It sounded so like him.
‘Not likely now,’ said the manager. ‘It was a small tremor.’
Zoe risked a quick glance behind her to identify the owner of the voice.
And froze.
It was Mitch Bailey, all right—right up at the back of the room. He was instantly recognisable: green eyes, dark blond hair, wearing a pair of blue checked board shorts and nothing else. His tanned, well-honed chest was bare. The blood drained from her face and her mouth went dry.
He was as handsome as he’d been at seventeen. More handsome. His face was more chiselled, more lived in, and his dark blond hair was cut spikily short—much shorter than when she had known him. He was tall, broad-shouldered, but lean, with well defined muscles. Then he’d been a suburban high school heart-throb. Now he was an international soccer star, who regularly topped magazine lists of ‘The Sexiest Men Alive’.
She quickly turned back and ducked her head. Dear heaven, don’t let him recognise her. He was part of a past she had chosen to put well behind her. She couldn’t let him see her.
Zoe thought back to the first day she’d met him. Grieving over the death of her parents, in an accident that had also injured her, she’d been removed from her inner city home and her laid-back, no-uniform high school and dumped mid-term by her disapproving grandmother—her father’s mother—into an outer suburbs school where she’d known no one and no one had seemed to want to know her. The uniform had been scratchy, uncomfortable and hideous—which was just how she’d felt during her time at Northside High.
Her first sight of Mitch Bailey had been of him surrounded by girls, with his girlfriend Lara—blonde and beautiful, of course—hanging possessively onto his arm. Zoe had kept her head down and walked past. But a burst of chatter had made her lift her head and she’d caught his eye. He’d smiled. A friendly, open smile born of his place as kingpin of his social group. He’d been a jock, a sports star—the most popular of the popular boys.
He hadn’t needed to smile at nerdy her. But he had, and it had warmed the chill of her frozen heart even though she’d been unable to manage more than a polite stretching of her lips in return.
Later they’d become sort of friends, when he’d had a problem she’d been able to help him with. But the last time she’d seen him he’d been so unforgivably hurtful she’d shrivelled back into her shell and stayed there until she’d got out of that school. Now she had no desire to make contact again with anyone from that place—least of all with him.
She tensed, her eyes darting around for an escape route, then realised her panic was for nothing. No way would he recognise her. She looked completely different from the unhappy seventeen-year-old he’d befriended all those years ago. But she kept her eyes to the ground anyway.
She wanted to ask the manager about the airport as she was due to fly back to Sydney the next morning. But she didn’t want to draw attention to herself. If she’d recognised his voice, Mitch might recognise hers. It was unlikely, but possible. She kept her mouth shut just in case.
The manager had said it was okay for the guests to return to their villas. That was where she was headed—pronto.
As other people started to ask more questions Zoe inched to the edge of the group. Not meeting anyone’s gaze, and as unobtrusively as she could, she edged away towards the pathway that led to her private villa. Once there she could order room service for the rest of her stay, to make sure she didn’t bump into Mitch Bailey.
Please, please don’t let him be anywhere around when she checked out.
She quickened her pace as she got near the pathway.
‘Zoe?’
His voice came from behind her and she started. She denied the reflex that would have had her turning around. Instead she kept her head down and kept walking, hoping against hope that he wouldn’t call her name again. Let him think he’d been mistaken.
Mitch had noticed the dark-haired girl wrapped in a white towel as soon as she’d come into the courtyard. What red-blooded male wouldn’t? The skimpy towel barely covered a sensational body.
It was knotted between high, round breasts and fell just to the top of slender, tanned thighs. Might it fall off at any moment? And, if so, was she wearing anything underneath? He’d been lying by his pool when the earthquake had hit. What had she been doing to be clad only in a towel?
But he’d thought no more about it as the girl had found a place near the front of the group of guests who had gathered to hear the charming Balinese hotel manager explain the ramifications of the earth tremor.
Mitch had been to Bali before, and knew small tremors like this weren’t uncommon. He’d appreciated the manager’s well-meant reassurances. But still, he’d asked the question about the tsunami because it didn’t pay to ignore possible danger. Mitch was the kind of guy who liked to anticipate and prepare for the next move—‘reading the play’, they called it in soccer. There was a prominent sign on the beach warning people what to do if there was a tsunami warning. Therefore he’d needed to ask about it.
At his second enquiry the girl in the towel had turned briefly, to see who was asking the scary questions. Recognition had flashed just briefly before she had hastily turned back round.
He was used to that these days. Strangers recognised him as being an international soccer player. Or from the endorsements for designer menswear and upscale watches he’d posed for—the advertisements were on billboards even here in Bali. This woman might be a young mum who wanted him to sign her child’s soccer ball. Or a fan with much more than signing on her mind.
He narrowed his eyes. The thing was, she had also seemed familiar to him. Her eyes had only caught his for a split second but there had been something about the expression in them—anxious, in a pale, drawn face—that had tugged at his memory. He’d met so many people over the last years, but he couldn’t place her. He’d dredged his memory with no luck.
But then she’d hotfooted it away from the group of guests. He’d admired her shapely behind, swaying in that tightly drawn towel as she’d headed for the pathway that led to the private villas. Once she was gone he’d probably never see her again, and would be left wondering who she could possibly have been.
Then he’d noticed the slight, almost imperceptible limp as she’d favoured her right leg. It was enough to trigger memories of a girl he’d known for a short time in high school.
‘Zoe!’ he’d called.
She’d paused for a moment, her shoulders set rigidly. Then continued to walk away.
Now he pushed his way to the edge of the row of people and took a few strides towards her to catch up.
‘Zoe Summers?’ he asked, raising his voice.
This time she stopped and turned to face him. For a long moment their gazes met. Mitch was shocked to realise she had recognised him and yet had chosen to walk away. He was swept by conflicting feelings—the most predominant being shame. It was what he deserved after the way he’d treated her all those years ago.
‘Mitch Bailey,’ she said, head tilted, no trace of a welcoming smile. ‘After all this time.’
‘I knew it was you,’ he said.
Her expression told him a kiss on the cheek, a hug, even a handshake would not be welcome. He kept his hands to his sides.
She looked much the same. More grown-up, of course. But the same sharp, intelligent face. The same black hair—only shorter now, and all tousled around her face. The piercings she’d sported so defiantly at school had gone, leaving tiny telltale holes along the top of her right eyebrow and in her nose, and there was just one pair of discreet gold studs in her ears instead of multiple hoops.
There was something indefinably different about her. Perhaps it was her air of assuredness. He didn’t remember that. Back then she’d emanated a miasma of misery that had made other adolescents uncomfortable around her. The ‘keep away’ glower hadn’t helped either. He’d considered himself privileged to have discovered the amazing person behind it all. Until he’d blown their friendship.
‘I didn’t think you’d recognise me,’ she said.
He’d forgotten what an appealing voice she had: mellow, slightly husky.
‘You mean you hoped I wouldn’t.’ He’d intended his words to sound light-hearted, but they came out flat.
She shrugged. ‘I didn’t say that. It’s been years.’
He swallowed uncomfortably. ‘Strange way to meet again. In an earthquake.’
‘A “tremor” the management called it,’ she said with a wry twist to her lips. ‘Playing it down so as not to freak out the tourists.’
‘Whatever name you give it, it scared the daylights out of me.’
She reacted with a raising of her perfectly shaped black eyebrows. ‘Me too,’ she said, with the shadow of a smile. ‘I thought my end had come. Still think it’s a possibility.’
‘Where were you when the quake struck?’
‘Having a body massage down at the spa.’
Where she must have been naked. So that was why she had only a towel wrapped around her.
Mitch willed his eyes to stay above her neck. Before today he’d only ever seen Zoe in a shapeless school uniform. He hadn’t taken much notice of her body back then—it was her brain that had interested him. Besides, he’d had a girlfriend. Now he realised what great shape Zoe was in—in her own quiet way she was hot.