The Australian's Proposal (Mills & Boon By Request): The Doctor's Marriage Wish / The Playboy Doctor's Proposal / The Nurse He's Been Waiting For (33 page)

That was fun?

Sexpot? Where on earth had he got that word?

He cast another glance towards his companion—golden hair gleaming in the sunlight, the freckles on her nose sparkling like gold dust, cleavage …

Yep. Sexpot.

‘You OK?’

Even anxious, she looked good enough to eat.

Slowly …

Mouthful by sexy mouthful …

‘Fine,’ he managed to croak, denying the way his body was behaving, wondering if rain had the same effect cold showers were purported to have.

Although the rain appeared to have gone …

Bloody cyclones—never around when you needed them.

‘Oh, dear, there’s Mrs P. and she looks distraught.’

Grace’s voice broke into this peculiar reverie.

‘Did you expect her to be anything but?’ he asked, as Grace left his side and hurried towards the woman who was wringing her hands and staring up towards the sky.

‘I’m on mother-in-law watch,’ Grace explained, smiling back over her shoulder at him. Maybe they
were
still friends. ‘I promised Em I’d try to keep Mrs P. calm.’

Harry returned her smile just in case the damage done was not irreparable.

‘About as easy as telling the cyclone not to change course,’ he said, before hurrying after Christina and Joe.

Grace carried his smile with her as she walked towards Mrs Poulos, although she knew Harry’s smiles, like the polite way Harry would take someone’s elbow to cross a road, were part of the armour behind which he hid all his emotions.

And she was through with loving Harry anyway.

Mrs P. was standing beside the restaurant’s big catering van, though what it was doing there when the reception was at the restaurant, Grace couldn’t fathom.

‘What’s the problem, Mrs P.?’ Grace asked as she approached, her sympathy for the woman whose plans had been thrown into chaos by the weather clear in her voice.

‘Oh, Grace, it’s the doves. I don’t know what to do about the doves.’

‘Doves?’ Grace repeated helplessly, clasping the hyperventilating woman around the shoulders and patting her arm, telling her to breathe deeply.

‘The doves—how can I let them fly?’ Mrs P. wailed, lifting her arms to the heavens, as if doves might suddenly descend.

Grace looked around, seeking someone who might explain this apparent disaster. But although a figure in white was hunched behind the wheel of the delivery van, whoever it was had no intention of helping.

‘The dove man phoned,’ Mrs P. continued. ‘He says they will blow away in all this wind. They will never get home. They will die.’

‘Never get home’ provided a slight clue. Grace had heard of homing pigeons—weren’t doves just small pigeons?

Did they home?

‘Just calm down and we’ll think about it,’ she told Mrs P. ‘Breathe deeply, then tell me about the doves.’

But the mention of the birds sent Mrs Poulos back into paroxysms of despair, which stopped only when Grace reminded her they had a bare ten minutes until the ceremony began—ten minutes before she had to be ready in her special place as mother of the groom.

‘But the doves?’

Mrs P. pushed past Grace, and opened the rear doors of the van. And there, in a large crate with a wire netting front, were, indeed, doves.

Snowy white, they strutted around behind the wire, heads tipping to one side as their bright, inquisitive eyes peered out at the daylight.

‘They were to be my special surprise,’ Mrs P. explained, poking a finger through the wire to stroke the feathers of the closest bird. ‘I had it all arranged. Albert, who is our new trainee chef, he was going to release them just as Mike and Emily came out of the church. They are trained, you know, the doves. They know to circle the happy couple three times before they take off.’

And heaven only knows what they’ll do as they circle three times, Grace thought, imagining the worst. But saving Em from bird droppings wasn’t her job—keeping Mrs Poulos on an even keel was.

‘It was a wonderful idea,’ Grace told the older woman. ‘And it would have looked magical, but you’re right about the poor things not being able to fly home in this wind. We’ll just have to tell Mike and Emily about it later.’

‘But their happiness,’ Mrs P. protested. ‘We need to do the doves to bring them happiness.’

She was calmer now but so determined Grace understood why Emily had agreed to the plethora of attendants Mrs P. had arranged, and the fluffy tulle creations all the female members of the wedding party had been pressed into wearing. Mrs P. had simply worn Em down—ignoring any suggestions and refusing to countenance any ideas not her own.

‘We could do it later,’ Mrs P. suggested. ‘Maybe when Mike and Emily cut the cake and kiss. Do you think we can catch the doves afterwards if we let them out inside the restaurant? All the doors and windows are shut because of the wind so they wouldn’t get out. Then we could put them back in their box and everything will be all right.’

Grace flicked her attention back to the cage, and counted.

Ten!

Ten birds flying around inside a restaurant packed with more than one hundred guests? A dozen dinner-jacketed waiters chasing fluttering doves?

And Em was worried the sea of tulle might make a farce of things!

‘No!’ Grace said firmly. ‘We can’t have doves flying around inside the restaurant.’

She scrambled around in her head for a reason, knowing she’d need something forceful.

More than forceful …

‘CJ, Cal and Gina’s little boy—he’s one of the pages, isn’t he?’ She crossed her fingers behind her back before she told her lie. ‘Well, he’s very allergic to bird feathers. Think how terrible it would be if we had to clear a table and use a steak knife to do an emergency tracheotomy on him—you know, one of those operations where you have to cut a hole in the throat so the person can breathe. Think how terrible that would be in the middle of the reception.’

Mrs Poulos paled, and though she opened her mouth to argue, she closed it again, finally nodding agreement.

‘And we’d get feathers on the cake,’ she added, and
Grace smiled. Now it was Mrs P.’s idea not to have the doves cavorting inside the restaurant, one disaster had been averted.

Gently but firmly Grace guided her charge towards the church, finally settling her beside her husband in the front pew.

‘Doves?’ Mr Poulos whispered to Grace above his wife’s head, and Grace nodded.

‘No doves,’ she whispered back, winning a warm smile of appreciation.

She backed out of the pew, her job done for now, and was making her way towards the back of the church, where she could see friends sitting, when Joe caught her arm.

‘We’ve kept a seat for you,’ he said, ushering her in front of him towards a spare place between Christina and Harry.

Sitting through a wedding ceremony beside Harry was hardly conducive to amputating him out of her heart.

Although the way things were between them, he might shift to another pew. Or, manlike, had he moved on from the little scene last night—the entire episode forgotten?

Grace slid into the seat, apprehension tightening ever sinew in her body, so when Harry shifted and his sleeve brushed her arm, she jerked away.

‘Problems?’ Harry whispered, misreading her reaction.

‘All sorted,’ she whispered back, but a flock of doves circling around inside the restaurant paled into insignificance beside the turmoil within her body.
Remembering her own advice to Mrs P., Grace closed her eyes and breathed deeply.

Harry watched her breasts rise and fall, and wondered just how badly he’d hurt her with his angry words. Or was something else going on that he didn’t know about? He glanced around, but apart from flowers and bows and a lot of pink and white frothy drapery everything appeared normal. Mike was ready by the altar, and a change in the background music suggested Emily was about to make an appearance.

So why was Grace as tense as fencing wire?

She’d seemed OK earlier, as if determined to pretend everything was all right between them—at least for the duration of the wedding.

So it had to be something else.

Did she not like weddings?

Had something terrible happened in her past, something connected with a wedding?

The thought of something terrible happening in Grace’s past made him reach out and take her hand, thinking, at the same time, how little he knew of her.

Her fingers were cold and they trembled slightly, making him want to hug her reassuringly, but things were starting, people standing up, kids in shiny dresses and suits were scattering rose petals, and a confusion of young women in the same pink frothy stuff that adorned the church were parading down the aisle. Emily, he assumed, was somewhere behind them, because Mike’s face had lit up with a smile so soppy Harry felt a momentary pang of compassion for him.

Poor guy had it bad!

Beside him Grace sighed—or maybe sniffed—and
he turned away from the wedding party, sorting itself with some difficulty into the confined space in front of the altar, and looked at the woman by his side.

‘Are you crying?’ he demanded, his voice harsher than he’d intended because anxiety had joined the stirring thing that was happening again in his body.

Grace smiled up at him, easing the anxiety but exacerbating the stirring.

‘No way,’ she said. ‘I was thinking of the last wedding I was at.’

‘Bad?’

She glanced his way and gave a nod.

‘My father’s fourth. He introduced me to the latest Mrs O’Riordan as Maree’s daughter. My mother’s name was Kirstie.’

No wonder Grace looked grim.

And how it must have hurt.

But her father’s fourth marriage?

Did that explain why Grace had never married?

‘His fourth? Has his example put you off marriage for life?’

No smile, but she did turn towards him, studying him for a moment before replying, this time with a very definite shake of her head.

‘No way, but I do feel a trifle cynical about the celebratory part. If ever I get married, I’ll elope.’

‘No pink and white frothy dresses?’ he teased, hoping, in spite of the stirring, she’d smile again.

Hoping smiles might signal all was well between them once again.

‘Not a froth in sight! And I think it’s peach, not pink,’ she said, and did smile.

But the smile was sad somehow, and a little part of him wondered just how badly having a marriage-addicted father might have hurt her.

He didn’t like the idea of Grace hurting …

Handling this well, Grace congratulated herself. Strangely enough, the impersonal way Harry had taken her hand had helped her settle down. But just in case this settling effect turned to something else, she gently detached her hand from his as they stood up. And although he’d put his arm around her shoulders and given her a hug, it was definitely a friend kind of a hug and had reminded her that’s what she was to him.

Now all she had to do was close her mind to the words being spoken at the front, pretend that Harry was nothing more to her than the friend she was to him, and keep an eye on Mrs P. in case she thought of some new reason for panic.

Fun!

It
was
fun, Grace decided, some hours later.

True, Harry had excused himself and left the church not long after the ceremony began, but whether because he couldn’t bear to sit through it or to check on the latest weather report and weather-related incidents, she didn’t know. Something had certainly happened—tiles or something coming off the roof—because there’d been loud crashing noises then the minister had insisted everyone leave through the vestry, disrupting the wedding party to the extent Grace had to calm Mrs P. down once again, persuading her the wedding was still legal even if the happy couple hadn’t left as man and wife through the front door of the church.

Grace had driven to the restaurant with Mr and Mrs Poulos so hadn’t caught up with Christina and Joe until the reception.

People milled around, sipping champagne, talking and even dancing. Luke Bresciano came up to her, took the champagne glass out of her hand, set it down on a handy table, and swept her onto the dance floor.

‘I was looking for you,’ he said, guiding her carefully around the floor. ‘Have you heard the ink-blot joke? I remembered it after we looked at the stain last night.’

Grace shook her head, and Luke launched into the story of the psychologist showing ink-blot pictures to a patient.

‘So the fellow looks at the first one, and says that’s two rabbits having sex. The psychologist turns the page and the fellow says, that’s an elephant and a rhino having sex. The psychologist is a bit shocked but he offers a third. That’s three people and a dog having sex. Floored by this reaction, the psychologist loses his cool. “You’ve got a dirty mind,” he tells his patient. “Me?” the patient says. “You’re the one showing filthy pictures.”’

Grace laughed, looking more closely at this man she barely knew. The lines around his eyes suggested he was older than she knew he was. Signs of the unhappiness she’d heard was in his background?

She asked about his early life but somehow the questions ended up coming from him, so by the end of the dance she knew no more than she had at the beginning.

Except that he had a sense of humour, which was a big point in his favour.

But when she glimpsed Harry across the room,
bending down to speak to Charles, the excited beating of her heart told her she had a long way to go in the getting over him stakes. Fortunately the best man—some friend of Mike’s who’d come across from New Zealand—appeared and asked her to dance, so Harry was not forgotten but tucked away behind her determination to move on.

The dance ended, and she noticed Harry heading in her direction. Dancing with Harry was
not
part of the plan, so she picked up her glass of now flat champagne and pressed into an alcove of pot plants, hoping to hide in this corner of the greenery festooning the restaurant.

Could one hide from a policeman?

‘You know I can’t dance with my leg!’

It wasn’t exactly the greeting she’d expected. In fact, the slightly petulant statement made no sense whatsoever.

‘What are you talking about? What do you mean?’ she demanded, looking up into Harry’s face, which seemed to be flushed with the same anger she’d heard in his voice.