He couldn’t endure her proximity for a moment longer. ‘I’ve got the measurements,’ he said abruptly as he stepped back.
He wanted to forget every rule he’d ever made and gather her into his arms.
But he couldn’t. She was a client. And, while he still owned the company, he still followed its rules. He was stuck here in Dolphin Bay until after the wedding. He had to get through his friend’s ceremony without there being any awkwardness. Kissing Kate right now would be ill-advised. Unwise. Irresponsible.
And he just knew it would be utterly mind-blowing.
He took another step back so she was more than arm’s length away, so he could not be tempted to reach out to her.
She turned to face him. ‘Are you okay with that? Do you need to see more?’ Her face was flushed, her eyes wide, her mouth slightly parted. She felt it too. He was sure she did. Maybe she was more disciplined than he was. Because all he wanted to do was kiss her. Claim that lovely mouth, draw her close to him.
‘No. I’ve got it,’ he said.
‘So, now we’ve settled on the style we—I mean you—need to start making it happen.’
‘I won’t be able to do it by myself. You’ll need to consult. Approve.’
The flush on her cheeks made her eyes seem even greener. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘If we want to keep the arch a secret, we’ll have to work on it away from the bride and groom. There’s a big shed at home. It...it used to be my father’s; there are tools in there.’
‘Sounds good,’ he said.
‘I’ll give you the address and you can have the timber delivered there.’
She looked around her and then at her clipboard. ‘Have we done all we need to do for the site inspection?’
‘For the moment.’
‘Let’s go, then. I’ll drop you at the hardware shop. I’ll look for the organza but I don’t think I’ll find it in the quantity we’ll need in any of the shops here. I might have to ask Sandy to get it for me in Sydney on Wednesday. I’ll tell her it’s for the table decorations. She won’t question that.’
‘Hold on,’ Sam said. ‘Why wouldn’t you buy it in Sydney yourself?’
Kate stilled and didn’t meet his gaze. ‘Because I...I won’t be going to Sydney.’
‘What?’ He was astounded. ‘For the stag night? Hen night? Hag night? Whatever they’re calling it.’
Her freckles stood out from her pale skin. ‘No.’
‘But you organised it.’ He’d been looking forward to getting her on his home territory. He’d even been going to propose they all stay at his apartment instead of a hotel. He’d bought the large penthouse in anticipation of getting married. It was way too big for one person; sometimes he felt as lonely there as he had in the palatial Palm Beach house. Kate could have her own room; there would be no question of any more intimate arrangement.
She shook her head. ‘I organised a night out in Dolphin Bay. Not Sydney.’
‘You’re upset that your plans were changed?’
Colour rushed back into her face. ‘Of course not. If Lizzie can’t come here, you should all go to Sydney. But not me, I’m afraid.’
He drew his brows together. ‘I don’t get it. Don’t you want to be with your friends?’ He paused. ‘Is it because you don’t want to spend time with Jesse? He’s the best man. It would be difficult to avoid him.’
‘No. Jesse and I are fine with each other now. It’s as if the...the incident never happened. He’s as relieved as I am.’
‘I was going to suggest I show you around the Lancaster & Son headquarters while we’re all in Sydney.’
‘That would have been nice. Perhaps another time?’
The stubborn tilt of her chin and the no-nonsense tone of her voice made him realise she had no intention of coming to Sydney. To party, to visit his office, even for a change of scene.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But this would be a good time for a visit to the office.’
‘You mean while you still own the company?’
It felt painful to think there could very well be a time when he had no connection to the company. But how could he keep the business and stop making the mistakes that had blighted his life because of it?
‘That too. But at the beginning of the job. You could meet the team who’ll be working on the resort build. That way they won’t be strangers when they come to Dolphin Bay.’
‘By the time we got up to Sydney and back the next day, I’d be away for too long. I’m needed here.’
‘At the hotel? Surely Ben can organise someone to replace you?’
‘Maybe. But it’s late notice. I’m also learning how to look after Sandy’s bookshop while she’s away on her honeymoon. I love Bay Books.’
Everything she loved seemed to be in Dolphin Bay.
He remembered how she’d referred to Sydney as ‘outside’. It had seemed odd at the time.
‘I can’t believe Ben and Sandy would want you to stay here working and not go to Sydney with them. You’re their bridesmaid.’
‘It’s not just them. I have...other commitments here.’
‘Commitments?’ He suddenly realised how little he knew about her. She could be a single mother with kids to support. She could have an illness that required regular hospitalisation. She could belong to some kind of sect that didn’t allow partying. Who knew?
‘I live with my mother and sister,’ she said.
Okay, it was unusual to be living at home at twenty-eight years old, but not unheard of.
‘And they don’t let you leave town?’ he quipped in a joke that immediately fell flat.
‘Of course they do. I don’t let myself leave town because I’m needed here.’
He frowned. He didn’t think he was particularly obtuse but he didn’t know what she was getting at. ‘I don’t follow you,’ he said.
‘My mother and I share the care of my sister,’ she said. ‘She was injured in a car crash when she was eleven and left a paraplegic. She’s confined to a wheelchair.’
For a long moment, Sam was too stunned to speak. That was the last thing he had anticipated. ‘I’m sorry,’ he eventually managed to say.
‘No need to apologise,’ said Kate. ‘You weren’t to know. Mum’s a nurse and often works night shift at the Dolphin Bay Community Hospital. My sister, Emily, says she’s fine on her own, but we like to be there when we can.’
‘I understand,’ he said.
Did he really? Sometimes Kate didn’t understand herself how she’d ended up at her age living at home with her mother and her twenty-six-year-old sister.
Sam’s brow was furrowed. ‘But you lived in Sydney and travelled with your dance troupe. Who looked after your sister then?’
She wished he wouldn’t ask the awkward questions that made her look for answers she didn’t want to find. The more he spoke, the more she could see herself reflected in his eyes. And she wasn’t sure she was at ease with what she saw.
‘My mother. Then she broke her arm, couldn’t manage and asked could I come home for a while.’
‘How long ago was that?’
‘Five years ago.’ Right when she’d fallen apart after the near-assault and had left the dance troupe. She’d been glad for an excuse to run home.
‘And you never left again?’
‘That’s right.’
‘That’s when you started to work for Ben?’
‘Yes. Though it was only casual hours at first. You see, I’d dropped out of university in the final year of my business degree.’
‘To join the dance troupe?’
‘Yes.’ There’d been so much more to it than that. But she wasn’t ready to share it with Sam. With anyone. ‘So when I came back, I finished my degree part-time at a regional campus not far from here.’
�
�And here you’ve stayed.’
‘Put like that it sounds so grim. Trust me, it isn’t. I’m happy here. This is a fabulous community to live in. And I love my job.’ She tried not to sound overly defensive.
‘If you say so.’ He didn’t look convinced. Who would blame him? Even her mother urged her to get more of a life. ‘I’m not one for small towns,’ he said.
‘Dolphin Bay might not be for everyone but it suits me.’
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘But I’m sorry you’re not coming to Sydney for the party. Have you told Sandy?’
She shook her head. ‘No, I haven’t, and I’d appreciate it if you didn’t tell her. I’ll make an excuse at the last minute so she doesn’t waste time trying to convince me to change my mind. Because I won’t.’
‘I can’t make you change your mind?’
If anyone could, it would be him. ‘Not even you.’
The knots of anxiety that could tie her up for hours were starting to tighten. She could lose control. She had to stop thinking about the trip to Sydney, not get caught up in that vortex of fear.
But right now she had to be cheerful Kate and put a bright face on it.
‘Let’s get moving, then, shall we? We’ve got a top-secret wedding arch to build.’
CHAPTER SEVEN
SAM NOTICED THREE things about the home Kate shared with her mother and sister as he approached it the next afternoon. The first was the wheelchair-friendly ramps that ran from the street to the house. The second was the riotously pretty garden and tubs of bright flowers everywhere. The third was the immediate sense of warmth and welcome that enveloped him when Kate opened the door to him.
‘Come in,’ she said with a smile that sparkled with dimples. ‘The delivery from the hardware store has arrived. I got them to stack it in the shed out the back.’
She had only recently finished her shift at the hotel but had already changed into faded jeans and a snug-fitting T-shirt. The simple clothes did nothing to hide her shapely body. That was going to prove distracting. And yet even if she were dressed in an old sack he’d find her distracting.
It was getting more difficult with every moment he spent with Kate to think of her only as a business contact. He shoved his hands in his pockets so he wouldn’t be tempted to greet her with a hug.
Inside, the open-plan house was nothing special in architectural terms, comfortably furnished with well-worn furniture in neutral colours. What made it stand out was that it had obviously been redesigned to accommodate a wheelchair—plenty of space left between furniture and the kitchen benches set much lower than was usual.
Framed photographs propped on practically every surface caught his eye: a wedding photo from thirty-odd years ago, baby photos—the adorable infant with the fuzz of ginger hair and gummy smile with tiny dimples already showing must surely have been Kate. There was another of Kate wearing a checked school uniform with her wayward hair tamed into two thick plaits. Kate with her arm around a younger girl with strawberry-blond hair. Kate, graduating in a cap and gown.
But the picture that held his attention was a large, framed colour photograph hanging on the wall of a young Kate in a classical ballet costume. The slender teenager was wearing a white dress with a tight, fitted bodice with gauzy wings at the back and a full translucent skirt. She balanced on pointed toes in pink ballet slippers. Her pale graceful arms were arched above her head to frame her face. Her hair was scraped right back off her face but glowed with fiery colour, and her green eyes sparkled with irrepressible mischief.
Sam gestured to it. ‘That’s nice.’
‘When I was thirteen I was embarrassed when Mum hung it up so prominently. Now I look at that girl and think she was kinda cute.’
Sam’s mother didn’t like family photos cluttering up the house. There was just one of him as a baby framed in heavy silver on her dressing table. There had been photos of him in the formal blazer and striped tie of his private school, others of him playing football. They used to be in his father’s study. He had no idea where they were now. He was gripped by a sudden, fierce desire to get them back. One day, when he had his own family, he wanted the living room to look like this one—not the stark, empty elegance of his mother’s.
‘You were lovely,’ he said, then quickly amended, ‘Are lovely.’
‘Thank you,’ she said, looking wistfully at the photo. ‘It seems so long ago now. I thought I was going to be a prima ballerina. So much has happened since.’
The time the photo was taken must have been around the time she’d shared her first kiss with Jesse. Again jealousy seared him. Unwarranted, he knew; he had no reason to doubt Jesse or Kate. Jesse had taken him aside and explained that, while he loved Kate like a sister, there was absolutely no romance between them. But still he felt uncomfortable at the thought of them kissing.
There was another equally large framed photo of an attractive, strawberry-blond teenager playing wheelchair basketball. ‘Is this your sister?’ She was holding the ball up ready to shoot a goal with strong, muscular arms, her expression focused and determined.
‘Yes. Emily’s a champion basketball player.’
He looked around the room. ‘She’s not home now?’
‘No. She’s an accountant at the bank in Dolphin Bay, so won’t be home until this evening. Though you might meet Mum; she’ll be knocking off from the hospital early today.’
‘I’ll look forward to that,’ he said. He was curious about the dynamic between three adult women sharing a house.
‘Come on,’ said Kate. ‘I’ll take you out the back to the shed. I’m looking forward to getting started on the amazing arch.’ She said the last two words with typical Kate exaggeration.
‘So it’s to be an amazing arch now, is it?’ he asked as he followed her.
‘Of course. After all, you’re making it,’ she said with that unconsciously flirtatious lilt to her husky voice.
‘I’m flattered you’re so confident in my abilities,’ he said.
She laughed but, as she neared the old wooden shed at the bottom of the garden, her laughter trailed away. She stopped outside the door. ‘I...I don’t go in here often.’
‘You said it was your father’s workshop. He’s not around?’
Kate looked straight ahead rather than at him. ‘He...he was driving the car when Emily was injured. Another car was on the wrong side of the road. Dad swerved to avoid a head-on collision but smashed into a tree.’
For a long moment Sam was too shocked to speak. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘Emily was trapped inside the car. He...Dad...walked away uninjured. But Emily... Her spine was broken.’ Kate’s mouth twisted. ‘Dad never forgave himself. Couldn’t deal with it. Started drinking. Eventually he...he left. Six months later, he died.’
Sam found it hard to know what to say as Kate’s family tragedy unfolded. ‘When did that happen?’
Her arms were tightly folded across her chest. ‘The accident happened not long after that photo of me at my ballet concert was taken.’
‘That must have been tough for you.’ He knew the words were inadequate but they were the best he could come up with. He had lost his father but it had been to a quick heart attack. He’d gone too soon, and he still mourned him, but the loss hadn’t been in the tragic way of Kate’s father.
She nodded. ‘For me. For my mum. Most of all for Emily. She was in hospital for more than a year. Our lives changed, that’s for sure.’
He longed to reach out and draw her into his arms but couldn’t bring himself to do it. It would change things between them and he didn’t know that she would want that. Or if he did.
Instead he pushed open the door to the shed. Inside it was neat and orderly. Hand tools were arranged on shadow boards. Nails and screws were lined up by size in old glass jars. He whistled his appreciation. ‘This is a real ma
n cave. Your dad must have liked spending time here.’
Kate hesitated, only one foot past the doorway. ‘He liked making things. Fixing things. I...I spent lots of time in here with him. He taught me how to be a regular young handywoman.’
Just as his father had decided to make a man of him and introduce him to building sites.
Kate adept with hammer and saw? She continued to surprise him. ‘That’s a good attribute in a girl.’
‘He wanted me to grow up as an independent woman who didn’t need a man to change a tap washer for her.’
‘And did you?’
‘He left before he completed my workshop education.’ Her voice was underlined with a bitterness he hadn’t heard from her before.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said again. He realised that while he could handle disputes on building sites, or argue the fine points of a multi-million-dollar contract, he was ill-equipped to deal with emotion. Frances had accused him of being so tied up with the company he couldn’t care about anything—or anyone—else. Perhaps she’d been right.
‘He changed so much,’ said Kate. ‘Changed towards me. Became angry when he’d always been so even-tempered. I was okay, he was okay, but Emily was lying broken in her hospital bed. Survivor’s guilt, I suppose now. But as a kid I didn’t know about all that. In a way...in a way I was glad when he went.’
Sam stood silent, not knowing how to comfort her in her still-present grief, raging at himself that he couldn’t. He was relieved when she changed the subject.
‘Anyway, enough about that,’ she said with a forced cheerfulness to her voice. We’ve got an amazing wedding arch to make.’
* * *
Kate found it disconcerting to have another man working in her father’s shed—and totally distracting because the man was Sam in jeans, work boots and a white T-shirt. Strong, capable and utterly male.
For a moment it seemed like the past and present collided. Yesterday, she was the little girl revelling in being allowed to work with Daddy in his shed, her father kind and endlessly patient. Today the grown-up Kate was acutely aware of tall, broad-shouldered Sam dominating the restricted space. Sam, the successful—and possibly ruthless—businessman. Sam, the man who spent his vacation helping people in need. Sam, who had been so good-natured about agreeing to make the arch she was sure would delight her friends on their special day.
The Tycoon and the Wedding Planner Page 8