The Blind-Date Bride

Different, she decided.

Not quite civilised.

Dark and intense.

Like his eyes…now that he was looking directly into hers.

Catherine sucked in a quick breath as her heart skipped into a wild canter. This guy had it in spades. With one searing look he burnt Stuart Carstairs right out of her mind and stamped his own image over the scar. It was a stunning impact. Catherine hadn’t even begun to recover from it when she heard Pete Raynor start the introductions.

‘Livvy…Catherine…this is my friend, Zack Freeman…’

Another stunning impact.

She knew him. Or rather, knew of him. Who didn’t in the computer graphics business? Zack Freeman was already reaching legendary status for what he had achieved in special effects. He produced amazing stuff. And he was Pete’s friend…her blind date?

Very white teeth flashed a winning smile. ‘I’m delighted to meet you both. And I wish you a very happy birthday, Livvy.’

He offered his hand to her first—a perfunctory courtesy as Livvy thanked him—just a quick touch—then to Catherine, who found her hand captured by his for several seconds, making her extremely conscious of the warm flesh-to-flesh contact.

‘I appreciate your giving me your company tonight, Catherine,’ he said very personally, his voice pitched to a low, deep intimacy.

Her stomach flipped. She’d thought of Zack Freeman as some clever computer nerd with a weird creative genius, occupying some planet of his own. Yet here he was, right in front of her, so dynamically sexy she could scarcely breathe. It was a miracle she found the presence of mind to produce a reply.

‘My pleasure.’

His smile was quite dazzling, given the dark tan of his skin. He had a strong nose, strong chin. His eyebrows were straight and low, his eyes deepset, somehow emphasising their penetrating power. His hair was a mass of tight, springy black curls which should have had a softening effect, but perversely added a sense of wound-up aggression.

‘Nice car,’ he said, nodding to where she’d parked.

‘I like it.’

His eyes teased as he asked, ‘What does it say about you?’

She already felt under attack from him and instinctively she fended off the probe that was asking her to reveal private feelings. ‘Does it have to say anything?’

‘Cars always say something about their owners.’ He withdrew his hand and gestured to his friend. ‘Now take Pete here. His BMW says he’s made it. He’s solid. He likes proven performance.’

‘Right on,’ Pete agreed.

‘So what car do you own?’ Catherine asked Zack, wanting to learn something about him.

He grinned. ‘I don’t. If I need a car, I hire one.’

‘Don’t let him fool you, Catherine,’ Pete quickly inserted. ‘Zack’s a bikie from way back. He’s got a whole stable of bikes to suit whatever mood he’s in and whatever he wants to do.’

‘An open road man,’ she observed, thinking Zack Freeman had to have the kind of mind that would hate any form of confinement.

‘Like you, Catherine,’ Livvy popped in, all for encouraging this twosome.

Zack raised one eyebrow. ‘True?’

She shrugged. ‘I’ve only ever thought of my car as a somewhat impractical self-indulgence.’ She shot a rueful look at her sister. ‘Livvy’s the one who analyses everything to death.’

‘And I love her great sense of logic,’ Pete said with relish, beaming pleasure in her sister. He held out the bottle he was carrying. ‘Brought the best French bubbly to celebrate your birthday, Livvy.’

‘Great!’ She grabbed his arm, hugging it as he turned to lead them into the restaurant. ‘I just love your sense of occasion, Pete.’

They were so obviously happy with each other, Catherine shook her head over the pressure exerted on her to make up a foursome. She eyed Zack Freeman curiously, aware that he could probably snap his fingers and pick up any woman. So why had he agreed to a blind date?

She remembered Livvy’s argument, centred mostly on getting Catherine to rid herself of Stuart and open up to other men. Embarrassment squirmed through her at the thought that Livvy had engaged Pete’s help to fix up her sister and she was some kind of charity case to Zack Freeman—doing a favour asked of him by his old friend.

A horrible sense of humiliation forced her to blurt out, ‘Did Pete coerce you into partnering me tonight?’

He was slow to reply, possibly picking up her inner tension and musing over its cause. ‘I had no other plans. Pete wanted me to make up a party of four tonight and I agreed.’ His mouth quirked. ‘No regrets so far. But if you have a problem with the arrangement…’

‘No,’ she rushed out on a wave of intense relief. He hadn’t been told anything personal about her.

His head tilted quizzically. ‘You want to cut and run?’

Truth spilled out before she could stop it. ‘Livvy would kill me if I did.’

‘Ah! So she coerced you.’

Catherine took a deep breath, wanting to get onto some kind of equal footing with him. ‘It was more her idea than mine.’

‘Does that mean you’re anticipating pain with me?’

A nervous gurgle of laughter bubbled out. ‘Let me fantasise pleasure for a while.’

‘Good idea!’ His eyes twinkled wicked mischief. ‘I’ll do the same.’

He half turned, waving her to fall into step with him to follow Pete and Livvy. He made no attempt to take her arm or hand, for which she was grateful since she was super-conscious of his physicality as it was, and any contact would feel sexual after her blunder in linking pleasure and fantasy.

‘Livvy said you and Pete have been friends since school days,’ she remarked, trying to dampen the sizzle she’d unwittingly raised.

‘Mmm…going on twenty years. We’re still the same people to each other. You get to value that as you move through life.’

‘I guess you do a lot of role-playing with your work.’

He paused, slanting her a sharp look beneath lowered brows. ‘You know what I do?’

Would he have preferred her not to know? To pretend he was just some regular guy for the night? Was he sick of women climbing all over him for what he was?

‘It’s okay. I won’t blab on about it,’ she assured him. ‘I don’t think Livvy knows. I happen to work with graphic artists who are interested in everything you come up with—big discussions—so when Pete introduced you…’

‘You’re a graphic artist yourself?’ he cut in, an angry tension emanating from him.

‘No. And I’m not a user, either,’ she asserted, resenting the implied assumption that she might angle some benefit out of this meeting with him. ‘You’re perfectly safe with me, Zack Freeman.’

He gave her a long hard look that bristled with suspicion and she stared right back with fierce pride, finally earning a glint of respect.

‘Oh, I wouldn’t go that far,’ he drawled, his mouth taking on a wry twist. ‘You pack quite a punch, Catherine Trent.’

Heat whooshed up her neck and into her cheeks as sexual electricity crackled from him and zipped into her bloodstream. Catherine was appalled at herself. She never blushed. She might flush in anger, but blushing belonged to adolescence and she was way past that. A sophisticated career woman did not blush.

‘You’re not exactly harmless yourself,’ she retorted defensively, only realising it was an admission of the attraction he exerted after she had spoken. Not that it mattered. He knew anyway. Impossible for him not to be aware of his effect on women, just as she was aware that many men fancied her.

He shrugged. ‘Sorry if I gave offence. This is my week off from being the Zack Freeman. In fact, it’s my last night off. I have to go back to being him tomorrow.’

‘You don’t like being him?’ Was being so successful such a burden?

‘It has its rewards and I’m not about to give them up,’ he stated, determination glinting in his eyes. ‘But there’s a time and place for everything.’

And it was clear he wouldn’t enjoy being with some star-struck woman who raved on about what he’d achieved or tried to ferret out the key to his meteroric rise to fame in his field.

‘So what would you like tonight to be?’ Catherine asked, somewhat bemused by his wish to set aside the recognition that most men’s egos would demand.

He paused to consider. His eyes beamed a speculative challenge as he answered, ‘Whatever two strangers want to make of it.’

‘Without a tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow I’m gone.’

Well, that was laying it on the line. No future with Zack Freeman. Not that she had had time to even think of one or consider whether it might be desirable.

‘Then I’ll just take this one night experience with the man behind the name,’ she countered, pride insisting that his schedule did not affect her expectations from this blind date, which had been zero before she met him anyway.

Sexual invitation simmered back at her. ‘I wonder if you will.’

She hadn’t meant a one-night stand. Another wretched blush goaded her into being uncharacteristically provocative. ‘You win some. You lose some.’ It was a warning not to assume anything.

He grinned. ‘The game is afoot. And you can’t cut and run because your sister is watching and she’ll kill you if you do.’

She laughed, trying to lighten the effect of a charge of nervous excitement. ‘You think I’m trapped?’

‘Why did you come?’

‘To please Livvy. It’s her birthday.’

‘Then you have a giving nature. That’s a trap in itself, Catherine.’

‘Oh, the giving only goes so far.’

‘What would you take, given the chance?’

‘That’s a big question.’

‘And you don’t intend to answer it yet.’

‘That would spoil the game.’

He laughed, entirely relaxed now and enjoying the flirtation he’d fired up and was stoking with every look and word. ‘I guess we’d better join Livvy and Pete. They’re waiting for us on the steps.’

So they were, paused halfway up the flight of steps to the restaurant and viewing her and Zack with an air of smug satisfaction—the successful matchmakers congratulating themselves on getting it right!

Except this blind date wasn’t going beyond whatever happened tonight.

Remember that, Catherine sternly told herself as she walked beside the man who had every nerve in her body agitated, her heart thumping, her mind bombarded with tempting fantasies.

There is no tomorrow, she recited, meaning it as a sobering caution to be sensible. Yet somehow it had the perverse effect of inciting a sense of wild recklessness—a desire to take what she could of Zack Freeman while she could. To have him. All he’d give her. If only for one night.

CHAPTER THREE

SHE had ordered the three scoops of different ice-creams for dessert and was tasting them each in turn, sliding the loaded spoon between her lips, consciously testing the flavour on her tongue. Zack found the action so sensual, his whole body was tightening up. Catherine Trent was one hell of a sexy woman and the urge to race her off into the night and ravage her from head to toe had a powerful grip on him.

He wrenched his gaze away from her mouth and turned it out to sea. Their table was on the open veranda that ran the length of the restaurant and he’d taken refuge in the view several times tonight, needing to cool the desire that kept plaguing him. Was she as hot for him as he was for her? Would she go for it, given the limitation he’d stipulated?

One night…

Problem was, he might end up wanting more and that would mess him up. She was like a fever in his blood and he needed a cool head once he hit Los Angeles. It was the wrong time to meet a woman like Catherine Trent. She appealed to him on too many levels. He liked the way her mind worked, liked talking with her, liked having her across the table from him, watching her face, the expressions in her fascinating eyes, her body language.

She wasn’t a stranger anymore, though he’d deliberately refrained from asking about her life, keeping their dinner conversation to very general topics. She’d still got to him, more than he recalled any other woman ever doing.

Better to let her go, he told himself. What had she said…win some, lose some? He’d never liked losing, but he had a lot at stake right now. Winning what he planned to win in L.A. was more important than losing out on a night of sex which could get him too involved with this woman.

‘Do you think a full moon really does affect people?’

There was a full moon tonight, big and white, hanging in the sky where he had turned his gaze, but he hadn’t been looking at it. Catherine’s question drew an instant reply from Livvy who’d been bubbling with high spirits all evening.

‘Course it does. The word, lunatic didn’t evolve from nothing.’

‘Historically it is associated with madness. And romance,’ Pete chimed in.

‘Which could be considered a form of madness,’ Zack observed dryly, looking back at Catherine, hoping she wasn’t nursing romantic thoughts about him.

It simply wasn’t on.

Yet the pull of her attraction was very strong.

‘I was just wondering…’ The musing little smile on her lips had his gut contracting with the desire to kiss her. ‘…how connected are we to the physical world? We get irritated when it’s windy. Sunshine tends to make us smile. The moon regulates the tides, so when it’s at full strength like this, does it tug at things in us, too?’

Was she wanting an explanation for what she felt with him?

An excuse for it?

Something outside herself so she couldn’t be blamed for wanting what he wanted, too?

‘You mean like amplifying the feelings we have,’ Livvy said speculatively. ‘Making mad people even madder.’

‘Swelling the tides of passion,’ Pete rolled out, relishing that idea and proceeding to banter with Livvy about possible lunar effects on human behaviour.

‘Don’t forget animals,’ Zack inserted after a while. ‘Why do wolves howl at a full moon?’

‘Because they prefer dark nights?’ Catherine suggested, looking at him with her head on a tilt as though mentally likening him to a wolf who prowled dark places.

‘Or maybe it’s part of the mating game,’ he couldn’t resist saying.

Her thick lashes lowered, veiling the expression in her eyes, though not before he glimpsed a vulnerability to the mating they could share.

Temptation bit into his resolution to let her go.

She wanted him. He wanted her. Where was the harm in a one-night stand? It wasn’t as though she was an inexperienced woman. Late twenties, he guessed, and given her face and figure, had probably been fending off or taking on guys since her mid-teens.

Her long throat moved in a convulsive little swallow. Dry-mouthed from the heat coursing through her? The low V-neckline of her dress pointed into the valley between her breasts, shadowed by the soft swell of lush feminine flesh on either side. He wanted to fill his hands with her, wanted to…

‘Coffee, anyone?’

The waiter deftly removed the emptied dessert plates as choices were made around the table.

‘Short black,’ Catherine said,

Strong and dark, Zack thought, which was how he wanted it, too. ‘The same for me.’

He didn’t hear what the others ordered. The waiter departed. Pete suggested they walk on down the hill to the Crowne Plaza after they’d finished their coffee, disco the rest of the night away. Livvy applauded the idea. Catherine smiled at her sister but said nothing, waiting for Zack’s reaction with no persuasion from her either way.

Hours of ear-blasting music and hot, sweaty dancing didn’t appeal to Zack. Nor did a long sexual tease with Catherine that promised without delivering. She had burned him enough tonight. If there was to be any action between them, it was now or never, he decided.

Her choice.

‘I hope you’ll all excuse me—you, particularly, Catherine…’ He offered her a rueful smile. ‘I wasn’t planning on a late night tonight. I have a car calling at seven-thirty in the morning to take me to the airport. I’ve enjoyed the evening very much but…’

‘You don’t want to be a total wreck tomorrow,’ she finished for him, smiling her understanding and with more than a hint of relief in her eyes.

Off the hook?

‘I won’t cut into your plan of action, Pete,’ he directed to his old friend. ‘I can call a taxi from here and the three of you can…’

‘No need for a taxi,’ Catherine cut in. ‘I can drive you back to Forresters Beach on my way home.’

Excitement zipped through his veins. Opportunity had just been opened up. Was it deliberate, decisive, or merely flirting with a chance she might take? ‘Thank you,’ he said, anticipation surging into a storm of desire at the thought of being alone with her.

She looked at her sister. ‘That’s okay with you, isn’t it, Livvy? Pete will bring you home after the disco?’

‘Absolutely,’ Pete agreed, happy to have Livvy to himself.

Her sister heaved a sigh and looked from Catherine to Zack, clearly exasperated by this abrupt end to their foursome. It wasn’t what she’d planned but the decision had already been taken out of her hands.

Zack smiled at her. ‘May I say it’s been a delight to meet you, Livvy. You and Pete have yourself a ball tonight.’

‘Hey! And wake me for a coffee with you before you leave in the morning, Zack,’ Pete demanded.

‘Will do.’

‘You don’t have to go home this early, Catherine,’ Livvy pressed, frowning at her sister. ‘It will only take ten minutes to drop Zack off at Forresters Beach…’

‘I don’t want you watching out for me at a disco,’ she stated firmly. ‘You and Pete should feel free to have fun together. It’s your birthday.’

And that might be the straight truth of it, Zack cautioned himself. Being at a disco without a partner, guys on a high trying to pick her up…he could well imagine a fight breaking out over Catherine Trent…and that could be extremely tiresome if she wasn’t in the mood to play. With anyone else but him.

Conviction fizzed through his mind. She need not have made the offer to drive him home. She could have waited until he’d left in a taxi, then made the decision not to go to the disco. This was not a safe play. The chance was on.

Catherine beamed her sister a flinty look that said enough was enough and there’d be no forcing her to circulate in a crowded disco where she might or might not hit it off with some guy. Impossible anyway after being with Zack Freeman all evening. Though her impulsive offer to drive him to Pete’s place now had her stomach churning.

The move protected her from being thrown at more men, which Livvy had obviously intended once Zack removed himself from the field of play. It also protected her from any argument over her decision to leave since giving her blind date a lift home was a perfectly reasonable and polite thing to do in return for his company tonight. But it did mean she’d be alone with him in her car and when they reached Forresters Beach.

Would she be safe with him?

Did she want to be safe with him?

Livvy’s resigned grimace set her free to do whatever she liked and Pete was obviously not troubled by their party being cut in half. He’d done what had been requested of him, supplying Zack for Livvy’s sister, and if the two of them went off together, that was fine by him. He had the woman he wanted still at his side.

The coffee arrived.

She hoped its hot bitterness would sober her up. Not from alcohol. She’d only drunk one glass of champagne. It was Zack Freeman’s affect on her that needed diluting down to something manageable. He was like a magnet, playing a tug-of-war with every female hormone in her body. Never in her life had she been made to feel so aware of her own sexuality, as well as a chaotic craving to experience his.

He had the most sinfully sexy eyes, teasing, challenging, flirting, knowing and constantly evaluating the response he drew from her. He made her laugh. He made her smile. He made her tingle all over. He was the intoxicant and not even the knowledge that he’d be gone tomorrow lessened the addictive power of his attraction.

‘So I get to have a ride in your car.’

She stopped sipping the coffee and looked up to answer him, her heart squeezing tight at the warm pleasure in his eyes. ‘A short ride,’ she said, reminding herself again of the brevity of this encounter.

One night…which was fast coming to an end.

‘An impractical self-indulgence,’ he drawled softly.

For a stomach-clenching moment, she thought he was referring to her decision to ride with him, whatever that might lead to between them. Then she realised he was repeating her own words about owning such a car.

‘You get wet if it rains before you can stop to get the hood on,’ she explained with a shrug.

‘But you don’t mind the wind in your hair.’

She smiled. ‘Nor the sun on my face.’

‘You like the feel of nature.’

‘Yes.’

He smiled. ‘An elemental woman.’

He made it sound intensely sensual, made her feel intensely sensual. She took refuge in sipping coffee again, trying not to wonder just how elemental he was and how he would look as nature had fashioned him.

The open-necked shirt had been tantalising her all throughout dinner, giving her a glimpse of tight black curls arrowing down his chest. His forearms weren’t hairy, their darkly tanned skin gleaming like oiled teak. She imagined his whole body would be mainly like that with a sprinkle of black springy curls in the most masculine places. The desire to know, to touch, conflicted terribly with the sensible course of simply wishing him well and waving him goodbye.

He wasn’t going to be in her life.

Except for this one night.

Pete paid the restaurant bill, insisting it was his party treat for Livvy. Everyone had drunk their coffee. It was time to go. Nervous tension gripped Catherine as Zack moved to hold her chair back for an easy rise from the table. She looked at the full moon as she stood up. Was this lust for him a madness that she would shake her head over tomorrow?

She didn’t understand it.

Was she raw and needful from Stuart’s most recent dalliance with another woman? But she wasn’t feeling any bitter hurt right now. It was as though all that was in a far distant place. Zack Freeman generated a physical immediacy that completely clouded anything else.

She was super aware of her legs moving in step with his as they followed Pete and Livvy out of the restaurant, aware that the top of her head was level with his chin, aware of the strength of the man and the weak little quivers running down her thighs, aware of her breasts straining against the stretch fabric of Livvy’s dress, aware of the flutters in her stomach where the yearning to experience Zack Freeman was strong and deep and beyond any mental control.

Pete decided to drive down to The Crowne Plaza and have his car parked at the hotel for an easy pickup when he and Livvy had had enough of the disco. They said their goodnights at his BMW and Catherine and Zack watched them drive off before moving on to the end of the car park where her red convertible was waiting for them.

‘Do you like to dance?’ Zack asked as they strolled along.

He wasn’t touching her, merely walking beside her, but Catherine barely found breath enough to answer, ‘Yes.’

‘I’m sorry if you feel you’re missing out.’

She shook her head.

‘For me it would have been more of a torture than a pleasure.’

The wry statement drew her into glancing at him.

His eyes caught hers and delivered their own searing meaning as he elaborated. ‘I would have wanted more than the touching permissable on a public dance floor, Catherine.’

She wrenched her gaze from his as heat whooshed through her entire body. The direct acknowledgment of the desire he was feeling for her left no way of dismissing it as possible fantasy. It was real. And it was vibrantly alive, pulsing through her, arousing eager responses that clamoured for expression.

Her mind tried to over-ride them. She didn’t do one-night stands. She believed that casual sex diminished what should be really special to a relationship that shared far more than just sex. Men were different, she’d told herself, having excused Stuart’s infidelities as meaningless rushes of testosterone. But she’d never felt so sexually connected to a man before, not even with Stuart at his charismatic best.