Читать книгу Australian Escape - Amy Andrews - Страница 11

THREE

Jonah wasn’t looking for Avery, not entirely.

He found her anyway, on the beach. Her big hat, so wet it flopped onto her shoulders. Half in, half out of a wetsuit that flapped dejectedly against her legs as she jumped around slapping at her skin as if fighting off a swarm of bees.

Jonah picked up his pace to a jog.

“Avery,” he called when near enough, “what the hell’s wrong now?”

She didn’t even look up, just kept on wriggling, giving him flashes of bare stomach through a silver one-piece with great swathes of Lycra cut away leaving the edges to caress a hip, to brush the underside of a breast, keeping Jonah locked into a loop of double takes.

“I’m stung!” she cried, jogging him out of his daze. “Something got me. A box jellyfish. Or a blue bottle. Or a stone fish. I read about them on the flight over. One of them got me. I sting. Everywhere.”

“Bottles don’t come this far north, the suit protects from jellies, and the flippers from stone fish.”

Avery jumped from flippered foot to flippered foot as if something terrible was about to explode from out of the sand at her feet. “Then what’s wrong with me?”

Jonah made a mental note to have a talk with Claudia. She always had some crazy theme going on at her resort, with games and the like—surely she could keep the woman indoors and out of his sight.

But until then he had to make sure she wasn’t actually hurt. Meaning he had to run hands down her arms, ignoring as best he could the new tension knotting hard and fast inside him.

He spun her around to check behind, wrapping the fall of hair about his hand to lift it off her neck, doing his all to avoid the mental images that brought forth. He swept his gaze over the skin the swimsuit revealed round back. Then grabbed her by the chin and tilted so he could see her face under the ridiculous hat. Her very pink face.

“Hell, woman,” he growled, snapping his hand away. “You’re sunburnt.”

Her mismatched eyes widened. “Don’t be ridiculous.”

He took off the hat to make sure, and with a squeak her hand swept to her hair. Jonah rolled his eyes and slapped the hat back on her head. “Did you bring anything for sunburn?” Sunscreen perhaps?

He glanced at her silver bag to find its contents already upended and covered in a million grains of white sand. Clearly she’d been looking in the hopes of a remedy herself. A remedy for stone fish, he reminded himself, biting back a smile.

“Don’t you dare laugh at me!”

Only made him smile all the more. “Don’t tell me you were All Conference in Sun Protection at Brown Mare too?”

“Bryn Mawr,” she bit out. And, whoa, was that a flicker of a smile from her? The one that lit her up brighter than the sun?

Jonah looked away, tilting his chin towards the jetty. “There’s aloe vera on the boat. It’ll soothe it at the very least. At least until the great peel sets in.”

“I don’t peel.”

“You will peel, princess. Great ugly strips of dead skin sloughing away.”

Muttering under her breath, she shoved all her bits and pieces back into her bag—including, he noted, a dog-eared novel, a bottle of fancy sparkling water, and, yep, sunscreen.

He plucked the sunscreen from her fingers and read the label. “American,” he muttered under his breath.

“Excuse me!” she shot back, no muttering there.

“Your SPF levels are not the same as ours. With your skin you can’t get away with this rubbish.”

“What’s wrong with my skin?” she asked, arms wide, giving him prime view of her perfectly lovely skin. And neat straight shoulders, lean waist, hips that flared just right. As for her backside, he remembered with great clarity as she bent over on his board...

Jonah closed his eyes a moment and sent out a blanket curse to whatever he’d done to piss off karma enough to send him Avery Shaw.

“I’m well aware I’m not all golden bronzed like the likes of you,” she said, “which is why I bought a bottle from home. Ours are stronger.”

“Wrong way around, sweetheart,” Jonah drawled. “Aussies do it better.”

She coughed and spluttered. That was better than having her eyes rove over his golden-bronzed self while standing there all pink, and pretty, and half-naked.

Then, feeling more than a little sorry for herself, she slowly went back to refilling her bag, now with far less gusto. Her drooping hat dripped ocean water down her pink skin, she had a scratch on her arm that could do with some antiseptic and a couple of toes had clearly come out badly in a fight with some coral before she’d remembered her flippers.

Suddenly she threw the bag on the sand, slammed her hands onto her hips and looked him right in the eye. “In New York we have cab drivers who don’t know the meaning of the words health code. Rats the size of opossums. Steam that oozes from the subways that could knock you out with its stench. I live in a place it takes street smarts to survive. But this place? Holy Jeter!”

After a sob, she began to laugh. And laugh and laugh. It hit the edge of hysteria, but thankfully it never slipped quite that far.

Jonah ran a hand up the back of his neck and looked out at the edge of the jetty visible around the corner of the beach where his boat and the bright blue sea awaited. Basic, elemental pleasures. Enduring... Then glanced back at the tourist whose safety had clearly, for whatever reason, been placed in his hands.

Whatever problems he had with her kind, there was no denying the woman was trying. Enough that something slipped inside him, just a fraction, just enough to give her a break.

“Come on, princess,” he said, holding out a hand. “Let’s get you a drink.”

She glanced at his sand-covered hand and her nose crinkled. “I don’t need a drink.”

Knowing it was only a matter of time before he regretted it, Jonah took a moment to brush the sand from his hand before holding it out again. It looked so dark near her skin. Big and rough near all that softness. “Well, I do,” he said, his voice gruff. “And I’m not about to resort to drinking alone.”

Avery watched him from beneath her lashes. Then, taking her bag in one hand and the arms of her wetsuit in the other, she flapped her way back up the beach, leaving him to catch up. “So long as drink doesn’t mean beer. Because I don’t do beer.”

Jonah watched her walk away, flinching every third step in fear of having unearthed some other Great Australian Wildlife intent on taking her down. Shaking his head, he dug his hands into the pockets of his shorts and did what he’d promised himself he’d never do again—follow a city girl anywhere. “Pity, princess, you really are missing out on one of the great experiences of an Australian summer.”

She cut him a look—straight, sure, street smart indeed—and said, “I’ll live.”

And for the first time since he’d met the woman Jonah believed she just might.

* * *

When her straw slurped against the bottom of the coconut shell, dragging in the last drops of rum, coconut milk, and something she couldn’t put her finger on, Avery pushed the thing away and looked up with a blissful sigh to find that the fabulous outdoor bar that Jonah had escorted her to some time earlier was empty.

Jonah North of Charter North. About halfway through the cocktail she’d put two and two together and figured the boat was his. She was clever that way, she thought, fluffing up her nearly dry hair, the happy waves in her head making it feel nice. She liked feeling nice.

Now what about Jonah? Big, gruff, handsome, bossy Jonah. Oh, yeah, he’d left her a few minutes ago to go and do...something. She looked around, shielding her eyes against the streak of bright orange cloud lighting up the dark blue horizon. Oops. Since when had the sun begun to set?

She found her phone in her bag and checked the time. Holy Jeter, she’d missed the boat! With a groan she let her head fall into her hands.

She knew the guy had only taken her for a drink because he’d got it into his thick He-Man head that she’d perish without supervision, but now the cad had damn well left her on an island in the middle of the Pacific, with night falling, and nowhere—

“Everything okay?” a familiar deep voice asked.

Avery peeled one eye open and looked through the gaps between her fingers to find Jonah standing by the table, his hands in the pockets of his khaki shorts, his white Charter North shirt flapping against the rises and falls of his chest in the evening breeze, the sunlight pouring over his deeply browned skin.

The guy might be wholly annoying in an I Told You So kind of way, but there was no denying he was Gorgeous—capital G intended. What with that handsome brown face all covered in stubble. And those shoulders—so big, so broad. Those tight dark curls that made a girl want to reach out and touch. And the chest she’d had her hands all over when he’d pulled her out of the ocean, all muscle and golden skin and more dark curling hair. In fact there was plenty about him that made a girl want to touch...

But not her, she reminded herself, sinking her hands down onto the chair so that she could sit on them before they did anything stupid.

If anybody was going to get the benefit of her touch on this trip, it would be that unsuspecting cabana boy—and, boy, did that sound seedy all of a sudden. So maybe not. Maybe, ah, Luke! Yes, dashing, debonair, dishy Luke Hargreaves. There you go, that was way better than nice—

“You okay there, Avery?”

“Hmm? Sorry? What?”

Jonah’s laugh was a deep low huh-huh-huh that she felt in the backs of her knees.

“How many of those have you had?” he asked.

“Just one, thank you very much.” A big one. “I’m fine.”

“You say that a lot. That you’re fine.”

She did? Funny, she could hear it too, like an eerie echo inside her head. I’m fine! All good! Don’t worry about me! Now what can I do to make you feel better? Cheer-cheer, rah-rah-rah!

“I say it because I am.” Mostly. “And I am. Fine. Just too much sun. And those cocktails have quite a kick, don’t they? And—” she pointed one way, and then turned and pointed the other, not quite sure which direction was which “—I do believe I’m meant to be on a boat heading back to the mainland right about now.”

Jonah pulled out a chair and straddled the thing, like he needed extra room between his legs to accommodate...you know. Avery blinked fast at the direction of her thoughts, before lifting her eyes quick smart to his, only to connect with all that quicksilver. Cool and hot all at once. As if he knew exactly where her eyes and thoughts had just been.

She swallowed. Hard. Tasted rum and coconut and...whatever the other thing was. The deadly wicked other thing that seemed to have made her rather tipsy.

“Avery.”

“Yes, Jonah.”

The quicksilver shifted, glints lighting the depths. “Our boat left about the time you started filling me in on why you came to the cove.”

Avery swallowed, wondering just how much rum she’d imbibed. She’d told him? What exactly? How she’d been a big chicken and fled New York so as to avoid her mother’s mortifying divorce anniversary party?

“To catch up with Claudia,” Jonah reminded her when she’d looked at him blankly for quite some time.

“Right! Of course. For Claude. We’re friends, you know? Have been a lo-o-ong time.”

No laugh this time, but a smile. An honest-to-goodness smile that made his eyes glow and his eye crinkles deepen. Sheesh; the man didn’t need to have a sexy smile to go along with the sexy laugh and all the other sexy bits. But there it was. Talk about a potent cocktail.

“I’ve secured a room at a local resort, the Tea Tree—”

“Wow. It was decent of you to buy me a drink—” a kicker of a cocktail “—in order to ease the sunburn—” embarrassment “—and all, but a room’s rather presumptuous, don’t you think?”

A few more glints joined the rest and his next smile came with a flash of white teeth. The rare and beautiful sight made her girl parts uncurl like a cat in the sun.

“Avery,” he said, and she kind of wished he’d called her princess, or honey, because her name in that drawl from that mouth was as good as ten minutes of concentrated foreplay. “The room is for you. Just you. Alone.”

“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.”