Because he’d known a woman like her once before.
He hadn’t realised why Rach had stood out to him like bonfire on a cloudy night from the first moment he’d seen her until it was too late. Turned out it was because despite her attestations that a sea change was exactly what she needed she’d never left the city behind enough to really fit in. Too late by the time he’d seen it to stop her leaving. Too late to convince himself not to follow. Until he’d woken up in Sydney, cut off, miserable, realising what he’d given up for her, and that he’d lost her anyway.
Returning to Crescent Cove after that whole disaster had been hard. Returning to find he no longer quite fitted in the place he’d been born had been harder still. He’d had to remake his life, and to do that remake himself. As if the cove had needed a sacrifice in order to take him back, in order to make sure he’d never take her for granted again.
So no, for however long Avery Shaw flitted about the periphery of his life she’d mean no more, or less, to him than a pebble in his shoe.
Because this time his eyes were wide-open and staying that way. This time he wouldn’t so much as blink.
Jonah wasn’t looking for Avery, not entirely.
He found her anyway, on the beach. Her big hat, so wet it flopped onto her shoulders. Half in, half out of a wetsuit that flapped dejectedly against her legs as she jumped around slapping at her skin as if fighting off a swarm of bees.
Jonah picked up his pace to a jog.
“Avery,” he called when near enough, “what the hell’s wrong now?”
She didn’t even look up, just kept on wriggling, giving him flashes of bare stomach through a silver one-piece with great swathes of Lycra cut away leaving the edges to caress a hip, to brush the underside of a breast, keeping Jonah locked into a loop of double takes.
“I’m stung!” she cried, jogging him out of his daze. “Something got me. A box jellyfish. Or a blue bottle. Or a stone fish. I read about them on the flight over. One of them got me. I sting. Everywhere.”
“Bottles don’t come this far north, the suit protects from jellies, and the flippers from stone fish.”
Avery jumped from flippered foot to flippered foot as if something terrible was about to explode from out of the sand at her feet. “Then what’s wrong with me?”
Jonah made a mental note to have a talk with Claudia. She always had some crazy theme going on at her resort, with games and the like—surely she could keep the woman indoors and out of his sight.
But until then he had to make sure she wasn’t actually hurt. Meaning he had to run hands down her arms, ignoring as best he could the new tension knotting hard and fast inside him.
He spun her around to check behind, wrapping the fall of hair about his hand to lift it off her neck, doing his all to avoid the mental images that brought forth. He swept his gaze over the skin the swimsuit revealed round back. Then grabbed her by the chin and tilted so he could see her face under the ridiculous hat. Her very pink face.
“Hell, woman,” he growled, snapping his hand away. “You’re sunburnt.”
Her mismatched eyes widened. “Don’t be ridiculous.”
He took off the hat to make sure, and with a squeak her hand swept to her hair. Jonah rolled his eyes and slapped the hat back on her head. “Did you bring anything for sunburn?” Sunscreen perhaps?
He glanced at her silver bag to find its contents already upended and covered in a million grains of white sand. Clearly she’d been looking in the hopes of a remedy herself. A remedy for stone fish, he reminded himself, biting back a smile.
“Don’t you dare laugh at me!”
Only made him smile all the more. “Don’t tell me you were All Conference in Sun Protection at Brown Mare too?”
“Bryn Mawr,” she bit out. And, whoa, was that a flicker of a smile from her? The one that lit her up brighter than the sun?
Jonah looked away, tilting his chin towards the jetty. “There’s aloe vera on the boat. It’ll soothe it at the very least. At least until the great peel sets in.”
“I don’t peel.”
“You will peel, princess. Great ugly strips of dead skin sloughing away.”
Muttering under her breath, she shoved all her bits and pieces back into her bag—including, he noted, a dog-eared novel, a bottle of fancy sparkling water, and, yep, sunscreen.
He plucked the sunscreen from her fingers and read the label. “American,” he muttered under his breath.
“Excuse me!” she shot back, no muttering there.
“Your SPF levels are not the same as ours. With your skin you can’t get away with this rubbish.”
“What’s wrong with my skin?” she asked, arms wide, giving him prime view of her perfectly lovely skin. And neat straight shoulders, lean waist, hips that flared just right. As for her backside, he remembered with great clarity as she bent over on his board...
Jonah closed his eyes a moment and sent out a blanket curse to whatever he’d done to piss off karma enough to send him Avery Shaw.
“I’m well aware I’m not all golden bronzed like the likes of you,” she said, “which is why I bought a bottle from home. Ours are stronger.”
“Wrong way around, sweetheart,” Jonah drawled. “Aussies do it better.”
She coughed and spluttered. That was better than having her eyes rove over his golden-bronzed self while standing there all pink, and pretty, and half-naked.
Then, feeling more than a little sorry for herself, she slowly went back to refilling her bag, now with far less gusto. Her drooping hat dripped ocean water down her pink skin, she had a scratch on her arm that could do with some antiseptic and a couple of toes had clearly come out badly in a fight with some coral before she’d remembered her flippers.
Suddenly she threw the bag on the sand, slammed her hands onto her hips and looked him right in the eye. “In New York we have cab drivers who don’t know the meaning of the words health code. Rats the size of opossums. Steam that oozes from the subways that could knock you out with its stench. I live in a place it takes street smarts to survive. But this place? Holy Jeter!”
After a sob, she began to laugh. And laugh and laugh. It hit the edge of hysteria, but thankfully it never slipped quite that far.
Jonah ran a hand up the back of his neck and looked out at the edge of the jetty visible around the corner of the beach where his boat and the bright blue sea awaited. Basic, elemental pleasures. Enduring... Then glanced back at the tourist whose safety had clearly, for whatever reason, been placed in his hands.
Whatever problems he had with her kind, there was no denying the woman was trying. Enough that something slipped inside him, just a fraction, just enough to give her a break.
“Come on, princess,” he said, holding out a hand. “Let’s get you a drink.”
She glanced at his sand-covered hand and her nose crinkled. “I don’t need a drink.”
Knowing it was only a matter of time before he regretted it, Jonah took a moment to brush the sand from his hand before holding it out again. It looked so dark near her skin. Big and rough near all that softness. “Well, I do,” he said, his voice gruff. “And I’m not about to resort to drinking alone.”
Avery watched him from beneath her lashes. Then, taking her bag in one hand and the arms of her wetsuit in the other, she flapped her way back up the beach, leaving him to catch up. “So long as drink doesn’t mean beer. Because I don’t do