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“Dammit,” he swore, hauling himself upright to run two hands through his hair. And despite himself he couldn’t help going to that place inside himself he’d worked his ass off to leave behind. The part of him that would always be small town, a lobsterman’s son. That knew no matter how many boats he owned, how many homes, how many helicopters or tourism awards or dollars in the bank, to a city girl like Avery Shaw he’d never be enough.
Rachel. A girl like Rachel. He’d lived with her for a year. He’d slept with Avery once. There was no comparison. None at all.
Punching out enough oaths to make a boxer blush, Jonah hit the floor, tore the sheets off the bed, threw them down the hall to be washed. He didn’t want to hit his bed that night and catch her scent, even if it was all he deserved for letting her in. To his head and his home. Thankfully his heart was tough as an old boot.
Still didn’t mean it wasn’t a smart idea to scrub her scent from his skin, her image from his head, and her presence from his heretofore perfectly fine life. If he saw Avery Shaw again in the weeks she spent in town it would be too soon.
* * *
When the cab dropped Avery at the Tropicana, the sun was barely threatening to spread its first golden streaks across the dawn sky.
She slid her room card into the slot at the front of the resort, opened the door and padded across Reception, which, due to the hour, was even more quiet than usual.
Except that Claudia was behind the reception desk.
Before Avery could think up an alternative escape route, Claudia looked up with a start; slamming shut her laptop, and looking as guilty as Avery felt.
“Hi!” said Claude.
“Morning!” chirped Avery. “What are you doing down here so early?”
“Oh, nothing. Just...bookings. So-o-o many bookings.”
Claude’s hair was a little askew, her eyes a little pink. She had gone hard at the cocktails the night before and yet here she was pre-sunrise, hours before check in, and all decked out in her polyester Tropicana Nights finest.
More importantly, though, she seemed distracted enough not to notice Avery’s walk of shame.
“Okay, well, I’ll catch you later then—”
“Wait.”
Dammit. Avery turned to find Claudia looking anything but distracted, her eyes roving over Avery’s shimmery top, her swishy black dress pants, the ankle breakers dangling from her fingers.
“Yo ho ho! Avery Shaw, you hot dog. You got yourself some Jonah!”
“Shh.”
“Who’s going to hear? The pot plants? Come,” said Claude, scooting from behind the desk to drag Avery over to a sumptuous leather couch where sunlight was starting to hit patches of once-plush rug. “So what happened? Why the pre-dawn crawl home? After all that sexy touching and tractor-beams eyes you two had going on last night I’d have thought you’d have set the bed ablaze. Was it terrible? All smoke no fire?”
Avery sniffed out a laugh. Then laughed some more. Then laughed so hard she got a stitch. Clutching at her side, she bent from the waist and let her head fall between her knees. Nose an inch from an old wad of gum stuck on the underside of the couch, she sighed. “It was...spectacular. Claude, I can’t even begin to describe the things that man did to me. On a cellular level.”
“Ha!” Claude clapped her hands so loud it echoed through the gargantuan space. “Awesome. But if it was so spectacular why aren’t you at Jonah’s shack doing the wild thing with that man right now?”
Because it was only ever going to be a one-night thing? Because her itch for him had finally been scratched? Because she knew Jonah well enough to know he’d give his right pinky not to have to go through a talky-talky morning after?
Avery heaved herself to sitting and stared into nothingness. “Because I am a common-or-garden-variety coward.”
Claudia took Avery’s hand between hers, and waited till Avery’s eyes were on hers. “You, my friend, are generous and kind. To a fault. But even the best of us trip over ourselves once in a while. Find your feet again, and you’ll be fine.”
Avery plucked a mint leaf—left over from some cocktail or other from the night before—from Claude’s hair. She just had to figure out which direction her feet ought to be going.
She wondered if he was awake yet. If he knew she was gone. If the decision as to what her summer entailed was already out of her hands.
“So it’s all over for you and Luke,” Claude said, “one would think.”
Avery laughed, then cringed. “Do you think he had any idea that I had...intentions?” Vague, and reactionary, as they’d been.
Claude’s mouth twisted in an effort not to smile. “If it makes you feel any better I had a huge case of the hero-worships for the guy when I was a kid.”
“Re-e-eally?”
Claudia slapped her on the arm at her saucy tone. “That was, of course, until I realised he was a robot. Thank goodness for Jonah or you might yet have married Luke and moved to wet old London and made robot babies.”
Claudia shivered—but whether it was the thought of London weather or making babies with Luke, Avery couldn’t be sure.
“What about you? Seeing anyone? Since Raoul?”
“Too busy,” Claude said with a wistful sigh. “No time. No energy. Especially for the likes of Raoul.”
“Stuff Raoul. Stuff Luke. You should have a fling with some hot blond surfie type, who has big brown muscles and never wears shoes and says dude a lot.”
“Not leaving much room for movement there.”
“It’s a beach. In Australia. Walk outside right now and you’ll trip over half a dozen of them.”
Claudia checked her phone as if checking the time to see if she could squeeze in a quick fling, then saw she’d missed a message. And her whole demeanour changed: back stiffening, her eyebrows flying high. “It’s Luke,” she said. “He’s gone.”
“What? Where?”
“London.”
“When?”
“Some time between when he dropped me back at the resort last night and now. Dammit. We had the best conversation we’ve had all summer last night. About the old days, the mischief we used to get up to behind the scenes in this place, and the crazy plans we made for when we got to take over the resort, and how we used to watch The Love Boat.... And then he ditches me...us faster than a speeding bullet?” Frowning, Claudia pressed a thumb to her temple. “Jerk.”
“Why?”
“Why is he a jerk? Let me count the ways—”
“No, why did he leave?”
Claudia waved her phone at Avery, too fast for her to catch a word. “‘Important Work.’ More important than here? His birthright? This place is the entire reason he’s as successful as he is!” Claudia nibbled at a fingernail, her right knee shaking so hard it creaked, and stared over at the desk. “I’d better get back.”
Avery’s eyes glanced off her friend’s less than perfect chignon, the dark smudges under her sunny blue eyes. The curve of her shoulders since Luke’s message. It was obvious things weren’t as peachy as Claude was making out; even Avery could see the resort wasn’t as busy as it ought to have been at the height of summer. But she knew her stubborn little friend well enough to know that Claude would come to her in her own time.
Till then, Avery worked her magic the way she best knew how. She took Claude’s stressed little face in her hands, removed a bobby pin, smoothed the errant hair into place, and slid the pin back in. “There, there. All better. Now, my clever, inventive, wonderful friend, go get ’em.”
Claude sighed out a smile, and then tottered off, her hips swinging in her shiny navy capris, the yellow and blue Hawaiian-print shirt somehow working for her.
Good deed for the day done, Avery lay back on the couch. Unfortunately the second she closed her eyes the night she’d been holding at bay came swarming back to her.
Jonah’s mouth on hers, tasting her as if she were precious, delicious, a delicacy he couldn’t get enough of. His calloused touch making paths all over her body.
She snapped her eyes open, early morning light reflecting off the white columns and walls.
At least Luke had had the good grace to let Claudia know when he’d done a runner. Avery had dressed in the dark, called a cab and split. Even if none of her expensive schools had given classes on Mornings After, she was well aware that it was just bad form.
She pulled herself up and padded back to her room. She needed a shower. She needed a coffee. Then, as usual, it was up to her to put the world back to rights.
EIGHT (#ulink_fc6b9575-a641-5951-bfe0-7956ad06c288)
Avery really got the hang of the right-hand drive in Claudia’s car—a bright yellow hatchback named Mabel with Tropicana Nights’s logo emblazoned over every possible surface—about the time she hit Port Douglas.
The GPS on her phone led her to Charter North’s operations, down a long straight road past a bright green golf course, million-dollar homes, and ten-million-dollar views.
She eased through the high gate and pulled to a halt by a security guard in a booth.
To her left was a car park big enough to fit fifty-odd cars, with a dozen gleaming sky-blue Charter North charter buses lined up beside a neat glass and brick building. Oceanside was a perfect row of crisp white sheds, as big as light airplane hangars, the Charter North logo on each catching glints of sunshine.
She knew the guy owned a few boats. And a helicopter. And a shack. Now nautical empire didn’t seem such a stretch.
“Ma’am?” the security guard said, bringing her back to earth.
“Sorry. Ah, Avery Shaw to see Jonah North.”
He took down her licence plate and let her through with a smile. She pulled into a car park in time for a super-friendly man in chinos and a navy polo shirt—who introduced himself as Tim the office manager—to point the way to a big white building hovering over the water. To Jonah. She would have known anyway, as right in a patch of sun outside lay Hull.
The sun beat down on her flowy shirt, and her bare legs beneath her short shorts. Her silver sandals slapped against the wood of the jetty and Hull lifted his speckled head at her approach.
“Hey, Hull,” she whispered. His tail gave three solid thumps—meaning he at least wasn’t about to eat her alive for dissing his master—then he went back to guarding the door. Her heart took up the rhythm; whumping so loud she feared it might echo.
The door was open a crack so she snuck inside—and understood instantly why Hull was stationed outside. Jonah had said the dog hated water, and inside huge jetties criss-crossed the floor and a ways below the ocean bobbed and swished against the pylons holding the building suspended above the waves.
A few boats were hooked to the walls by high-tech electrical arms, one in the process of being fixed. Yet another was getting a wash, and spray flew over the top and onto the jetty.
Not seeing any other movement, Avery eased that way, taking care where she stepped as the wood beneath her feet grew wet.
Until against one wall she saw a familiar surfboard. Silvery-grey, like its owner’s eyes, with the shadow of a great palm tree right down the middle, and her heart beat so hard it filled her throat.
Because she knew why she’d fled in the middle of the night. Somehow in the odd sequence of meetings that had led her to Jonah’s bed, she’d got to know the guy. And despite his ornery moods she even liked him.
She’d woken up terrified that those feelings would unleash her Pollyanna side upon him—Like me! Love me!— like some rabid pixie hell-bent on smothering the world with fairy dust. Not quite so terrified, though, as what it might mean if Pollyanna still didn’t show up at all.
Her feet felt numb as she came upon a curled-up hose, water trickling from its mouth. Then around the bow of the boat she found suds. And at the end of a great big sponge was Jonah. Feet bare, sopping wet jean shorts clinging to his strong thighs, T-shirt clinging wet to the dips and planes of his gorgeous chest.
As Avery’s gaze swept over him, over his roguish dark hair, over the curve of his backside, his athletic legs, she didn’t realise how dry her mouth had become until she opened it to talk. “You could hire people to do that, you know.”
Jonah stilled. Then his deep grey eyes lifted and caught on her. She felt the look like a hook through the belly—yet he gave nothing away.
A moment later, he turned off the hose, threw the sponge into a bucket at his feet, wiped his forearm across his forehead, and slowly headed her way.
And when he spoke his deep Australian drawl twisted the hook so deep inside she was sure it would leave a scar. “I have hired people to do this.” A beat, then, “But today I find being around water a damn fine release of tension.”
Avery considered picking up the sponge herself. “Well, that’s why I’m here, actually.”
“To wash my boat?” His voice skittered down her arms like his touch—coarse and gentle all at once. How did the guy make even that sound sexy?
“To apologise.”
“For?”
He was going to make her say it, wasn’t he? Not nice. Not nasty either, though. Just...plain-spoken. Direct. True.
“For leaving. This morning. After—” She waved a hand to cover the rest.
“After you fell asleep in my bed, exhausted from all the hot lovin’.”
“Jonah North,” she muttered, throwing her hands in the air in despair, “last of the great romantics.”
“It was sex, Avery,” he said, walking towards her again. “Good sex. Nothing to apologise for.”
He didn’t stop till he was close enough she could feel his warmth infusing the air around her. Could see his eyelashes all spiked together with water, as they had been that first day. And that his face was a picture of frayed patience, also as it had been that first day.
But the difference between that day and now was vast.
“It was more than good,” she said, her voice as jerky as a rusty chainsaw.
One eyebrow lifted along with the corner of his mouth.
“It was freakin’ stupendous.”
His mouth tilted fully into a smile so sexy it made her vision blur. Then he ran a hand up the back of his hair and said, “Yeah. I’ll give you that.”
Then he moved nearer, near enough to touch. But instead of touching her, he reached out for a towel draped over a mossy post near her feet. She closed her eyes and prayed for mercy, lest she drool and lose the high ground completely.
Jonah wiped the towel over his face, and down his arms, smearing the sweat and suds.
“Why, then, did you run?”
“I didn’t run. I caught a cab.”
By the way his brow collapsed over his eyes, she was pretty sure that being flip wasn’t going to cut it. But there was no way on God’s green earth she was about to tell him she ran because of how much she wanted to stay. She’d been very careful till now not to let anyone have that much sway over her desires. Keeping things light, happy, above the surface. The flipside was unthinkable.
“Just hit me with it, Avery,” he said, throwing the towel over the back of his neck and holding onto the ends, his biceps bulging without any effort at all. “It’s about Luke.”
“What? No! Luke was...a brief flirtation with finding a way to distract myself from the goings-on back home by dipping my toes back into the past. But from pretty much the moment you hauled me out of the ocean and manhandled me back to shore and glared down at me with your steamy eyes...” Okay, heading off track now. She breathed deep, her cheeks beginning to heat with a slow burn that showed no signs of stopping, and said, “I want you.”
Jonah didn’t so much as twitch. He let her sway in the wind. Getting his money’s worth. Till finally he said, “Okay, then.”
