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‘You!’ he said. ‘I savedyou. Here.’

She grinned and then, to his delight, she bumped her shoulder into his. ‘You sure did, Hero Boy.’

He chuckled. ‘Hero Boy?’

‘That’s what I called you. In my head. Later, when I thought about that moment I was in your arms, and you carried me out of the water and set me on the rock just … over … there.’

Somehow their arms were still touching, and it felt warm, and fun, and friendly. If warm and fun and friendly could also have undercurrents of heat.

‘Did you do that often?’ he said. ‘Think about that moment?’

‘Only a million or so times. Hey, I was sixteen. Being carried by a good-looking boy for the first time leaves an impression.’

‘Hero Boy,’ he murmured, and couldn’t keep the idiot grin off his face.

‘Of course, then you put me down and went back to your friends and didn’t give me another thought. My heart wascrushed.’

‘Erm, sorry. In my defence, there was something else going on that day that you don’t know about.’

‘Oh?’

‘Yeah. There was a rumour going around that Penny Atwell was going to sunbathe topless. She’d just been to Europe with her family and it was, like, the cool thing to do over there or whatever. It kinda took up all my brain power, as I recall. All the brain power of every boy at Clarence High School.’

She rolled her eyes.

‘Hey,’ he said defensively. ‘Have you met a teenage boy? Say the word “topless” within a hundred yard radius and their hormones go berko. It’s a scientific fact.’

‘Uh-huh.’

He chuckled. ‘I could rescue you again now and do it properly, if you like.’

She gave him a sideways look and he knew he’d won her over.

‘I do like.’

‘But maybe don’t jump in this time. It’s low, I reckon not much more than waist deep. The wet season doesn’t really kick in until February.’

‘So … we shimmy in?’

He laughed. ‘You shimmy to your heart’s content, darling. I’m gonna use these rocks over here that are just as good as steps.’

The water was insanely cool after the heat of the day; every sense sparked up into a new version of alive. Will tried to recall when he’d last felt as carefree as that long-ago teenage version of himself had been, then gave up trying to analyse what he was feeling.

Hewasfeeling. That’s all that mattered. Contentment was there, he recognised that one(yay), but also so much more. Happiness, affection for Jodie’s silly hero-boy story, nostalgia for a simpler time back before he’d left school and discovered that adulthood could actually totally suck, and riding over the top of all of that was a shimmer of a golden, sunny something that he rather thought was good, old-fashioned, often maligned but totally awesomelust.

Well, well. Who would have thought the prickly tripper-upperer could become an object of his desire in so short a time?

Jodie had shimmied into the water with a little bit of squealing and then had dunked herself deep to the bottom of the rock pool. She emerged, her head tilted back, her hair sleek. She looked like a sea otter, all lithe and brown in the water, the red in her hair a flame in the sunlight.

‘For a couch potato, you’re not very plump,’ he said.

‘There are plenty of exercises that can be conducted on a couch, for your information.’

Yeah. He could think of one exercise in particular that might need to be brought out of hibernation.

‘You ready to be rescued?’

She smiled at him, looking as relaxed as he’d ever seen her. As wet as she was, he could see a small line running through one eyebrow, a childhood scar perhaps.