Chapter Four

Jarrah leaned against the kitchen counter while Olivia prowled toward him with an effortless sexuality that had him fighting not to groan out loud. His painfully solo, ice-cold shower had temporarily anaesthetized his libido, but it’d done nothing to quiet his brain. If he’d wanted to just have sex with her, he’d have surrendered to the insanity in the gym or called her bluff and followed her into the shower. But he didn’t want just a frantic quickie with her before rushing home. He wanted to savor every inch of her while exploring just how crazy she could drive him.

Her impact on his lust was a no brainer. Shit, the woman didn’t need a defibrillator to jump-start hearts. All she had to do was look at a guy to get his blood pumping. But with every challenge they’d traded, and every joke and childhood story they’d shared, he’d grown more desperate to figure out what it was about her that had him smiling and laughing at three o’clock in the morning when he could barely remain conscious. The pathetic truth was he simply hadn’t wanted their night to end. How long had it been since he’d genuinely smiled? Shit, how long had it been since he’d laughed? And their sweaty wrestling match had only fried his brain even more. But he’d just figured it out.

He liked her, liked everything about her. The love she had for her sister and his brother, the passion she had for her career, her compassion, her determination, her intelligence, her snark, the way she laughed so easily. The list was endless and the fact he’d never forget what it felt like to have those slender curves locked around him wasn’t bad, either.

He straightened and pretended he hadn’t just ogled her. “Ready to go?”

She ran her gaze all the way down his body and back up to let him know she hadn’t missed his leering before jutting her chin toward the luggage he’d stacked by the door. “Don’t think I didn’t notice you stealing my luggage.”

He shrugged, partly to prove her slow assessment of him hadn’t gotten to him and partly to redirect blood flow back to his brain. “Didn’t want you squealing to my mum that I haven’t been—taking good care of you.”

His best bedroom voice only had her rolling her eyes, which confirmed the temporary insanity they’d succumbed to half an hour ago had well and truly subsided. Yet the smile that escaped while she fished out her phone had him grinning.

She tapped and swiped through her phone before tucking it back into her handbag. “Should I call a taxi?”

“No need. Charlie’s picking us up.”

She eyed him. “She deserves a raise.”

Charlie deserved a hell of a lot more than that for putting up with him for so long. If only the battle-ax let him spoil her. He faked a frown. “She’s lucky I don’t fire her.”

He ignored her disgusted grunt and gestured to the door. “Your carriage awaits, m’lady.”

She nibbled her bottom lip and took a hesitant step forward. “And you’re sure we’ll make it tonight? I mean, what if there’s a delay with the paperwork or the shipping company damaged something? What if it breaks down in the desert?”

Her barely contained panic filled him with pride. However, he couldn’t take all the credit. She’d arrived with a healthy dose of anxiety after trawling Google’s top one hundred things that could kill you Down Under. And he’d kindly added a few the internet had missed. “Relax. My people have been custodians of this land since the dawn of time.”

Her gaze darted between him and the hi-tech apartment surrounding them as her American politeness waged war with her smart mouth and even smarter brain. Eventually, her manners won out and she nodded before hitching her handbag higher onto her shoulder and reaching for her suitcase.

He slid in front of her and hip-checked her out of the way before picking up their luggage. “What did I tell you about carrying bags and opening doors down here?”

He straightened and found her glaring at him with her tanned arms crossed over her T-shirt. “And how do you plan on opening the elevator’s doors, Mr. Dundee?”

It took his brain way longer than it should’ve to convince his eyes to let go of the cleavage her posture had enhanced. Damn, he couldn’t figure out what was sexier: her smile or her scowl. He glanced down at the bags hanging off him then at the elevator’s control panel before shrugging. “Okay, just this once, but don’t tell Mum.”

The elevator’s doors slid open, and she ushered him in with a gentle tap on his rump. “There’s a good lad. My driver’s waiting downstairs.”

Her cheesy British accent had almost the same reaction on his body as the slap on his butt. “Yes, ma’am.”

Whitney Houston humming “I Will Always Love You” drowned out her chuckles as she followed him in and turned around. He lowered their luggage, hit the last button on the panel, and looked up to find her eyeing the basement button he’d just pressed in the door’s reflection.

“I thought Charlie was picking us up?”

The woman didn’t miss a thing. “She’s meeting us in the basement. It’s easier for unloading and loading.”

Her eyes narrowed, yet she swallowed the challenge loaded on her lips. He stared into the stainless-steel doors and thanked whoever was in charge of the heavens that the sleazy lawyers and shifty executives he battled weren’t as switched on.

While Whitney hummed away and they pretended not to check each other out in the door’s reflection, the vanilla, cinnamon, and floral scent she wore had him unconsciously leaning closer for a better whiff. He caught himself and straightened just as the elevator chimed and the doors opened.

He didn’t give her a chance to take in the absent Charlie or missing Mercedes. Hefting their luggage up, he doubled-timed it across the basement toward the surprise he’d planned for months.

…

He was up to something. And the smart-ass knew she knew something was up because he’d taken off across the basement like a Sherpa on speed. Yet all Olivia could do was admire the view. The lawyer had been replaced by a faded jeans- and khaki shirt-clad cowboy complete with worn work boots. The only thing missing was the damned hat. Cursing her weakness, Olivia hurried through a showroom’s worth of Mercedes, BMWs, and Audis before catching up to him in front of a car hidden beneath a heavy gray cover.

The man’s Aston Martin was in Wingarra, and there was no sign of Charlie or the Mercedes. He hadn’t mentioned any other stupidly extravagant toys when she’d interrogated him last night, yet he stared at the cloaked car as if it was the Ark of the Covenant.

Before her overstimulated brain could process the questions tumbling around inside her head, he whipped off the cover and stole her breath. Clutching a trembling hand to her gaping mouth, she stumbled back and gawked at her father’s glistening candy apple-red ’67 Chevrolet Camaro in all its muscle-car glory.

“But—how?” The two words were all she could force out before her throat clamped shut. The last time she’d seen Abi’s pride and joy it had been strapped inside a shipping container on the other side of the Pacific and she’d been terrified she’d never see it again.

He shot her that damned grin before popping open the passenger door, dropping the seat forward, and squeezing their luggage into the backseat. The same backseat she and Abi had seen most of the United States from on the unforgettable family vacations her hippy mom and gearhead dad had spoiled them with.

“But the paperwork, the registration, what about…”

Her words trailed off as he clicked the seat back into position and closed the door. The thud of vintage American steel echoed through the cavernous garage as he sauntered toward her while holding out the keys. “Let’s get this show on the road.”

The weeks of planning and the dozens of phone calls, emails, and forms she’d waded through to organize the Camaro’s shipment and registration flashed through her mind as her gaze darted between the keys and his annoyingly smug face.

She shrugged as if her mind and heart weren’t racing each other and waved him away. “You drive. That way when we get pulled over by the police I can say you kidnapped me and stole my car.”

Negotiating her way out of an unknown city in a fifty-year-old car built for lethal speed while driving on the wrong side of the road had been one of the reasons she’d agreed to pick him up. She’d intended to beguile him into driving them out of the city by playing the helpless damsel in distress. But there was no way in hell she was letting him know that. Plus, she could use the time in the passenger seat to regroup.

He was still chuckling when he sank into the driver’s seat after making a performance of opening the passenger door for her. She couldn’t shake the feeling that even if they did get pulled over he’d somehow sweet-talk his way out of a ticket.

He slid the key into the ignition, but instead of waking the snarling beast she couldn’t help loving, he eased back into the bucket seats Abi had reupholstered three years ago and stared out the windshield. Silence filled the inches separating them as she inhaled the leather-and-chrome interior her father had kept meticulously clean despite ferrying two precocious kids who couldn’t stop arguing from ill-fated ballet classes to martial-arts training.

“It’s magnificent.” He caressed the wooden inlayed steering wheel and shifter as if he was paying homage to some sort of automotive god, and another reason he should drive worked its way through the mayhem in her mind. She’d seen the same reverence in her father’s eyes when she’d helped him wash and polish the bodywork. She’d felt the same admiration and respect flowing from Abi when she’d passed her weekend-mechanic sister tools and read out instructions from the original dog-eared service manual. Olivia had never understood the fascination for impractical hunks of metal, yet her dad and sister had, and apparently her sneaky tour guide did as well.

She leaned over and pretended to search the dash. “I don’t think it has a start button.”

He turned, and just like that, the delicious warmth simmering in her belly erupted into a rolling boil. The freshness of his cotton shirt combined with the exotic aftershave that had curled her toes in the elevator and the long-ago scents of family road trips to create an intoxicating cocktail of memories and visions that had her fighting for balance.

“No.”

A gust of peppermint-scented breath carried the word to her ears, but she was too preoccupied with the man sitting beside her who looked almost as nervous as she was.

She had no idea who moved first or whether gravity drew them together. Regardless, she found herself dangerously close to him yet again. Her hand seemed to move of its own accord, and she caught it just in time. The only problem was her intervention diverted her traitorous fingers from his face to his chest, where they toyed with the button on his shirt. “Th-thank you.” This time her stutter didn’t seem to amuse him. If anything, it widened his eyes until she feared she’d drown in them.

Something halfway between a groan and a curse washed over her before he dropped his forehead to hers and shook his head. “W-we better get going.”

She nodded, he nodded, and there they stayed until the squealing tires from a passing sedan fractured the moment. She reared away and stared out the windshield without noticing anything other than his scent lingering in her nostrils and the heat rippling across her skin.

The huge engine she’d helped Abi rebuild snarled to life. Like a grumbling monster, the Camaro lumbered out of the car park and through the garage. The noise was so ferocious she was amazed it didn’t set off the car alarms of the luxury herbivores cowering around them.

He guided them up the ramp and into a narrow laneway at the back of his building before pulling onto a road flanking the river without saying a word. She forced herself to focus on something other than the electricity tightening her chest and the queasiness in her belly. In desperation, she zeroed in on how the hell he’d gotten her car through customs, registration, and out of the criminally expensive transport company’s holding yard without her consent.

“If the cops pull us over, we’ve been married three months, and you haven’t been able to keep your hands off me long enough to change the surname on your license.”

She snapped around only to find the playboy had returned with a vengeance. Part of her wanted to burst out laughing, another part of her worried he may be serious, and what remained wondered how he always seemed to know what she was thinking.

He chuckled before downshifting and sweeping through a left-hand bend that followed a cycling path along the river’s edge. “Relax. Charlie’s uncle works in customs and owed me a favor. If anyone asks, I’m your Australian legal representative.” He wiggled his eyebrows. “Congratulations.”

She couldn’t decide whether she was relieved or disappointed the playboy had reemerged. His cocky-lawyer mode made it easy to convince herself he was just another player with too much charm and money. When he dropped the millionaire facade and stared at her with those genuine, all-knowing eyes, it scared the crap out of her almost as much as it excited her.

He downshifted, slid past a truck, slotted the shifter back into fourth, and released the clutch with graceful movements that were as smooth as his boxing before turning to her. “I’m no doctor, but you’re mighty uptight for a girl on holiday.”

Her glare only widened his grin.

He jutted his chin at the glove box. “All the paperwork’s in there. Registration’s paid up for the year, and I had my mechanic look her over to make sure everything survived the trip before he fitted the new license plates. I don’t know what impressed him more—this masterpiece or the woman who’d maintained it.” He shook his head. “If Abi ever gets sick of my brother, there’s a balding, slightly overweight automotive magician not far from here with a fairly sizable crush on her magic hands.”

And just like that, the warm, floating feeling that had washed away her fatigue and kept her up till three in the morning enveloped her like an L.A. summer breeze. “Yeah, right, like that’s ever going to happen.”

He knew the way and was used to driving on the wrong side of the road, still, it couldn’t have been easy driving a left-hand-drive car and shifting with his opposite hand. He drove with the same effortless confidence he did everything else. She was wondering if anything ever got to him when she remembered the tension stiffening his torso and the concern dragging on his features when he’d left for his meeting the night before.

She’d thought she’d done a good job of hiding her surveillance only to find him grinning at her. He chuckled softly before turning back to the highway and the suburbs drifting by beneath the morning sunshine drenching Brisbane.

“The moment Ryder introduced me to Abi I knew he was done for. The stupid ogre had been shot so many times I thought some shrapnel had lodged in his brain. That was before I got to know your sister.” He shook his head and rolled down his window. “She’s stubborn, psychotically independent, sneaky”—he flashed her a grin—“and one of the most amazing people I’ve ever met.”

Memories flooded her mind as she relived just how incredible her big sister was. The rock she’d been when their parents had died. The war she’d waged with community services to keep them together. The shitty jobs she’d worked to keep a roof over their heads. The dictator Abi had become when Olivia had wanted to drop out of college and get a full-time job. And the superhero Abi had become when cancer had tried taking her life. The very same life her big sister had dedicated to caring for her.

“You’re not so shabby yourself, Doc.”

She turned to find him casually gazing out the windshield like some sort of vintage matinee idol.

“Ryder told me what you went through when Abi was diagnosed.” He didn’t meet her gaze, just continued staring straight ahead with the humid breeze ruffling his hair and the sun glistening off his skin.

She’d been too shocked and terrified to think when they’d received Abi’s diagnosis, which had probably been a good thing. But Jarrah and his family probably knew that better than most. She shrugged and rolled down her window in an attempt to cool the heat flooding her cheeks. “You went through the same thing with your mom.”

He downshifted and overtook a bus crawling up the highway before resting his forearm on the door. “I had five brothers and sisters to share the fear. You did it solo.”

She’d never forget those years and the lifetime she’d spent staring into the darkness as a cardiac monitor counted down the heartbeats of the most important person in her world. She’d passed the endless hours creating a world for Abi that was free of death, hard work, and sacrifice. One filled with the love and laughter her sister deserved. She’d imagined dozens of fairy-tale worlds and hundreds of Prince Charmings, yet never dreamed her sister would find her happily ever after in the arms of a decorated war hero and the heat and dust of his fairy-tale kingdom in a land far, far away.

Olivia had her happy for now well and truly locked down. Some day she might have to get around to hunting down a happily ever after of her very own.