Текст книги "How to Fall"

Автор книги: Rebecca Brooks

сообщить о нарушении

Текущая страница: 2 (всего у книги 19 страниц)

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 huge 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.

“That’s kind of how we do it Down Under,” he said. “It’s so far to get anywhere that when people travel off the continent, they tend to save up their time and money and do it all at once.”

“We’ve been on the road for six months,” Chris said. “We wanted to hit up the falls, and when we read about this hostel online, we knew we had to come. Now we just keep extending our stay!” She laughed.

“It’s amazing here,” Julia agreed. “Where’s your next stop?”

“We’re off to Santiago in a week,” Jamie said. “A few days in Chile, and then heading home.” He gave Chris’s shoulder a squeeze.

“And you?” Julia asked Blake.

“I came down through Central America and then across Colombia and northern Brazil. I’m supposed to be heading to Buenos Aires tomorrow.”

Julia blinked. “Wow.”

Blake had no idea what that look meant, if she was disappointed or impressed—or possibly excited?

Or maybe she just had something in her eye. It was hard to tell when she kept herself so contained. But the point was that he’d said it. No pussyfooting around the fact that he was leaving when the sun came up.

Wasn’t that the whole point of being newly single? No problems, no worries, nothing holding him back.

So what was that “supposed to” and how did it creep in like that? He was heading into town tomorrow to get his bus ticket over the border. Nothing was going to make him change his plans.

“Man, Buenos Aires is such an awesome city,” Jamie sighed.

“We could always go back,” Chris said, and Jamie laughed, even though as far as Blake could tell, Chris hadn’t been joking.

“Next time,” Jamie said.

“I’ll drink to that.” She raised her glass.

“To Iguaçu,” Jamie said.

“To travel,” Chris said.

“To not being on the bus,” Julia said.

“To new friends.” Blake couldn’t help stealing a glance at Julia as he said it. They all clinked glasses, sloshing beer on the table, and he went to take a drink.

“No, no, no!” Chris admonished. “You have to make eye contact, you idiot.”

“What?” Blake asked.

Chris shook her head in exasperation and turned to Jamie. “Don’t these people know anything?”

Jamie shrugged. “Maybe that’s why the bloke’s cursed.”

“Ouch,” Chris said.

“Yeah, man,” Blake added. “Ouch.”

“What are you talking about?” Julia looked from one to the other.

“Do you Yanks not do this when you say cheers? Your whole country’s going to fall down the tubes.”

“Chris has this thing,” Jamie started to explain.

“You have to make eye contact when you take the first sip. Otherwise…” She paused and put her glass down for dramatic effect.

Chris raised an eyebrow to Blake, and he leaned over to Julia. “Otherwise it’s seven years of bad sex,” he whispered loudly.

He was rewarded by the pink fluttering in her cheeks, her hand nervously touching her hair.

“Well I’d better try it to be certain,” she said with a flush.

“Pretend you haven’t had a sip yet,” Chris instructed, topping off their glasses again. When she finished pouring Blake’s, she winked.

Blake wanted to protest that he did not need help being set up. But Julia was standing between him and Lukas, and when Chris turned to Jamie, he felt a surge of—was it pride or adrenaline?—when Julia turned to him.

“Ready?” Chris asked.

“I don’t have anyone to look at,” Lukas complained.

“The curse of the odd numbers,” Chris said. “I’ve got enough years of luck backlisted with Jamie, but from the looks of it, your skinny photographer ass could probably use a good streak.” And so although she first clinked glasses with Jamie, it was Lukas’s gaze she held as she drank.

Jamie didn’t seem to care about the ritual, and Blake knew it was nonsense, but he felt a sudden stab for his friend.

Not for long, though. Julia was holding his gaze, open and unblinking, and he couldn’t look away. Her eyes were deep brown, flecked with lighter bits that sparked in the sun. There was something unreadable in her, something hidden below the surface that he couldn’t see. Like her blush, it made him want to find out more.

It was the writer in him, the one who made his living figuring out people and their situations. Looking at Julia, he wanted to dive right in.

“To good sex,” he said.

“To good sex,” she echoed, and lifted the glass to her lips.

Julia took a sip, and then she put the glass down slowly and pressed her lips together. The move wasn’t so pronounced as to be obvious, but enough to make Blake wonder if she was intentionally playing with him. She smiled with her eyes, even as her mouth barely curved.

Definitely a tease, he decided. How could they be eyeing each other, talking about good sex when they’d only just met?

He really did need a jump in the pool.

But Julia had settled back in her chair, still nursing her beer, and Blake couldn’t pull himself away even after Chris, Jamie, and Lukas returned to the water. He was just being nice to the newcomer. Just making friendly conversation. Not at all glad that the two of them had been left alone again under the shady palm trees.

“So what brings you here for seven whole days, Ms. Julia?” he asked.

“Ugh, don’t call me that.” She made a face. “That’s what my students call me.”

“You’re a teacher?” Definitely not what he would have guessed. “I thought teachers usually got a last name.”

“They try to be progressive.”

“I bet your students love you.”

“Nope,” she said cheerfully. The laugh escaped him before he could stop himself. “I’m strict. You have to be.”

“Well, I’m sure they’re lucky nonetheless.” He grinned. God, to have had a teacher like her… He would have paid a lot more attention in class.

Maybe.

“High school,” she went on, ignoring his attempts to compliment her. “Math, all levels. They’re hellions, but I love them.” She paused. “Most of the time.”

“Oh my God—calculus?”

She nodded like it was no big deal. Blake whistled. He wanted to admit that he was terrible at math and was sure to embarrass himself in front of her trying to figure out a bill or something. But that might open him up to questions about what he did for a living, and that was something he didn’t want to talk about—at least not yet.

Not to mention that it implied some future meeting during which he might be paying said bill, and that wasn’t going to happen because even if he got lucky enough to do more than chat by the pool, he was leaving first thing in the morning. He swallowed his comment and tried a different approach.

“So a week is what you get for, what, Christmas holiday?”

She nodded. “I can’t even remember the last time I took a real vacation. It’s a new school, and I’ve been there since it opened. I adore the teaching part, but I do way too much of the administrative work because most everyone else is still learning the ropes. I’m supposed to be leading a training this week over the break, but at the last minute I just said fuck it, I can’t.”

The sudden curse surprised him coming from her delicate mouth but he liked the contrast. Put that down on the list of more things he wanted to elicit from her. Preferably followed by the sound of her crying out his name.

“So what made you say fuck it?” he asked, not trying to hide his smile as he took the opportunity to test whether she liked the word on his lips as much as he liked it on hers.

She looked up at the sun beginning to dip toward the trees as though it held the answer, and that was when he saw it again, that hint of something else beneath the exterior she wore for the world. Now that he knew what she did for a living he could see the distinction between the self she put on as a teacher, keeping all those kids in line, and the other woman struggling to break through.

“I guess I’d had enough,” she said softly, and suddenly it wasn’t the voice of flirty, easy confidence. Suddenly, she was telling him something real.

He leaned forward and listened. “Enough of what?” he prodded as a shriek from the pool rose over a volley of splashes.

“I had a birthday,” she admitted.

“These things have a way of occurring.”

She rolled her eyes. “Thanks for the reminder.”

“It can’t have been that high of a number,” he said.

“Turning thirty when your whole life revolves around your job and a bunch of hormone-soaked teens is sort of depressing.” She sighed into her glass.

“Well, I can tell you from the other side that life does go on, and the view from the ripe old age of thirty-one isn’t so bad.” He smiled warmly. That he’d spent his thirty-first birthday trashed out of his skull, depressed as hell over Kelley, didn’t need to be shared. The fact that Julia was so distressed about the big three-zero was pretty adorable.

All the more reason for him to show her how good her birthday could be.

He drained the last of his cup. “How about a birthday swim?”

“Too late for that—it was yesterday.”

“A belated birthday swim, then.” He stood and extended his hand.

She hesitated for a moment, fingers resting on the knot of that thing around her waist. Drops of water from Chris and Lukas’s splashing stained her bathing suit and trickled down her stomach. He had to stop himself from trailing his finger along that same path.

And then she seemed to decide something and let the cloth fall. Blake barely had time to appreciate the sway of her hips before she’d jumped in. He laughed to himself at how she’d already left him behind.

Blake dove in and popped up alongside her. “Not bad,” he grinned, shaking water from his hair. The temperature was just right, cool enough to be refreshing but still warm enough to stay in for what felt like forever.

“It’s pretty much perfect,” she agreed.

She closed her eyes and floated on her back, drops of water clinging like stars to her lashes. Blake forced himself to swim a few laps to get his brain back. He wasn’t supposed to be noticing things like eyelashes, and the little curve of her nose, and the way her lips parted when she sighed.

He was supposed to be having fun and forgetting anything that might make him linger. Resisting the pull that might draw him to one person, one place for too long.

They swam until they were tired, came out for cold beer until they were hot again, and jumped back in the pool. Then Chris suggested a place in town for dinner, and they piled five into a cab, Julia wedged tightly between Chris and Blake in the back seat.

He could feel her body pressed against his side, his thigh, smell her shampoo and a faint, clean whiff of chlorine. Her hair was still damp from the shower and only the fact that it was too cramped in the taxi to move kept him from brushing it back with his hand.

She sat across from him at dinner, and at first he was disappointed, but on second thought he didn’t mind the view. They filled their plates from a buffet laden with grilled fish, spicy sausage, and a thick smoky stew. There were black-eyed peas and empanadas, fresh green beans and pickled beets, and a large fruit spread with mangoes, star fruit, and the pear-like cupuaçu.

Julia was thorough about trying everything, sucking on the pulpy flesh of a cashew fruit as she tried to think of what it reminded her of. Blake wanted to be the one licking the juice from her fingers, tasting the fruit on her lips.

For the cab ride back, he announced that his arms couldn’t survive another ride being pinned against the door and flagged down a second car. Somehow he wasn’t surprised when in all the confusion of who was going where, he wound up alone with Julia in the back seat.

“Good Lord,” she moaned, “I hope I get to eat like this every day this week.”

“That’s what vacation is for.” He smiled at her happiness.

“Yet another thing I’ve been missing out on,” she murmured, and looked away at the lights of the town drifting away, lost for a moment in her own thoughts. Blake could hear a trace of sadness in her words and wondered if she even realized she’d spoken aloud.

“Still feeling bad about your birthday?” he asked.

She laughed, pulled back from whatever place she’d just retreated to that he couldn’t touch. When she looked at him again, she was smiling. “This has been a great introduction to thirty. I’m beginning to realize life actually does go on.”

“Sometimes it even gets better,” he joked.

She shook her head. “It’d be hard to top that pumpkin flan.”

“I’m sure we could think of something.” He slid across the back seat, next to her.

She looked startled, but he couldn’t believe that she hadn’t been thinking about it all night. Not with the way they’d been looking at each other, pulled into conversations across the table even when everyone around them was talking about something else.

The taxi was climbing the hill toward the hostel. He didn’t have much time. It wasn’t some grand romantic gesture, but who cared? The night was slipping away and he had to act fast. Before the taxi made the next turn, he lifted her chin with his first two fingers and pressed his lips to hers.

Even in the dark of night she tasted like sunlight and fruit, and he felt the warmth flood him as her mouth opened to him. He could feel her back arch, her neck tilt to draw him in. She’d been wanting that kiss, he could tell.

The car shuddered to a stop as they pulled up to the lighted entrance of the hostel. There was a volley of car doors as the rest of the crew piled out of the cab ahead of them.

Blake pulled away reluctantly. Julia’s eyes were still closed and he remembered the water on her lashes, how she was lost to the world. He wished they could have kept driving, but he knew this wasn’t the end.

He wasn’t done showing her how good her birthday could be.