by Ally Blake
With a grunt, Frank took JJ in his arms. Samuel could sway, but Frank was smooth and strong. The man could lead. He even hummed the Sinatra classic under his breath and well. No wonder Hazel had gone back for try number three.
“How’s Kane?” he asked about halfway though.
She smacked him on the arm, and his eyes opened wide with shock. “Not you too.”
“Me too what?”
“Laying bets on whether or not a woman is going to . . . get it on is not terribly chivalrous.”
“Aaah. Can’t bet. Hazel would leave me in a heartbeat. Her last husband was a gambler. Broke her heart. So that’s it for me for good.”
Taciturn as the man was, he was a good dancer who paid heed to his woman. He was seriously cementing his place as her favorite. “So why did you ask about Kane?”
“His leg. Saw him limping when we got back from Noumea.”
“Did he hurt himself?”
“Did he hurt himself,” Frank muttered. Then, his eyes narrowing as if he’d gone into some kind of cinematic flashback, he said, “It was off season. Best and fairest second year running at club level. Third in the Brownlow, with everyone betting he’d take it out the next year. All that and a major player with the ladies too. Kid had it all. Then suddenly . . .”
Frank paused as he spun her out to the end of his arm and back again. He was very gentlemanly in the way he controlled his oof when her elbow got him in the solar plexus.
“. . . The kid went wild. For weeks, the back pages of the papers were filled with stories of his disappearance from pre-season training in Arizona. Turned out he’d gone on some kind of extreme adrenalin junkie spree. All came to a screeching halt when he broke his leg in three places. Pierced a lung. Nearly died. Never played the game again.” Frank harrumphed as if the demise of Kane’s career had been aimed at him personally. “Never knew what happened since ’til I saw him at dinner.”
“Right,” JJ said, her voice feeling as if it was coming from an inch in front of her face as she struggled to put Kane and the man Frank described in the same room much less the same body. “Right.”
For Frank’s tale painted Kane as seriously wild. For her, jumping off a tire swing into a creek, riding her bike downhill with her eyes closed, moving to a big new city on her own, had been about having a life with zing. Mistakes had been made, decisions botched, but she’d never been purposely self-destructive. Imagining Kane that way sounded even more ridiculous.
As for the player angle . . .
She pictured the way he’d dealt with the young dancer, cool, short, leaving no room for misunderstandings. The way he let the older women flirt with him but it was always in fun, never inappropriate. He was one of the most upstanding men she’d ever met. Deliberate. Sincere.
Wasn’t he?
Her heart-rate told another story as she remembered the intent that had burned behind his clear blue eyes the first time they met. The beat against her ribs grew erratic as she recalled the way he moved into her personal space that first dinner—a hand on the back of the chair, sitting close enough every breath was filled with his scent. It thrummed through her a way that was deeply primal as she thought on how they hadn’t had one conversation without his gaze dropping to her mouth.
Crusher. Had he been so famous for crushing hearts it had been his professional nickname?
She probably felt so sideswiped by the thought because she’d never had a thing for bad boys. She’d first seen her own too-handsome father snuggling with a woman who wasn’t her mother when she was six years old. The idea of choosing to be with someone like that as a grown-up was akin to buying designer shoes two sizes too small; they might look gorgeous on the shelf but they cost more than she could afford and would always leave her hurting.
And then there was Kane. Who’d sparked something inside of her the moment she’d heard his voice. By the time she’d opened her eyes and added the visual effects to the sound, and the warmth, and the entire package that was the man in question . . . Zing.
Okay, she thought, trying to settle the rising panic. Maybe he was a player, and not just in the kicking a ball for money sense. In real life that would send her fleeing for the hills. But looking around her at the starry sky, the beautiful costumes, the elegant music, this was a million miles away from real life. And she wasn’t looking for a boyfriend. She was looking for a good time.
A new song started up and when JJ looked up into Frank’s smiling face she instead found Bernie. She hadn’t even felt them swap.
“JJ, my dear. You look a peach tonight, do you not?”
“I . . . okay.”
“Something’s the matter? You seem pale, a little.”
“I’m fine,” she said, grimacing as Bernie stood on her toes.
He took her squinch the wrong way. “Ah, you’re struggling, dear. Maybe next time you ought to take a cruise with more young people onboard.”
Sweet Bernie, too busy adoring his wife to notice the gossip swirling about the ship. “You’re a smart man, Bernie,” she said, squeezing his shoulder. “Vacuum cleaner sales must miss you terribly.”
The music swelled and Bernie continued stepping on her feet more than she did his. “Sorry,” she said the tenth time it was his fault. “If only the dancers weren’t all . . . otherwise occupied then maybe I could flirt my way into some free dance lessons.”
“Oh no,” said Bernie in all seriousness, “staff and guests? Big no-no.”
He really wasn’t following the ship chitchat, was he?
Bernie glanced around, pulled her in closer, and unknowingly kicked her in the shin. “Last cruise, our waiter was taken off the boat at the next port and flown home to Indonesia in disgrace—found canoodling with a passenger, contract terminated, job kaput. It was quite the scandal.”
“Really?” JJ managed, even while her mouth suddenly felt as dry as cotton wool.
“Needs to be some level of decorum on board a place like this. The nurse’s station is busy enough as it is.”
The swirling of her feet was suddenly no match for the swirling in her head.
She’d only just managed to rationalize her attraction to a type of man she usually avoided like the plague, because the ship wasn’t real life. But losing his job? That was as real as it came.
Bernie tried to spin her again and this time he clocked her in the knee. It snapped her out of her trance right in time to see a familiar face moving through the crowd.
Kane had shucked a jacket over his white shirt, his hair raked back by restless fingers, his jaw shadowed in a day’s worth of stubble. The Merry Widows surrounded him and he checked out the trophy, holding it up to catch the moonlight, like it was the most amazing thing he’d ever seen.
Despite all she’d just learned about the guy, a deep well of craving rippled inside of her as his deep voice and easy laughter echoed into the night. She envied him. Craved that kind of blithe spirit with every fiber of her being. Or maybe she simply craved him.
It was way too much philosophy for someone who’d eaten nothing but three gin-soaked olives in the past three hours.
She unpeeled herself from Bernie’s arms, swung him in the general direction of a delighted Myrtle, then saying goodnight she slipped away; down the stairs and gone before Kane even knew she was there.
Chapter 17
An hour passed before Kane—a piccolo bottle of bubbly in one hand, the stems of two plastic champagne glasses hooked in the other—finally found JJ by the pool.
Stars peppered the sweeping black sky, water slapped the sides of the pool, eerily maintaining sea level as the ship’s floor swayed.
And JJ lay on the diving board in her little black dress, feet bare, ankles crossed, looking up. Looking remarkably alone.
Even when his life had hit its lowest point, he’d had people. He’d had schoolmates, teammates, even his family who’d been dealing with the grief in their very different way. The months spent in rehab for his leg he’d had a great team of physios and doctors, a
nurse who’d been a port in a storm for a while after he’d left hospital, all of whom he classed as friends today.
As for the people in JJ’s life? He’d rarely known a young woman go on a cruise alone. She’d mentioned the friend who’d booked her on this one—badly. And she never spoke of her family. And yet she wore her self-sufficiency like a cloak. With pride.
It was endearing as hell. And conversely made him want to wrap her up and keep her warm and safe. Made him want to show her that she wasn’t alone.
She must have heard his footsteps as with a sharp intake of breath her head tilted. Her whiskey eyes were fathomless in the moonlight.
“Hey Juliana.” Her eyes flashed as they always did when he used her full name. Like she liked it. So while she’d been JJ in his head for a while, he’d keep it up as long as she got that look.
“Hey,” she sighed, head rolling to look back at the sky.
“You did great tonight.”
“I know.”
He laughed and her cheek twitched. He saw it as invitation enough to join her on the diving board—carefully, as it bounced beneath his weight. She slunk her feet around the edge and sat up and sat up, making room for him.
He held up the bottle. She nodded. He poured them each a healthy glass which they tapped together, plastic on plastic, before taking a sip.
Putting bottle out of harm’s way, Kane gripped the edges of the board close enough their hands nearly touched. He could feel the now familiar crackle of electricity humming between them. Like a bucket of iced water poured over his head after a big footy win, it made him feel every inch alive.
Her sexy little dress snuck up her thighs, her shoulders hunched. Her hair spilled gorgeously over one shoulder, her feet tangled shyly as they hung beneath the board. She was a study in contrasts and contradictions. Outwardly don’t mess with me. But inwardly . . .
“People were asking after you. At the dance. Wanting to thank you for such a great night.”
“Wanting to get the lowdown on you and me, you mean.”
“Yeah,” he laughed, the sound catching on the breeze. “That too.”
Her golden eyes dropped to his mouth, her shoulders rolling as she sat straighter. Then she said, “About that. Bernie told me that you could get in trouble for . . .” She waved a hand between them.
He’d wondered when this conversation might come. And having grappled with it and come out the other side, he thought about making light. But she was clearly not in a light kind of mood. “Mm-hmm.”
“And yet here you are.”
“Here I am.”
He held her gaze, waiting for her to ask why, all the while knowing he wasn’t exactly sure of the answer. Not a simple one anyway. Not quite yet. At least not one that wouldn’t send Miss Skitzy rappelling off the side of the ship the first chance she got.
And one thing he was absolutely sure about was that he liked it better when she was around.
“I’m not . . . I’m not sure how to put this,” she said, frowning into the dark water. “But I’m not worth losing your job over.”
Fuck. Kane’s fingers gripped the diving board so hard it protested audibly. Whoever did a number on this woman to make her think such a thing deserved to be shot. Hung. Drawn and quartered. Then kicked in the nuts a few times just to drive the point home.
He edged closer, hooked a finger around hers and gave her shoulder a bump. “Trust me, I know what I’m doing.”
She looked at him then—moonlight and indecision and desire swirling in her pale brown eyes before her gaze traveled over the length and breadth of him. “Well I’m glad one of us does.”
He smiled, feeling it sweet and low. Then before she could make any more protests he cradled her face with one hand, and kissed her. Her wavering sigh whispered against his lips before the willing heat of her slid through him like fresh honey—sweet, balmy, exquisite.
“I’ve been hanging out for that all day,” he said, lips still clinging to hers.
“Not smart,” she said, not pulling back. “You called me trouble once, and you were right.”
“Maybe I like trouble.”
She bit down gently on his lower lip and his blood thickened and strained against the constraints of his veins.
“Then maybe I should be the one keeping away from you,” she said, only she didn’t move away. She tilted her head to lean it on into the curve of his shoulder where she fit like she’d been made to do just that. He put his arm around her lean shoulders. Her presence had become so significant to him, such a big part of his day, he forgot how small she was.
“You going to the island tomorrow?” he asked, giving them both a break.
“Don’t think so.”
“Have you got something against palm trees? Pristine white sands?”
“Something like that.”
He waited for her to explain. He had to be up in about five hours but with her tucked into him, the scent of her hair, her skin, in his nose he felt like he had all the time in the world.
In the past he would have frantically filled that time with training, with women, with pushing himself to the limit, anything but quiet, anything but space to think. But with the stars beaming down on him from the fresh clear sky, and JJ’s warm body leaning into him he found himself content.
“I told you I was married before, right?” she said.
“You did.” Several other sources had also offered it up to him in he hopes they’d get a hint as to his intentions where their sweet little mascot was concerned. Didn’t make the reality any easier to hear from the lips he’d just kissed.
“We grew up together in this little town in the hills looking over the Great Ocean Road where a trip to the beach meant a drive, a rocky path walk, and a freezing cold dip that sent us home with blue lips and wind burn. As far as honeymoon destinations went, somewhere hot and decadent and lush seemed the bomb.”
“Did you get there?”
“We were over before we even made it that far.” She frowned down at her toes, black glittery toenails glinting in the moonlight. “I’ve come to the conclusion that I’m being punished. Just so you know.”
“For?”
“Giving up the sweetest boy in the world,” she said before leaning away from him to grab her bubbly and taking three huge gulps.
Kane had to breathe around the knots in his gut. “The one that got away.”
She closed her eyes tight as she tilted her face to the stars. “The one I should never have chased in the first place.”
His tangled insides loosened their death grip. “Did you love him?”
A shrug. Then, “Everyone loved him.”
He didn’t question her. Her answer was clear. The urge to track down and knock the block off a total stranger dissolved away and Kane could finally breathe fully again.
“See,” she said. “Trouble. I’m not sure I’m all that good a person.”
“You’re okay.”
Her mouth twisted a moment before she laughed into her bubbles. But she wasn’t done. “I mean I’d understand if you got up right now and went back to your room and from tomorrow on treated me like every other passenger onboard.”
“Who says I’m not doing that already?”
She rolled her eyes, then growled at him. Literally curled her lip and growled. “Kane, I’m being serious here.”
“We all make mistakes, Juliana. Heaven knows I’ve made some rippers. I like to think that growing up means attempting not to make the same ones twice.”
“Who has the time when there are so many new ones to make?” she asked, sizing him up, as if he might be one of those mistakes. Hell, maybe he was. But sometimes a guy had to go there to know for sure.
“Come on,” he said, placing a hand on her head and tilting it to drop back to his shoulder.
She let it happen, melted into him even as he could still feel the thoughts rattling around inside that pretty head.
He knew what that felt like. He’d lived deep inside his head for
years after Aidan died, when everything felt so personal. So much so he’d nearly killed himself in the bargain.
Not that she was in danger of going that feral. Not if he had any say in the matter. Falling into the pool fully clothed was about as wild as he’d let things get in that moment. And that wasn’t such a bad kind of wild at all.
Maybe she needed to know it too.
He reached behind her, grabbed her bubbly, put it on the edge of the pool. Then, angling an arm behind her, he bounced the diving board.
She let out a little squeal, her knees knocking as she gripped on tight. “Kane. What the—”
Using his weight and the strength in his good leg, he gave the board a good hard bounce. Her mouth in a shocked O, JJ slid towards the edge of the board and then right on into the water with a mighty splash.
She came up with a flailing of arms and a string of expletives the likes of which he hadn’t heard since he’d left footy behind. “What the hell did you do that for?”
“I’m sorry, weren’t you the girl asking where she could get her kicks onboard this thing?”
“Well, yeah. But—” she spat out a mouthful of water in disgust. Then ducked her head backwards into the water, dark hair trailing down her back like silk and her make-up smudging around her eyes making them look like pools of gold and fire in her beautiful elfin face.
He stepped off the diving board and sauntered along the edge of the pool, “Maybe you needed to be more specific.”
“You mean like please don’t throw me in the pool fully dressed?”
“For starters. Any other requests? Because I’m not going anywhere.”
She swam to the edge, hooking her forearms along the tiles as she looked up at him. Her big brown eyes looked so deeply into him he felt like . . . like he was being seen for the first time. Really seen. It was a hell of a thing. Thrilling and terrifying all at once. Like the moment you step off the platform, hoping the bungee rope will catch you at the last.
He stopped his sauntering and bent down on his haunches.
She licked her lips, creases forming above her nose before she said, “Maybe I gave you the wrong impression. I’m not all that wild, you know. In case that’s what you want from me.”
