Australian Escape: Her Hottest Summer Yet / The Heat of the Night

They neared the end of the jetty and Avery looked up and saw Luke watching them from his position at the shuttle bus. She stood straighter, smiled big, and lifted her hand in a cheery wave.

Luke shot her a nod. A smile. Just looking at him she knew he’d know his way around a wine cellar. That he knew a Windsor knot from a Prince Albert. He’d slip into any dinner party with her friends back home as if he were born there. And yet she could still feel Jonah behind her, even at twenty paces away.

“Thanks for the offer of a lift,” she said to Claude, backing away, “but I think I’ll walk back. Stretch my legs. Lunch later? Just you and me?”

“Lunch would be great.”

Avery gave Claude a big hug, then wiggled her fisherman’s hat tighter on her head, the strap of her bag digging into the sunburn on her shoulder, and headed off.

* * *

Hull padding along warm and strong beside him, Jonah ambled down the jetty towards Luke.

While he waited for his old mate to finish up his phone call, Jonah’s eyes slid to the retreating back of the crazy-making blonde in the oversized green T-shirt that stopped just short of her backside. And he brooded.

With Claude the woman was like some kind of puppy dog, all floppy and happy and bright. Waving to Luke she’d practically preened. While with him she was a flinty little thing, all snappy and sharp. It was as if she didn’t know who she was. Or that she felt a need to be different things to different people. And then there was all that talk of her ‘reconnecting’ with some other guy... And Jonah was a man who appreciated good faith above all. And yet there was no denying her physical response any time he came near. Or, for that matter, his. It had been a while since he’d felt that kind of spark. Real, instant, fiery. And like a fishhook in the gut, it wasn’t letting go. Every touch, every look, every time he caught her staring at him with those stunning odd eyes it dug deeper.

He should have known better. He did know better. Seemed his hormones didn’t give a flying hoot. They wanted what they wanted. And they wanted restless little tourist Avery Shaw.

Rach had been a tourist too. Even while she’d insisted she wanted to be more. Even when her actions hadn’t backed it up, even when she’d never really tried to fit in.

Not that he’d let himself see it. He’d been too caught up in the fantasy of a girl like her seeing something worthy in a drifter like him.

When she’d had enough of playing tourist and moved back to Sydney, he’d followed. She’d let him, probably for no stronger reason than that it felt good to be chased. While Jonah had given up everything, leaving his home, his friends, his way of life, selling his father’s boat, getting a job on the docks as if water were water. Unable to admit he was wrong...

When he’d had run out of money and finally admitted to himself that it was all a farce, she was happily ensconced in her old life, while his was in tatters.

Lesson learned.

His biggest mistake had been thinking something was more than what it was.

Meaning he had to decide what this was, and soon. A spark. Attraction. A deep burn. Nothing more. So long as he owned it, he could use it. Enjoy it. Till it burned itself out.

Yeeeah, mind made up between one breath and the next. Next time he saw Avery Shaw it was game on.

As for her mysterious ‘reconnect’? If it wasn’t all some story she’d made up and the guy hadn’t manned up by now, fool had missed his chance.

“Jonah, my man,” Luke called, jerking Jonah from his reverie.

Jonah moved in and gave his old friend a man hug.

“Funny,” said Luke, “riding in the resort van got me to thinking about that summer I used to hitch rides in your Kombi, driving as far as it took to find the best surf of the day.”

“Ah, the surf. I remember it well.”

“And the girls.”

“That too,” Jonah added, laughing. They’d spent long summers surfing and laughing and living and loving with no thought of the future. Of how things might ever be different.

Look at them both now. Luke, in his suit and tie, phone glued to his palm, a touch of London in his accent. Jonah the owner of a fleet of boats, a helicopter, more. Successful, single...satisfied.

“Found any wave time since you’ve been back?” Jonah asked. If he had it’d be more than Jonah had seen in a long time.

Luke bent down to give Hull a quick scoff about the ears, which Hull took with good grace. “Nah,” he said, frowning. “Not likely to either.”

Maybe not completely satisfied, then.

“Aww, young Claude have you wrapped around her little finger, does she?”

Luke straightened slowly and slid his hands into his pockets, his gaze skidding to their sunny little friend at the end of the jetty. “Let’s just say it’s taking longer than I might have hoped for us to...set the tone of our new business relationship.”

Jonah laughed. Luke had been one of the big reasons he’d even been able to carve a new life for himself in the cove after Rach. He owed him more than money could repay. But not enough he’d take on Claudia Davis. He patted his friend on the back and said, “Good luck there.”

“And good luck there,” Luke said, the tone of his voice shifting. Jonah followed the shift in Luke’s eyeline to find him watching Avery shuffle off into the distance, her thongs catching at the soft sand, her ridiculously inappropriate city-girl shoes dangling from one hand—the shoes he’d spent an hour the night before combing the moonlit beach to track down.

“Cute,” Luke added, both men watching till she disappeared into a copse of palms.

Jonah admitted, “She is that.”

“She was here once before, you know,” said Luke. “Ten odd years ago. With her family. Odd couple, I remember—father quiet, mother loud, dripping money. And Avery? Skinny little thing. Shy. Overly well-bred. Had a crush on me too, if memory serves. Big eyes following me up and down the beach. If I’d known then she’d turn out like that...”

Jonah missed whatever Luke said next as blood roared between his ears and a grave weight settled in his gut, as if he’d swallowed a load of concrete.

Luke.

Avery planned to ‘reconnect’ with Luke.

The way she’d bounced on her toes as she’d waved to the guy just now, fixing her hair, smiling from ear to ear, the sunshine smile and all. Hell, she’d called out Luke’s name that day on the beach, hadn’t she?

The concrete in Jonah’s gut now turning his limbs to dead weights, he turned to face his old friend to find Luke’s gaze was on the water now, following the line of white foam far out to sea. Avery clearly not on his mind. As the guy hadn’t a single clue.

Hull whimpered at his side. Jonah sank a hand into the dog’s fur before Hull lifted his big snout and pressed it into Jonah’s palm, leaving a trail of slobber Jonah wiped back into his fur.

It had been Luke who’d put up the money to buy back his father’s boat when Jonah had come back home to the cove with his tail between his legs, calling it ‘back pay of petrol money’ from the times he’d hitched rides in that old Kombi. From there Jonah had worked day and night, fixing the thing up, accepting reef charters to earn enough money to buy the next boat, and the next, and the next. Becoming a grown-up, forging a future, one intricately tied to the cove, his home.

He’d paid Luke back within a year. But he owed him more than money could ever repay.

Which was precisely why, even while the words tasted like battery acid on the back of his tongue, he said, “You should ask her out.”

“Who?” Luke’s phone rang, then, frowning, he strolled away, investing everything into the call. Leaving Jonah to throw out his arms in surrender.

Which was when Claudia stormed up. “No getting through to him now.” Then, shaking her head, she turned to Jonah with a smile. “Now that you’ve brought my girl home safe, what’s the plan?”

“Work,” Jonah said. “Haircut, maybe.”

“Don’t you dare! Your curls are gorgeous.”

Jonah glanced down at the petite bundle of energy at his side. A woman who was as much a part of the landscape as he was. A local. Someone who’d stick around. “Your little friend told me you think I’m hot.”

“She did not!”

Jonah smiled back.

Claudia gaped at him a moment before she burst out laughing. “Of course I think you’re hot. The entire region of females thinks you’re hot. Anyone else simply hasn’t met you yet.” She squeezed his biceps, gave a little a shiver, and then went back to walking congenially at his side.

And that was why he’d never gone there with her. Because while Claudia was cute as a button, and local, and available, there’d never been that spark. That all-out, wham-bam, knock-the-wind-from-your-sails spark that he knew was out there for the having.

He knew because he’d felt it.

Twice.

The first woman who’d made him feel that way had made him believe it was real, until the day she woke up and decided it wasn’t.

The other one had convinced herself she wanted to ‘reconnect’ with his best mate.

To think, his week had started with such high hopes.

FIVE

Feeling better about the world after having just signed a lucrative contract to keep his newest luxury yacht on call for clients of the Hawaiian Punch Hotel, Jonah set off through the outdoor Punch Bowl Bistro, Hull meeting him at the door and padding along beside him.

He’d nearly hit the path between resorts when Hull whimpered, ran around in front of him, and nudged his hand with his nose.

“What’s up, boy?” Jonah asked, right at the moment he realised it wasn’t a what, it was a who.

For there at a table sat Avery Shaw.

It had been days since he’d set eyes on her. After the Luke revelation, he’d figured total avoidance was the safest bet.

Now as he watched her sit at the table doing nothing more seductive than swirl a straw round and round in a pink drink the staunched heat clawed its way through his gut like some creature kept hungry way too long, settling with a discomforting ache in his groin.

Before he even felt his feet move Jonah was threading his way towards her.

Hull got to her first, curling around the base of her table and lying down as if he was expected.

“Hey!” Avery said, her face lighting up with surprised laughter. With sunshine.

Then he saw the moment she knew what Hull’s sudden appearance meant. Her head whipped up, her eyes locking onto his, lit by an instant and wild flicker of heat, before she tilted her chin as if to say, I refuse to admit my cheeks are flushed because of you.

Yeah, honey, he thought, right back at ya.

Then her eyes slid past him, to the empty doorway leading inside the hotel. And all sunshine fled to leave way for sad Bambi. What scrape had she gotten herself into now?

His vision expanded to notice her knife and fork were untouched. The bread basket mere crumbs.

And he knew.

Luke. She’d made plans to have lunch with Luke. And for whatever reason, the goose had clearly failed to show.

That was the moment Jonah should have walked away. Considering how much he owed Luke, how long a friendship they’d enjoyed, and the fact that being anywhere near Avery made him feel like a rubber band stretched at its limit, it was the only honourable option.

And yet he dragged out a chair and—blocking Ms Shaw’s view of the front door—sat down.

Luke not carving out time for a surf during his first time in the cove for years was one thing. But not knowing when a gorgeous woman wanted to get to know him better? Unforgivable.

And she was gorgeous. Her pale hair clipped neatly away from her face in some kind of fancy braid, eyes soft and sooty, lips slicked glossy pink, ropes of tiny beads draping over a black-and-white dress that made her look like a million bucks. If he ever needed a reminder she was not from here, that whatever spark was between them had no future...

Then she had to go and say, “Oh, you’re staying?”

And that was it. He was hunkered in. His voice was one notch above a growl as he said, “Nice to see you too, Miss Shaw.”

She pointed over his shoulder. “I’m actually—”

“Thrilled to see me?”

She swallowed, clearly undecided as to whether to admit why she was there alone. In the end she kept her mouth shut.

“Saw you sitting here all alone and figured it was the gentlemanly thing to rescue you from your lonesomeness,” he said, casually perusing the menu he already knew by heart. He put the menu down, and settled back in his chair, sliding a leg under the table, navigating Hull’s big body. Only to find himself knocking shoes with Avery. Her high-heel-clad foot slipped away.

“Really?”

“Hand to heart,” he said, action matching words.

Her eyes flickered to his hand, across his chest, over his shoulders, to his hair, pausing longest of all on his mouth, before skimming back to his eyes. And while he knew it was not smart, was traitorous even, he enjoyed every second of it.

“Is your dog even allowed in here?” she said, pointing under the table.

He lifted a shoulder, let it fall. “Not my dog.”

She leaned forward a little then. Her mouth kicked into a half-smile.

“Well, whoever’s dog he is,” that mouth said, “he’s sitting on my foot. And my toes are now officially numb. He’s enormous.”

“Huge,” said Jonah, lifting his eyes to hers to find them darkened, determined, as if making some kind of connection between man and beast. Enough that he had to fight the urge to adjust himself.

Wrapping her lips around her straw in a way that was entirely unfair, she asked, “So how did you and Hull meet?”

“Found him on the beach when he was a pup—a tiny, scrawny, shivery ball of mangy, matted fluff, near dead with exhaustion and hunger. Odds on he wasn’t the only one in the litter dumped. Probably tied up in a sack full of rocks and thrown overboard. He’s been crazy afraid of water ever since. Took him home, cleaned him up, fed him, and that was it.”

“You saved his life and that doesn’t make him your responsibility?”

“Never bought him, never sought him. Don’t get me wrong, he’s a great dog. And if he thinks you’re a threat to me, he’d like nothing better than to tear you limb from limb.”

“Me?” she said, flicking a quick glance at the now-snoring lump under the table. “A threat?”

Jonah shot her a flat look. She was the biggest threat he’d met in a long time.

By the rise and fall of her chest she got his meaning loud and clear.

Then, frowning, she slipped her fingers down the length of beads and stared at the little bits of pineapple bobbing on top of her drink. Most likely because of the elephant in the room. Or not in the room as he hadn’t showed up.

Rubbing a hand up the back of his neck, Jonah wished he’d simply called Luke and asked where the hell he was. Or at the very least what his intentions towards her were, if any. Hell, he’d done such a fine job avoiding the woman, for all Jonah knew she and Luke could have been dating for days.

That thought clouded his vision something mad, but didn’t put a dent in the attraction that rode over him like a rogue wave. The only right thing to do was leave. Walk away. Avoid more. At least until he knew where they all stood.

He quietly schooled his features, looked casually over the restaurant, towards the still-empty doorway. And set his feet to the floor as he made to leave her be.

When the waiter came shuffling up. “Oh, good, your company’s finally arrived. Are you ready to order now?”

Jonah glanced back at Avery to find her blushing madly now, nose buried in the menu.

“Um...he’s... I guess. Just... Can I have a second, please? Sorry!”

When she looked up at the waiter she shot him her sunshine smile, catching Jonah in its wake. The effect was like a smack to the back of the head, rattling his thoughts till he could no longer quite put them back in order.

“This is my first time here,” she said. “What would you recommend?”

Jonah jabbed a finger at the rump steak. “Rare.” Motioned to his friend under the table and said, “Two.”

“Make it three,” said Avery, picking out a pricey glass of red wine to go along with it.

When the waiter wandered off, she lowered the menu slowly, frowned at it a second, before taking a breath and looking up at him. Clearly bemused as to how they’d got there. Just the two of them. Having lunch.

He wished he knew himself.

Avery shuffled on her chair and said, “So, Jonah, did you always want to work with boats growing up?”

“Boats? We’re really heading down that path?”

“Boats. The weather. You pick!” She threw her arms out in frustration. “Or you can just sit there all silent and broody for all I care. I was perfectly happy to have lunch on my own before you came along.”

“Were you, now?”

She glared at him then, the truth hovering between them.

She grabbed her pink drink and slugged the thing down till it was empty. The fact that she thought she needed booze to get through lunch with him was actually kind of comforting. Then she licked her lips in search of stray pink drink. And Jonah had never felt less comfortable in his life.

He rubbed a hand over his jaw, hoping the prickle of stubble might wake him the hell up, but instead finding his cheeks covered in overly long scruff. The lack of a close shave was just about the only throwback to his old life. When the idea of lunch with a pretty girl was as normal to him as a day spent in the sea, not something fraught with malignant intentions and mortal peril.

He dropped his calloused fingers to his lap, so like his father’s fingers.

She wanted to talk boats? What the hell. “My father worked on boats.”

“Oh, a family tradition.”

Jonah coughed out a laugh. His father wouldn’t have thought so. As brutally proud as Jonah was of everything Charter North had become, he knew his father wouldn’t have understood. The types of boats, or the number. Karl North had only ever owned the one boat, the Mary-Jane, named after Jonah’s mother. And in the end she’d killed him.

“He was a lobster man,” Jonah went on. “A diver. Over the reefs. Live collection, by hand.” No big hauls, just long hours, negligible conversation, even less outward displays of affection, not much energy left for anything not on the boat.

Avery picked up on the “Was?”

“He died at sea when I was seventeen. He’d taught me a thing or two about boats before then, though. I could pull a boat engine apart and put it back together by the time I was fourteen.”

“You think that’s impressive? At fourteen I could speak French and create a five-course menu for twenty people.”

“You cook?”

“I created the menu. Cook cooked it.”

“Of course.”

She grinned. Sunshine. And when she slid her fingers over the rope of beads, this time he felt the slide of those fingers somewhere quite else. “And your mother?”

“She left when I was eleven. I haven’t seen her since. Hard being married to a man whose first love is big and blue. When the summer storms threaten to turn every boat inside out and upside down. When quotas laws changed, or the crops just weren’t there. He went back out there the next day and tried again, because that’s what men did.”

And there you have it, folks, he thought, dragging in a breath. Most he’d said about his own folks...probably ever. Locals understood. Rach hadn’t ever asked. While Avery dug it out of him with no more than a look.

Jonah shifted on his chair.

“My turn?” she said.

“Why the hell not?”

Grinning, this time less sunshine, more sass, she leaned down to wrap her lips around the edge of her glass, found it empty, left a perfect pink kiss in their place.

“My parents are both still around. Dad’s an investment banker, busy man, Yankees fan—” A quick fist-pump. “Go Yanks! My mother earned her living the Park Avenue way—divorce—and is a fan of spending Dad’s money. While I am the good daughter: cheerful, encouraging, conciliatory.”

Jonah struggled to imagine this caustic creature being conciliatory. Until he remembered her snuggling up to Claude, bouncing on her heels as she waved to Luke. Luke. He frowned. Forgot what he was thinking about, or more likely shoved it way down deep inside.

“Even my apartment is equidistant from both of theirs,” she went on.

“You’re Switzerland?”

She laughed.

Chin resting on her upturned palm, she said, “Between you and me and this dog who’s not yours, being Switzerland is exhausting. I didn’t realise how much Switzerland needed a break till I came here. You know what my mother is doing right this second? Organising a party to celebrate the tenth anniversary of the divorce. Manhattan rooftop, over a hundred guests, yesterday she called to tell me about the comedian she’s hired to roast my father, who won’t even be there.”

The waiter came back with her wine, which she wrapped her hands around as if it were a life ring. “Worst part? She actually thought I’d be dying to help. As if my relationship with my father—such as it is—means nothing.”

Her eyes flickered, a pair of small lines creasing the skin above her nose. And when she shook her head, it was as if a flinty shell had crumbled to reveal a whole different Avery underneath. A woman trying to do the right thing in her small way against near impossible odds.

He got that.

With a shrug and an embarrassed twist of her sweet lips Avery gave him a look.

He opened his mouth to say...something, when Hull sat up with a muffled woof, saving him from saying anything at all. Seconds later the waiter arrived in a flurry. Hull’s raw steak had been pounded into mush by the chef. Avery’s and Jonah’s sat in sweet and juicy seas of mushroom pepper sauce.

After the waiter left, Jonah said, “You know what Switzerland should do next?”

“What’s that?” she asked, her hand flinching a little as she put her napkin on her lap.

“Eat,” he said, shoving a chunk of steak in his mouth.

Her smile was new—soft, swift, and lovely. And Jonah breathed through the realisation that there couldn’t possibly be any more last-minute saves.

The next time he nearly did something with this woman it would be all on him.

* * *

“So what’s the plan for the afternoon?” Jonah asked later as they ambled onto the palm-tree-lined path that curled between the resorts and led back to the main street.

“Tropicana, I guess. Track down Claude. Sit on her so that we can get more than two minutes together in a row.”

“How’s she doing?” Another scintillating question. And yet he couldn’t let her go. Not yet. The rubber-band feeling was back, tugging him away even as it pulled him right on back.

“Great. I think. Truth is, she’s been so busy running the resort I’ve probably spent more time with you this holiday than her.”

Her cheeks flushed as she realised what she’d said. And something swelled hot and sudden inside him. She’d spent more time with him. Not Luke. Meaning nothing had happened between them. Yet.

“Come on,” he growled, pressing a hand to her back as he shielded her from a group of oblivious teenagers taking up the whole path as they headed towards the Punch Bowl.

Jonah kept his hand at her back as they continued along the now-secluded path. And she let him.

When they reached a fork in the path—one way headed straight to the beach, the other hooking back to the rear entrance to the Tropicana Nights—she turned towards him, and his hand slid naturally to her waist.

Wrong, he told himself, on so many levels. And yet it felt so right. His hand in the dip of her waist. Her scent curling beneath his nose. Her mismatched eyes picking up the earthy colours around her.

Her voice was breathless as she said, “Thanks for lunch. It was nice to have company.”

Streaks of sunlight shot through the palm leaves above and shone in her pale hair and the pulse that beat in her throat. Through the thin dress he felt the give of her warm flesh beneath his rough palm. She leaned into his touch without even knowing it.