by Bronwyn Sell
‘Which part?’ she asked.
‘The next part.’
Tingles swept up her body and she breathed them in. That feeling. Anticipation. Another sensation she’d forgotten. He brought one hand to her face and smoothed his thumb across her cheek, dislodging a couple of strands of hair, his gaze intently following its path. Yep, really happening. The air that had been so full of oxygen seemed suddenly thin. His thumb looped to one side of her mouth and he closed the gap and touched his lips gently to hers. And it was almost certainly not a hallucination.
She swivelled to face him fully, and he slid his arms around her waist and pulled her flush. As the kiss deepened, she let her hands drift up to explore his shoulders. His skin was just as warm and smooth as she’d imagined. Like that night outside her villa, the sounds intensified. Daytime sounds, this time—bird calls, bleating, the breeze moaning through the pines, the distant rhythmic crash of the ocean. If she’d married Jeremy, this incredible thing would not be happening.
And here she was thinking of Jeremy when she was kissing Harry!
Goanna, goanna, goanna.
She forced her mind to concentrate on how good her body felt—all the little electric bolts and pools of desire deep within, her skin rising to his touch, the silky slide of his mouth and tongue, the rasp of his stubble.
Wait, was this meditation?
And just like with living for the moment, as soon as you became aware you were doing it, you weren’t doing it anymore, like when you realised you were finally falling asleep after tossing and turning and the thought woke you up.
Silence, little voices!
He broke off and nuzzled her cheek, his hands stroking her back, hitting skin in between her halter-neck. She sighed, part satisfaction, part frustration. Had he sensed the moment she’d disconnected?
‘So you were planning to isolate me and accost me?’ he said, a low amused murmur against her ear.
‘All along.’
‘I’m still not sure this is any better an idea than it was a few nights ago.’
‘Um, goanna?’ she said hopefully. He chuckled, his warm breath coasting down her neck. She pulled back and slid her palms down his glorious bare chest. His hands settled on her waist, his thumbs stroking her hips through her yoga pants, such a tiny move but ohhh …
‘So, what you were saying the other night about me not seeming confused?’ she said. ‘It may be that I am somewhat confused after all, and I’ve only just figured that out. Because I honestly wasn’t feeling that way before—and that has nothing at all to do with you.’ She was aware she was talking too quickly but she needed to get all her caveats out and get back to the moment—which was now the past, damn it. ‘And for the record? I don’t think this would break my heart. I mean, I don’t think a fling with you would break my heart, not if we understand what it is and what it isn’t.’ As much as right now she’d like it to be more, what he’d said the other day was dead right. She wasn’t in a position to make that call—yet. ‘But I don’t want to hurt you either. I don’t want to be one of these legions of women who falls in love with the idea of you. I don’t think that’s what I’m doing, but I’m sure no one ever thinks that.’ She took a big inhale. She’d forgotten to breathe. ‘And that’s all. I’m done. So, executive summary—I really like you and I really want to do this but I can’t make any promises about the future so if you’re okay with that, I’m okay with that, but if you’re not okay with it, that’s okay, too, and stop me now before this executive summary becomes longer than the report.’
She expected his laugh—maybe she’d been playing for his laugh—but it didn’t come. He still had that sexy serious look. One hand left her hip and then one rough fingerpad skirted her hairline, from her centre part to her jaw, his gaze again following the path. Her scalp tightened. He entwined a lock of hair in his fingers and studied it. She bit her lower lip, and he picked up on the movement and locked his focus onto her mouth. This was it. If they kissed again, it was settled.
His phone dinged, and they both jumped. ‘Ah shit,’ he said, ‘what’s the time?’
‘About midday.’
He backed away, patted his shorts pockets and drew out his phone. He tapped the screen and groaned. ‘I’m supposed to be at this wedding rehearsal lunch …’ He looked up, apologetically. ‘Five minutes ago.’
Damn. She should have paid closer attention to the conversation about Carmen’s schedule. ‘I thought the wedding rehearsal was before your dinner tonight?’
‘There are two rehearsals.’ He showed her his phone, open at a calendar app. There were coloured-coded boxes all over the screen. ‘I was foolish enough to agree to being MC.’
‘Great snakes. And I thought my wedding was well-organised. I am an apprentice.’
He rubbed his face with his free hand and swore, which reminded her of that first day when he’d stopped himself from swearing in front of her. ‘Every other wedding I’ve been to has a ceremony and a reception and that’s it. Not that there’s been one in my family this century.’ He pocketed his phone, took one of her hands and enclosed it in both of his. ‘I’m sorry.’
‘About which part?’
‘About having to leave. And only that. It’s not you, it’s my family.’
He slid his hands away, looking gratifyingly disappointed.
And that was it—the end of the moment.
They drove back in silence, Harry at the wheel. She wasn’t ready to talk about what had just happened, and he evidently wasn’t either. Hell, she didn’t even know what to think, except that now the idea of him was inextricable from the reality. If she believed in fate, she might read something into her fantasy date being twice interrupted by real life. But she really did need to talk to Jeremy. She couldn’t begin to move on until that happened. She let her head fall back. It seemed her heart would have to be truly broken before she could begin to fix it. But maybe, if she had another flirtation well underway by that point …
As they parked outside reception, Carmen appeared at the doors, tapping her watch. Harry covered Sophia’s nearest hand with his, out of his cousin’s sightline. Sophia was confident she looked a wreck, while his dishevelment fell just on the sexy side of unkempt.
‘I’ll catch up with you later,’ he said, which could be a promise or a fob-off. He ran a thumb over the back of her hand, and she would testify under oath that she felt it on her cheek and her hips too. A promise, surely?
‘Harry?’ she said, as he got out.
‘Yeah?’
‘You know where to find me.’
He studied her with a many-layered expression she would have to photograph and examine at leisure to have any hope of figuring out, gave a quick nod, and shut the door. He never had responded to her rambling statement of caveats, her I-will-if-you-will. She didn’t watch him walk away, instead staring blindly into the tropical garden that wound down to the jetty, letting her breath return to normal.
Operation Distraction had proved a little too successful.
Trip Review: Curlew Bay
Rating:
Review: The meals are included in the price so I put on heaps of weight in a week even though I was trying to choose the healthy options. They should make desserts cost extra so you don’t have to eat them if you don’t want to.
26
Josh
It was torture for Josh to shower and dress for the evening’s events with Amy doing the same in a space that seemed way smaller than it had that morning. He seemed to be bumping into her or dancing out of her way twice every minute. Since becoming roommates, they’d hardly crossed paths inside the apartment, as she was usually shut in her room when he got back at night and always left like a gunshot at dawn. One morning, he’d been awake early—cheers, kookaburras—and he’d heard her get up, and hauled his arse out of bed to say hi, but all he’d got was the door sliding shut behind her.
As usual, Amy was wearing the perfect Amy outfit—a dress with a lacy sleeveless top and puffy, shiny short skir
t. Cute and sexy and a little unexpected. As usual, it was black. Even her yoga gear and bathers were black. He couldn’t help imagining how it’d feel to run his hands over the bumpy lace, the satiny skirt. And he’d had his hands in enough places on her body, legitimately and not so much, that he knew just how warm and soft the skin between the clothing would be.
Stalker, much?
He was way past kidding himself that this was his brain getting mixed up about what a sister was. He liked Carmen, but he didn’t click with her like he did with Amy, and he had no urge whatsoever to put his hands on her—which was a relief, because lusting after both his sisters would be thoroughly fucked up. Lusting after one was just mildly fucked up.
Stepsisters, not sisters. A universe of difference.
‘Nuh-uh, you are not giving yourself that out,’ he mouthed to his reflection in the bathroom mirror, his mouth foaming with toothpaste. ‘You wanted siblings, you got siblings. Stop trying to literally screw it up.’
As they got ready, they talked bands and AFL and family gossip—her family gossip. There wasn’t much to say about his, and it wasn’t entertaining. As they meandered down to the pavilion in the golden late-afternoon sun, they talked movies, TV shows, aliens and bird species. In the breaks during the rehearsal, they made a point of not talking to each other to avoid drawing attention. Well, he guessed that was her game plan too, consciously or not. She was the life of the party in her corner, he was the life of the party in his. Because overcompensating with perkiness was sure to deflect suspicion. But then, Sanjay had hugged him and thanked him for ‘sorting yourself out’, so something was working, even if Josh was way up and over the bell curve from ‘sorted out’. The whole rehearsal rolled out in a parallel world where he and Amy hadn’t had the most charged kiss of his life that morning, like they’d wordlessly agreed that priority number one was to get through the rest of the day without anyone getting wise.
But the more they didn’t talk about the kiss, the more he thought about it.
At dinner, he found his assigned spot inside the pavilion between Amy and her cousin Harry, who had already taken his seat and was examining the menu. Sitting next to Amy was going to make it tough to carry off the existing-in-parallel-universes strategy.
‘Only Carmen would do calligraphy by hand for the rehearsal dinner,’ Harry said, glancing up. ‘This was on the schedule as a casual meal. It’s practically a ten-course degustation.’
‘That schedule. Mate. Here was I thinking I’d come for a holiday.’
‘You’ll learn. Amy tells me you’re a firefighter?’
‘Yep,’ Josh said, pulling out his chair and taking a seat. No bench seats in here, so he could maintain more personal space. The pavilion had been split in two by a wall that had been magically slid out from somewhere, behind which super-secret wedding preparations were presumably being made for tomorrow. On this side, the tables and sofas had been squeezed in to fit more people.
Harry turned out to be as easy to talk to as Amy was. Seeing as Geoff wasn’t related to Harry, Josh couldn’t claim him as a cousin, but it was cool to think of him as part of Josh’s extended stepfamily—a family where you lost track of how everyone fit but it didn’t matter. No chance of that when you were an only child who might as well be the son of two only children, for all they saw Josh’s aunt and cousins.
Of course, if Josh married Amy, Harry would be a cousin-in-law, which was almost a brother-in-law, which was pretty much a brother. An actual brother.
And where had that thought come from? Stop hoovering up Amy’s relatives. A stepdad and two stepsisters was plenty. Plus Geoff’s elderly parents and his sister and her family, who were arriving in the morning from Melbourne. Step-grandparents were absolutely a thing.
Of course, the most likely scenario was that he would mess everything up with Amy, her family would hate him for it, and he’d be back to tumbleweed Christmases, while making things awkward for Sanjay.
‘Sounds like you’re getting on well with Amy and Carmen?’ Harry said, as their conversation moved from firefighting to family.
‘Yeah. I mean, if you got to choose a couple of sisters, they’re the ones you’d pick, am I right?’ Liar. You’d never choose a sister as hot as Amy. And Josh didn’t want to get onto the subject of Amy, not with her favourite cousin. ‘They’re fun.’ Harry frowned, for no reason Josh could comprehend. ‘Well, Carmen isn’t all that fun at the moment but I’m guessing that’s because she’s in wedding planner mode?’
‘She’s usually stressed out with planning something or other, but don’t feel sorry for her. She’ll complain about her workload, but she’ll complain louder if you take a single one of her responsibilities away. She’s only happy if she has ten things on her mind. But you’re right. Amy is … fun.’
Josh looked at him sideways. Definitely a hidden meaning.
‘Sorry,’ Harry said, shaking his head, ‘you reminded me of something someone said.’
‘Is Sophia coming along tonight?’
Harry flinched. Josh mentally face-palmed. Shocker of a segue. It had made complete sense in Josh’s brain. They’d been talking about the woman Josh was fighting his attraction to, and everyone had been speculating that Harry and Sophia had a thing going on, so it seemed natural to ask after the woman Harry was apparently fighting his attraction to.
‘Uh, Sophia’s doing her own thing tonight. She’s not part of this wedding.’
‘Oh, cool. It’s just you guys came to the bucks’ night together the other night, so I assumed you were friends or something.’ Reversing on out of the cul-de-sac.
‘She didn’t come with me. She came with Cody.’
‘Oh. My bad.’
‘Did Amy say something to you, about me and Sophia?’
‘No, not at all,’ Josh said. ‘It was just, yeah, the bucks’ night. You guys seemed friendly. And then she left the beach to go to pick you up today.’
A surf-and-turf platter landed in front of them and they both lunged for it. High time for Josh to take his foot out of his mouth and shove in some ribs instead.
‘Never did get a chance to ask you about your morning, Harry,’ Amy said, sitting next to Josh and reaching across him to spear some prosciutto with her fork. ‘I noticed you were late for lunch and looking a little crumpled.’
A half-smile slid across Harry’s face. He’d been made and he knew it. ‘I guess you were too occupied to pick me up yourself, Aims?’
Whoa. Had she told Harry about Josh?
Amy gave the same half-smile that Harry had, right down to the dimple. ‘The bartender said Sophia came in this morning and bought a bottle of wine,’ she said.
‘Is that right?’ Harry popped a whole arancini ball into his mouth. There were layers in this conversation that Josh couldn’t begin to peel back. Reading family subtext obviously took practice.
‘And she took two glasses.’
Harry grunted something noncommittal, his cheeks full.
‘And she asked what beer you liked and bought several bottles.’
‘Maybe the other wine glass was for you?’ Harry mumbled. ‘Seems you and Sophia got pretty cosy while I was gone.’
Amy leaned in again and grabbed a tiger prawn, brushing Josh’s arm. He passed her a plate from the stack in front of him. ‘Seriously, cuz,’ she said to Harry, ‘if you don’t want Sophia, there’s something wrong with you. She’s awesome. She can do a mermaid, a crow and a wheel, which makes her my personal superhero.’
‘You’ve seen her do a mermaid?’ Josh said. Amy began to explain—something about yoga—but he held up a palm. ‘Don’t. It could only be a disappointment.’
Harry laughed. ‘Careful, Josh, you’re starting to sound like Cody.’
‘Talking me up again, Houdini?’ Cody said from across the table as he spun a chair and sat on it in one movement. ‘What could he have possibly done that’s that bad?’
‘I told him that if he doesn’t want Sophia, he’s an idiot,’ Amy said.
&nbs
p; ‘Still heroically holding yourself back then?’ Cody said to Harry, pulling an unmanned platter from along the table toward him like it was his personal dinner plate. ‘How was the school visit?’
‘Good.’
‘Did you bomb out or did she?’
Puzzled, Josh raised an eyebrow at Amy. She shook her head slightly, as if to say, It’s complicated.
Carmen walked up, trailed by Mika. She picked up the placename in front of Cody and held it to his face. ‘Is your name Carmen?’
‘We finished the platter at my end,’ he said, gnawing on a rib. ‘You snooze …’
‘I was arranging logistics for tomorrow. Mum, you can’t sit there!’ Carmen pointed to the chair on Amy’s other side, which Rosa was about to take. ‘You’re here!’ Rosa shot Amy and Josh a conspiratorial smile and let Carmen direct her to the seat beside Cody. ‘Now I’m going to have to take Sanjay’s seat and the whole plan will get messed up. Guys!’
‘That’s it, call off the wedding,’ Cody said, hunting for his next snack.
‘You’re such a turd.’ Carmen sighed, sat down, rearranged the placenames in defeat and pushed Cody’s stolen platter back down the table, forcing him to dive for a prawn. She patted the seat beside her for Mika, but the little girl took off, shouting, ‘Gandah!’ Geoff and Sanjay were walking in from the deck. Geoff crouched and held out his arms, welcoming the assault. He caught her and swung her upside-down. Kid giggles. Cute.
‘Settle, bridesmaid-zilla,’ Cody said.
‘Groomswoman-zilla,’ Amy corrected.
‘I have to leave before the main course,’ Cody continued. ‘Picking up a guest from Airlie Beach. We were just talking about Harry and the jilted bride.’
Rosa’s eyes widened. ‘Is this the woman you brought to the bachelors party? Sophia, right? There’s something to talk about?’
‘I didn’t bring her, and there’s nothing to talk about,’ Harry said.
Amy pointed a rib at Harry, forcing Josh to lean back so she didn’t impale his cheek. ‘That’s not what Lena says. She says she stopped by the homestead but had to backtrack quietly and in a hurry before her innocent young mind got corrupted.’