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

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СКАЧАТЬ 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?”

      “Work,” Jonah said. “Haircut, maybe.”

      “Don’t you dare! Your curls are gorgeous.”

      Jonah glanced down at the petite bundle of energy at his side. A woman who was as much a part of the landscape as he was. A local. Someone who’d stick around. “Your little friend told me you think I’m hot.”

      “She did not!”

      Jonah smiled back.

      Claudia gaped at him a moment before she burst out laughing. “Of course I think you’re hot. The entire region of females thinks you’re hot. Anyone else simply hasn’t met you yet.” She squeezed his biceps, gave a little a shiver, and then went back to walking congenially at his side.

      And that was why he’d never gone there with her. Because while Claudia was cute as a button, and local, and available, there’d never been that spark. That all-out, wham-bam, knock-the-wind-from-your-sails spark that he knew was out there for the having.

      He knew because he’d felt it.

      Twice.

      The first woman who’d made him feel that way had made him believe it was real, until the day she woke up and decided it wasn’t.

      The other one had convinced herself she wanted to ‘reconnect’ with his best mate.

      To think, his week had started with such high hopes.

       FIVE

      Feeling better about the world after having just signed a lucrative contract to keep his newest luxury yacht on call for clients of the Hawaiian Punch Hotel, Jonah set off through the outdoor Punch Bowl Bistro, Hull meeting him at the door and padding along beside him.

      He’d nearly hit the path between resorts when Hull whimpered, ran around in front of him, and nudged his hand with his nose.

      “What’s up, boy?” Jonah asked, right at the moment he realised it wasn’t a what, it was a who.

      For there at a table sat Avery Shaw.

      It had been days since he’d set eyes on her. After the Luke revelation, he’d figured total avoidance was the safest bet.

      Now as he watched her sit at the table doing nothing more seductive than swirl a straw round and round in a pink drink the staunched heat clawed its way through his gut like СКАЧАТЬ