He looked around the crowd. Besides Simon’s big family—his dad and stepmother and mom and stepfather, four siblings and three grandparents—he was the only friend who’d flown over to Australia for the wedding. He hadn’t known anyone else in Australia, except for the mysterious, vanishing Belle. And now, miracle of miracles, he’d managed to find her on his first day Down Under. When he got back to his B&B later that night, he’d email his lawyers and get them to arrange the papers for the divorce. Then all he had to do was get the paperwork signed and he could go home and get on with the rest of his life.
Man, he really needed a drink. More than the one glass already half empty in his hand. He needed a bottle. A magnum. A jeroboam. Fuck that. He needed a nebuchadnezzar. He needed the biggest damn bottle of wine he could find to make sense of what had just happened. He’d found her. After all this time, he’d accidently found her.
And what had he done? He’d told her he wanted a divorce.
“Isn’t this a gorgeous spot for a wedding?” Serenity with the blue hair was still by his side, like a determined one-woman welcoming committee to Australia.
When he hesitated, she kept talking. “Maggie Walker’s done an amazing job. This has been all everyone in Wirralong’s been talking about since she came back. This used to be her grandparents’ place, you know. She set up the wedding business about eighteen months ago. Can you believe this used to be a sheep station? Look what she’s done with it. Isn’t it incredible? And none of this would be happening, either, if it wasn’t for Isabella. She gave up her life in the big smoke to help Maggie. They were best friends at high school, or at least that’s what I’ve heard. And you wouldn’t believe the battles Isabella’s had with the stuffed shirts in this town. Honestly, not everyone wants to get married in a church these days. I mean, look around. Can you think of a better place to get married than this?”
“It’s pretty nice.” He filed away that information about Belle. Isabella. Whatever the damn hell her name really was.
“And isn’t every bride beautiful, Harry?”
Harry’s jet-lagged mind flashed up a memory from last February. His bride had been beautiful. More than beautiful. Luminous. As fine as the best wine, the kind you wanted to cellar for fifty years, because you were that sure it would get better and better with age. And you’d want to taste it every damn day for the rest of your life. Sure, Belle had a smile that had knocked him sideways the minute they’d met, but she’d been more. She’d been alive, infectious, flirtatious, lit up.
Where had that woman gone? If he hadn’t seen the proof with his own eyes—his ring on her finger—he might have thought he was hallucinating the whole thing.
Serenity nudged him with her elbow. “I’ve known the bride—Amanda—my whole life. Did you know that? She’s a born-and-bred Wirralong girl, just like me.”
Harry tuned back and realised Serenity had been talking the whole time his mind had been spinning.
“You have?”
“She’s a great girl. To tell the truth, we were all a bit suss about this Internet dating thing she was dabbling in, but to each his own. And you know, underneath all that sci-fi stuff, she’s done all right. He’s a pretty nice bloke, your mate Simon.”
“He really is.” Simon was nice and nerdy and obsessed with space movies. He was also loaded. He worked in Silicon Valley and had invented an app that had revolutionised the finance industry. Or something. Harry didn’t know – or understand – the details, no matter how many times Simon had tried to tell him. In the Harrison winemaking family, Harry’s older sister, Amy, was the money. He and his younger sister, Tess, were the wine, and the youngest of all of them, Everett, was the marketing. Harry didn’t think in dollars and cents. Wine, like love, was never about dollars and cents or balance sheets.
Serenity laughed heartily at one of her own jokes and Harry found himself chuckling along with her. Simon was the most loyal friend Harry had ever had, and he thought of him as another brother. When Simon had told Harry that he was marrying someone he’d met online, Harry had simply smiled and wished him every bit of good luck. Harry believed that maybe, sometimes, when you find the something or someone that’s just right for you, you should stick to it, no matter what people said, no matter what was fashionable or profitable.
Simon was a husband now. The realisation about his own predicament struck Harry again. He was a husband too. He’d been married for twelve months—twelve months minus one week, in actual fact. But he’d never felt like a husband. He’d only had one night, one damn night, to be with Belle. He’d thought that would be his life, from that moment onwards. That she would be like the wine he wanted to taste every day. Until he’d woken up the day after the night before and she’d disappeared. Not even a note or a text message or a friend request on Facebook.
He’d hungered for her every day since. Hungered for her and hated her in turn with wanting her more than ever. So now he’d found her. And soon, it would be all over.
*
Isabella’s ring finger felt frozen. She’d been running it under the cold water tap in her bathroom for a full five minutes in an attempt to dislodge the damned ring. Harry’s damned ring. The paperwork and this ring: two pieces of Harry she would have to deal with before he left and this whole mistake was over.
Oh God. Harry was here.
The husband she’d deserted eight hours after they’d got married.
They’d had one night. Okay, one day and one night together. One incredible night together. She’d gone to Vegas for a conference, a weekend of professional development that happened to be at a glittering hotel on Las Vegas’s famous Strip. It was the last day, and Isabella was exhausted. Exhilarated but exhausted. She’d learnt so much about the business and couldn’t wait to put all her new ideas into practice. New trends. How to use social media. Public speaking skills. Customer service. She had thought she was doing it all right, but there was so much more she could try to grow her new business. Three days of intensive learning and she felt like a sponge, soaked with information and ideas. A very tired sponge. It was most likely the jet lag too, but on that last day she had felt wiped and decided that the best thing to do on her last night in Vegas was to have a glass of American wine to celebrate her educational adventure and then go to bed for a good night’s sleep before her mid-morning flight back to Australia.
So, she’d found an empty stool at the bar in the hotel foyer and ordered a Napa Valley merlot. In winter, she drank merlot. In summer, riesling. In between, whatever took her fancy. And considering it was February in Vegas, although not really that cold by any stretch of the imagination, she’d decided a red would do the trick.
*
The woman behind the bar had just put the glass in front of her and registered her room number when Isabella spotted someone in her peripheral vision.
“Hope you like the merlot.” That voice was as smooth as the wine. She turned. A stranger. She studied him. Had he been a delegate at the conference? Had they perhaps gone to the same workshop? No. She would have remembered that face, if they had. Tanned, a strong jaw, shadowed with the hint of a beard, a straight nose, short brown hair and eyes the colour of dark chocolate. He was a handsome stranger, by any measure, but a stranger none the less.
“I haven’t tried it yet,” she answered.
He chuckled. “I’ll wait while you do.”
Isabella wrapped her fingers around the bowl of the glass and lifted it to her lips. She sipped, swirled, tasted.
“It’s good,” she replied. “There are dark plum notes, some vanilla.”
The stranger had raised an eyebrow and leaned an elbow on the bar, turning towards her. “You know your stuff, I see.”
She sipped again. “I’m originally from wine country, back home. The Coonawarra, in South Australia. We do big reds down there. Mostly cabernet sauvignons, but I like merlot.”
The way he looked at her in that moment took her breath away. As if something had been lit inside him. The friendly expres
sion on his face had become a wide grin and his dark chocolate eyes had almost melted.
“Where have you been all my life?” He slammed a hand to his chest and glanced up at the ceiling. Then he laughed, hearty and warm.
“That’s my wine you’re drinking. Harrison’s. Napa Valley.”
“You’re a winemaker?”
“Fifth generation. And I know all about the Coonawarra. I spent a summer there a couple of years ago during harvest, as a matter of fact.”
“Get out.”
“True.” He looked around the bar and then leaned closer. “I bet no one else here has heard of Larry the Lobster.”
Isabella almost sprayed her mouthful of wine across the bar. She swallowed and sucked in a deep breath before letting out a laugh.
“You’ve been to see the Big Lobster? In Kingston?”
He slapped a palm on the bar. “Hell, yeah. The Aussie guys at the vineyard were telling me about it when I got down there, and I thought they were full of shit at first. I mean, what kind of crazy person builds a fifty-foot-tall lobster? So I went to Kingston and I saw that damn thing for myself. Scared the hell out of me.”
Isabella scoffed. “You? Scared?” This man, all six foot—what, six foot three or four—of him, scared? She checked out his shoulders, his chest. He was wearing a suit, but there was some serious muscle under all that fabric. “I’m not buying that.”
“It’s true. I had nightmares the whole time I was in Australia. Larry the damn Lobster.” He held out a big hand to her.
“I’m Harry,” he said.
“Nice to meet you, Harry.” She slipped her hand into the warmth of his grip and held it. He seemed nice. He was definitely nice to look at. More than nice, actually. Distractingly gorgeous. Something inside her flipped like a switch. She didn’t have to be Isabella Martenson, the staid marriage celebrant from Australia. She could be whoever she wanted to be, in that moment. And that whoever was someone else entirely.
“I’m Belle.”
“Well, now, it’s very nice to meet you, Belle from Coonawarra.”
“Same here, Harry Harrison.” She tried not to smirk, but it was funny. “Your parents weren’t very imaginative, were they? Harry Harrison?”
He dipped his chin and smiled. “Harry’s a nickname that stuck. It’s what happens when you’re the first-born son.”
He didn’t let go of her hand and she didn’t let go of his. Something warm, perhaps the merlot, seeped inside her, spreading warmth to every fingertip, every nerve ending, every hair on her head. The lights behind the bar blurred into fuzzy stars and every other voice in the place hushed. Except his.
“What’s you real name then?”
“That, sweetheart, is a deep, dark secret.”
She raised an eyebrow and dipped her chin, letting him know she understood. This was a fun game they were playing. They didn’t really need to know each other’s real names, did they?
“Harry it is, then,” she said.
“Belle.”
Four hours later, they were husband and wife.
*
Isabella twisted off the cold water tap in her bathroom sink. She dried her right hand on the fluffy white hand towel hanging on a hook by the mirror and tried again to twist Harry’s damn ring off her finger. When it slid off, she suppressed the sadness welling inside her. It was over. Really over.
She set it on the shelf by her toothbrush. That damned ring. Damn Harry Harrison. Damn that pure, hot attraction she’d felt again just now, seeing him again for the first time in nearly a year. Parts of her were still quivering from his touch, from some kind of skin memory of having her mouth on his and his body on hers the night of their … honeymoon? She shook the thought away.
She had to pull herself together. She had to return the ring and then keep the hell away from him until she signed the papers. Then it would all be official. She could erase this mistake from her personal CV and get on with her life. She took a deep breath, brushed her teeth, reapplied her makeup, and restyled her hair back into another tight and high ponytail. She reached for her hairspray and gave her ‘do a burst before smoothing it down with her palms. She took a deep breath and steadied herself. She was a grown woman, for pity’s sake, who’d done something foolish in a moment of madness. Merlot-inspired madness. Everyone makes mistakes. Show me a person who has never made a whopper of a mistake, she thought, and I’ll show you someone who has never lived.
She picked up his ring and clenched it in her fist.
“Pull yourself together, Martenson,” she told her reflection in the bathroom mirror. “You will do whatever it takes to protect this business. To protect Maggie’s investment and her faith. And if that means buying Harry’s silence about our marriage by agreeing to a divorce, that’s what I’ll do.”
She checked her hair once again. She needed to look as dignified as humanly possible when she got down on her knees and begged him to keep their secret.
Because if that’s what she had to do to save her job and this new life she had made for herself, she would do it.
Chapter Four
As Isabella walked across the neatly mowed green lawns towards The Woolshed to find Harry, the wedding guests were already filing into the venue to find their seats. She stopped, scanned the crowd. He was tall enough that she might have spotted him above the heads of the other guests, but no luck. She gritted her teeth. He was probably inside being all charmingly American and wooing everyone, from the grandmothers to the little kids. This might take a little longer than she’d thought.
“Hey, Isabella.” Maggie sidled up alongside her and slipped an arm around Isabella’s shoulders. They stopped on the edge of the crowd, watching, enjoying the success of another wedding function. Oh, how she needed her friend right now. It was comforting to have Maggie’s arm around her shoulder, to have her by her side. There would be a time to tell Maggie everything, but it wasn’t right now in the middle of a function.
“Nice to have you here. You don’t normally come over for the reception. What’s up?”
“I was in the mood for a walk and a glass of champagne.” It was a shock to her how easily another lie spilled from her lips. Harry’s ring was in her clutch purse, tucked tightly under one arm. A stone of guilt sat in her stomach, growing heavier.
“You deserve it. It was a really, really lovely ceremony today,” Maggie said. “The bride and groom were so happy at the way it all turned out.” She chuckled and leaned close to whisper in Isabella’s ear, “A Star Wars wedding. That’s definitely a first for us.”
“In more ways than one. I do believe it’s also my first trans-Pacific wedding. One American. One Australian.” Isabella laughed and then swallowed it. She’d had her very own trans-Pacific wedding, hadn’t she? Why did every damned thing she say have to remind her?
Isabella and Maggie looked out over the historic sandstone building. It was strong, it had roots in this part of the world that went back a century, grounding it right here in this part of the world. That’s how Isabella had felt since moving to Wirra Station. Grounded. She’d become part of this life Maggie had created, had perhaps even helped create it for Maggie, too. Before this, she’d been a drifter, rootless, a wanderer, lost. This place – and Maggie – had saved her.
In the past year, Wirra Station had hosted more than one hundred weddings—everything from intimate gatherings with the bride and groom and a few family members, to today’s event, with more than two dozen guests having flown in from California. Maggie had not only organised the event here, but had lined up accommodation for the overseas visitors in B&Bs in Wirralong’s main street and in top-end local resorts. She was across every detail. She was a one-woman economic development board for the town, and was being recognised for it everywhere.
Isabella sighed and leaned in to her friend’s embrace. “This is you, Maggie. All you. You had the vision for what this could be.” Strings of lights hung in the gums and swayed in the gentle breeze. Laughter floated over the lawns to them.<
br />
Maggie squeezed Isabella’s shoulder. “We’re a team, you and me. I couldn’t do this without you, you know that. I wouldn’t have a business without you. We have a symbiotic relationship.”
“Like a flower and a bee, right?”
“Exactly. Someone online yesterday described Wirra Station as, and I quote, the premier rural wedding location in the country. Unquote.”
“Send me the link!”
“Already did.”
Her friend, quietly efficient and with the skills of a commanding officer guiding a platoon of troops into battle, smiled. “It takes a village, right? This isn’t just me, Isabella. It’s me and Max and you and Marie and Jennifer and Adrian and the waitstaff and Bob who keeps these lawns under control.” Maggie sighed. “I’m so proud of us all.”
Isabella let herself feel a little glow of accomplishment. Wirra Station was her favourite place in the world and she would do whatever it took to protect her place here, and Maggie’s business.
“You’re being too modest. You’re so good at this. It’s as if you were born to it.”
Maggie shivered. “Some days things run like a Swiss watch. Other days …” She rolled her eyes discreetly.
“What happened with this one?”
Maggie dropped her voice to a whisper and checked to make sure no one else was within ear shot. “Quick debrief with my most trusted friend. This particular event has been …” She considered her words. “Challenging.”
“I can’t believe Amanda turned into a bridezilla. I didn’t see any of that in our pre-marriage meetings.”
“God, no. She’s been a dream. It was her mother, Annette. First she disagreed with the placement of the flowers—and the colour—even though Amanda had chosen them six months ago. Then she wanted a band singing Aussie pub rock songs instead of the DJ that Amanda and Simon wanted. And she chose to have that particular argument this morning. This morning, while the DJ was setting up! And the lights aren’t right. Too harsh, apparently.”
Isabella linked her arm through Maggie’s. “Poor you. Poor Amanda. Poor Simon. They were so easy to deal with, although I did have to put the kibosh on one of their Star Wars–related ideas.”
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