A Groom For The Taking

‘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.

Neither did the lift doors as they slowly slid closed.

And then, as though it was the most natural thing in the world, Bradley bent his head and kissed her.

Hannah’s eyes fluttered closed as fireworks exploded behind her eyes, and then down and down and down her body, until she felt as if her blood was made of popping bubbles.

He pulled back, his lips hovering millimetres from hers. Giving her the chance to stop things before they went any further. But it was way too late. The kiss was out there. For eternity. There was no going back now.

Whether it was because of the press of her hips to his, or the miserable groan that rumbled through her, he held back no more.

He slid his hand deep into her hair and his mouth plundered hers until she could barely breathe for the intensity of feeling cascading through her.

When his tongue slid knowingly across hers that was the absolute end of her. She was gone—lost in a swirl of sensation and heat and need. She lifted up onto her toes and wrapped her arms around his neck, pressing as close as she could. Needing to feel his warmth, his skin, his realness. Aflame with the impossible desire to crawl inside him.

But in her bare feet he was too tall, too big, too far away, and she wanted to be closer. She wanted to be a part of him.

Buoyed by frustration and desire for the liberating sense of release she leapt into his arms, wrapping her legs about his hips.

His hands cupped her, holding her as if she weighed nothing. But his kiss deepened, heated, ratcheted up a dozen levels—as if she meant anything but nothing to him. As if his own long-held frustration had broken through a dam and now nothing was going to stop it.

And then his lips were on her neck, her collarbone, her bare shoulder. His teeth sank into the tendon below her neck and she cried out in pleasure, her hands gripping the back of his head. The most delicious heat she had ever known pooled deep inside her.

She sighed and murmured, ‘If I’d had a clue this would feel this good I’d never have been able to hold back all these months.’

Hannah felt Bradley stiffen in her arms. Then the lift went bing. Or maybe it happened the other way around.

Either way, the sound of the lift opening registered somewhere in the fuzz that was Hannah’s brain at about the same time she felt Bradley’s arms unwinding from around her.

She looked into his eyes, confusion taking hold of her still liquefied system. But she didn’t have time to decipher a thing as a pile of Elyse’s friends spilled out of the lift, laughing, screaming, half way to being drunk.

She scrambled to fix her hair. Her lipstick. Her crumpled clothes. Then saw her discarded shoes were in their stumbling path. She leapt away from Bradley, grabbed the shoes out of their way before somebody impaled themselves on a stiletto.

‘Hannah Banana!’ one of Elyse’s oldest friends called out, grabbing her and trying to pull her in their wake. She managed to extricate herself and tell them to have fun. And then, as suddenly as they’d appeared, there was nothing left of them but their echoing laughter.

The quiet foyer was filled with nothing but the sound of her puffing breaths. Adrenalin poured through her like a flood, till her body shook from the shock. Her body—which was still throbbing from head to toe as it baked in the intensity of Bradley’s kiss.

Bradley.

Shoes gripped in her tight fist, she glanced up to find him watching her. A huge dark shadow of a figure in the pale moonlight. Hands in pockets. Still as a mountain.

The lift ‘binged’ again. This time instinct had her stepping inside. The doors started to close until she reached out and held them at bay.

‘Coming up?’ she asked, shoes swinging against her leg.

A muscle worked in his jaw as he flicked a glance up in the direction of their suite. Then he took a step back. ‘You go. I’m going to track down a nightcap.’

The fact that they had a crazily well-stocked bar in their über-suite seemed to have eluded him. Or perhaps not. Hannah felt a wretched little cramp in her stomach. She wished Elyse’s friends would return, so she could throttle them one by one.

‘Okay,’ she sing-songed, as though she didn’t realise she’d just been wholeheartedly rejected. Then, falling back into ever helpful assistant mode, she said, ‘I’m pretty sure the foyer bar is open all night.’

He nodded. Yet didn’t move.

The cramp in her stomach gave way to hope. Maybe he was being a gentleman, waiting for a sign from her. Though she wasn’t sure she knew a bigger sign than throwing herself into a guy’s arms and wrapping her thighs around him.

The lift ‘binged’ several times, ready to get a move on. She clenched her teeth and jabbed at the ‘open door’ button till it shut the hell up. Didn’t it realise what a delicate moment this was?

Maybe that was the problem. Maybe subtlety didn’t work on mountains. Maybe the guy needed not a sign but a sledgehammer.

‘Bradley, would you like to—?’

‘Get some sleep.’ He cut her off. ‘It’s been a big day.’

Her stomach sank like a stone dropped into the lake behind their hotel. She desperately tried to locate some dormant thread of sophistication somewhere inside her but just ended up babbling. ‘Right. Sleep. What a great idea. Just what I need.’

Clearly to him what had just happened was just a kiss. And a little necking. And, okay, some extremely dextrous fondling. Maybe it was an everyday occurrence for him and it had simply been her turn. Maybe she’d come on too strong and he already regretted it. Maybe. But then again he’d absolutely come on to her first.

As her head began to spin, the only thing Hannah knew was that she should take his advice and get the hell out of there before she said or did something really stupid.

She looked away to jab hard and fast at the number for their floor. ‘Goodnight, Bradley.’

He nodded. ‘I’ll see you in the morning.’

Slowly, slowly the lift door closed. When her own reflection stared back at her and the lift began to rumble she could still see his face clear as day. Dark. Stormy. Stoic.

Somehow, some way, whatever forces had come together to create that moment back there had disappeared as if in a puff of smoke. If only she knew why.

CHAPTER SEVEN

BRADLEY cradled the now lukewarm cup of coffee in his palms as he sat in the big, empty foyer bar.

Unfortunately the mind-numbing normality of a late-night coffee hadn’t done a damn thing to numb one bit of him.

He wasn’t a reckless man. Even as he’d lowered his head to kiss Hannah’s soft, pink smiling lips he’d known there would be consequences. He’d weighed them, measured them, and decided that after negotiating such a riotous night with commendable finesse a celebratory kiss was a pretty fine idea.

What he hadn’t expected was for the effortless sensuality she wore so lightly to explode into a raging furnace the second his lips had touched hers. Though that he could handle.

What had him sitting alone in a bar at three in the morning was, ‘If I’d had a clue this would feel this good I’d never have been able to hold back all those months.’

Her words hadn’t stopped ringing inside his head since he’d sat down.

It appeared as though Hannah had feelings for him. Perhaps only nascent ones, but that was still too much. He’d never let himself become involved with any woman who didn’t view relationships with the same lack of gravity he did. Doing so would be nothing short of hypocritical. He knew all too well how it felt to have the world you thought you knew cut out from under you.

So why did the same mouth that back-chatted constantly, barked remonstrations whenever he ran late, and grinned delightedly any time he was pushed outside of his comfort zone have to be an instant gateway to paradise?

Dammit. He pushed the porcelain cup aside in frustration.

‘Another, Mr Knight?’ the barman asked.

‘No thanks, mate,’ he said, his voice ragged. ‘I think I’ve done enough damage for the night.’

‘Very good, sir.’

Bradley hauled his heavy self from the bar stool and walked slowly to the lift. Standing on the very spot where for the sake of that mouth he’d ignored the signs and kissed her anyway.

The lift door opened and he stepped inside. He looked at his feet rather than his reflection in the mirrored doors, not wanting to look himself in the eye as he considered things again.

Hannah liked him. He’d never use that to his advantage. If he did he’d be no better than those who’d hurt him in the pursuit of making their own lives a tad more comfortable.

Even though she kissed like a siren. As if there was a fountain of untapped heat bubbling beneath her small frame. As if she wanted nothing more than for him to be the one to release it.

All he could hope was that by the time he got back to their shared suite Hannah’s room would be dark and quiet. Then he could retire to his own room, strip down, open his bedroom window as wide as it would go and let lashings of bitterly ice-cold air do what will-power and boiling hot coffee could not.

Bradley shut the suite door behind him as quietly as humanly possible. Ears pricked, he couldn’t hear anything beyond the faint swoosh of winter wind gently buffeting the unadorned windows that stretched the entire length of the shared living space.

He shucked off his shoes and lifted a foot to sneak to his room. Then he heard a noise. His whole body clenched and adrenalin kicked his senses into overdrive.

He heard it again. It sounded like the clink of glass on wood. Probably a tree branch scraping against the window. Only one way to be sure.

He padded down the wide steps into the lounge, to find all the lights were off bar a lamp at one end of the modern cream leather fourseater couch. Beneath the lamp a magazine was open and turned face-down. In the far corner of the room embers burned red in the fireplace. It seemed Hannah hadn’t been able to instantly fall into the sleep of the innocent either.

The clink pinged in his ears again and he turned towards the sound. It was coming from the corner of the room in which the spa pool sat, tucked into an alcove with a window overlooking the forest. It was hidden discreetly from view behind a half-wall.

Blood pumping in his ears, Bradley took two more steps. The deep dark blue of a large square dipping pool came slowly into view …

And there she was.

Hannah. Awake. Sitting on the edge of the pool. Top half covered in a loose pale grey sweater. Naked legs dangling into the lapping water. A half-glass of red wine at her fingers. A hot pink cowboy hat sitting incongruously atop her head.

The groan he swallowed down was deep and painful. For she couldn’t have looked any sexier if she’d tried.

He could walk away right now and pretend he’d never seen her. Pretend to who? a strangled voice shouted inside his head. Because sure as you’re a grown man you ain’t ever going to forget it!

Her fingers reached out and played with the stem of the glass, twirling it back and forth. The edge of her top slipped, revealing the creamy skin of one beautiful bare shoulder. Skin he’d tasted less than an hour before. Skin that tasted of honey and heat and such sweetness he couldn’t get it out of his head.