Suspicious Ways Read Online Free Page A

afternoon I own Wind Seeker and With the Wind Charters, and he can’t get her.” He swallowed, the slip bitter on his tongue. “He can’t get it, I mean.”
    Stunned disbelief wrinkled Mike’s weathered face. “You what? Jesus, Jack, you’re meant to be Ali’s friend, not the guy who takes everythin’ she—”
    “I know what I am,” Jack cut him short. “But believe me, Ali wants as little to do with me as I do her.”
    Mike snorted. “Bullshit. You forget who you’re talkin’ too, mate. I know exactly how you feel about Ali Graham an’ little has nothin’ to do with it. I think I’ve known longer than you have. An’ I can tell you the way you’re behavin’ now is not the way a man behaves towards the woman he—”
    “It’s done, Mike. And I’m not changing my mind.”
    “But—” Mike frowned, “—what about Ali? What about her business? Her father? Is this how you honor Andrew’s memory?”
    Jack looked away, not wanting to meet the knowing look in his old friend’s eyes. Zane Peterson was a cancer. A cancer that devoured young women like Ali. The thought of Ali ending up like his niece—stretched cold and lifeless on the morgue’s metal slab—scared the shit out of him so much he broke out in an icy sweat. He’d do anything to prevent that from happening, whatever the costs. Even if it meant destroying any fragile remnants of a relationship he and Ali once had. “Peterson is evil, Turps,” he said, his voice close to a snarl. “You know that as well as I. I couldn’t stand back and let Ali become his next play thing.”
    Mike gave him a long, serious look. “She may be already, mate. He’s the only bloke I’ve ever seen her with. And the way he looks at her, the way he talks about her…”
    Jack shook his head. “No. I can’t believe that. She’s too strong willed. Too damn independent and stubborn.”
    “Too spirited and too attractive,” Mike added. “Everything Zane Peterson finds irresistible in a woman.”
    Jack’s gut twisted. Everything he found irresistible in a woman as well. No, not just any woman. Ali Graham. The only woman he’d ever found irresistible was Ali bloody Graham. So irresistible he’d run from her. Turned his back on her for his own sanity and hers. And now he was back and she hated him.
    Christ, what the hell am I doing?
    He scrubbed at his face with his hands. “I’ve spent years convincing myself I was over her.” He dragged his hands through his hair again, looking over to Ali’s empty yacht. “But God help me, Mike, all it’s taken is the mere thought of her in someone else’s arms for me to realize I’ve been deceiving myself all along.”
    He let out a low sigh. Ali was completely and utterly under his skin.
    And that was by far more dangerous than Zane Peterson could ever be.

Chapter Two
    Ali flung her little Mini through the dark city streets with reckless haste, her stare locked on the road, her heart slamming in her chest.
    What was she doing? She must be out of her mind.
    “No.” She shook her head, her flat mutter like a shout in the silent cabin of her car. “Not out of my mind. Just desperate.” She gripped the steering wheel harder, skidding around the last turn that would take her to the opulent and ultra-expensive homes in Darling Point. In one of those homes was a self-serving, arrogant, smug yacht-stealing bastard. She hoped. She knew his brother had been house sitting while he was overseas, but surely now Jack was back in Australia, he’d go to his own home? If he’d checked into a hotel she was screwed.
    She ground her teeth and pressed her foot harder to the accelerator. If Jackson McKenzie thought he could just waltz in and take everything from her he was wrong. She wasn’t giving up without a fight. And she would fight nasty if it came to it.
    She’d made herself a promise four years ago as she scattered her dad’s ashes over the waters of Sydney Harbor from the bow of Wind Seeker . She’d promised she