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

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?”