Australian Escape
“Oh,” she said. Then several moments too late, “Of course. I knew that. I just— How do you even know that I could pay? I might be broke. Or tight with the purse strings. Or—”
“We’re more than a tourist town. The cove is a real community. All I had to do was drop Claude’s name and it was comped.”
“Really?” Oh, how lovely! They loved Claude enough to look after her? Oh, she loved this resort already. Belatedly she wondered why they wouldn’t simply comp it for him. Probably because Jonah North was a big scary bear. Or maybe he wasn’t big on favours. She certainly owed him a few.
“I also let Claudia know I’d make sure you got home safe and sound tomorrow.”
Avery’s eyes shot back to his. A drink. A room. A ride. Maybe he wasn’t such a jackass after all. Huh. Did that mean she had to try harder to be nice to him now too? Saying “no” had actually been fun, like being outside her own skin rather than curled up tight inside...
He pushed back his chair and held out his hand to her, and not for the first time. And not for the first time, she baulked.
She glanced up into his eyes to find him watching her, impatience edging at the corner of his mouth. Not wanting to start an international incident, she placed her hand in his to find it warm—as she’d expected—and strong—as she’d imagined—and roughly calloused—which sent a sharp shot of awareness right down her arm.
“Sorry,” she said in a rush of breath as he tugged her to her feet, “my manners seem to fly right out the window where you’re concerned. I can’t seem to figure out why.”
His pale grey eyes now shadows in the falling light, he said, “Can’t you?”
Avery’s belly clenched at the intensity of his gaze, and her heart beat so hard she could hear it behind her ears.
Such a simple question, with such a simple answer: she could.
She was obnoxious when he was around because he flummoxed her. He made her feel as if she had to keep her emotional dukes up, permanently, lest he find a way in and knock her out.
And if the past few days far away from the drama of her real life had told her anything, it was that she sorely needed a break. A return to simpler times. Like the summer when the most important thing that had ever happened to her had been a smile from the dreamy brown-eyed boy across the other side of the beach bonfire.
“The thing is,” she said, regretting opening her mouth even as the words poured out, “I’m currently...thinking about...seeing someone.”
“Someone?” he asked, everything in him suddenly seeming very still.
“Well, a man, to be more specific.”
Jonah looked about the bar where an islander was putting chairs onto the tables so he could sweep the floor. He hooked a thumb in the guy’s direction.
“No!” said Avery, grabbing his thumb and pulling it down by his side. It brought her within inches of his chest, so that she could feel the steady rise and fall of his breaths, the heat of his skin, could count his individual eyelashes, all one million of the gorgeous things. She let go. Backed away. Breathed. “Someone else. Someone I met here years ago. Someone I’m hoping to...reconnect with.”
“So then you’re not here to help out Claudia.” His words were tinged with such depths of boredom she wondered how she’d even come to think it was any of his business in the first place.
“Of course I am.” Avery lifted her chin. And she was. Or at least she would be. But since their big girlie talk, she hadn’t been able to pin her friend down long enough for a coffee, much less a conversation. Go play tourist! Claude would say on the fly. Swim, drink cocktails, take a boat to Green Island. Look how that turned out.
“You city girls,” said Jonah, his voice dropping into a by now familiar growl. “Can’t relax. Can’t do one thing at a time. Can’t settle your damn selves for love or money.”
“That’s a pretty broad brush.”
“Am I wrong?”
Well...no. Back home “busy-busy” or “can’t seem to get anything done” was akin to “fine, thanks.”
“Yeah,” he said, ducking his head as he ran a hand up the back of his neck and through those glorious curls. “That’s what I thought. Come on, princess, let’s get you checked in.”
He jerked his chin in the direction of the exit, and this time he didn’t hold out a hand.
Feeling strangely bereft, Avery collected her sandy, sodden gear and followed in her wet clothes and bare feet as at some point she’d lost her shoes. Beneath the shadows of the palm trees that grew everywhere in this part of the world, up the neat paths nearly empty of tourists now most had headed off the island.
And her mind whirled back to how that mortifying conversation had begun.
Can’t you? he’d asked, when she’d admitted not knowing why she pushed his buttons. But then why did he insist on pushing hers? Maybe, just maybe, she rubbed him the wrong way too. That very particular kind of wrong way that felt so right.
At that moment Jonah looked back, and she offered up her most innocuous smile.
“All okay?”
“Fine, thanks. You?”
The edge of his mouth twitched, but there was no smile. No evidence he thought she was hot stuff too. He merely lifted a big arm towards a small building with a thatched roof—the Tea Tree Resort and Spa—and they headed inside into blissful air-zconditioned luxury.
Once she’d got her key and thanked the guy at Reception profusely for the room, promising him payment, free PR services, a night in a hotel in New York if he was ever in town—all of which he rejected with a grin—she headed in the direction of her bungalow.
The clearing of a male throat brought her up short, and she turned to find Jonah leaning against the wall.
“You’re not staying here?” she asked, and the guy’s jaw twitched so hard she worried he’d break a tooth. “I mean in another room?”
“I have a place on the island.”
“Oh.” She waited for more. A description would have been nice. A little shanty hidden from view in the mangroves on the far side of the island? A towel on the sand, nothing between him and the stars? But no, he just stood there, in the only patch of shadow in the entire bright space.
“Think you’ll be okay here?” he asked, his voice rough around the edges, and yet on closer inspection...not so much. Much like the man himself.
“You tell me. You’re the one who seems to think I can’t walk out the door without facing certain death.”
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said, his expression cool, those eyes of his quiet, giving nothing away. “If you’re still alive in the morning, I’ll change my tune.”
“Till the morning, then,” Avery said, taking a step outside the force field the guy wore like a second skin. “Now I’m going to take a long cold shower.”
His gaze hardened on hers, and she felt herself come over pink, and fast.
“For the sunburn.”
At her flat response, his mouth kicked into a smile, giving her another hint of those neat white teeth. A flash of those eye crinkles. A flood of sensation curled deep into her belly.
“Good night, Jonah.”
He breathed in deep, breathed out slow. “Sleep tight,” he said, then walked away.
Yeah right, Avery thought, watching the front doorway through which he’d left long after he was gone.
When she got to her room it was to find a fruit basket, a bottle of wine, and a big fat tub of aloe vera with a Post-it note slapped on top that read, “For the American who now knows Aussies do it better.”
FOUR
Avery woke to an insistent buzzing. Groaning, she scrunched one eye open to find herself in a strange room. A strange bed. Peering through narrowed eyes, she saw the pillow beside her was undisturbed. That was something, at least.
She let her senses stretch a mite and slowly the day before came back to her... Green Island. Jonah. Sunburn. Jonah. Cocktail. Jonah. And lusting. Oodles of coconut-scented lusting. And Jonah.
And she rolled over to bury her face in a pillow.
When the buzzing started up again, she realised it was the hotel phone. She smacked her hand around the bedside table till she found it. “Hello?” Her voice sounded as if she’d swallowed a bucket of sand.
The laughter that followed needed no introduction.
“Don’t. Please. It hurts.”
“I don’t doubt it,” Jonah rumbled, his voice even deeper through the phone. “How long till you can be ready to leave?”
“A week?”
She felt the smile. Felt it slink across her skin and settle in her belly. “Half an hour.”
“I’ll meet you in Reception in forty-five minutes. And don’t forget the sunscreen. Australian. Factor thirty. Buy some from the resort shop.”
“Where are we going?”
“Home,” he said, then hung up.
Avery heaved herself upright and squinted against the sunshine pouring through the curtain-free windows. The scent of sea air was fresh and sharp, the swoosh of the water nearby like a lullaby. It was a fantasy, with—thanks to rum—glimpses of hell. But it sure wasn’t home.
Home was blaring horns and sidewalks teeming with life, not all of it human. City lights so bright you could barely see the stars. It was keeping your handbag close and your frenemies closer. It was freezing in New York right now. And heading into night. The storefronts filled with the first hints at hopeful spring fashion even while the locals scurried by in scarves and boots and coats to keep out the chill.
As soon as she turned on her phone it beeped. Her mother had sent a message at some point, as if she could sense her beloved daughter was about to have less than positive thoughts.
Hello, my darling! I hope you are having a fabulous time. When you get a moment could you please send me Freddy Horgendaas’s number as I have had a most brilliant idea. I miss you more than you can know. xXx
Freddy was a most brilliant cake-maker, famous for his wildly risqué creations. Avery pressed finger and thumb into her eye sockets, glad anew she wouldn’t be there when her mother revealed a cake in the shape of her father’s private parts with a whopping great knife stuck right in the centre.
She sent the number with the heading ‘Freddy Deets’ knowing the lack of a complete sentence would make her mother twitch. It wasn’t a no. More like passive aggression. But for her it was definitely a move in the right direction.
Forty minutes later—showered and changed into the still-damp bikini she’d found on the bathroom floor—she made a quick stop to the resort gift shop where she picked up an oversized It’s Easy Being Green! T-shirt, a fisherman’s hat, and flip-flops to replace the shoes she’d somehow lost along the way, and slathered herself in Australian sunscreen and handed her key in to the day staff at Reception.
The girls behind the desk chattered about the shock of Claudia’s and Luke’s parents suddenly heading off into the middle of nowhere, and asked how Claudia was coping. Avery said her friend was coping just great, all the while thinking shock and coping were pretty loaded words. Making a deal with herself to pin Claude down asap, Avery still knew the moment Jonah had arrived, for she might as well have turned invisible to the two women behind the desk.
“Hi, Jonah!” the girls sing-songed.
“Morning, ladies,” he said from behind her, his deep Australian drawl hooking into that place behind Avery’s belly button it always seemed to catch. Then to Avery, “Ready to go?”
And the girls’ eyes turned to her in amazement and envy.
Avery shook her head infinitesimally—I get the lust, believe me, but don’t panic, he’s not the guy for me.
Then she turned, all that denial ringing in her head as it got a load of the man who’d arrived to take her away.
It shouldn’t have been a surprise that Jonah was still unshaven, and yet the sight of all that manly stubble first thing in the morning did the strangest things to her constitution. As did the warm brown of his skin against the navy blue shirt, and the strong calves beneath his long shorts, and the crystal-clear grey eyes.
“Shall we?” he asked.
We shall, she thought.
“Bye, Jonah!” the girls called.
Avery, who was by then five steps ahead of Jonah, rolled her eyes.
When they hit sunlight, she stopped, not knowing which way to go.
“What time’s the boat?”
“No boat today. Not for us anyway.” And then his hand strayed to her lower back, burning like a brand as he guided her along the path, leaving nothing between his searing touch but the cotton of her T-shirt and her still-damp swimmers.
“This way,” he said, guiding her with the slightest pressure as he eased her through a gate marked Private then down a sandy path beneath the shade of a small forest, and back out into the sunshine where a jetty poked out into the blinding blue sea. And perched on a big square at the end—
“A helicopter?” A pretty one too, with the Charter North logo emblazed across the side.
“It was brought here this morning on a charter. They don’t need it back till four. Quickest way off the island.”
“No, thanks,” she said, crossing her arms across her chest, “I’ll wait for the boat.”
“You sure?” he asked, his eyes dropping to where her crossed arms had created a little faux cleavage. Her next breath in was difficult. “It’ll be a good eight hours from now, the sea rocking you back and forth, all that noise from a bunch of very tired kids after a long hot day at the beach—”
Avery held up a hand to shush him as she swallowed down the heave of anticipatory post-cocktail seasickness rising up in her stomach. “Yes, thank you. I get your point. So where’s our pilot?”
At the twist of his smile, she knew.
Before she could object, Jonah’s hands were at her waist, shoving her forward. Her self-preservation instincts actually propelled her away from his touch and towards the contraption as if it were the lesser danger.
When he hoisted her up, she scrambled into her seat with less grace than she’d have liked. And then suddenly he was there, his silhouette blocking out the sun, the scent of him—soap and sea and so much man—sliding inside her senses, the back of his knuckles scraping the T-shirt across her belly...
Oh, he was plugging her in.
“That feels good,” she said. Then, cheeks going from sunburned to scorched in half a second flat, added, “The belt feels good. Fine. Nice and tight.” Nice and tight?
A muscle in Jonah’s cheek twitched, then without another word he passed her a set of headphones, slid some over his dark curls, flipped some dials, chatted to a flight-control tower, and soon they were off, with Avery’s stomach trailing about ten feet below.
It didn’t help that Jonah seemed content to simply fly, sunlight slanting across the strong planes of his face, his big thighs spread out over his seat.
Three minutes into the flight Avery nearly whooped with relief when she found a subject that didn’t carry some unintentional double entendre. She waved a hand Jonah’s way.
He tapped her headphones. Right.
“I hope you found someone to look after your dog,” she said, her voice tinny in her ears. “I was thinking about it before I fell asleep last night. I mean, since it was my fault you couldn’t go home to him last night.”
“Hull’ll be fine.”
Hull. It suited the huge wolfish beast. Like something a Viking might call his best friend.
Then Jonah added, “But he’s not my dog.”
“Oh. But I thought... Claude said—”
“He’s not my dog.”
Okay, then.
An age later Jonah’s voice came to her, deep and echoey through the headphones. “Want to know what I was thinking about when I finally fell asleep?”
Yes... But she was meant to be getting better at saying no. And this seemed like a really good chance to practise. “No,” she lied, her voice flat even as her heart rate shot through the roof.
He shot her a look. Grey eyes hooded, lazy with heat. And the smile that curved at his mouth was predatory. “I’m going to tell you anyway.”
Oh, hell.
“I wondered how long it will be before I have to throw myself between you and a drop bear.”
Avery wasn’t fast enough to hide the smile that tugged at her mouth. Or slow enough not to notice that his gaze dropped to her mouth and stayed. “I may be a tourist, Jonah, but I’m not an idiot. There’s no such thing as a drop bear.”
His eyes—thankfully—slid back to hers. “Claudia tipped you off, eh?”
“She is fabulous that way.”
At mention of her friend another option occurred to her! Sitting up straighter, she turned in her seat as much as she could, ignoring the zing that travelled up her leg as her knee brushed against his.
“Speaking of Claudia,” she said. Here goes. “She thinks you’re hot.”
A rise of an eyebrow showed his surprise. “Really?” And for a moment she thought she had him. Then he had to go and ask, “What do you think?”
Her stomach clenched as if taking a direct hit. “That’s irrelevant.”
“Not to me.”
“Why do you even care?”
His next look was flat, intent, no holds barred. “If you don’t know that yet, Ms Shaw, then I’m afraid that fancy education of yours was a complete waste.”
She tried to blink. To think. To come up with some fabulous retort that would send him yelping back into his man cave. But the pull of those eyes, that face, that voice, basking in the wholly masculine scent of him filling the tiny cabin, she couldn’t come up with a pronoun, much less an entire sentence.
And the longer the silence built, the less chance she had of getting herself off the hook.
It took for him to break eye contact—when a gust of wind picked them up and rocked them about—for her to drag her eyes away.
With skill and haste, he slipped them above the air stream and into calmer air space. While her stomach still felt as if it were tripping and falling. All because of a little innocent flirting.
Only it didn’t feel innocent. It felt like Jonah was staking a claim.
But he scared the bejesus out of her. Not him so much; the swiftness of her attraction to him. It was fierce. And kind of wild. And she was the woman who calmed the waters. Not the kind who ever went chasing storms.
Even while she knew she was about to admit she understood exactly what Jonah meant, she said, “I told you—I’m interested in someone else.” Considering becoming interested, anyway.
Then, as if it just didn’t matter, he said, “You didn’t answer my question.”
“Because it’s a ridiculous question!”
“You brought it up.”
So she had. How had this suddenly gone so wrong?
Avery risked a glance to find Jonah’s eyes back on her mouth. His jaw was tight, his breaths slow and deep. And his deep grey eyes made their way back to hers.
“Good Lord, Jonah, first the girls at the hotel were all swoony over you—”
“You noticed?” The smile was back. And a sheen of perspiration prickled all over her skin.
She held up a hand to block his face from sight. “Then Claude mentions in passing that she thinks you’re a ‘supreme example of Australian manhood—’”
His laughter at that echoed through the tiny space till her toes curled. But still she forged on.
“You really need me to be in the line-up too? Are you really that egotistical?”
“No, Avery. I’m really that interested. I want to hear you admit you’re as attracted to me as I think you are,” he said, and not for a second did he take his eyes from hers.
If she hadn’t been strapped up like a Thanksgiving turkey she’d have been on him like cranberry sauce. But she was, and she couldn’t. And the conversation had become such a hot mess, Avery wished she could go back in time. Perhaps to the very beginning when all that mattered in life was sleep, food, and a safe place in which to hide from pesky dinosaurs.
“You want to know what I want?” she asked, proud of the fact that her voice wasn’t quavering all over the place. “What I want is for you to keep your eyes on the sky! No matter what you think of my survival skills, I have no intention of dying today.”
She waited, all air stuck in her lungs, for him to say something like I’d rather keep my eyes on you. But he merely smiled. As if he knew that she was a big fat liar. Deep down in the dark places inside her that she avoided at all costs. The place where Pollyanna had been born: always positive, not a bother, things would get better, they would! No wonder she worked in PR.
When Jonah’s smile only grew, she muttered, “Oh, shut up.”
“I didn’t say a thing.”
“Well, stop thinking. It doesn’t suit you.”
The smile turned into a laugh—huh-huh-huh. Then, easy as you please, he shifted eyes front and left her alone for the rest of the flight.
Disappointment and temptation rode her in equal measure, so much so she clenched her fists and let herself have a good internal scream. Because she didn’t need this, feeling all breathless and weightless with all the hot flushes and the like. Avery wasn’t looking for sparks. Sparks were incendiary. Their sole purpose was to start fires. And fire burned.
She couldn’t have been more relieved when the helicopter finally came to rest on a helipad at the end of a jetty belonging to one of the bigger resorts just north of Crescent Cove.
Even better when she saw Claudia waving as if Avery had been rescued from some deserted island.
And, bless his shiny black shoes, there was Luke, leaning against the Tropicana Nights shuttle bus in the car park at the far end of the jetty. Tall, and handsome, with half an eye on his phone.
Hull was there too. The beast sat apart, upright on a cluster of rocks in the shadow of a tilting palm tree at the end of the jetty. Not Jonah’s dog? Maybe somebody should tell the dog that.
Avery managed to get herself unstrapped without help. But getting down was another matter.
Strong hands at her waist, Jonah dropped her to the ground. She didn’t dare breathe as all that hard muscle and sun-drenched skin imprinted itself upon her and good. The second her feet hit terra firma, she peeled herself away.
“Here’s hoping that’s the last time you feel the need to come to my salvation.”
Jonah didn’t second that thought. In fact, even as he stood there, like some big hot, muscly statue, the look in his eyes told her he wasn’t on the same page at all. With a shake of her head, she turned and walked away.
“Avery,” he called.
She scrunched her eyes tight a second, held her breath. And when she looked back, she saw he was holding out her missing shoes.
Meaning at some point after he’d dropped her at the Tea Tree he must have gone looking for them. Which was actually...really...nice.
She walked to him, hating every second of it. And when she slid her fingers into the straps, her fingers brushed his. And there was the spark. Hard, fast, debilitating.
Their eyes met. One corner of his sexy mouth lifted. Deny that, he said without saying anything at all. And her heart thumped so hard against her ribs she dared not look down in case it was leaving a mark.
“Aaaaaveryyyy!” Claudia’s voice carried on the air.
Jonah’s eyes followed the sound, and lit up with an easygoing smile, one not fuelled with sex appeal and intent. When his eyes once again found hers, he caught her staring. And the next smile was all sex, all intent, all for her.
“Don’t say it,” she said, walking backwards, using her dangly sandals as a shield. “Don’t even think it. The end.”
And then she turned, looped her arm through Claudia’s and swung her away from the crazy-making guy at her back.
“You okay?” Claude asked. “You looked all flushed.”
“Sunburn,” Avery deadpanned. Then bumped shoulders with her friend. “Now did you guys really drive out here just to get me?”
“Of course we did. When Jonah rang to say you’d nearly been eaten by a giant squid I had to find out the real story!”
“Funny man,” she mumbled, “that friend of yours.”
“Seems he’s becoming quite the friend of yours. I’ve never been on his chopper before. Not once.”