Man About The House

The moment he saw the stones set in the silver, he suddenly had a colour for those eyes: turquoise. Joanna Ford’s big, beautiful eyes were the purest of turquoise.

‘Oh, thank you so much!’ Karessa almost choked him with gratitude. ‘Thank you, thank you, thank you!’

He laughed. ‘You’re welcome. You’re welcome. You’re welcome!’

‘Oh, Brett, I’ve just gotta go show Mum and Joanna now. Then I’ll come right out and help with the luggage, okay?’

‘Don’t bother; I can handle it,’ he told her already departing form. ‘Er, by the way, Karessa...is Meaghan really giving her driving lessons?’

‘Mmm. Scary thought, huh?’

‘You’re not wrong, kiddo,’ he murmured, although the idea of Joanna Ford’s unique beauty being put at even the slightest risk struck him as more criminal than scary.

It took Brett the better part of three days to shake off his jet lag, during which time he saw Joanna a corresponding number of occasions. Once when he’d been crossing the foyer, en route to the living area of the house from his bedroom, and she’d barrelled into him at around a hundred ‘k’s an hour.

Automatically his hands had gone to her shoulders to steady her, and in the ensuing few seconds she’d simply stood there looking slightly dazed as she stared up at him. Again, on the surface she’d been glamour personified, but in the depths of her turquoise eyes—oh, yeah, turquoise was their precise colour—he’d seen an ocean of uncertainty. In the next instant she’d pushed him away and started muttering an embarrassed apology, explaining she was hurrying to catch the bus to the North Sydney office.

‘Hey, if you wait till I pull on a shirt I’ll drive you down to the bus stop.’ His offer had met momentary wide-eyed confusion, a blush, then a vigorously shaking dark head and a hasty, ‘No, er, thanks. I’m fine. I...I’m in a hurry. Bye!’

She’d been out of the front door and had it closed behind her before her perfume could catch up with her. He’d liked her perfume... However, on the second occasion he’d seen her he’d been too far away to smell it.

He’d been on his way out for an evening run just as she’d been climbing into a five-year-old Porsche. Having spent all afternoon in his mother’s study, reviewing various job offers, Brett hadn’t heard her come in from work and had assumed that, it being Friday night, she’d be late home. People who lived on the upper end of the northern Sydney peninsula didn’t usually come all the way home from the city to get changed before going out. Brett had figured the male driver was merely a friend, because if he was a date he’d surely have got out of the car to open the door for her! Plus, she’d been wearing snug-fitting jeans and a bomber jacket, which also pretty much ruled out a romantic dinner at a restaurant.

The third time his and Joanna’s paths crossed had been some five hours later, just ten minutes ago, when he’d gone out to check what was causing the security sensor light in the front yard to turn on and off every few minutes. He’d expected to find a neighbour’s dog had got out, instead he’d found her, bent over in drizzling rain and heaving her heart out in his mother’s azalea bed.

She was a wet, tearful and woebegone sight, and he couldn’t do much besides offering her physical support by way of an arm across her shoulders, and emotional support that amounted to verbal assurances that she would live and that everything was going to be all right. Which was pretty much what he’d told Meaghan the first time she’d written herself off—and what old Mr Parsons who’d used to live next door had told him when as a seventeen-year-old he’d been in exactly the same position Joanna was now. No doubt about it, over the years this particular plant had received a more bizarre fertilising compound than any of the others in the McAlpine family garden.

He didn’t know what events had led up to Joanna being in this less than sparkling state of health; there was no sign of her Porsche-driving escort and she wasn’t making much sense.

‘I...I’s not dunk,’ she continued insisting as he carried her into the house. ‘Don’t dink. S’never dink.’

‘Well, then, princess, I guess you must be having an allergic reaction to that Jack Daniel’s you wear as perfume, ’cause it’s sure as hell making my eyes water.’

She frowned up at him. ‘Jack? Hoosh Jack?’

‘Someone you weren’t ready to take on, that’s for sure.’

Despite the limpness of her body she was light as a feather, and for an instant Brett considered carrying her down the hall to the bathroom and shoving her under a shower fully clothed. It wasn’t as if she wasn’t already half drenched and in need of warming up, but she was snuggled against him in such a damn trusting way he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Instead, he stopped at the bedroom door and bent his knees so he could open the door without dropping her in the process; the handle, though, gave a useless half-turn, indicating it was locked.

‘Hell.’ He sighed heavily and felt the echo of a softer one as the body in his arms nestled closer. Even smelling like a brewery, with her long black hair a damp tangle and black tear-tracks streaking her face, she possessed an ethereal beauty that inspired protective instincts only Karessa had previously managed to provoke. If he could get her into her room and convince her to get out of her wet clothes and have a shower, she’d be in good enough shape for him to leave her and let her sleep it off.

‘Joanna... Joanna, I’m going to put you down and—’

Her arms tightened around his neck. ‘No. Shleep...I’m ashleep.’

‘No, you’re not, honey,’ he said, fighting laughter and the stranglehold she had on him. ‘You’re what’s commonly known as tanked to the gills.’

‘Fank oooo,’ she mumbled. ‘You...nice.’

Shaking his head at her inebriated agreeability, he used his left arm to haul her tighter against his chest for stability while his right forearm supported her lower body in such a way that his hand was free to blindly grab the door handle. His height, the bundle in his arms and the low position of the handle made it something of a juggling act, but fortunately long familiarity with the intricate lock mechanism worked in his favour.

He nudged the door wide with his foot, then used his elbow to flick the light switch on the architrave. Immediately the woman in his arms gave a yelp, and buried her face into his shoulder.

‘Sorry, but if you think that’s bad, waking up tomorrow is going to feel like you’re staring directly into the sun.’ He stood for a moment, scanning the room, and decided he could do without emptying the assorted stuffed animals from the wicker chaise in the comer, which meant the bed was the only other place to put her.

Crossing to the broderie anglaise-covered bed, he lowered her to her feet, intending to pull back the comforter. But before he could act on the thought she emitted a delighted whimper and lurched towards it so fast she nearly pulled him down onto it too. He managed to brace himself on the bedhead, and when her arms could no longer maintain the effort of stretching up around his neck, she slumped back onto the mattress.

And this had seemed like a two-second rescue job when he’d started it!

He shook her shoulder. ‘C’mon, Joanna, your clothes are wet. You can’t go to sleep in them.’

‘Yesh...shleep. I wanna go...shleep.’

‘Yeah, I’m sure you do. But you have to change into something else first.’

She pushed him away when he endeavoured to sit her up. ‘Shleep,’ she mumbled, rolling sideways to embrace the . pillow on the other side of the bed.

‘Damn,’ he breathed. Trying to coax her into compliance would be a waste of breath, since neither her current comprehension or co-ordination gave him a hope in hell of success. Which meant he either had to let her sleep in clothes that were wet and grubby enough to support incineration over washing or...undress her himself. If Meaghan hadn’t been going away for the weekend he’d have taken great delight in calling at—he glanced at his watch—twenty to one in the morning and asking if the ‘hands off instruction she’d issued about his housemate extended to the point of letting her risk pneumonia.

Looking down at the motionless, bedraggled form on the bed, he resigned himself to the fact he couldn’t in good conscience just leave her as she was, but dealing with the situation wasn’t going to be easy.

Toni had always insisted that a pair of jeans didn’t fit right unless you had to lie down on a bed to get into them and then use a coat hanger hook to zip them up. Apparently Joanna adhered to the same fashion philosophy, because had the jeans she was wearing hugged her any tighter they’d have cut off her circulation. Dry, they’d have been tough enough to get off; damp, they were going to be a nightmare. Although executing that particular task was going to be a whole lot easier on his nerves than ridding her of the Lycra knit bodysuit she wore under them, because that was more than wet and tight enough to tell him she was sans bra.

Damn.

He raked his hair in frustration, then grabbed her bootshod foot and gave it a hard shake. ‘Hoy! Joanna! C’mon, wake up!’

No response. He repeated the action, this time with more vigour and a raised voice. ‘Hoy! Wake up!’

The futility of the exercise didn’t take long to register. The next time Brett grabbed her ankle it was to start unlacing the trendy pseudo-army boots she wore. If his putting her to bed meant Joanna would suffer severe embarrassment as well as a terminal hangover in the morning... well, damn it, she had no one to blame but herself for getting into this state in the first place!

CHAPTER THREE

BRETT climbed the steep stone steps rising from the beach to the grassed area that his mother always referred to as ‘the backyard’. It was, in fact, only a small patch of painstakingly laid and maintained lawn which people failed to notice because it was overwhelmed by the sweeping Pacific view beyond it. For Brett it was the pristine sand and thick rolling waves of Whale Beach which had been his true backyard growing up. There’d only been a handful of days from the time he was ten until he was nineteen that he hadn’t felt the urge to grab his board for a quick surf even if the waves weren’t ideal.

Today, having woken to discover a surf breaking to near perfection thanks to a pre-dawn storm, the fact he was thirty-four and it was smack in the middle of winter hadn’t mattered a whit. Of course, after about twenty minutes, when the initial adrenalin rush of making a ride all the way to the beach on his first choice of wave had worn off, cold and old age had started to prove a diabolical combination. Not his age, of course, but the wetsuit he’d fished out of his wardrobe was about thirteen years old; as insulation it was as useful as a screen door on a submarine.

He laughed aloud when he caught himself giving his most beloved tri-fin an affectionate pat as he leaned it against the wall of the laundry, yet in that instant he knew that even though he’d come to no firm decisions about his professional future he’d made the right personal one in coming home. He’d missed this...really missed it. Oh, sure, he could’ve surfed in California, and on occasion he had, but somehow it suddenly seemed more natural, indeed essential that the rest of his life be spent seeing the sun rising over the Pacific rather than setting on it.

Reaching behind his neck, he snared the plaited tail of the wetsuit’s zip and was tugging it down when a startled yelp behind him caused him to almost leap free of the clinging latex.

‘Lord, Joanna! You frightened the life out of me.’ His heart was still beating out of whack. ‘You always sneak up on people like that?’

‘I... I...I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you were home.’ She was hugging a pile of bedding and looking everywhere but at him. ‘I...er...just wanted to use the washing machine. But it’s okay. It can wait. I’ll do it later.’

When she went to dart from the room, Brett snagged her arm. ‘Whoa, there. Contrary to whatever stories you’ve heard, I don’t bite.’

Though she stilled, her head was downcast, and he used his free hand to tilt it. The minute their eyes made contact she flushed the most vivid red Brett had ever seen and he couldn’t help smiling. ‘Now your skin matches the red lines in your eyes.’