If You Can't Stand the Heat... (Harlequin Kiss) Read Free Page B

behind him and she reappeared. She pulled the wooden and glass door shut, then yanked down the security grate and bolted and locked it.
    Jack looked from the old-style bakery to the wide beach across the road and felt a smile form. It was nearly half-past six, a warm evening in summer, and the beach and boardwalk hummed with people.
    ‘What time does the sun set?’ he asked.
    ‘Late. Eight-thirty-ish,’ Ellie answered. She gestured to the road behind them. ‘I live so close to work that I don’t drive...um...my house is up that hill.’
    Jack looked up the steep road to the mountain behind it and sighed. That was all he needed—a hike up a hill with a heavy pack. What else was this day going to throw at him?
    He sighed again. ‘Lead on.’
    Ellie pulled a pair of over-large sunglasses from her bag and put them on, and they started to walk. They passed an antique store, a bookstore and an old-fashioned-looking pharmacy—he needed to stock up on some supplies there, but that would raise some awkward questions. He waited for Ellie to initiate the conversation. She did, moments later, good manners overcoming her increasingly obvious shyness.
    ‘So, what happened to you?’
    ‘Didn’t your father tell you?’
    ‘Only that you got jumped by a couple of thugs and were kicked out of Somalia. You need a place to stay because you’re broke.’
    ‘Temporarily broke,’ Jack corrected her. Mitchell hadn’t given her the whole story, thankfully. It was simple enough. He’d asked a question about the hijackings of passing ships which had pushed the warlord’s ‘detonate’ button. He’d gone psycho and ordered his henchman to beat the crap out of him. He’d tried to resist, but six against one...bad odds.
    Very bad odds. Jack shook off a shudder.
    ‘So, is there anything else I can do for you apart from giving you a bed?’
    Her question jerked him back to the present and his instinctive answer was, A night with you in bed would be great.
    Seriously? That was what he was thinking?
    Jack shook his head and ordered himself to get with the programme. ‘Um...I just need to spend a night, maybe two. Borrow a mobile phone, a computer to send some e-mails, have an address to have my replacement bank cards delivered to...’ Jack replied.
    ‘I have a spare mobile, and you can use my old laptop. I’ll write my address down for you. Are you on a deadline?’
    ‘Not too bad. This is a print story for a political magazine.’
    Ellie lifted her eyebrows. ‘I thought you only did TV work?’
    ‘I get the occasional assignment from newspapers and magazines. I freelance, so I write articles in between reporting for the news channels,’ Jack replied.
    Ellie shoved her sunglasses up into her hair and rubbed her eyes. ‘So how are you going to write these articles? I presume your notes were taken.’
    ‘I backed up my notes and documents onto a flash drive just before the interview. I slipped it into my shoe.’ It was one of the many precautionary measures he took when operating in Third World countries.
    ‘They let you keep your passport?’
    Jack shrugged. ‘They wanted me to leave and not having a passport would have hindered that.’
    Ellie shook her head. ‘You have a crazy job.’
    He did, and he loved it. Jack shrugged. ‘I operate best in a war zone, under pressure.’ He loved having a rucksack on his back, dodging bullets and bombs to get the stories few other journalists found.
    ‘Mitchell always said that it’s a powerful experience to be holed up in a hotel in Mogadishu or Sarajevo with no water, electricity or food, playing poker with local contacts to the background music of bombs and automatic gunfire. I never understood that.’
    Jack frowned at the note of bitterness in her voice and, quickly realising that there was a subtext beneath her words that he didn’t understand, chose his next words carefully. ‘Most people would consider it their worst nightmare—and to the people living and working in that