CHAPTER ONE
CAN I get away with it?
It was harder than you’d think to take a picture of yourself in a small, enclosed space wearing nothing but a bikini. Biting back the giggle, Mya Campbell peered at her latest effort. The flash had created a big white space over at least half the screen, obscuring most of her reflection, and what you could see was more dork than glam.
With a muffled snort—a combination of frustration and laughter—she deleted it and twisted in front of the mirror, trying for another. Her teeth pinched her lower lip as she glanced at the result—maybe the skinny-straps scarlet number was a step too far?
‘Is everything okay?’ the clearly suspicious sales assistant called through the curtain, her iced tone snootier than her brittle perfect appearance.
‘Fine, thanks.’ Mya fumbled, quickly taking another snap before the woman yanked back the curtain. She needed to get it away before being—ah—busted.
Both she and the assistant knew she couldn’t afford any of these astronomically priced designer swimsuits. But that long-suppressed imp inside her liked a dress-up and it had been so long and if she were to have such a thing as a summer holiday, then she’d really love one of these little, very little things …
Giggles erupted as she tried to send the text. Her fingertips slipped she shook so hard. She was such an idiot. Typos abounded and she tapped faster as she heard the assistant return.
‘Are you sure you don’t need any help?’
She needed help all right. Professional help from those people in white coats. Too late now, the soft whooshing sound confirmed her message had gone. And she couldn’t afford this scrap of spandex anyway.
‘Thanks, but no, I don’t think this style is really me.’ Of course it wasn’t. She tossed the phone into her open bag on the floor and began the contortions required to get out of the tiny bikini. She caught a glimpse of herself bent double and at that point she blushed. The bikini was basically indecent. Would she never learn that bodies like hers were not built for tiny two pieces? She’d bend to pull off her shoes at the beach and instantly fall out of a top like this. Not remotely useful for swimming. She’d have to lie still and pose, and that just wasn’t her. Mind you, a summer holiday wasn’t for her this year either.
And never in a million years would she send such a picture to anyone other than her best friend and all-around pain in the butt, Lauren Davenport. But Lauren would understand—and Mya didn’t need her answer now. It was a ‘no’ already.
Brad Davenport looked at his watch and stifled the growl of frustration. He’d had back-to-back cases in court all day, followed by this meeting that had gone on over an hour too long. He watched the bitterness between the parents, watched eleven-year-old Gage Simmons seated next to him shrivel into a smaller and smaller ball as accusations were hurled from either side of the room. The boy’s parents were more interested in taking pieces out of each other and blocking each other instead of thinking about what might be best for their son. And finally Brad’s legendary patience snapped.
‘I think we can leave this for now,’ he interrupted abruptly. ‘My client needs a break. We’ll reschedule for later in the week.’
He glanced around the room and the other lawyers nodded. Then he glanced at the kid, who was looking at the floor with a blank-slate expression. He’d seen it many times, had worn it himself many times—withdrawing, not showing anyone how much you hurt inside.
Yeah, it wasn’t only his client who needed a break. But Brad’s burden was his own fault. He’d taken on too many cases. Brad Davenport definitely had a problem saying no.
Twenty minutes later he carried the bag full of files out to his car and considered the evening ahead. He needed a blowout—some all-physical pleasure to help him relax, because right now the arguments still circled in his head. Questions he needed to ask and answer lit up like blindingly bright signs; every item on his to-do list shouted at him megaphone-style. Yeah, his head hurt. He reached for his phone and took it off mute, ready to find an energetic date for the night—someone willing, wild and happy to walk away when the fun was done.
There were a couple of voice messages, more emails, a collection of texts—including one with an attachment from a number he didn’t recognise. He tapped it.
Can I get away with it?
He absorbed that accompanying message by a weird kind of osmosis, because the picture itself consumed all his attention. He could see only the side of her face, only half her smile, but that didn’t matter—he was a man and there were curves in the centre of the screen. Creamy, plump breasts pushed up out of the do-me-now-or-die scarlet bra she’d squeezed into. Brad swore in amazement, his skin burning all over in immediate response. The picture cut off beneath her belly button—damn it—but he really couldn’t complain. Her breasts were outstanding—lush curves that made him think … think … Actually no, he’d lost all ability to think.
Can I get away with it?
This doll could get away with anything she wanted.
Startled, but happily so, he slid his fingers across the screen to zoom the picture, adjusting it so it was her partially exposed face he focused on now. She was smiling as if she was only just holding b
ack the sexiest of laughs.
Brad stilled, his heart hiccupping as disbelief stole a beat. There was only one person in the world with a smile like that. Slowly he traced her lips. Her upper lip was sensual—widening, just as the bone structure of her face widened to those sharp, high cheekbones and wide-set green eyes while her lower lip was as full, but shorter; it had to be to fit with that narrow little chin. And between those slightly mismatched lips was that telltale gap between her two front teeth. It had never been fixed. Her whole body was untainted by cosmetic procedures, indeed any kind of cosmetics.
Mya Campbell. Best friend of his wayward sister, Lauren, and persona non grata at the Davenport residence.
In that minute that Brad thought about her—the longest stretch of time he’d ever thought about her—a few images from the past decade haphazardly flashed through his head. Glimpses of a girl who’d been around the house often enough, but who’d hidden away whenever he or his parents were home. Who could blame her? His parents had been unwelcoming and patronising. Which of course had made Lauren push the friendship all the more. And Mya had come across as less than impressed with those in authority and less than interested in abiding by any of the normal social rules. The two of them had looked like absolute terrors. And the irony was that Mya was the most academically brilliant student in the school. An uber-geek beneath the attitude and the outrageous outfits. That was why she was at the school; she was the scholarship kid.
He’d only ever seen her dressed up ‘properly’ the once. She’d still looked sullen, exuding a kind of ‘cooler-than-you’ arrogance, and frankly at the time he’d been otherwise distracted by a far friendlier girl. But now he saw the all-grown-up sensuality. Now he saw the humour that he’d heard often enough but never been privy to—never been interested enough to want to be privy to. Now he saw what she’d been hiding all this time. Now the heat shot to his groin in a stab so severe he flinched. And she’d sent him …?
No. He laughed aloud at the ridiculous thought. Mya Campbell had not just sent him a sexy summons. She didn’t even know he existed—other than as her best friend’s big, distant brother. Hell, he hadn’t seen her in, what, at least three years? He tapped the screen to bring it back to normal—correction, completely amazing—view. No, this playful pose wasn’t for him. Which meant that certified genius Mya Campbell had actually made a mistake for once in her life. What was he going to do about it? Crucially, where was Mya now?
Questions pounded his head again, but this time they caused anticipation rather than a headache. He tossed the phone onto the passenger seat of his convertible, ignoring every other message. He put his sunglasses on, stress gone, and fired the engine. Now the night beckoned with a very amusing intrigue to unravel.
Can I get away with it?
Not this time.
The music was so loud Mya could feel the vibrations through her feet—which was saying something given her shoes had two and a half inches of sole. But she was used to the volume and she had enough experience to lip-read the orders well enough now. Shifts six days a week in one of the hottest bars in town had her able to work fast and efficient. The way she always worked. No matter what she was doing, Mya Campbell was driven to be the best.
Her phone sat snug against her thigh in the side pocket of her skinny jeans, switched to mute so it didn’t interrupt her shift. The duty manager, Drew, frowned on them texting or taking calls behind the bar. Fair enough. They were too busy anyway. So she had no idea whether Lauren had got the pic or what she’d thought of it. Though, given Lauren was welded to her mobile, Mya figured there’d be an answer when she got a spare second to check. She grinned as she lined twelve shiny new shot glasses on the polished bar, thinking of Lauren’s face when she saw it. She’d be appalled—she’d always shrieked over Mya’s more outrageous ‘statement’ outfits.
‘Come on, gorgeous, show us your stuff!’
Mya glanced up at the bunch of guys crowded round her end of the bar. A stag party, they’d insisted she pour the trick shots for them, not her sidekick, Jonny, down the other end of the bar. She didn’t get big-headed about it—truth was Jonny had taught her the tricks and she was still working towards acing him on them. It was just these guys wanted the female factor.
She’d mixed three for them already and now was onto the finale. She enjoyed it—nothing like lighting up a dozen flaming sambucas for a bunch of wild boys who were megaphone loud in their appreciation. She flicked her wrist and poured the liquid—a running stream into each glass. Then she met the eyes of the groom and flashed him a smile.
‘Are you ready?’ she teased lightly.
The guys nodded and cheered in unison.
She held the lighter to the first shot glass and gently blew, igniting the rest of the line of glasses down the bar. The cheers erupted. She glanced at Jonny and winked. She’d only recently mastered that one, and she knew he was standing right where one of the fire extinguishers was kept.
Grinning, she watched them knock the shots back and slam the glasses onto the bar. Some barracked for more but she already knew the best man had other ideas. Her part in their debauched night was over; they were onto their next destination—she didn’t really want to know where or how much further downhill they were going to slide.
‘A thank-you kiss!’ one of the guys called. ‘Kiss! Kiss!’
They all chanted.
Mya just held up the lighter and flicked it so the flame shot up. She waved it slowly back and forth in front of her face. ‘I wouldn’t want you to get hurt,’ she said with a teasing tilt of her head.
They howled and hissed like water hitting a burning element. Laughing—mostly in relief now—she watched them mobilise and work their way to the door. And that was when she saw him.
Brad High-School-Crush Davenport.
For a second, shock slackened every muscle and she dropped the lighter. Grasping at the last moment to stop it slipping, she accidentally caught the hot end. Damn. She tossed it onto the shelf below the bar and rubbed the palm of her hand on the half-apron tied round her waist. The sharp sting of that small patch of skin didn’t stop her from staring spellbound schoolgirl-fashion at her former HSC. But that was because he was staring right at her as if she were the one and only reason he’d walked into the bar.
Good grief. She tried to stop the burn spreading to her belly because it wasn’t right that one look could ignite such a reaction in her.
Back in the days when she’d believed in fairy tales, she’d also believed Brad would have been her perfect prince. Now she knew so much better: a) there were no princes, b) even if there were, she had no need for a prince and c) Brad Davenport was nowhere near perfect.
Although to be fair, he certainly looked it. Now—impossible though it might be—he looked more perfect than ever. All six feet three and a half inches of him. She knew about the half because it was written in pencil on the door-jamb in the kitchen leading to the butler’s sink, along with Lauren’s height and those of their mum and dad—one of the displays of Happy Familydom his mother had cultivated.
Topping the modelicious height, his dark brown hair was neatly trimmed, giving him a clean-cut, good-boy look. He was anything but good. Then there were the eyes—light brown maple-syrup eyes, with that irresistible golden tinge to them. With a single look that he’d perfected at an eyebrow-raising young age, he could get any woman to beg him to pour it all over her.
And Brad obliged. The guy had had more girlfriends than Mya had worked overtime hours. And Mya had done nothing but work since she’d badgered the local shop owner into letting her do deliveries when she was nine years old.
She tried to move but some trickster had concreted her feet to the floor. She kept staring as he walked through the bar, and with every step he came closer, her temperature lifted another degree. This despite the air-conditioning unit blasting just above the bar.
He was one of those people for whom the crowds parted, as if an invisible bulldozer were clearing the space just ahead of
him. It wasn’t just his height, not just his conventionally handsome face with its perfect symmetry and toothpaste-advertisement teeth, but his demeanour. He had the presence thing down pat. No wonder he won every case he took on. People paid attention to him whether they wanted to or not. Right now Mya wasn’t the only person staring. Peripheral vision told her every woman in the bar was; so were most of the men.
She needed to pull it together. She wasn’t going to be yet another woman who rolled over and begged for Brad Davenport—even if he was giving her that look. But why was he giving her that look? He’d never looked at her like that before; in fact he’d never really looked at her at all.
Her heart raced the way it did before an exam when she was in mid ‘OMG I’ve forgotten everything’ panic. Had she entered a parallel universe and somehow turned sixteen all over again?
‘Hi, Brad.’ She forced a normal greeting as he stepped up to the space the stag boys had left at the bar.
‘Hi, Mya.’ He mirrored her casual tone—only his was genuine whereas hers was breathless fakery.
It was so unfair that the guy had been blessed with such gorgeousness. In the attractiveness exam of life, Brad scored in the top point five per cent. But it—and other blessings from birth—had utterly spoilt him. Despite her knowing this, the maple-syrup glow in those eyes continued to cook her brain to mush. She ran both hands down the front of her apron, trying to get her muscles to snap out of the spellbound lethargy. But her body had gone treacly soft inside while on the outside her skin was sizzling hot. What was she waiting for? ‘What can I get you?’
He smiled, the full-bore Brad Davenport charming smile. ‘A beer, please.’
‘Just the one?’ She flicked her hair out of her eyes with a businesslike flip of her fingers. That was better—the sooner she got moving, the more control she’d regain. And she could put herself half in the fridge while she got his beer; that would be a very good thing.