The Wedding Date (8 page)

She turned to glare at him, only to find glints throwing out specks of silver in his dark grey eyes. He said, ‘Turns out that despite Virginia’s predilection for … what was it?’

‘Pink cardigans and cocktails with umbrellas in them,’ she muttered.

‘That’s right. I couldn’t remember beyond rhinestones. It turns out that she’s an entirely sensible woman.’

Sensible? Sensible?

‘Oh, no, no, no,’ Hannah said, waggling a furious finger in front of his face. ‘Don’t
you
go falling for her act. Virginia is the very opposite of sensible. She’s a narcissistic, selfish, hurtful
creature who
always
has an agenda. And it always revolves around how any situation can benefit
her.’

Her harsh words seemed to echo in the large space, coming back at her and back at her, like some kind of horrible Groundhog Day moment.

Bradley’s hand slipped away from her knee and she felt the cool slap of his silence. She hunched her shoulders in mortification and stared unseeingly at a patch of carpet.

‘Evidently,’ he drawled into the painful silence, ‘until this moment I wasn’t aware just how deeply the issues run between your mother and you.’

She ran her fingers through her hair, needing to shake off the crazies. ‘Well, now you are.’

Suddenly Hannah felt very, very tired. As if her years in the city, working her backside off, building an impeccable professional reputation, creating a life for herself from nothing, doing her best to forget the period of her life at home after her dad died, were catching up with her in one fell swoop.

With a groan, she let her head fall to the bar with a thunk.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw Bradley’s fingers fiddling with the room key. Maybe one good thing had come from her pyscho rant. Maybe he was realising the level of drama he’d
be subjecting himself to by standing anywhere near a Gillespie girl in full flight. Maybe he was thinking of leaving her and her mad family in peace.

She lifted her head and swept her hair from her eyes. He was looking into the middle distance, the expression in his eyes pure steel. Whatever he was thinking there would be no talking him out of it.

She breathed in deep and waited.

Finally he turned to face her, and said, ‘I’m coming to your sister’s wedding.’

She moved to let her head thunk against the bar again—only this time he saw it coming. He took her by the shoulders, holding her upright. She wobbled like a marionette.

She must have looked as pathetic and wretched as she felt because his hands slid to cradle her neck, to slip beneath her hair, his thumbs touching the soft spots just below her ears. He had to be able to feel her pulse thundering in her neck at his gentle but insistent touch, but he didn’t show it.

He just looked her right in the eye—serious, determined, beautiful. ‘By the sound of things you’re walking into a lions’ den this weekend, with no back-up. It wouldn’t be showing you any kind of thanks for having my back all these months if I just walked away and let that happen.
Especially after exacerbating the problem. I’ll be your wing man.’

His hands dropped to her shoulders, and then away.

Hannah wondered if a person could get jet lag from a one-hour flight. Because, blinking slowly at Bradley’s mouth, that was just how she felt—woozy, off-kilter, slipping in and out of a parallel universe. Surely the fact that Bradley Knight had just offered to be her
wing man
was a hallucination.

She glanced at her drink. It was still three-quarters full.

‘Hannah—’

She closed her tired eyes and held up a hand. ‘I’m thinking.’

‘About?’

About the fact that she couldn’t twist his offer to mean anything other than what it meant. There was no punishment for rhinestone comparisons at play. By offering to throw himself in the path of the drama tornado, for
her,
he was being nice. Thoughtful. Selfless. Things she’d taken pains to remind herself he was not.

She took a deep breath and said, ‘It’s a really nice offer, Bradley. Truly. But this holiday is not all about my family. It’s about taking a break from work … and those I work with.’

She glanced up at him with one eye open.

Taciturn, stoic, unreadable as ever, he said, ‘Meaning me?’

She opened the other eye and nodded. ‘You. And Sonja. And dealing with prima donnas all day. And Spencer following me around like a lovesick puppy while I’m trying to work. And sixty-hour weeks. And no sleeping-in—’

‘Okay. I get it. I hadn’t realised you found your job such a hardship.’

Grrr!
That one man could be so smart one minute and so dumb the next …

Hannah shuffled on her stool. ‘Don’t be daft. I love my job. More than anything else in my life. Truly. But in order to do it right I need to recharge. This weekend is my chance.’

Finally, after such a long time she wondered if he’d heard a word of what she’d said, he nodded. ‘Fair enough.’

Then, after an even more interminable silence, he said, ‘But I know how even the most … thorny of families can have the kind of pull over you nothing else can. And that doesn’t mean you have to take their crap. Not alone, anyway. If that’s a concern in your case, my offer stands.’

She let out a great fat sigh. And, whether it was from the shock of his little insight, or a masochistic streak she was becoming all too familiar with, she threw her hands in the air and said, ‘Fine. Okay.’

‘Okay?’ He perked up. As if he was finding himself quite enjoying playing the hero.

It was irresistible.
He
was irresistible. And he was going to be her plus one at her sister’s wedding.

She was in mounds and mounds of trouble.

He took her hand, slipped it into the crook of his elbow and helped her off the stool.

‘Come on, kiddo, let’s go see what’s so amazing about the suites in this place.’

‘Prepare to have your socks literally knocked off.’

Glancing up at him as they walked through Reception, arm in arm, her blood fizzing more and more every time her hip bumped against his, she saw an ever so slight curve to his mouth.

Mounds and mounds and mounds of trouble.

T
HE
lift doors opened to reveal a line of people outside the Gatehouse’s basement nightclub. The
doof-doof-doof
of the beat echoing from behind the bouncer-manned double doors thundered in Hannah’s chest.

It didn’t help that she was overly aware of the big warm man standing so close behind her she could feel the brush of his jeans against her backside every time the line moved.

‘Stop fidgeting,’ Bradley said, his breath brushing her chandelier earring against her bare neck. ‘You look fine.’

‘Thanks,’ she said dryly. But she could hardly tell him the fidgets were all his doing.

The doors opened. Lights flashed over their faces. The line moved forward. Hannah took her chance and arched away from him. The doors closed.
Doof-doof-doof.

‘I was serious when I said you should get a guide to take you out for a night tour of Cradle
Mountain rather than coming along to this pre-wedding party thing.’

‘I’m fine.’

‘Look,’ she said, leaning back so she could drop her voice in case any of the bouncy young things in line were from Elyse’s wedding party, ‘it’s just going to be a bunch of locals, all of whom will pinch me on the cheek and remind me they were there the time I took off down Main Street naked. You’ll be bored out of your mind.’

When he didn’t answer straight away she looked up at him, surprised to find his jaw was clenched. He asked, ‘You took off down Main Street naked?’

The husky timbre of his voice gave her pause before she cleared her throat and explained, ‘I was two, and not overly keen on having a bath that evening.’

The slightly haunted look in his eyes disappeared. ‘You were a tearaway?’

‘Hardly. I was the perfect first child. Studious, polite, a pleaser. I took singing and dancing lessons for four years because Mum wanted me to—even though I’m tone deaf with two left feet. In compensation, when I did have my moments, I made the most of them—usually in front of the entire town.’

‘Coming in?’ the bouncer asked.

Hannah looked up to find they were at the
front of the line. And she was still leaning back against her boss as though they were in the middle of a crushing crowd.

She pulled herself upright, rolled her shoulders and said, ‘You betcha.’

The bouncer smiled. ‘Knock ‘em dead.’

Hannah gave him a bright smile, feeling for the first time that night as if maybe she could. As if she was no longer the naked two-year-old, or the gawky, soccer-playing tomboy kid of the local beauty queen. ‘You know what? I’m going to do just that.’

The guy cleared his throat and blushed.

Only when she nodded did he open the door.

Bradley placed his hand against the small of her back and gave her a not too subtle shove. In fact she practically had to trot to stop from falling over.

‘Somebody has a fan,’ Bradley murmured against her ear once they were inside and the
doof-doof-doof
had become music so loud she could barely hear herself.

‘I do not.’

‘That big, burly bouncer back there thinks you look more than fine tonight. He thinks you look downright gorgeous. And you know what?’

Hannah was feeling so dizzy from the effects
of that voice skimming her ear she was amazed she had the ability to speak. ‘What?’

‘He has a point.’

Then the door swung shut behind them, and it was too loud to do anything but shout to be heard.

The club was rocking. Tasmania-style.

There were men with burnt-orange copper mine dust stained into their jeans and the grooves of their hands, mixed with women and men in business suits, twenty-somethings in classic black club attire, and tourists in sensible layers.

And then there was Hannah.

Bradley might not have been to a wedding in his life, but he had seen his fair share of bachelor parties. Leaving studious, polite and pleasing Hannah to her own devices at such a do, looking the way she did, was never going to happen.

Smoky make-up and glossy pink lips. Tousled hair that seemed to shimmer every time she moved. And an outfit that seemed demure at first glance only to cling in all the right places the second she breathed.

Not that his imagination needed help. All that talk of her running naked down Main Street had brought her dash from the bathroom back to the front and centre of his mind. In full 3D. Technicolor. As for her perfume … It had his
nostrils flaring like a horse in heat every time she moved.

If she’d come to the wilds of Tasmania looking for a wild fling then she was going the right way about it. Hell, without even turning his head he could see a dozen men checking her out, and the look in their eyes was creating a red mist behind his.

Because
he
had her back. He’d promised he would, and he was a man of his word.

He moved in closer, putting his hands on her shoulders as she began to snake a path through the club, so he wouldn’t lose her in the crowd. Her hair spilled over his fingers, silky soft. His thumbs rested against the back of her warm neck.

The fact that those men with room keys burning holes in their pockets might consider his touch some kind of brand was their problem.

And possibly, he admitted, his.

It would only take one of those goons to show her the time of her life this long weekend and she’d have reason to wonder if sixty-hour weeks working for a stubborn perfectionist was actually a form of sado-masochism.

Resolve turned to steel inside him. Hannah must have felt it in his grip. She glanced back at him, eyebrows raised in question. He tilted his head towards the bar, and lifted a hand off her shoulder to motion that he needed a drink.

She gave him a thumbs-up and a wide, bright smile. Even in the smoky half-darkness the luminosity in those eyes of hers cut through. Showing the lightness of spirit that made her easy to have around.

The goons could go hang. She’d be damned hard to replace.

The crowd bumped and jostled. Then out of nowhere lumbered a guy carrying a tray of beers who looked as if he’d drunk a keg by himself already that night. Instinctively Bradley slid an arm around Hannah’s slight waist and lifted her bodily to one side. She squeaked as she avoided having a cup of beer spilled over her in its entirety by about half a hair’s breadth.

He found a breathing space in the gap around a massive pillar covered in trails of fake ivy, and let her down slowly until her back was against the protective sconce.

His breaths came heavily. Then again, so did hers. Her chest lifting and falling, her lips slightly parted. Pupils so dark he couldn’t find a lick of green.

A wisp of hair was stuck to her cheek. He casually swept the strand back into place, tucking it behind her ear where he knew she liked it. But there was nothing casual about the sudden burst of energy that coursed through his finger, as if he’d had an electric shock. He folded his fingers into his palm.

‘You’re making a habit of coming to my rescue this weekend,’ she said, shifting until the hand that had remained on her hip nudged at her hipbone. ‘A girl could get used to it.’

‘Don’t,’ he growled, shocked at the ferocity of the urge to slide his hand up to her waist to see if it was as soft and warm as the sliver of skin he touched indicated. ‘I’m no Galahad. I was thinking of myself the whole time. Of the griping I’d have to put up with if you ended up soaked head to toe in beer.’

He pictured it now.
Her skin glistening. Her white top rendered all but see-through. Her tongue sliding between her lips to clean away the amber fluid shining thereupon.

He’d never felt himself grow so hard so fast.

But this was Hannah. The woman whose job it was to de-complicate his life. Hannah, whose hair smelt of apples. Whose soft pink lips were parted so temptingly. Who was looking up at him with those wide, bright and clear open eyes of hers. Unblinking. Unflinching. Unshrinking.

He stood his ground for several beats, then slowly, carefully, removed his hands from her body, sliding one into a safe spot in the back pocket of his jeans and placing the other on the column above her head.