The Wedding Date (11 page)

Alone.

Bradley glanced at his watch to find Hannah had been AWOL for over an hour. That was as long as he’d decided to give her. Because if she was
actually
off doing maid of honour business he’d shave his head.

After five solid minutes of frustrated searching, he found her. Back against the wall in a quiet cocktail lounge at the far end of the bar. Stuck between Roger and her mother.

Even in the half-light he could see that she
was struggling. Both hands were clasped tight around a tall glass of iced water as her eyes skimmed brightly from one hostage-taker to the other.

Something must have alerted her to his presence as he excused himself and made his way through the chatty crowd towards her, because her eyes shifted to lock instantly with his.

That very moment she went from dazed to delighted. Her whole face lit up as if the sun had risen inside her. It felt … nice.

‘Hi,’ she said on an outward breath.

He nodded.

Virginia and Roger turned in surprise, and expressed understandably different levels of excitement to see him. He gave Virginia a kiss on the cheek, and patted poor Roger on the shoulder. Poor Roger’s eye began to twitch. But Bradley had more important things to worry about.

‘I’ve been searching for you for some time,’ he said.

Hannah’s eyes widened in a plea for help. ‘I’ve been right
here
for quite some time.’

Guilt clenched at him. While he’d been stewing about the way she’d walked away, right when things seemed to have been going so fine, he’d greedily forgotten why he was really there. He’d promised to watch her back. He’d already let her down. Some white knight he was.

‘We’ve monopolised her terribly,’ Virginia said, blinking at him coquettishly over a glass of champagne—clearly not her first.

Through clenched teeth Hannah said, ‘Virginia’s been telling Roger all about my lack of flair for any of the Young Tasmanian pageant sections she aced as a kid.’

‘Has she, now?’ Bradley asked, frowning at Virginia. It didn’t make a dent.

It seemed it would take more than his presence to give Hannah the upper hand. All he could think of for her to do was the same thing he’d done in order to shake off the shackles of his own mother’s disappointment. Prove to her, himself and the world that it didn’t matter.

‘On that note,’ he said, ‘did you forget we’re up next?’

‘Up?’

‘Karaoke.’

‘But I thought you couldn’t sing,’ Roger said.

‘I can’t,’ Hannah said, hand to her heart, eyes all but popping from her head.

‘She’s not kidding. She really can’t.’ That was Virginia.

Having seen enough, he reached in, took Hannah by the hand and dragged her from the local axis of evil. He shot them a little over-the-shoulder wave before he took their plaything away.

He skirted his way through the crowd in silence. Hannah kept close, tucking in behind him when things became overly cramped. Her small hand in his felt good. Really good.

‘Maid of honour business all finished?’ he asked, his voice gruff.

‘It is, thank you,’ she said stiffly. ‘Now where are you taking me?’

‘I said we were going to sing, so now we have to sing.’

Suddenly his arm was almost yanked from its socket. He spun to find she’d dug in her heels and was refusing to budge.

He glanced towards the cocktail lounge. ‘It we don’t they’ll just think it was a dodgy excuse for you to ditch them.’

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘Only if you’re happy with them thinking so.’

Two little frown lines appeared above her nose, and she nibbled at her full lower lip. He found himself staring. Imagining. Planning.

Finally she shook her head. ‘But I really can’t sing.’

‘Can they?’ He motioned to the wannabe boy band who could barely slur out a sentence yet still had a rapt and voluble audience. ‘Now, pick a song. Something you can recite in your sleep.’

‘Oh, God. This is really happening, isn’t it?
Umm … In my dreams when I audition for random TV talent shows I’m always singing something from
Grease
.’

He felt a grin coming at the thought of such innocent dreams, and struggled to bite it back.

Apparently not well enough. Her face fell. ‘You don’t know
Grease,
do you? Well, I am
not
going up there on my own.’

‘You’re safe. I had the biggest crush on Olivia Newton-John when I was a kid.’

The manic tugging relaxed instantly as she gawped at him. He used her moment of distraction to drag her to the edge of the stage.

‘I love it!’ she said, grinning from ear to ear. ‘You used to sing her songs into your mum’s hairbrush, didn’t you? You can tell me. I promise I won’t tell a soul. Well, bar Sonja, of course—and you know how discreet
she
is.’

She shook her head, her thick dark hair curling over her shoulders—sexy, unbridled, exposing a curve of soft golden skin just below her right ear that was crying out for a set of teeth to sink into it.

He stared at the spot, finding himself wholly distracted by the imagined taste of her spilling into his mouth. Better that than to brood over the fact that somehow he’d promised to leap onto a spotlit stage and in the act of performing beg a crowd of strangers for their superficial devotion.

He took solace in Hannah’s luscious creamy shoulder as he pulled her closer—close enough to lose himself in the last subtle trails of her scent as he whispered in her ear, ‘What the lady wants, the lady gets.
Grease
it is.’

Then he turned her in his arms and pointed to the stage, looming dark and high in front of them.

Her smile disappeared and she swallowed hard. ‘So we’re really doing this?’

‘One song. Show them that even though you have no flair for pageantry you have pluck to spare.’

‘You think I have pluck?’

He turned away from the stage at the softness in her voice, only to find himself drowning in the heat of her eyes. ‘To spare.’

She blinked at him. Long dark lashes stroked her cheek, creating flutters as he imagined their light graze caressing his skin as she kissed her way up his—

She breathed deep and shook out her hands. ‘Let’s do it. Now. Quick. Before I change my mind.’

He went to move away and she grabbed his hand again. Hers was warm, soft, small—and shaking. Trusting.

Holding on tight, he had a quick word in the ear of the guy in charge of the karaoke lineup, and slipped him a twenty so that they could
get this over and done with as soon as humanly possible.

‘Okay,’ she said, bouncing from foot to foot, tipping her head from side to side to ease her neck. Warming up as if she was about to do a triple-jump, not a little show tune. ‘We’ve established that I’m doing this because I’m a cowardly pleaser. But why are you?’

‘When in Rome …’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve worked right by your side for nearly a year now, Bradley. I know you. Putting yourself up there like some piece of meat to be picked over must be akin to torture.’

She was so close to the truth—a truth he had no intention of sharing with her or anyone—he shut his mouth and avoided those big, clear, candid eyes.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me. I’ll figure it out eventually.’

And then she smiled. The smile of a woman who knew him. Who cared enough to
try
to know him. A woman who didn’t care if he knew it too.

Dammit. He was in the middle of a bar without a drink, and if he’d ever needed Dutch courage the time was now.

Lucky for her the thing propelling him forward was his inability to stand by and allow her to be so summarily dismissed. He’d rewritten
his story. He wasn’t merely a little orphan boy any more. He was a man who conquered mountains and showed others how to do the same.

What Hannah had yet to realise was that in going up on that stage it wouldn’t matter if she proved her mother right by not holding a tune. What would matter was that her story would no longer be about being her mother’s great disappointment. Her story would be the time she summoned the kind of guts she never knew she had in order to belt out a song at her sister’s fabulous pre-wedding party.

And, in the spirit of watching her back, if he had to endure a little excruciating drama to give that to her, then so be it.

The current song had stopped. The guys were ushered off-stage to a round of bawdy cheers.

Bradley took Hannah’s hand and dragged her limp body on-stage. Once there, he gave her a little push till she was beneath the glare of the spotlight. And, just as he’d hoped, the second they saw who was on stage the crowd cheered like nobody’s business.

She laughed softly. And blushed. Then curtsied. The crowd went wild.

Her face glistened with perspiration. Her eyes were wild and glittering. But her chin jutted forward, as if she was daring
anyone
to tell her this was something she couldn’t do. The strength of her inner steel surprised him. It even seemed
to steady him until he stared, undaunted, out through the bright lights to the braying faceless crowd beyond.

The strains of ‘You’re the One That I Want’ blared from the speakers, and the entire club got to its feet and cheered as one.

Hannah came to, as if from a trance, lowered her microphone, and looked up into his eyes. ‘Can
you
sing?’

He put the mike back to her lips and said, ‘We’re certainly about to find out.’

Hannah’s high heels dangled from one hand as she padded across the marble floor towards the bank of lifts leading to the Gatehouse’s extensive rooms.

Her ears rang from the after-effects of hours of overly loud music, while her limbs felt loose and languid. The rest of her buzzed from a mix of cocktails and exhaustion and coming down from the high of her karaoke duet with Bradley which had brought the house down.

She turned to walk backwards, smiling at her partner in crime who strolled along behind her. ‘Of all the crazy moments of this bizarre night, the biggest shock has to be the fact that you can really sing!’

‘So you’ve mentioned once or twice,’ he drawled, his eyes following her closely as she swayed.

‘I suck. I mean, I
really
suck. But you were right—it didn’t matter. I felt like a rock star. And, no matter how strong and silent you are being about the issue, I know that somehow you knew I would.’

‘Lucky guess,’ he said, quietly eating up the distance between them.

She grimaced at her bare feet, indecision warring with the most intense sexual attraction she’d ever felt. Judging by the tumble of sensations bombarding her every sense as her eyes met his, it was clear which was winning.

Needing some physical distance from all that manly heat, she skipped over to the lift and pressed the ‘up’ button. In the quiet, deserted foyer it made such a loud noise she giggled. ‘Shhh!’

‘Shhh, yourself.’

‘Nah,’ she said, nice and loud. ‘No shushing me tonight. I have sung in front of strangers and friends alike, I have sung badly, and yet I have survived. That calls for a lack of shushing. It calls for dancing.’

So she danced. Her bare feet sticking to the floor, her hips swaying, her arms flying out sideways, she started spinning and spinning and spinning. She’d been so scared of being judged and found wanting for so long she’d only done things she knew she was great at. And she’d done them as well as she humanly could.

Now, having thrown herself at something that had always been tied up in her mind with a deep-down bruising kind of hurt, she realised it wasn’t so scary after all. She felt as if she could do anything. Fly. Play the ukulele. Bradley …

When his strong, solid arm slid around her waist—when he pulled her close and began to sway to the beat of the tune inside his head—she wondered if her desire had been so immense she’d summoned him to her against his will.

Then again, there was nothing forced about the way his body pressed against hers, the way his chin rested atop her head, the way his hand cradled her waist. Nothing mistakable about the hard jut she felt pressed into her belly.

He spun her out and tugged her back in. Giddy laughter shot from her lungs as she tried to regain her footing. When he tucked her tight into the warm cocoon of his embrace he was humming. Something slow and soft and sweet and poignant, melodic and unrecognisable. And quieting.

She leant her droopy head on his shoulder—or as close as she could get since it was so very, very high off the ground and she was barefoot on tippy-toes. In fact she was closer to his heart. She could feel the steady beat against her cheek. It was the very same beat that throbbed within her.

He did better. He lifted her till her feet were on top of his.

What could she do but throw her shoes over her shoulder and thread her hands around his neck, slide her fingers through the springy thick hair at the back of his neck? How long had it been since she’d first ached to do just that?

And now she was slow-dancing.

With Bradley.

With her boss.

Somewhere deep down inside her a little voice tried reminding her why that was a bad idea. She shook her head to shut it up. Didn’t it realise that she couldn’t remember ever, in her whole life, feeling this way? As if she was made of melted marshmallow, all hot and soft and sweet and yummy.

She breathed in deep and was soon drowning in the heavenly scent of hot, clean, male skin. No man in the world had ever smelled so good. So sexy. So edible.

The lift doors opened with a loud ‘bing’. Neither of them paid it any heed.

Hannah pulled her head away from its heavenly pillow and looked up into the most beautiful mercury-grey eyes on the planet.

She threaded her fingers deeper into Bradley’s hair, her thumb caressing the soft spot beneath his ear. His eyes grew dark, like the sky before a winter storm.

The swaying stopped. He pulled her tighter still, and the air escaped her lungs as her head rocked back on her all but useless neck. Moonlight slanted across his strong, angular profile as though all it wanted was to touch him too.

So big, she thought, so tall. So private. So exceptional. So, so beautiful.

Bradley lifted her off his feet and placed her gently on the floor. The marble beneath her bare feet was ice-cold, but the rest of her was filled with a licking flame so hot it barely registered.