Australian Bachelors, Sassy Brides

by Margaret Way

  No. This was all going to be fine. Mary knew what she was doing, and Callie must trust in Gideon’s aunt’s judgment.

  Right. Callie drew a stabilising breath. ‘Try to understand, Gideon, there’s nothing to worry about.’

  ‘I understand perfectly.’ Gideon’s face took on an implacable set. ‘Mary’s allowed herself to be taken in by some airy-fairy feeling that she’s in love with the man and it’s blinded her to everything else. That kind of attitude is dangerous.’

  That was what Gideon would say, wasn’t it? Never mind that there’d once been another person who’d thought herself in love. Never mind that Callie had softened to him moments earlier. This was the real Gideon. She needed to remember that.

  He was kind when he rejected you, Callie. And you can’t judge him for being worried now.

  They’d retraced their steps along the beach during their discussion. Callie turned to Gideon. ‘Promise me you’ll simply enjoy this wedding—support your aunt in it and be happy for her?’ Maybe if she kept emotion out of her request she would get somewhere with it. Maybe if she resolved this she would stop thinking about the rest.

  But Gideon didn’t give her what she needed. Instead, he shook his head. ‘Callie, I can’t—’

  ‘Callie?’ Mac called her name from the front steps of the guest house and the moment was fully lost. ‘The decorations have been delivered for the gazebo. I got them to leave the boxes there, but there’s a bit of a crisis going on in the kitchen at the moment. Do you have time to take care of the delivery?’

  Callie sucked back a sigh.

  ‘Absolutely.’

  She waved Mac back with a determined smile, and turned towards the gazebo perched high above the beach on a knoll.

  Before she started in that direction, she turned to the man at her side and tried one last time. ‘Your promise, Gideon. If you can’t give it to me, maybe you should get on a boat out of here as well.’

  ‘I’m not leaving.’ Gideon fell into step beside her as she walked towards the gazebo. ‘I’m not going anywhere until I’ve spoken with my aunt. If she needs talking out of this marriage, I’ll do it. For her sake.’ He hesitated, frowned, then added, ‘And for yours. You may not be a child any more, but I still feel a sense of responsibility for your welfare.’

  CHAPTER THREE

  ‘MARY should be back quite soon, so you’ll get your chance to talk to her.’

  Callie flung herself into the task of unpacking the first box of supplies in the gazebo. She couldn’t really be cross with Gideon when even in his immovable state he showed that he cared for her and for his aunt. It just would have been better if Mary had been here to speak with him!

  ‘Had Mary planned for long to go into Melbourne today?’ Gideon moved in to help Callie unpack as he waited for her to answer his question.

  Callie turned with her hands full of ribbons and table flounces. ‘Actually, it was a last-minute decision.’

  ‘She left you holding the bag?’ His voice was deep, and he couldn’t help looking at her with all those bits of lace in her slender hands. Even in her practical clothes she looked feminine and…desirable.

  Not a thought you should pursue, Deveraux. Callie might be all grown up now, and fair game to any man who found her attractive—and for some reason Gideon didn’t like to think of that, either—but she was not fair game to a man who wouldn’t love her.

  He didn’t know how to do that—love a woman. At this age, and with a marriage behind him that hadn’t exactly left him devastated when it ended, Gideon figured he didn’t have what it took to love truly, madly, deeply.

  He was too practical for that—too determined to keep his best interests safe.

  And he’d hurt Callie once already. He’d tried not to think about it, had tried to attribute that night to Callie pursuing some random teenage crush, which no doubt she had been, but in the throes of that crush she’d had her heart on her sleeve, and that was the one thing he hadn’t been able to take into safekeeping for her.

  If circumstances had been different…

  But they hadn’t been. He hadn’t been. Something inside him ached as he thought this. Well, it was the truth.

  Gideon turned his thoughts back to the conversation at hand. ‘You shouldn’t have been left to introduce me to Mac.’

  Callie sighed, and her shoulders slumped for a moment before she straightened them and pinned a smile back on her face. ‘Maybe not, but Mary doesn’t like confrontations.’ She started to attach the table flounces to the long tables already placed around the room.

  Gideon thought about that shoulder slump and his voice softened. ‘You’ve probably been working since dawn. At least let me help you while I’m waiting to speak with my aunt. There must be something I can do.’

  He thought she would refuse his offer, but in the end she gave a single nod of her head. ‘Thank you. I could do with the extra pair of hands—just not forty-seven sets of them at once, if you know what I mean. It has been a long couple of days, though I don’t begrudge any of it for Mary.’

  They got to work. Time passed, and Gideon began to tease out details about the time Callie had spent here with Mary over the years. As she started to talk more freely he got a picture of how much his aunt meant to her—and how much he had kept himself out of both their lives.

  He watched Callie spread cloths over tables, and he arranged rows of chairs just so at the other end of the gazebo under her eagle eye. She folded napkins into swans, he placed cutlery with as much precision as the best of the best waiting staff. The need to ensure her future was secure and that she would be happy in it crystallised inside him.

  ‘You’d truly be happy here without Mary? You haven’t thought about how isolated you’d be, carrying on here by yourself?’

  ‘Not isolated. We have good staff. Some of them are dear friends as well.’ Callie started to buzz past him. ‘I’ll be fine. I appreciate your concern, but I’m all grown up now. You don’t need to worry about me, Gideon.’

  ‘I’ve felt responsible since the day I pulled your uncle clear and stopped that tractor from crushing him.’ Gideon caught her gently by the arm and registered warm, soft flesh beneath the edge of her T-shirt. The touch of Callie that he hadn’t experienced since that night…

  ‘My uncle—’Her eyes darkened to moss-green, and her gaze slowly dropped from his eyes to his mouth and lingered there.

  Just like that Gideon was back on the estate, in his apartment’s living room with his arms full of her, his mind scrambling as he kissed her and forgot about his promises to Dianna and Callie’s age and everything else that should have stopped him—until the doorbell rang and Dianna called his name and he and Callie sprang apart and Callie rushed outside. He’d left Dianna there and followed Callie, explained that he’d made a mistake and shouldn’t have touched her, he was sorry, she just had a girlish crush…

  ‘Your uncle?’ he prompted, and told himself he must not draw her close, could not possibly want to taste her again as he had seven years ago.

  ‘Reid…He shouldn’t have made you feel responsible for me.’ A soft flush filled Callie’s face and made her eyes soften and darken even further. ‘To say you’d inherited me because you saved his life, to leave me to you—even if only informally—in his will.’

  Gideon had felt responsible. But he had never minded that. ‘It doesn’t—’

  ‘Well, you’re not responsible any more.’ Callie drew away from him, broke the contact of his fingers circling her upper arm. ‘I can look after myself now, and have done so for quite a long while.’

  That should have been a matter of relief for him. So why did he feel she’d taken an emotional step away from him with her words?

  Callie went on. ‘As for the rest, Mac is reformed and rehabilitated, he loves Mary, and if it’s Mary’s choice to be with him—well, their love for each other will be all they need to be happy.’ Her voice trembled just a little—just enough to let him know she wasn’t as composed or calm as she wante
d him to believe. ‘Can’t you please try to see that, Gideon?’

  ‘It’s not that I don’t want to respect your point of view, but Mac—’

  ‘You’re looking at this with your head, not your heart. Your unemotional attitude about love between a man and a woman—’ She broke off and bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry, but you said you didn’t love Dianna, and that wasn’t what marriage was going to be about for you. That night…’

  That night he had forgotten his commitment to Dianna completely. Until it had come back to him, saved him at the last moment from taking Callie to his bed and creating a situation they both wouldn’t have been able to deal with.

  Something inside Gideon stilled even as her words hit home, challenging something deep within him that he didn’t want to examine; yet he couldn’t stop his words. ‘You don’t know what I feel—what emotions are inside me.’

  For the first time in his socially acceptable, upper-echelon, controlled, plotted and planned, heir to millions, owner of billions life, Gideon wondered if he was quite as certain about what he wanted as he had always believed. If he was as incapable of giving and receiving as he had believed because of his relationship with Dianna and his lack of feeling true loss when she left.

  Callie chewed her lip. ‘That night I embarrassed—’

  ‘You were beautiful.’ He spoke over the top of her, out of something deep inside him that he’d pushed away for seven years. Out of a need to assure her that he had…‘I wanted you too much.’

  And now he’d said too much.

  Green eyes locked with his gaze while sparks arced between them. They were back there, but more than that they were here and now…and here and now was somehow not at all the same.

  Gideon became aware of just how close they were standing, almost nose to stuck-in-the-air pert nose. His body was bowed towards hers, wanting to be close. Wanting…her. His mouth was halfway there already and he had no desire to stop that forward progress.

  Callie’s breath caught as she stared up into his eyes and Gideon thought, Why shouldn’t I?

  ‘Gideon. Darling boy!’ His aunt’s voice sounded as she rushed into the gazebo.

  Callie sprang away from him as though caught in an illicit act. He’d wanted it a great deal more than he had thought he might. Just as she had when they had been caught, or almost, by Dianna.

  Gideon wanted to tug her close again and finish that act. But Callie had a soft glow on her face, an even softer expression in her eyes as she struggled to pull herself together.

  And the chorus from seven years ago came back to him: Don’t hurt her. Don’t hurt her with what you don’t have in you to give her. Don’t take your limitations to her. She deserves so much more than that.

  He did have those limits. His relationship with Dianna, his cold, calculated choice of Dianna was proof of that. And then Dianna had moved on to a colder, more calculated choice. Ironic, really.

  Gideon turned to Mary, forced his attention to her. He couldn’t believe what he’d been about to do with the woman still standing so close to him. ‘I’m glad to see you, Mary. You look well.’

  Indeed, as Gideon finally looked at his aunt properly he saw that she was glowing.

  She had a scarf over her wavy brown hair, and now she pulled it off and smiled. ‘I am well, dear boy, and all the happier for seeing you.’ At this statement her smile did falter slightly, before she pinned it back on with renewed determination. ‘Mac said I’d find you here with Callie.’

  At least the other man had sent Mary to him. The mention of MacKay’s name reminded Gideon of the reason—the forty-seven reasons, in fact—he needed to speak with Mary, whether she had a glow on her or not. Whether Callie was standing beside him glowering at him in warning or not.

  ‘Can we chat, Mary? I met your fiancé.’ Gideon glanced at Callie and registered her prickly disapproval. ‘Callie introduced us, and I have to say I’m a little concerned about your relationship with MacKay. How long have you known him, for example? What do you know of his life in the past, and since he…?’

  ‘Got out of jail?’ Mary shrugged her shoulders. ‘Don’t feel uncomfortable saying it, Gideon. I certainly don’t feel any concern about Mac’s history or where he is in himself now. He’s a good man.’

  ‘He could potentially be dangerous to your health and well-being, and so could his family.’

  Mary’s calm expression didn’t waver. ‘That’s not how it is with Mac.’ She paused, and her expression firmed. ‘Give me your presence at my marriage and your good wishes. That’s all I’m asking of you, Gideon. Indeed, it’s all I want.’

  Gideon passed a hand over the back of his head. ‘I don’t want you to be hurt.’

  ‘And I won’t be. You have to trust in that, Gideon. Trust it with your heart, for a change, rather than trying to see everything with your head.’

  Mary glanced towards Callie and gestured at Gideon’s chest. ‘It’s past time you started thinking with the organ housed deep inside there.’

  Callie’s glance met his, and he remembered wanting to kiss her.

  That hadn’t involved his heart. It hadn’t. But it had involved him not thinking logically. He turned back to Mary. ‘I prefer to stick to facts and trust in analytical judgement.’

  ‘Oh, Gideon. You do make me sad sometimes.’ Mary sighed and patted his arm, then turned to Callie and asked her how the wedding preparations were going.

  End of discussion, her actions seemed to say. Did Gideon realise that for Mary this discussion was now over? He’d expressed his concerns. Mary had rejected them.

  Callie watched Gideon chafe at Mary’s change of topic as she answered his aunt’s questions. In detail. With enthusiasm. Because this was Mary’s ‘day before the wedding’ and she deserved it to be exactly what she wanted it to be.

  And if answering Mary’s questions helped take Callie’s mind off the sadness of Gideon’s stance on marriage, took the attention away from ‘Gideon and Callie’ and how much they weren’t any part of these questions or answers, then that was a good thing. Wasn’t it?

  ‘So, I’d like you to get quite a few cuttings of that, if you could, dear. You can take Gideon to help carry it all back here.’ Mary dusted her hands off, as though she had just organised something that would greatly please her.

  Callie had listened, but just with part of her, while the rest of her remained overly aware of Gideon.

  Mary wanted her to take foliage cuttings from native bushes that only grew in one place on the other side of the island. She wanted lots of those cuttings because she’d done a reading, and the cards had told her the foliage should be used to scent the gazebo for the ceremony.

  Well, it would be a break from the intensity of the past moments with Gideon, Callie supposed!

  Callie pinned a smile on her face. ‘Of course I’ll get the cuttings for you, Mary. But I can harvest them myself. I don’t need help.’

  ‘Oh, do take Gideon, Callie.’ Mary waved her hand. ‘I’ll feel happier knowing you have company. Yes.’ She cast a single repressive glance in her nephew’s direction. ‘That sorts everything out.’

  Right. Mary didn’t want to talk with Gideon any more right now, so she was foisting him off on Callie.

  One glance in Gideon’s direction showed that if he stayed here he would pursue the conversation further with Mary. Which meant Callie had no choice but to do what Mary wanted.

  Callie gave in as graciously as she could. How bad could a bit more time in Gideon’s company be? She glanced at the looming overcast sky, thought about the weather predictions of storms for tomorrow, and crossed her fingers behind her back.

  They didn’t need gale force winds and a storm that could wreak havoc over the entire island. Not on the wedding day. That was one more worry on Callie’s mind. And Callie didn’t need to be fixated on the thought that Gideon had been about to kiss her when Mary had interrupted them. They must both have been temporarily insane to almost allow that to happen. The possibility was a storm warning
of another kind altogether!

  ‘What replacement job will you offer Heather Stiller now she’s lost the chance to manage the guest house here?’

  Callie posed the question as she clipped another portion of bush and passed it to Gideon, who placed it carefully into the canvas carrier at their feet. The aroma, a lovely blend of spice and evergreen, filled the air around them.

  That air was heavy with the approach of rain, and that worried Callie. She glanced at the darkening sky. ‘I don’t want Mary’s day spoiled tomorrow. I hope it stays fine. The storm warnings haven’t been great, to be honest. I’m hoping Mary hasn’t been checking, otherwise she’ll be worrying, too.’

  ‘I’ll find a place for Heather.’ Gideon would worry about that when he got back to Melbourne. ‘I have enough business enterprises that I’m sure I’ll find something that will satisfy her. She joined one of my Melbourne-based business companies about six months ago, so I don’t know a huge amount about her working history, but her ambitions are obvious and her current qualifications read well.’ He, too, glanced at the sky. ‘It does look a bit black, but perhaps there’s just some rain on the way?’

  Gideon reached forward to pick a piece of greenery from Callie’s shoulder. He inhaled the scent of it before he let it drift through his fingers to the ground, and then seemed to realise he was standing rather close to her and backed away a step.

  Callie lowered her gaze to the secateurs in her hands. She’d liked his closeness too much. She snipped another sprig off the bush. The wind whipped at her hair and clothes and plastered Gideon’s clothes against his body. He had a rather splendid body, Callie thought, and then reminded herself not to think about things like that.

  But Callie stood there, secateurs in hand, unable to move. His gaze captured hers, and then it was all there again.

  After a loaded silence, and a sigh from him that was rather like acceptance, the secateurs were taken from her grasp and dropped into the tote.