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

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      Then Jonah added, “But he’s not my dog.”

      “Oh. But I thought... Claude said—”

      “He’s not my dog.”

      Okay, then.

      An age later Jonah’s voice came to her, deep and echoey through the headphones. “Want to know what I was thinking about when I finally fell asleep?”

      Yes... But she was meant to be getting better at saying no. And this seemed like a really good chance to practise. “No,” she lied, her voice flat even as her heart rate shot through the roof.

      He shot her a look. Grey eyes hooded, lazy with heat. And the smile that curved at his mouth was predatory. “I’m going to tell you anyway.”

      Oh, hell.

      “I wondered how long it will be before I have to throw myself between you and a drop bear.”

      Avery wasn’t fast enough to hide the smile that tugged at her mouth. Or slow enough not to notice that his gaze dropped to her mouth and stayed. “I may be a tourist, Jonah, but I’m not an idiot. There’s no such thing as a drop bear.”

      His eyes—thankfully—slid back to hers. “Claudia tipped you off, eh?”

      “She is fabulous that way.”

      At mention of her friend another option occurred to her! Sitting up straighter, she turned in her seat as much as she could, ignoring the zing that travelled up her leg as her knee brushed against his.

      “Speaking of Claudia,” she said. Here goes. “She thinks you’re hot.”

      A rise of an eyebrow showed his surprise. “Really?” And for a moment she thought she had him. Then he had to go and ask, “What do you think?”

      Her stomach clenched as if taking a direct hit. “That’s irrelevant.”

      “Not to me.”

      “Why do you even care?”

      His next look was flat, intent, no holds barred. “If you don’t know that yet, Ms Shaw, then I’m afraid that fancy education of yours was a complete waste.”

      She tried to blink. To think. To come up with some fabulous retort that would send him yelping back into his man cave. But the pull of those eyes, that face, that voice, basking in the wholly masculine scent of him filling the tiny cabin, she couldn’t come up with a pronoun, much less an entire sentence.

      And the longer the silence built, the less chance she had of getting herself off the hook.

      It took for him to break eye contact—when a gust of wind picked them up and rocked them about—for her to drag her eyes away.

      With skill and haste, he slipped them above the air stream and into calmer air space. While her stomach still felt as if it were tripping and falling. All because of a little innocent flirting.

      Only it didn’t feel innocent. It felt like Jonah was staking a claim.

      But he scared the bejesus out of her. Not him so much; the swiftness of her attraction to him. It was fierce. And kind of wild. And she was the woman who calmed the waters. Not the kind who ever went chasing storms.

      Even while she knew she was about to admit she understood exactly what Jonah meant, she said, “I told you—I’m interested in someone else.” Considering becoming interested, anyway.

      Then, as if it just didn’t matter, he said, “You didn’t answer my question.”

      “Because it’s a ridiculous question!”

      “You brought it up.”

      So she had. How had this suddenly gone so wrong?

      Avery risked a glance to find Jonah’s eyes back on her mouth. His jaw was tight, his breaths slow and deep. And his deep grey eyes made their way back to hers.

      “Good Lord, Jonah, first the girls at the hotel were all swoony over you—”

      “You noticed?” The smile was back. And a sheen of perspiration prickled all over her skin.

      She held up a hand to block his face from sight. “Then Claude mentions in passing that she thinks you’re a ‘supreme example of Australian manhood—’”

      His laughter at that echoed through the tiny space till her toes curled. But still she forged on.

      “You really need me to be in the line-up too? Are you really that egotistical?”

      “No, Avery. I’m really that interested. I want to hear you admit you’re as attracted to me as I think you are,” he said, and not for a second did he take his eyes from hers.

      If she hadn’t been strapped up like a Thanksgiving turkey she’d have been on him like cranberry sauce. But she was, and she couldn’t. And the conversation had become such a hot mess, Avery wished she could go back in time. Perhaps to the very beginning when all that mattered in life was sleep, food, and a safe place in which to hide from pesky dinosaurs.

      “You want to know what I want?” she asked, proud of the fact that her voice wasn’t quavering all over the place. “What I want is for you to keep your eyes on the sky! No matter what you think of my survival skills, I have no intention of dying today.”

      She waited, all air stuck in her lungs, for him to say something like I’d rather keep my eyes on you. But he merely smiled. As if he knew that she was a big fat liar. Deep down in the dark places inside her that she avoided at all costs. The place where Pollyanna had been born: always positive, not a bother, things would get better, they would! No wonder she worked in PR.

      When Jonah’s smile only grew, she muttered, “Oh, shut up.”

      “I didn’t say a thing.”

      “Well, stop thinking. It doesn’t suit you.”

      The smile turned into a laugh—huh-huh-huh. Then, easy as you please, he shifted eyes front and left her alone for the rest of the flight.

      Disappointment and temptation rode her in equal measure, so much so she clenched her fists and let herself have a good internal scream. Because she didn’t need this, feeling all breathless and weightless with all the hot flushes and the like. Avery wasn’t looking for sparks. Sparks were incendiary. Their sole purpose was to start fires. And fire burned.

      She couldn’t have been more relieved when the helicopter finally came to rest on a helipad at the end of a jetty belonging to one of the bigger resorts just north of Crescent Cove.

      Even better when she saw Claudia waving as if Avery had been rescued from some deserted island.

      And, bless his shiny black shoes, there was Luke, leaning against the Tropicana Nights shuttle bus in the car park at the far end of the jetty. Tall, and handsome, with half an eye on his phone.

      Hull was there too. The beast sat apart, upright on a cluster of rocks in the shadow of a tilting palm СКАЧАТЬ