Читать книгу A Groom For The Taking - Rebecca Winters - Страница 13

HANNAH nibbled at her little fingernail until there was nothing more to nibble without taking the top off her finger.

For a weekend that was meant to be about relaxing and recharging, sorting out her head, she felt as if she’d been walking a tightrope blindfolded.

What with Elyse being so unexpectedly fabulous. Her mother driving her even crazier than she’d expected. And poor Roger flirting up a storm every chance he had while she thought him about as interesting as a potted plant.

But they were mere wallpaper compared with the most glaring factor in the story of her lack of a pinky fingernail.

What had got into Bradley?

Even thinking her boss’s name had her teeth aiming for a new nail.

No matter how she played out that first half an hour inside the bar, she kept coming back to the indisputable fact that Bradley had been hitting on her. The dark glances, the whispering in her ear, the unexpected touches …

She bit down so hard on her fingernail it stung.

Wincing, she snuck a glance across the table to where the man himself sat, all six feet four inches of him, sprawled out in his chair, long fingers clasped around a glass of beer, smiling contentedly as he watched Elyse and Tim belt out ‘Islands in the Stream’ on the karaoke stage.

‘I’m sorry?’

She blinked, realising he was leaning towards her, one eyebrow cocked, the edge of his mouth lifted in the remnants of a smile. How did the man manage to make even the word sorry sound so sexy?

‘Did you say something?’ he asked, almost shouting to be heard over the music.

‘Nope. Nothing going on over here. All quiet my end.’

He looked at her a beat longer. His deep grey eyes burning into her. Heat she’d never sensed from him before was now arcing across the table and turning her knees to butter. When he finally looked away she let out a long, slow breath.

Something had shifted back there. But how much? How far? She was confused and jumpy and prickling with anticipation all at once.

Then she asked the question she’d been finding any way to avoid. Was she looking at the early stages of a fling? She gave in to a delicious shiver that tumbled through her from top to toe.

But no. No way. Anything but that. Not with the boss. She’d worked too hard to prove herself indispensable—irreplaceable, even—to turn into a cliché now.

She leant her chin on her palm and bobbed her head in time with the music, all the while watching him from the corner of her eye.

She’d have to see something way beyond fling on the horizon to even consider that kind of risk. Whereas Bradley … She knew first-hand that the women who dated Bradley were lucky if they stayed on his mobile phone longer than a month.

Her enigmatic, heartlessly delicious, emotionally stunted boss suddenly picked up his chair and plonked it down beside hers.

She leaned away. ‘If you can’t see from there I’ll happily switch places.’

‘Stay.’ He placed a hand over hers, cupping it on the table. ‘I don’t plan on shouting to be heard all evening.’

She slid her hand away and used it to scratch her non-itchy head.

‘Elyse is a pretty fair singer too, you know,’ he drawled. ‘How did you miss that gene?’

Hannah shook the cotton wool from her head. ‘That’s what you came over here to say? Not Are you’re having a good time, Hannah? Or Can I get you another drink, Hannah? But what’s with the talent deficiency? You are a charmer.’

He laughed softly—a low rumble that whispered to all the deep, dark feminine places inside her. Serious face on, he was heart-stoppingly gorgeous. Smiling, he was devastating. Laughing, he was … a dream.

This man had been hitting on her? Her? Sensible, back-chatting, small-town Hannah Gillespie? She felt it, but couldn’t quite believe it.

Needing to know for sure, to see if her radar was so rusty it was no longer even functional, she turned in her chair, giving him her most flirtatious smile.

‘Okay,’ she said, ‘just so we can put this topic to bed once and for all—’

He raised an eyebrow. Her heart rate quickened. And all the places his large warm hands had glanced that night pulsed.

Hannah met his raised eyebrow and raised him another. ‘I’m talking, of course, about my lack of singing and dancing skills.’

‘Riiight.’

‘I don’t want you sitting there feeling all sorry for me because I can’t do a series of triple-spins while belting out “I Dreamed a Dream”.’

When he opened his mouth, she held up a hand. ‘Before you ask, all I’ll admit is that routine had fake peacock feathers and sequinned masquerade masks.’

‘I was going to say that I don’t feel the least bit sorry for you. A woman doesn’t have to be able to sing and dance to have it going on.’

He lifted his beer and finished it in one slow swallow. All she could do was stare.

Oh, yeah. Bradley was flirting, all right. Batting her about like a lion with a moth. She wondered what she might do if he decided to stop playing and get serious. The very idea petrified her to the spot.

Even in the low light of the club she could see the gleam in his eyes. The thrill of the chase.

Utterly out of her depth, she reached for her drink.

Bradley got there first, snatching it out of her way. But not before her fingers had brushed across his. Pure and unadulterated sexual attraction wrapped itself around her like a wet rope, slippery and unyielding. And even in the darkness she was sure his pupils had grown so large the colour of his eyes was completely obscured.

From an accidental touch of fingers. Oh, God …

Bradley swirled the ice around in her drink. Once. Twice. Each time ice hit glass her nerves twanged sharply—like an out-of-tune guitar.

She sat on her hands and bit her lip. He’s your boss. You love your job. He’s not looking for for ever. And you are. Just allowing this flirtation to continue is going to change everything.

He lifted her drink to his mouth and took a sip. The press of his lips where her lips had just been made her tingle in the most aching anticipation.

Then his face screwed up as if he’d just sucked on a lemon. ‘Holy heck—that’s atrocious! How can you drink this slop?’

‘It’s not slop!’

‘What on earth’s in it?’

‘Whisky, lemon juice, sugar, and a dash of egg white.’

‘Are you serious?’

He picked up his empty beer glass and practically ran his tongue around the rim in search of leftover foam. Hannah’s limbs went limp so quickly she had to look away.

‘It was my father’s favourite drink. So clearly it’s meant for a palate far more discerning than yours.’

To prove it, she put the glass to her mouth and took a giant swig—only instead of tasting the sharp mix of ingredients that had always felt nothing but warm and comforting, she was certain she could taste a whisper of beer as left by Bradley’s lips.

She slammed the glass to the table, then pushed back her chair. ‘I need to … do some urgent maid of honour things.’

He crossed his arms and looked at her a long time. ‘Right now?’

‘You know I don’t like leaving things till the last minute. Boss.’

There. Put things back in perspective. Remind him who you are. Who he is. How things are meant to work between you.

‘Need company?’ A slow smile slid across his face, proving he was apparently happy to forget.

As he began to uncurl his large lanky self from the chair she backed up so fast she bumped into some poor woman who spilt her drink. Hannah pulled her emergency ten dollars from her cleavage and shoved it in the girl’s hand.

Bradley sank back into the chair, his eyes glued to her décolletage as though he was wondering what other secrets she held down there. None to write home about! she wanted to shout.

Instead she demanded, ‘Sit. Drink. Grab a lighter and sway. Whatever gets you through the night. I’ll come find you later.’

And with that she spun and, head down, feet going a mile a minute, took off through any gap she could find.

Until that moment she’d enjoyed her crush on him because it had never had a chance of going anywhere. Bradley was impossible. Untouchable. Out of her league. In fact he’d been a convenient excuse not to get close to anyone else while she concentrated on consolidating her career.

And now?

Someone clearly cleverer than she had once said, ‘Be careful what you wish for or you just might get it.’

She wished they were there right now, so she could shake their hand. Or ask if they’d mind slapping her across the back of the head as many times as it took to make sure she made it back to her bedroom that night.

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.

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.