Tropical Sin: Bandicoot Cove, Book 3

Dedication

To the man who was once “just” my friend.

Chapter One

You Are Personally and Cordially Invited to Attend

The Soft Opening of Australia’s Newest FIVE-STAR Luxury Resort

BANDICOOT COVE on Bilby Island.

Bring a plus one if you desire.

All expenses and needs will be catered for

as we test our customer services in preparation for the Grand Opening.

(P.S. Can you believe I got this job, guys? Wow!!

Mack, if you don’t bring Aidan I will thump you. Just saying.

See you soon,

Love, Kylie

XXXX)

“Holy shit!” McKenzie Wood grabbed at her best friend’s sleeve, almost yanking Aidan off his seat and into her lap. “Did you see who that was?”

She swiveled in her own seat, trying like hell to catch a glimpse of the tall-dark-and-freaking-gorgeous man through the restaurant’s crowd.

Aidan, bless his little cotton socks—well, not that little, since the guy had size thirteen feet—didn’t smack her back. Instead, her best friend since she was fourteen disengaged his shirt sleeve from her fist, righted himself on his chair and turned to look in the general direction she was gawking.

“Hugh Jackman?” he guessed, his deep voice rumbling with mirth. “Russell Crowe? Russell Brand? Brandon Routh?” He shot her a sideward glance, a grin pulling at the corners of his mouth. “Care to throw me a bone here, Mack, ’cause I haven’t got a bloody clue.”

McKenzie twisted back to him and gave him a wide grin. “Nick Blackthorne.”

Aidan’s mouth fell open. He smacked his palms to the sides of his face, his green eyes wide. “No!” he burst out. “Nick Blackthorne?
The
Nick Blackthorne?”

McKenzie whacked the back of her right hand against his chest, hiding her grunt of pain under a scowl of exasperation. Damn it, the man’s chest was harder than concrete. “Yeah, yeah, yeah—” she rolled her eyes, “—funny bastard, aren’t you? The last time anyone saw Nick Blackthorne, he was supposedly checking into a sex rehab clinic in Germany for being an addict.”

Aidan cocked an eyebrow. “Sex addict? The guy’s a bloody rock star. The biggest rock star this country has produced. Isn’t he
meant
to have sex with just about everything in a dress that throws herself at him?”

“No, no, no, no.” McKenzie shook her head. “God, don’t you actually read the rags I write for? He supposedly checked into a sex rehab center because he can’t stop having sex with
men
.”

Aidan studied her for a long second. Followed by another one.

She sat and waited for him to say something, her hands on his knees, her gaze holding his.

Finally, he shrugged. “Well, to each his own.”

McKenzie leaned closer to him. “You’re missing the point, Rogers. If Nick Blackthorne is here, when everyone thinks he’s in Germany, I could get the scoop.”

“The scoop?”

She grinned, squirming closer to the edge of her seat. “The scoop.”

Aidan let out a sharp breath, turning back to their table and reaching for his beer. “McKenzie,” he said, his voice level, “we are at the soft opening of your friend’s resort. If you go all tabloid-journalist and stalk a guest, Kylie will kill you. Then I will have to explain to Mason why I let his twin sister get killed. And then Mason will probably try to punch me.”

“And what would you do in return?”

Aidan gave her a steady sideward glance. “Depends. Do you like your twin today or not?”

McKenzie thought about that question for a moment, struggling to keep her face composed. Aidan always,
always
seemed to make her want to grin, even when he was telling her she was being horrible. Prick. “Better not punch him back,” she answered. “He did, after all, pay for the flights up here.”

“Good point.” Aidan took a mouthful of beer before picking up his fork and stabbing at the lobster bisque on his plate. “Although I coulda done without the blackmail to help clean that boat of his he just bought with Trent. Seriously, if Trent wanted to sail up the Australian coastline, how come I get stuck with scraping the barnacles off the hull of the damn rust bucket?”

“’Cause you lost that stupid bet at the airport about whose bag was the lightest—his or yours, remember?” McKenzie offered, picking up her own fork. She had to hand it to Kylie; the girl knew how to throw a party, and the soft opening hadn’t even started yet. Lobster for brunch? Bring it on. “Oh, and you can hold your breath the longest?”

Aidan snorted again, the sound making her grin wider. “Next time Kylie launches a resort opening, I want it to be in the Outback.” He took another mouthful of beer. “Or the Snowies.”

McKenzie laughed. “Don’t tempt her. You know what she’s like. Besides, it was nice to have Mason on the flight with us, even if he did sucker you into cleaning
Paradise
. At least this way I don’t have to call Mum. She still hasn’t forgiven me for my article on—” A tall man walked past the entrance to the restaurant, oozing brooding sexuality, phenomenal good looks and smoldering arrogance. Nick Blackthorne. In the flesh. She grabbed Aidan’s arm just as he was about to take a drink, sploshing beer over his hand and wrist. “Oh God, it
is
him, Rogers. It is him! Look.
Look
!”

Before Aidan could do such a thing, McKenzie jumped to her feet, sending her chair tumbling to the ground. The rather overweight and ridiculously overdressed woman sitting at the table behind her muttered something that sounded very much like “inconsiderate cow”, but McKenzie didn’t care. Nick Blackthorne
was
here. At Bandicoot Cove Resort. Walking around without any sign of bodyguards, groupies or entourage.

Nick Blackthorne. The world’s biggest rock star.

Here. Within twenty meters of her.

She watched him amble through the opulent foyer, his stunning light grey eyes concealed by a pair of pitch-black sunglasses, his tall, lean frame wrapped in a pair of snug, faded Levis and a R2-D2 T-shirt. Sinewy muscles coiled and flexed as he walked, each stride almost rhythmic, as if he moved to music no one else but he could hear.

A little flutter of something entirely sexual stirred in McKenzie’s core, a tiny throb of base, instinctual interest. For a brief second an image of him throwing her on the massive bed in her resort room filled her mind. His long-fingered hands tore her clothes from her body before, with fluid ease, he sank what was rumored to be a solid and very impressive ten inches into her sodden and very willing pussy.

Her nipples pinched tight and she huffed into her fringe, tracking his path past the reception desk and out of sight.

“We gotta go.” She hooked her fingers under Aidan’s arm and tugged him to his feet. Well, tried to. Shifting a six-foot-three firefighter wasn’t easy, especially when he was looking up at her like she’d lost her mind. “Quick quick,” she begged, resorting to both hands wrapped around his biceps. Bloody hell, when had Rogers bulked up so much? “I need to see where he’s going.”

Aidan—stubbornly—stayed put. “Stalking now? Didn’t you tell me you wanted out of the tabloid business? That it was time to start your serious journalist career?”

McKenzie slapped the back of his head and then snared his arm again, her fingers barely curling halfway around its muscled width. “Shut up. He’s getting away.”

Aidan made a move to pick up his fork again. “Good for him.”

A surge of hot anger stabbed into McKenzie’s chest and she bit back a curse. Aidan was correct. She
had
told him and Mason on the flight up that she was going to quit her job at Goss when she got back. She
had
said it was time to actually use her degree in journalism for the greater good. But then Nick Blackthorne had walked past, and really, wasn’t it for the world’s greater good to know just what he was doing here and where he’d been? And if that “where” had anything to do with the secret activities of ten inches of flesh?

She pulled at Aidan’s arm once more, an ineffectual tug she was almost ashamed of. Almost. “Please, Aidan?” she begged, giving him her most wounded-puppy expression. The kind that always, always made him bail on one of his stubborn stand-offs. “Please? For me?”

He looked up at her, his jaw square, his expression unreadable. He’d been her best friend since before she had her first boyfriend. He’d been her rock, her anchor. Her voice of reason when her journalist’s mind got carried away with her. She didn’t want him upset with her. She needed him with her on this.

He studied her with those deep, direct eyes of his. Eyes that missed nothing. Eyes that seemed to see nothing in the world but her.

A soft flutter constricted in McKenzie’s sex, unexpected and just as eager as her earlier response to Blackthorne.

She hitched in a silent breath and let his arm go, a lump forming in her throat. “Please,” she muttered, looking everywhere but at the man sitting before her. “Please come with me, Aidan.”

“Fuck it,” she heard him grumble, half a second before his chair scraped over the polished bamboo floor and he stood.

A wave of impish relief surged through her, destroying the wholly unsettling…
thing
…she’d just felt. Aidan was Aidan. Yes, he was pretty okay to look at and just about every woman within a ten-mile radius threw herself at him whenever she hit the clubs with him, but he was Aidan. That was it.

Grinning up at him, she snared his arm again with her fingers, giving his hard biceps a small squeeze. “You are so bloody awesome, Rogers.”

“I know,” he growled, moving away from the table and taking her with him. “Just promise me no muck-slinging, no trash-flinging and no lies. We follow the guy, you ask him for a comment and we leave. All over, Red Rover, in ten minutes. Deal?”

“Deal.”

He pointed a finger at her nose, a stern glower darkening his otherwise friendly face. “And no asking him if he’s gay. A bloke doesn’t like being asked such a thing whether he is or not, got it?”

McKenzie cocked her head, quickening her step to stay abreast of him. “Are you gay, Rogers?”

His eyebrows shot up. “What?”

“I only ask ’cause you’ve never gone out with anyone for more than a day or two. Like, ever.”

Aidan let out a harsh breath and turned his glare forward, all but pulling her out of the restaurant. “I’ve had girlfriends.”

“Really? When? The longest you ever went out with a woman was that police officer from Newcastle Command and that lasted for a little less than a week.”

His fingers curled harder into her arm, his stride lengthening. “Why the hell do I put myself in these situations?”

McKenzie skipped into step with him. “’Cause they’re fun?”

“Yeah,” he grunted, not looking at her. “Like a root canal.”

They walked through the foyer, McKenzie’s stomach flipping and flopping in a strange little way she didn’t understand. Part of her wanted to slide Aidan a little sideward glance, just to be sure it was still Aidan storming along beside her. She’d known him forever, well, what felt like forever. She’d met him in her second year of high school when his family had moved to Newcastle. The minute he’d walked into the science lab, towering over just about every boy in the class, and the teacher as well, she’d smiled. It had nothing to do with the way he looked—which even at fourteen she knew was pretty damn good. She’d smiled because his eyes said,
there’s mischief to be had. Who wants in?

The rest of the girls in her year, and quite a few above and below, threw themselves at him straightaway, but he never took any of them up on their far-from-unsubtle advances. It wasn’t until he’d been at school for a week when she finally spoke to him—right after she’d accidently kicked a soccer ball straight into his groin during a Phys Ed class.

Of course, she’d run over straightaway and dropped to her knees, rubbing his groin and making sorry sounds before she realized what she was doing. She had six brothers, after all, one of them being Mason, her twin. Male anatomy wasn’t something mysterious or dangerous to her. She’d seen more penises by the time she was fourteen than she could remember—especially Mason’s. Damn, her brother had zero interest in personal privacy. When Aidan had looked up at her, squirming under her palm, his face red with pain, his eyes wide with stunned shock, she’d realized what she was doing and promptly burst out laughing. She’d laughed all the way to the principal’s office after being sent there by her mortified Phys Ed teacher for inappropriate touching of a fellow class member. Aidan had found her at lunch, plonked down beside her on the rickety metal bench, said, “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever had a handjob quite like that before,” and that had been it. They’d been best friends since.

She’d never
ever
thought of him in any kind of sexual way. Ever. So why had her belly done that weird squirmy thing just now in the restaurant?

Because you’re excited. You’ve just seen Nick Blackthorne.
The
Nick Blackthorne
.
Of course, you’re going to be all squirmy. Not just ’cause the guy’s as freaking hot as sin, but because he’s your ticket. One exclusive exposé about Nick Blackthorne’s sexual tendencies, and you can write your own meal ticket out of tabloid trash hell and land yourself that serious job you’ve ached for forever.