Table of Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Discover more Amara titles… Nightingale
The Charmer
Nailed It
Brazilian Surrender
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 by Jezz de Silva. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
2614 South Timberline Road
Suite 105, PMB 159
Fort Collins, CO 80525
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Amara is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Edited by Tera Cuskaden
Cover design by Fiona Jayde
Cover art from iStock and Shutterstock
ISBN 978-1-64063-462-6
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition January 2018
Chapter One
Olivia sagged against the Dinky Di motel’s reception desk and lost herself in the blinding white sand, glistening cobalt water, and iridescent marine life splashed across the brochures welcoming her to Queensland, Australia: beautiful one day, perfect the next. But instead of lying on a deserted tropical island or snorkeling the Great Barrier Reef, she’d be driving five hundred miles into the Outback. To probably be mauled to death by a rabid kangaroo.
She shook her head and silently cursed her big sister. Why the hell couldn’t Abi be marrying a scuba-diving instructor or tour-boat operator instead of a cowboy living in the middle of freaking nowhere…literally nowhere? Baroona—the closest town to Wingarra, the million-acre cattle station her batshit crazy-in-love sister now called home—was indigenous for A Place Far Away. Which, according to Google Maps, was yet another example of the legendary Aussie knack for understatement.
She worked loose the kinks thirteen hours in economy had twisted into her spine and studied the seventies-inspired reception area of the quaint, if a little run-down, Dinky Di motel. Oh, who the hell was she kidding? The paisley-carpeted and wood-paneled monstrosity was a few stars south of where she’d like to spend her very first night outside the good ole U.S. of A. But luxurious hotels, business-class air travel, and fine dining would have to wait until the paychecks from the dream job waiting for her back in L.A. started flooding her drought-prone bank account.
“Thank you so much for your patience, Ms. Williams. Our booking system’s temperamental these days.”
“What did I tell you about that whole ‘Ms. Williams’ thing?” Olivia side-eyed the poor girl hammering the keys of what must’ve been one of Bill Gates’s earliest prototypes.
“There you are, Ms. Will—I mean, Liv.” Rachel’s name tag glinted under the flickering fluorescent light illuminating reception as she leaned back triumphantly.
Olivia couldn’t decide who was more thankful the booking she’d made a month ago had finally shown up. The young woman who’d just poured out her broken heart while wrestling not-so-modern technology or the exhausted close-to-thirtysomething doctor who’d just traveled eighteen time zones into the future and smelled like she’d flown across the world’s largest ocean in an overcrowded metal tube.
“Room six.” Rachel rummaged behind the desk and popped up with a key dangling from a hairless toy koala. “It’s our best single room.”
Olivia fought the urge to cringe and studied the tarnished key and tortured koala hanging from Rachel’s bejeweled fingers. Single. The title had never bothered her before. Hell, she’d worn her freedom like a badge of honor and flaunted her bachelorette status in her sister’s face so often it’d almost become boring…almost. Yet after enduring her sister’s stupid grin for the last year, semi-anonymous sexy times and relationships of convenience no longer held the allure they once had.
Cursing herself, she bundled up her first-world problems, shoved them back under the rock they’d lurked under since she’d kicked her sister and future brother-in-law out of her apartment, and accepted the key.
“Thanks for looking after me, Rachel. It was lovely meeting you.” Olivia narrowed her gaze and jabbed the bedraggled koala at Rachel. “And no more blubbering over arrogant bad boys who don’t deserve us. They’re not worth it, and there are plenty of good guys out there.”
Rachel’s smile eased some of the melancholy dragging on Olivia, and she couldn’t help grinning back. And she freaking should be happy. Ecstatic even. Unlike Rachel, Olivia had absolutely nothing to be sad about.
After enduring eleven years of college, med school, and residency hell, she’d start the career of a lifetime in just over five weeks. With her dream job at Cedars-Sinai came a salary that would enable her to stock her empty fridge with proper food, buy some decent clothes, and turn her Amazon wish lists into reality. And, to top off all that, she was only one day into the four-week vacation of a lifetime.
But the cherry on her freaking amazing triple choc-fudge sundae of a life was that her brain–tumor–killing sister was cancer free and a few days away from marrying the cowboy of her dreams. Ryder had shown Olivia what a real romance hero was and confirmed exactly what she’d been blindly searching for without even realizing: a best friend who made her laugh, respected her, loved her, and incinerated her lady parts on a regular basis.
“Dr. Williams, I presume?”
The voice rumbled through her chest and melted her insides like vintage single-malt bourbon. Olivia froze as Rachel’s eyes widened, and something between a moan and a gasp leaked from her gaping mouth. Olivia slowly turned and slammed straight into the brown eyes of her sister’s best man.
Jarrah Harper winked before pressing a phone to his ear. “Relax, I found her.”
Will Smith’s charm, Idris Elba’s rugged sexiness, George Clooney’s sophistication, and just enough Joseph Gordon-Levitt to disarm a woman’s self-respect. Abi’s description of Jarrah, Ryder’s older brother, flashed through Olivia’s mind as her wedding date’s grin widened into a smile that consumed his mahogany features.
Ryder had shared hundreds of photos of his crazy adoptive family. And she’d gotten to know the Harper clan during the weekly Skype get-togethers that’d become an apartment ritual. But Jarrah, the reclusive playboy lawyer, had never joined the chaos. Rumor had it he worked even longer hours than she did
and only returned home once a year to help with mustering.
Their initial emails and texts had focused on their official duties. But with each late-night and early-morning message they’d drifted further and further away from organizing pending nuptials and into a trans-Pacific battle of wills. There was something intimate about knowing they’d probably both been in bed in opposite hemispheres while teasing each other. The distance had tempted her into some less than polite maid of honor behavior and the resultant flirting had convinced her that spending her first night Down Under in his lair was a very, very bad idea.
She’d done everything short of going full Jason Bourne to avoid sharing quality alone time with the man currently rolling his eyes and holding the phone away from his ear until she’d at least had a decent night’s rest. For one, it would annoy the crap out of her overprotective sister. Secondly, it’d been so long since she’d had a dance with no pants she couldn’t risk even the slightest possibility of doing something monumentally stupid with her sister’s future brother-in-law. Even if the sexy times were as wild as she imagined she’d be reliving the inevitable morning after for the rest of her freaking life. And most importantly of all, the darker version of James Bond studying her while holding a stunning wildflower bouquet scared her almost as much as he intrigued her.
“Wasn’t I picking you up tomorrow morning?” The question blurted out like an accusation, but given the difficulty she had swallowing, she was lucky the words hadn’t dribbled onto her blouse and dripped onto her practical yet hella stylish knockoff Jimmy Choos.
His ebony suit must have cost more than her ten-year-old Prius. The damned thing practically shimmered as he half strode, half floated across the worn carpet. The asthmatic air conditioner rattling above her barely pumped out any air yet still managed to tousle the jet-black hair brushing his collar like he was shooting an aftershave commercial. Before she’d even closed her mouth, she was slammed by the scent of money, power, and one-hundred-proof, prime-A-grade, Aussie male.
With a grin that disarmed her defenses, he swooped in and pecked her cheek before lingering just long enough to have her neck and certain parts of her anatomy snapping to attention. “Welcome to Australia, Doc.”
She was still figuring out what was more intoxicating: his scent, the tenderness of his kiss, or the way he enveloped her without actually touching her when he leaned away and offered her the wildflowers.
She buried her face in the explosion of color to escape his gaze, while silently cursing herself and scrambling to pull her shit together. Drawing in as much of the floral perfume as possible to purge him from her lungs, she lowered the bouquet and smiled. At least she hoped she smiled, because she couldn’t feel her face. “T-thank you, they’re beautiful.”
His sly grin confirmed he hadn’t missed her pathetic stutter, but it also sparked something inside her that finally jump-started her stalled brain. Easing forward, she rocked onto her toes and pressed a kiss to his jaw. His entire body stiffened as she leaned closer and trailed her lips just above his stubble to his ear. “You don’t scrub up too bad yourself…for a lawyer.”
When she pulled away, the mouth that had taunted her hung open, and his how you doing eyes looked decidedly more WTF.
An all-too-familiar bark from his phone tempered her victory celebration and shocked him out of his trance. Wincing, he shoved the phone at her and backed away as if it was radioactive.
Olivia grabbed the phone and slammed it to her ear. “How the hell did you find me?”
“Nice try, Padawan.”
Even the five hundred miles of snake- and spider-infested desert separating them couldn’t dampen Abi’s smugness.
“My future husband’s ex–Special Forces and even more protective of you than I am.”
Her frustration at being treated like a child on her first day of kindergarten evaporated as she pictured the giant six-foot-four-inch marshmallow who’d become the brother she’d never had. Wasn’t being an overprotective pain in the ass exactly what big brothers did?
“So, what do you think of my best man?”
Olivia had heard that tone before and knew exactly where Abi was heading. Normally, she’d play dumb and revel in her sister’s ridiculous attempts at subtlety. However, she was tired, jet-lagged, and way too preoccupied trying to pick up what Jarrah had whispered to the completely dumbstruck Rachel to torture her sister. “You’re going to pay for this when I get to that dusty patch of hell you call home.”
She canceled the call and was about to use the phone as a distraction to thwart whatever the hell Jarrah was up to when his screen saver appeared. She’d expected a half-naked woman draped over the hood of the ridiculously expensive Aston Martin Abi couldn’t stop yammering on about. Instead, a grainy photo of the entire Harper clan grinned back. Black, white, and in-between, European, Asian, and Indigenous. The only thing they had in common was the love radiating from their smiles and the fierceness of their hugs. No wonder her sister had fallen so hard and so quickly for the crazy rednecks.
Olivia pulled free of the image just as Jarrah thanked Rachel and slid something back into his pocket. Rachel’s flushed cheeks confirmed the receptionist had already forgotten about the little shit who’d stomped her heart and was well on the way to ignoring the hard-earned advice Olivia had just shared. Jarrah Harper was as cocky and dangerous as boys got, and Rachel was practically climbing over the counter to get closer to him.
Olivia drew in a fortifying breath and held out the phone. Jarrah pocketed it and refused to meet her gaze as he casually hitched her backpack over his shoulder and grabbed the handle of her pathetically underused suitcase.
Olivia folded her arms across her chest and blocked him. “Can I help you?”
With a pained sigh, he released her suitcase and raised his hands in surrender. “If I let you spend your first night in Australia alone when I’ve got a perfectly comfortable guest suite in my apartment, my mum and your sister will take turns beating me to death, and my brothers and sisters will help dispose of my body.”
Through a convoluted saga of emails, texts, and more than a little meddling from his family, Jarrah had somehow ended up riding shotgun in the passenger seat of the top-secret wedding present she’d spent the last of her pitiful savings shipping across the Pacific. She’d only relented to his family’s badgering because the prospect of driving solo across the desert in her father’s classic if horrendously unreliable ’67 Camaro was only slightly more terrifying than spending eight hours trapped in a car with him. But she’d drawn the line at sharing his apartment.
Her resolve weakened for just an instant. That was all it took for his pleading smile to turn calculating. “You swore an oath to save lives when you became a doctor. So, how about you save the life of an innocent best man simply trying to make his maid of honor’s first night Down Under as comfortable as possible?”
There was nothing innocent about him, but holy Mary Mother of God the man was charming. Fatigue had dampened her senses, yet she couldn’t shake the feeling that beneath the polished exterior he was completely genuine. That’s what made him so dangerous. She glared at him to ensure he knew she hadn’t fallen for his bullshit, and brushed past him before the grin she’d been fighting broke free.
She waited for Rachel to tear her gaze from the man hovering behind her before sliding room six’s koala key across the counter. “I’m so sorry for yanking you around like this. But this poor guy’s life’s at stake. Do I owe you anything for the room?”
Rachel hesitated before shooting a nervous glance Jarrah’s way.
Olivia spun in time to catch Jarrah shaking his head before he froze and grinned like the sneak he was. “You can pay me back later.”
Olivia wondered how much shit that lopsided smile had gotten him out of and how many lingerie ensembles it had melted. She spun around and fished out her credit card before shoving it at Rachel. “This is exactly what I warned you about. Stay the hell away from guys like this.” She hitched a thumb o
ver her shoulder before cursing under her breath and shaking her head. “Now, please refund Mr. Harper’s generous yet unnecessary gesture and charge any cancellation fees to my card.”
Jarrah slid in beside her and leaned an elbow on the counter. He didn’t look angry, insulted, or even the least bit put out. If anything, his smile grew as Rachel fumbled with the credit card machine while trying and failing miserably to ignore him.
After even more juggling, nervous glances, and whispered thank-yous, Rachel finally completed the refund and held out the machine to Olivia. She keyed in her PIN before jabbing her card at Rachel. “And you pay your own way and take care of yourself. Never forget, real men are attracted to strong, confident, independent women.”
Rachel’s hesitant smile confirmed the hopelessness of the situation. What was it about bad boys that turned women into mush? After another useless warning glare, Olivia sighed and exchanged a knowing grin with Rachel before readjusting the strap of her handbag and reaching for her suitcase. Only to have her hand engulfed by fingers that were a lot rougher than a lawyer’s should be.
With an unstoppable tenderness, he peeled away her fingers and took control of her suitcase. “Look, I know you and your sister are independent women with a thing for taking care of yourselves bordering the psychotic. However, my brothers and I were brought up to carry luggage, open doors, and give up our seats. So for the sake of a helpless man stuck in a gender war he didn’t start, please let me at least carry your bags.” He extended the handle and wheeled her luggage back and forth before shrugging. “Technically, I’m not even carrying it.”
She tried summoning outrage, she’d have even settled for frustration, only she just couldn’t manage it. He was simply too damned sweet. Hiding her smile behind a scowl, she ignored Rachel’s encouraging nod and two thumbs-up and shoved past him as all sorts of alarm bells and sirens screeched inside her head.
Australia wrapped around her like a thick blanket as the Dinky Di motel’s automatic door groaned open. The picture-postcard scene greeting her was eerily familiar to the Santa Monica Beach sunsets she’d enjoyed her entire life. But instead of sinking into the Pacific Ocean, the sun disappeared behind the Brisbane skyline and the world’s largest and driest island continent.
A Choice of Fate Page 1