A Groom For The Taking

Hannah frowned at her toes a moment, before lifting her head with a bright smile. ‘Party sounds great.’

‘Now, my love bunny and I haven’t seen one another all day, and the poor pet will be fretting. I’d best head up to our room and ease his mind.’

With a wink that told of salacious goings on, Elyse flounced off.

Elyse—all grown-up and irreverent with it. Her mother—not unhappy to see her. A pleasant kind of warmth that had nothing to do with flickering fires or Boston Sours or even Bradley Knight began to spread through her.

Until a hotel room key slid in front of Hannah’s face, with Bradley’s long, tanned fingers on the other end.

‘What is that?’ she asked, her drink threatening to come back out the way it had gone in.

‘Do you really need to ask?’ Bradley drawled as he slid around behind her, the lapels of his jacket brushing against her back, causing her spine to roll in delicious anguish, before he straddled the bar stool beside her.

She spun on her seat to glare at him. Her knees knocked his before he shifted, placing a hand on her knee and allowing it to tuck neatly between his. Even then he didn’t let go—just rested a hand there as if it was nothing.

As cool as she could manage, Hannah said, ‘If you promised the man your firstborn son you’ve lost all my respect.’

The smile in his eyes gave her hot chills. As if she was sitting on the edge of a volcano. The kind from which you knew you ought to flee if only you could just let go of the primal urge to jump right in.

‘I didn’t do anything drastic,’ he said. ‘Or illegal. I simply negotiated. The only way I could get a room was to get us a suite.’

‘I’m sorry, did you say us?’

Bradley glanced at the bartender, who poured a fresh packet of peanuts into a small glass bowl. ‘Separate rooms off a shared lounge. Better even than the honeymoon suite, or so I’ve been told.’

While he was crowing, she was fast turning to a wobbly mess. But what could she say? They’d shared suites on numerous occasions before—at TV trade fairs or in pre-production on new shows—using the joint lounge as a makeshift office. Of course they’d been constantly surrounded by the half-dozen odd staff who travelled everywhere with him. Who were right now in New Zealand.

Her unimpressed air must have been crystal-clear, because he added, ‘From what I heard they only let the Platinum Suite to their most favoured VIPs.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘That’s my mother’s suite. I had to schmooze like crazy to make sure she got that room in the first place.’

Something that seemed a heck of a lot like a blush washed across Bradley’s face. But Hannah was too infuriated to take any heed.

‘I bumped into Virginia at the desk. She overheard my predicament and offered to swap rooms. She now has your single, and we have her suite.’

Hannah had her face in her hands and was rocking on her chair by that stage.

Bradley’s thumb curving over her knee brought her out of her trance. She ran her hands down her face and did her best to act as though it was irrelevant that he was touching her at all.

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.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE 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.

‘Now,’ he said, his voice as deep as an ocean, ‘do you still want that drink?’

She nodded, her hair spilling sexily over her shoulders. It took every ounce of his strength not to wrap his fingers around a lock and tug her the last few inches it would take for those wide, soft pink lips to meet his.

‘Boston Sour, right?’ he asked.

She nodded again. A waft of that killer perfume slid past his nose. He gripped the pillar so hard he felt plaster come away on his fingernails.

‘I’m guessing beer for you,’ Hannah said. ‘Imported. Sliver of lime.’

Her words carried a slow smile, and behind that a hesitant note of flirtation he’d never heard from her before. He knew her drink of choice. She knew his. And now they both knew it.

‘Stay here,’ he demanded. ‘Don’t move. I didn’t save you from that booze-soaked clod so that some other mischief might befall you the second I leave you alone.’

He’d moved to push away, to get her drink and whatever they could pour quickest for himself, when she lifted a hand and flicked an imaginary speck from his shirt. ‘Whether you want to admit it or not, beneath the tough guy exterior you are, in fact, an honest-to-goodness nice guy.’

Through the cotton of his shirt her fingernails scraped against the hair on his chest, which sprang to attention at her touch. He clenched his teeth so hard a shot of pain pulsed in his temple.

Nice? Hardly. The truth was her tough relationship with her mother had unexpectedly slid beneath his defences and connected with his own. And in a rare fit of solidarity he’d felt he had no choice but to help.

He wasn’t being nice. He was choosing sides in battle. A battle whose lines were fast blurring. Dangerously fast.

It was time to make the boundaries perfectly clear. So that she understood just how close to the fire they were dancing.

‘Honey,’ he drawled, ‘looking out for you this weekend is purely professional insurance. I want you back on dry land this Tuesday, ready to work—not all hung-over and homesick, addled by wedding-induced romantic thoughts. That’s it. End of story. You think your mother is egocentric? She has nothing on me.’

He dropped his hand till it rested just above her shoulder. Edged closer till she had to arch back to look him in the eye. Till his knee brushed against the outside of hers. The rasp of denim on suede shot sparks up his leg which settled with a painful fizz in his groin.

She flinched at the sliding contact. Her cheeks grew red. The crowd jostled, the music blared, and the air around them was so heavy with implication and consequence it vibrated. He was meant to be teaching his protégée a lesson. Instead the effort of keeping himself in check made his muscles burn.

Hannah’s hand slowly flattened to rest against his chest. But she didn’t push him away. If the thunderous thumping of his heart wasn’t enough of a caution to her, he wondered how far he might have to go.

And where the point of no return might be.

It did occur to him—far too late—that he might have walked blithely past it the moment he’d stepped off his plane. The moment he’d made certain they’d be stranded on an island, to all intents and purposes alone.

Suddenly she gave him a hearty shove, then ducked under his arm and took off to the edge of the dance floor. He should have been relieved. But it wasn’t often he had a girl literally bolt from his advances—simulated or otherwise.

Feeling suddenly adrift, he made to follow when the strains of a new song blaring over the speakers stopped him short. That particular combination of notes plucked at something inside him. Something that chased all of Hannah’s latent heat from his veins and chilled him to the bone.

In his mind’s eye he could see a woman standing at a kitchen bench, hand reaching out for an overly full glass of wine, dishtowel thrown over her shoulder, gently swaying from side to side as she quietly sang along with the small radio on the bench at her elbow.

One of his aunts? No. Wrong kitchen.

The woman in his mind turned, but he couldn’t see her face. In the end he didn’t need to. The moment she saw him her whole body seemed to contract in on itself, and the overwhelming sense of rebuff told him exactly who she was.

It was his mother’s kitchen. His mother’s disappointment bombarding him. Telling him without words that he was nothing to her but a constant reminder that she’d fallen pregnant young and his father had bolted the minute he’d heard. It was his fault her life hadn’t tuned out as she’d hoped it would.

‘No, no, no!’ a familiar voice shouted at the edge of his consciousness.

He dragged himself back to the present to see Hannah, in her tight capri pants, sexy stilettos, hair tumbling down her back, with hands to her ears, mouth agape, staring into the distance.

At the sight of her—the realness of her, the nowness of her—the unbearable memory dissolved like a pinch of salt in a pool of water. It was just what he needed in that moment. She was just what he needed.

‘Are you okay?’ he asked, placing a hand on her arm. Hannah’s warmth beneath his fingers further banished the cold memories. Selfishly, he let his hand trail down her arm till it found purchase in the sultry dip of her waist.

At his intimate touch her eyes snapped from the middle distance to glance at him. Cheeks pink. Eyes bright and questioning. Confused.

But mostly curious.

His solar plexus clenched in pure and unadulterated sexual response. It hit so hard, so violently, he just had to stand there and ride it. Either that or haul her over his shoulder like some caveman and drag her back to their room. Their shared room.

The song changed key. Hannah blinked, as if coming round from a trance. Then she waved a frantic arm in the direction of the karaoke stage and yelled to be heard over the speakers buzzing nearby. ‘I’m not tall enough to see, but is that my mother?’

Her mother?

‘You mean the one singing?’

Hannah nodded frantically.

Bradley searched the hazy room to see Hannah’s mother was indeed up on stage, belting out a Cliff Richard classic while swinging her hips and waving at the small crowd who were cheering as if she was a rock star. A man joined her on stage—a man young enough to be Hannah’s brother. Though from the way they oozed over the microphone together Bradley assumed the man was not blood-related.

‘That would be her,’ he said, keeping that last part to himself.