Once she got back to the town house she changed into her one-piece bathing costume and some casual separates and headed straight for the beach. The sting of the sun had eased now it was early evening. The iconic arc of Bondi Beach was still heavily dotted with bodies making the most of the long, hot summer. Dozens of fit-looking surfers were out at the back of the swell, waiting for the perfect wave. Kitty couldn’t help envying their agility and grace. She had never been all that confident around water. She could swim…well, maybe that was stretching it a teensy bit. She could get from one end of a very short pool to the other. The ocean was another thing entirely. She had been to the beach plenty of times, but gentle, bay-like ones—ones with shingle or pebbles, not sand as fine as sugar and a swell that was rolling in with a roar that sounded like thunder as each wave crashed against the shore.
Kitty laid out her towel on the sand, anchoring the four corners with each of her flip-flops and two shells. She carefully tucked her keys inside her hat, along with her sunglasses, before she walked down to the water’s edge between the lifesaver patrol flags.
The water was warmer than she was used to and yet refreshing as she let it froth over her ankles and shins. She went in up to her knees and stood there watching as children half her height went out further, shrieking and squealing in delight as they jumped over or dived under the waves.
The lowering sun was like a warm caress on her back and shoulders, easing some of the tight golfball-sized knots that had gathered there.
‘Watch me, Uncle Jake!’ A young boy’s voice rang out over the sound of the surf.
Kitty felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand up and the golfballs in her shoulders knock together.
How many Jakes were there in Sydney and at Bondi Beach on this particular evening?
She looked to her right and saw Jake Chandler—the Jake Chandler—standing watching as a young boy bodysurfed a small wave.
Her heart tripped.
Her belly hollowed.
Her mouth watered.
Jake was standing less than a metre away from her. He was naked from the waist up. He was wet. He was tanned. He was lean. He was muscular in all the right places.
He was gorgeous.
‘Why is that lady staring at you, Uncle Jake?’
Kitty blinked herself out of her stasis, embarrassed colour shooting to her face as Jake’s blue gaze turned and met hers. ‘I’m not staring…’ she said, and stared.
Jake’s thick dark lashes were spiky with seawater. He had a lazy smile playing about his mouth. He had a day’s growth of sexy stubble. His black hair was wet. His shoulders were broad, his hips narrow. His abdomen washboard-flat, his groin—
Kitty swallowed and blushed some more as she dragged her gaze back to his. ‘I didn’t know you were an uncle,’ she said, in a paltry effort to cover her mortification.
Jake put his hand on his nephew’s wiry shoulder. ‘Nathan,’ he said. ‘I’d like you to meet a new member of my staff at the hospital. This is Dr Cargill.’
Kitty smiled at the child, who looked about nine or ten years old. ‘Hi. I’m pleased to meet you, Nathan.’
‘You talk funny,’ Nathan said, screwing up his face.
‘It’s called the Queen’s English, Nate,’ Jake said. ‘You’d do well to learn it—and some manners while you’re at it.’
The boy wriggled out from under Jake’s hand. ‘Can I surf some more?’ he asked.
‘Yeah, but stay between the flags,’ Jake said. He turned and looked at Kitty again. ‘Sorry about that. He’s a good kid but he needs a bit of polish.’
Kitty tried not to stare at those long spiky eyelashes. ‘He’s very like you,’ she said.
His brow came up in a sardonic arc. ‘You think I need a bit of a polish too, do you, Dr Cargill?’
She felt her cheeks burn as she fought to hold his gaze. ‘That’s not what I meant at all,’ she said, with as much composure as she could muster whilst standing partially naked before him. ‘I meant you’re like him in looks. Your eyes, your hair—that sort of thing.’
Jake returned his gaze to the waves, where his nephew was bodysurfing with varying degrees of success. ‘He’s a handful,’ he said. ‘I try and wear him out for my sister Rosie.’ He glanced at her again. ‘That’s whose party it was the other night. As a single mum she doesn’t get to kick up her heels much.’
‘Oh.’ Kitty caught her bottom lip with her teeth.
‘Nathan’s father shot through before he was born.’
‘I’m sorry…’
‘She’s not,’ Jake said, swinging his gaze back to hers. ‘She’s better off without him.’
She tugged at her lip some more. ‘I mean I’m sorry about complaining about the music the other night,’ she said. ‘It must have seemed so…so petty.’
He checked on his nephew again before turning his gaze back to her. ‘You don’t like being out of your depth, do you?’ he asked.
‘What makes you say that?’
‘You’re only wet up to your knees,’ he said. ‘We usually have to drag overseas tourists unconscious from this beach. A lot of them dive in without checking the conditions first.’
‘I don’t like leaping before I look,’ she said.
‘Can you swim?’
Kitty flashed him an affronted look. ‘Of course I can swim.’
‘Give me a shout if you need a hand with some stroke correction,’ he said.
‘No doubt breaststroke is your particular specialty?’ she said with an arch look.
His lips curved upwards in a sexy smile, but not before his glinting eyes had dipped to the hint of her cleavage first. ‘How’d you guess?’ he said, and then before she could think of a return he had joined his nephew in the rushing waves.
KITTY went back to her towel. Resting her chin on her bent knees, she concentrated on watching the surfers further out, but her gaze kept drifting back to where Jake was coaching his nephew. He looked so magnificently male, so vital and fit and healthy. She couldn’t help thinking of Charles, with his fair skin, his slight paunch and his receding hairline.
She pulled her thoughts back into line. She wasn’t the shallow looks-are-everything type. She was attracted to depth of character, to strong values and dedication and ambition, to caring for others…
She chewed at her lip as she watched Jake scoop his nephew out of a particularly rough wave, holding him steady against him until Nathan got his breath back and found his feet.
He would make a wonderful father.
Kitty felt ambushed by the errant thought. What did she care what sort of father he would make? It had nothing to do with her. What right did her belly have to give a soft little flutter at the thought of him holding a tiny baby in his large masculine hands?
She