Which was why she thought she might be hallucinating when she saw him standing on the beach, in the same place he’d stood when she’d last been here. She blinked. It was Max all right. Tall, imposing. The same but different. Even more handsome, if that were possible. His beard was a proper short beard now, not the stubble of when she’d first seen him there. His shorts were grey not blue. And he was wearing the hat and sunglasses they’d agreed to wear in public.
Had he seen her? Could she turn around and take the speedboat back to the mainland? Panic tightened her throat. She wasn’t ready for this. Had thought she’d have time to prepare herself before she spoke to him. What was he doing here?
He waved to her. There would be no escape. She would have to face him. But she wasn’t going to be cowed by his presence.
‘Mr James, what a coincidence,’ she said lightly.
‘It’s no coincidence,’ he said. ‘Maya organised for the truck to come pick you up. I hitched a ride so I could meet you at the boat. I didn’t want to hang around at the hotel waiting for you.’
She wasn’t going to act all passive aggressive and angsty because he’d hurt her feelings. But she wasn’t going to let the conversation get personal either. As far as she was concerned, their no-label fling had fizzled out. ‘Thank you, but that wasn’t necessary,’ she said, forcing a polite smile. ‘I trust our driver to get me back to Big Blue.’ She knew she sounded stilted. But it was the best she could do. She screwed her eyes shut tight and wished he’d be gone when she opened them.
* * *
Nikki looked different, Max thought. Gone were the hippy pants, the tangle of windblown hair. Now her hair was sleek and sophisticated, falling below her shoulders; her eyes made up with some dark shadow; her mouth slicked a deep pink. Her natural-coloured linen dress looked elegant and businesslike, even with the flip-flops she’d worn for the boat. This wasn’t his Nikki of the island or the Nikki of his dreams. Not that she’d ever been his, either in reality or dream.
He felt as if there were a sheet of glass between them. And it wasn’t because she was wearing sunglasses and a hat and he couldn’t properly see her expression.
He offered to carry her backpack for her but she demurred. ‘It’s nicely balanced,’ she said.
‘How did the interview go?’ he asked as they walked to the waiting place for the truck. The streets were much too narrow for the driver to park anywhere and they had to wait for him to come back for them.
‘Very well,’ she said. ‘Sammie asked some interesting questions, which really made me think.’ She put up her hand as if to forestall a question from him. ‘Rest assured, your name wasn’t mentioned at all. The wedding incident was a no-go zone so you didn’t even come up in reference to your role as best man. It was strictly business.’
‘Good,’ he said, relieved to hear it. He still worried at the wisdom of her meeting with a journalist. Journalists went for blood at the slightest sniff of a story, the more scandalous the better. And if it wasn’t a scandal, they turned it into one—as he’d learned to his peril. If the press hadn’t got hold of the paternity dispute story, it wouldn’t have given his opponent the fuel to goad him into the ill-timed shot that had ended his career. He was glad he hadn’t had to meet Sammie. It would have been difficult to be polite to her.
While he waited with Nikki for the truck they made small talk about the hotel she had stayed at with her friends in Sanur. She was polite, pleasant, not a trace of snark in her voice or demeanour. But he realised she had not once met his gaze.
He’d blown it with her.
They sat on opposite benches on the back of the truck all the way back to the hotel. Max tried not to think of the last time they’d sat there together, Nikki with her blue dress slipping up her thighs, he trying not to stare too blatantly. Or to remember the previous night when his ‘Nikki in her blue dress’ dream had turned into a nightmare.
It had started as usual with her gliding up the aisle towards him, then lifting her face for his kiss. Only instead of kissing her, he’d watched as she’d turned away from him back to her groom. A groom who suddenly wasn’t Alan but some anonymous dude gazing at her in adoration. The symbolism was painfully obvious—he couldn’t give her what she wanted so she’d found someone else. In the dream the pain of his loss had seared through him. He’d awoken in a sweat and never returned to sleep, tossing and turning, thoughts and regrets churning through his brain.
He was beginning to realise that relationships were a fluid thing. Opportunities for something exciting and unexpected could slip away while he was trying to make everything perfect. There wasn’t a perfect time for a relationship. You had to make the time. He might have good balance when it came to being nimble on his feet. What he didn’t have was balance in his life. He could have both a career and a relationship. What appeared so patently obvious to others had been a revelation to him. Look how Maya and Kadek worked so harmoniously together—a business, a happy marriage, a child.
When it came to Nikki, it seemed he’d kept his eye off the ball and lost the game, forfeiting the prize that had been right under his nose.
* * *
Nikki looked unseeingly out of the truck as it bumped its way back to the hotel. Seeing Max, wanting him, was too difficult. It was impossible for her to stay in any kind of proximity to him. She would have to get right away from here, from Bali, from anywhere in Indonesia. Time to move on. Tonight she would get online and book a flight home. Many of the flights to Sydney left from the Ngurah Rai international airport in Denpasar very late in the evening so she would almost certainly be able to leave tomorrow. Maya would understand.
When they reached the hotel, Nikki accepted Max’s offer of assistance with her backpack but not his hand to help her down from the truck. Not after what had happened last time. She flushed at the memory of that passionate, public kiss, furious at herself for the wave of longing for him that swept through her. Now Max kept at a polite distance but she was as aware of him as if they were skin-to-skin close. His scent, his warmth, the essence of his Max-ness. It was too painful. She had to go, and go quickly.
Packing up to leave Lembongan wouldn’t take long. She hadn’t brought much with her when she had fled Sydney and hadn’t acquired much during her stay. Just the knick-knacks she’d bought to personalise her villa, a couple of gorgeous sarongs, this dress she’d bought for the interview.
Oh, and her heart. She’d been at risk of leaving that behind with the best man. It had been a close call.
She thanked the driver. He wasn’t known to her, so she was very careful to stay staff-guest distance from Max and to address him as Mr James. But when the truck drove away from the driveway nearest to their villas she was left alone with Max. Most likely for the last time.
He refused to give her back her backpack, saying he would carry it to her villa for her. She walked the short distance to her door aware every second that he was only a few steps behind her. They reached her villa. He put her backpack down.
‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘That was kind of you.’ She went to fish in the outside pocket of it for her room key but her hands were shaking too much to make a connection. She closed her eyes in despair. This was dreadful. They’d been so at ease with each other. To be reduced to this level of awkwardness was unbearable.
‘Let me,’ he said, deftly retrieving her big old-fashioned key with the wooden tag and handing it to her. A gentleman to the last.
She took it, being ultra-careful their hands didn’t brush in the process. ‘Thank you,’ she said again, in an excess of politeness to cover how she was crying in her heart that it had come to this. She feigned a yawn. ‘I’m so tired, can’t wait to get inside.’ She’d been about to add and out of this dress but stopped herself in time.
‘You left your uniform in my villa the other night,’ he said. ‘The top, the sash and the sarong.’
Nikki snatched her hand t
o her mouth. ‘How careless of me. The housekeepers would have seen it and drawn their own conclusions.’ She groaned. ‘So much for being discreet.’
‘They couldn’t have seen it. I packed it away in my suitcase in my closet to keep it hidden until you came back.’
‘Good idea,’ she said. She would just leave the clothing there. Maya could retrieve it after she’d left.
‘I could bring it out to you,’ he said.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ she said.
‘Or you could come into my villa and get it,’ he said.
‘I... I don’t think so.’ She couldn’t bear to be alone with him in the privacy of those high walls.
She looked up and finally caught his gaze, intensely blue in the fading light of the day. ‘Please come in, Nikki,’ he said. ‘Please.’
CHAPTER TWELVE
NIKKI TOOK A deep breath to steady herself. Now would be as good a time as any to tell him she intended to fly back to Sydney tomorrow evening. After all, he hadn’t actually done anything wrong. She had simply decided not to accept the terms he was offering. Her choice. They should part on civilised terms.
Mutely, she nodded.
She followed him through the courtyard and into his villa. He closed the door and stood with it behind him, facing her. ‘I missed you, Nikki. Every minute you were away I missed you. This place was so empty without you. I know you were angry with me. I was—’
Her carefully rehearsed explanation of why she was going fled from her mind. ‘I missed you too,’ she said, something she had had no intention of admitting. ‘Every second I wished you were with me. I couldn’t sleep for thinking about you. Yearning for you. But I can’t do a no-strings fling, Max. And I actually don’t see at this stage what’s stopping us from treating this like a normal boy-meets-girl scenario. Okay, so we want to avoid media intrusion, keep things private. We’re on the same page there.’
‘Yes,’ he said vehemently with a curse that told her exactly what he thought of the media.
‘But we’re both single. Free to see whoever we want. We’ve both been burned before in other relationships. I... I’m scared of getting hurt again. I admit I have trust issues. But I also really enjoy being with you. More than any other man I’ve ever met. A few days here has established that. If we like each other why—?’
‘Can’t we just date and see where it leads to?’
‘I was going to say why hedge ourselves with restrictions like one night but you said it better. I deserve better than to be seen as a no-strings fling to be picked up then discarded. And so do you.’
He looked at her quizzically. ‘That’s not the kind of thing a girl usually says to a guy. That he deserves more than a passing encounter.’
‘I mean it. But if you still don’t think you can fit a meaningful relationship into your new life after tennis, then say goodbye for good now.’
Their gazes held for a long moment. The hunger she saw in his eyes was surely reflected in hers. She swayed towards him. All thoughts fled her mind except how much she wanted him. Max.
‘I don’t want to say goodbye,’ he said.
He kissed her and she kissed him back without hesitation. They skipped the tender, questing kind of warm-up kiss and went straight to demanding and urgent. He bunched her hair in his hand and tugged to tilt her face upward to deepen the kiss. The tug on her hair should have hurt but it didn’t. It thrilled her. He thrilled her.
Pent-up desire ignited and flamed through her. He pulled away from the kiss, to say something, she thought. But there had been enough words. She pressed her mouth back against his to silence him, slipped her tongue between his lips, demanded more. She slid her arms under his shirt, around his waist to hold warm, bare skin. He slid his hands down her shoulders past the curves of her breasts to hold her bottom. Her nipples tightened and tingled and she pressed her body close to his. Close, closer, not close enough. She wanted more.
She murmured deep in her throat. Pleasure, want, hunger. He groaned and held her closer. She stepped back, trying to drag him in the direction of the bedroom but she met an immovable wall of muscle. Then he propelled her forward. Then they were stumbling towards his bedroom, laughing when they bumped into the wall and knocked a wooden carving askew, laughing when they got tangled up in the mosquito net, laughing when they met a recalcitrant zipper or tore off a button in their haste to strip each other of their clothes.
‘This would be so much easier if we were wearing sarongs,’ she murmured in mock complaint.
‘Or a towel and a pink bikini,’ he said.
Then their laughter slowed to murmurs and sighs and moans as they explored each other’s wants and needs.
* * *
Nikki woke up and thought for a moment she was in her own bed in her own villa. The bed was identical. Same mosquito-net canopy. Same ceiling fan with cane blades flicking languorously around. What was different was the warm male body next to her, hand resting possessively on her thigh. Max. Her lover.
And what an awesome lover he was. Passionate, energetic, inventive. Not to mention thoughtful and considerate. They had seemed to instinctively know what pleased each other. After their first time together, they had fallen asleep in each other’s arms. It was dark when they’d woken, ravenous, and ordered pizza from room service. Nasi goreng didn’t seem quite the thing to eat in bed.
He’d then fulfilled all her built-up fantasies of him—and she his—in his open-air bathroom as they’d showered together. When they eventually fell asleep again it was the deep sleep of the totally exhausted.
Now shafts of sunlight were filtering through the blinds, picking up the gold in Max’s beard, the fine hair on his chest and legs. Heaven knew what time it was.
She stretched out her satisfied, pleasurably aching body. Max lay asleep on his back beside her, his limbs sprawled across the bed in the same confident possession of space that had become so familiar. His hand stayed on her thigh and she tentatively covered it with hers.
She didn’t think she had ever felt happier. She wanted this. Wanted him. There was no use in denying it any further. She was falling in love with him.
* * *
The first thing Max saw when he woke was Nikki smiling into his face. She lay next to him, her head turned to his. With her hair dishevelled and spread across the pillow, dark smudges of make-up under her eyes, her lips swollen from his kisses, she had never looked more beautiful. She was naked and unselfconscious, her lovely body gilded with sunlight.
He noted with a stab of guilt slight marks from his fingers on the smooth skin of her thighs. But he remembered when he’d given them to her and she hadn’t been complaining. A fierce possessiveness surged through him. She was perfect in every way. She was his.
‘Hey, you,’ he said, dropping a kiss on her mouth.
‘Hey to you too,’ she said, nipping on his lower lip.
‘This is nice,’ he said, knowing the words were grossly inadequate to express how he felt.
‘Yes,’ she said, and he knew he didn’t need the words. ‘Do I wish we’d done this the first night we knew we wanted to do it?’
‘Do you?’
‘No. It wouldn’t have been the same.’
‘I think I could have been okay with it that first night,’ he said. In fact he knew so. He had wanted her from the get-go. ‘But I want more.’
‘Now?’ she said, wiggling closer to him.
He stroked the fine strands of her hair back from where they were falling across her face. ‘Yes,’ he said, immediately ready for her. ‘But what I meant was I want this to continue. Us, I mean.’ He laughed. ‘I’m not very good at this. If I was sixteen I’d say I want you to be my girlfriend.’
‘That’s not a bad way of putting it even for a thirty-year-old,’ she said. ‘I know exactly what you mean. I’d like to be your girlfriend.’ She stroked his face with
delicate fingers from his cheekbone to the corner of his mouth. ‘Very much so.’
‘I want to enjoy all the time we can have together here and then afterwards. What are your plans? I could try to get up here as often as possible, but it would be easier if we were in the same city. Sydney, I mean. For the foreseeable future anyway.’ If he took the sports announcer job he could be based anywhere. But rather than thinking he had to make those decisions on his own, he realised with a surprising sense of relief he might make them with Nikki. Make a decision based on what she wanted as well as his own needs.
‘I was talking about that with my friends last night,’ she said. ‘Me moving back to Sydney, I mean. Going back to my old life.’ Her voice trailed away and he realised she was still nervous about going home.
‘Not quite the same old life with a new boyfriend,’ he said.
Her eyes brightened. The way the green seemed to appear among the brown at different times continued to fascinate him. ‘What an exceedingly appealing thought,’ she said, her lips curving into a luminescent smile. ‘That makes me much happier about going home—sooner rather than later.’
‘Good,’ he said. Later he might broach the subject of her coming back on the same flight as him. That and the other vexed topic of how they would handle being seen together in the public eye. Perhaps he could talk to his publicist about making a media announcement, keeping the public perception of his relationship with Nikki under his control.
But right now she was snuggling close to him and pressing a trail of little kisses across his chest and up towards his mouth. Thoughts of an entirely different nature took over and he rolled Nikki over so he could kiss her back. She wound her arms around his neck and whispered exactly what she’d like to do to him. Who was he to resist?
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
WHEN NIKKI NEXT WOKE, the sun was seriously bright in Max’s bedroom and her mobile phone was vibrating all over the bedside table. Blearily she reached out to get it, blinked herself awake when she noticed the number of messages, both voicemail and text, that had come in.
Best Man and the Runaway Bride Page 14