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Damn it. Was it too much to ask for a few moments’ reprieve from his knowing, sarcastic eyes and smug smile?
She moved closer to the corner so there wasn’t even the remote chance of brushing shoulders with him.
His gaze flicked over her briefly. Suddenly she was very aware of her wet hair and the fact that she wasn’t wearing a bra. She shifted uncomfortably and his gaze dropped to her carrier bag of goodies.
“Having a big night, I see,” he said.
“Something like that.”
He leaned closer. She fought the need to pull away as he hooked a finger into the top of the bag and peered inside.
“Chocolate-chip ice cream and nacho-cheese corn chips. Interesting combo.”
Up close, his eyes were so blue and clear she felt as though she could see all the way through to his soul.
If he had one.
“Do you mind?” she said, jerking the bag away from him.
He raised his eyebrows. She raised hers and gave him a challenging look.
“Just trying to be friendly,” he said.
“No, you weren’t. You were being a smart-ass, at my expense, as usual. So don’t expect me to lie down and take it.”
His gaze dropped to her chest, then flicked back to her face. She waited for him to say something suitably smart-assy in response, but he didn’t. The lift chimed as they hit her floor.
Thank God.
She stepped out into the corridor. He followed. She frowned, thrown. Then she started walking toward her room, keeping a watch out of the corner of her eye. As she’d feared, he was following her.
She stopped abruptly and he almost walked into her as she swung to face him.
“I don’t need an escort to my door, if that’s what you’re doing,” she said. “I don’t need anything from you, which I know probably sticks in your craw since your ego is so massive and so fragile you can’t handle having a rookie on the team.”
Jake cocked his head to one side. Then he smiled sweetly and pulled a key from his pocket. The number 647 dangled from it. Two rooms up from hers.
Right.
She could feel embarrassed heat rising into her face. Why did this man always make her so self-conscious? It wasn’t as though she cared what he thought of her.
She started walking again. She had her key in her hand well before her door was in sight. She shoved it into the lock and pushed her door open as quickly as she could. She caught a last glimpse of his smiling face as she shut the door.
Smug bastard.
She grabbed a spoon from the minibar and ripped the top off the ice cream. She needed to keep an eye on her temper around him. And she had to stop letting him get under her skin. That, or she had to somehow develop Zen-like mind-body control so she could stop herself from blushing in front of him.
Large quantities of chocolate-chip ice cream went a long way to calming her. She turned on the TV and opened the corn chips. An hour into the movie, she was blinking and yawning. When the movie cut to a love scene, she decided to call it quits for the night. She liked watching James run and jump and beat people up, but she wasn’t so wild about the mandatory sex scenes. She knew other people liked them, even got disappointed when they didn’t get enough of them, but she so didn’t get it.
She contemplated the issue as she brushed her teeth.
Sex, in her opinion, was one of the most overrated activities under the sun. She figured she was experienced enough to know—she’d had three lovers in her thirty-one years, and none of them had come even close to being as satisfying as George, her battery-operated, intriguingly shaped friend. Disappointing, but true.
Of course, it was possible that she’d had three dud lovers in a row, but she thought it far more likely that sex, like most anti-aging products and lose-weight-now remedies, was not all it was cracked up to be.
But that was only her opinion.
She spat out toothpaste and rinsed her mouth. Then she climbed into bed. Just before she drifted off, she remembered that moment in the hallway again. Next time she came face-to-face with The Snake, she was going to make sure she was the one who came out on top. Definitely.
THE NEXT DAY SHE CAUGHT A CAB to the airport for her flight home and discovered that while she and the bulk of Australia had been focused on the ups and downs, ins and outs of a red leather ball, the baggage handlers union had decided to go on strike.
The mammoth lines of irate and desperate-looking people winding through the terminal were her first clue that something was up. She collared a passing airport official and he filled her in. The strike was expected to run for at least three days. Most flights had been canceled.
“Damn it,” she said.
He held up his hands. “Not my fault, lady.”
“I know. Sorry. It’s just my uncle’s birthday is on Wednesday.”
She’d planned to drive to her parents’ place in Ballarat, about an hour north of Melbourne, for the party. But at this rate it didn’t look as though she was even going to be in the same state come Wednesday.
“Lots of weddings and funerals and births, too,” the official said with a shrug. “Nobody likes an airline strike.”
He moved off and Poppy stared glumly at his back. This was not the first time she’d been left stranded by an airline. As a swimmer, she’d been at the mercy of more than her fair share of strikes, bad weather and mechanical failures. Once, the swim team had almost missed an important meet in Sydney thanks to an airline strike, but their coach had had the foresight to hire a minibus and had driven them the thousand kilometers overnight.
A lightbulb went on in Poppy’s mind. If it was good enough for Coach Wellington, it was good enough for her. She turned in a circle, looking for the signs for the car rental agencies. She spotted the glowing yellow Hertz sign. Then she spotted the lineup in front of it. Well, she could only try.
Fingers crossed, she headed over to join the masses.
JAKE WOKE, FEELING LIKE CRAP. Headache, furry mouth, seedy stomach—standard hangover material. He groaned as he rolled out of bed and blessed his own foresight in ensuring he had an afternoon flight out of Brisbane and not a morning one. He’d played this game before, after all, and he’d known last night would be a big one. And it had been. He’d lost track of which bar he’d wound up in, and who he’d been drinking with. There had definitely been some disappointed Bears players in the mix, drowning their sorrows. And he could distinctly remember someone singing the Hawk’s club song at one stage.
Whatever. A fine time was had by all.
Well, not quite all. Some people had chosen to forgo the festivities and hole up in their room with chocolate-chip ice cream and nacho-cheese corn chips.
He rinsed his mouth out as the memory of Poppy’s uptight little “I don’t need an escort” speech filtered into his mind.
He didn’t know what it was about her, but he couldn’t seem to resist poking her with a stick. Maybe it was the way her chin came up. Or the martial gleam that came into her eyes. Or maybe it was the pink flush that colored her cheeks when he bested her.
He stepped beneath the shower and lifted his face to the spray. Oh, man, but he needed some grease and some salt and some aspirin. Big-time.
Of course, Ms. Birmingham wouldn’t be in search of saturated animal fats this morning. She’d had hers last night, in the quiet privacy of her room.
Someone needed to tell her that road trips were a good opportunity to bond with her colleagues. Especially when you were a newcomer to the team.
He shrugged. Not his problem. And she was unlikely to take advice from him, anyway.
He recalled the way she’d looked last night, hair wet, face devoid of makeup. Sans bra, too, if he made any guess. She had more up top than he’d expected. Definitely a generous handful.
He soaped his belly and wondered again what she’d look like naked. She wasn’t his type, but he supposed he could understand why Macca followed her with his eyes whenever he thought no one was watching. She was striking. She could almost look Jake in the eye, she was so tall. He bet she liked to be on top, too.
He stared down at his hard-on.
Okay, maybe she was his type. But only because it had been a while since he’d gotten naked with anyone. Four…no, five months. That was when he’d decided that his fledgling relationship with Rachel-from-the-gym was too much of a distraction from the book he still hadn’t written.
He turned the water to cold. Brutal, but effective—his erection sank without a trace.
He dressed and packed his luggage. Then he checked out.
“We hope you enjoyed your stay with us, Mr. Stevens,” the woman on the reservation desk said. “And we hope the strike doesn’t inconvenience you too much.”
He lifted his head from signing his credit card slip. “Strike? What strike?”
“The baggage handlers’ strike. It looks like it’ll last three days minimum at this point. We’ve had a lot of people coming back from the airport to check in again.”
Shit. He had ten days vacation starting tomorrow. He had plans to go fishing with an old college buddy. No way was he going to kick his heels in Brisbane when there were rainbow trout going begging.
He grabbed his bags and headed to the taxi stand. He’d been caught out like this before and he knew that even during a strike there were still planes in the air. He might be able to talk his way onto one of them. And there was always the bus, God forbid, or a rental.
The moment he hit the airport he nixed the idea of talking himself onto a flight. Lines spilled out the door and every person and his dog was on a cell, trying to hustle some other way home.
He turned for the rental desks. No lines there. Bonus. Maybe no one else had thought of driving home yet.
He dropped his bags in front of the counter and smiled at the pretty blonde behind the desk.
“Hey, there. I need to rent a car,” he said.
She rolled her eyes. “You and the rest of the country. Sorry, sir, as we announced five minutes ago, we’re all sold out.”
He kept smiling.
“There must be something. A car due back later today? Something that didn’t pass inspection?”
“Many of our cars didn’t come in when our customers heard about the strike. We’ve been pulling cars in from our other branches, but there’s no stock left. I’m very sorry, sir.”
She didn’t sound very sorry. She sounded as though she’d had a long and stressful day and was privately wishing him to hell.
“There must be something,” he said.
“Where are you traveling to?”
He waited for her to start tapping away at her keyboard to find him a car, but she didn’t.
“Melbourne.”
“The only thing I can suggest is that you hook up with someone else who is driving your way. I know that blond woman over there is going to Melbourne. She got our last car—maybe she’ll take pity on you.”
Jake turned his head to follow the woman’s finger. He stared in disbelief at the back of Poppy Birmingham’s head.
“Shit.”
“Excuse me, sir?”
There was no way Poppy was going to take pity on him. She’d more than likely laugh in his face—if he gave her the opportunity.
“Is there a bus counter around here?” he asked. He hated bus travel with a passion, but desperate times called for desperate measures. There were trout swimming in the Cobungra River with his name on them, and he intended to be there to catch them.
“They’re on the west side of the airport. Just follow the crowd.”
“Thanks.”
He hefted his bags and started walking. He could see Poppy up ahead, talking on her cell phone. If it were anyone else—a complete stranger—he’d throw himself on her mercy in a split second. But Poppy didn’t like him. Admittedly, he’d given her plenty of reasons to feel that way, but the fact remained that she was far more likely to drive over him in her rental car than offer him a lift in it.
He walked past her, wondering how she’d react if he snatched the keys from her hand and made a bolt for it. But she was probably pretty fast on her feet. She had those long legs and hadn’t been out all night swilling beer and red wine the way he had.
He kept walking. Then he started thinking about sitting on a bus with seventy-odd other angry travelers, sucking in diesel fumes and reliving horror flashbacks from half a dozen high school excursions.
Man.
He stopped in his tracks. He lowered his chin to his chest. He thought about the bus, then he thought about his pride. Then he turned around and walked to where Poppy was finishing her phone call.
He stopped in front of her. She stared at him blankly. Then her gaze dropped to his luggage. A slow smile curved her mouth. He waited for her to say something, but she didn’t.
She was going to make him ask.
Shit.
He took a deep breath. “Going my way?”
Her smile broadened. “I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to do much better than that.”
She crossed her arms over her chest and waited. He stared at her for a long moment.
Then he braced himself for some heavy-duty sucking up.
3
POPPY STILL COULDN’T BELIEVE she’d let Jake into her car. Even if she drove nonstop like a bat out of hell, she’d sentenced herself to twenty-four hours in The Snake’s company in a small enclosed space. Had she been on drugs twenty minutes ago?
She slid him a look. His eyes were hidden behind dark sunglasses but he appeared to be staring out the windshield, his expression unreadable. He hadn’t shaved and his face was dark with stubble. He hadn’t said a word since they argued over who was driving the first leg and which route out of the city to take.
He resented having to kiss her ass, but she didn’t regret making him do it. It was nice to have a bit of power for a change, even if it was only temporary.
She focused on the road. If he wanted to play it strong and silent, that was fine with her. She’d had more than enough of his smart mouth over the past three weeks.
“Do you mind if I turn the air-conditioning on?” he asked ten minutes later.
It was an unseasonably warm day for September and she was starting to feel a little sticky herself.
