The Bridesmaid's Baby Bump (3 page)

For a moment he regretted the decision he’d made to keep her out of his life. Three months wasted in an Eliza-free zone. But the aftermath of his divorce had made him unfit for female company. Unfit for
any
company, if truth be told.

He’d been thrown so badly by the first big failure of his life that he’d gone completely out of kilter. Drunk too much. Made bad business decisions that had had serious repercussions to his bottom line. Mistakes he’d had to do everything in his power to fix. He had wealth, but it would never be enough to blot out the poverty of his childhood, to assuage the hunger for more that had got him into such trouble. He had buried himself in his work, determined to reverse the wrong turns he’d made. But he hadn’t been able to forget Eliza.

‘Eliza!’ he called now.

She started, looked up, was unable to mask a quick flash of guilt.

‘Jake. Hi.’

Her voice was higher than usual. Just as sweet, but strained. She was not a good liar. He stored that information up for later, as he did in his assessments of clients. He’d learned young that knowledge of people’s weaknesses was a useful tool. Back then it had been for survival. Now it was to give him a competitive advantage and keep him at the top. He could not let himself slide again.

‘I suspected you might try and avoid me, so I decided to head you off at the pass,’ he said.

Eliza frowned unconvincingly. ‘Why would you do that?’

‘Because you obviously think I’m a jerk for not calling you after the divorce. I’m determined to change your mind.’ He didn’t want to leave things the way they were. Not when thoughts of her had intruded, despite his best efforts to forget her.

‘Oh,’ she said, after a long pause. ‘You could do that over coffee. Not during an hour’s drive to Port Douglas.’

So she’d been mulling over the enforced intimacy of a journey in his car. So had he. But to different effect.

‘How do you know I won’t need an hour with you?’

She shrugged slender shoulders. ‘I guess I don’t. But I’ve booked the shuttle bus. The driver is expecting me.’

‘Call them and cancel.’ He didn’t want to appear too high-handed. But no way was she going to get on that shuttle bus. ‘Come on, Eliza. It will be much more comfortable in my car.’

‘Your rental car?’

‘I have a house in Port Douglas. And a car.’

‘I thought you lived in Brisbane?’

‘I do. The house in Port Douglas is an escape house.’

He took hold of her wheeled bag. ‘Do you need to pick up more luggage?’

She shook her head. ‘This is all I have. A few bikinis and sundresses is all I need for four days.’

Jake forced himself not to think how Eliza would look in a bikini. She was wearing flat shoes and he realised how petite she was. Petite, slim, but with curves in all the right places. She would look sensational in a bikini.

‘My car is out front. Let’s go.’

Still she hesitated. ‘So you’ll drop me at my resort hotel?’

Did she think he was about to abduct her? It wasn’t such a bad idea, if that was what it took to get her to listen to him. ‘Your private driver—at your service,’ he said with a mock bow.

She smiled that curving smile he found so delightful. The combination of astute businesswoman and quick-to-laughter Party Queen was part of her appeal.

‘Okay, I accept the offer,’ she said.

The warm midday air hit him as they left the air-conditioning of the terminal. Eliza shrugged off her jacket to reveal a simple white top that emphasised the curves of her breasts. She stretched out her slim, toned arms in a movement he found incredibly sensual, as if she were welcoming the sun to her in an embrace.

‘Nice and hot,’ she said with a sigh of pleasure. ‘Just what I want. Four days of relaxing and swimming and eating great food.’

‘April is a good time of year here,’ he said. ‘Less chance of cyclone and perfect conditions for diving on the Great Barrier Reef.’

The garage attendant had brought Jake’s new-model four-by-four to the front of the airport. It was a luxury to keep a car for infrequent use. Just as it was to keep a house up here that was rarely used. But he liked being able to come and go whenever he wanted. It had been his bolthole through the unhappiest times of his marriage.

‘Nice car,’ Eliza said.

Jake remembered they’d talked about cars at their first meeting. He’d been impressed by how knowledgeable she was. Face it—he’d been impressed by
her
. Period. No wonder she’d been such a difficult woman to forget.

He put her bag into the back, went to help her up into the passenger’s seat, but she had already swung herself effortlessly up. He noticed the sleek muscles in her arms and legs. Exercise was a non-negotiable part of her day, he suspected. Everything about her spoke of discipline and control. He wondered how it would be to see her come to pieces with pleasure in his arms.

Jake settled himself into the driver’s seat. ‘Have you been to Port Douglas before?’ he asked.

‘Yes, but not for some time,’ she said. ‘I loved it and always wanted to come back. But there’s been no time for vacations. As you know, Party Queens took off quickly. It’s an intense, people-driven business. I can’t be away from it for long. But I need to free my head to think about how we can make it work with Gemma not on the ground.’

Can’t
or
didn’t want to
be away from her job? Jake had recognised a fellow workaholic when he’d first met her.

‘So you’re familiar with the drive from Cairns to Port Douglas?’

With rainforest on one side and the sea on the other, it was considered one of the most scenic drives in Australia.

‘I planned the timing of my flight to make sure I saw it in daylight.’

‘I get the feeling very little is left to chance with you, Eliza.’

‘You’ve got it,’ she said with a click of her fingers. ‘I plan, schedule, timetable and organise my life to the minute.’

She was the total opposite of his ex-wife. In looks, in personality, in attitude. The two women could not be more different.

‘You don’t like surprises?’ he asked.

‘Surprises have a habit of derailing one’s life.’

She stilled, almost imperceptibly, and there was a slight hitch to her voice that made him wonder about the kind of surprises that had hit her.

‘I like things to be on track. For me to be at the wheel.’

‘So by hijacking you I’ve ruined your plans for today?’

His unwilling passenger shrugged slender shoulders.

‘Just a deviation. I’m still heading for my resort. It will take the same amount of time. Just a different mode of transportation.’ She turned her head to face him. ‘Besides. I’m on vacation. From schedules and routine as much as from anything else.’

Eliza reached back and undid the tie from her ponytail, shook out her hair so it fell in a silky mass to her shoulders. With her hair down she looked even lovelier. Younger than her twenty-nine years. More relaxed. He’d like to run his hands through that hair, bunch it back from her face to kiss her. Instead he tightened his hands on the steering wheel as she settled back in her seat.

‘When you’re ready to tell me why I had to read about your divorce in the gossip columns rather than hear it from you,’ she said, ‘I’m all ears.’

CHAPTER THREE

J
AKE
WAS
VERY
good at speaking the language of computers and coding. At talking the talk when it came to commercial success. While still at university he had come up with a concept for ground-breaking software tools to streamline the digital workflow of large businesses. His friend Dominic Hunt had backed him. The resulting success had made a great deal of money for both young men. And Jake had continued on a winning streak that had made him a billionaire.

But for all his formidable skills Jake wasn’t great at talking about emotions. At admitting that he had fears and doubts. Or conceding to any kind of failure. It was one of the reasons he’d got into such trouble when he was younger. Why he’d fallen apart after the divorce. No matter how much he worked on it, he still considered it a character flaw.

He hoped he’d be able to make a good fist of explaining to Eliza why he hadn’t got in touch until now.

He put the four-by-four into gear and headed for the Captain Cook Highway to Port Douglas. Why they called it a highway, he’d never know—it was a narrow two-lane road in most places. To the left was dense vegetation, right back to the distant hills. To the right was the vastness of the Pacific Ocean, its turquoise sea bounded by narrow, deserted beaches, broken by small islands. In places the road ran almost next to the sand. He’d driven along this road many times, but never failed to be impressed by the grandeur of the view.

He didn’t look at Eliza but kept his eyes on the road. ‘I’ll cut straight to it,’ he said. ‘I want to apologise for not getting in touch when I said I would. I owe you an explanation.’

‘Fire away,’ Eliza said.

Her voice was cool. The implication?
This had better be good.

He swallowed hard. ‘The divorce eventually came through three months ago.’

‘I heard. Congratulations.’

He couldn’t keep the cynical note from his voice. ‘You
congratulate
me. Lots of people congratulated me. A divorce party was even suggested. To celebrate my freedom from the ball and chain.’

‘Party Queens has organised a few divorce parties. They’re quite a thing these days.’

‘Not
my
thing,’ he said vehemently. ‘I didn’t want congratulations. Or parties to celebrate what I saw as a failure. The end of something that didn’t work.’

‘Was that because you were still...still in love with your wife?’

A quick glance showed Eliza had a tight grip on the red handbag she held on her lap. He hated talking about stuff like this. Even after all he’d worked on in the last months.

‘No. There hadn’t been any love there for a long time. It ended with no anger or animosity. Just indifference. Which was almost worse.’

He’d met his ex when they were both teenagers. They’d dated on and off over the early years. Marriage had felt inevitable. He’d changed a lot; she hadn’t wanted change. Then she’d betrayed him. He’d loved her. It had hurt.

‘That must have been traumatic in its own way.’ Eliza’s reply sounded studiously neutral.

‘More traumatic than I could have imagined. The process dragged on for too long.’

‘It must have been a relief when it was all settled.’

Again he read the subtext to her sentence:
All settled, but you didn’t call me.
It hinted at a hurt she couldn’t mask. Hurt caused by
him
. He had to make amends.

‘I didn’t feel relief. I felt like I’d been turned upside down and wasn’t sure where I’d landed. Couldn’t find my feet. My ex and I had been together off and on for years, married for seven. Then I was on my own. It wasn’t just her I’d lost. It was a way of life.’

‘I understand that,’ she said.

The shadow that passed across her face hinted at unspoken pain. She’d gone through divorce too. Though she hadn’t talked much about it on the previous occasions when they had met.

He dragged in a deep breath.
Spit it out. Get this over and done with.
‘It took a few wipe-out weeks at work for me to realise going out and drinking wasn’t the way to deal with it.’

‘It usually isn’t,’ she said.

He was a guy. A tough, successful guy. To him, being unable to cope with loss was a sign of weakness. Weakness he wasn’t genetically programmed to admit to. But the way he’d fallen to pieces had lost him money. That couldn’t be allowed to happen again.

‘Surely you had counselling?’ she said. ‘I did after my divorce. It helped.’

‘Guys like me don’t do counselling.’

‘You bottle it all up inside you instead?’

‘Something like that.’

‘That’s not healthy—it festers,’ she said. ‘Not that it’s any of my business.’

The definitive turning point in his life had not been his divorce. That had come much earlier, when he’d been aged fifteen, angry and rebellious. He’d been forced to face up to the way his life was going, the choices he would have to make. To take one path or another.

Jake didn’t know how much Eliza knew about Dominic’s charity—The Underground Help Centre in Brisbane for homeless young people—or Jake’s involvement in it. A social worker with whom both Dominic and Jake had crossed paths headed the charity. Jim Hill had helped Jake at a time when he’d most needed it. He had become a friend. Without poking or prying, he had noticed Jake’s unexpected devastation after his marriage break-up, and pointed him in the right direction for confidential help.

‘Someone told me about a support group for divorced guys,’ Jake said, with a quick, sideways glance to Eliza and in a tone that did not invite further questions.

‘That’s good,’ she said with an affirmative nod.

He appreciated that she didn’t push it. He still choked at the thought he’d had to seek help.

The support group had been exclusive, secret, limited to a small number of elite men rich enough to pay the stratospheric fees. Men who wanted to protect their wealth in the event of remarriage, who needed strategies to avoid the pitfalls of dating after divorce. Jake had wanted to know how to barricade his heart as well as his bank balance.

The men and the counsellors had gone into lockdown for a weekend at a luxury retreat deep in the rainforest. It had been on a first-name-only basis, but Jake had immediately recognised some of the high-profile men. No doubt they had recognised him too. But they had proved to be discreet.

‘Men don’t seem to seek help as readily as women,’ Eliza said.

‘It was about dealing with change more than anything,’ he said.

‘Was that why you didn’t get in touch?’ she said, with an edge to her voice. ‘You changed your mind?’

Jake looked straight ahead at the road. ‘I wasn’t ready for another relationship. I needed to learn to live alone. That meant no dating. In particular not dating
you
.’

Her gasp told him how much he’d shocked her.

‘
Me?
Why?’

‘From the first time we met you sparked something that told me there could be life after divorce. I could see myself getting serious about you. I don’t want serious. But I couldn’t get you out of my head. I had to see you again.’

To be sure she was real and not some fantasy that had built up in his mind.

* * *

Eliza didn’t even notice the awesome view of the ocean that stretched as far as the eye could see. Or the sign indicating the turn-off to a crocodile farm that would normally make her shudder. All she was aware of was Jake. She stared at him.

‘
Serious?
But we hardly knew each other. Did you think I had my life on hold until you were free so I could bolt straight into a full-on relationship?’

Jake took his eyes off the road for a second to glance at her. ‘Come on, Eliza. There was something there between us. Something more than a surface attraction. Something we both wanted to act on.’

‘Maybe,’ she said.

Of course there had been something there.
But she wasn’t sure she wanted to admit to it. Not when she’d spent all that time trying to suppress it. Not when it had the potential to hurt her. Those three months of seeing his divorce splashed over the media, of speculation on who might hook up with the billionaire bachelor had hurt. He had said he’d get in touch. Then he hadn’t. How could she trust his word again? She couldn’t afford to be distracted from Party Queens by heartbreak at such a crucial time in the growth of her business.

The set of his jaw made him seem very serious. ‘I didn’t want to waste your time when I had nothing to offer you. But ultimately I had to see you.’

‘Six months later? Maybe you should have let
me
be the one to decide whether I wanted to waste my time or not?’ She willed any hint of a wobble from her voice.

‘I needed that time on my own. Possibly it was a mistake not to communicate that with you. I was married a long time. Now I’m single again at thirty-two. I haven’t had a lot of practice at this.’

Eliza stared in disbelief at the gorgeous man beside her in the driver’s seat. At his handsome profile with the slightly crooked nose and strong jaw. His shoulders so broad they took up more than his share of the car. His tanned arms, strong and muscular, dusted with hair that glinted gold in the sunlight coming through the window of the car. His hands— Best she did not think about those hands and how they’d felt on her bare skin back in magical Montovia.

‘I find that difficult to buy,’ she said. ‘You’re a really good-looking guy. There must be women stampeding to date you.’

He shrugged dismissively. ‘All that eligible billionaire stuff the media likes to bang on about brings a certain level of attention. Even before the divorce was through I had women hounding me with dollar signs blazing in their eyes.’

‘I guess that kind of attention comes with the territory. But surely not
everyone
would be a gold-digger. You must have dated
some
genuine women.’

She hated the thought of him with another woman. Not his ex-wife. That had been long before she’d met him. But Eliza had no claim on him—no right to be jealous. For all his fine talk about how he hadn’t been able to forget her, the fact remained she was only here with him by accident.

Jake slowly shook his head. ‘I haven’t dated anyone since the divorce.’ He paused for a long moment, the silence only broken by the swish of the tyres on the road, the air blowing from the air-conditioning unit. Jake gave her another quick, sideward glance. ‘Don’t you get it, Eliza? There’s only one woman who interests me. And she’s sitting here, right beside me.’

Eliza suddenly understood the old expression about having all the wind blown out of her sails. A stunned, ‘Oh...’ was all she could manage through her suddenly accelerated breath.

Jake looked straight ahead as he spoke, as if he was finding the words difficult to get out. ‘The support group covered dating after divorce. It suggested six months before starting to date. Three months was long enough. The urge to see you again became overwhelming. I didn’t get where I am in the world by following the rules. All that dating-after-divorce advice flew out the window.’

Eliza frowned. ‘How can you
say
that? You left our seeing each other again purely to chance. If we hadn’t met at the airport—’

‘I didn’t leave anything to chance. After six months of radio silence I doubted you’d welcome a call from me. Any communication needed to be face to face. I flew down to Sydney to see you. Then met with Dominic to suss out how the land lay.’

‘You
what
?
Andie didn’t say anything to me.’

‘Because I asked Dominic not to tell her. He found out you were flying to Port Douglas this morning. I couldn’t believe you were heading for a town where I had a house. Straight away I booked onto the same flight.’

Eliza took a few moments to absorb this revelation. ‘That was very cloak and dagger. What would have happened if you hadn’t found me at the airport?’

He shrugged those broad shoulders. ‘I would have abducted you.’ At her gasp he added, ‘Just kidding. But I
would
have found a way for us to reconnect in Port Douglas. Even if I’d had to call every resort and hotel I would have tracked you down. I just had to see you, Eliza. To see if that attraction I’d felt was real.’

‘I...I don’t know what to say. Except I’m flattered.’

There was a long beat before he spoke. ‘And pleased?’

The tinge of uncertainty to his voice surprised her.

‘Very pleased.’

In fact her heart was doing cartwheels of exultation. She was so dizzy that the warning from her brain was having trouble getting through. Jake tracking her down sounded very romantic. So did his talk of abduction. But she’d learned to be wary of the type of man who would ride roughshod over her wishes and needs. Like her domineering father. Like her controlling ex. She didn’t know Jake very well. It must take a certain kind of ruthlessness to become a billionaire. She couldn’t let her guard down.

‘So, about that coffee we talked about...?’ he said. ‘Do you want to make it lunch?’

‘Are you asking me on a
date
, Jake?’ Her tone was deliberately flirtatious.

His reply was very serious. ‘I realise I’ve surprised you with this. But be assured I’ve released the baggage of my marriage. I’ve accepted my authentic self. And if you—’

She couldn’t help a smile. ‘You sound like you’ve swallowed the “dating after divorce” handbook.’

His brows rose. ‘I told you I was out of practice. What else should I say?’

Eliza started to laugh. ‘This is getting a little crazy. Pull over, will you, please?’ she said. She indicated a layby ahead with a wave of her hand.

Jake did so with a sudden swerve and squealing of tyres that had her clutching onto the dashboard of the car. He skidded to a halt under the shade of some palm trees.

Still laughing, Eliza unbuckled her seatbelt and turned to face him. ‘Can I give you a dating after divorce tip? Don’t worry so much about whether it’s going to lead to something serious before you’ve even gone on a first date.’

‘Was that what I did?’

She found his frown endearing. How could a guy who was one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country be having this kind of trouble?