The Wedding Date (20 page)

Hannah’s mind fled the foyer. It was inside a hotel suite, where lay a man she loved to desperation.

She had always known she would never settle. Only for the first time she realised what that really meant. She wasn’t going to settle for a man she
liked.
A man who ticked the boxes of what a husband
should
be. She wanted a lover, a partner, someone who made her laugh and made her think, a great and loyal friend she trusted with her life.

She wanted Bradley.

Hannah had everything she’d ever hoped and dreamed of right there at her fingertips. Right now. She couldn’t let herself worry about the outcome. If she didn’t at least try to have it all she’d never forgive herself.

Bradley was in the shower when Hannah got back to the suite. Humming something she couldn’t put her finger on. Not a surprise. Her head was so full she could barely remember her own name.

She paced up and down his bedroom, prep-ping. Trying to figure the best way to tell him how she felt.

Casual? Dinner? Saturday? My place? I promise not to cook.

Blasé?
Let’s shock the pants off everyone in the office and turn up tomorrow engaged.

Sexy?
I want your hands inside my pants now, and a year from now. And I’m not taking no for an answer, big boy.

Full frontal?
You’re the one that I want!

Honest?

Honest … She loved him. It was that simple. And that complicated. And that was what she needed him to know.

The bathroom door opened. She hadn’t even heard the shower stop. Bradley stepped out, a large white towel slung low around his hips, feet bare. Water dripping from his dark hair.
Wet muscles gleaming bronze in the low morning light.

Her mouth turned as dry as sand.

He started when he saw her standing in his room. Then his face broke into a sexy smile.

Her heart began to pound as it had never pounded before.

Courage failing her at the last, she sank down onto the corner of his bed, her hands gripping tight to the comforter.

‘I woke up and you were gone,’ he said.

‘Had a few goodbyes to say. We go home today, you know.’

‘We do. The plane’s set to pick us up at four o’clock. I’m thinking we’ll head off around midday and get something to eat in Launceston. I can’t tell you how much I’m looking forward to getting my hands on that Porsche again.’

He
brrrrrmmmed
like a little boy, grinning from ear to ear.

Hannah felt as if she was about to faint. Her self-protective instinct told her to cut and run. To give him a bright smile and thank him for a lovely weekend. Go back to a life of pretending that she wasn’t working side by side with a man who made her melt just by glancing her way.

But then he slipped his arms into a crisp white shirt and she found herself drowning in the subtle scent of soap. His skin was still slightly damp, so the shirt clung to him in
places, highlighting the muscle, the might, the perfect smattering of springy dark hair on his chest. Her mouth watered so fast she was afraid to open her mouth for what might come out.

But she’d sung karaoke and survived.

She’d lost the dad she loved and survived.

She’d had enough of just surviving. She was ready to live. And to do that she needed the man who put the Technicolor in her day.

She wasn’t going anywhere.

‘We need to talk,’ she barked.

Bradley turned to her slowly as he did up the last of his buttons. ‘About?’

She lifted herself off the bed and walked to him, placing shaking hands on his chest. His warmth buoyed her, giving her wings.

‘You’re a good man, Bradley Knight. You work hard. And you never expect anything to be handed to you on a plate.’

‘Sounds like me.’ He smiled, but there was wariness in his eyes.

‘But I also know that when it comes to women you’ve had the attention span of a goldfish.’

He laughed, surprise flaring in his eyes, before he let his towel slip, as if showing her she was spot-on.

But she knew there was more to him than that. She knew he was kind, and thoughtful,
and heroic when someone he cared for was in trouble. And her heart wanted what it wanted.

She reached over to the chair and found his jeans, handed them to him. Waited till he’d slipped them on before she said another word.

And when he stood before her, looking more beautiful than any man deserved to be in the crisp white shirt and dark jeans, and bare feet and liquid grey eyes, she took a deep breath and said, ‘I’ve had a crush on you for the longest time. And I think I let it continue because you were so unavailable. It gave me the perfect excuse not to put myself out there for real. And then you had to go and call my bluff.’

She stopped to take a breath. Her blood pounding in her ears. Waiting for his response. Any response. But the room remained dead quiet.

After what felt like a hundred years had passed he reached past her for the light grey sweater on his bed and tugged it over his head.

She hadn’t expected him to leap onto the bed and jump around whooping in excitement, but she hadn’t expected this level of cool. Not after what they’d been through together. Not after the way he’d made love to her, the way he’d spooned her as they slept.

So she sucked in a deep breath, collected together every molecule of love she felt for the big
lug, and without a lick of body armour stepped onto the battlefield alone.

‘Bradley, you’d have to be blind not to realise that I’m in love with you, and have been—well, for ever.’

She held her arms out in supplication, then let them fall to her sides. They tingled, wanting to wrap around him. To pull him close. But he just stood there, looking through her with those impossibly impenetrable grey eyes.

Fear and excitement and anticipation came together in a great ball of emotion and she blurted, ‘I just told you I love you, Bradley. I’m in love with you. I don’t want to go back to work tomorrow and pretend this never happened. I want to date you, and hold your hand, and have dinner with you, and make love to you, and wake up in your arms and—’

She watched in amazement as right before her eyes he literally took a step backwards. But, worse, she saw him retreat further and further inside himself, exactly the same way he did when some effusive stranger stopped him on the street looking for an autograph.

Even while fear flooded her, she understood why. His childhood had made detachment come as easily to him as breathing. But that was just tough. No matter how deep inside himself he fled, she meant to follow.

‘Bradley. Look at me.
Really
look at me. I’m
opening myself up to you. Completely. Offering you everything I have to give. Because … Because we’re like a pair of gloves: functional alone, but not complete without the other. I’m yours, Bradley. For ever if you’ll have me.’

‘Nobody can promise for ever.’

She almost wept with relief that finally he’d said something. ‘I can. And I am. I know with every fibre of my being that I’m yours. Eternally. I’m not going anywhere.’

Feeling as if she might explode if she didn’t touch him, lean on him, feel a response from him whatever it might be, Hannah reached out a shaking hand and laid the back of it on his cheek.

He flinched as though burned.

She recoiled as if she’d been slapped.

Feeling more scared than she had in her entire life, Hannah curled her hand into her chest and her feelings into her heart.

Oh, God. She’d screwed everything up royally. Building castles in the air with no foundation but her own woolly romantic mush for brains. Bradley didn’t want her. He would never want her. Just as she’d always tried to convince herself was the case.

‘This is all the response I’m to get from you?’

Silence.

A great ball of anger—most of it directed
at herself for being so foolish—built up inside her and she leapt forward and pummelled a fist against the wall.

It hurt.

Puffing, she stopped. Defeated. And furious with it.

She waved a hand across his eyes as though he was comatose—which to all intents and purposes he was. Emotionally catatonic. While she loved him enough for the both of them.

With that most ridiculous of thoughts in mind came one last shot of determination—or hope, or sheer bloody-mindedness. She pressed forward, stood on her tiptoes, slid her hands into his thick dark hair and kissed him.

Eyes closed. Heart racing.

Those lips that had burned hers, become intimate with every inch of her, brought her to the edge of ecstasy and beyond over and over again, acted as if she wasn’t even there. Heat emanated from him. Soul-deep heat that told her he was wrong and she was right. Yet he remained unmoved.

Then she hiccuped, and a flood of tears poured down her cheeks. That, and the taste of salt in her mouth, woke her from her trance.
Finally.
She made to pull away.

And that was when she felt it. A softening of his lips. A response so subtle she stopped breathing.

And then he kissed her. So gently she was almost sure she was imagining it. If that was the case, oh, what an imagination she had!

Soft, warm lips brushing against hers. Tasting hers. Taking away her tears. It was a kiss so beautiful she could barely remember why she was crying in the first place.

And then it came to her. She loved him, but he wasn’t man enough to even summon up a response.

She pulled away, wiping her hands over her face, across her mouth, trying to erase the sensation that felt so much like love returned when it was nothing more than a learned response.

She stumbled to the other side of the bed and leant her hands on the bedspread. Needing space to breathe, room to think.

He didn’t follow. He didn’t come after her. He still didn’t say a damn thing.

There was only one thing she could do.

Her voice was raw as she said, ‘I can’t go back to work tomorrow and pretend nothing happened. And since it’s your company, and I can’t convince you to be the gentleman and sell up, it looks like this is going to have to fall to me. God, I feel so predictable.’

‘You’re quitting?’

And that gets a response!

‘You’ve given me no choice.’

He took a step her way and held out a hand.
‘I never asked you to quit. That’s the last thing I want. In fact, if I’m being honest, I’ll admit it’s the reason I came down here in the first place.’

He ran a hand up the back of his hair. His face was stormy.

‘Things are so busy at work right now I had to be sure there weren’t any inducements here that might tempt you to stay.’

‘You hijacked my holiday in order to make sure I’d come back to work for you?’

Of course he had! She made his life so easy. He
liked
his life to be easy. As a move, it was so self-centred,
so him,
she couldn’t believe it had never occurred to her.

Argh!

‘Only now I don’t know why I bothered. You’re leaving anyway.’

‘Excuse me? Oh, you are unbelievable. Anyone else in my position would have left months ago. But I loved the work that much, and respected you that much, I relished the long hours and hard work. While you … You push people to breaking point, then shake your head in surprise and say “I told you so” when they finally snap.’

He came around the bed. ‘Hannah …’

She took two steps back, far enough away that she couldn’t feel the tug of warmth from his body.

He said, ‘If you think I
only
made love to
you with a view to forcing you out, then you must really think I’m some kind of bastard.’

She threw out her arms in a wild shrug. ‘I’m not sure what to think right now. My judgement is clearly impaired when it comes to you. Now I’m wondering how the whole “you take over the Tasmania idea” thing fits in. What was that? Some kind of payment for services rendered?’

Finally she saw some emotion in his eyes. She’d never seen him look angrier. If he was any other man she would likely have ducked and weaved. Her nerves crackled as if they’d been stripped raw.

His voice was as deep as a valley when he said, ‘I only ever offered you the Tasmania proposal because you deserved it. Because I thought the subject matter would suit your style more than it suited me. And because I thought it would make you happy. I’m sorry you thought otherwise.’

He was sorry.
Not that he didn’t love her. Not that she was standing there feeling as if her heart had been trampled by a herd of elephants in tap shoes. He was sorry she’d
misunderstood
him.

This time even
he
couldn’t make the word ‘sorry’ sound as sexy as he once had. This time it meant goodbye.

She turned her back on him, then realised she had one last thing to say. ‘I know you think
you’ve found a way to not let what your mother did to you shape the course of your life. But you seem determined to repeat her greatest mistakes. You shut people out. Always. And once you decide to, that’s it. No room for compromise. No room for anyone.’

She didn’t wait to see if he’d even heard a word of it. ‘I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back in two hours. Be gone or I’ll have Security throw you out of my room. I can do it, you know. I have a famously magical way with management.’

Without stopping to grab a coat or her handbag, she walked out of the suite door and took off down the hall towards the lifts.

D
AYS
later Bradley sat at the café on Brunswick Street, staring unseeingly at a busker who was playing a song he couldn’t put his finger on.

Like a mosquito in his ear Spencer babbled on and on about the Argentina trip. How excited he was. What he was going to pack. The vaccinations his mother had insisted he have before letting him leave the country. The fact that Hannah had organised everything so brilliantly he wasn’t sure what he’d be called on to do, but he was willing whatever it might be.

‘I’m sorry? What did you say?’ Bradley asked, something dragging him back to the present.

‘Hannah,’ Spencer said, and Bradley felt the name hit him like a bullet to the chest.