Sun Kissed (Crane Series) by Nancy Warren

clock was still so whacked that she was in pretty good shape at six in the morning. Wide awake and alert. Sadly, the same could not be said of her by six in the evening. Still, she knew she’d adjust eventually. Probably the day she flew back home.
    Sure enough, when six rolled around, she was ready to go. She’d had time for a shower, had written up some ideas from last night’s focus group, and gone for light makeup. No doubt she’d soon be smeared in sand and salt water, but at least she’d start the day fresh and looking her best. She wore her new Crane duds, mainly to flatter her client, but when she got them on she really liked how they fit and felt. A woman wearing clothes this comfortable and brightly colored couldn’t take herself too seriously. Or the man she was with. They’d surf, get back on the businesslike, friendly terms they’d been on before last night, and she would, on no account, drink a beer.
    Now that she thought about it, she was pretty sure Mark had warned her that Australian beer had a higher alcohol content than its US counterpart. She’d lied to Cam the first day here. Of course she’d brought her bathing suit. A couple actually, and the one she put into a beach bag along with her sunscreen, a cotton hat, and a sarong wrap was the one she used for swimming lengths at home. It covered as much of her as any bathing suit could. Mr. String Bikini was going to be out of luck. In fact, if she had a choice, she’d take her lesson in a full wetsuit.
    She was ready in plenty of time, and if she felt a slight blush rise when she encountered Cam, he was so absolutely the same as always that she could almost have imagined their passionate embrace of the previous night.
    This early on a Saturday, the streets were all but empty, so she took in the Victorian architecture, mostly terrace houses, some neat and tidy, with a brightly painted door and updated windows, some sagging in Dickensian squalor. She recalled seeing streets like this on her trip in from the airport. Wait a minute, this looked exactly like the road to the airport.
    “Where are we going?”
    “Surfing.”
    “Which beach?”
    “Nice little place called Byron Bay.”
    “Byron Bay? Isn’t that in Queensland?”
    “Somebody’s been reading their Lonely Planet guide. Well done. Byron Bay is in the northern part of New South Wales. But you can drive to Queensland from there in about ten minutes,” he said, as though pleased with her grasp of Australian geography. “Excellent surfing.”
    “But—but so does Bondi Beach.”
    “Not as good. And it’s too crowded.”
    “But how—” She bit down on her own question, having a strong intuition that the answer was going to irritate her. So she shut up. Wisely, he stayed silent and since she wasn’t looking at him she didn’t have to know if he was smirking.
    “Here we go.”
    They were in a private airfield. Naturally. And he had his own plane. Naturally. When he climbed into the cockpit, she stilled. She’d go pretty far to keep a client happy, but getting herself killed by an overconfident womanizer was a little too far.
    “What’s the matter? Scared?” He shot her a grin of pure challenge.
    “Not scared. Prudent.”
    “Tell her, Ernie,” he said to an official-looking older man in a uniform who stood ready to slam the doors shut. “I don’t like to boast.”
    Her eye-roll was a thing of beauty; too bad he was fiddling with instruments and didn’t see it.
    “Mr. Crane’s a very good pilot.”
    “Have you flown with him?”
    The man grinned at her. “I taught him. Really, he’s a lot better than he looks. He got his commercial pilot’s license when he bought his own airline. Honest, miss. You can trust him.”
    There was prudence, and then there was stubbornness. Besides, she wasn’t usually risk-averse, and she did know how to have fun. From a plane, she would get more sightseeing done than she’d believed possible.
    “All right. But if we crash, I’m going