Sexy as Sin (Sinful, Montana Book 3) Read online

  Text copyright 2018 Rosalind James

  All Rights Reserved

  Cover design by Robin Ludwig Design Inc., http://www.gobookcoverdesign.com/

  Formatting by Polgarus Studio, http://www.polgarusstudio.com

  Serious men don’t eat red Popsicles.

  Brett Hunter’s life isn’t unicorns and rainbows, and it sure isn’t sparkles. He’s a businessman, a disciplined man, a money man, and if he ever believed in magic, it was a long time ago. He’s not a hero, and he doesn't play one on TV. Oh, and he really doesn't like the water.

  What’s he doing, then, on an Australian beach in a custom-made Italian suit, up to his waist in the waves and helping a red-haired mermaid save the day?

  No matter how crazy his life gets, not being in control isn’t an option, and neither is veering from his path or falling for mermaids. Also, serious men don’t eat red Popsicles.

  Table of Contents

  1 - Fins

  2 - Battle Cry

  3 - All About Emotion

  4 - Delicious

  5 - Reality Bites

  6 - When It Turns to Custard

  7 - Sweet Temptation

  8 - Falling Hard

  9 - Holding On

  10 - Pretty Damn Impressive

  11 - Not on the Second Date

  12 - Pretty Woman

  13 - No Cinderella

  14 - Entangled

  15 - Slay Your Dragons

  16 - A Mad Proposition

  17 - Skinner’s Shoot

  18 - Not a Mermaid

  19 - Barriers Breached

  20 - The Dog Star

  21 - Flying Foxes

  22 - Strong as Silk

  23 - Seeing Stars

  24 - Ups and Downs

  25 - A Lifetime of Listening

  26 - Mung Bean

  27 - Rainbows and Unicorns

  28 - Imposter Syndrome

  29 - Trying Harder

  30 - Happy Valentine’s Day

  31 - The Fixer

  32 - The Bowling Club

  33 - Clouds of Pink and Gold

  34 - The Symmetry of Her Labia

  35 - A Rainbow and a Ziplock Bag

  36 - Fireworks

  37 - How to Hold On

  38 - Sweater Thing. Coat Thing. Whatever.

  39 - Worse Than a Great White

  40 - A Visit From Harry (Winston)

  41 - Blood From a Stone

  42 - Cheer Up. Slow Down. Chill Out.

  43 - Not the Pearl District

  44 - Ground Glass

  45 - Confusing All the Way Around

  46 - The Real Thing

  47 - Believe

  48 - Trying Again

  49 - Money and Mushrooms

  50 - Closing the Deal

  51 - Flying High

  52 - Push Comes to Shove

  53 - Under the Sea

  54 - The First Place

  55 - Shoot the Moon

  56 - So Close

  Recipes, A Closer Look, & An Aussie Glossary

  Links

  By Rosalind James

  Acknowledgments

  Author’s Note

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  It’s your turn. So go for it. It’s never too late to become what you always wanted to be in the first place.

  J. Michael Straczynski

  Brett Hunter did only one thing well: make a lot of money without making a lot of enemies. But he did it very, very well.

  Did that sound bleak? Maybe it was. By the time he turned forty, though, a man ought to know what he was good at. You focused on your strengths, not your weaknesses. Your strengths would bring you home.

  So what was he doing on a beach? That was some solid-gold weakness right there.

  Desensitizing, that was what. Or, possibly, taking his mind off his latest and most far-flung international deal, and the way he’d hung himself and his investors right out on the line.

  No. It was a calculated risk, and risk was his life. Self-improvement was a much preferable motive. He was in Australia, right? Australia was all about the ocean. A luxury-property developer who was afraid of the water was absurd, it was limiting, and it had to stop. No better time to tackle that than today. The beach was broad, the sand was white, squeaky-fine, and firm under his bare feet, and the Southern Hemisphere sun was early-February warm even at seven in the morning. Anybody in the world would look at a video of this scene—a businessman standing barefoot on the sand, his dress pants rolled up, an endless expanse of blue ocean spread out before him like a gift—and want to trade places.

  He didn’t have to go in the water. He just had to walk next to it. Nothing easier. He set the timer on his phone for fifteen minutes. He’d walk as far as he could towards the bluff where the lighthouse stood guard, and when the timer went off, he’d walk back. Disciplined. Easy. Zero danger. Thirty minutes.

  He got the occasional curious glance from a surfer, possibly because nobody else out here was wearing a tie. He’d already exercised, shaved, and showered this morning, too. The beach walk had been an impulse, which was another indulgence he didn’t permit himself. He wasn’t sure why today felt like the day.

  He could have said that he started watching the girl as a distraction, but it would have been a lie. He started watching her because . . . because . . .

  Because the sunlight had lit up the copper of her hair, was why. It was pulled back tightly from her narrow, fine-featured face and hung down her back in a braid, but you couldn’t miss that shine, bright as a new penny. The top of her short wetsuit was still around her waist, which meant that he was looking at a black bikini on skin much too fair for the strength of this sun. As he watched, she pulled the wetsuit up, shoved her arms into the sleeves, and pulled the zipper up, so that was sad. After that, she picked up a baby-blue surfboard covered in rainbows, glitter, and unicorns, ran into the water on endlessly long legs, and started paddling out, and that was sadder.

  He wasn’t going to watch her surf. The motion of the waves was making him sick, their thunder a menacing roar he felt all the way through his muscles—at least, they were tightening up, making it hard to breathe. People said this was restful? People were crazy. He kept walking, and not looking at the ocean. Focusing on Cape Byron instead, where the lighthouse stood. The most powerful lighthouse in Australia, situated at the country’s most easterly point. If you stood out here at dawn, you’d be the first person in the country to see the sun rise.

  Facts were always helpful.

  His phone finally began to chirp, and he reached for it, hit the Stop button, and turned around. Fifteen minutes down, fifteen to go, and he hadn’t had a heart attack yet.

  When he got back to the spot where the girl had gone in—well, the woman, because she hadn’t been a teenager, despite the skin, the rainbows, and the unicorns—fortunately, or he’d have been a pervert—he did look out at the water.

  He didn’t spot her at first. The waves, which didn’t seem terribly large, rolled in nearly perpendicular to the shore, an odd configuration he hadn’t realized existed, and there had to be twenty people out there. Some of them were kids. Their parents let them surf alone at seven in the morning? That was dangerous, surely. There were two surfers riding one of those waves right now, and one of them was his redhead. She was too far away to see the color of her wet hair, but there was that braid and those long, slim legs. Besides, something in her posture, the angle of her head, told him so. She looked . . . relaxed. Conf
ident. Free.

  She’d dropped down onto her board and was paddling out again, parallel to the shore, when he saw the fin.

  You’re free, Willow Sanderson told herself as she paddled out into the surf. Feel free, dammit. That was why she’d come out on the water on three hours’ sleep after finishing the prep for this afternoon’s event. Now, trays of ribbon sandwiches, of tiny vegetarian empanadas, of skewered beef and chicken and barbecued prawns, of honeydew melon and watermelon both red and golden, and much, much more, sat neatly slotted into the racks in the walk-in cooler. The day before that, she’d piped chocolate mousse into dozens of tiny individual shortbread crusts, filled others with creamy, intensely flavorful lemon curd, and dipped more dozens of huge strawberries in melted chocolate.

  This was an open-air event, though, a summer celebration, and she’d tried to bring some extra life to it with something brand-new, a playful touch of her own. The melon had given her the idea, and experimentation had convinced her it was a good one. Nourish’s freezer was filled with fresh-fruit ice blocks made of mango and orange, lime and pineapple, and strawberries and beets, and the vibrant orange and green and red of them made her smile. She’d serve them in a galvanized tub filled with ice, and the whole thing would look so festive and fun, and so uniquely Byron Bay. This event was about selling the Aussie lifestyle, so she’d do her bit. This was the town, however large it had grown, whose hand-painted Welcome sign still told you to “Cheer Up. Slow Down. Chill Out.” Anyway, food should be fun.

  The rest of the menu, she’d agreed upon in advance with the client’s representative, a PR woman businesslike to the point of abruptness, who clearly hadn’t read the sign. The ice pops were Willow’s bonus. A little cheeky, a little offbeat. She was allowed to be that. She was a partner now, which meant she was free to try.

  Everything was in place, in fact. Amanda Oldmarsh, the company’s founder and senior partner, had scheduled the wait staff and setup. All Willow had to do was to load the van, turn up with the food, and supervise the service and cleanup. Nothing she couldn’t handle after ten years in the catering business. And, for now, surf to get into the right head space. She did not have to think about Gordy Atkins, the supposedly laid-back events coordinator who owned more pairs of board shorts than he did actual trousers and whose messy, white-blond curls always looked like he’d just come from the beach, or about what he’d said day before yesterday, when he’d rung her in the midst of shortbread-making.

  It was like not thinking about pink elephants. She did have to think about it, now that she’d thought about it.

  “I’ve got a thing on at the Station Pub Sunday night,” Gordy had said. “You might like it.” Which didn’t exactly make your heart go pitter-pat, did it, as a “You’re Special” invitation?

  “Hang on,” she’d said. “I have to check my calendar.”

  “Just once,” he’d said, “I wish you’d just say ‘yes.’”

  “I can’t just say ‘yes,’” she’d answered, “since I could very well be prepping for a Directors’ luncheon the next day, piping whipped cream and putting mint leaves onto the chocolate cups for a dinner for twelve. I can’t be in two places at the same time.”

  “Right.” He’d sounded not so much boyish as sulky. “I’ll come by after, then.” He’d hung up before she’d had time to check her calendar for that. Or even to say “yes” or “no.” Wasn’t he meant to ask? Wasn’t that how it was meant to work?

  Why, when you wanted good-natured and easygoing, did you so often end up with “feckless and irresponsible”? Not to mention “still leaving his dirty clothes on the floor?” Couldn’t you be easygoing, fun, and a full-grown man?

  She’d better decide what she meant to do about it, because at this moment, the thought of Gordy coming through her back window at one in the morning was filling her more with irritation than desire.

  The next wave looked like a good one, though, and she was here. Beside her, a blond girl of eight or nine was looking back as well. Willow called out, “We’ll both take it,” and the girl nodded and smiled happily. All teeth, coming in too big for her face, the way teeth did.

  That was the great thing about the waves at Belongil Beach. They weren’t big and powerful, but you didn’t have to fight for them. You shared them, and riding them was communion. With your neighbor, and with the sea. She popped up, the blond girl did the same, their boards rose and carved through the sea, and Willow laughed out loud.

  Never mind Gordy. Never mind Nourish, and her brand-new partnership. Never mind feeding a hundred people who were celebrating breaking up the countryside she loved best in order to put up more houses for rich people. Right now, she was riding this wave all the way down the beach. Right now, she could fly.

  Until she dropped onto her board again and saw the bloke on the shore, wearing, for some bizarre reason, a dress shirt and tie, waving his arms overhead like he’d gone mad.

  He was pointing, too. Pointing, shouting, and running into shallow water, despite his clothes. She couldn’t hear him, not over the surf, but somehow, her breath was coming short. What she saw was alarm. Or worse. Fear.

  Nothing in front of her. Where was he pointing? She looked over her shoulder, beyond the little blond, and saw it.

  Gray. Triangular. And closing in on the girl’s board.

  A fin. A big one.

  A shadow in the water, much bigger.

  Shark.

  She moved faster than she ever had in her life.

  She got to the back of the girl’s board the same time the shark did, stared into a gaping, meter-wide mouth at three rows of triangular teeth, and time froze.

  The shark bit straight into the end of the surfboard, centimeters from the girl’s feet, and Willow felt the heavy, dull thunk of it like a truck had jumped the curb and slammed into a bakery. Just as shocking. Just as out of place.

  The girl screamed. Willow heard her, but only dimly. She had nothing to hit with. Nothing but the ragged end of a surfboard, which the shark had spat out again, but she grabbed that and did hit. She bashed the shark in the nose, and then she bashed it again. The foam-and-fiberglass piece broke, useless, and she tossed it and hit the shark’s nose with her fist. Twice. Three times.

  She was looking down at herself from above, somehow. Taking in great gasps of air, sobbing them out. Pulling herself closer to the shark, not farther away.

  Too late to run. Time to fight.

  Stab the eyes. The shark’s eye was cold, staring, and black. She sent all four of her fingers straight into it, and the shark retreated. Not gone for long, surely. Gone for a second.

  It doesn’t want us. It doesn’t like us. We don’t taste good. She was thinking it, and she was grabbing the girl’s surfboard. Thankfully, she’d had the courage and wits to hold tight and hadn’t fallen off.

  “Paddle,” Willow told her fiercely. “Paddle hard. Straight to shore.” She kept hold of the girl’s board, paddled with her free hand, and didn’t look back.

  Oh, no. The others. There was a boy out here who couldn’t be more than seven. And Amber Hawkins, who’d finished her chemo a month before and still didn’t have hair. Amber had two kids.

  She gave the girl’s board a hard shove towards shore, saw the bloke in the tie wading out, and shouted, “Paddle!” Then she turned around and moved towards the group of surfers with her arms going like windmills.

  Some were heading in. They’d seen, then. Others, though, farther out, hadn’t. She levered herself up with one palm flat on her board, waved the other over her head, and shouted, “Shark! Shark! Shark!”

  Heads turned. She kept waving, kept shouting. The few people on shore were running and shouting, too. The man in the tie was beckoning them on, urging them into action. They had their arms waving over their heads, were yelling, calling.

  The surfers came in fast, paddling like their lives depended on it, and Willow thought, Eleven attacks in four years between here and Ballina. Three deaths. Thirty kilometers of coastline, and t
oo many great whites.

  Everyone was going in, she saw with relief that made her temporarily weak, her arms threatening to shake. A man had hold of the young boy’s board, was paddling him in, and the bloke in the tie was in water to his waist, reaching for him, hauling him out. Willow saw it in a glance, but a look the other way showed her something else. Amber Hawkins, paddling in the other direction, off to catch the next wave. She hadn’t heard.

  Willow hesitated for an awful moment. Going back out there felt like stepping straight into those jaws. But . . . Amber’s younger girl, Charity. Five years old. When Willow had catered Amber’s “Kicking Cancer’s Bum” celebration at the end of her chemo, Charity had taken her back to her bedroom to show off her new school uniform, a green-and-black-plaid dress, and told her, “Mummy says she won’t be sick anymore, so she can take me. We’re going to have a photo on the first day. Me and Grace and Mummy, all together. We’re the Three Nusketeers.”

  She didn’t realize she was doing it until she actually was. She was paddling out. Paddling to Amber, expecting that cold eye at any moment. It was the eye, not the teeth. It was the eye.

  Her dad’s voice. Nearly twenty years ago now. Looking up from his papers on a hot African night, rubbing a hand over his closed eyes, under his unfashionable black glasses, squeezing the bridge of his beaky nose. She’d been on the couch, reading a book. Trying to be ignored, so nobody would order her off to bed.

  “He’s taking a hell of a risk,” he’d said quietly. Talking to himself. “But what good is living if you don’t live right?”

  She paddled on grimly, and, finally, Amber turned. Willow raised her arm again, waved it, and pointed to the beach. Amber stared—at Willow, at the empty sea, at the mayhem on shore—then started paddling in, closing the gap fast, like a woman with two kids at home who needed their mum. And, at last, Willow turned and headed in, too. Knowing that jaw was opening. Knowing the teeth were coming. Planning to kick. Planning to fight.