Long Hot Summer Read online

  “I don’t think that’ll be an issue. Alice probably won’t ever let her come back.”

  Dylan cocked his. “What?”

  “Oh, nothing.” She averted her eyes from his inquisitive gaze.

  Hannie shook her head. She couldn’t tell Dylan the truth about his first love, could she? That Hannie feared there was some big plan in place to force Mandy to sell the property?

  “The kids will love having their grandmother there, that’s all.”

  “Right.” Dylan took a step closer. “You going to be all right up here on your own?”

  A prickle of anger rose in her. “You think I don’t know what I’m doing?”

  He frowned at her, settled his feet apart in a wide stance and crossed his arms over his chest. “I am the professional firefighter. In case you hadn’t noticed.”

  She had noticed. From his daffodil coloured helmet in his hand to his protective yellow jacket and trousers, he was every inch the expert. She looked Dylan up and down, from the top of his buzz-cut hair to the steel cap of his boots, stopping for just a fraction of a second on what was in between. Strength. Heat. Muscle.

  All forbidden to her.

  It wasn’t that blasting north wind that was frying her brain. It was Dylan Knight and the memory of that damn kiss.

  “You know I’ve lived here all my life.”

  “Yes.”

  “And you know that I know what I’m doing.” She’d evacuated more times than she could count with her mum, their four-wheel drive packed to its roof with their secured plastic containers filled with all the important papers in the house – insurance papers, wills, passports – and their precious pets. Charlie the lab when she was a child, then Oscar the next lab when she was a teen.

  Dylan was close now. Almost as close as he’d been the night before when he’d pressed his lips to hers and scorched her.

  “So stop bossing me around. I’ve lived through bushfires, Knight. I’ve taken all the steps recommended by your colleagues in the Country Fire Service. Look around. There’s no tall grass here. I’ve checked the generators and my water tanks are full. I have a battery-powered radio and enough food and water to last a week if we have power blackouts. I’ve cleaned leaves out of all the gutters on Mandy’s house and my cottage and the lawns are mowed. And, yes, I have an evacuation plan in case you’re wondering.”

  She shouldn’t have to convince Mr Macho-Firefighter-Teen-Crush that she knew about bushfires. But she felt the need to show off. Just a little.

  He shook his head. “Why did I even think I had to ask?”

  “Because you’re you, that’s why.”

  He studied her face for a moment and she wished she could see behind his reflective sunglasses.

  His mouth remained a flat line. “Don’t take any risks, Hannie.”

  “I won’t.” She’d learnt from bitter experience that taking risks hurt and that the consequences could be lifelong.

  Despite what had happened last night, she didn’t want him to worry about her staying at Reynolds Ridge when he was supposed to be at the station or on the trucks, saving people and property.

  He turned to go, and then looked back. “Because, even though I would do it in a heartbeat, I’d hate to have to get all official on your ass.”

  “You’re not getting anything on my ass, Knight.”

  His jaw twitched before he turned away. As he strode off, he called out, “When the fire’s out, we’re going to talk about last night.”

  “There’s nothing more to say,” she shouted after him.

  Dylan stopped. Turned. “Oh, yes there fucking is.”

  Then he got in his car and drove off to fight the fires.

  Chapter Nine

  It was the best sound in the world. The plop-plop-plop of raindrops on the tin roof of her cottage. When she heard it, Hannie lifted her eyes to the ceiling and breathed a sigh of relief so deep it emptied her lungs.

  The weather forecasters had been predicting it would rain, that the cool change would sweep up from the southwest to blanket the city and the hills with rain, and it had finally arrived.

  “Hear that, Ted? It’s raining. Your favourite thing. If you’re really lucky and we get a decent downpour, there’ll even be water in the creek in the gully. I might take you down there for a swim, hey?”

  Ted sat up and whimpered in excitement. She undid his leash and threw open the back door and they stood together in the rain. Hannie let it soak through her T-shirt and her shorts, her hair and closed her eyes and turned her face to it, drinking it up in joy.

  It had been a long day and a long wait for the rain to come, but at nine at night, it had delivered. The forecast was for ten millimetres, a decent soaking for the Adelaide Hills, which would extinguish all the embers that had been blowing around from the Normanton blaze, and settle any smaller grass fires that could have potentially flared. In the morning, the State Emergency Service crews could continue their work clearing tree branches from roads all over the hills, and people could perhaps return to normality for a while.

  Until the forecast turned again.

  Hannie took Ted back inside and tethered him in his bed. She poured herself a long glass of water and gulped it down.

  When the fire’s out, we’re going to talk about last night.

  Dylan’s words had been going around and around in her head since she’d heard the rain. What was she going to do? It didn’t feel safe to be around him but how could she tell him that? She’d have to lie. She’d have to pretend that kiss was a big nothing and she wasn’t interested in him in that way.

  “We should just be neighbours.” Yes, that was what she should open with.

  And it was true. For months now, she’d been working on plans to move out of the cottage on Mandy’s property into a place of her own, with a shop attached if she could find such a place. She’d been grateful for Mandy’s offer, as it had allowed her to really get her business up and running with low overheads, but she was doing well now. Jobs were steady and Hannie had done her sums. She had socked away money in the bank and she was almost ready to make the leap. She wanted to be out on her own, to prove to herself that she could make her dream of her own business come true.

  While she was still torn about what was going on with Mandy, it would be so much better to be further away from Dylan. Knowing he was there across the valley had become unbearable. So close and yet so untouchable.

  Ever since the night of the school party all those years ago, Hannie had tried to repair her relationship with Alice, to make up for her betrayal. She had hoped that staying with Mandy and looking after her aunt and the property has been part of that bridge-building, but Alice seemed to resent her for it instead of being grateful.

  They had been young, hadn’t they? Couldn’t they be forgiven a stupid mistake?

  She’d kissed her cousin’s boyfriend, Alice’s first love.

  And worse, he’d kissed Hannie, too.

  They’d broken Alice’s heart and were still paying the price for it.

  It was ten o’clock when Dylan drove up to the cottage.

  Ted growled a moment before Hannie heard the sound of tyres on gravel. Hannie was sitting at the kitchen bench on a high stool, her fingers knotted together. The hair on the back of her neck prickled when she heard the footsteps outside and then the knock.

  She’d known he’d keep his word. He was that kind of man.

  “Come in,” she called.

  Dylan walked through the unlocked door and strode into the kitchen. He wasn’t wearing his fire fighting uniform, but jeans and a worn T-shirt. His hair was wet and pushed back and Hannie smelled soap.

  “You shouldn’t have bothered coming over,” she said. “I don’t think there’s anything more to say.”

  “I don’t agree. We’re finally going to talk about what happened.”

  She spun on her chair and stared at him. “You mean what happened all those years ago?”

  “And last night.”

  Hann
ie gritted her teeth. “We kissed each other. We shouldn’t have. That’s it. It can’t happen again. End of story.” She swivelled her chair away from him.

  Dylan walked to the kitchen bench, stood opposite her. Hannie focussed her attention on the fruit bowl between them. It was full of plums and she stared at them to distract herself from his penetrating gaze.

  “You wanted me to kiss you.”

  The plums were plump and purple. The stems and leaves were bright green and fresh. “So what if I did?”

  “You liked it.”

  “Yes, I did.” Hannie squeezed her eyes shut. She’d more than liked it. She’d been hungering for it ever since.

  “And you kissed me back.”

  She let out the breath she’d been holding. “So what if I did?”

  She heard his long strides on the slate floor and then felt him close. His hands were on her shoulders and he swivelled her around on the bar stool. Her clamped-together knees pressed into his strong thighs.

  “Hannie,” he said, “I want to kiss you again.”

  “No, you don’t,” she replied, in barely a whisper.

  “Oh, yeah, I do. And then I want more. I want to fuck you right here on the kitchen bench.”

  “Oh, god.” She gasped and he put his hands on her knees and stroked up the bare skin of her thighs, into the legs of her shorts.

  She spread her knees wide and Dylan moved in, pressed himself closer, up against her. Tingles became an explosion. One of his hands moved from her thigh to her neck, splaying against the skin under her ear. She kept her eyes closed and shivered at the feel of his warm breath on her cheek.

  “You didn’t want me when we were in high school. Do you want me now?”

  She pulled back. “What did you just say?”

  His eyes were dark as the night outside. “Fuck, Hannie. Don’t make me say it again. You kissed me that one time, all those years ago, and then nothing. You dumped me. I was crazy about you, didn’t you know?”

  Hannie’s head spun. She planted her hands on his chest to keep his lips away from hers, so she could get her thoughts straight. “You were crazy about me?”

  “For months.”

  Hannie’s eyes stung. “I wanted you, Dylan, but you weren’t mine to want. You were with Alice. That night we kissed, when I would have given you everything, you were hers. I wanted something I could never have and I took a stupid risk and betrayed my cousin. Wanting you now makes me feel exactly the way I felt back then. I can’t betray her again.”

  The fingers on her thigh gripped hard. “I wasn’t with Alice when we kissed. We’d already broken up. On the night of the district Grand Final.”

  That had been in late September. Reynolds Ridge High had thumped the Normanton High boys by ten goals. She’d been watching the whole game with Alice at the school oval. Dylan had kicked six of those goals. Alice had told her she was going to give him her virginity that night, to celebrate. The school party had been a week later, just before school ended for the year.

  Hannie felt sick. “No... no... no.”

  Dylan ran a frustrated hand through his hair. His other hand was still on her thigh. She looked down at it, his tanned fingers against her pale skin.

  “Look,” he said, “I know I was an eighteen year old kid full of hormones, but there’s no way in hell I would have kissed you if I was with someone else. No fucking way.”

  Hannie tried to breath. “But she screamed at me that night at the school party.”

  “She was angry and jealous. I tried talking to her but she stormed off.”

  “But the next day, you weren’t there. She stood on my doorstep and screamed at me some more. She accused me of trying to steal her boyfriend.”

  “She did what?”

  Hannie’s head throbbed.

  She could either believe Dylan or Alice. And she knew, in that moment, that she couldn’t choose her cousin, not after how she’d been treating her all these years, like the poor step-sister in some crazed fairy tale, letting her hang on a lie all this time. For fourteen years she’d made her feel guilty.

  But this wasn’t a fairy tale. This was real life.

  “All these years ...” Hannie finally managed to say. “She’s been lying to me all these years.”

  She looked up. Dylan was gazing down at her.

  “You thought I’d cheated on Alice.”

  Hannie nodded.

  “That’s why you didn’t talk to me after that.”

  She nodded again, her heart pounding in her chest, her palms sweating, her head light and spinning.

  “And she kept the lie up to keep us apart, didn’t she?” Hannie said quietly. “Out of some kind of twisted revenge or something.”

  “It sure as hell looks like it.”

  Hannie reached for his T-shirt, gripped her fingers in the fabric and pulled him in close. She took a deep breath and slammed her mouth to his. And all the heat of the scorching Adelaide summer was in that kiss.

  Chapter Ten

  Hannie moved fast. There were so many pent up years of longing in her heart that she didn’t want to waste a single second.

  She pulled Dylan’s T-shirt off over his head and pressed her lips to his chest, all tight muscle and bone and naked skin that tasted like soap and man and sex. She felt his breath catch in his throat when she licked his pec and bit his nipple, and she looked up at him, saw his dark eyes blazing, watching her, and she trailed her tongue up his chest, along his neck and jaw to his bottom lip and she found his mouth and kissed him again. She slipped her arms around his neck and pulled him close and somehow his hands found the hem of her singlet top and got it over her head. Then, with a quick flick, he’d unfastened the clasp of her bra and that was off, too.

  “Fuck, Hannie...” He moaned when he took in her bare breasts and then he dropped his head to one nipple, sucking it and nipping it with his teeth, and then the other, and it was so good and she was building and building and the tingle became a throb.

  “I want you.” She groaned.

  He chuckled deeply against her lips. “You got me.”

  And then he kissed her again and her whole body responded to his mouth by throbbing, aching, demanding release and needing him inside her.

  “Dylan,” she said, pulling away so she could speak. “Condom. Now. The bathroom.”

  He gripped his arms around her and lifted her off the stool. She wrapped her legs around him, pressing herself against his stomach, wanting the pressure of his body against hers, and as he strode down the hallway, she kissed him again, rubbed against him, splayed her hands in his hair.

  She stopped only just long enough to open the medicine cabinet on the wall and grab a box of condoms she kept there.

  He grinned. “Think that’ll be enough?”

  “Surprise me, Knight.”

  When they reached Hannie’s bedroom, he sat on the edge of the bed and Hannie pushed him backwards until his back hit the sheets. She slipped off him to tug down her shorts and her knickers and he kicked off his shoes and jeans and then she climbed back on him and, as soon as he’d ripped the foil wrapper open and protected himself, Hannie found him with a hand and moved over him and he thrust up and filled her and she closed her eyes and felt every inch of him inside her.

  His hands were on her hips, tight, and she arched herself back and rode him and splayed her hands on his chest and then fell forward, knowing this was how she would come too, and when she did, she bit her lip and held her breath, and then he came, with a thrust that felt like she was riding a bucking bull. He slowed, closed his eyes, and they tried to catch their breath and slow their pounding hearts and they looked at each other, in disbelief, in shock, in total lust.

  “Hannie,” he said.

  She slid off him and dropped to the bed by his side, boneless, sated, in a daze.

  “Uh-huh,” she replied.

  Dylan got off the bed, went down the hall to the bathroom and came back. She propped herself up on her elbows to watch him. He really was
magnificent naked. Tall and lean, and with the kind of muscle definition one get from exercise and hard work, not hours in a gym staring at themselves in the mirror. But it was his smile that got her right in the solar plexus. Oh, his smile. He slowly climbed over her and covered her with his body. She spread her legs to let him settle against her and he kissed her, gently, softly, slowly. Her lips tingled. She was sure they would be swollen tomorrow. She didn’t care.

  The light of the night sky left the room in semidarkness. He was more than a shadow; his eyes were bright and his smile the same.

  And when she felt him hard, pressing against her, she lifted her head. He wanted her again?

  “Really?” she asked.

  He moved against her, hard and hot and huge, as he kissed her and when she lifted her hips, he said with a sexy grin, “You wanted me to surprise you, Reynolds.”

  “I did say that, yeah,” she said, feeling brain-fuzzed.

  “Surprise,” he said in her ear as he pushed himself against her again.

  She fought the urge to spread her legs and take him in and, instead, fumbled on the sheets for the box of condoms. Dylan moved backwards off the bed and stood before her, watching as she tore the foil.

  “You want to do that for me?” he asked.

  Hannie looked at him, took in every muscle, every plane of his body, and shook her head.

  “Not yet.” She edged forward.

  His cock was almost up against his taught belly and she suddenly didn’t want to cover it with anything but her hands and her mouth. Hannie moved closer to him, dropping her legs over the edge of the bed, squeezing his calves between her knees, and she took him in her hand, wrapping her fingers around him, tight, then loose then tight, sliding her palm the length of his shaft, listening to his breathing deepen, watching his chest rise and fall.

  “You’re incredible,” she whispered and when she pressed her lips to his cock, kissed him, and then ran her tongue along the silky skin, he gripped her shoulders and moaned her name.

  She opened her mouth wide and took him in. His legs shook and his hands moved to her head and he tangled his hands in her hair, like handcuffs around his wrists. He pulsed against her tongue and then he pulled out, reached for the foil package by her leg and rolled the condom on in half a second flat.