First Love, Second Chance: Friends to Forever / Second Chance with the Rebel / It Started with a Crush.... Nikki Logan

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СКАЧАТЬ was the deep, black silence late at night, under the West Australian stars, miles from anywhere. The earthy green silence of Beth’s shambolic warehouse studio, only broken by the splashes of colour from her latest artworks. There was the newly discovered, beige-coloured silence inside her head, where voices and thoughts used to clamour but had now all eased into a comfortable hum.

      And there was this one …

      The simmering red silence of a man who was not particularly pleased to see her. Not that Beth had imagined he would be. It was why she’d put this off for so long. The awful sound of nothing echoed through the heartbeat thumping past her eardrums. She cleared her throat.

      ‘Marc.’

      He may have been half a house larger than the boy she remembered, but Marc Duncannon had two trademark giveaways and one was the way he stood when he was on guard, legs apart as if readying himself for a physical assault.

      Muscular arms stole up to cross in front of a broad chest as he continued to stare wordlessly at her. Twisted humour raced in to fill the aching void inside where she wasn’t letting herself feel. While he’d grown a kick-butt chest in ten years, she was no bigger in that department than when he’d last seen her. Yet another disappointment for him.

      Coming here suddenly seemed like a spectacularly bad idea. ‘Are you not even going to say hello?’

      He nodded briskly, his lips tight, resenting opening at all. ‘Beth.’

      One stony word, but loaded with meaning and breath-stealing in its timbre. More than she’d had from him in over a decade. A total contrast to the way he used to say her name. Beth. Betho. Bethlehem. They’d had their short lifetimes to come up with stupid nicknames for each other. He’d only called her Elizabeth once. The day he’d kissed her.

      The day she’d ripped out his heart.

      She swallowed past the lump threatening her air supply. Past the welling excitement that she was here—with Marc—again. ‘How are you?’

      ‘On my way out.’

      Okay … She’d prepared herself to be unwelcome but it still felt so foreign radiating from him. ‘I just needed … I’d like a couple of minutes. Please?’

      His hazel eyes darted away briefly but the miracle of any part of him moving seemed to thaw the rest of him out. His whole body twisted and he resumed loading equipment into his four-wheel drive. Beth risked closing the gap, but her breath got shorter with her distance from him, until she either stopped advancing on him or took her last living gasp.

      Seeing him again would almost be worth it.

      He threw words out like a shark net to entangle her before she got nearer. ‘You could stand there gawping or you could help me load the Cruiser.’

      Beth scrambled to help, stunned by the gift of so many words in a row. It wasn’t friendly. But it wasn’t silence. And, given it was possibly the only chance she was going to get, she took it.

      ‘I went to your old house. Your neighbours told me where you were, ‘ she started to jabber. ‘I heard about your mum. What happened? You two were so close.’

      Oh-so-familiar eyes lifted below hooded lids and glared at her. Intense and intensely … adult. ‘That’s what you’ve come all this way to ask?’

      Her heart lurched. Marc didn’t do sarcasm when they were kids but it seemed he’d perfected the fine art in the years since she’d seen him.

      ‘No. I’m sorry …’ It was lame but what else could she say?

      He turned to face her and straightened, frustrated. ‘What for, Beth? For turning up unannounced or for dropping off the face of the earth for a decade?’

      How could she have forgotten what a straight shooter he was? She took a shaky breath. ‘That’s why I’ve come. I wanted to explain—’

      He moved off again. ‘You’ll have to explain some other time. Like I said, I’m on my way out.’

      She watched as he tossed a few final items into his dusty black Land Cruiser. A satellite phone. A first aid kit. A wetsuit. She frowned. ‘Where are you going?’

      The hard glare he shot her from under the broad ridge of his brow should have had her quailing, if not for the fact that she’d developed immunity long ago, from exposure to much worse. Courtesy of her husband.

      ‘We’ve had a report of a stranding out at Holly’s Bay. I’m going to check it out.’

      ‘Stranding?’

      ‘A whale, Beth. It needs help. I don’t have time to entertain you.’

      She fought the bristle his unkind words inspired. She was here to help her healing process, not to pass the time. Would she have put herself through this otherwise? ‘I just need a minute …’

      He ignored her and moved around to the driver’s side door and yanked it open. ‘The whale may not have a minute. You’ve already slowed me down.’

      She made her decision in a blink. It had cost her too much to come here today; she couldn’t let him just walk away from her. Who knew if she’d find the courage to try again? She sprinted around to the passenger side of the four-wheel drive and leaped in as he started it. Up close and in the confines of a cabin, he was bigger even than he’d seemed at a distance.

      ‘Get out, Beth.’

      His voice certainly fitted the new him. Deep, rough. But still essentially Marc. That part tugged at her. ‘I need to talk to you. If I have to do that on the move, I will. Whatever it takes.’

      He practically growled, ‘You’re wasting time.’

      Anger finally broke through her carefully constructed veneer. ‘No, you are, Marc. Drive!’

      Marc Duncannon concentrated on keeping his hands glued to the steering wheel, cemented there harder than clams on a reef. The tighter he held them, the less likely they were to shake, to give him away. He didn’t want her getting the slightest clue about how thrown he was.

      Beth Hughes.

      She was still the same lean, athletic build she’d been as a kid. It still suited her, even if it made him wonder how long ago she’d had her last meal. Same high brows, straight nose. Full coral lips. He would have recognised her even if she hadn’t spoken and he hadn’t heard again the soft tones he’d given up as a memory, but there was something very worn out about the way she held herself. The way her long dark hair hung, defeated, from a dead straight parting. As if she was doing her best not to stand out. Very un-Beth. She’d always been such a show pony.

      Now she looked a little too much like his mother’s tormented appearance the last time he’d seen her. He clenched his jaw and leaned on the accelerator harder, flying down the long track leading from the homestead to the coastal highway.

      His vehicle now reeked of Beth’s particular scent. That skin cream that, clearly, she still used after all these years. Coconut something. Chemical free. Cruelty free. The scent he associated with summer and beaches and bikinis … and Beth. The scent that would take weeks to fade from his upholstery.

      The СКАЧАТЬ