Page 33 of Contracted and Claimed By The Boss

Paige shook her head slowly and a warm breeze lifted from the beach and carried her hair against her cheek so she brushed it away.

‘Now you do.’ He strode down the steps. ‘Come with me.’

Her heart, her untouchable heart, raced.

‘Where?’

He closed the distance between them. ‘You’ll see.’

‘A surprise?’

His eyes were as vibrant as the ocean beyond the house, his nod was just a shift of his head.

Evidently, their conversation last night had convinced him that there was no risk of Paige falling for him, because he’d let go of any inhibitions and she liked that, because she’d been honest with him. She enjoyed spending time together. She found him exhilarating. Yes, that was the perfect word. He was unlike anyone she’d ever known. Intelligent, charismatic, charming, handsome but also good, his moral fibre impressive and admirable. Just the way he loved Amanda and made her his top priority showed Paige what a great guy he was—and also the polar opposite to her own father.

‘I like surprises,’ she said, then qualified it with a wrinkling of her nose. ‘Some surprises.’ The memoir that was about to hit shelves was a surprise she could have lived without.

‘Great. Let’s go.’

Paige had known Australia was a vast and beautiful place but she couldn’t have conceptualised quite how expansive and stunning until she was in the air in a helicopter being piloted by Max, hovering high above this land of stunning nature and stark contrasts. The ocean was mesmerising for its colour changes and vastness. Near the coastline, it was turquoise, almost transparent, so she could see a pod of dolphins in the warm, shallow waters of the oyster farm. Paige held her breath as he brought them in low enough to observe the details on their gunmetal-grey bodies, emerging from the water then diving down again. She couldn’t help smiling.

Max piloted them further out over the ocean and the colour change was dramatic—here it was a dark, earthy blue, no less beautiful, but somehow menacing. The white caps of the waves frothed towards the shore as Paige watched. Back over the land, she delighted in the lush green rainforest, the sound of the birds imprinted on her mind now so, even up here, she could remember those sounds as if they were in her ears again now.

But the rainforest and dramatic cliffs and waterfalls were all near the ocean. After another ten or so minutes, they were back over the desert, bright red, strikingly beautiful from this height, particularly when contrasted with the azure blue of the sky. Even better, the helicopter had ice-cold air conditioning so, while Paige could see the heat hazing off the ground, she couldn’t feel it as she had that first day, when she’d felt as though her skin were going to sear from her body.

‘Incredible,’ she murmured, to herself, but, courtesy of the headphones they wore, Max heard and turned to her, grinning.

‘Every tourist should fly over the country like this.’

She liked that he considered her a tourist. It was yet another reminder of how temporary her time here was.

‘Hungry?’

Paige was surprised to realise it was lunch time. She had no concept of how far they were from home. ‘Yeah. I’ll need to get back for Amanda—’

He nodded. ‘Plenty of time.’

With expert control, Max brought the helicopter lower, and through the swirls of dust Paige could just make out a collection of a few buildings, small and rickety, made of timber and tin.

‘Where are we?’

‘This used to be the old town,’ he said, landing them on the ground to the left of a two-storey building with a rickety-looking veranda. ‘The drought closed most of the farms around here down. The town is limping along, but there aren’t many people out this way any more.’

‘What’s this place?’

‘The pub.’

‘How can such a small town have a pub?’

‘It’s important to the remaining locals.’

‘Sure, but it’s hard to see how it could cover its costs. Isn’t that why most of these places get shut down?’

He nodded once. ‘It’s important to keep places like this though. Not just for the locals,’ he conceded, ‘but because it’s a part of the history of the area. This pub used to do a roaring trade, then the highway moved, and it was all but forgotten.’

‘It’s charming,’ she said, glancing up at him as a thought occurred to her and she just knew her gut feeling was right. ‘Max, do you own the pub?’

He looked at her for several beats, shrugged his shoulders, then turned to the building. ‘It’s part of the place’s history. Come have a look.’

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