AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It didn’t make any sense. It had been four days since Cyclone Luke, a huge category-five juggernaut, had crossed the coast right on top of them, and it still didn’t make any sense.
None of it did.
Tears threatened again and Claudia blinked them back. She refused to cry as Avery had done. Tears wouldn’t get the Tropicana back on its feet and Claudia was determined to hold it all together if it killed her. She’d been doing that since Luke had deserted her to run the place by herself, since their respective parents had handed the keys over to them and entrusted twenty years of their life’s work to their children.
She would not be cowed by the mammoth task ahead of her just as she’d refused to be cowed by Luke’s ultimatum this time last year to have the resort turned around in twelve months—or else!
She hadn’t needed him to elaborate on his threat—and it really hadn’t been an issue because she had turned it around. They’d had a bumper summer, there was money in the bank and they’d been poised to welcome their best ever winter season in over a decade.
And then along came Cyclone Luke. As determined as the other Luke in her life to take away everything she’d ever known and loved.
‘Bloody hell, Claude. You’re never going to recover from this.’
Claudia blinked as the eerily familiar voice behind her caused everything inside her—her heartbeat, her breath, the metabolism in her cells—to come to a standstill.
Luke?
She turned and there he was. Standing right there. Every tall, lean, clean-shaven inch of him. Close enough to touch. Close enough to feel a very familiar pull down deep and low.
Luke.
The boy she’d hero-worshipped, the teenager she’d crushed on, the man who’d disappointed her more than she’d ever thought possible when he’d turned his back on their legacy.
You’re never going to recover from this?
His words were like a jolt to the chest from a defibrillator and then everything surged back to life. Her lungs dragged in a swift harsh breath, her heart kicked her in the ribcage with all the power of a mule, her cells started metabolising again at warp speed.
You’re never going to recover from this?
Oh, no! He had to be kidding. This had to be a monumental joke. A very bad one.
But no, here he was, in a freaking business shirt and trousers. On the beach. Gloating. A tsunami of emotion Claudia had been stuffing down for four days—hell, for the last year—rose in her chest and demanded to be expressed.
‘What the hell are you doing here?’
Luke’s eyes widened at the distinct lack of welcome turning her normally chirpy voice deeper. Darker. He shrugged. ‘I saw it on the tele...I just...came.’
And he had. As much as he’d resented the weird pull this place still had over him, he couldn’t not put in an appearance. Escaping to the other side of the world a decade ago, immersing himself in a completely different life had dulled the pull, but one look at the devastation and it had roared back to life.
Claudia blinked at his explanation, then let loose a laugh that bordered on hysteria. But if she didn’t laugh she was going to cry. And it wasn’t going to be dainty little London tears he was no doubt used to from his bevy of gorgeous sophisticated Brits, it was going to be a cyclonic, north Queensland snot fest.
And she’d be damned if she’d break down in front of Luke.
‘How’d you even get here?’ she demanded. ‘The road is still cut in both directions.’
‘Jonah picked me up in his chopper from Cairns airport.’
Claudia vaguely remembered hearing the chopper a little while ago and she silently cursed Jonah for being so damned handy. She made a mental note to tell Avery to withhold sex from him as his punishment for fraternising with the enemy. Because as far as she was concerned, Luke Hargreaves was public enemy number one.
Not that Avery would—those two were still so loved up it was sickening.
‘Well, you came, you saw,’ she snapped. ‘Now you can leave. Everything’s fine and dandy here.’
Fine and dandy? Luke looked at the unholy wreck in front of him. It was the complete antithesis of fine and dandy. He shoved his hands in his pockets. ‘I’m not going to do that, Claude.’
Claudia gave an inelegant snort. ‘Why not? Isn’t that what you do? Leave?’
‘I thought I could...’ Luke flicked his gaze to the flattened resort ‘...help.’
‘Help?’ Her voice sounded high even to her own ears. ‘Now you want to help?’
‘Claude...’ Luke sighed, unsurprised she was still carrying a grudge that he hadn’t wanted anything to do with their parents’ giant folly when they’d decided to retire and pass on the management to their children last year. ‘I can help with the clean-up. And there will be partnership decisions that need to be made.’
