One week of adventure might just lead to love…
Julia Evans has always put others ahead of herself—her high school math students, her troubled best friend, and her ex. But with New Year’s approaching, she buys a round trip ticket to Brazil. For one week, she can put her needs first. She can meet a stranger in the hotel pool at midnight and dance all night on the beach.
Screenwriter Blake Williams has to keep moving before Oz’s latest scandal catches up to him. But the dark-haired beauty with a backpack and an adventurous streak is messing with his plans. He can’t seem to walk away from her. But secrets have a way of coming out, and when the week is up, Julia and Blake will have to decide if they’re jumping into the biggest adventure of all or playing it safe.
Table of Contents
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Discover more Entangled Select Contemporary titles…
Playing with Fire
One Sinful Night in Sao Paulo
Hidden Away
Priya in Heels
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2015 by Rebecca Brooks. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
2614 South Timberline Road
Suite 109
Fort Collins, CO 80525
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Select Contemporary is an imprint of Entangled Publishing, LLC.
Edited by Alycia Tornetta
Cover design by Heather Howland
Cover art from Shutterstock
ISBN 978-1-63375-422-5
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition November 2015
For Robert
Chapter One
The Falls
Monday
Julia heaved her bag off her shoulder and rang the small silver bell. There was no one at the front desk, but she’d already learned that in Brazil, life had a way of taking its time. She set the backpack on the floor and twisted her long hair up off her skin, welcoming the breeze on her neck.
It had been nicely air conditioned on the bus, the first time she’d felt cool since her plane touched down two days ago. The evening heat hit her as soon as she stepped into the street, laden with luggage and unsure where to go. Clutching the map in her guidebook, she’d finally found the turn-off for the hostel hidden behind a row of palm trees, long fronds rustling as she passed. After the twelve-hour ride from São Paulo, through rushing greenery and endless fields, she wanted nothing more than a cold drink and a long dip in the pool.
The pool was why she’d chosen this place. “A delightful option,” her guidebook said. “Pousada Iguaçu may be off the beaten path, but with a steady stream of travelers looking to unwind, relax, and explore the waterfalls—the main reason to come to this border town—you’ll be sure to leave with new friends from around the world.”
New friends? She was sold. Just having someone to talk to would make Iguaçu a major step up from São Paulo. The most social contact she’d had in two days was when an elderly woman waiting for the bus pointed out that Julia had been holding the map upside down.
She took a deep breath. She wasn’t alone, she reminded herself. She was a woman traveling solo. Independent. Self-assured. She knotted her hair into a ponytail and rang the bell again.
The sound of a door opening from the garden made her turn.
She told herself that the first thing she noticed were his eyes, clear blue like a tropical sea and looking straight at her. Maybe his tan. Or the curl in his sun-lightened hair.
But no. She hadn’t gotten laid in she didn’t know how long, and the man walking in from the garden behind the lobby was shirtless, wearing nothing but cobalt blue swimming trunks slung low on his tanned, narrow hips. She wasn’t about to miss a single detail as her eyes ran from his sculpted chest down to the ripples cut into his abs.
“You must be looking for André,” he said, and Julia blinked in surprise at his Australian accent. His voice made her think of the beach and diving into the pounding waves. She could practically smell the sun on his skin.
She ran her eyes up and down his body like she could feel him just by looking. Every inch of his muscular torso. The softness of his thick, curly hair. A picture formed of its own accord: her fingers hooked under the band of his shorts, yanking him to her with a take-no-prisoners grip. Her mouth pressed against his before he had time to protest.
There was no one around. She could totally do it.
If she didn’t die laughing first.
She couldn’t believe how blatant she was being. Was there any chance this guy hadn’t noticed how much she’d eaten him up with her eyes?
He flashed her a teasing smile.
Nope, there was no way she was off the hook. She hoped he’d think the deep flush in her cheeks was from walking up the hill to the hostel in the heat and not because she was in the middle of the least Julia-like fantasy to ever pop into her head.
“André?” she asked, trying to regain her composure.
“He does check in. Hang on, I’ll get him for you.” Before she knew it, he’d hopped over the front desk and was calling through a back door, giving her a shameless view of the muscles in his back as they narrowed down to what she’d already guessed would be a very, very fine ass.
Damn, damn, damn.
She swung her eyes up a second too late as he turned around.
“It’s hard for him to hear the bell back there sometimes.”
She nodded, trying to stay cool, but her eyes were moving again, completely out of her control. She was a kid reaching into a cookie jar. An addict going for that next hit. Shamelessly she drank in the sight of the man’s muscular chest, his tanned skin, the curl in his towel-dried hair.
She wondered if there were any private rooms at the hostel, any chance she could wind up alone with him. Maybe she could “accidentally” trip and fall directly on top of him. Or just happen to lose all the shorts she’d packed. And shirts.