Hot Stuff

by Various

  Jasmin’s reply was lightning fast and made Gemma burst out laughing.

  You better screw that hot lifesaver, Gemma Knox! Whatever you do tonight, it better end up with you screwing him! Good luck!!

  Gemma bit her lower lip and smiled when she heard Jake’s throaty laugh from downstairs. She couldn’t remember the last time she had been this excited. Giving herself a last glimpse in the antique brass-framed mirror that stood in the corner of the bedroom, she slipped on red ballet flats and skipped down the stairs. Jake had his back to her as he leant against the bannister and spoke to Mrs Harris.

  Gemma’s heart skipped a beat as she listened to his warm, deep voice and took in his build. He was wearing navy blue and white patterned board shorts, a white fitted T-shirt that showed off his muscles, and she could see that he’d washed his hair, it looked so soft and fresh. He was so unbelievably sexy, even viewed just from the back.

  ‘Hello again,’ Gemma said brightly, and he turned around.

  ‘Whoa,’ he mouthed with his jaw open. ‘You look spectacular.’ He eyed her up and down admiringly.

  ‘Oh, please, I just threw on a top and jeans,’ Gemma said nonchalantly, thrilled she had gone to the effort to look her best.

  ‘You ready to go?’ he asked, looking more at her bra through the shirt than at her face.

  ‘Sure am.’

  ‘Enjoy yourselves, you two,’ Mrs Harris waved them off with a chuckle. ‘I dare say I won’t be waiting up for you, young lady.’

  Gemma’s cheeks flushed. ‘I have my key anyway thanks, Mrs Harris.’

  As they walked through the front garden, Jake stopped at a rock daisy bush, picked one of its lilac flowers off and tucked it behind Gemma’s ear.

  ‘Pretty,’ he said softly.

  It was the single most romantic thing Gemma was sure she had ever experienced.

  Jake smiled his sexy smile. ‘Are you feeling okay after everything that happened today?’

  ‘Yes, fine,’ Gemma answered. ‘I’m surprised at how little nearly drowning has bothered me!’

  Jake nodded. ‘You really were amazing. You should consider being a surf lifesaver, you’re a natural.’

  Gemma guffawed, ‘Not a chance! That was my one and only foray into rescuing. I was amazed by you, though — those boys owe their lives to you and so does that man from yesterday.’

  ‘Well, it is in the job description,’ Jake said humbly. ‘And I met a girl doing it today, so that’s a nice perk, yeah?’

  ‘You must meet girls all the time,’ Gemma prodded.

  Jake shook his head, ‘Nah, not really. No interest in that. Until today.’ He snuck another glance at her.

  ‘Why? Why me? I don’t get it.’

  ‘I told you, I’m intrigued by you,’ Jake said simply. ‘And I feel a strange kind of connection to you. That sitting on the rocks and staring out to sea that you’ve been doing? I’ve never seen anyone do that day after day since I did it myself a while ago. I recognise the pain necessary to be able to spend days doing that. And I know the healing that sitting in that exact same spot, looking at that exact same surf brings.’ He winked at Gemma. ‘Plus watching you lying around and stretching in those pretty flowy skirts and thin blouses got my blood pumping every day this week. Then I saw you in your knickers and, well, that kind of sealed the deal.’

  Gemma laughed and slapped Jake lightly on the arm. But his words had really touched her. And since he had joined her on the rocks, she’d felt an instant connection to him, too. And her intense instant attraction to him was growing by the second.

  Jake raised his eyebrows and said, ‘So, woman of mystery. Do I get to find anything out about you now?’

  ‘How much detail do you want?’ Gemma didn’t want to bore him with her life story.

  ‘It’s a good half-hour walk to my cottage, so go for it.’

  Gemma didn’t know where to start. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘How about what do you do for a living?’

  That was easy enough. ‘I’m a high school English teacher. Well, I was. I’m not working at the moment.’

  ‘Will you go back to it?’

  ‘Not sure.’ Gemma pursed her lips. Would she? She had no idea.

  ‘Well, is it the job you were born to do?’ Jake asked.

  Gemma sighed, ‘No. I mean I do enjoy it, but my dream has always been to be a writer. I told myself I’d get a day job as a teacher to pay the bills while I wrote an epic fantasy children’s series. I’ve had the story in my head for over ten years — dragons, Vikings, prophecies, curses, the works. But I’ve never written down a word of it.’

  ‘Why not do that now? Here?’

  Gemma didn’t answer. She looked out from the cliff road to the magnificent ocean and at the fairy-tale cottages that were dotted along the opposite cliffs amongst the dense greenery. If there was ever a place to be inspired to write, this was it. It was the reason she’d chosen to come to Cornwall, because she knew she’d be inspired here like so many authors before her. So why hadn’t she taken the leap yet and put pen to paper? Every morning this week she had taken her journal down to the beach and left it untouched. What was she afraid of? Now or never. She didn’t want to end up an eighty-year-old who had never chased her dream. What was the worst that could happen? That she’d discover she wasn’t a talented author and nobody would read her story. Was that so bad compared to never trying?

  Gemma made a promise to herself to start writing in the morning. The ugliness of the divorce could be replaced by a wonderful imaginary world that she could immerse herself in. She’d sit in Mrs Harris’s front room that she loved and write the story she had always wanted to write.

  ‘You’re away with the fairies,’ Jake broke the silence.

  She told him what she’d just day-dreamed. And then Jake asked her about her shattered heart, which opened up the subject of her marriage and divorce. She was surprised by how calmly she was able to discuss Ross without all the angry outbursts that usually followed any mention of him.

  ‘Did you suspect he was gay?’ Jake asked.

  ‘Not even a little bit,’ Gemma said, feeling like a fool. ‘Even though, looking back, he was always a bit distant and I was never totally satisfied with our sex life. I guess it should have made me wonder, but I never did. Back then he was lovely and charming and we had a lot of fun together, but I guess the sexual attraction was never really there — and quite obviously it wasn’t there for him, either,’ she said ruefully and chewed her cheek. ‘I loved him, so I guess I didn’t want to go looking. But funnily enough when I told my family and friends that we were separating because he was in love with another man, nobody was surprised. Makes me feel like a complete idiot.’

  Jake nodded sympathetically. ‘Sorry that happened to you.’ He reached for her hand and gave it a squeeze. Gemma loved the feel of his big warm fingers cradling hers.

  ‘Just so you know, there’s definite sexual attraction from my end here and now.’ Jake grinned and her tummy did a triple flip.

  ‘Look now,’ Jake said as they approached the front of Trevone Bay. Gemma was stunned to see it full of people. There were at least a hundred of them spread out on the sand, walking along the shore, picnicking, children running in and out of the shallows and playing with buckets and spades. It was a festive atmosphere with music pumping from the car park and teenagers hanging out in front of the surf shop doing tricks on their skateboards.

  ‘Wow!’ Gemma exclaimed. ‘What a difference a couple of hours make.’

  ‘Told you,’ Jake said as they stopped at the peak of the cliff to look down. ‘And that’s nothing, it’ll be twice this busy in the morning, and loads of them will be in the water then, too, crashing into each other with their boards.’

  As Gemma looked out at the surf, she remembered the faraway tone of Jake’s voice when he was staring out to sea earlier, telling the tragic story of Tristan and Iseult. ‘Jake, I’m so sorry you lost your wife in that car accident. I was talking to Mrs H
arris about you when I got back to the cottage and she told me,’ she said softly, and he gulped.

  ‘It wasn’t an accident,’ he said in barely more than a whisper, looking straight ahead. ‘It was suicide. Everyone calls it “the accident”. I think they find that easier to say.’

  Gemma felt the air leave her body. ‘Oh my God,’ she breathed.

  Jake tightened his grip on her hand while he told Gemma about Sophie’s battle with depression and how he and her parents had fought hard to try to keep her safe, but that she kept going off her medication secretly because she hated how dull it made her feel. Her third suicide attempt proved her last when she gassed herself and their unborn child while their little one was at pre-school.

  ‘She was my only girlfriend. We started going out when we were fifteen, so I loved her for a big chunk of my life.’ Jake’s voice was hoarse.

  ‘Oh, Jake.’ Gemma struggled with her emotions. ‘We don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.’

  ‘I do want to.’ Jake opened his heart to Gemma, as they continued to walk, about his confusion when Sophie changed without warning the day before she died, from the bubbly, loving wife and mother to a dark and intense stranger who aggressively denied coming off the anti-depressants, and about his paralysing fear when the kindergarten teacher rang him to say Lani was still waiting to be picked up an hour after school was out for the day, to the traumatic search for Sophie that lasted almost six hours, and the horrifying discovery of her body in the car on a remote cliff top, along with a note that revealed the meticulous attention to detail Sophie had put in when planning her suicide.

  He told her about the daunting responsibility he suddenly faced in his late twenties of being a single parent, about how Sophie’s parents had all but shunned him for the past two years, blaming him for somehow ‘allowing’ it to happen, and about how the whole thing had brought him so much closer to his own parents, who were helping raise his daughter with more love than she could handle.

  Gemma listened without speaking, and wiped at her tears with her free hand.

  ‘We’re here,’ Jake said, stopping in front of a tiny bluestone cottage with an A-frame thatched roof. It had a small overgrown vegetable garden, a rusted love seat and a yellow metal swing set out the front, and it looked directly over the ocean. ‘My home. Welcome.’

  ‘Oh, Jake,’ Gemma cried. ‘I’m so sorry you’ve been through all of that, you poor thing.’ She stood up on her tip-toes and placed her arms around his neck and hugged him tightly.

  As Jake hugged her back, she could feel his heart racing. He pulled his face away and looked at her with such tenderness that her heart melted all the way down into her ribs.

  ‘Do you like the view?’ he asked.

  Gemma looked down at the wide, uninterrupted blue of the Celtic Sea surrounded by the dramatic cliffs. ‘It’s perfect.’

  ‘So are you.’ Jake took her closer in his arms and kissed her, gently at first, and then more deeply until Gemma was lost in the kiss and never wanted to come out of it.

  When he pulled away minutes later, they were both breathless.

  ‘All those hours I spent looking out at sea, waiting, I think it might have been you I was waiting for.’ Jake smiled, twirling one of Gemma’s loose red curls around his index finger as he spoke, with his other arm around her hips, pulling them to his.

  Gemma’s tears poured and she shook her head. ‘Jake, we only just met. You don’t know that. You might not even like me if you get to know me better.’

  He looked deeply into her eyes. ‘Well, let’s get to know each other better then. Stay in Cornwall and let’s find out. Let’s see if I’m right or wrong. But I can tell you now I’ll be right.’ As he took away her tears with his kisses, Gemma knew he would be right, too.

  ‘Hungry for lasagne?’ he asked huskily.

  ‘No.’

  ‘Hungry for more of this?’ he kissed her collar-bone.

  Gemma had never been more certain of anything in her life. ‘Yes.’

  Jake led Gemma to the back garden, away from the road, where it was more private but still overlooking the bay. She leant back against the stone wall of the house with him facing her. Jake bent his head down, and his hot breath tickled the back of Gemma’s neck.

  ‘Like the view from here?’ he whispered into her ear, as his nose traced her cheek.

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Gemma said, panting, everything blurring in front of her as she half-closed her eyes. She’d never been more aroused. Ever. Her attraction to Jake completely overpowered her.

  ‘You can write your best-selling novel looking out at the sea.’ Then he sucked her bottom lip as he began unbuttoning her blouse. ‘Or . . . do this looking out to sea instead.’

  ‘Uh-huh,’ Gemma gasped as he slid off her shirt, unclipped her bra and took one of her nipples into his warm mouth as he pushed his rock-hard erection against her.

  She moaned with pleasure.

  ‘Don’t go back to Australia yet,’ he whispered and kissed her long and hard, his tongue playing with hers. He took off his T-shirt, revealing his magnificent body. ‘Stay. Stay and see what happens here.’

  He unzipped her jeans and pulled them and her pants off her legs and did the same with his shorts. Then, with their eyes locked, he entered her, making their connection and their oneness complete. ‘Stay,’ he repeated, his voice shaky with arousal and his warm chest pressing down against hers. ‘You could be my Iseult,’ he smiled as he moved further inside her. ‘The greatest Cornish love story ever told might just be about to start, yeah?’ He cupped her face, and his smile was so full of promise that she couldn’t disagree with him.

  ‘Yes.’ Gemma let the happiness wash over her.

  About the Authors

  CARLA CARUSO was born in Adelaide, Australia, and only ‘escaped’ for three years to work as a magazine journalist and stylist in Sydney. Previously, she was a gossip columnist and fashion editor at Adelaide’s daily newspaper, The Advertiser. She has since freelanced for titles including Woman’s Day and Shop Til You Drop. These days, in between writing romantic comedy novels, she plays mum to twin lads Alessio and Sebastian with hubby James. Her books include the ‘Astonvale’ rom-com mystery series (kicking off with A Pretty Mess), Starcrossed, and Unlucky for Some. Visit www.carlacaruso.com.au, ‘Carla Caruso Author’ on Facebook, or her blog, www.theunitalianwife.com.

  MARIA LEWIS is an author, journalist and pop culture commentator based in Sydney, Australia. A journalist for over a decade, her writings have appeared in The Daily Mail, New York Post, Penthouse, Empire magazine, News.com.au, Huffington Post, The Daily and Sunday Telegraph, Junkee and Daily Life, to name a few. A regular radio and television commentator, she also hosts and produces the Eff Yeah Film & Feminism podcast. Her debut novel Who’s Afraid? is set for release in Australia on January 12, 2016 and worldwide on July 14, 2016. She can be found on Twitter at @MovieMazz and via her website marialewis.com.au.

  ALLI SINCLAIR has climbed some of the world’s highest mountains and has immersed herself in an array of exotic destinations, cultures, and languages. She’s lived in Argentina, Peru, and Canada and her stories combine her love for travel, history, family saga, mystery and romance. Alli’s debut novel, Luna Tango was voted 2014 Book of the Year for the Ausrom Today Readers Choice Awards. She also was voted Favourite New Romance Author of 2014 by members of the Australian Romance Readers Association. Alli volunteers as an author role model with Books in Homes, promoting literacy and reading amongst young Australians. Alli can be found at www.allisinclair.com.

  TESS WOODS is a physiotherapist who lives in Perth, Australia with one husband, two children, one dog and one cat who rules over all of them. Her first novel, Love at First Flight, released by HarperCollins in April 2015 has received worldwide critical acclaim. Tess is currently writing her second novel, Flat White with One. When she isn’t working or being a personal assistant to her kids, Tess enjoys chatting with her readers online, reading and all kinds of grannyish pleasu
res like knitting, baking, drinking tea, watching Downton Abbey and tending to the veggie patch. You can learn more about Tess on her website www.tesswoods.com.au.

  Copyright

  Impulse

  An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers

  First published in Australia in 2015

  by HarperCollinsPublishers Australia Pty Limited

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  harpercollins.com.au

  Compilation copyright © HarperCollins 2015

  Copyright in the individual contributions remains the property of their authors

  This work is copyright. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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