Sea Kissed, A Crane Series Romance: Crane Series Read Free

bleached blond hair and oil on his muscles doing a body-builder pose, he reckoned. His stomach turned over queasily, which could have been at the thought of what awaited him, or from the sudden movement of the plane. In truth, he was a lot more used to buses than planes.
    For all the money they were offering—and he had to admit that would come in handy—he still might have refused the job if it hadn’t been for Cameron Crane. When he met the man himself, he instantly saw a blighter he recognized. A rugged bloke who likes a beer and can play a round of footie without crying.
    They’d met and shaken hands, and Cam had looked at him with eyes that understood and said, “Well? What do you reckon?”
    He’d shrugged. “Dunno.”
    Crane had understood everything he needed to from that one word. “Don’t you let those Yanks make him too pretty,” the big boss of the operation had warned Jennifer Talbot, and at that moment Steve had believed it might just work. “He’s a man, he surfs like a man, he looks like a man, right?”
    “Of course. He’s perfect. I don’t want him to change,” Jennifer Talbot had said in the exasperated tone of someone who’d said the same thing a million times.
    Still, he was glad to hear they weren’t planning to turn him into something he wasn’t. Now as he headed for foreign soil in a brand new suit that felt like a posh stranger’s, he wondered if taking the job had been the right thing to do.
    “Only one way to find out,” he mumbled as the plane bumped to the ground.
    He rose to retrieve his swish new carry-on bag, careful not to let his head bump the ceiling. It didn’t, but it was a close-run thing. Beside his bag was a tartan affair that he recognized as belonging to the older woman across the aisle. He passed it to her and she thanked him.
    “Oh, would you mind getting my bag as well?” A younger woman who’d been eyeing him throughout the flight batted her eyes at him.
    “Sure. Which one?”
    “The green one.”
    He reached for the bag and almost recoiled when he touched it. Crocodile skin. And if the poor croc hadn’t had enough to put up with, being hunted and turned into a lady’s bag, he’d been further humiliated after death by being dyed to match the inside of a kiwi fruit. He passed the bag over briskly, trying to rebuff the woman’s efforts to chatter at him as they left the plane. Thank goodness he was being met—and by a woman, he thought—as the crocodile bag and its owner tagged along by his side.
    They’d already been through immigration in Hawaii, so all he had to do was grab his bags and go. The crocodile woman was clearly disappointed when his single bag came off the carousel and her fourth still hadn’t appeared. Having hefted the first three off for her, he was amazed the plane had remained airborne. As he emerged into the meeting lounge, he glanced around for Jennifer Talbot, although he hadn’t really expected her to be here.
    There were a few people with signs but none had his name on it. Lots of people were hugging, a few crying, as families and friends reunited. A few tired souls were gathering in a bedraggled crowd under a tour company’s logo, and a few breezed out clearly knowing where they were going. Steve felt utterly and completely alone. Well, he reckoned someone would show up sooner or later, so he decided to find a cup of coffee and sit in the lounge and wait.
    As he made his way through a seating area he saw his first party girl. Or, more accurately, his first morning-after-the-party girl. In fact, what caught his attention was the soft mound of a smallish breast perilously close to committing indecent exposure in an already eye-catching dress. The owner of both the dress and the breast was asleep, her bright, red-painted mouth open slightly on a gentle snore. Her bag was open on her lap and he guessed she’d had quite the party based on the large bottle of headache tablets and the economy size bottle of antacid.
    Her thick