brooding stranger stood—sand pale against the brown of his knees, muscles in his arms bunching as he wrapped a hand around the edge of the surfboard he’d wedged into the sand. “I’m a big boy. I’ll live.”
Yes, you are, a saucy little voice cooed inside her head. But not particularly nice. And that was the thing. She’d had some kind of epiphany before she’d gone for a swim, hadn’t she? Something about needing some sweet, simple, wholesome, niceness in her life compared with the horror her mother was gleefully planning on the other side of the world.
“Take care, little mermaid,” he said, taking a step back, right into a slice of golden sunlight that caught his curls, and cut across his big bronzed bare chest.
“You too!” she sing-songed, her inveterate Pollyannaness having finally fought its way back to the surface. “And it’s Avery. Avery Shaw.”
“Good to know,” he said. Then he smiled. And it was something special—kind of crooked and sexy and fabulous. Though Avery felt a subversive moment of disappointment when it didn’t reach his eyes. Those crinkles held such promise.
Then he turned and walked away, his surfboard hooked under one arm, his bare feet slapping on the footpath. And from nowhere a huge dog joined him—shaggy and mottled with deep liquid eyes that glanced back at her a moment before turning back into the sun.
Definitely not Luke. Luke Hargreaves had been taller, his hair lighter, his eyes a gentle brown. And that long-ago summer before her whole world had fallen apart he’d made her feel safe. To this day Avery could sense the approach of conflict as tingles all over her skin, the way some people felt a storm coming in their bad knees, and Mr Muscles back there made her feel as if she’d come out in hives.
She blinked when she realised she was staring, then, turning away, trudged up the beach towards the road, the resort, a good long sensible lie-down.
“Avery!”
She glanced up and saw a brilliantly familiar blonde waving madly her way from the doorway of the Tropicana: navy skirt, blinding blue and yellow Hawaiian shirt, old-fashioned clipboard an extension of her arm. Claudia. Oh, now there was a sight for sore eyes, and a bruised ego and—
Avery’s feet stopped working, right in the middle of the street. For there, standing behind Claudia and a little to the left, thumb swishing distractedly over a smartphone, was Luke Hargreaves—tall, lean, handsome in a clean-shaven city-boy kind of way, in a suit she could pin as Armani from twenty feet away. If that wasn’t enough, compared to the mountain of growly man flesh she’d left back there on the beach, not a single skin prickle was felt.
With relief Pollyanna tap danced gleefully inside her head as Avery broke out in a sunny smile.
A car honked long and loud and Avery came to. Heat landed in her cheeks as she and her still wobbly legs made their way across the road.
She wished her entrance could have been more elegant, but since in the past half an hour she’d near drowned, passed out, woken up looking into the eyes of a testosterone-fuelled surfer who made her skin itch, she had to settle for still standing.
Avery walked up the grassy bank to the front path of the resort where Claudia near ploughed her down with a mass of hugging arms and kisses and relieved laughter. When Avery was finally able to disentangle herself she pulled back, laughing. Compared with the stylishly subdued Mr Hargreaves, Claudia with her bright blue eyes and wild shirt was like sunshine and fairy floss.
“What happened to you?” asked Claudia. No hellos, no how was your flight. The best kind of friendship, it always picked up just where it left off.
“Just been out for a refreshing ocean dip!”
Avery shot a telling glance at Luke. Claudia crossed her arms and steadfastly ignored the man at her back. Avery raised an eyebrow. Claudia curled her lip.
They might have lived on different continents their whole lives but with Skype, email, and several overseas trips together, their shorthand was well entrenched.
Finally Claudia cocked her head at the man and with a brief flare of her nostrils said, “Luke, you remember Avery Shaw.”
Luke looked up at the sound of his name. Avery held her breath. Luke just blinked.
Rolling her eyes, Claudia turned on him. “My friend Avery. The Shaws stayed at the resort ten odd years ago.”
Still nothing.
“They booked out the Tiki Suite for an entire summer.”
“Right,” he said, a flare of recognition finally dawning in his seriously lovely brown eyes. “The Americans.”
Claudia clearly wasn’t moved by it. Something he’d said, or the way he said it, had Claudia bristling. And Claudia wasn’t a bristler by nature; she was as bubbly as they came.
Avery didn’t have a problem with him seeming rather...serious. Serious was better than hives, any day. And like the worrying of a jagged tooth her mind skipped back to the scratch of the other man’s leg hairs on her inner thighs. To the hard heat of his hands gripping her waist, calloused fingers spanning her belly, big thumbs digging uncomfortably into her hips. Those cool grey eyes looking right through her, as if if he could he would have wished her well away...
She shook herself back to the much more pleasant present where Claude snuggled up to her with love. Waiting till she had Luke’s distracted attention, she brought out the big guns—a smile that had cost her parents as much as a small car. “Nice seeing you again, Luke. Hopefully we’ll bump into one another again. Catch up on old times.”
He blinked again, as if he thought that was what they’d just done. But it was early days. She had time. To do what, she was as yet undecided, but the seeds were there.
“I’m off duty as of this second, Luke,” Claude said, not even deigning to look his way. “We’ll talk about that other stuff later.”
“Soon,” he said, an edge to his voice.
Claude waved a dismissive hand over her shoulder, offloaded Avery of half her gear as they headed up the stairs into the resort.
“Are you sure?” Avery said. “You must be so busy right now, and I don’t want to get in the way. I can help! Whatever you need. I have skills. And they are at your disposal.”
“Relax, Polly,” Claude said, using the nickname she’d given Avery for when she got herself in a positivity loop. “You are never in my way.”
“Fine, Julie,” Avery shot back. Claude’s nickname had sprung from an odd fascination with The Love Boat that Avery had never understood. Though when Claude instantly perked up as a seniors tour group from the UK emerged from behind a pylon—amazingly remembering everybody by name—it couldn’t have been more apt.
Cyrus—who’d been leaning on the desk staring out at nothing—straightened so quickly his pirate hat flopped into his eyes.
Claudia frowned at Cyrus, who moved off at quite a pace. “Welcome to Crescent Cove,” she said to Avery, “where heat addles the hormones.”
“Is that in the town
