The Wedding Date

by Ally Blake

  And when he stood before her, looking more beautiful than any man deserved to be in the crisp white shirt and dark jeans, and bare feet and liquid grey eyes, she took a deep breath and said, ‘I’ve had a crush on you for the longest time. And I think I let it continue because you were so unavailable. It gave me the perfect excuse not to put myself out there for real. And then you had to go and call my bluff.’

  She stopped to take a breath. Her blood pounding in her ears. Waiting for his response. Any response. But the room remained dead quiet.

  After what felt like a hundred years had passed he reached past her for the light grey sweater on his bed and tugged it over his head.

  She hadn’t expected him to leap onto the bed and jump around whooping in excitement, but she hadn’t expected this level of cool. Not after what they’d been through together. Not after the way he’d made love to her, the way he’d spooned her as they slept.

  So she sucked in a deep breath, collected together every molecule of love she felt for the big lug, and without a lick of body armour stepped onto the battlefield alone.

  ‘Bradley, you’d have to be blind not to realise that I’m in love with you, and have been—well, for ever.’

  She held her arms out in supplication, then let them fall to her sides. They tingled, wanting to wrap around him. To pull him close. But he just stood there, looking through her with those impossibly impenetrable grey eyes.

  Fear and excitement and anticipation came together in a great ball of emotion and she blurted, ‘I just told you I love you, Bradley. I’m in love with you. I don’t want to go back to work tomorrow and pretend this never happened. I want to date you, and hold your hand, and have dinner with you, and make love to you, and wake up in your arms and—’

  She watched in amazement as right before her eyes he literally took a step backwards. But, worse, she saw him retreat further and further inside himself, exactly the same way he did when some effusive stranger stopped him on the street looking for an autograph.

  Even while fear flooded her, she understood why. His childhood had made detachment come as easily to him as breathing. But that was just tough. No matter how deep inside himself he fled, she meant to follow.

  ‘Bradley. Look at me. Really look at me. I’m opening myself up to you. Completely. Offering you everything I have to give. Because … Because we’re like a pair of gloves: functional alone, but not complete without the other. I’m yours, Bradley. For ever if you’ll have me.’

  ‘Nobody can promise for ever.’

  She almost wept with relief that finally he’d said something. ‘I can. And I am. I know with every fibre of my being that I’m yours. Eternally. I’m not going anywhere.’

  Feeling as if she might explode if she didn’t touch him, lean on him, feel a response from him whatever it might be, Hannah reached out a shaking hand and laid the back of it on his cheek.

  He flinched as though burned.

  She recoiled as if she’d been slapped.

  Feeling more scared than she had in her entire life, Hannah curled her hand into her chest and her feelings into her heart.

  Oh, God. She’d screwed everything up royally. Building castles in the air with no foundation but her own woolly romantic mush for brains. Bradley didn’t want her. He would never want her. Just as she’d always tried to convince herself was the case.

  ‘This is all the response I’m to get from you?’

  Silence.

  A great ball of anger—most of it directed at herself for being so foolish—built up inside her and she leapt forward and pummelled a fist against the wall.

  It hurt.

  Puffing, she stopped. Defeated. And furious with it.

  She waved a hand across his eyes as though he was comatose—which to all intents and purposes he was. Emotionally catatonic. While she loved him enough for the both of them.

  With that most ridiculous of thoughts in mind came one last shot of determination—or hope, or sheer bloody-mindedness. She pressed forward, stood on her tiptoes, slid her hands into his thick dark hair and kissed him.

  Eyes closed. Heart racing.

  Those lips that had burned hers, become intimate with every inch of her, brought her to the edge of ecstasy and beyond over and over again, acted as if she wasn’t even there. Heat emanated from him. Soul-deep heat that told her he was wrong and she was right. Yet he remained unmoved.

  Then she hiccuped, and a flood of tears poured down her cheeks. That, and the taste of salt in her mouth, woke her from her trance. Finally. She made to pull away.

  And that was when she felt it. A softening of his lips. A response so subtle she stopped breathing.

  And then he kissed her. So gently she was almost sure she was imagining it. If that was the case, oh, what an imagination she had!

  Soft, warm lips brushing against hers. Tasting hers. Taking away her tears. It was a kiss so beautiful she could barely remember why she was crying in the first place.

  And then it came to her. She loved him, but he wasn’t man enough to even summon up a response.

  She pulled away, wiping her hands over her face, across her mouth, trying to erase the sensation that felt so much like love returned when it was nothing more than a learned response.

  She stumbled to the other side of the bed and leant her hands on the bedspread. Needing space to breathe, room to think.

  He didn’t follow. He didn’t come after her. He still didn’t say a damn thing.

  There was only one thing she could do.

  Her voice was raw as she said, ‘I can’t go back to work tomorrow and pretend nothing happened. And since it’s your company, and I can’t convince you to be the gentleman and sell up, it looks like this is going to have to fall to me. God, I feel so predictable.’

  ‘You’re quitting?’

  And that gets a response!

  ‘You’ve given me no choice.’

  He took a step her way and held out a hand. ‘I never asked you to quit. That’s the last thing I want. In fact, if I’m being honest, I’ll admit it’s the reason I came down here in the first place.’

  He ran a hand up the back of his hair. His face was stormy.

  ‘Things are so busy at work right now I had to be sure there weren’t any inducements here that might tempt you to stay.’

  ‘You hijacked my holiday in order to make sure I’d come back to work for you?’

  Of course he had! She made his life so easy. He liked his life to be easy. As a move, it was so self-centred, so him, she couldn’t believe it had never occurred to her.

  Argh!

  ‘Only now I don’t know why I bothered. You’re leaving anyway.’

  ‘Excuse me? Oh, you are unbelievable. Anyone else in my position would have left months ago. But I loved the work that much, and respected you that much, I relished the long hours and hard work. While you … You push people to breaking point, then shake your head in surprise and say “I told you so” when they finally snap.’

  He came around the bed. ‘Hannah …’

  She took two steps back, far enough away that she couldn’t feel the tug of warmth from his body.

  He said, ‘If you think I only made love to you with a view to forcing you out, then you must really think I’m some kind of bastard.’

  She threw out her arms in a wild shrug. ‘I’m not sure what to think right now. My judgement is clearly impaired when it comes to you. Now I’m wondering how the whole “you take over the Tasmania idea” thing fits in. What was that? Some kind of payment for services rendered?’

  Finally she saw some emotion in his eyes. She’d never seen him look angrier. If he was any other man she would likely have ducked and weaved. Her nerves crackled as if they’d been stripped raw.

  His voice was as deep as a valley when he said, ‘I only ever offered you the Tasmania proposal because you deserved it. Because I thought the subject matter would suit your style more than it suited me. And because I thought it would make you happy. I’m sorry you though
t otherwise.’

  He was sorry. Not that he didn’t love her. Not that she was standing there feeling as if her heart had been trampled by a herd of elephants in tap shoes. He was sorry she’d misunderstood him.

  This time even he couldn’t make the word ‘sorry’ sound as sexy as he once had. This time it meant goodbye.

  She turned her back on him, then realised she had one last thing to say. ‘I know you think you’ve found a way to not let what your mother did to you shape the course of your life. But you seem determined to repeat her greatest mistakes. You shut people out. Always. And once you decide to, that’s it. No room for compromise. No room for anyone.’

  She didn’t wait to see if he’d even heard a word of it. ‘I’m going for a walk. I’ll be back in two hours. Be gone or I’ll have Security throw you out of my room. I can do it, you know. I have a famously magical way with management.’

  Without stopping to grab a coat or her handbag, she walked out of the suite door and took off down the hall towards the lifts.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  DAYS later Bradley sat at the café on Brunswick Street, staring unseeingly at a busker who was playing a song he couldn’t put his finger on.

  Like a mosquito in his ear Spencer babbled on and on about the Argentina trip. How excited he was. What he was going to pack. The vaccinations his mother had insisted he have before letting him leave the country. The fact that Hannah had organised everything so brilliantly he wasn’t sure what he’d be called on to do, but he was willing whatever it might be.

  ‘I’m sorry? What did you say?’ Bradley asked, something dragging him back to the present.

  ‘Hannah,’ Spencer said, and Bradley felt the name hit him like a bullet to the chest.

  Nobody had dared mention her name when he’d stormed into the office Tuesday morning with the news that she no longer worked for Knight Productions and made it clear that was the end of that.

  ‘She did a great job of organising the trip,’ Spencer finished.

  Then he snapped his mouth shut, as though he’d just realised he’d said something wrong but wasn’t sure what it might be.

  Spencer’s mobile beeped, and he grabbed the thing as if it was a lifeline. ‘It’s the airport. I’m going to find somewhere quiet to take this.’

  You do that, Bradley thought, his gaze winging back to the busker, only to find he was packing up. His disappointment was tangible.

  ‘She hasn’t found another job yet.’

  Bradley flinched, his eyes sliding to the annoying sound. Sonja. He’d forgotten she was even at the table.

  ‘Hannah,’ Sonja said, in case he hadn’t cottoned on. In case Hannah wasn’t all he’d been thinking about while listening to the busker play.

  Remembering the amazing light in her eyes as together they’d belted out that song.

  Reliving the light so bright it had been almost stellar when she’d looked him in the eye and told him that she was in love with him.

  Recoiling from the darkness in her eyes as she’d stormed out of their hotel room and told him to be gone by the time she got back.

  ‘She’s had offers, of course,’ Sonja continued. ‘They’re pouring in every day. But instead she’s remaining locked in her room, doing goodness knows what on her computer.’

  He glared at Sonja.

  ‘What happened in Tasmania?’ she asked.

  He gritted his teeth. What had happened in Tasmania had been meant to stay in Tasmania. Yet he felt as if he was carrying every minute of it on his shoulders like a beast of burden.

  ‘She hasn’t said a word,’ Sonja said. ‘She came home looking like she’d been hit by a bus. In fact she looks about as delighted with life as you do right about now.’

  Bradley said nothing. Just stewed as the angry knot inside his gut got bigger and bigger.

  ‘Fine,’ Sonja said, throwing her hands in the air. ‘You can both be stubborn and refuse to talk to me about it. But since I’m living with her, and working for you, you have to talk to each other before you both drive me out of my mind with all your moping. So, whatever it is that you did to made her leave, go and apologise. Now. And save us all from all this drama.’

  He shot her a sharp glance. ‘What makes you think her leaving had anything to do with me?’

  Sonja looked at him as if that was the most idiotic thing she’d ever heard in her entire life.

  And the worst of it was she was right. It had everything to do with him. If he hadn’t followed her, seduced her, then cast her away, she’d have come back from her holiday refreshed and ready to get back to work.

  Why couldn’t he have left well enough alone? If he had she’d be sitting there now, laughing with him, picking holes in his ideas, giving brightness to a day which now felt dull as dishwater.

  He’d still be suffocating his attraction to her deep down inside, where it could do no harm. He’d never have known that there was someone out there who found it possible to love him. Happy days!

  He shoved his dark sunglasses tight onto his nose and pushed back his chair so hard it scraped painfully on the concrete. ‘I’m going to walk back to the office.’ He threw the company credit card on the table. ‘Look after it.’

  Sonja nodded, concern etched all over her face.

  ‘Tell Spencer I’ll be back … later.’

  He shoved his hands in the pockets of his jacket and took off down the street, heading he knew not where. Not a soul stopped him along the way for a chat or an autograph. He must have looked as approachable as a rabid dog.

  Away from the glare of his staff, he let his mind go where it had been wanting to go all day.

  Hannah.

  Wham. Slam. Bam. He rubbed his fist over the spot on his chest that still ached days since he’d last exerted himself.

  Losing her had put the whole office off kilter all week. She was the one who’d kept such a high-pressure environment fun. The one who’d meant staff turnover was at an all time low. The one whose work ethic had given him the room to just create, meaning he’d come up with the best ideas of his life.

  Still, he’d run Knight Productions for years before she came along. The business had such momentum it would survive her loss. Intellectually he knew it would work out in the end.

  Knowing it didn’t stop him from missing her thoroughness. Missing the confidence with which she charmed his colleagues over the phone. The way she always had a coffee at his fingertips right when he needed one. The way she finished his thoughts.

  He missed her feet on his office desk. The pen constantly behind her ear or clacking mani-cally against her teeth. Her biting sense of humour. Her laugh. Her smile. Her mouth …

  Hell.

  He missed her taste. Her skin. Her fingers playing with the back of his hair. The soft flesh at her waist. The way his teeth sank into the delicious slope of her shoulder. Waking up with her warm body tucked so neatly into his.

  Dammit. He missed her.

  And as he walked up the bustling sidewalk the feelings he’d kept buried for so long refused to be smothered any longer. They pummelled at him until he felt every one in every bruised muscle. His feelings for her were so sweet, so foreign, so consuming, so deep, he knew there was only one answer.

  He’d fallen in love for the first time in his life.

  He loved her. He loved Hannah.

  Of course he loved her! How could anyone not? He’d have to be pure rock not to love her lightness, her sense of fun, her kindness, her conscientiousness, and especially—most astonishingly, most unfathomably—the way she loved him back.

  That was the truth. The candid, straight up, no embellishment truth.

  But it didn’t matter.

  It would never have lasted. It was far kinder—to both of them—to cut it off before it had barely begun.

  Who says? an insistent voice barked in his ear. He turned to find the source, only to find nobody was paying him any heed.

  It’s a fact, he continued to himself. People are inherently self-serving
. Relationships never last. They blaze to life and subsist on drama and eventually fade under their own lack of steam.

  She was right. Your relationships have never lasted because you sabotaged them before they had a chance to prove you right. Or prove you wrong.

  Bradley felt his footsteps slowing as the other truths he’d always known to be firm began to wobble and crack. It hurt like hell, but he stood there and let it.

  She left, he said to the voice he now knew was in his head.

  You pushed her away. But she fought back. As long and hard as she could. Because she believed you were worth it. Your friendship was worth it. Your love was worth it. But any relationship has to go two ways, and you never fought for her. She couldn’t leave you. You’d already quit.

  His feet came to a halt. The Brunswick Street crowd spilled around him, muttering none too quietly for him to get the hell out of their way. But, considering the dressing down he’d been giving himself, it was water off a duck’s back.

  He’d quit her. Right when she’d needed him most. Right when she’d gathered up every ounce of strength and come to him, with her heart, her soul, her trust, her love in her hands, he’d decided it was too hard.

  Yet being without Hannah was harder. Way harder.

  It hit him like a sucker punch. It wasn’t drama he’d been avoiding his entire adult life, it was rejection. The infernal emptiness that came of loving someone who didn’t love you back. For a man who thrived on pushing himself to his physical limits, who relished any and every challenge life threw his way, when it came to relationships he’d been an absolute coward.

  No more. Not this time.

  He breathed in a lungful of cold Melbourne air. He could smell car fumes, baklava from a nearby Greek bakery, and best of all the thrilling hint that the greatest challenge of his life was just around the corner.

  There was only one way he was ever going to know for sure.

  He looked up, figured out where he was, spun on his heel and headed off with a clear destination in mind.

  There was a knock at Hannah’s door. She opened her mouth to ask Sonja to get it, then remembered it was the middle of the afternoon and Sonja would be at work.