An Ocean Between Us Read online

  An Ocean Between Us

  Between the Sheets Book 2

  by Serenity Woods

  *

  Copyright 2015 Serenity Woods

  All Rights Reserved

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locales or organizations is coincidental.

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  Table of Contents

  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

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  More by Serenity Woods

  Chapter One

  It had been a long and exhausting day.

  Danny Love placed a last shovel of earth around the new palm, knelt on the ground, and pressed it in with his hands. The cool soil sank between his fingers, rich and loamy. He’d never tire of the smell of fresh earth, cut grass, and new plants. He didn’t understand people who hated being outdoors. Insects and animals, flowers and trees, they were his life, and they always had been, ever since he was a kid.

  Still, he’d had enough for now. He’d worked hard all week, and today, Friday, he’d arrived at eight a.m. to continue the landscaping of Mr. and Mrs. Spencer’s huge garden. It was now seven in the evening. He’d sent his crew home at five, and had continued on his own for a while, enjoying the peace of the place, as well as its glorious view across the bay.

  He pushed himself to his feet, passed his forearm across his face to wipe away some of the sweat, and began watering the new palms with the hose. Even though it was late May and therefore autumn in New Zealand, up here in the Northland it grew warm by midday, and with all the lifting and carrying he’d done, he felt as if it was the height of summer.

  The Spencer estate was incredibly impressive. Their large house—well, it was more of a mansion, by Kiwi standards—sat atop a hill overlooking the Bay of Islands. The surrounding lawns led to acres of thick bush on either side. Straight in front the grass gave way to a private sandy beach, and beyond that the Pacific Ocean sparkled a gorgeous blue in the evening sunshine.

  Imagine living somewhere like this, he thought, waking up every morning to such a view out of the bedroom window. He’d love to have any kind of view. Danny lived with his father in a tiny house in the center of the seaside town of Paihia. His bedroom window looked out onto a small garden with a high fence. He loved the garden and had worked hard to make it a place in which his father could sit in his wheelchair and enjoy feeding the birds, which was the only outdoor activity he could really take part in. But Danny would have killed for a view like this.

  Still, at least he got to spend the greater part of his days on other people’s land. Danny ran his own business, Love Landscaping, and he adored his job, which earned him and his father a decent wage to live on, even if it wasn’t enough to buy a place like this.

  Sighing, he coiled up the hose, packed the wheelbarrow with his tools, and set off up to the house. The work the Spencers had requested was going to take him a couple more weeks, so he left his tools locked up in one of their sheds at night rather than lug them home and bring them all back the next day. He was looking forward to treating himself for the week’s hard work by going to the Between the Sheets bar tonight. The notion of an ice cold beer was the only thing that had kept him going the last few hours.

  He was halfway across the lawn when he saw a figure standing in front of the house. The woman wore a pale blue dress and sunhat and was watching him, hand raised to shield her eyes.

  The couple who’d recently bought the house had returned to England for the winter, but Danny knew their daughter was supposed to be coming to stay for a while, so he assumed this must be her. He changed direction and slowed as he approached her. For a brief moment, he thought he’d travelled back two hundred years. She looked the spitting image of the women he’d seen in some of the early photographs of the first European settlers in New Zealand, the dress buttoned up to her neck and almost reaching her ankles. She was tiny and slender, like a fine porcelain teacup he’d be afraid of holding, sure it would break in his hands.

  He knew Mr. and Mrs. Spencer were upper class English gentry, and he’d been amused by William Spencer’s plummy BBC accent, straight out of an old black-and-white movie. Did the daughter speak the same way?

  He stopped before her, lowered the handles of the wheelbarrow, and straightened. “Kia ora,” he said, the standard Kiwi greeting, pronounced key-ora.

  “Hello,” she replied, lifting her chin. He grinned—yes, she did have the same plummy accent. “Goodness,” she said, her nose wrinkling. “You’re filthy.”

  He raised his eyebrows, then looked down at himself. She had a point—after a day spent up to his armpits in earth he’d then turned to mud with the hose, there wasn’t a lot of clean clothing left on his body. He wore shorts to the knee but the mud had caked on his bare legs, and although he hadn’t looked in a mirror since he’d showered that morning, he was certain his face would be streaked with earth and sweat.

  “Sorry,” he said. “I’m a real Kiwi man. We prefer things dirty.”

  He grinned, but she didn’t smile back. She was a cool one, he thought. Then she slid off her sunglasses. He’d imagined her eyes to be an icy blue, but to his surprise they were a warm brown. She had long chestnut hair she’d braided into a plait that hung over one shoulder. There were no freckles on her pale skin—he bet she wore factor seventy sun-lotion as soon as summer approached, very different to most Kiwi girls, the majority of whom sported a healthy tan. Still, it meant her face and neck were free of lines, and he had the feeling that if he ran a finger around her pale shoulder, the skin would feel silky smooth to the touch.

  She gave a tiny sniff and looked away, down to the palm island he’d been working on. “I thought you’d be further along by now. Is that all you’ve done so far?”

  Irritation fought with amusement. Completing the island had taken him all week. Clearly, this posh bird had never picked up a spade in her life, and she had no idea of the work involved in landscaping grounds the size of these.

  “I’m sorry it doesn’t meet with your approval.”

  She turned her frosty gaze back to him. “Where’s Mr. Love? I’d like to talk to the owner rather than one of his hands.”

  One of his...? Who the fuck did this girl thinks she was?

  He put his hands on his hips. If he wasn’t sitting in the bar drinking a beer within thirty minutes, he was going to end up murdering someone, and if the snooty girl kept talking like that, she would end up the prime contender. “He’s not here.”

  She blew out a frustrated breath. “What’s your name?”

  “Danny.”

  “Danny...”

  “Mellors,” he said, deadpan.

  She gave a small nod, and he stifle
d a chuckle. Clearly, D.H. Lawrence hadn’t been on the curriculum when she was at Oxford or Cambridge, or wherever she’d received her stuffy, upper-class education.

  “Well, Mr. Mellors, you can tell Mr. Love from me that I am not impressed. He knew I was arriving on Friday, and I had expected him to be here.”

  “I’m not sure he was aware what time you’d be arriving.”

  Huffing an irritated sigh, she pulled her smartphone out, tapped on the screen, and handed it to him. “I sent him an email this morning.”

  Danny read it through—he hadn’t checked his emails since yesterday evening and hadn’t seen her message. He read the last line. It said ‘Hermione Spencer’. “Hermy-wun? Is that your name?”

  Her eyes flared. “It’s pronounced Her-my-on-ee.”

  He stifled a laugh as he handed the phone back. “Sorry. But I don’t think Mr. Love saw your email.”

  “Even so—I expected him to wait for me.”

  “It’s seven o’clock,” he pointed out. “On a Friday. Any decent guy would be on his second beer by now.”

  “You’re here.”

  “I’m not decent,” he said, and grinned.

  He knew he should be angry with her. She’d insulted him, she was superior and arrogant, and she deserved taking down a peg or two, but he could only summon amused desire as his gaze slid down her very womanly curves. “What are you doing tonight? I don’t suppose you’d like to come out for a drink with me?”

  Hermione narrowed her eyes. Walking forward a few steps—daintily, to ensure the high heels she wore didn’t sink into the grass—she stopped before him and gave him a cold stare. “Don’t even think about getting fresh with me, Mr. Mellors. I don’t cavort with hired hands, and I certainly don’t drink beer.”

  Cavort? This chick really was straight out of the 1840s.

  He looked down at her. Even though she wore heels, he topped her by a good six or seven inches. He’d thought she would be wearing lavender water or something else subtle and nondescript, but to his surprise an enticing, sensual scent arose from her, stirring his blood. Her eyes flashed and she’d pursed her mouth, but all it did was draw his attention to her pale pink lips. If he kissed them, they’d be soft as rose petals.

  Not bothering to hide his amusement, he tugged the peak of an imaginary cap and dipped his head. “Yes, ma’am.”

  For a second, he thought he saw the flicker of a smile on her lips. Then she strode off.

  He watched her hips swing as she walked, the heels giving her a gorgeous wiggle he rarely saw on girls these days. After a few steps, she stopped and turned around. “Please tell Mr. Love I would like to see him on Monday, come hell or high water. Oh, and Mr. Mellors?”

  “Yes, ma’am?”

  “Please don’t stare at my bottom when I walk. It makes me uncomfortable.”

  He laughed. “Whatever you say, ma’am.”

  He saw a definite lift of her lips before she turned and walked off again.

  Picking up the handles of the wheelbarrow, he headed for the shed. Lady Chatterley was going to prove a fun distraction.

  Chapter Two

  Hermione Spencer opened her eyes. For a few moments she couldn’t think where she was. Brilliant sunshine poured through the open curtains, sunshine that quite clearly wasn’t English, and the windows were on her left, not on her right as they were in her flat in London.

  She blinked and cleared her vision. The windows had no nets—very un-British. Outside, on the rail at the end of the deck, two birds sat watching her. They looked like parrots, their red, yellow, and violet feathers a vivid reminder she wasn’t at home.

  It was Monday, the first day of June, and she was thirteen thousand miles away in the sub-tropical Northland of New Zealand, Down Under, where they spent Christmas around the pool and celebrated midwinter on the twenty-first of this month.

  Captivated by the birds, she reached for the phone that rested on the bedside table, hoping to take a photo, but they saw her movement and flew away. She sat up, her disappointment vanishing as her gaze fell on the view.

  Casting aside the bedclothes, she got to her feet and then walked over to the windows. After unlatching them, she pulled the large sliding door open and stepped out onto the deck.

  The gardens before her were bathed in sunshine. Closing her eyes, she lifted her face up to the sun for a moment, enjoying the warmth on her cheeks and the smell of the roses that surrounded the deck. In England they were heading toward summer, but it still wouldn’t be as warm as this gorgeous autumn day.

  Opening her eyes, she looked around at the towering palm trees and the huge rolling lawns, scattered with the occasional cluster of late daisies. A strip of golden sand shone in the distance. Beyond the private beach, the Pacific Ocean sparkled in the morning sun.

  Paradise.

  Then her gaze fell on a mound of earth to the left of her parents’ land. A digger crouched beside it, incongruous and ugly, like a pimple on a beautiful woman’s face. Hermione frowned as a memory of the night before flickered through her mind. She’d dreamed about the workman she’d met on Friday evening. In her dream, as in real life, he’d been shoveling dirt into a wheelbarrow, his face and body covered in mud, only in the fantasy he’d been completely naked.

  Her lips twitched. Having erotic dreams about the staff now, was she? Good Lord. How inappropriate. If she was going to dream about anyone, it should be Richard, the man she was going to marry.

  But she didn’t want to think about Richard, not while she was here, on the other side of the world. She pushed his image out of her mind. This was her escape, and while she was here, she wasn’t going to dwell on the problems she’d left behind. Here she was free!

  Sighing happily, she turned and went inside, slotted her feet into a pretty pair of flip-flops she’d bought especially for her trip—what did they call them here? Jandals?—and went through to the kitchen. The clock on the wall showed it was barely seven, so she had plenty of time for breakfast outside before she had to get ready to meet the elusive head gardener.

  She made a pot of tea in one of her mother’s china teapots, placed it on a tray with two slices of toast and marmalade, and took it outside. The large deck that ran the length of the house had a luxurious swing seat and an outdoor sofa and chairs, but she took the tray to the little two-seater table at the end, poured herself a cup of tea, and put her feet up.

  She could get used to this. When her parents had first announced their intention to become ‘swallows’—retirees who spent half the year in the northern hemisphere and half in the south—she’d not understood why they felt the need to chase the sun around the globe.

  Winter in the UK could be wet and mild rather than crisp and even, it was true, but she loved spring and autumn, and she’d read that this far north in New Zealand the seasons tended to be less marked, so much so that it had been christened ‘the winterless north’.

  Now, she comprehended their decision. Their home in Devon, England, was far from small with its parks and estates, and the resplendent manor house, but it wasn’t a patch on this place. Their ancestral home did have all the paintings and traditional furniture she loved, but being here felt so...exciting, so liberating.

  Everything was new in this place. While she loved history and appreciated the heritage of her country, there was something about the notion of starting again that appealed to her. Breaking away from tradition had become part of her life’s plan over the years, so this country suited her very well.

  And now she was back to thinking about Richard. She closed her eyes and gave a frustrated sigh. She was not going to let him ruin her holiday.

  Sliding down in her seat, she rested her head on the back of the chair and let the sun warm her through. The idea she’d been playing with all weekend filtered into her mind. Half of her was certain it wasn’t possible. The other half—the rebellious half—insisted she at least give it some consideration.

  Later, she’d grab a pen and paper and start making lists.
For now, though, she let the idea bloom like the roses by the side of the deck.

  “Morning.”

  The deep male voice made her jump. She sat up, banging her knee on the table, and looked around in shock to see the workman from Friday standing on the lawn.

  That first evening after she’d landed was somewhat hazy in her mind. The flight had taken a total of twenty-six hours with a short stop in Singapore, plus New Zealand was eleven hours ahead of London, and her body clock had been completely confused. She’d felt dizzy, and even though it had only been seven in the evening when she’d met him, when she’d returned to the house she’d gone to bed and fallen asleep immediately. Her dreams had been filled with Lewis Carroll-style crazy creations, dominated by the man in the mud-caked clothing, whose handsome face and warm eyes had haunted her until daybreak.

  Now, with three good sleeps under her belt, the jet lag was wearing off a little and her mind felt fresher, and she looked at him with renewed interest. Her first thought was how much cleaner he looked—his blue T-shirt and khaki-colored cargo shorts were free of Friday’s mud, his skin looked deeply tanned without the caking of dirt. His dark hair curled damply around his temples and the nape of his neck, so she guessed he’d recently had a shower.

  “Goodness.” She suddenly remembered it was only seven o’clock. “What are you doing here so early?”

  “I’m a lark—I always start work early. I’m asleep by nine in the evening.” He grinned, showing his straight white teeth.

  “Well, you could have warned me. I’m still in my nightie.” She smoothed down the white cotton shift nervously, hoping her nipples weren’t showing through the lace-covered bodice.

  His eyebrows rose. “Oh, Christ, sorry. I assumed it was a sundress.”

  “Seriously?” The nightie had ribbon straps, and when she stood it fell to an inch above her knees. At the moment, because she was sitting, it covered only half her thighs. “I don’t know what Kiwi girls wear but I would never buy a sundress as revealing as this. Plus I would have thought the bed hair and pillow-creased face would have given me away.”