Ice-Breaker
Page 5
***
‘Oh God, please.’ You prayed easily in a disaster zone, pleading with Fate — if you believed in nothing more.
Kiara was chasing her own miracle.
‘The golden-haired, so beautiful giant sleeps in there.’ Kiara’s informant, a giggling little girl, pointed at a rescue crew tent.
Kiara’s Kurdish barely coped with the translation, but surely a golden giant had to be Selwyn. She had traced him this far by questioning everyone for ‘the Australian, the one caring for the old people’ and showing a photo from one of his old modelling campaigns. After so many encounters where people fixated on his good looks and refused to believe that such a handsome man could be slaving in the disaster zone, she shared his frustration at people’s superficial judgments.
Exhaustion and an awareness of time passing pressed in on her. In a couple of hours, she had to return to the second tent city twelve kilometres away over a bad road. She’d hitched this lift with a supply driver and would be returning when he did, salving her conscience by closing her eyes during the drive, even if she didn’t get much real, and really needed, sleep.
Yet here she stood, feet locked to the ground, staring at a tent and afraid to hope.
‘Thank you.’ She slipped her last chocolate bar into the little girl’s hand.
The child dashed off, shouting, ‘Mama, Mama.’
Two unshaven and filthy men stumbled out of the tent. ‘Good morning,’ they mumbled, although it was more like lunch time. With floodlights set up, the rescue work continued twenty-four hours a day.
Her rescue worker ID gave her uncontested access to the tent. The canvas of its flap felt rough under her fingers. It crumpled as she clutched it.
‘Please, Selwyn, be here.’ She ducked into the tent.
A weight like a granite boulder rolled off her and she could have fallen where she stood. ‘Selwyn.’ After worrying and regretting so much, she had found him. Safe.
Three steps had never been so far. So important. He was safe, but what about them? Had she destroyed the connection between them with her immature, selfish words? Whatever she had to do for a second chance, she would do it.
She knelt beside his bed and stared at the dirt in his hair and on his face that dulled the fairness of his stubble.
His eyelids lifted and vivid blue eyes stared into hers, focussed and opened wide. He grabbed her and pulled her over him, kissing her with such desperation that it was as if he drank her in.
Stubble grazed her face and his fingers bit into her shoulders. She revelled in the pain, in the reality of it. She had thought of so many things she might say to him, ways to explain and ask forgiveness.
None of it mattered.
The truth was there in their raw encounter, stripped of all self-protection or luxury surroundings.
A tear rolled down her face and became a salty part of their kiss.
Selwyn pulled back, his thumb swiping up a second tear.
‘I’m happy.’ She excused the water leaking from her eyes.
‘So am I.’ In his deep voice, the words sounded like a vow. He kissed her again. ‘So am I.’
***
Their return journey from Armenia touched down briefly in Moscow and Hong Kong, and ended in a Sydney television studio.
Selwyn looked gorgeous in his work shirt, cargo trousers and scuffed boots.
Kiara wore the same gear, but by her own wish, she stayed in the background; something the television show’s producer fought hard against. Apparently her and Selwyn’s romance would really ‘sell’ the segment.
‘No,’ Selwyn said.
She loved him for that veto, knowing how much he wanted to build Grey Knot’s profile, but not at the expense of their relationship. She trusted him to put their relationship first.
The disaster relief effort in Armenia had changed her life in more than one way. Recognising her love for Selwyn was the most important takeaway, but Armenia had also shown her her parents’ work from an adult perspective. She was no longer a child, powerless to help or to shape a response to desperate need. Now she saw and shared her parents’ and Selwyn’s need to help.
It was he who pointed out to her that she’d always shared that need. ‘Your career is crisis ecology, Kiara. Disaster relief for non-humans.’
She’d never considered it that way, nor seen how far she’d run, just to come home.
Because home wasn’t a place: it was being with those you loved.
She watched the television cameras roll and Selwyn reach through the cameras to touch viewers with his charm and conviction. And then he was off-air and walking in her direction, all his attention for her. Over his shoulder she saw the producer signal and the cameras switch back on, the filming go live again. It was incredibly unethical, and yet…she smiled at Selwyn.
Let the television viewers have their romance.
She had the real thing.
Thanks for reading Ice-Breaker. I hope you enjoyed it.
If you’d like to know more about me, my books, or to connect with me online, you can visit my webpage authorjennyschwartz.com, follow me on Twitter @Jenny_Schwartz, or like my Facebook page facebook.com/authorjennyschwartz.
You can also follow me through my publisher’s page here www.escapepublishing.com.au
Reviews can help readers find books, and I am grateful for all honest reviews. Thank you for taking the time to let others know what you’ve read, and what you thought.
If you liked this book, here are my other books Mistaken Engagement, It’s Love, Dude and Hero Duty. There’s more information over the page.
This book was published by Escape Publishing. If you’d like to sample some more great booksfrom my fellow Escape Artists, please turn the page.
BESTSELLING TITLES BY ESCAPE PUBLISHING…
Hero Duty
Jenny Schwartz
She can buy anything she wants…except the courage to stand up to her family. That’s where he comes in.
Jessica Trove is a billionaire Cinderella, bullied by her family, and terrified of the responsibilities crashing down on her shoulders. She knows what she needs to do — she just needs to find the courage to do it.
That’s where Brodie Carlton comes in. Jessica is used to buying anything she wants, and what she wants right now is a hero. She’s going to make Brodie Carlton an offer he can’t refuse: be her emotional bodyguard, and she’ll make him rich. The only question is who will guard their hearts?
A Jardin Bay novel.
It’s Love, Dude
Jenny Schwartz
Sand, sun, small towns, and surfing…
Zane Carlton is a World Champion surfer. Molly Georgiou is a shy, small-town girl. They have nothing in common except an instantaneous attraction and an impossible quest for a rare, endangered Australian marsupial. But Zane is determined to make it work, and invites Molly to take a step into his world. But Molly isn’t ready for the spotlights and attention — she loves her town, its quirks, its characters. Opposites attract, but can two such different people find both a woylie and forever?
A Jardin Bay novel.
Mistaken Engagement (Novella)
Jenny Schwartz
Saul knows he crossed the line when he claimed a surprise engagement with Grace. But her hysterical denial – and the way she’s avoided him ever since – has made things awkward, but it can all be worked out. The Australia Day long weekend down at her family’s beach house is the perfect time to show everyone that they’re friends, with not a broken heart between them. But can a fake engagement become life-changingly real?
Kiss It Better
Jenny Schwartz
Revisit gorgeous Jardin Bay with Jenny Schwartz’s fabulous new novel. The town may look like paradise, but for one nurse it represents only broken dreams.
All Cassie Freedom wants to do is save the world, and she could, if only she were able to. But her dream of nursing in Africa is shattered, and she returns home to Jardin Bay, where familiarity, security, and a sense o
f her own failure threaten to drown her.
Dr. Theo Morrigan knows a thing or two about responsibility, leaving his own medical practice to take over a family business. He knows his mind, his future, and how he wants to live his life – until an old secret resurfaces and rocks his whole world.
Suddenly, the man who needed no one needs a broken-hearted nurse, and a nurse who thinks she’s too weak will find her own strength.
Roses For Sophie
Alyssa J. Montgomery
From the polished, pacy, passionate pen of Alyssa J Montgomery come a delicious billionaire, a mining heiress, a marriage of convenience and a very inconvenient attraction.
To convince the court that his playboy days are over and to keep a desperate promise, Australian billionaire Logan Jackson needs a wife…fast.
To make her grandfather happy and sway him into making her managing director of the family company, mining heiress Sophie Hamilton needs a husband…fast.
With common goals, similar values, and a very definite end date, there is no reason why Logan and Sophie shouldn’t be able to strike a deal to satisfy them both. No reason except that the sizzling attraction arcing between them is too hot to trust.
The House At The Bottom of The Hill
Jennie Jones
From the best-selling author of The House on Burra Burra Lane, comes a brand-new story about opposites, attraction, an outback pub, and a pink house…
The mysterious death of her mother has left Charlotte Simmons on edge and off-balance for too long. The only way to move forward is to get answers, and those answers can only be found in one place. So Charlotte buys a Bed & Breakfast establishment in Swallow’s Falls, a small town in Australia’s Snowy Mountains, as a ploy to get close to the man who might have the answers. She’ll jazz up the old place, flip it, get her answers, and be gone in two-months – max.
What she doesn’t count on is opposition from the dogmatic and slightly eccentric members of the town council, and the hotshot owner of Kookaburra’s Bar & Grill and his two-hundred-squats-a-day physique whose mouth offers to act as mediator, but his eyes promise something so much more.
Easy-going Daniel Bradford knows progress is slow in Swallow’s Fall. He’s finally about to put his plans into place to upgrade the hotel when a prim-and-proper, citified redhead blows into town, putting everyone on edge. The only way to contain the trouble she’s about to cause is to contain her – but he knows trouble when he sees it, and soon it becomes very clear that there’s absolutely nothing containable about Charlotte, or the way he feels about her.
A Swallow’s Falls book
Connect with us for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!
Sign up to our newsletter
Share your reading experience on:
The Escapades Blog
Facebook
Twitter
Watch our reviews, author interviews and more on Escape Publishing TV
ISBN: 9780857992314
Title: Ice-Breaker
Copyright © 2015 by Jenny Schwartz
All rights reserved. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher, Harlequin Enterprises (Australia) Limited, Level 4/132 Arthur Street, North Sydney, NSW, Australia, 2060.
All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.
® and ™ are trademarks of Harlequin Enterprises Limited and are used under license to the Publisher. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in Australia, New Zealand, the United States Patent and Trademark Office and in other countries.
www.escapepublishing.com.au