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Olivia. Bloody, bloody hell.
He stared at the dry lawn beneath his feet, battling with himself. Then he strode toward the house and took the steps to the porch in one long-legged leap. Usually he tried not to drink before four o’clock, but trial and error had taught him that there was only one way to hold the anxiety at bay. He went straight to the kitchen and grabbed a can of beer from the fridge. He downed it quickly, closing his eyes and waiting for the alcohol to warm his belly. Vodka would be faster, of course, as would any other hard spirit. He wasn’t sure why he clung to beer as his therapy of choice. The illusion that it still meant he had some self-control, perhaps?
Whatever. The tight feeling banding his chest eased and he reached for his second beer with less urgency.
After this, maybe he’d phone around, see who was heading out to Summerlands or one of the other surf beaches so he could catch a few waves. Kill a few hours before he could hit the pub at a more socially acceptable time and start drinking himself toward oblivion again.
And then another day would be over. One less trial to be faced. Hip, hip, hooray.
ELIZABETH STARED AT THE peeling paint on her hotel room ceiling. The sound of laughter and the hum of conversation drifted in the open window. She’d been trying to sleep for the past three hours, but the room she’d been assigned at the Isle of Wight Hotel boasted only an old oscillating fan to combat the heat. Even though she was lying in her underwear on top of the sheets it was like being in a sauna. A really noisy, loud sauna, thanks to the fact that her window looked out over the hotel’s beer garden.
She was so tired she should have been able to sleep through a hurricane, but her mind was racing, going over and over the same ground. She didn’t know what to do. Stay and wait for her father to come home? Go to Sydney and try to track him down somehow? Or—God forbid—return to England with her tail between her legs.
She hated the idea of having come all this way for nothing, but the idea of waiting and putting her trust in Nathan Jones was enough to fill her with despair.
She made an impatient sound and flopped onto her back. Every time she thought about Nathan Jones she got annoyed all over again. The way he’d told her straight up that he didn’t trust her and that he didn’t want to get involved in whatever was going on between her and her father. The way he’d shrugged so negligently when she’d been practically throwing herself on his mercy.
“Stupid beach-bum git,” she muttered.
Because that was exactly what he was—a beach bum. He’d very obviously just rolled out of bed when he opened the door, even though it was nearly midday. His short, dark hair had been rumpled, his pale blue eyes bloodshot, and she’d caught a whiff of stale beer when she passed him on the way to the kitchen. It wasn’t hard to guess what he’d been up to last night.
As for the way he’d stood around with nothing but a frayed towel hanging low on his hips and his ridiculously overdeveloped body on display.
She stirred, uneasy about the way images of his big, hard body kept sliding into her mind. The deeply tanned firmness of his shoulders. The trail of gold-tinted hair that bisected his hard belly and disappeared beneath the towel. The way his biceps had bulged when he crossed his arms over his chest.
The way he’d laughed at her when she’d reminded him that anyone with half-decent manners would have thrown some clothes on before inviting someone into his home.
She sat up and swung her legs to the floor.
Clearly, she wasn’t going to get any sleep.
She crossed the threadbare carpet to where she’d left the shopping bags from her brief foray along Main Street earlier in the day. By the time she’d checked into her room her linen shirt had been damp beneath her armpits and perspiration had been running down the backs of her knees. She’d packed for an English summer, not an Australian one, and she’d quickly realized she would need to get a few items of lighter clothing if she was going to survive the next few days with her sanity intact. She’d bought herself a yellow-and-red sundress and a couple of pastel-colored tank tops. None of it was in her usual style—tailored, elegant—but it was light and breezy and much more suitable for the weather.
Now she pulled on the sundress and checked herself in the tarnished mirror on the back of the bathroom door. The skirt was a little shorter than she’d like—just above her knee—and the halter neck meant she couldn’t wear a bra, but there was no doubting that the cotton fabric was blessedly cool compared to her own clothes.
She spent a few minutes coiling her hair into a neat chignon, then she checked her watch. Six o’clock. The whole evening stretched ahead of her, long and empty.
Maybe she should explore Main Street more thoroughly while the light lasted. Or perhaps she could walk along the jetty, maybe even along the beach …?
She crossed to the window to close it before she left the room and her gaze fell on the life and color and movement in the beer garden downstairs. There were dozens of holidaymakers clustered around tables, dressed in shorts and swimsuits and bright summer clothes, downing beer and wine and laughing with each other.
Every time she’d ever holidayed someplace warm she’d always been traveling with her grandparents or Martin. The sort of restaurants and hotels they favored were discreet and refined—a far cry from the raucous chaos on display down below.
A peal of laughter floated up through the window and Elizabeth found herself smiling instinctively in response.
If Violet was here, she’d go down and join in the fun, a little voice whispered in her ear.
Elizabeth frowned and pulled the window closed, flicking the lock into place.
She wasn’t Violet. She couldn’t just go downstairs and buy herself a drink and become part of the noise and the laughter. That simply wasn’t the kind of person she was.
Who says? I thought this was about finding out who you really are, what you really want? Wouldn’t going downstairs be part of that? the voice piped up again. Perhaps not very surprisingly, it sounded exactly like her best friend.
“You’re a damned interfering nag, you know that?” she told her empty room.
But she knew the voice was right. She’d run away from her old life because she was afraid of the person she’d nearly become. If she was going to find herself, she needed to go looking. She needed to push against her old notions of who she was.
She grabbed her purse and her room key and made herself walk out the door before she could think herself out of it. Nerves fluttered in her belly as she descended the stairs and walked into the din of the crowded main bar. She paused for a moment to get her bearings, a little overwhelmed by the noise and the press of people and all the bare flesh on display. The smell of beer and fried food and suntan lotion hung heavily in the air, and the carpet underfoot was both sticky from years’ worth of spilled drinks and gritty with sand that had been tracked in from the beach.
It’s just a pub, Elizabeth, she told herself, and they’re just people. Nothing to be afraid of.
She took a deep breath and threw herself into the melee, slowly weaving her way toward the bar.
“What can I get you, love?” the barmaid asked.
“I’ll have a Pimm’s and lemonade, thank you.”
The barmaid frowned. “Pimm’s. God, I haven’t served that for years.” She turned toward the man working the other end of the scarred wooden bar. “Trev, we got any Pimm’s, do you reckon?”
“Pimm’s? I don’t know. Let me check out the back.” The barman glanced at Elizabeth curiously.
“It’s okay, don’t bother,” Elizabeth said, feeling foolish. Of course they didn’t have Pimm’s. She was a long way from home, after all. About as far away as she could get.
She gestured toward the frosted glass the barmaid had just handed over to the previous customer. “I’ll just have one of those.”
“A VB? Not a problem,” the barmaid said.
A minute later, Elizabeth was handed a tall, frosted glass full of beer. She took her first sip and gasped, surprised by how icy cold it was. After the heat of the day, however, it was hugely welcome and she took another big gulp as she spotted an empty table in the corner. Good. A table would give her a refuge to hide behind and make her feel less conspicuously alone.
She dodged a couple of well-muscled backs as she made her way across the bar. She was just about to put her drink down when a dark-haired woman slid her glass onto the table at the same time. They stared at each other, startled, then the other woman laughed.
“I’d call that a draw, what do you think? Should we toss for it?” the other woman said good-naturedly and Elizabeth recognized the familiar vowels of an East London accent.
“It’s fine. You got here first,” Elizabeth said politely.
It had been a mistake coming downstairs on her own, she could see that now. It was too loud, too hectic and she was jet-lagged and very uncertain about what move to make next. The sooner she drank her beer and returned to her room, the better.
“Hey! English! Cheers!” the other woman said, her face splitting into a welcoming smile. She lifted her glass to clink it against Elizabeth’s. “How long have you been in Oz for, then? Me and my bloke have been here nearly six months, in case you couldn’t tell by the tan.” The other woman proudly showed off her nut-brown arms. “Bugger skin cancer, I say.” She gave another laugh.
Her name, Elizabeth soon learned, was Lexie and she insisted that she and Elizabeth share the table since Lexie was waiting for her boyfriend to join her and had no idea when he was going to show up.
“You can help me fight off these randy Aussie blokes until he gets here,” she said with another of her loud, unselfconscious laughs. “Horny bastards, and they don’t mind having a go, let me tell you, even when you let them know you’re taken.”
Somehow Elizabeth’s one beer turned into two when Lexie insisted on treating her, then three because Elizabeth had to return the favor. By the time it was full dark outside she was feeling more than a little squiffy. By that time Lexie’s boyfriend, Ross, had arrived with the rest of their friends and Elizabeth was drawn into their circle. When music started up out in the beer garden she went along quite happily as the rest of them swept outside.
Hips swinging in time to the music, cold beer in hand, she glanced around the bar, a dreamy, happy smile on her face. Despite her initial nervousness, she’d held her own with Lexie and Ross’s loud, friendly group. No, more than held her own—she was having a good time. A great time. For the first time in her life there wasn’t someone watching, waiting to remind her of what she should say or do or how her actions might be perceived. She wasn’t worried about what Martin might think or living up to her grandparents’ expectations.
She was on her own. Free. For the moment, anyway.
Which was when she glanced across the garden and locked eyes with Nathan Jones, leaning against the far wall with a beer in his hand as he watched her with a small, speculative smile.
3
NATE STARED ACROSS the sea of people at the woman in the bright, breezy dress. It was amazing the difference a few hours and, he guessed, a few beers could make. Gone was the pale, tense society princess he’d met this afternoon and in her place was a flush-faced blonde with a swing in her hips and a smile on her lips. He almost hadn’t recognized her, but nothing could disguise the way she held herself and the tilt of her chin.
His gaze ran over her body again. Her red-and-yellow dress ended just above the knees and tied around her neck. The neckline was modest by island standards—half the girls in the pub had come straight from the beach and there were dozens of bikini tops and skimpy tank tops on display—but it was tight and low enough to reveal that Elizabeth Mason had great breasts.
He lifted his beer and took a long swallow, not taking his eyes from her the whole time. The smile faded from her face as their gazes connected, but she didn’t look away, either, even though he was pretty damn sure she wanted to.
He wasn’t sure what was going on. He’d noticed her sexually this morning, there was no denying that—the shape of her ass, the flash of her bra, the long line of her neck. But she wasn’t the kind of woman he’d been spending time with lately—”spending time” being shorthand for casual sex, which was all he was good for these days. Elizabeth Mason had hard work written all over her. And that was before he even got into the whole mess of her being here to find her father.
And yet for some reason that he couldn’t explain, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Across the room, she finally looked away, turning her shoulder.
Against his smarter instincts, he pushed away from the wall and made his way toward her. He told himself every step of the way to rethink, to turn around and find some other woman to dance and drink and maybe go home with, but he didn’t stop until he was standing behind her. Elizabeth must have sensed his approach because she tensed, the exposed muscles of her back flexing as though she was bracing herself.
“I figured you had to be around somewhere when Tania told me someone had tried to order a Pimm’s,” he said.
She didn’t turn around, didn’t so much as twitch.
He smiled. He hadn’t been given the silent treatment since third grade. It hadn’t worked then, either. He never had been able to resist a challenge.
He leaned a little closer, whispering right into her ear. “Do you want me to go away, Betty?”
“What do you think?” she said without moving.
He was standing so close he could see the fine blond hairs on the nape of her neck.
“I think that that was a pretty long look you gave me just now.”
She swung to face him, ready to object. Her eyes widened when she registered his proximity. She took a quick step backward and crossed her arms protectively over her chest.
“Scared of me, Betty?” he asked, amused by how skittish she was.
“Of course not. And my name is Elizabeth, if you don’t mind.”
He cocked his head to one side. Was it his imagination, or did her accent get even snootier?
“Elizabeth is kind of an uptight name, don’t you think? Makes me think of old ladies with scepters in their hands and cast-iron underwear.”
“It’s a very old, very traditional name, and it happens to be the one my parents gave me.”
“Like I said, uptight.”
Her nostrils flared. His smile widened into a grin. She was so prim, so proper—and so damned easy to get a rise out of. He hadn’t had this much fun in a long time.
“What exactly is it that you want, Mr. Jones?”
He took a mouthful of beer and let his gaze slide past her chin to the neckline of her dress. Her perfume drifted toward him, something light and crisp and citrusy.
“Just being friendly. Making sure you settled in okay,” he said.
She gave him a cool look. “Perhaps you could clarify something for me. Am I supposed to be charmed by all this? The smiles and the suggestive comments and the standing too close?”
“What do you think?”
“You don’t want to know what I think, let me assure you.”
“I can handle it, Betty, I promise. Hit me with your best shot.”
She peered down her nose at him—quite the accomplishment given their difference in height. “My grandmother taught me that if you can’t say something nice about someone, you shouldn’t say anything at all.”
“Your grandmother. That explains a lot.”
Her eyes narrowed. “All right, then, since you insist, here is what I think—that you believe an overdeveloped beefcake body and passable good looks give you a free pass to get away with anything where women are concerned.”
He laughed. Couldn’t help himself. “Overdeveloped? Which parts of me are overdeveloped? “
He watched, fascinated, as she blushed again.
“You have the fairest skin I’ve ever seen,” he murmured. Every other body in the bar was brown from the Australian sun, but she was as pure and cool as a lily. He reached out a hand and ran his thumb along the curve of her cheekbone. As he’d suspected, she was as soft and smooth as silk.
She swallowed audibly. “Do you mind?” Her eyes were very wide, the pupils dilated.
“You know, I think I might, Betty,” he said, surprising himself.
He dropped his hand. He’d crossed the bar to tease her, to fill in some time, to amuse himself on the way to oblivion. But she wasn’t amusing. She was … disturbing, with her crisp, standoffish accent and tilted chin and uncertain eyes. For a moment they were both silent as they stared at each other.
“I’m not going to sleep with you, Mr. Jones.”
That made him smile again. “No one asked you to, Betty.”
Then, because she was too complicated, too messy, too challenging, he lifted his glass.
“Cheers,” he said. He turned and walked away before she could say another word.
HE WAS UNBELIEVABLE. Earlier today she’d thought he was surly and uncooperative and rude, but now she added insufferably conceited and arrogant to the list of Nathan Jones’s crimes. She honestly didn’t know where he got off, touching her like that, standing so close she could smell the detergent he’d washed his clothes in and the sun-warmed, salty scent of his skin.
As for how he’d laughed at her and looked at her as though he could see straight through her clothes.
She’d never dealt with a man like him before. Cocky and arrogant and so … physical it was impossible to look at him and not imagine him on top of her, his heavy weight pinning her to the—
Elizabeth took a huge swallow of her beer. Why was it that when she thought about Nathan Jones her mind automatically descended below the waist?
She peeked out of the corners of her eyes to make sure that he really had disappeared into the crowd. He had and she relaxed a notch. With a bit of luck he’d leave the bar altogether and she wouldn’t have to deal with him again.
A vain hope. Half an hour later she glanced across to where a few people had cleared some tables to create an impromptu dance floor to see Nathan in the middle of the swaying crowd, his arms around a small redheaded woman. The other woman was wearing a skimpy sundress with lots of strategic rips and tears in it, her swimsuit clearly visible underneath.
