“It’s not interrupting.” Blake smiled broadly. “We’re just a bunch of bludgers hanging around. Jamie and his girlfriend, Chris, are Aussies like me, Lukas is a Dutch photographer, and Dana’s from Ireland. She just left for the bus station, but if she can’t get a seat tonight, she’ll be back soon.” He rattled off their names and Julia didn’t hear anything in his voice that sounded like spoken for.
“Oh,” Julia said. Both her brain and mouth still seemed to be broken. Blake gave her a look that hovered somewhere between a smile and a smirk.
“Tough decision?” he asked, like he could read the thoughts running through her mind. Like he knew exactly how good-looking he was and expected her to jump all over him.
Well, not this girl. She’d been on a bus for the whole day and what she really wanted was to relax. To sit by the pool with a nice cold—shit.
Yes, she very much did want a beer.
“Give me five minutes,” she said.
“Take your time. André’s rules about the dorms are strict, so I’ll meet you in the garden before I’m kicked out for improper behavior.”
“For improperly carrying my bag?” The edges of a smile danced around her lips.
“Improper actions, improper thoughts.” He grinned. “You never can tell sometimes.”
“André’s got a busy job if he’s making sure everyone’s thoughts are clean.”
“Not everyone’s. Only the ones who look like they might be up to something dirty.”
His crooked smile made the heat rise to her face. Just how far was she going to push this flirting?
But the question was out of her mouth before she could stop herself. “And who might those people be?”
“Oh, I think you’ll know when you see them,” he teased. It was a good thing he’d stepped away from her bed. Everything he said in that accent sounded like an invitation to fuck.
Julie was about ready to fling herself backward on the mattress and drag him on top of her. But that would not be practical, respectable behavior befitting a high school math teacher now one day into her thirties. She smoothed down the front of her tank top, conscious of how thin the material was and how short her shorts. The outfit was perfect for the heat, but now that his eyes were on her…
“I’ll keep a lookout. Wouldn’t want to run into anyone…” she paused, choosing her last word carefully. “Dangerous.”
His blue eyes flashed. “I felt it was my duty to warn you.”
“And I do appreciate your concern.”
The look they shared lasted a beat too long before he closed the door, telling her to come out to the garden whenever she wanted. Julia’s long hair crested down her back from where she’d pulled her ponytail out. But it was like he had suddenly blown on the back of her neck, making her shiver in spite of the heat.
Julia grabbed her toothbrush, soap, and bathing suit and made her way to the bathroom, grateful the hallway was clear. She didn’t want anyone to see how pink her cheeks were in the bright bathroom light. She splashed cold water on her face to tame the flush and reapplied a trace of eyeliner to deepen the brown in her eyes.
God, what am I doing?
The face in the mirror pouted innocently back. Just having a drink with some fellow travelers—so what?
Yeah right, she scoffed. A drink with one “fellow traveler” in particular who looked straight out of a magazine and here she was changing from not much clothing into even less. She tied the straps of the bikini around her neck and back and pulled on the bottoms, surveying herself in the mirror. Sea-foam green with delicate white patches like clouds rode high on her breasts and low on her hips, which she covered—barely—with a thin crocheted sarong. It was the kind of outfit she never, ever would have bought for herself if Liz hadn’t insisted on taking her shopping before her trip.
“It’s my birthday present to you,” Liz had said as she nodded approvingly at her friend in the dressing room mirror. “And a present to all the guys who are going to lose themselves as soon as you step onto the beach.”
Sure, it fit her well. But maybe a little too well. With almost everything exposed and the rest concealed just enough to let the imagination run wild, she felt more naked than if she were preparing to meet Blake and his friends with nothing on at all.
The thought made her squeeze her thighs together as a tremble rippled down her spine. What was she thinking? It was just a drink. And with a group of people—she wouldn’t even be alone with Blake.
Besides, overworked teachers didn’t flirt with gorgeous Australian supermodel-type guys. And they definitely didn’t get naked with them. On the first—or any other—night together.
She heard Liz’s voice in her head. “Overworked teachers get to have a sex life too you know,” she’d said as she plunked down her credit card at the register of the swimsuit shop. Julia had shushed her, horrified at the knowing grin of the cashier.
“You should listen to your friend,” the woman said as she folded Julia’s gift in tissue paper and found a bag. “Wherever you’re going, in these suits you’re bound to have a good time.”
“See?” Liz raised an eyebrow. Julia didn’t respond. She was still wondering at how her friend had gone from practically celibate and constantly wary to the authority on all things sex.
“As long as you can get out of Chicago in the middle of winter, you’re going to have a good time,” the cashier added, handing Liz her receipt, and on that at least, Julia had to agree.
“I want you to have fun,” Liz had said as they left the store and headed to lunch.
“I will.” Julia clutched the bag. “I just don’t want it to seem like I’m bailing on you, you know?”
“Seriously?” Liz shook her head. “First of all, it’s a week—so I’m going to assume you’re coming back. And secondly, I promise I’ll be okay. You’ve done so much for me, but you can’t spend your whole life worrying. Danny and I are hanging out over New Year’s, and then before we know it, you’ll be back. How much trouble can I get in until then?”
Liz was joking, but Julia hadn’t wanted to answer. Wasn’t that what she was afraid of—that at any second something could go wrong? A flashback, a memory that came without warning, any number of reminders that used to set Liz into a downward spiral again?
But the worst parts hadn’t happened in a long time. So maybe Liz was right. Nothing much could happen in a week. And who could live always preparing for something bad to go down?
Now, as Julia examined herself in the mirror above the sink to make sure her boobs weren’t popping out all over the place, she couldn’t tell if she felt secretly pleased or beyond horrified that she was even considering yielding to Liz’s entreaties to have a good time.
If Blake was even interested.
He probably had a ton of friends and flirted with everyone, which was how he’d managed to meet so many travelers. She was just going to have a beer, she told herself firmly.
Absolutely zero expectations.
Chapter Two
Blake lounged in the shade and poured another round. He’d been in Brazil long enough to do like the locals, ordering rounds of the large bottles called garrafas and pouring the amber liquid into cups so small they were hardly more than glorified shot glasses. Ice-cold perfection in the afternoon sun.
“Someone joining us?” Chris asked as André plunked down an extra glass.
“New guest arrived and I told her to come on out,” Blake said. “Her name’s Julia—a Yank.” He pretended to be concerned with making sure each glass was full to the brim. Did he sound normal? He was trying to sound normal. After all, she was just another guest in the random flow of travelers to come and go.
Just another really gorgeous guest with a beautiful smile and bright eyes who’d stared at him like he was dinner and she hadn’t eaten all day.
“Uh oh,” Chris said, turning to Jamie and shaking her head. “Blake’s got that look in his eye.”
“I don’t have a look!” Blake protested, and took a h
uge gulp of beer so he wouldn’t have to say more.
“Um, you didn’t until that,” Jamie said, twisting a strand of unruly beard as he stretched out in one of the pool chairs.
“Lukas, doesn’t Blake have a look?” Chris called. Lukas heaved himself out of the pool and came over, wringing water from his swimming trunks. A cluster of small holes marred the fabric across the bottom. He claimed they came from a lion cub dragging his clothes off the line one night when he was camping in a ranger park in Tanzania, but Blake thought it more likely he’d worn through them and didn’t want to get a new pair.
Still, the pinpricks were a good conversation starter. Lukas had shown up at the hostel the same day Blake met Jamie and Chris. When they were all lounging by the pool, Lukas and Chris struck up a conversation about his near run-in with the unseen cubs. The four of them had been hanging out ever since, with a few other travelers coming in and out as they passed through the town. After so much time on his own, it was nice to have regular company. Blake would be sad to say good-bye tomorrow, especially to Jamie. The two had become close during late nights talking and laughing over bottles of beer. Blake had made an itinerary, though, and he planned to stick with it.
“Blake always has a look,” Lukas said as he reached for his glass.
“See?” Blake said. “This is just my face. I’m sorry if you don’t like it.”
Chris stuck out her tongue, so Blake did, too.
“Such a beauty,” Jamie sighed, and pulled Chris onto his lap, planting a kiss on her freckled, sunburned cheek.
She only stayed for a minute, though, before she downed her glass and cannonballed back into the pool. “Are you coming?” she called, floating on her back. Jamie swallowed the last of his beer and made a more modest splash.
Blake lifted his glass, signaling that he’d be in when he finished. He took extra small sips, wondering if Julia would actually join them. Not that it mattered, he reminded himself. He was leaving for Buenos Aires in the morning.
And he’d been looking forward to it, too, until he laid eyes on the raven-haired beauty by the front desk idly sweeping her hair up and suddenly wished this wasn’t his last night in Foz do Iguaçu.
Blake had seen more than a few beautiful women in Brazil. He’d even slept with some of them, figuring that after all the years he devoted to his ex-girlfriend, Kelley, he deserved a little fun. The fewer strings attached, the better—both literally and figuratively. Some of the women down here wore hardly anything on the beach. Flo dental, they called their bikinis. Dental floss. If they didn’t mind that he was gone the next day, then neither did he.
But somehow Julia didn’t seem like just another pretty face. Okay, pretty face and long, stunning legs, hips curved in all the right ways, delicate breasts peeking through her thin white tank top like she didn’t realize she would drive any red-blooded man wild as soon as he laid eyes on those sweet, pert nipples saying hello…
All of that was enough to pique his interest, but then there was her blush. Of course he’d noticed her checking him out while he stood in the doorway in his board shorts, watching her watching him back. Plenty of girls saw him shirtless on the beaches, decided they liked what they saw above the waist, and eagerly got to work discovering what his lower half had in store. The interest had skyrocketed after he became—it was still hard to wrap his mind around it—something of a recent celebrity in Oz. (Not that he’d taken advantage of it back home. But it was nice to know he could still turn heads in a place where nobody knew his name.)
Yet where he might have expected to meet Julia’s brazen eyes inviting him to explore her own body in equal parts, instead she’d quickly blushed and looked away. Those two pink apples on her cheeks and the downward swoop of her lashes excited him so much more than a direct invitation ever had. More than any overt offer ever could. It made him want to find out what was going on beneath the surface of her smile and how he could make her blush like that again.
Before he’d known what he was doing, he’d walked over to help her with her things, even though she was obviously capable of handling her bags on her own. But he’d wanted to hear the sound of her voice. Wanted to see the shape of her mouth as she formed her lips around the words. The thought of those lips made him shift uncomfortably in his seat. Maybe he should take a dive in the pool.
Jamie and Chris were kicking on some neon noodle things floating in the pool while Lukas splashed between them. Funny that he had to leave Australia to find anyone from his home who seemed to like him for him, and not because of his fame.
Of course there were people who no longer liked him after he’d been publically disgraced by his now ex-girlfriend and his former best friend. But Jamie and Chris seemed smart enough not to believe everything the tabloids said. Being able to hang out with ordinary people who weren’t in the entertainment business, order garrafas of beer, swim in the pool, take in the sights—he almost felt normal again.
The fact that Jamie was happily settled with Chris made it easier to remember that not all friends were out to steal his girlfriend and stab him in the back.
But he didn’t want to think about that. What was taking Julia so long? She probably wasn’t joining them. She’d be tired from the bus—it was a comfortable ride from São Paulo but still must have taken her most of the day. Plus he was a stranger, and for all he knew she wasn’t looking to meet anyone new.
But surely she wasn’t staying inside all afternoon. Not after the way that she’d flushed and glanced away…
Then he saw a pale glimmer catch the sun and resolve itself into two long legs and he had to keep himself—and other parts of him—from leaping straight up to greet her. She’d kept her hair down and it spilled in dark cascades over her shoulders, bare but for the thinnest strings of a bikini top. Those impertinent round mounds looked even more delicious without her thin shirt pretending to cover them, and the wink of her green bikini through that thing around her waist only made the question of what was hidden underneath all the more enticing.
Not that it was much of a mystery as her thighs flashed through the opening of the wrap. Down, boy. He did not want to give Chris any more reason to make fun of him.
“You made it.” He smiled as she gave a little wave. “Julia, these are the very responsible adults who will be your mates here at the hostel. Very Responsible Adults, this is Julia.”
He gestured toward the pool. Chris had Lukas in a headlock and was splashing water up his nose while he kicked up a storm. Jamie was pulling on Lukas’s leg, either trying to free him or drown him, it wasn’t clear which.
They paused in the middle of dunking each other long enough to introduce themselves, then got back into the fray. Blake was exhausted just looking at them.
“It’s so great that you have friends to travel with,” Julia said, accepting a glass of beer.
“Oh, we met here at the hostel,” Blake said. “Although I guess by now it feels like we’ve known each other for longer.”
“You’re traveling alone?” She sounded surprised.
“Yep, you?”
“I’m just here for a week, down from Chicago. What brings you here from Australia?”
That damned accent of his. He screwed up his face. Sometimes it would be nice to have a little air of mystery about him. He had gotten way too visible in his homeland. But at least no one outside Australia seemed to recognize him, even if they could immediately tell where he was from. Julia wouldn’t be refilling his glass and then her own with that effortless grace if she realized who she was sitting across from, and he was grateful for the normalcy. If anything about his life could be called normal anymore.
“I wanted to get out,” he said vaguely, looking at his friends in the pool while he thought about the subtle difference between the truth and the answer he gave. “I’d always planned on seeing some of the world, but it never seemed like the right time. Finally, I realized there would never be the perfect time—if I was going to go, I just needed to do it.”
It wasn’t a total lie. It was even more of an admission of his shortcomings than he usually gave when people asked. But something about the way she tilted her head as she listened made him feel like he could talk to her.
Even if he was sure she would never tell him everything about herself—not with the way her eyes locked into him and then darted away.
And then Jamie dashed out of the pool and whatever moment had happened between them was lost.
“Beer, beer, beer,” he chanted, making a beeline for the table. “Pleasure to meet you, Julia. So sorry you had to meet these wankers, too.”
“We’re not wankers!” Chris called, now straddling Lukas’s shoulders so he was forced under water again. “We’re delightful company!”
“Well, at least one of us is a delight,” Jamie agreed.
Lukas managed to push her off and bob to the surface again, and then the two of them roughhoused their way out of the pool to shake Julia’s hand. Chris was wearing a sporty two-piece that showed off a tattoo of a garden snake winding up her side. Next to her sunburned chest and tanned arms, Julia looked delicate and slight, all smooth skin and narrow bikini top straps.
Blake tried not to stare at the string pulled taught across her collarbone. Somehow all that made him think about was the knot behind her neck unraveling in his hands.
“So how long have you been in Brazil?” he asked, trying to make normal conversation that didn’t involve spilling his soul or encouraging a raging hard-on.
“Two whole days,” she said. “What about you?”
“Four weeks in Brazil, six days in Iguaçu.”
“And all of them spent at the pool,” Jamie said. “I think I’m turning into a prune.”
“Wow, you’ve been traveling for a long time,” Julia said as she accepted a refill.
“Three months so far,” Blake said. “I’ve got another four to go.”
Her eyebrows rocketed up, and suddenly Blake realized there was an unscripted woman beneath her composed exterior. It was only there for a second before her calm expression descended once more. But it made Blake want to draw her out again.
How to Fall Page 2