A Week with the Best Man

by Ally Blake

  “So fresh eyes, hey?”

  Lola clapped her hands together and bounded on the balls of her feet. “Yes! It’s going to be great. We’ll do some wedding stuff along the way—to the tailor to check out our dresses, and a bar to check out the band who’ll be rocking the wedding. But I also have a few secret plans to make you fall in love with Blue Moon Bay.”

  “Did you say band?”

  “Only the best band in the bay.”

  “And the Chadwicks are okay with that?”

  “Of course they are.” There was no glancing away. No fussing with her thumbnails. No signs that she was lying and the Chadwicks were actually horror in-laws.

  Yet the back of Harper’s neck tingled.

  The Chadwicks were as good as royalty in this community. And they had one child. One son. There was no dimension she could imagine in which they would not impose their influence over his wedding.

  Then there was the fact they had refused to let Harper pay a cent towards the big day, asking for her blessing to allow them to pay for it all.

  But what if it went deeper than that? What if they were doing so out of guilt? Was this their way of trying to rectify their part in the mess of years before? If so it wasn’t nearly enough.

  It took Harper’s elite-level self-control to say, “I imagine a string quartet to be more to their taste. Or the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra.”

  Lola blinked. “Possibly. But it’s my wedding.”

  “Yours and Gray’s.”

  “He did his part with the proposing and being so gorgeous I had to marry him.” Lola took Harper by both hands. “Harps, everything is fine. Everything is fabulous! You’re so used to fighting for me you’re looking for bad guys to smite. But I’m happy. This will be the wedding of my dreams.”

  The thing was, apart from the waterworks the day before, Lola did seem happy. And so very young.

  It was early days. Better to eke out the truth rather than smack Lola over the head with it. Harper hooked her arm through Lola’s elbow and said, “So let’s do this.”

  Lola dragged her through the double-storey foyer, and out the front door. At which point Harper took a literal step back.

  The same sky-blue, open-topped sports car Cormac had been sitting on the day before was now perched on the gravel outside the front door, its engine producing a throaty purr.

  The man himself lounged in the driver’s seat. No sitting, or slouching, for Cormac Wharton. For the gods had gifted him an overabundance of ease which only turned Harper’s tension up a gear.

  Cormac shifted, looked over his shoulder.

  Dark sunglasses covered his eyes, bringing his jawline into relief. And his mouth. That same gorgeous mouth that had been doing things to her in her dreams that made her blush, even now.

  “Our chariot awaits!” Lola proclaimed, her good cheer carrying on the wind as she dragged Harper down the stairs. Then she leapt over the car door to sit in the back seat alongside Novak, the dog, leaving the front passenger spot for Harper.

  “Morning, ladies,” Cormac rumbled.

  “Hey, Mac,” Lola sing-songed. “Thanks for the lift.”

  “You bet. Harper?”

  Harper was busy trying to figure out how to get in the damn car as it seemed to have no door handles. Cormac opened the door from the inside, the muscles in his tanned forearm bunching winningly.

  With a smile that felt like more of a wince, Harper slid onto the soft cream seat to find the leather already warmed by the biting southern sun. A subtle breeze kicked at her hair until it stuck to her lipstick. And she could feel Cormac’s gaze burning a mark into her cheek.

  “You all right over there?” Cormac asked, laughter lighting his deep voice.

  Harper glanced sideways to find him watching her from behind his dark shades. He tilted his chin, motioning to where she held her bag like a shield. She slid it into the footwell.

  With a grin, Cormac gunned the engine and took off down the drive.

  “Nice car,” Harper allowed.

  “Nice?” he said, his face pained, before running a hand over the leather dash. “This is an original, metallic blue, 1953 Sunbeam Alpine Mark I. You can do better than nice.”

  She could. She just didn’t want to. The best she would offer was, “Reminds me of the one in that movie. With Grace Kelly and Cary Grant.”

  “Oh, my life!” Lola said from the back seat. “Harper, you have no idea what you’ve just done.”

  Harper glanced at her sister. Then at Cormac, who had dropped his sunglasses to the end of his nose to look at her as if he’d never seen her before.

  “What? What did I say?”

  “He’s obsessed with Hitchcock movies,” said Lola. “Obsessed.”

  “Right. Novak,” Harper said, pointing a thumb at the dog, who wagged her thin tail.

  Lola groaned. “Poor guy actually believes this is the car used in the filming of To Catch a Thief.”

  “Really?” Harper asked, unable to withhold her interest. Had Grace Kelly actually sat in this same seat? No, from memory, she had been the one driving.

  “The provenance is unprovable,” said Cormac, gazing dreamily over the inside of the car. “But the research I’ve done leads me to believe it really could be the one.”

  When his eyes once more found hers, they narrowed. “Don’t tell me you’re a sceptic.”

  “I’m not much of a believer in fairy-tale endings.”

  Cormac lifted a hand to his heart, as if he’d been shot. “I ache for you. I truly do.” At which point he pushed his sunglasses back into place and slowed at the Chadwicks’ front gates.

  Giving Harper the chance to deal with the fact that Cormac Wharton had just told her he ached for her. She had to move past this erstwhile crush of hers, and fast. The man was far too astute, and if she wasn’t careful he’d soon figure it out.

  “Buckle up, kids,” Cormac said. “The sun is out, life beckons and the waves wait for no man!”

  Waves? What waves? Harper didn’t have the chance to ask, as Cormac zoomed out onto Beach Road, pressing them back into their seats.

  As they curved around the mouth of the bay, heading back towards town, the car rumbled smoothly beneath them, the sun filtered through the thin trees dappling the bonnet.

  The air rolling in hot waves over the windscreen and whipping past Harper’s face smelled of sea salt and scorched sand. Of sunscreen and coconut oil. Of bonfires and summers that lasted for ever.

  “Everything okay?” came Cormac’s voice.

  Harper didn’t realise her eyes were closed until she snapped them open.

  “You sighed,” he said, his voice low. “Dreamily.”

  Had she? “I was...lost in memory.”

  “That’s what today’s all about,” said Lola, leaning forward to poke her head between them. “Harper’s been away too long to remember how amazing it is here. Today’s mission is to make her fall in love with Blue Moon Bay all over again.”

  All over again.

  If she was honest her childhood had been mostly wonderful: a kaleidoscope of lazy summers and snug winters, lit with the smiles of a permanently joyful little sister and their wildly charismatic father, who’d told her daily that he loved her more than the moon and stars.

  Before he’d lost everything and bolted, making it clear that love wasn’t enough to tether him. She wasn’t enough.

  “Shouldn’t be too hard,” Cormac said, his warm voice sweeping away the discomfiture of those memories. “This is the best place on earth.”

  Harper laughed. Sure, Blue Moon Bay was ostensibly appealing with its craggy cliffs and blustery bluffs, world-famous surf beaches, stunning homes and quaint village shops, but come on.

  “You disagree.”

  “Oh, you weren’t kidding.”

  Cormac shot her a glance, the edge of
his mouth lifting. Even a hint of that knee-melting smile made her pulse jump.

  “I prefer somewhere nearer an international airport for a start. With consistent Wi-Fi coverage. A greater variety of cuisine. Style. Culture. Need I go on?”

  Cormac whistled long and low. “I do believe we’ve been dissed.”

  Lola’s laughter was short and sharp. “You think?”

  “So, where are these havens of style of which you speak,” Cormac asked. “Give us names. Paris? Verona? Madrid?”

  “For a start.”

  Lola perked up. “What do you reckon, Mac? Is she right? Mac’s been to more countries than I even knew existed. Yet he chose to come home.”

  What was that, now? So far as Harper knew, Cormac had left high school, moved into the Chadwicks’ pool house, skated through university and found himself in a cushy position too good to give up. It seemed she’d missed some steps.

  Then again, at one time he’d given her good reason to believe the worst of him.

  “Is this true, Cormac?” Harper pressed. “In between the gnarly waves, throwing a stick for your dog and babysitting for the Chadwicks, did you truly find the time to see the world?”

  A muscle ticked in Cormac’s jaw—a classic sign of discomfort—before he shot her a dark look. Enjoying having him on the back foot for once, Harper wriggled down into her seat and waited.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I truly did.”

  He deftly changed down through the gears as they hit the edge of the cliffs overlooking Blue Moon Bay’s rugged coastline, one side of the road dropping away to a giant curving hole that seemed torn from the edge of the continent.

  Harper thought he was done, until he said, “After uni I studied in England for a bit. Worked in bars, restaurants, sold balloons in Hyde Park to earn cash to backpack every chance I could.”

  Lola tsk-tsked. “Seriously, Mac? Way to downplay. By ‘study in England’ he means he went to Oxford on a Rhodes Scholarship.”

  Harper’s gaze whipped so fast to Cormac she nearly pulled a muscle.

  “It was around the time Gray and I got together,” Lola added when it became clear Cormac wouldn’t. “Poor Gray, pining for his friend, started coming to the gym where I worked. One day he took my yoga class and that was that. Then Cormac broke Gray’s heart by not coming straight home after Oxford. Harps, remember that Christmas I couldn’t come to you in Dubai?”

  Harper remembered.

  “Gray and I had gone to Boston to surprise Mac. Why were you there, again?”

  Cormac gripped the wheel a little tighter. “My MBA.”

  Harper blinked. And blinked some more. And it had nothing to do with the wind.

  None of this was sitting well. Like a piece from the wrong puzzle, it didn’t fit into the picture she’d built up—or down—of him in her head.

  And the worst of it? With the advantages he’d had, he was wasting it all. The top-class education, the comprehensive world view; he should have been living the kind of life she’d scraped and fought and bled to achieve.

  So what on earth was he doing in Blue Moon Bay?

  Looking for answers, her gaze tripped over the dry brush covering the cliff-face, the sandy dirt spilling onto the edges of the pockmarked road as they reached the end of the bite and slowed to a stop at an intersection.

  “Well,” she said, motioning to a big, battered sign pointing the way to The Oldest Working Lighthouse in South-Eastern Australia. “That’s gotta add bonus points.”

  Cormac turned to face her, his eyes hidden behind his sunglasses. But she felt his look all the same. Flat, assessing, and not altogether cool.

  “Are you sassing us, Harper?”

  “I’m just saying it all comes down to taste.”

  “Which is your way of saying we have none.”

  “Pretty much.”

  With that Cormac laughed, the sound deep and throaty and sexy as hell. Then he lifted his sunglasses onto his head, sending his hair into a mass of shaggy chestnut spikes.

  “Lola,” Cormac said, eyes never leaving Harper, “your sister is most definitely sassing us.”

  Lola said, “And yet I am not deterred.”

  “Mmm...” Cormac murmured, those warm, dark eyes of his holding her in their thrall. “Neither, it seems, am I.”

  He took off, curling around the bend and onto the long, winding stretch of road heading into town.

  His expression had been light but something in the tone had Harper’s heart ricocheting off her ribcage as if she was back in the grip of teenage crushdom. And, by the smile still creasing his cheek, she had the awful feeling he sensed something of it too.

  Mad at herself, and him, and life in general, Harper turned bodily towards the window.

  She should be better at this. She spent every working day facing down boardrooms full of powerful people with axes to grind and fear for their futures. She stood tall against their antipathy, not a single barb or sharp glance piercing her armour, she was that sure of her position.

  Facing Cormac Wharton should be no different. For she was on the side of right and he was on the side of wrong and that was that.

  A small voice of dissent chirped up. And for the first time that day she remembered the contract dispute she’d most recently left behind.

  She’d purposely taken on a much smaller job than normal; representing a group of investors looking to buy out a small string of Italian restaurants in London that were in financial trouble with the plan to manage them more efficiently and take them international.

  The original owner, the man who had started the brand from scratch, had been amenable to negotiation. His son, not so much. Especially once Harper been brought on board to end the talks quickly.

  The son of the owner had somehow tracked down her private mobile number, leaving a string of awful messages accusing her of being soulless. A robot. Closed off to any real human emotion.

  Yes, she saw things in black and white, separate from any emotional attachment, but that was her forte. Her research into both businesses had been thorough and flawless. Her recommendations equitable.

  And yet those accusations had shaken her. As if the man tapped into some deep vein of unhappy truth she’d hidden from herself.

  Once the deal was sealed she’d left without sticking around for the after-party. Back in Dubai, she’d packed fast and taken a car to the airport; the bad taste in her mouth a result the negotiation and not the fact she was heading back to Blue Moon Bay.

  And if it wasn’t for Lola, her gorgeous, smushy, beloved little Lolly-Pop, she’d never have stepped foot in the place again.

  As wounds—both fresh and ancient—throbbed inside her, Harper closed her eyes to the sunshine and breathed, knowing she’d need to conserve her energy for whatever else this place threw at her today.

  * * *

  Harper knew herself to be organised. She had to be, what with international travel, shifting time zones, having to research every client to the nth degree, but Lola was a revelation.

  The morning passed by in a blur of visits to the florist, the baker, the candlestick maker. Seriously. A local artisan had produced custom-made candlesticks wrought into the shape of driftwood for the reception table centrepieces.

  While Lola chatted to the woman who was hand-printing the seating chart, encouraging her to come to a yoga class, Harper watched Cormac through the window. He stood outside the surfboard shop across the road talking to a guy with blond dreadlocks and skinny brown limbs. Novak sat on his foot, looking adoringly at her lord and master.

  “The blonde or the brunette?”

  Harper jumped out of her skin when Lola suddenly popped up beside her.

  “Which one were you checking out?”

  Harper scoffed. “Please.”

  Cormac made a rolling motion with his hand and the surfer dude laughed so h
ard he had to bend over to catch his breath.

  Harper asked, “What do you think those two could possibly have to talk about?”

  “Those long boards by the front door are made by one of the Chadwicks’ subsidiary companies. Knowing Cormac, he’s most likely checking how Dozer—the blonde—is doing. If they’re selling. If he can do anything to help.”

  “Why would their lawyer need to do that?” Unless something untoward was going on.

  “He doesn’t need to, he just does. Cormac knows every employee by name. Every supplier too. Makes everyone in the Chadwick family of businesses feel like more than a cog in the wheel. That they are all important.”

  Harper narrowed her eyes. “But what’s in it for him?”

  Lola laughed and gave Harper a hug. “Oh, Harps, my favourite cynic. I do love you so.”

  A cynic? She wasn’t a cynic. She was a realist. In reality people usually did things to serve their own ends. She classed herself in that group as well. Her motivations were black and white-she did what she did for Lola. Dammit, she was fine with that.

  When Cormac turned to jog across the road, slowing to wave a Kombi van through in front of him, Harper quickly turned away from the window. But not before catching a knowing glint in her sister’s eye.

  “Ready?” Cormac asked as he strode in the door, dark eyes taking in Lola, who was trying to hide a grin, and Harper, who was trying to hide the heat that had risen in her cheeks.

  “Ready as she’ll ever be,” said Lola, moving to hook a hand into the crook of Harper’s elbow and drag her from the shop.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CORMAC STOOD BY Gray’s Jeep, wetsuit unzipped and hanging low from his hips as he waxed down his surfboard, not watching Harper and Loladoing yoga on the beach.

  Or, to be more exact, Lola did yoga while Harper tried not to fall over. Or bend too far. Or snap in two.

  “So what do you think of the elder Miss Addison?” asked Gray as he ambled around the car, wetsuit zipped up, board under one arm, half-eaten apple in the other hand.