Page 4 of The Beach Cottage
“Rowan Clements, get over here and help me.”
He winked. “You know, I’ve been gone for years and yet here you are, still in the same place I left you, doing the same thing. You always seem to find yourself in trouble right as I come along. My very own damsel in distress.”
She rolled her eyes. The last time she’d seen Rowan in person, he’d rescued her from a rip in the ocean. Hardly the same situation, but it irked her to be in need of rescuing again in that moment. She wasn’t the kind of woman to get herself into scrapes that required help, and the fact that he thought of her as one, only further irritated her.
“That was an entirely different situation. I got caught in a rip—a few of us did. And anyway, you were barely any help at all.”
“Maybe, or perhaps you’d have drowned if I didn’t rescue you. I guess we’ll never know. I’m sure in a few years, you’ll pretend you didn’t need me to get you out of this mud as well.” He reached forward and clasped both of her hands, then began to pull while he straddled the mud as best as he could to avoid getting his expensive shoes dirty.
Penny was willing to put all their differences aside for the moment just to get out of the muck. It’d leached into her pants, coated both legs and was climbing up her back at that very moment. As Rowan pulled, there was a great sucking sound, and she began to shift in his direction.
“Yes, that’s it — keep going!”
“What is that kangaroo up to?” Rowan asked, eyeing Frank.
The creature sidled around behind Rowan, fists raised as it bounced lightly on large hind legs.
“Frank, don’t you dare!” Penny recognised the stance. It was Frank’s boxing pose. He didn’t like men in his enclosure, and normally Penny would’ve warned anyone who came in to keep their distance, but in this case, they’d had no choice.
“Don’t dare what? What’s he doing?” Rowan tried to look over his shoulder but couldn’t see the animal.
“Frank!” Penny used her most stern voice, but it was no use. Frank wasn’t listening. He rocked onto his tail and kicked with both hind feet into the middle of Rowan’s back.
Rowan’s eyes widened and he fell directly onto Penny, knocking her down as he went. She landed with her ponytail in the mud. With a grunt, he caught himself with both hands pressed on either side of her. His face hovered above hers, his breath warm on her skin.
“Frank, stop it!” Penny screeched.
The kangaroo wandered off. Penny glared at Rowan.
“What? It’s not my fault,” he said, grinning down at her. “Although I’m not complaining.”
His mouth was dangerously close to Penny’s, and she stared at his full lips a moment before pressing both hands to his chest and pushing hard. He was far too heavy for her to lift, and the effort merely left handprints on his formerly clean shirt. She wriggled to no avail. He appeared to be laughing at her, although he didn’t make a sound. Why was everything about him so obnoxiously irritating? And why was he still on top of her?
“Can you please move?”
He struggled to his feet with a flash of white teeth, then pulled her free of the mud. “I can’t believe I’m covered in this junk within the first twenty seconds of visiting you. You really are something, Penny St James. Life’s never dull when you’re around.”
Mud dripped from both of them. Penny couldn’t help feeling a little satisfaction in seeing his perfectly styled outfit covered in muck. She suppressed a smile. “I aim to please.”
“You’re loving this, aren’t you?”
“Of course not,” she huffed. “And besides, what did you expect would happen, coming to a wildlife refuge dressed like you’ve stepped out of GQ Magazine?” She squeezed the mud from her ponytail.
“You think I look like a model?” He quirked an eyebrow.
She rolled her eyes. Trust Rowan to take it as a compliment. He had always been full of himself. There were times when Penny had wondered why she’d disliked him so much in high school, but as soon as she spent time with him, it all came rushing back. He was infuriating, frustrating, irritating and about a thousand other things she didn’t have time to think of right in that moment.
She had to get cleaned up and finish building the enclosure she’d been in the middle of making for the new kangaroo that’d been brought in that morning with her joey. Penny wanted to dig a small billabong for them so they’d be able to drink in a more natural environment, but the amount of rain they’d had lately had left the area she’d earmarked for it a muddy swampland.
“What are you doing here, anyway?” she asked as she strode to the closest building, Rowan beside her.
“I came with Rob.”
“Rob’s here?” Her brother had been living on the mainland for months and had promised to come home, but she hadn’t seen him yet. She missed him so much when he was gone on a work trip, but she hated to admit it to Rowan. At least that answered the question of how Rowan made it through the locked front gate.
“Yeah, he and I came in on the ferry this morning.”
“Together?”
