by Liz Fielding
Not his family.
Not even Lissa, the woman whose genius for design had turned this place from a basic boy’s own safari lodge, much like any other, into a place of beauty. Who’d taken the utilitarian and made it magic with candles, mirrors, nets.
The wedding dress taunted him and, unable to bear it a moment longer, he hauled himself off the sofa, lifted it down and stuffed it inside the wardrobe so that it was out of sight.
He used his arm to wipe the cold sweat from his face, then leaned against the door, forcing himself to let go of the tension that had snapped through him like a wire the minute he’d seen it hanging there, like a ghostly accusation.
He’d come here to draw a line under the past but, instead of closure, it seemed to be pursuing him, hunting him down.
What was it his doctor, Connie, had said? ‘…sooner or later you’re going to have to stop running…’
The water was still running in the shower, tantalising him with its promise of soothing, reviving heat. With the image of being crammed in there with Josie, her hands on his shoulders, sliding down his back, easing away the pain with those capable hands. Just the thought of it warmed the muscles, eased the ache, sent a hot flood of desire coursing through his veins as he imagined her small breasts against his wet skin as she kneaded away the aches, dug into the hollow at the base of his spine. In his heart…
He recoiled from the thought. Dammit, he was still using her, even inside his head.
Not good. Forget hot— what he needed was a cold shower and he opened the bathroom door just wide enough to grab a towel from the rack. As the candles flickered in the draught something moved, catching his eye, and he opened the door a little wider. It wasn’t a gecko that had lost its grip sitting in the middle of the floor, but a hunting spider on the prowl for supper.
Suddenly everything went quiet as the water was turned off. He had one, maybe two seconds before Josie stepped out of the shower, saw the spider and screamed.
His chance to be a hero.
His reward, a naked woman in his arms.
As the shower door clicked, he dropped the towel on the spider, scooped it up, shut the door quietly behind him.
He steadied himself, then carried it outside, shook it carefully over the rail.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Wedding favours were traditionally five almonds to represent health, wealth, long life, fertility and happiness; the modern wedding planner will add something that memorably reflects the couple’s interests.
—The Perfect Wedding by Serafina March
JOSIE pulled down a towel, wrapped it around her, opened the shower door, paused to take a careful look around.
The bathroom was a myriad of reflected lights, stunningly beautiful, and there wasn’t a creepy-crawly, or even a friendly lizard, in sight.
‘You are such a wuss, Josie Fowler,’ she said as she dried off. Then she brushed her teeth, applied fresh make-up, used some wax on hair that had wilted in the steam and finally emerged, wearing the fishnet T-shirt she kept for evenings beneath a simple slipover, ready for the next round with her nemesis.
‘It’s all yours,’ she said to an empty room.
Gideon was nowhere to be seen. Neither was Cryssie’s wedding dress.
‘Gideon!’ she yelled, surging out onto the deck.
He emerged from the outdoor shower, dark hair clinging wetly to his neck, his forehead, wearing only a pitifully small towel—stark white against his slick sun-drenched skin—wrapped around his waist.
Standing straight, he was so utterly beautiful that for a moment she struggled for words.
‘You shrieked?’ he prompted.
She made an attempt to gather herself. ‘The dress…’ She swallowed. ‘What have you done with Cryssie’s dress?’
‘I put it out of harm’s way,’ he said. ‘In the wardrobe.’
‘Oh…’
‘What did you think I’d done with it? Tossed it into the trees for the monkeys to play with?’
‘No. Sorry. It’s just—’
‘Your responsibility. I heard you, Josie. This is your room and you’ve every right to keep whatever you want in it.’
‘It was just that you were so obviously disturbed by its appearance, angry even—’
‘Forget it,’ he said, so fiercely that she drew back a little. ‘Let it go, Josie,’ he said, rather more gently. ‘It’s not important.’
Clearly it was. His dislike of weddings was obviously rooted in something rather deeper than an aversion to long white dresses. But it was equally obvious that he didn’t want to talk about it.
‘I realise that all this is nothing but a huge pain in the backside for you, Gideon—’
‘A little higher than that,’ he suggested, doing his best to make light of it by making fun of her.
‘Dammit, Gideon!’ she snapped. ‘This is really important to me. Sylvie has taken a huge gamble making me a partner and so far I haven’t been exactly trampled in the stampede of women desperate for me to plan their weddings. I have to get this right…’
‘Why?’
‘Why?’ she repeated, confused. ‘Surely that’s obvious?’
‘Why was it a gamble?’
She sucked in her breath. He wasn’t supposed to ask that. She shouldn’t have said it, wouldn’t have let it slip if she hadn’t been so wound up. So desperate that everything should go without a hitch.
‘You’re motivated, enthusiastic and you care deeply that Cryssie’s big day is special,’ he pressed. ‘In her shoes, I’d rather have you than Cara’s scary Aunt Serafina holding my hand on my big day.’
If Sylvie had been here, it was exactly what she would have said and she was forced to blink hard to stop a tear from spilling over.
Not good. Determined not to lose it completely and blub, she took her eyes on a slow ride down that luscious body until she reached his feet. Then she shook her head.
‘Sorry, Tarzan, they wouldn’t fit.’ And, just to prove to herself that she was firmly back in control, she made herself look up, meet his gaze. Nothing had changed. He knew what she was doing and he wasn’t diverted. The question was still there…
Why was it a gamble?
‘And, to be honest, embroidered, beaded satin slingbacks really wouldn’t be a good look for you,’ she added a little desperately.
For a moment he continued to look at her, challenge her and she thought he wasn’t going to let it go, but finally he shrugged. ‘You think the beads would be pushing it?’
‘The bigger the feet, the less you want to draw attention to them,’ she replied.
He looked down at her boots, lifted an eyebrow, said nothing.
‘Cryssie will be waiting,’ she said, desperate to escape. ‘I’ll… um… just get my briefcase.’
Gideon followed her inside. ‘It’s a working dinner?’
‘We’ve got to rearrange the table layouts. Then we’re going to start on the favour boxes.’
‘Favour boxes?’
‘Little table gifts for the guests. The boxes have been specially created to look like Tal’s football strip. We have to slot them together, then fill them with all the bits and pieces,’ she explained. As if he’d be interested.
‘Could you do with an extra pair of hands?’
‘Excuse me?’ A tiny laugh, pure disbelief, exploded from her. ‘Are you offering to help?’
‘Now I ask you, is that likely?’ he replied. ‘I was going to suggest that you ask Alesia and some of the other girls to give you a hand. I’ve no doubt they’d love to be involved.’ He shrugged. ‘Just a thought.’
Just a thought. A crazy, foolish thought. The very idea of him sitting around with a bunch of women making wedding favour boxes was so ridiculous that anyone would laugh.
Everyone knew that he didn’t do weddings. The engraved invitations arrived once in a while, Gideon McGrath and Partner inscribed in copperplate—he was never with anyone long enough for his family, friends or colleagues to be sure who it would be. No
t that it mattered that much. The invitations were a formality. They knew he wouldn’t attend.
The excuse would be solid. The gift generous.
Yet here he was, stuck in the middle of the biggest wedding of the year, a wedding he wanted nothing to do with, and, like an idiot, he’d volunteered to help and even Josie Fowler, who’d known him for less than a day, had understood how ridiculous it was. Assumed that he had to be kidding.
And why wouldn’t she?
He could scarcely believe it himself.
‘Josie!’
‘Sorry,’ she said as Cryssie claimed her wandering attention. All through dinner, while Cryssie had been chattering away, telling her how she’d met Tal, about the country estate they’d bought, her mind had kept drifting back to Gideon on his own back there in the trees.
His casual, ‘Could you do with an extra pair of hands…?’
Not him. He couldn’t have meant him.
He was so anti-weddings that he’d ordered Cryssie’s dress out of his room. Her room. Their room!
And yet, even as he’d dismissed the idea out of hand, suggested asking Alesia, waved her away, urging her not to keep the blushing bride waiting, she’d felt a little sink of uncertainty. The feeling that she’d thoughtlessly spurned something rare.
That she’d hurt him…
‘Where are you sitting?’ Cryssie asked. ‘I can’t find you.’
‘I’ll be running things behind the scenes,’ she said absently.
‘That’s just rubbish. I’m going to put you on this table,’ she said, carefully pencilling her in. ‘Right here, next to Gideon.’
‘No, really,’ she protested. The fact that she cared whether she’d hurt him was the biggest warning yet. Far bigger than drooling over his gorgeous body. Much more dangerous than losing her senses and kissing him. Fantasising about dribbling oil over his back and soothing the pain away. That was physical.
Caring about his feelings was on a whole different level.
But Cryssie wasn’t listening.
‘I want you both at the pre-wedding dinner too.’
Falling back on the need for professionalism, she summoned up the book of rules to support her. ‘Serafina March would not approve.’
‘Really?’ Then, with a burst of giggles that attracted indulgent smiles from other late diners, ‘Well, to be honest, I wouldn’t have asked her.’
Josie glanced at the bottle of champagne Cryssie had insisted on ordering and sighed.
‘Why don’t you leave the rest of this to me, Cryssie?’ she said, gathering everything up. ‘It’s going to be a long day tomorrow and you’ll want to look your best for your photo shoot.’
‘But I was going to help you with the favours,’ she protested.
‘Better not risk it,’ she said. ‘You might damage your nails.’
Cryssie extended a hand to display her exquisite extensions and giggled again. ‘They are great, aren’t they?’
‘Gorgeous,’ she said. Definitely time to get her up the wooden hill… ‘Come on. I’ll put this stuff in the office and then walk you back to your room.’
The champagne had made Cryssie talkative and more than a little weepie as she cleaned off her make-up. Josie just held her for a while as she babbled on about her mother, her dad.
‘You will be there, Josie?’ she sniffed, a long way from the poised young woman who, a few hours earlier, had dismissed this whole wedding as a media event.
‘Every step of the way,’ she promised, fighting back tears of her own. She did a good ‘hard’ act in the office, tried to remain detached, professional, throughout even the most touching event. Weddings, though, were an emotional quagmire, with a trap for the unwary at every turn. ‘Come on. Into bed. Tal will be here tomorrow.’
Cryssie was asleep by the time Josie had hung up her discarded clothes. She blew out the candles, leaving her like Sleeping Beauty, enclosed within the gauzy nets, the little torch within hand’s reach in case she woke in the night, while she returned to the dining room.
It was empty now. Everyone had moved on to the open fire pit in the boma, the candles had been extinguished and there was only the low level glow of the safety lighting.
As she fetched her boxes from the storeroom she could hear bursts of laughter as they drank their nightcaps and told tall stories in a wide range of accents. People had come from all over the world to stay here, experience this. By the morning they’d all have moved on to other camps, other sights. Crossing the desert, taking in the Victoria Falls, going into the mist to find the gorillas.
She, meanwhile, had more than a hundred favour boxes to deal with. She’d normally have the girls in the office doing this in spare moments, but she couldn’t even call on Alesia to give her a hand. The reception desk was closed with only an emergency bell.
She found a box of matches on the service trolley, moved three candles to one of the larger tables, lit them, then spread herself out and set to work, tucking in the flaps of the flat-packed little boxes. Losing all sense of time as people gradually drifted away to their rooms, the fire died down and, within the small world of the candlelight, everything became quiet.
This wasn’t a resort where people stayed up late.
They would all be up before light to grab a cup of coffee and a muffin before heading off at first light to get in another game drive, guided walk, or to glide through the reeds in a canoe in the hope of catching one of the rarer beasts on an early morning hunt or drinking at the water’s edge.
‘Josie?’
She started, looked up. ‘Gideon…’ He looked ashen in the candlelight. ‘How did you get here?’
‘Slowly,’ he said.
‘Oh, God… Sit down,’ she said, leaping up, pulling out a chair. ‘Do you need someone? Can I get you anything?’
‘No. I’m fine. Don’t fuss…’ Then, as he sank carefully on the chair, ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing? Have you any idea what time it is? I thought you must have fallen off the bridge…’
‘You were waiting up for me?’ she asked, astonished.
‘I’ve been lying down all day. I’m not tired.’ Then, ‘Yes, I was waiting up for you.’ He didn’t wait for her to laugh at him again, but looked around. ‘So much for everyone pitching in to help. Where’s Cryssie?’
‘I put her to bed. She had a glass or two of champagne and got a bit emotional.’
‘Nerves?’
‘No. She was missing her mum,’ she said, sitting back down, reaching for another box, concentrating hard on putting it together.
‘Oh, right. When’s she arriving?’
‘She’s not. She died when she was a teenager. Hence the tears.’
‘I didn’t know. That’s tough.’
‘Especially at moments like this. You go through the day-to-day stuff, managing, but…’
And, without warning, it got her, just as it had caught Cryssie. One minute she had been giggling with excitement, full of the joys, the next there had been tears pouring down her face at the prospect of facing the biggest, most important day of her life without her mother to support her.
It would have been so easy to break down and weep with Cryssie, but she’d held back the tears, knowing that to join in would have dragged them both down into a black pit. But it had got to her and now Gideon had provided the emotional catalyst. A stranger, a man she barely knew, staying up to make sure she got home safe. It was years since anyone had done that and, without warning, the box in her hand crumpled and, just as she’d known the moment to reach for Cryssie, he was there, solid as a brick wall, to prop her up as the memories flooded back.
The times when she’d been frightened, angry, in despair. The times when something amazing had happened. That day when, just before Sylvie had gone into church to be married herself, Sylvie had hugged her and told her that she wanted her to be her partner.
She’d been so happy, thought she might burst with pride and the only person she’d wanted to tell was her mother. Just to let her
know she was all right. That everything had worked out, that she was okay…
‘Sorry,’ she said as her tears seeped into his shirt. ‘It’s been years since anyone waited up to see me home safe.’
‘How many years?’
‘Nearly eight.’
She let her head lie against his chest, letting the scent of freshly washed linen fill her head. That was a good memory too. Being tucked into clean pyjamas, feeling safe, protected…
‘I was seventeen, almost eighteen. There’d been a party at college. It was late when I got home but Mum was sitting up for me as she always did. Pretending to be engrossed in some old movie. She made us hot chocolate and we sat in the kitchen while I told her about the party. About some boy I’d met who’d walked me home. Just talked, you know, the way you do in the middle of the night when it’s quiet and there’s no one to butt in.’ Her throat closed with the ache of that last night of pure happiness. ‘Being still like that, with no distractions, no radio…’ without her mother’s second husband yelling for a beer or a sandwich or his cigarettes ‘…I suddenly saw how tired she looked. That her clothes were hanging on her. And I knew then. Knew she was sick.’ A little shiver ran through her as she recalled the fear. ‘I said that maybe she should make an appointment for one of those well-woman clinics. Just for a check-up…’
But she’d already seen the doctor.
She sniffed and, as she pulled away, hunted in her pockets for a tissue, looked helplessly at the crushed mess of blue and orange card in her hand.
He made no attempt to hold her, just took the useless box from her and replaced it with a handkerchief. A proper one. White. Folded. Perfectly ironed. And that nearly set her off again but Gideon, playing the calm, unemotional role, said, ‘I hope there are spares.’
‘Loads,’ she said, mopping up the dampness on her cheeks, grateful for the fact that she never used anything but waterproof mascara—panda eyes was such a bad look at a wedding. ‘They had to be printed specially and you never know the exact number until the last minute.’
He picked one up, turning it over to examine it, before fitting it together as if he’d been doing it all his life.
