‘Sorry, but if you think that’s bad, waking up tomorrow is going to feel like you’re staring directly into the sun.’ He stood for a moment, scanning the room, and decided he could do without emptying the assorted stuffed animals from the wicker chaise in the comer, which meant the bed was the only other place to put her.
Crossing to the broderie anglaise-covered bed, he lowered her to her feet, intending to pull back the comforter. But before he could act on the thought she emitted a delighted whimper and lurched towards it so fast she nearly pulled him down onto it too. He managed to brace himself on the bedhead, and when her arms could no longer maintain the effort of stretching up around his neck, she slumped back onto the mattress.
And this had seemed like a two-second rescue job when he’d started it!
He shook her shoulder. ‘C’mon, Joanna, your clothes are wet. You can’t go to sleep in them.’
‘Yesh...shleep. I wanna go...shleep.’
‘Yeah, I’m sure you do. But you have to change into something else first.’
She pushed him away when he endeavoured to sit her up. ‘Shleep,’ she mumbled, rolling sideways to embrace the . pillow on the other side of the bed.
‘Damn,’ he breathed. Trying to coax her into compliance would be a waste of breath, since neither her current comprehension or co-ordination gave him a hope in hell of success. Which meant he either had to let her sleep in clothes that were wet and grubby enough to support incineration over washing or...undress her himself. If Meaghan hadn’t been going away for the weekend he’d have taken great delight in calling at—he glanced at his watch—twenty to one in the morning and asking if the ‘hands off instruction she’d issued about his housemate extended to the point of letting her risk pneumonia.
Looking down at the motionless, bedraggled form on the bed, he resigned himself to the fact he couldn’t in good conscience just leave her as she was, but dealing with the situation wasn’t going to be easy.
Toni had always insisted that a pair of jeans didn’t fit right unless you had to lie down on a bed to get into them and then use a coat hanger hook to zip them up. Apparently Joanna adhered to the same fashion philosophy, because had the jeans she was wearing hugged her any tighter they’d have cut off her circulation. Dry, they’d have been tough enough to get off; damp, they were going to be a nightmare. Although executing that particular task was going to be a whole lot easier on his nerves than ridding her of the Lycra knit bodysuit she wore under them, because that was more than wet and tight enough to tell him she was sans bra.
Damn.
He raked his hair in frustration, then grabbed her bootshod foot and gave it a hard shake. ‘Hoy! Joanna! C’mon, wake up!’
No response. He repeated the action, this time with more vigour and a raised voice. ‘Hoy! Wake up!’
The futility of the exercise didn’t take long to register. The next time Brett grabbed her ankle it was to start unlacing the trendy pseudo-army boots she wore. If his putting her to bed meant Joanna would suffer severe embarrassment as well as a terminal hangover in the morning... well, damn it, she had no one to blame but herself for getting into this state in the first place!
CHAPTER THREE
BRETT climbed the steep stone steps rising from the beach to the grassed area that his mother always referred to as ‘the backyard’. It was, in fact, only a small patch of painstakingly laid and maintained lawn which people failed to notice because it was overwhelmed by the sweeping Pacific view beyond it. For Brett it was the pristine sand and thick rolling waves of Whale Beach which had been his true backyard growing up. There’d only been a handful of days from the time he was ten until he was nineteen that he hadn’t felt the urge to grab his board for a quick surf even if the waves weren’t ideal.
Today, having woken to discover a surf breaking to near perfection thanks to a pre-dawn storm, the fact he was thirty-four and it was smack in the middle of winter hadn’t mattered a whit. Of course, after about twenty minutes, when the initial adrenalin rush of making a ride all the way to the beach on his first choice of wave had worn off, cold and old age had started to prove a diabolical combination. Not his age, of course, but the wetsuit he’d fished out of his wardrobe was about thirteen years old; as insulation it was as useful as a screen door on a submarine.
He laughed aloud when he caught himself giving his most beloved tri-fin an affectionate pat as he leaned it against the wall of the laundry, yet in that instant he knew that even though he’d come to no firm decisions about his professional future he’d made the right personal one in coming home. He’d missed this...really missed it. Oh, sure, he could’ve surfed in California, and on occasion he had, but somehow it suddenly seemed more natural, indeed essential that the rest of his life be spent seeing the sun rising over the Pacific rather than setting on it.
Reaching behind his neck, he snared the plaited tail of the wetsuit’s zip and was tugging it down when a startled yelp behind him caused him to almost leap free of the clinging latex.
‘Lord, Joanna! You frightened the life out of me.’ His heart was still beating out of whack. ‘You always sneak up on people like that?’
‘I... I...I’m sorry. I didn’t realise you were home.’ She was hugging a pile of bedding and looking everywhere but at him. ‘I...er...just wanted to use the washing machine. But it’s okay. It can wait. I’ll do it later.’
When she went to dart from the room, Brett snagged her arm. ‘Whoa, there. Contrary to whatever stories you’ve heard, I don’t bite.’
Though she stilled, her head was downcast, and he used his free hand to tilt it. The minute their eyes made contact she flushed the most vivid red Brett had ever seen and he couldn’t help smiling. ‘Now your skin matches the red lines in your eyes.’
If possible she turned even redder. With the exception of last night, when she’d been totally plastered, whenever she was around him Joanna Ford acted as if she was being asked to deal with an alien. It put an irritating dent in his ego, since women usually made no secret of the fact they enjoyed his attention.
‘So, how are you feeling this morning?’ he asked. ‘And if you say anything but “half-dead”, I’m not going to believe it.’
Her tongue came out to graze her lip a split second before she spoke, so mesmerising Brett that it took him several seconds to realise he hadn’t heard her response. Releasing her chin, he shook his head to clear it. ‘Sorry...what?’
The sigh she gave was so heavy he regarded it a disguised blessing she was still hugging the laundry. Considering his lower body was clad in a wetsuit, the less he was reminded of the fact she even had breasts the better off he’d bel
She’d been out cold when he’d finally summoned the courage to strip her wet top from her last night, but, as swift and circumspect as he’d endeavoured to be in averting his gaze, images of their translucent white firmness and cherry-red peaks had tormented him for the better part of the night.
‘I said...I’m mortified about what happened last night.’
Her voice was slightly shaky and her knuckles whitened as she tightened her grip on the wad of bedding. She swallowed hard before continuing, ‘I don’t remember much, except being sick and you talking to me, then helping me inside. I’m sorry you had to find me like that... I know how...how revolting it is to see someone vomit, and I want you to know I appreciate you staying with me and taking care of me.’
It irked the hell out of him that while the tone of her apology was polite and sincere she’d delivered it without once looking at him. He didn’t know if she realised he’d been the one to undress her, but suspected she didn’t; her embarrassment didn’t seem that extreme.
‘Listen, Joanna, I realise getting drunk and pulling a hangover can blur