by Amy Andrews
Jess waited for something more forthcoming but Adam collapsed back against the mattress, his abs unfurling like flower petals, his eyes closed.
Oh, brother! He really did look centrefold material now, reclining in her bed as if he owned it.
‘Adam!’ she said, still not game enough to touch him.
Adam, already falling back into the blissful folds of sleep, prised his eye open. He raised himself slightly on bent elbows. ‘What?’ he demanded crankily.
It hadn’t been her plan to wake him up but now he was he could damn well vacate her bed. ‘Why are you in my bed?’
He watched her mouth move but it took a moment for the words to compute.
He hadn’t noticed how pink Jess’s mouth was before. Like fairy floss. Was it lipstick or natural? It was a little too dark to tell. ‘Hmm?’
Jess noticed his heavy-lidded gaze on her mouth and almost lost her train of thought. She scrambled hard to get it back again. ‘You’re. In. My. Bed.’
He hadn’t noticed how her hair flicked up at the ends like that when it was freed from its ponytail or even that it was so long. It brushed her shoulders and fell forward over well-defined collar bones.
Had it always been so blonde?
‘Ah, but, Goldilocks,’ he teased lightly, a smile spread across his full lips, ‘your bed was just right.’
Jess felt her knees go weak as the smile warmed his face, taking it from sexy-but-tired to steal-your-breath sublime. She reached for the nearby wardrobe door and held on tight.
‘Adam…’
He sighed. ‘Sorry.’
His exhausted body protested as he curled into a sitting position again.
‘The air-con in my room is on the blink. A fix-it guy is coming at ten.’ He shrugged. ‘Your room was empty. And air-conditioned. I checked the calendar. Sorry…I’m just exhausted, I guess.’
He rubbed his right eye with his hand. It felt gritty and unfocused. ‘I think I’ve been in four different time zones in the last week.’
Jess felt everything solid inside her melt to liquid. He looked completely done in. She wanted to go to him, pull him down beside her, cradle his head against her breast, stroke his hair till he slept, hush him, tell him she was there for him.
Oh, God. She still had it bad.
‘I thought you were in the wilds of Asia for three months? You’ve still got another few weeks left, haven’t you?’
She couldn’t help it. She always knew where he was. Would count down the days. His comings and goings were also marked on the calendar in black and she absorbed it like the big fat Adam sponge that she was.
Maybe groupie was closer to the mark.
‘There was some unrest in the last province when we first arrived,’ he said. ‘The department of foreign affairs ordered us out. So I’ve spent the last week talking with international funding bodies, trying to organise for the patients to come to us.’
Jess felt ill at his casual reference to unrest. She certainly forgot all about the fact that they were both essentially naked and this was probably the longest conversation they’d ever had.
She knew he went to some remote places in his crusade to bring equality of healthcare to all but there’d never been any trouble before.
The mere thought of it had her heart palpitating wildly.
It was no secret she had the utmost respect for what he did. In fact, her housemates often teased her about her hero-worship. But, hey, the man could be making squillions of dollars as a plastic surgeon doing boob jobs and lipo like his esteemed father. Instead he’d chosen to help horrendously disfigured people that no one in the world cared about, have a shot at a normal life.
He could easily have been a playboy.
But he wasn’t.
Frankly, it got her hot just thinking about it.
‘Unrest?’ she squeaked.
Adam waved his arm dismissing the threat. ‘Local warlord stuff. We were fine. Just the government being cautious.’
Local warlord?
Dear God, was his work dangerous? What if…what if he went away one time and didn’t come back? What if she never got the chance to…?
Adam studied Jess intently for an age. She was chewing on that pink, pink mouth and he found himself suddenly wondering what it might be like to run his tongue along those lips and soothe them from her savaging.
The insidious thought that she was naked beneath her towel hit him from out of the blue. He’d never thought about Jess like that before. Not about her mouth. Or what was under that towel. She was a friend of his little sister.
She was twenty-three, for crying out loud.
He was thirty-five.
And she read romance novels.
Time to leave. Way past time to leave.
Jess watched as he shifted, the muscles of his naked arms and chest rippling as he began to pull the sheet aside. ‘Stop,’ she squeaked. ‘What are you doing?’
Adam frowned. ‘It’s okay,’ he assured her, consulting his watch, ‘I’ve had a couple of hours. I’ll be fine now till the air-con guy gets here.’ Even though he felt like his eyeballs had been rolled in shell grit.
‘Adam…’ She shook her head. ‘You haven’t got a stitch on under that sheet.’
It was on the tip of Adam’s tongue to tell her she didn’t have a stitch on under her towel either but then another thought struck him.
‘Well, now,’ he drawled as he leaned back on his splayed palms. ‘And you would know that how, Jessica Donaldson?’
Realising her gaffe, Jess blushed furiously. A more sophisticated woman may have been able to come up with some witty reply but Jess was mortified.
‘You were peeking at me,’ Adam stated and seeing her cheeks grow an even more fetching shade of pink—as pink as her mouth—he laughed.
The rich, deep sound filled the room and Jess felt her skin break out in goose-bumps.
She really must turn the air-con down.
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ she blustered. Her heated denial only seemed to deepen his mirth and she glared at him impatiently, waiting for his laughter to subside.
‘You were covered by the sheet,’ she blurted out. Mostly.
Adam laughed again, enjoying the way she blushed and looked like she wanted aliens to swoop in and abduct her.
‘Well, as I walked naked from my room to your room I don’t have anything to cover me.’
Of course he had.
Any normal person would have taken the time to throw on some undies or sling a towel around themselves but Mr Centrefold had preferred his birthday suit.
‘Tell you what, why don’t you throw me that towel you’re wearing? That ought to do it.’
Jess felt her cheeks grow even hotter. Her heart drummed a heavy beat in her ears. She swallowed hard. Her nipples tightened and she was pleased for the thickness of the towelling as she imagined standing before him with nothing on.
Naked in front of a man.
In front of Adam.
‘Would you like a hand?’ he teased as Jess’s fingers clutched ever tighter at the fastening of the towel. Jess frowned as a heavy fog of confusion muddled her brain. He was smiling, his voice was light and teasing. She risked a brief glance at his face—there was a glint in his eyes.
Was he flirting with her?
But why?
He never flirted with her. Hell, he barely contained himself from ruffling her hair and patting her on the head on those rare occasions he was home and graced the rest of the house with his presence. Instead of being holed up behind closed doors, going for gold in the sexual Olympics.
He must be jet-lagged. And she was obviously delirious!
It would be foolish to read too much into any of these crazy last minutes.
Although dropping the towel just to wipe the smug smile off his face was exceedingly tempting.
She dropped her gaze instead. To the floor. Desperate to gain some composure.
Who knew she’d actually find her salvation?
She smi
led and then squatted down, picking up two of her throw cushions and lobbing them at him. ‘These should do the trick.’
Adam caught them automatically as they hit him square in the chest. They’d been an irritation a couple of hours ago when he’d been trying to offload them so he could get horizontal as quickly as possible. Like an insurmountable mountain.
‘Look at that,’ he murmured, his gaze locking with hers. ‘They do serve a purpose.’
And then, his eyes never leaving her face, he rose in one fluid moment, one cushion clutched to his front, the other to his back.
Jess took a step back as his superior height overwhelmed her. At five-six in her bare feet she wasn’t exactly short—but she felt positively diminutive in the presence of his all-encompassing maleness.
‘Sweet dreams.’ He winked and turned on his heel, sauntering out.
Jess followed his retreat, amazed that somehow he still managed to look one hundred per cent male even with a purple cushion covering what she knew to be one hell of a swagger.
Not even her door shutting quietly, blocking her view, was going to be enough to erase that image from her brain. Groaning, her heart tripping, her hands trembling, Jess collapsed on her back on the bed.
She picked up her pillow and plonked it over her head. Adam’s edgy masculine scent filled her nostrils and she sucked in big, deep lungfuls of him. She threw it aside in disgust, rolling onto her stomach.
The same tantalising aroma wafted up from the sheet wrapping her in Adam.
She couldn’t decide if it was heaven or if it was hell.
She did know she was never going to wash these sheets. Ever again.
CHAPTER TWO
THE next morning Adam sat on his board out to sea with a line of other eager early morning surfers, waiting for the next wave to come in.
It was probably going to be a while.
The surf was non-existent. The ocean was flat and glassy, with just an occasional gentle swell bobbing him in the water.
But for Adam, surfing was about more than the waves. Sure, he liked the exhilaration of riding a monster wave as much as the next guy, but what he enjoyed most was this. The sense of stillness, of the world waking up, of being connected to the planet, in tune with its pulse.
The sun was rising rapidly in the sky behind him, spreading golden fingers over a still sleepy Coogee. It was already warm on his shoulders, shaping up to be another scorcher no doubt.
The light murmur of his fellow surfers melded perfectly with the distant sounds of the sea lapping against the beach.
Everything was as it should be.
Except for that damn image of Jess in nothing but a towel, with water droplets clinging to her skin, that had lodged itself stubbornly into his grey matter.
Prior to yesterday Adam had probably never given Jessica Donaldson a second thought. Sure, she was a nice enough kid but he doubted they’d ever said more than a handful of things to each other in the last three years.
Jess was just a friend of his sister’s who, along with Ellie and Tilly, had helped Ruby with the rent in his Hill St house.
Why had he never noticed her incredible bone structure before? Or how hot that little pink mouth was?
Because.
Adam gave himself a shake.
Because she was barely out of her teens, that’s why! Twenty-three, for crying out loud.
The only other time he’d dated a woman in her early twenties, Francine, it had been an unmitigated disaster—one that he had no intention of repeating.
Once bitten, twice smart.
Younger women were complicated. They had romantic stars in their eyes. They wanted things. Like declarations of love.
They were needy. He didn’t do needy.
He did sophisticated. Worldly. Independent.
Women. Not girls.
And he wasn’t about to start just because he’d dreamed about Jess and that mouth all through his marathon eighteen-hour sleep.
He felt things begin to stir beneath his boardies as they had earlier, prodding him from his slumber, and he looked up at the headlands either side of Coogee bay, determined to distract himself. To focus on something—anything—other than Jess.
He could see a couple at the monument to the Bali bombing victims and further back towards the front a lone jogger pounded the footpath, the majestic Norfolk pines forming a dramatic backdrop. His gaze lifted higher, to the hilly suburban sprawl behind and the Eastern Beaches Hospital perched atop, dominating it all. He could even see his house from here, his eyes easily locating the double-storey monstrosity badly in need of some TLC.
His gaze fell on Jess’s window and he found himself wondering if she was still asleep.
Did she sleep nude, like he did?
Had it been her plan yesterday to shimmy the towel off her body and just drop straight into bed?
He closed his eyes as a vision of him brushing his mouth across a bare shoulder blade assailed him. Her skin would be cool from the kiss of the air-con and he could almost feel the tiny hairs feathering her skin brush his mouth as they stood to attention beneath his lips.
His groin stirred again and he almost groaned out loud. This was madness!
What he really needed was a date. Obviously it had been too long if he was lusting after a woman—a young woman—twelve years his junior.
And it’d been a long time since he’d had any female company.
His time away with Saving Face was always frantic and there was never time for socialising. Long days of operating, often well into the night, followed by travelling on to the next place and repeating it all over again wasn’t conducive to sexual liaisons.
Frankly, even if he didn’t have a strict no-sleeping-with-colleagues rule, he was too exhausted for anything other than snatching vital hours of sleep whenever he could.
But when he came home between missions, that was a different story. That was his down time. Time to surf, top up his tan, spend time with Ruby, see his mother, tolerate his father and date pretty women.
Time for liaisons.
‘Wave!’
Adam looked over his shoulder as the excited cry worked its way down the line. He felt his adrenaline kick in as the mediocre wave emerged from the ocean behind him and he flattened his belly against the board in anticipation.
He welcomed it. Riding a wave was an all-consuming pastime and he welcomed the break from his internal dialogue. No time for thoughts of Jess and her cute pink mouth.
Just him and the ocean.
He felt the drag, could feel the kick in his chest as his pulse picked up a notch. His board started to lift at the back and he paddled frantically to position himself perfectly for when the wave crested.
He leapt to his feet at just the right moment, bending his legs, cutting across the face as if he’d been born with fins. The wind ruffled his hair and he could taste salt on his tongue.
It was just him and the wave.
He whooped out of sheer exhilaration as he conquered the wall of water. He was unstoppable.
Until the second he wondered if Jess could surf.
And then he promptly lost his balance and tumbled off his board head first into the ocean.
‘Good morning,’ Jess chirped as she flipped over some frying bacon.
‘How on earth can you be so damn happy at this ungodly hour of the morning?’ Ruby bitched as she shuffled into the kitchen and headed straight for the coffee pot she knew Jess would have brewing.
Jess laughed. She didn’t have to tell her friend that back home she would have been up two hours ago. ‘This is the best part of the day.’
Ruby shook her head. ‘You country chicks are mad.’ But she smiled as she took her first fortifying sip.
Jess loaded up her plate with the bacon and waited for the eggs to cook. ‘What are you doing up this early anyway?’
‘Cort got called in at four. I haven’t been able to get back to sleep since.’
Jess frowned. ‘Everything okay?’
&
nbsp; ‘’Course,’ Ruby dismissed. ‘Just can’t sleep without him.’
‘Oh,’ Jess murmured. ‘That’s so sweet.’
She envied Ruby. And Tilly and Ellie. They’d all found love this past year. Oh, she was thrilled for them too but it was a little hard to be the single one in a house full of couples.
And she wanted what they had. What her parents had. What her grandparents had.
The fairy-tale.
Was that so wrong?
No.
But who she wanted it with was just plain, never-going-to-happen crazy.
Jess turned back to the pan. ‘Do you want some bacon?’ she asked as she lifted her eggs onto the plate. ‘I’ve cooked too much.’
Ruby shook her head. ‘I don’t know how you have a greasy cooked breakfast every morning and manage to stay so skinny.’
Jess grinned. ‘Good metabolism.’
The door that led from the side of the house into the kitchen was pushed open and Jess swung around in time to see all her happily-ever-after fantasies in all his six-foot-two glory entering the house.
His wet boardies, riding low on his belly, barely hung onto his hips as they clung to meaty quads. Great slabs of muscular flesh—shoulders, pectorals, abs—were exposed to her view as they had been yesterday.
A tantalising trail of hair drew her eyes down from his belly button.
Down, down, down.
‘That smells amazing,’ Adam said. ‘Don’t suppose there’s any extra?’
Jess dragged her gaze up, up up and nodded dumbly. ‘Bacon.’
‘Great.’ Adam smiled. ‘I’ll have a quick shower and throw on some eggs.’ He ruffled Ruby’s hair as he went past and earned a grumpy glare.
Jess stood in the middle of the kitchen, staring after his straight tanned back as it disappeared from view.
Tilly passed Adam and entered the kitchen dressed in a strappy little beach-dress thrown over her bikini, ready for her regular morning dip in the bay. She shook her head. ‘It should be illegal for your brother to go shirtless, Ruby.’
Jess couldn’t have agreed more.
She plonked her plate on the bench and went to the fridge for eggs.
‘What are you doing?’ Ruby frowned.
‘I might as well do his eggs,’ Jess said. ‘It won’t take a jiffy.’