Her Hottest Summer Yet. Ally Blake

      Leaving Jonah to use the respite to remind himself that despite the lush mouth, and the bewitching eyes and the rich vein of sexual attraction she’d unearthed, he didn’t much like her.

      Because he’d known a woman like her once before.

      He hadn’t realised why Rach had stood out to him like bonfire on a cloudy night from the first moment he’d seen her until it was too late. Turned out it was because despite her attestations that a sea change was exactly what she needed she’d never left the city behind enough to really fit in. Too late by the time he’d seen it to stop her leaving. Too late to convince himself not to follow. Until he’d woken up in Sydney, cut off, miserable, realising what he’d given up for her, and that he’d lost her anyway.

      Returning to Crescent Cove after that whole disaster had been hard. Returning to find he no longer quite fitted in the place he’d been born had been harder still. He’d had to remake his life, and to do that remake himself. As if the cove had needed a sacrifice in order to take him back, in order to make sure he’d never take her for granted again.

      So no, for however long Avery Shaw flitted about the periphery of his life she’d mean no more, or less, to him than a pebble in his shoe.

      Because this time his eyes were wide-open and staying that way. This time he wouldn’t so much as blink.