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sound that shot straight to his groin. Yeah, like everything else she’d done and said since he’d laid eyes on her again hadn’t.
    “Some of the girls from the club come here to unwind.” Jess shrugged. “I don’t get to Vegas often and felt like letting off a little steam tonight.”
    That made two of them.
    “Why?”
    She eyeballed him. “I’m a little edgy.”
    Edgy? What the hell was that? Code for toey? Because he knew what toey meant. Aussie for horny. And with her unwavering stare fixed on him, damn, did he know what horny was.
    “Because we have to work together?”
    “Don’t flatter yourself.” She rolled her eyes. A vast improvement on staring at him with that beguiling mix of wonder and intrigue and need. “I’ve got a lot going on, stuff to think about.”
    “And you thought it’d help coming here?” He swept his arm wide, encompassing the writhing bodies jamming the dance floor, the wall-to-wall sleazes scoping the talent, the DJ surrounded by groupies.
    “I want to try new things.” She spoke so softly he had to lower his head to hear her and if it wasn’t the damndest thing, she leaned into him so her hair tickled his nose. “Step out of my comfort zone. Jazz it up a little.”
    Her palm splayed against his chest, right over his heart, which jack-knifed.
    His skin burned through the cotton of his shirt, like she’d branded him. He had to shrug her off and leave. Now.
    But he made the fatal mistake of locking gazes with her again and he was a goner. If he could barely handle her bold and feisty, he had no hope against her defiant vulnerability.
    “I’m tired of being good,” she said, her fingers clutching at his shirt, making him wish she’d rip the damn thing off.
    Shit. Jess was ready for experimentation and by the way she wouldn’t let go of him, she’d chosen her candidate.
    “Being bad isn’t everything it’s cracked up to be.”
    He should know. He’d been a rotten kid, so bad his dad had taken off when he was four and his mom at six. He’d been shunted between foster homes for years, alternating between trying to be the model kid to being a rat-bag when his niceness got him nowhere.
    He’d gone bush at sixteen, worked his way through outback cattle stations, doing everything from mustering to branding to cooking.
    Until he met Reid and Jess Harper and for the first time in a long time he stopped wanting to be bad.
    In different ways they’d redefined him. He’d never forgotten it. And it should be the number one motivation to keep his hands off this luscious woman.
    “You wouldn’t understand.” She stared at her hand resting on his chest, her brows rising as if surprised, before she removed it. He irrationally missed her touch. “You’re a celebrity. You travel the world, have your own TV show, socialize with the rich and famous.”
    “None of that equates to being bad.”
    “It’s freedom to do what you want when you want.”
    “And you don’t have that?”
    She gnawed on her bottom lip, her expressive face showing a clear battle, indecision warring with a yearning to unburden. “That one month holiday in the outback? The only time I’ve been out of Nevada. Since then, I’ve been working as Craye Canyon’s librarian, being the dutiful daughter, the perfect fiancé, the town sweetheart.”
    She dragged a finger across her throat in a slashing motion. “I’m done.”
    In that moment, he understood why travelling to the Caribbean was so important to her—why she’d tried to scare him away with her bold moves.
    Planning this wedding wasn’t just a job for her. It was an escape. An outlet. A chance to do something completely out of character.
    He couldn’t fault her for that, but he’d be damned if he became part of her grand plan to cut loose.
    “So that’s why you’re hell-bent on spending a week on the island?”
    She shook her head, the swish of silky soft hair tumbling across her bare shoulders making him want to bury his face in it.
    “No.