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

“Not quite so tragic, then.”

Claude grinned. “If you’re going to wander anywhere the rest of your days, might as well be here.”

Avery opened her mouth to ask if there’d been a “Catherine” to send him wandering the moors/beach in the first place. Then snapped it shut tight. Jonah North was none of her business. Hopefully she could get through the rest of her holiday without tripping over the guy or she’d go back home even more tightly wound than when she left.

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?”