Better with You: Outback Skies Book 4 Read online

  Damn it. John Tennant, Charlie Baynard, whatever the hell he called himself now, still pushed all her buttons.

  Coming here, letting him know she was here, actually interacting with him, may be far more dangerous than she’d thought.

  Slicking her tongue along her bottom lip, she oozed as much sinfully evocative presence as she could. “Ready.”

  “Lacky,” he shouted over his shoulder without tearing his stare from hers, “make sure those pastries get to the cop shop, okay?”

  “Sure thing, Senior Constable,” the man behind the bar called back.

  With a slow grin, Charlie touched his trigger finger to her bottom lip, winked and then pivoted on his heel and strode through the pub, pulling her along behind him.

  She drew level with him by the time they made it to the door, flicked her wrist out of his grip with practiced ease and slid her hand down his back. Slipped her fingers between his body and the waistband of his trousers.

  Inched them lower.

  Hot, smooth flesh. Nothing but hot, smooth flesh.

  No boxers. No briefs.

  No blade either. Or 9mm semi-auto.

  Nothing but Charlie’s skin under her fingers.

  Wow.

  Had he really changed that much in the last four years?

  Was the man beside her now not the man she’d come all this way for?

  And why was that idea far more disquieting than it should be? Why did the idea of an unarmed John Tennant make her heart race in a way it never had before?

  “Have a good one, Senior Constable,” a voice yelled behind them as they reached the door. “Give ’er everything ya got.”

  Charlie flung a grin over his shoulder, his unreadable eyes catching hers as he did so. “I plan to, Lacky.”

  Dani’s breath caught.

  Whoever this man was, whatever he called himself, he was still the ruthless, dangerous man she’d known.

  Thank fucking God for that.

  Brutal heat slammed into her the second they stepped from the pub. Not even the shade of the building’s awning offered any real alleviation from the extreme temperature.

  The glare from the sinking sun, a ball of blood-orange fire unlike any she’d seen in any part of the world, stunned her eyes and, without thinking, she reached into her bag for her sunglasses.

  The world turned to a hot blur of red and brown and blue. Excruciating pain detonated in her wrist, followed instantly by her back and the back of her head as she was slammed against the outside wall of the pub.

  Smashed against it by Charlie.

  He pinned her there, one crushing hand ramming hers—the one she’d reached into her bag with—to the wall beside her head, the other wrapped around the base of her throat.

  Cold hazel eyes drilled into hers. His body pressed hard to hers, one corded thigh driven between her thighs, imprisoning her against the brick wall.

  A muscle in his stubble-covered jaw ticked. “Uh-uh, sweet cheeks.”

  Lust hotter than the day rushed through Dani. Lust and fear and relief. He was still the man she was after.

  Staring into his eyes, she cocked an eyebrow. “Sunglasses, baby cakes. I was reaching for my sunglasses.”

  He didn’t move.

  Held her that way.

  His grips on her wrist and throat didn’t relax. The steely length of his thigh muscle ground harder against her spread sex.

  Her clit responded to the ungentle pressure. Her body responded to her imprisonment. Adrenaline rushed through her. Her heart quickened and then slowed. Her breath did the same. Her stomach clenched. Her nipples pebbled.

  Charlie’s fingers around her throat closed tighter. “If you’re here to kill me, Dani, you’re going to need more than sunglasses.”

  She twitched her lips, rolling her hips to rub her clit harder to his thigh before she could stop herself. “You must be happy to see me, John, because I know you don’t have a gun in your pocket. Or at your back. And the Glock on your hip isn’t big enough to be rubbing against my—”

  “Baynard?”

  The harried shout right beside them, along with the thumping thuds of booted feet on the wooden floor, made Dani jump.

  Charlie released her with fluid speed and turned to the man—the doctor—now hurrying from the pub.

  “What’s up, Doc?” Charlie called at the man’s back just as Matt ran down the steps leading to the road.

  Matt skidded to a halt and spun to face Charlie. “We’ve got an emergency. Out on Cobar Road. A road train hit a 4WD. Family of four trapped inside. The road train has flipped. The driver is also trapped.”

  “Shit.”

  Dani blinked. The open concern in Charlie’s voice surprised her. When had she ever heard him speak with such a tone?

  Without looking back at her, he ran.

  Dani blinked again.

  What the hell?

  “Sorry, Mrs. Baynard,” another voice uttered beside her as Evan suddenly burst from the pub and ran after Charlie. “You can have him back later.”

  Dani stood motionless. Watching the three men all run in the same direction across the red-dust covered road. Heading…where?

  More pounding footfalls vibrated through the wooden floor and she turned to her right to find Ryan sprinting from the pub.

  “You too?” The question left her before she realized she’d uttered it.

  He half-turned, jogging in a nimble backwards gait. “The road train was carrying over 200 head of Farpoint Creek cattle. While your hubby, Evan and the doc deal with the accident, I’ll make sure the livestock still alive are okay.”

  “Oi, De Vries?”

  At Charlie’s shout, distant but still commanding, Dani jerked her stare away from the heli-musterer.

  Her ex-partner pointed at her, still running for his unknown destination, but now in a backward jog like Ryan. “Think about why you’re here,” he called, his expression unreadable. “And then think about if you still want to be here by the time I get back.”

  He spun around and took off, his threat—for that’s what it was—hanging in the dusty air.

  Dani stood motionless, watching the four men go.

  Ryan threw himself into a beat-up ute. Matt and Evan climbed into a 4WD. Red dirt and dust spewed up from their spinning wheels and both vehicles sped away.

  By the time it settled, Charlie was no longer visible.

  For some reason, Dani felt…cheated.

  Unsettled.

  Discombobulated.

  Which concerned her immensely.

  She didn’t like feeling any of those things. But what she disliked most of all was the new John.

  Charlie Baynard.

  She didn’t like that he seemed the kind of person everyone liked. A nice guy.

  The kind of man she’d thought she’d glimpsed under the ruthless spy exterior years ago.

  At least when she’d believed her ex-partner was still a ruthless assassin, the reason for being here was easier to come to terms with.

  But now…

  Now the thought of Charlie dead tore at something she didn’t think she still had—a heart.

  Shit.

  Chapter Three

  Eight hours after arriving at the accident, Charlie stepped through the front door of his home.

  Eight hours of hell.

  It hadn’t been pretty.

  When he’d landed the Wallaby Ridge Police Department’s helicopter next to the accident site, he’d been prepared for the worst.

  He hadn’t prepared himself enough.

  Dead and injured cattle had been strewn for almost a kilometer, the distance the 120-ton road train’s speeding momentum had continued to propel the flipped triple trailer truck. Trapped beneath the road train’s prime mover was the 4WD that had—for reasons Charlie had yet to ascertain—crossed the road into the road train’s path.

  A family of four from Melbourne had been in that crumpled mess of steel. A married couple in their forties, their two children—a boy of fifteen and a girl of twelve—and their pet dog.

  Only the dog was dead when Charlie arrived. How the rest of the family had survived was a miracle he’d gladly investigate once the wreckage arrived in Wallaby Ridge.

  The doc had flown with the family to the Wallaby Ridge hospital in the Flying Doctors’ plane. A helicopter was on its way from Cowra to transport them to Royal North Shore Hospital in Sydney ASAP. At this stage, Matt suspected the father would lose both legs and the mother her right arm. Their children were luckier. The son would walk away from the accident with only a punctured lung, and the daughter with a broken femur.

  The driver of the road train hadn’t been so fortunate.

  It had taken Charlie more than an hour to find his next of kin—a brother living in London—who hadn’t cared when told his last living relative was dead.

  Life, Charlie knew, was a fucked-up weird reality.

  After helping the doc get the family into the plane, helping Ryan round up the loose cattle and corral them into a temporary enclosure, and then helping Evan and the rest of the Wallaby Ridge fire brigade clear the wreckage, Charlie was more than looking forward to getting back home.

  To washing the dirt and blood and sweat from his body in a hot shower.

  To collapsing onto his bed.

  Almost two hours of paperwork kept him from doing so.

  But now he was finally here.

  Home.

  Flicking the switch beside the front door, he flooded his dark, silent living room with light.

  It took a second for his exhausted brain to remind him who he’d been with when he’d heard about the accident. Who had come back into his life.

  Hand moving to the Glock on his hip, he scanned the room before him.

  Nothing moved.

  There was no sign Dani had been here.

  Of course, this was Dani, so there really wouldn’t be.

  But still, with how brazen she’d been in the pub, how open she’d been approaching him, if she was here in his house, why would she hide?

  He knew she was in Wallaby Ridge. She didn’t need to be clandestine any more.

  Withdrawing his gun from its holster, he took one more step into his living room, closed the door behind him, locked it, activated the emergency lighting that would turn on every light in his house. “Honey?” he called, listening to the silence, studying the shadows. “I’m home.”

  Nothing.

  He didn’t move.

  “Sweet cheeks?”

  If anything was going to draw her out, it would be that.

  Still nothing.

  Without re-holstering his gun, Charlie crossed his living room, raised the lid concealed in the ottoman and withdrew an older model Nokia phone. Scanning the room, he dialed a number from memory and pressed the mobile to his ear.

  After the third ring, a scratchy male voice said on the other end, “I’ve told you all I know.”

  Turning his back to the closest wall, Charlie began making his way towards the kitchen. “All I want to know now is if she’s still in the Ridge?”

  Silence answered him. Not the silence of disconnection. The silence of an answer being sought.

  He could make out the faintest tapping of computer keys. At this time of the night, one a.m. to be precise, his source would need to do some fancy hacking to access the info Charlie wanted.

  “Unclear,” the male voice finally answered as Charlie scoped out the kitchen and found it free of any lurking female with ambiguous intentions.

  “Explain,” Charlie requested, moving from the kitchen into the hallway that would take him to the house’s only bathroom and two bedrooms—one of which he’d set up as a home gym, the other was where he slept.

  “She hasn’t made contact with anyone. Not since arriving in Australia.”

  “Great,” Charlie muttered, nudging the door to his gym open with his shoulder and stepping into the room, gun raised.

  “Sorry, sir,” the male voice answered.

  Charlie pulled a face. “Don’t call me sir.”

  He ended the call. Any longer on the connection may draw attention to it. As it was, they were walking a dangerous line already, what with the fancy keyboard work.

  After clearing the room, he moved to the bathroom. Checked it for a lurking assassin in the guise of a seductive, sexy-as-sin woman.

  Clear.

  Heart thumping a little faster, he moved to his bedroom.

  Tensed at the closed door.

  If Dani was going to ambush him, this would most likely be the room.

  He remembered how well she’d taken out a mark from beneath a hotel room’s bed in one of their earlier jobs together. How she’d sliced the foreign agent’s Achilles tendon as he’d sat on the edge of the mattress before sliding out like a snake, straddling him as he crumpled to a screaming heap on the floor and silencing him for good with another slice of her knife across his windpipe.

  Efficient and effective.

  And fast.

  Shifting his grip on his Glock, he wrapped the fingers on his other hand around the doorknob and twisted it to the right.

  Stopped.

  Waited.

  Not a sound from the other side of the door. Adrenaline turned his blood to a living charge. His body burned. Thrummed. Finger sliding over the trigger of his gun, he pushed the door open. Entered his bedroom.

  Two steps.

  Stopped.

  Scanned the room.

  Nothing.

  His runners sat on the floor beside the bed where he’d toed them off after his morning run. Beside them, his filthy socks and equally filthy running shorts.

  If Dani were under his bed, she’d be likely plotting a slow death for him. When they’d been husband and wife, she’d hated it when he’d neglected to put his dirty clothes in the wash.

  In fact, she’d cornered him in the bathroom once as he’d finished a shower. Had slammed him to the wet tiled wall, blade to his balls, hand around his throat and told him if she found a single item of his clothing on the floor again, she’d castrate him.

  What were the odds of her lying under his bed now, her stare fixed on those dirty socks and running shorts, fuming about them as she planned to separate his genitals from his body?

  Chest tight, Charlie crossed to his bed, stare fixed on the dark gap between the mattress and the floor.

  With deliberate nonchalance—and his Glock aimed at the floor—he nudged his runners aside, half stood on his discarded socks as if they weren’t there, and unclipped his belt with his free hand. Pulled it free of the loops on his waistband. Dropped it to his feet.

  Waited.

  He toed off his boots. One, then the other.

  Still nothing.

  Wriggled his toes in his socks.

  Coughed loudly. Snorted back what would sound like a massive ball of snot.

  Burped. Snorted again.

  He stared at the dark space between bed and floor, waiting. Adjusted his grip on his gun, his finger on the trigger. Listened.

  Silence.

  Pulling a slow breath, and without turning his back on the bed, he crossed to the cupboard. Stood beside it, not in front of it, and pushed the sliding mirror door open.

  Dani didn’t throw herself out from amongst his clothes.

  In fact, the only thing that came out was the distinct scent of Omo laundry powder and clean cotton.

  Still, with a flick of his hand through his hanging clothes, he checked she wasn’t in there.

  No.

  Heart thumping faster, he moved back to beside the bed.

  Keeping the rest of his body as motionless as he could, he slowly bent at the waist, slid his fingers beneath the mattress and the bed’s metal frame and then, heart racing, muscles coiling, yanked the double mattress upward and flipped it sideways from the bed.

  He trained his gun on what he’d revealed between the bed frame’s slats.

  The floor.

  That was is.

  The wooden floor, some dust bunnies and an old MasterChef Magazine.

  No Dani.

  No skilled assassin waiting to do him in.

  Charlie narrowed his eyes. His pulse pounded in his ears. His head throbbed.

  Turning from the now destroyed bed, he scanned his room. Listened.

  It seemed she wasn’t here after all.

  Huh.

  Maybe she’d realized he wouldn’t hesitate to do what had to be done if she tried to do whatever she was here to do?

  Dani wasn’t just a skilled killer after all. Any spy worth their weight had to be smart, and Dani was one of the best spies Australia had.

  Whatever was going on, she wasn’t here now, in his house.

  He could have a shower.

  Of course, he’d take some preparations before he did.

  He’d been the best agent ASIO had, which meant he wasn’t stupid either.

  It took him five minutes to activate the security system in his house, turning on the internal motion detectors in all rooms save the bathroom, along with the external and window sensors. He moved the knife block in the kitchen into the pantry and locked the door. Since leaving ASIO and coming to Wallaby Ridge, he’d discovered he had a passion for gourmet cooking. Who would have suspected his advanced knife skills once used for filleting enemies of his country would be useful to fillet the meat of a different animal altogether.

  His Shun knife block cost more than two months of his cop’s salary, and he didn’t want Dani to dull any of the honed blades on any part of his body.

  Better to put them out of reach.

  But before he did, he withdrew the twenty-three-centimetre salmon-slicing knife.

  Took it with him to the bathroom and tucked it behind the shampoo before stripping himself of his dirty, blood-splattered uniform.

  His Glock, he placed on the bathroom vanity, right beside the shower.