The Secret Wedding Dress

by Ally Blake

  ‘All righty, then,’ said Clint.

  Paige laughed, amazing considering the day she’d had. But even while her heart felt as if it had been pounded with a meat hammer, there was enough left to feel happy for Mae. Happy her friend had found the most important, strong, invincible relationship of her life.

  To Mae she said, ‘Be good to him.’

  Mae’s eyes shifted sideways, landed on her fiancé, who was flapping a hand at the TV, his voice rising by the second, backside halfway off the couch, willing his team forward from his position at wing-via-couch. With a sigh she said, ‘Always and for ever.’

  Then Mae all but ran to the couch, snuggled in under her fiancé’s waiting arm.

  The pain beneath Paige’s ribs eased a tiny little bit, and she managed to swallow back the tears that had started—happy for them, devastated for herself—before she closed the door behind her.

  As she walked along the Richmond back streets to the tram stop, the icy winter wind snuck through her clothes, but she shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her warm jacket and kept walking, Clint’s words playing through her mind on a loop.

  A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do for the woman he loves.

  She’d thought Gabe cared. Even with her limited experience she’d been near certain that he felt the same way. Had she been so completely wrong?

  If all he’d wanted was meaningless sex, he could have kept her on a string. And she might have let him. It could have gone on that way for months. Years. But he hadn’t. He’d made a clean break, giving up a sure thing to save her from herself.

  While she’d been not nearly so self-sacrificing. She’d kept Gabe at a distance from the beginning. She’d made it all about sex while he’d been the one to suggest a date. She’d never told Mae about him, while he’d told Nate about her. She’d never made any effort to let him into her life, while he’d opened his apartment to her on day one.

  Even at the last she’d not told him how she felt. Never told him she wanted him to stay.

  No wonder he’d found it so easy to walk away. Because she’d stood there and let him.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  GABE leant back in the wrought-iron chair in the outdoor café at the edge of St Mark’s square, his unfocused gaze touching on huddles of wide-eyed tourists gawping at the architecture, and lean, young, dark-haired Venetian men checking out the female tourists.

  Pigeons cooed and fluttered across his vision. He downed the remnants of his espresso, then went back to the dozen new emails from different departments back at BonaVenture HQ: Research, Accounts, PR.

  Nate, who’d seemed not all that surprised when he’d left, but had also made him swear in blood he’d be gone no longer than a month, had also made him promise to use BonaVenture’s extensive resources rather than try to do everything on his own. Thankfully the guy had an eye for talent because even while Gabe was sure he was halfway to landing the deal, and beating out four other mobs vying for the chance, his level of care didn’t amount to a hill of beans.

  They’d land it or they wouldn’t. And life would, in fact, go on.

  What had been keeping him up nights was that he found it near impossible to imagine what kind of life that might be.

  Before closing his email, he scrolled down, in case he’d missed any messages. But no. No phone messages missed either. Not the one he was hoping for, anyway.

  The day he’d arrived in Venice he’d wandered the meandering streets to get on local time, and had come to a halt at the sight of a pair of battered pink lawn flamingos leaning at an odd angle amongst the junk in the dusty window of a bric-a-brac shop. He’d taken a photo on his phone and messaged it to Paige.

  A peace offering, he’d told himself as he’d pressed Send, because he wished he’d handled the dissolution of their affair with more style. But that was hogwash. He’d wanted to know she was thinking about him, even if for a moment. Even if it was to consider him pond scum. Because he thought about her constantly.

  He knew he’d done the right thing in making a clean break, and yet he didn’t feel righteous. He felt … lonesome.

  Gabe slammed his laptop shut, slid it into his satchel, and hooked the strap over his head. He slid his sunglasses onto his face and picked a random corner of the square and set to getting lost in the bewildering twisting cobbled alleyways of Venice once again. Knowing he could never truly be lost. All paths led to the water.

  Where Melbourne was full of white noise—Nate, BonaVenture, his parents, his gran, Lydia—every corner turned compounding his alienation, Venice held no memories for him as yet. As such it was quiet. So quiet he could no longer ignore the voices in his head.

  He’d convinced himself he’d left Paige so he’d never have to lose her, thus losing her anyway. At a distance that made about as much sense as cutting off his toes when the temperature dropped in case of possible future frostbite. And under the quiet blue Italian sky it had become all too clear: all his adult life he’d avoided intimacy, love, contentment because he felt he hadn’t earned it.

  Guilt had a way of twisting a person and he’d been twisted for so long he couldn’t remember what it was like to be simple and straight up and down. But until he’d heard Paige’s gutsy confession in that soft, sweet, sure voice, he’d never known what twisted really felt like.

  He pulled up short of skittling a clump of tourists leaning over a bridge watching a gondolier, straw hat at a rakish angle, slide his boat artfully along the canal below, ‘O Sole Mio’ tripping from his practised lips, and sending all the girls into giggling swoons.

  The song tickled at the corner of his memory—the cab-ride through water-washed Melbourne the night of their one and only date. He’d fought for Paige then. As the water twinkled up at him he began to understand why. He’d been falling for her already, and, even while he’d been scrambling to regain traction on his old life, his instincts had told him to stick with her instead.

  He grumbled, ‘Excuse me,’ and bodily lifted a kid out of the way so as to get past. To keep moving. Round and round in circles, twisty, like a rat in a maze.

  Soon enough, he hit the water again and the nefarious scent of the canal was enough to have him turning straight up the next alley he found. This one dark, dank, narrowing, as close to being lost in the city as he could hope to be. He walked till sweat gathered beneath his armpits and his bag made his shoulder ache. Until a patch of sunshine filtered through the precariously inclining buildings to either side.

  There he stopped. Tilting his face to the warmth. And with every deep breath out he let the quiet in. As everything fell away, every sliver of guilt, and sadness, and regret, the vacant spaces began to fill. With sunshine, with warmth, with hope. And with Paige. Her scent, her skin, her smile, her eyes, her tenacity and her temper. And that one night, wrapped around him in the warmth of his bed, when she had whispered that she loved him.

  Something dazzling blinded him—a flash of sunshine, a reflection off water somewhere. And when he blinked the ground beneath his feet shifted so fast he held out his arms to get his balance.

  Sucking in air, he knew the groundswell had nothing to do with the fact that the only things keeping the entire city from falling into the sea were thousands of wet sticks. It was vertigo. Paige-induced vertigo. She made his heart race, and his blood rush, and kept him more than a little off balance. And while it wasn’t easy, and nothing was guaranteed, that, that energy, that exhilaration, that acute reminder that he was alive, was the exact flash of fire, of brilliance, he’d spent his whole life chasing.

  Breathing deep, the impossible scent of orange so strong in his nostrils even the pervasive scent of the Venetian waterways didn’t make a dent, he shielded his eyes as he looked up at the pale clear sky and attempted to figure out where he was.

  And which direction he had to go to get home.

  Paige did a last-minute check on the details of the Brazil recce trip.

  Everything was in place—the hotel, the permission to use the beac
h, the local suppliers, the photographer. Once she was happy everything was right to go, she checked she had her passport, left a message on Sam the Super’s phone that she’d be away—for whatever that was worth. Then she locked her apartment door and slid the key into an envelope to leave in Mrs Addable’s mail box so her upstairs neighbour could water her plants.

  She pressed the down arrow outside the lift and watched the number display above the lift, trying her best to stamp down her rising impatience. But she wanted to get on that plane as soon as humanly possible. She was so tense, when the lift binged almost instantly, she flinched. And when the lift doors slid open—

  Her heart skipped a beat.

  Because inside the lift, in leather and soft denim and huge scuffed boots, looking exactly as big, and dark, and dangerous as the day they’d first met was—

  ‘Gabe?’

  ‘Morning, Paige.’

  The deep rumbling voice clinched it, vibrating down her spine, searing her to the spot so that she couldn’t move, and filling her up with so much heartache she could barely contain it.

  Because he’d left without even a backward glance. Protect yourself! a familiar old voice yelled in the back of her head. But as she drank him in, his dark soulful eyes, his big broad shoulders, his knee-melting scent, she told the voice to sod off.

  She was done preparing for the worst. It felt a whole lot better hoping for the best. And if there was even a remote chance she could have what Mae and Clint had, then she needed to be ready for it. Open to it. Even if it meant having her heart broken all over again. The risk was worth it. Gabe was worth it.

  ‘I was hoping to catch you before you headed into work,’ he said, all smooth and nonchalant, as if he weren’t meant to be on the other side of the world.

  Work? As if she’d be let through the Ménage à Moi doors in her airplane uniform of beanie, ten-year-old electric-blue stretchy pants, faded Bon Temps football T-shirt, blazer, fluffy socks and Mae’s old Docs.

  And then she realised. He hadn’t noticed her clothes. Hadn’t even noticed the huge blood-red suitcase at her feet. His eyes hadn’t once left hers. He’d only seen her. Just as he had that first morning in the lift when she’d been carrying a garment bag bright enough to be seen from the moon. And every day since. Bar, of course, the days since he’d told her she was amazing and left.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ she asked, heart trying its dandiest to be hopeful, but it was struggling with the new skill. ‘You’re meant to be in Venice.’

  His eyebrow rose, and she realised belatedly she’d given away that she’d found out where he was. ‘I am,’ he said. ‘I was. Now I’m not. Seems I have a whole staff I can get to do the hard yards for me, leaving me to swoop in at the last and look brilliant.’

  ‘Lucky you.’ When Paige realised she was gripping the handle of her suitcase so hard the tops of her fingers were becoming numb, she eased off. ‘I’m not heading into work, but you did just catch me. I’m meant to be heading to Brazil.’

  With what seemed like considerable effort, Gabe dragged his eyes from hers long enough to take in her beanie, her take-no-prisoners boots, her massive red bag. ‘Brazil? The catalogue. You won them over. Well done you. You’ll love it. What time’s your flight?’ Even as he congratulated her he moved to the front of the lift, both hands gripping the doors, as if blocking her way.

  ‘I said I’m meant to be heading to Brazil.’

  His dark eyes slid back to hers. And the twin flints of heat and hope lighting their dark depths had her heart thumpety thumping against her ribs so hard she had to check to make sure her T-shirt wasn’t dancing in time.

  ‘Meaning you’re not.’

  ‘Not. I too have underlings and sent them in my stead.’

  His nostrils flared as he breathed deep. As he considered the connotations of what she’d said. As he leaned an inch out into the hall.

  ‘Look at us,’ he rumbled, ‘delegating.’ And look he did, all the way down her legs and back up again with such concentration she felt every touch of his gaze like a caress. ‘Frees up the spare time, I find.’

  ‘Whatever will we do with it?’

  ‘Come here,’ he said, with a tilt of his chin, moving his big body aside, ‘and I’ll give you some ideas.’

  Paige didn’t have to be asked twice. She shoved her suitcase against her front door, tossing her handbag and key in the same general direction, then practically leapt into the lift.

  Once inside, she scooted to the back before she glanced up at him, his breadth blocking out the light, making the room feel so tight with him in it. And, God, he smelled good. Of fresh air, and clean cotton, and spice, and soap, and every good manly thing.

  The lift doors might have closed at that point. Or they might not. Paige was trying too hard to find some kind of rhythm in her breath to notice much of anything but the man in her sights. The man moving slowly her way.

  When he got close enough she had to look up to see him, she took a step back, but he just moved closer still. So close her fingers itched with the effort not to slide her hand up the soft cotton of his T-shirt, scrunching the fabric into her hands, revealing all that hot male skin as she went. To run across his overlong stubble. To smooth out the new creases across his brow. He looked tired.

  ‘Long flight?’ she asked.

  ‘Long week,’ he said, his eyes roving over her face. Then, as they landed on her eyes, ‘Longest of my life.’

  He moved closer. Close enough she could just make out the rim of dark brown around his bottomless black pupils. ‘If you’re not going to Brazil, where are you going?’

  Here goes, she thought. No going back from here. ‘I’m going to Venice.’

  ‘Are you now?’ he rumbled, his voice like velvet as he kept on coming.

  She rocked back on her heels till her shoulders hit the lift wall. And Gabe couldn’t be any closer without touching her. So touch her he did, his big hand sliding around her waist to settle in the sweet spot of her lower back, his heat wrapping around her like a blanket.

  With a sigh she felt to the bottoms of her feet, Paige slid her hands up his arms to curl around his big leather-clad biceps. ‘I hear it’s lovely this time of year.’

  ‘It rains this time of year. Thunderstorms like you wouldn’t believe.’

  Had he pressed closer still? She could feel his heart thundering against her chest and one hard thigh nudged between hers. Her eyes fluttered closed and she had to force them to open back up again. ‘Is that why you’re back? Fear of storms to go with your fear of small spaces.’

  He stilled as humour flared in his dreamy dark eyes. Until they came over so serious her chest began to ache in the most beautiful way. He shook his head. ‘Clear skies as far as the eye could see.’

  ‘Oh.’ She licked her lips. Needing to know, needing to hear him say it. And looking into his face, so beautiful, so close after all those nights when it had been so far, she found the courage to ask, ‘So why are you back?’

  His dark eyes flickered between hers, and after what felt like for ever, he said, ‘I have something for you.’

  He tilted sideways and her body followed his like metal shavings to a magnet. Then she saw the bulky item wrapped in newspaper leaning next to her against the wall of the lift and she near leapt out of her skin. It came near to her shoulders, and she hadn’t even seen it.

  From the second the lift doors had opened she’d only seen him.

  He grabbed the package and held it out to her. ‘For you.’

  She took it, peeling away the Italian newspaper it had been hastily wrapped in. The guy really hadn’t a clue about garnish. And she loved him all the more for trying.

  A black eye peeked out of the newspaper. Then a pink head. A darker pink beak. Two beaks. The newspaper fell to her feet with a scrunch and a shuffle and she was left holding two bruised and battered vintage flamingo lawn ornaments, pink paint worn away in places, their necks curved into a heart as they touched beaks.

  Gabe mig
ht not have known a thing about garnish but he knew plenty about her. So much so her heart was lodged so far up into her throat she didn’t know what to say.

  ‘They’re the ones from the photo,’ he explained.

  She sniffed as discreetly as possible and willed away the tears burning the backs of her eyes. ‘What photo?’

  ‘The one I texted to you.’

  Her hand went to her phone in the back pocket of her stretchy-pants, only to remember it was in her handbag. Her bag she’d left in the hallway, while the lift was sailing past goodness knew what floor. She was about to find out how trustworthy her neighbours were.

  ‘That? I thought you’d accidentally sent it to the wrong person.’ And that fate could be a cruel cow at times.

  ‘But … isn’t that why you were coming to Venice?’

  Suddenly big bad Gabe Hamilton looked unsure. He’d come all the way from Venice to bring her a couple of used flamingos and he’d done so without any guarantee of what he might find. If she’d thought she couldn’t have loved him more than she did after seeing his gift, she’d been dead wrong. And now was the time to tell him.

  But she’d planned to spend the next twenty-four hours’ travelling to come up with the right thing to say. So that he’d hear her. So that he’d believe.

  Paige swore inelegantly as she planted her feet and her hands flew out to her sides as the lift shuddered and the lights flickered to low. By the cessation of vibration through her legs she realised the lift had stopped. Her eyes cut to Gabe, to find his hand on the emergency button. Gabe who, no matter how he might try to deny it, was at least a little claustrophobic.

  He took the flamingos from her hand and leant them against the wall, then grabbed a hank of hair poking out from under her beanie and gave it a tug. ‘You know why I’m back, Paige.’

  When his hands moved to brush her neck, to run over her shoulders, his thumbs tracing the edges of her breasts before his long fingers curled beneath her blazer and around her waist, Paige’s whole body pulsed so hard she wrapped her fingers around the lapels of his thick leather jacket to keep herself from collapsing in a heap.