A few boats were hooked to the walls by high-tech electrical arms, one in the process of being fixed. Yet another was getting a wash, and spray flew over the top and onto the jetty.
Not seeing any other movement, Avery eased that way, taking care where she stepped as the wood beneath her feet grew wet.
Until against one wall she saw a familiar surfboard. Silvery-grey, like its owner’s eyes, with the shadow of a great palm tree right down the middle, and her heart beat so hard it filled her throat.
Because she knew why she’d fled in the middle of the night. Somehow in the odd sequence of meetings that had led her to Jonah’s bed, she’d got to know the guy. And despite his ornery moods she even liked him.
She’d woken up terrified that those feelings would unleash her Pollyanna side upon him—Like me! Love me!— like some rabid pixie hell-bent on smothering the world with fairy dust. Not quite so terrified, though, as what it might mean if Pollyanna still didn’t show up at all.
Her feet felt numb as she came upon a curled-up hose, water trickling from its mouth. Then around the bow of the boat she found suds. And at the end of a great big sponge was Jonah. Feet bare, sopping wet jean shorts clinging to his strong thighs, T-shirt clinging wet to the dips and planes of his gorgeous chest.
As Avery’s gaze swept over him, over his roguish dark hair, over the curve of his backside, his athletic legs, she didn’t realise how dry her mouth had become until she opened it to talk. “You could hire people to do that, you know.”
Jonah stilled. Then his deep grey eyes lifted and caught on her. She felt the look like a hook through the belly—yet he gave nothing away.
A moment later, he turned off the hose, threw the sponge into a bucket at his feet, wiped his forearm across his forehead, and slowly headed her way.
And when he spoke his deep Australian drawl twisted the hook so deep inside she was sure it would leave a scar. “I have hired people to do this.” A beat, then, “But today I find being around water a damn fine release of tension.”
Avery considered picking up the sponge herself. “Well, that’s why I’m here, actually.”
“To wash my boat?” His voice skittered down her arms like his touch—coarse and gentle all at once. How did the guy make even that sound sexy?
“To apologise.”
“For?”
He was going to make her say it, wasn’t he? Not nice. Not nasty either, though. Just...plain-spoken. Direct. True.
“For leaving. This morning. After—” She waved a hand to cover the rest.
“After you fell asleep in my bed, exhausted from all the hot lovin’.”
“Jonah North,” she muttered, throwing her hands in the air in despair, “last of the great romantics.”
“It was sex, Avery,” he said, walking towards her again. “Good sex. Nothing to apologise for.”
He didn’t stop till he was close enough she could feel his warmth infusing the air around her. Could see his eyelashes all spiked together with water, as they had been that first day. And that his face was a picture of frayed patience, also as it had been that first day.
But the difference between that day and now was vast.
“It was more than good,” she said, her voice as jerky as a rusty chainsaw.
One eyebrow lifted along with the corner of his mouth.
“It was freakin’ stupendous.”
His mouth tilted fully into a smile so sexy it made her vision blur. Then he ran a hand up the back of his hair and said, “Yeah. I’ll give you that.”
Then he moved nearer, near enough to touch. But instead of touching her, he reached out for a towel draped over a mossy post near her feet. She closed her eyes and prayed for mercy, lest she drool and lose the high ground completely.
Jonah wiped the towel over his face, and down his arms, smearing the sweat and suds.
“Why, then, did you run?”
“I didn’t run. I caught a cab.”
By the way his brow collapsed over his eyes, she was pretty sure that being flip wasn’t going to cut it. But there was no way on God’s green earth she was about to tell him she ran because of how much she wanted to stay. She’d been very careful till now not to let anyone have that much sway over her desires. Keeping things light, happy, above the surface. The flipside was unthinkable.
“Just hit me with it, Avery,” he said, throwing the towel over the back of his neck and holding onto the ends, his biceps bulging without any effort at all. “It’s about Luke.”
“What? No! Luke was...a brief flirtation with finding a way to distract myself from the goings-on back home by dipping my toes back into the past. But from pretty much the moment you hauled me out of the ocean and manhandled me back to shore and glared down at me with your steamy eyes...” Okay, heading off track now. She breathed deep, her cheeks beginning to heat with a slow burn that showed no signs of stopping, and said, “I want you.”
Jonah didn’t so much as twitch. He let her sway in the wind. Getting his money’s worth. Till finally he said, “Okay, then.”
“Okay, then?” That was it? That was all she got? For basically telling the guy he turned her to putty?
He took a step her way but Avery planted her feet into the floor so as not to sway back. “Was there something else?”
“Yeah. You’re an ass, Jonah North. A gorgeous ass, one I can’t seem to get out of my head no matter how much I try, but still an ass. I’ll see you ’round.”
She turned and walked away, waving a hand over her shoulder that might have had a certain finger raised. But she’d given her apology and that was all that was important. She had the high road. He only had her pride.
Then suddenly he was walking beside her.
“So,” he said, “I was just about to head up to the Cape to check on a tour-boat operation I’m thinking of buying.”
“How nice for you.”
“Avery,” he said, his voice a growl as he slid a hand into her elbow, forcing her to stop and look at him. She crossed her arms and glared, as if facing all that sun-soaked skin, and those deep grey eyes, and that pure masculine beauty were some kind of chore.
He tipped his face to the ceiling and muttered, “God, I’m going to regret this. Would you care to join me?”
Pollyanna showed up long enough to flip over and waggle her happy feet in the air. But Avery’s dark side, her careful side, pulled Pollyanna’s plaits and told her to shut the hell up for a second.
This wasn’t as simple as being forgiven. This was the tipping point. Her chance to hole up with her heart and spend her summer reading, and swimming, and refilling her emotional well; or to dive into uncharted waters with no clue as to the dangers that lay beneath.
“Are you asking me on a date, Jonah North?”
He watched her for a few seconds, his eyes sliding to settle on her mouth, then with a hard heavy breath he said, “I’ll let you decide when we get there.”
Because there was no choice really. She was going with him. He knew it, and she knew it too.
* * *
Avery leant against the battered Jeep that had brought them to the edge of the crumbling jetty on the side of the marshy river, watching Jonah grumble his way through a business call.
He shot her the occasional apologetic glance, but honestly she could have stayed there all day, watching him pace, listening to that voice; it was nearly enough for her to forgive him the hat—a tatty Red Sox cap that he’d foraged from who knew where, as if the fates one day knew she’d be owed some payback.
Avery turned when she heard a boat. It appeared through the tall reeds; not as fast and streamlined as the boat to Green Island, or sleek and sexy as the one Jonah had been washing down back at Charter North HQ. This was squat, low riding, desperately in need of a paint job.
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