скачать книгу бесплатно
“Okay, then?” That was it? That was all she got? For basically telling the guy he turned her to putty?
He took a step her way but Avery planted her feet into the floor so as not to sway back. “Was there something else?”
“Yeah. You’re an ass, Jonah North. A gorgeous ass, one I can’t seem to get out of my head no matter how much I try, but still an ass. I’ll see you ’round.”
She turned and walked away, waving a hand over her shoulder that might have had a certain finger raised. But she’d given her apology and that was all that was important. She had the high road. He only had her pride.
Then suddenly he was walking beside her.
“So,” he said, “I was just about to head up to the Cape to check on a tour-boat operation I’m thinking of buying.”
“How nice for you.”
“Avery,” he said, his voice a growl as he slid a hand into her elbow, forcing her to stop and look at him. She crossed her arms and glared, as if facing all that sun-soaked skin, and those deep grey eyes, and that pure masculine beauty were some kind of chore.
He tipped his face to the ceiling and muttered, “God, I’m going to regret this. Would you care to join me?”
Pollyanna showed up long enough to flip over and waggle her happy feet in the air. But Avery’s dark side, her careful side, pulled Pollyanna’s plaits and told her to shut the hell up for a second.
This wasn’t as simple as being forgiven. This was the tipping point. Her chance to hole up with her heart and spend her summer reading, and swimming, and refilling her emotional well; or to dive into uncharted waters with no clue as to the dangers that lay beneath.
“Are you asking me on a date, Jonah North?”
He watched her for a few seconds, his eyes sliding to settle on her mouth, then with a hard heavy breath he said, “I’ll let you decide when we get there.”
Because there was no choice really. She was going with him. He knew it, and she knew it too.
* * *
Avery leant against the battered Jeep that had brought them to the edge of the crumbling jetty on the side of the marshy river, watching Jonah grumble his way through a business call.
He shot her the occasional apologetic glance, but honestly she could have stayed there all day, watching him pace, listening to that voice; it was nearly enough for her to forgive him the hat—a tatty Red Sox cap that he’d foraged from who knew where, as if the fates one day knew she’d be owed some payback.
Avery turned when she heard a boat. It appeared through the tall reeds; not as fast and streamlined as the boat to Green Island, or sleek and sexy as the one Jonah had been washing down back at Charter North HQ. This was squat, low riding, desperately in need of a paint job.
And had Cape Croc Tours written on the side.
While Jonah chatted with the tour operator, Hull—who’d been pacing back and forth by the Jeep, one eye on the water the other on the man-who-was-not-his-master—huffed at her with a definite air of You asked for it.
Jonah rang off, slid the phone into the back pocket of his shorts, and came to her, long strides eating up the dusty ground. While she subjugated her panic beneath a smile.
“You okay?” he asked, and she dialled the smile back a notch.
“Fine! What girl doesn’t dream about the day a guy offers to take her on a croc tour? Okay? No. I’m not okay. Are you freakin’ kidding me?”
A grin curved across his mouth. Then he reached into the cabin of the Jeep and pulled out an old felt hat and slapped it on her head. Not the most glamorous thing she’d ever worn.
“Can they climb in the boat?”
“The crocs? No.”
Hull huffed as if to say Jonah was pulling her leg. Avery glanced back to find him lying in a patch of shade by the Jeep, his head lying disconsolately on his front paws. In fact, maybe she ought to keep him company—
“Ready?” Jonah asked.
“As I’ll ever be.”
Avery took Jonah’s hand as she stepped into the boat, gripping harder as the boat swayed under her feet. Jonah didn’t let go till he sat her on a vinyl padded bench at the rear of the vessel.
Feeling a little less terrified, she caught his eye and smiled. “I like your shirt, by the way.”
He glanced down at the faded American flag with the eagle emblazoned across it, pulling it away from his chest for a better look and giving her an eyeful of his gorgeous brown stomach.
“Were you thinking of me when you picked it out this morning?”
His deep eyes slunk back to hers, then in a voice deeper than the water below he said, “Believe it or not, princess, I go entire minutes without thinking of you.”
Her smile turned into a grin. “Good for you.”
He flipped some keys into the air, and caught them, then moved to sit on what looked like a modified barstool up near the helm.
“You’re driving?” she called.
“Yep.”
“Shouldn’t we have a chaperone?” She earned a lift of two dark eyebrows for her efforts. “I mean because the boat’s not yours.”
Jonah glanced back at the dock. “If we go down he can have the Jeep. And the dog.”
“The dog that’s not your dog.”
His eyes slid back to hers with a sexy smile.
“Fine. Whatever,” she said, tipping her hat lower on her head and squinting against the sun. Just the two of them, heading off into the wilderness, where crocs were near guaranteed. She really hoped he’d forgiven her for sneaking out on him.
The engine turned over and the boat shifted in the water, giving her a fair spray of river water in the face. Gripping the bench, she looked back over her shoulder and saw how low the boat actually was. The edges of the thing looked real easy to scale. With an agility she wasn’t aware she had she scuttled up to take the stool next to Jonah’s.
“Happier there?”
“Better view.” Her disobedient gaze landed on his muscular arms as he put the boat in gear, eased it into the middle of the thin river, and took the thing along at a goodly pace. Yep, much better.
“So, feel like a date yet?” he asked, and her insides gave a hearty little wobble.
“This is textbook. In New York a date isn’t really a date if there aren’t wild animals involved.”
And just like that she and Jonah North were officially on a date. And she was okay. Not deeper than her limits. Just...about...right. Feeling unusually content about her world and everything in it, Avery propped her feet on the dash; the wind whipping at her hair, the sun beating down on her nose, the deep rumble of the engine lulling her into a most relaxed state. Till the hum, and the heat, and eau de Jonah had her deep in memories of the night before.
“I hate to think what you’re conjuring up over there, Ms Shaw.”
She nearly leapt out of her skin. “Nothing. Just soaking it all in. Thinking.”
“Dare I ask what about?”
To say it out loud would be pornographic. “I really liked your shack.”
A surprised smile kicked up the corner of his mouth. “It’s hardly the Waldorf.”
“Why would you want it to be? It’s unique. And cool. It suits you.”
After a few beats, Jonah added, “It was my father’s house.”
“Were you brought up there?”
He nodded. “Never lived anywhere else.” He frowned. “Not true. I spent three months in Sydney a few years back.”
“You? In Sydney?” She was already laughing at the idea by the time she noticed the twitch in his jaw and the sense that the air temperature had slipped several degrees towards arctic. Okay... “Was it for work? Play? Sea change...in reverse?”
“My ex-fiancée lived there.”
Well, she’d had to go and ask!
A deep swirly discomfort filled her up and she struggled to decipher if her reaction was shock at the fact a woman had managed to put up with him for any length of time, or that she’d been wrong about his lone-wolfdom. There was a woman out there that this man had at one time been prepared to marry. A fiancée. Ex-fiancée, her subconscious shot quickly back.
“I’m assuming things didn’t turn out so well,” she said, her daze evident in her hoarse whisper.
But he was clearly caught up in thoughts of his own. She jumped a little when after some time he answered.
“She came here on holidays and stayed. Then she left. I followed. Got a position with a shipping company to manage their freight in and out of the harbour. Told myself water was water.”
Clearly it hadn’t been, as here he was. Mr Not Quite So Thoroughly Unattainable After All.
On a date.
With her.
“Wow,” she croaked, “Sydney.” Yep, she was focusing on the easier of the two shocks. “Try as I might I can’t picture you living in the big smoke.”
Storm clouds gathered in his eyes, his jaw so tight he looked liable to crack a tooth.
“Jonah—”
“Don’t sweat it, Avery. You’re not the first woman to think me provincial.”
And that came from so far out of left-field Avery flinched. “Hold on there, partner, that’s not what I meant at all. I’m sure you made a huge splash in Sydney.”
“I didn’t, in fact.” He took the boat down a gear so that the change in engine swept his words clean away.
“Rubbish,” she scoffed, imagining the looks on her friends’ faces if she’d ever turned up with this guy on her arm. Those Manhattan blue bloods would take one look at those delicious eye crinkles, those big shoulders, and drop their jaws like a row of cartoon characters. And it wasn’t just the way the guy looked—it was in his bearing, how obviously he lived his life to as high a standard as any man ever had. “I don’t believe that for a second.”
Jonah glanced up, the storm clouds parting just enough for a spark to gleam from within. A spark that met its twin in her belly.
“What I meant,” she said, now choosing her words with care, “about me not being able to imagine you in Sydney, is that you seem like you were made for this place—the scorching sun, the squalling sea, the immense sky. Sydney would be a big grey blur in comparison. Which sounds ridiculous now I’ve put it into words—”
“No,” Jonah said, frowning and smiling at the same time. “No.”
“Okay.” Avery hugged her arms around her belly to contain the tumbly feelings as they softened down to a constant hum. “So what happened with you and—”
“Rach? Real life.”
“It has a way of getting in the way of things.”
“You ever come close?” Jonah asked. “Marriage. Kids. The whole calamity.”
“Me? No. Not unless you include Luke, of course, and he wasn’t even aware of our impending plans.”
Jonah laughed. An honest laugh. Confident, this man. Why wouldn’t he be, though? Look at him. One hand resting casually on the wheel, a shoe nudged against the foot of the helm, eyes crinkling in the sunshine as he eased the boat around the reeded bends of the river.
This was a man who knew where he belonged.
The boat hit a wider stretch and Jonah slowed the engine to a throaty hum.
Maybe she still had to figure out where she really belonged. Not here. A ride on a dilapidated old boat at the top of Australia was probably a bit of a stretch considering where she’d come from. But here, so far away, made her realise how much of her life she spent trying to sort out her parents’ lives. And the seed was now sown; to find her place. It would be hard. It would mean unravelling a decade’s worth of ties before weaving them into something new. Something better.
Later, she thought as her throat began to constrict with the thought of it. Right now, the summer was hers. All hers. Nobody else’s. And she no longer had any doubts about how she wanted to spend the time she had left.
Avery slipped off her stool and slipped under Jonah’s arm, finding a perfect spot for herself between his knees. She rested a hand on his chest; the other took the cap from his head. His slow intake of breath and the darkening of his eyes created pools of heat low in her belly.
“So, Jonah North, what do you say we put all that behind us and just have some damn fun? No promises. No regrets. Do you want to be the man who makes my summer holiday one to remember?”
A muscle ticced in his jaw a moment before he grabbed her by the waist and drew her into him, covering her mouth with his. No finesse this time, no interminable teasing, just pure unleashed desire.
Lust rushed through her, unfettered, thick and fast, and she kissed him back, the heat of his mouth, the slide of his tongue driving every thought from her head but more, now, yes!
She threw his hat away—the man was hot but kissing a Sox fan would be sacrilege—and tucked her hands under his T-shirt, revelling in the warm skin, the rasp of hair, the sheer size of him. He was so big and hot and so much man he made her feel so light, like a breath of fresh air. As if nothing else mattered but here, now, this.
He tugged her closer, the ridge of his desire pressed against her belly, and her head fell back as anticipation shivered through her with the surety of what was to come.
“What time do you have to have the boat back?”
Holding her close with one hand, Jonah grabbed his phone with the other, punched in a message, waited a long minute for a response, then with a wolfish grin said, “Never. The boat’s mine.”
Avery’s knees near gave out. In her life she’d been wooed with bling, with tables at impossible-to-get-into restaurants, never had she had a man want her so much he’d bought the real estate under his feet in order to have her.
In one swift move he lifted her floaty top over her head, taking the hat with it. “Hell,” he said, spying her bikini top which was made of mostly string a shade or two paler than her skin.
“You like? I found it in this wicked boutique in the Village—oh...”
Jonah proceeded to show her just how much he liked it by yanking it down to take her breast in his mouth. When she thought herself filled with more pleasure than she could possibly bear, his mouth slowly softened, placing gentle kisses over the moist tip.
