Australian Escape
“Voilà!” Claude repeated. “Good God, hon! One of these days you’re going to have to learn to say the word no!”
Avery pish-poshed, even though she and Claude had had the same argument a dozen times over the years.
“Starting now,” said Claude. “Repeat after me—No.”
“No,” Avery shot back.
“Good girl. Now practise. Ten times in the morning. Ten times before bed.”
Avery nodded, promised and wondered why she hadn’t brought up the fact that she hadn’t had a problem saying “no” to Jonah North. And that saying “no” to him had felt good. Really good. So she had the ability. Buried somewhere deep down inside perhaps, but the instinct was there when she really meant it.
But Claude was right. She should have told her mother “no.” Well, considering there were more venomous snakes in the world’s top ten here than any other place on earth, if she was ever going to toughen up, this was the place.
* * *
The Charter North Reef Cruiser was on its way to Green Island. In the engine room everything looked shipshape, so Jonah headed up the companionway to the top deck.
The crew ought to have been used to him turning up on a skip unannounced; he did it all the time. There was no point having a fleet of boats with his name on them if they weren’t up to his standards. Besides, his father had been a boatman before him and he knew an extra pair of hands was always welcome.
But the moment he entered the air-conditioned salon, the staff scattered. He caught the eye of one—a new girl, by the starched collar of her Charter North polo shirt, who wasn’t as quick off the mark as the others. With a belated squeak she leapt into action, polishing the silver handrails with the edge of her sand-coloured shorts. Odd. But industrious.
So he walked the aisles. The passenger list was pretty much as per usual—marine biologists researching the reef, Green Island staffers, a group of girls who looked as if they’d closed one of the resort bars the night before, a toddler with a brown paper bag under his chin.
His gaze caught on a crew of skinny brown boys, skateboards tucked on their laps, eyes looking out of the window as if urging the island nearer. Part of the Dreadlock Army who lived in these parts, kids who survived on sea water and fresh air. A lifetime ago he’d been one of them.
Fast forward and this day he’d been awake since five. Gone for a five-kilometre run. Driven the half-hour to Charter North HQ in Port Douglas. Checked emails, read the new safety procedures manual he’d paid a small fortune to set up, negotiated the purchase of a new pleasure cruiser he had his eye on in Florida. No time for sticking a toe in the ocean, much less taking it on.
As the captain began his spiel over the speaker system about the adventures available once they hit the island, Jonah slid his sunglasses in place and headed aft.
A few customers had staked out prime positions in the open air, laughing as they were hit with ocean spray. He didn’t blame them. It was a hell of a day to be outside.
When they said Queensland was beautiful one day and perfect the next, they were talking about Crescent Cove. The Coral Sea was invariably warm, a slight southerly bringing about a gentle swell. The sky was a dome of blinding blue with only a smattering of soft white streaks far away on the horizon. And soon they’d hit the edge of the Great Barrier Reef, one of the natural wonders of the world.
He was a lucky man to have been born here. Luckier still to remain. He breathed deep of the sky and salt and sun. He didn’t need surf. All he needed was never to take the place for granted again.
He nodded to the staff keeping watch on deck and made to head back inside when someone caught his eye. Not just any someone, it was his waterlogged mermaid herself.
She lifted a hand to shield her eyes and turned her gaze to Crescent Cove. She had nice hands. Fine. Her nails were the colour of her dress—a long flame-orange thing flapping against her legs—and her hair was twisted up into a complicated series of knots atop her head making her look as if she were about to step out onto the French Riviera not a small island on the edge of the Pacific.
Jonah glanced at his own hands knowing they’d be less than fine. Burly brown with many a war wound, and motor oil under his chipped nails. He rubbed his fingers across his rough chin. How long since he’d shaved? Three days? Four?
He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his long shorts, his forehead pinching. What did he care about all that?
Unfortunately, in the time he’d spent caring, she’d turned to face him, all elegant stance and plaintive eyes.
Caught out, his breath found itself caught somewhere in the region of his gut.And then her eyes narrowed. As if he’d done anything to her other than save her ass.
Then the boat hit a swell, the bow lifting and crashing to the water with a thud.
Squeals of excitement ricocheted through the cabin. But, facing him, his mermaid had no purchase. She lost balance, knocked a hip against the side of the boat, and began to topple—
From there everything happened in slow motion—Jonah’s leap over a bench, his canvas shoes landing on the slippery deck then sliding him towards her. He reached for her hand, grabbed, caught, and dragged her back to safety and into his arms.
Her hands fisted into his shirt, the scrape of nails through cotton hooked his chest hair, pulling a couple right from the roots. At the sharp tug of pain, he sucked in a breath. And her eyes lifted swiftly to his. Those odd mismatched eyes. Seriously stunning in such an otherwise quiet face.
“Seriously?” he growled. “I’m going to start thinking these moments are all for my benefit.”
She gave him a shove. Strength in those lean arms. “Seriously?” she shot back. Then heaved up a hunk of her skirt, flapped it at him accusingly and shot him a look that said that if she had the superpower, she’d have set him on fire. “All that I know is that thanks to you, I’m soaked!”
“Stick around here, princess, and chances are you’re gonna get wet.”
She opened her mouth...but nothing came out. Instead high spots of pink burned into her cheeks creating hollows beneath her elegant cheekbones, pursing those kissable lips, and bringing wild glints to those eyes. Not such a quiet face after all. “Maybe next time you decide to go all He-Man, try not to rip the victim’s arm from its socket.”
She rubbed her arm as if to prove as much, only bringing his attention to the fact that her skin was covered in goosebumps. With the temp edging into the high thirties, that was some feat. Only one other reason Jonah knew for a woman to go goosey when locked in a man’s arms...
Testing his theory, Jonah leaned an inch her way, caught the intake of breath, the widening of her eyes, the fresh pink staining her cheeks. Seemed Miss Yankee Doodle Dandy here wasn’t as unaffected by him as she was making out.
She swallowed and shoved, with less oomph this time. “Oh, go peddle your He-Man act to someone else for a change.”
“No one else seems to need it.” The fact that nobody else had ever brought out the urge he kept to himself.
Yeah, he’d heard the chatter since he’d come home; heard himself called hell-bent, a lone wolf. But the truth was even before that, as a kid with all the freedom in the world, he’d known he could count the people he could truly depend upon on one hand. He was glad of that instinct now. Less chance he’d make the mistake of counting on the wrong someone again.
And yet, with this one, it took someone else to wrench him away.
“Mr North?”
Jonah turned to find one of his staff standing in the doorway, wringing his hands, swallowing hard, as if his head might be bitten off for disturbing the boss.
“Sir,” said the kid, “we have a Code Green.”
“Right.” Awesome. He’d asked the crew before they’d taken off to grab him in the event of any major incidents so that he could watch any of the new policies and procedures in action. Code Green was otherwise known as Puke Patrol.
“I’ll be there in a sec.”
The kid disappeared so fast into the salon he practically evaporated. Leaving Jonah to turn back to Avery, whose eyes were locked onto his chest.
“Twenty minutes till touchdown, Avery,” he said.
She blinked, looked up, then pinked some more. He’d never much been one for girls who blushed, but it suited her. Took the edge off her sharp tongue. Heaven help the guy who fell for one before he was witness to the other.
“You might want to get out of the sun. Get something to drink. Complimentary sunscreen’s inside. Whatever you do, get something between you and the big blue. One of these days I won’t be around to save you.”
Not intending to stick around to see how that went down, Jonah slipped inside.
It was a little under twenty minutes before Green Island came into view: a sliver of land on the horizon that grew into a small atoll of forest-green with a long crooked jetty poking out into the ocean. The cruiser slipped through the reef to park and the passengers staggered off; some clutching snorkels ready for a close encounter with tropical fish, others planning to head straight to a bar.
Jonah caught a flash of orange out of the corner of his eye and turned to find Avery now with a huge sunhat covering her face. Lifting her long dress, she stepped onto the gangplank, her shoe caught and she tripped. Jonah near pulled a muscle in an effort not to grab her. Chin tilted a mite higher, she walked steadily along the jetty, where all sorts of adventures awaited.
Adventures...and dangers. Things happened to tourists all the time—swimming too far, diving too deep, getting knocked off by ingenious spouses.
“Avery!” he called.
She turned, surprise lighting her features. “Yes, Jonah?”
She knew his name. A thick slide of satisfaction washed through him—then he remembered the Code Green. Down boy. “Take care.”
She blinked, those odd eyes widening, then softening in a way that made him want to howl at the moon.
Hence the reason he added, “Don’t get eaten.”
The next look she shot him might as well have said, Bite me. But when she realised they had an audience, she found a sweet-as-pie smile, and said, “Oh, don’t get eaten. Thanks for the advice. I’ll keep it in mind.”
And he found himself laughing out loud.
With a frown and twitch of her mouth, she disappeared into the crowd.
Leaving Jonah to use the respite to remind himself that despite the lush mouth, and the bewitching eyes and the rich vein of sexual attraction she’d unearthed, he didn’t much like her.
Because he’d known a woman like her once before.
He hadn’t realised why Rach had stood out to him like bonfire on a cloudy night from the first moment he’d seen her until it was too late. Turned out it was because despite her attestations that a sea change was exactly what she needed she’d never left the city behind enough to really fit in. Too late by the time he’d seen it to stop her leaving. Too late to convince himself not to follow. Until he’d woken up in Sydney, cut off, miserable, realising what he’d given up for her, and that he’d lost her anyway.
Returning to Crescent Cove after that whole disaster had been hard. Returning to find he no longer quite fitted in the place he’d been born had been harder still. He’d had to remake his life, and to do that remake himself. As if the cove had needed a sacrifice in order to take him back, in order to make sure he’d never take her for granted again.
So no, for however long Avery Shaw flitted about the periphery of his life she’d mean no more, or less, to him than a pebble in his shoe.
Because this time his eyes were wide-open and staying that way. This time he wouldn’t so much as blink.
THREE
Jonah wasn’t looking for Avery, not entirely.
He found her anyway, on the beach. Her big hat, so wet it flopped onto her shoulders. Half in, half out of a wetsuit that flapped dejectedly against her legs as she jumped around slapping at her skin as if fighting off a swarm of bees.
Jonah picked up his pace to a jog.
“Avery,” he called when near enough, “what the hell’s wrong now?”
She didn’t even look up, just kept on wriggling, giving him flashes of bare stomach through a silver one-piece with great swathes of Lycra cut away leaving the edges to caress a hip, to brush the underside of a breast, keeping Jonah locked into a loop of double takes.
“I’m stung!” she cried, jogging him out of his daze. “Something got me. A box jellyfish. Or a blue bottle. Or a stone fish. I read about them on the flight over. One of them got me. I sting. Everywhere.”
“Bottles don’t come this far north, the suit protects from jellies, and the flippers from stone fish.”
Avery jumped from flippered foot to flippered foot as if something terrible was about to explode from out of the sand at her feet. “Then what’s wrong with me?”
Jonah made a mental note to have a talk with Claudia. She always had some crazy theme going on at her resort, with games and the like—surely she could keep the woman indoors and out of his sight.
But until then he had to make sure she wasn’t actually hurt. Meaning he had to run hands down her arms, ignoring as best he could the new tension knotting hard and fast inside him.
He spun her around to check behind, wrapping the fall of hair about his hand to lift it off her neck, doing his all to avoid the mental images that brought forth. He swept his gaze over the skin the swimsuit revealed round back. Then grabbed her by the chin and tilted so he could see her face under the ridiculous hat. Her very pink face.
“Hell, woman,” he growled, snapping his hand away. “You’re sunburnt.”
Her mismatched eyes widened. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
He took off the hat to make sure, and with a squeak her hand swept to her hair. Jonah rolled his eyes and slapped the hat back on her head. “Did you bring anything for sunburn?” Sunscreen perhaps?
He glanced at her silver bag to find its contents already upended and covered in a million grains of white sand. Clearly she’d been looking in the hopes of a remedy herself. A remedy for stone fish, he reminded himself, biting back a smile.
“Don’t you dare laugh at me!”
Only made him smile all the more. “Don’t tell me you were All Conference in Sun Protection at Brown Mare too?”
“Bryn Mawr,” she bit out. And, whoa, was that a flicker of a smile from her? The one that lit her up brighter than the sun?
Jonah looked away, tilting his chin towards the jetty. “There’s aloe vera on the boat. It’ll soothe it at the very least. At least until the great peel sets in.”
“I don’t peel.”
“You will peel, princess. Great ugly strips of dead skin sloughing away.”
Muttering under her breath, she shoved all her bits and pieces back into her bag—including, he noted, a dog-eared novel, a bottle of fancy sparkling water, and, yep, sunscreen.
He plucked the sunscreen from her fingers and read the label. “American,” he muttered under his breath.
“Excuse me!” she shot back, no muttering there.
“Your SPF levels are not the same as ours. With your skin you can’t get away with this rubbish.”
“What’s wrong with my skin?” she asked, arms wide, giving him prime view of her perfectly lovely skin. And neat straight shoulders, lean waist, hips that flared just right. As for her backside, he remembered with great clarity as she bent over on his board...
Jonah closed his eyes a moment and sent out a blanket curse to whatever he’d done to piss off karma enough to send him Avery Shaw.
“I’m well aware I’m not all golden bronzed like the likes of you,” she said, “which is why I bought a bottle from home. Ours are stronger.”
“Wrong way around, sweetheart,” Jonah drawled. “Aussies do it better.”
She coughed and spluttered. That was better than having her eyes rove over his golden-bronzed self while standing there all pink, and pretty, and half-naked.
Then, feeling more than a little sorry for herself, she slowly went back to refilling her bag, now with far less gusto. Her drooping hat dripped ocean water down her pink skin, she had a scratch on her arm that could do with some antiseptic and a couple of toes had clearly come out badly in a fight with some coral before she’d remembered her flippers.
Suddenly she threw the bag on the sand, slammed her hands onto her hips and looked him right in the eye. “In New York we have cab drivers who don’t know the meaning of the words health code. Rats the size of opossums. Steam that oozes from the subways that could knock you out with its stench. I live in a place it takes street smarts to survive. But this place? Holy Jeter!”
After a sob, she began to laugh. And laugh and laugh. It hit the edge of hysteria, but thankfully it never slipped quite that far.
Jonah ran a hand up the back of his neck and looked out at the edge of the jetty visible around the corner of the beach where his boat and the bright blue sea awaited. Basic, elemental pleasures. Enduring... Then glanced back at the tourist whose safety had clearly, for whatever reason, been placed in his hands.
Whatever problems he had with her kind, there was no denying the woman was trying. Enough that something slipped inside him, just a fraction, just enough to give her a break.
“Come on, princess,” he said, holding out a hand. “Let’s get you a drink.”
She glanced at his sand-covered hand and her nose crinkled. “I don’t need a drink.”
Knowing it was only a matter of time before he regretted it, Jonah took a moment to brush the sand from his hand before holding it out again. It looked so dark near her skin. Big and rough near all that softness. “Well, I do,” he said, his voice gruff. “And I’m not about to resort to drinking alone.”
Avery watched him from beneath her lashes. Then, taking her bag in one hand and the arms of her wetsuit in the other, she flapped her way back up the beach, leaving him to catch up. “So long as drink doesn’t mean beer. Because I don’t do beer.”
Jonah watched her walk away, flinching every third step in fear of having unearthed some other Great Australian Wildlife intent on taking her down. Shaking his head, he dug his hands into the pockets of his shorts and did what he’d promised himself he’d never do again—follow a city girl anywhere. “Pity, princess, you really are missing out on one of the great experiences of an Australian summer.”
She cut him a look—straight, sure, street smart indeed—and said, “I’ll live.”
And for the first time since he’d met the woman Jonah believed she just might.
* * *
When her straw slurped against the bottom of the coconut shell, dragging in the last drops of rum, coconut milk, and something she couldn’t put her finger on, Avery pushed the thing away and looked up with a blissful sigh to find that the fabulous outdoor bar that Jonah had escorted her to some time earlier was empty.
Jonah North of Charter North. About halfway through the cocktail she’d put two and two together and figured the boat was his. She was clever that way, she thought, fluffing up her nearly dry hair, the happy waves in her head making it feel nice. She liked feeling nice.
Now what about Jonah? Big, gruff, handsome, bossy Jonah. Oh, yeah, he’d left her a few minutes ago to go and do...something. She looked around, shielding her eyes against the streak of bright orange cloud lighting up the dark blue horizon. Oops. Since when had the sun begun to set?
She found her phone in her bag and checked the time. Holy Jeter, she’d missed the boat! With a groan she let her head fall into her hands.
She knew the guy had only taken her for a drink because he’d got it into his thick He-Man head that she’d perish without supervision, but now the cad had damn well left her on an island in the middle of the Pacific, with night falling, and nowhere—
“Everything okay?” a familiar deep voice asked.
Avery peeled one eye open and looked through the gaps between her fingers to find Jonah standing by the table, his hands in the pockets of his khaki shorts, his white Charter North shirt flapping against the rises and falls of his chest in the evening breeze, the sunlight pouring over his deeply browned skin.
The guy might be wholly annoying in an I Told You So kind of way, but there was no denying he was Gorgeous—capital G intended. What with that handsome brown face all covered in stubble. And those shoulders—so big, so broad. Those tight dark curls that made a girl want to reach out and touch. And the chest she’d had her hands all over when he’d pulled her out of the ocean, all muscle and golden skin and more dark curling hair. In fact there was plenty about him that made a girl want to touch...
But not her, she reminded herself, sinking her hands down onto the chair so that she could sit on them before they did anything stupid.
If anybody was going to get the benefit of her touch on this trip, it would be that unsuspecting cabana boy—and, boy, did that sound seedy all of a sudden. So maybe not. Maybe, ah, Luke! Yes, dashing, debonair, dishy Luke Hargreaves. There you go, that was way better than nice—
“You okay there, Avery?”
“Hmm? Sorry? What?”
Jonah’s laugh was a deep low huh-huh-huh that she felt in the backs of her knees.
“How many of those have you had?” he asked.
“Just one, thank you very much.” A big one. “I’m fine.”
“You say that a lot. That you’re fine.”
She did? Funny, she could hear it too, like an eerie echo inside her head. I’m fine! All good! Don’t worry about me! Now what can I do to make you feel better? Cheer-cheer, rah-rah-rah!
“I say it because I am.” Mostly. “And I am. Fine. Just too much sun. And those cocktails have quite a kick, don’t they? And—” she pointed one way, and then turned and pointed the other, not quite sure which direction was which “—I do believe I’m meant to be on a boat heading back to the mainland right about now.”
Jonah pulled out a chair and straddled the thing, like he needed extra room between his legs to accommodate...you know. Avery blinked fast at the direction of her thoughts, before lifting her eyes quick smart to his, only to connect with all that quicksilver. Cool and hot all at once. As if he knew exactly where her eyes and thoughts had just been.
She swallowed. Hard. Tasted rum and coconut and...whatever the other thing was. The deadly wicked other thing that seemed to have made her rather tipsy.
“Avery.”
“Yes, Jonah.”
The quicksilver shifted, glints lighting the depths. “Our boat left about the time you started filling me in on why you came to the cove.”
Avery swallowed, wondering just how much rum she’d imbibed. She’d told him? What exactly? How she’d been a big chicken and fled New York so as to avoid her mother’s mortifying divorce anniversary party?
“To catch up with Claudia,” Jonah reminded her when she’d looked at him blankly for quite some time.
“Right! Of course. For Claude. We’re friends, you know? Have been a lo-o-ong time.”
No laugh this time, but a smile. An honest-to-goodness smile that made his eyes glow and his eye crinkles deepen. Sheesh; the man didn’t need to have a sexy smile to go along with the sexy laugh and all the other sexy bits. But there it was. Talk about a potent cocktail.
“I’ve secured a room at a local resort, the Tea Tree—”
“Wow. It was decent of you to buy me a drink—” a kicker of a cocktail “—in order to ease the sunburn—” embarrassment “—and all, but a room’s rather presumptuous, don’t you think?”
A few more glints joined the rest and his next smile came with a flash of white teeth. The rare and beautiful sight made her girl parts uncurl like a cat in the sun.
“Avery,” he said, and she kind of wished he’d called her princess, or honey, because her name in that drawl from that mouth was as good as ten minutes of concentrated foreplay. “The room is for you. Just you. Alone.”