Our Kind of Love by Victoria Purman Page B

of the water. With the other, she tried to control her hair, which was whipping about her face and her shoulders. Anna wished she’d brought a hair band with her. And perhaps some thongs.
    She breathed deeply and, mysteriously, miraculously, some of the tension seemed to leave her. The feeling was so delicious and unexpected that she stopped, turned to look out to the distant ocean and breathe some more. She wondered if the cleansing sensation would make it further than the muscles of her neck and shoulders, reach right down into her chest and soothe her heart as well.
    ‘You okay?’ Dan ambled beside her.
    Anna found a smile. ‘It’s kind of nice down here, isn’t it?’
    Dan took in the sweep of the view, from the Point to the Coorong. ‘You’re preaching to the choir, baby.’
    Anna laughed as the wind played with her hair some more and she struggled to control it. ‘I get why you love it. You look a million bucks and you’ve got the sweetest woman in the whole world to love you. I think she’s what makes Middle Point special for you, no?’
    The smallest shadow passed over Dan’s face but quickly lifted. Anna knew him well enough to know he was thinking back to his recovery from the car accident and all he’d been through during the past six months.
    ‘Yeah,’ he grinned, suddenly happier than she’d ever seen him. ‘I’d live anywhere as long as I’m with Lizzie. But,’ Dan thought for a moment, ‘There’s something else, too. There’s a magic here. I can’t describe it.’ Dan shrugged his shoulders. ‘All I know is that once you feel it, it snares you and you never want to let go.’
    Okay, maybe Dan had a point, just a small one. So the place looked like a postcard and the sun tingled your skin, warming you up from the inside. The views for miles along the coastline were good and the old stone pub up on the Point looked impressive, if you liked old buildings.
    It was nice for weekends but Anna was a city girl through and through, from her high heels to her coffee addiction, and knew for sure that she was totally impervious to the charms of a sleepy beachside town. She wasn’t so sure about her immunity to one of its residents, however.
    She was so lost in thought that she hadn’t realised Dan had stopped until she heard him behind her.
    ‘G’day,’ he called out to the waves. Anna stopped and turned to see who Dan was talking to.
    Oh, this was just perfect.

CHAPTER
12
    Joe Blake was walking up the beach towards them, carrying a white surfboard under his right arm and flicking the water from his hair with his free hand. Anna was glad she was wearing sunglasses so he wouldn’t notice the way she rolled her eyes at his look of smug self-satisfaction. She’d just rejected him and there he was, looking all athletic and beautiful and sun-drenched and strong. Could he have planned this any better?
    He lifted a hand in the air to wave at them as he approached. ‘Hey.’ She didn’t need to be looking at him to hear the smile in his voice.
    ‘Hi Joe,’ Anna replied, trying her hardest to sound indifferent. She glanced back to the road. Didn’t he just know he looked amazingly handsome in his half-nakedness? He was actually half-naked because he’d pulled down the top half of his wetsuit and the inside-out arms were flapping around his thighs like soggy origami. So what , she thought? It’s not as if she hadn’t seen thousands of men in a similar state. She was a doctor after all. Bare skin and muscles were just body parts. Organs and musculature. Biceps. Deltoids. Triceps. Their combination in the six-foot-two frame of Joe Blake had no more affect on her than if he were one of her patients lying on her examination table and she was listening to his heartbeat with a stethoscope.
    ‘Waves any good?’ Dan asked.
    ‘Yeah, west of the Point, five footers. What are you two up to?’
    Anna felt his gaze on her. And when she looked back at him, the sun was shining so bright that she could