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

Good deed for the day done, Avery lay back on the couch. Unfortunately the second she closed her eyes the night she’d been holding at bay came swarming back to her.

Jonah’s mouth on hers, tasting her as if she were precious, delicious, a delicacy he couldn’t get enough of. His calloused touch making paths all over her body.

She snapped her eyes open, early morning light reflecting off the white columns and walls.

At least Luke had had the good grace to let Claudia know when he’d done a runner. Avery had dressed in the dark, called a cab and split. Even if none of her expensive schools had given classes on Mornings After, she was well aware that it was just bad form.

She pulled herself up and padded back to her room. She needed a shower. She needed a coffee. Then, as usual, it was up to her to put the world back to rights.

EIGHT (#ulink_fc6b9575-a641-5951-bfe0-7956ad06c288)

Avery really got the hang of the right-hand drive in Claudia’s car—a bright yellow hatchback named Mabel with Tropicana Nights’s logo emblazoned over every possible surface—about the time she hit Port Douglas.

The GPS on her phone led her to Charter North’s operations, down a long straight road past a bright green golf course, million-dollar homes, and ten-million-dollar views.

She eased through the high gate and pulled to a halt by a security guard in a booth.

To her left was a car park big enough to fit fifty-odd cars, with a dozen gleaming sky-blue Charter North charter buses lined up beside a neat glass and brick building. Oceanside was a perfect row of crisp white sheds, as big as light airplane hangars, the Charter North logo on each catching glints of sunshine.

She knew the guy owned a few boats. And a helicopter. And a shack. Now nautical empire didn’t seem such a stretch.

“Ma’am?” the security guard said, bringing her back to earth.

“Sorry. Ah, Avery Shaw to see Jonah North.”

He took down her licence plate and let her through with a smile. She pulled into a car park in time for a super-friendly man in chinos and a navy polo shirt—who introduced himself as Tim the office manager—to point the way to a big white building hovering over the water. To Jonah. She would have known anyway, as right in a patch of sun outside lay Hull.

The sun beat down on her flowy shirt, and her bare legs beneath her short shorts. Her silver sandals slapped against the wood of the jetty and Hull lifted his speckled head at her approach.

“Hey, Hull,” she whispered. His tail gave three solid thumps—meaning he at least wasn’t about to eat her alive for dissing his master—then he went back to guarding the door. Her heart took up the rhythm; whumping so loud she feared it might echo.

The door was open a crack so she snuck inside—and understood instantly why Hull was stationed outside. Jonah had said the dog hated water, and inside huge jetties criss-crossed the floor and a ways below the ocean bobbed and swished against the pylons holding the building suspended above the waves.

A few boats were hooked to the walls by high-tech electrical arms, one in the process of being fixed. Yet another was getting a wash, and spray flew over the top and onto the jetty.

Not seeing any other movement, Avery eased that way, taking care where she stepped as the wood beneath her feet grew wet.

Until against one wall she saw a familiar surfboard. Silvery-grey, like its owner’s eyes, with the shadow of a great palm tree right down the middle, and her heart beat so hard it filled her throat.

Because she knew why she’d fled in the middle of the night. Somehow in the odd sequence of meetings that had led her to Jonah’s bed, she’d got to know the guy. And despite his ornery moods she even liked him.

She’d woken up terrified that those feelings would unleash her Pollyanna side upon him—Like me! Love me!— like some rabid pixie hell-bent on smothering the world with fairy dust. Not quite so terrified, though, as what it might mean if Pollyanna still didn’t show up at all.

Her feet felt numb as she came upon a curled-up hose, water trickling from its mouth. Then around the bow of the boat she found suds. And at the end of a great big sponge was Jonah. Feet bare, sopping wet jean shorts clinging to his strong thighs, T-shirt clinging wet to the dips and planes of his gorgeous chest.

As Avery’s gaze swept over him, over his roguish dark hair, over the curve of his backside, his athletic legs, she didn’t realise how dry her mouth had become until she opened it to talk. “You could hire people to do that, you know.”

Jonah stilled. Then his deep grey eyes lifted and caught on her. She felt the look like a hook through the belly—yet he gave nothing away.

A moment later, he turned off the hose, threw the sponge into a bucket at his feet, wiped his forearm across his forehead, and slowly headed her way.

And when he spoke his deep Australian drawl twisted the hook so deep inside she was sure it would leave a scar. “I have hired people to do this.” A beat, then, “But today I find being around water a damn fine release of tension.”

Avery considered picking up the sponge herself. “Well, that’s why I’m here, actually.”

“To wash my boat?” His voice skittered down her arms like his touch—coarse and gentle all at once. How did the guy make even that sound sexy?

“To apologise.”

“For?”

He was going to make her say it, wasn’t he? Not nice. Not nasty either, though. Just...plain-spoken. Direct. True.

“For leaving. This morning. After—” She waved a hand to cover the rest.

“After you fell asleep in my bed, exhausted from all the hot lovin’.”

“Jonah North,” she muttered, throwing her hands in the air in despair, “last of the great romantics.”

“It was sex, Avery,” he said, walking towards her again. “Good sex. Nothing to apologise for.”

He didn’t stop till he was close enough she could feel his warmth infusing the air around her. Could see his eyelashes all spiked together with water, as they had been that first day. And that his face was a picture of frayed patience, also as it had been that first day.

But the difference between that day and now was vast.

“It was more than good,” she said, her voice as jerky as a rusty chainsaw.

One eyebrow lifted along with the corner of his mouth.

“It was freakin’ stupendous.”

His mouth tilted fully into a smile so sexy it made her vision blur. Then he ran a hand up the back of his hair and said, “Yeah. I’ll give you that.”

Then he moved nearer, near enough to touch. But instead of touching her, he reached out for a towel draped over a mossy post near her feet. She closed her eyes and prayed for mercy, lest she drool and lose the high ground completely.

Jonah wiped the towel over his face, and down his arms, smearing the sweat and suds.

“Why, then, did you run?”

“I didn’t run. I caught a cab.”

By the way his brow collapsed over his eyes, she was pretty sure that being flip wasn’t going to cut it. But there was no way on God’s green earth she was about to tell him she ran because of how much she wanted to stay. She’d been very careful till now not to let anyone have that much sway over her desires. Keeping things light, happy, above the surface. The flipside was unthinkable.

“Just hit me with it, Avery,” he said, throwing the towel over the back of his neck and holding onto the ends, his biceps bulging without any effort at all. “It’s about Luke.”

“What? No! Luke was...a brief flirtation with finding a way to distract myself from the goings-on back home by dipping my toes back into the past. But from pretty much the moment you hauled me out of the ocean and manhandled me back to shore and glared down at me with your steamy eyes...” Okay, heading off track now. She breathed deep, her cheeks beginning to heat with a slow burn that showed no signs of stopping, and said, “I want you.”

Jonah didn’t so much as twitch. He let her sway in the wind. Getting his money’s worth. Till finally he said, “Okay, then.”