by Ally Blake
Heat pulsed in her centre, radiating outwards until she had to breathe through her mouth to gather enough oxygen to remain upright. She wrapped her arms tight around her.
Brilliant, beautiful, intense—and literally on the other side of the door. With no sound in the apartment bar the sound of the running shower. And the door was unlocked. Heck, the walls were so old and warped she had a floor mat shoved at the base of the door to keep it closed. With his bulk, if he walked too hard on the creaky floorboards the thing might spring open.
What if that happened and he looked up to find her naked, wet, slippery? Alone. Skin pink from the steaming hot spray. More so from thoughts of him.
What would he do? Would it finally occur to him that she was actually a woman, not just a walking appointment book?
No, it wouldn’t. And thank God for that. For if he ever looked at her in that way she wouldn’t even know what to do. They worked together like a dream, but as for the paths they’d taken to stumble into one another? The man was so far removed from her reality he was practically a different species.
‘Perfect, safe, fantasy material for a girl too busy to get her kicks any other way,’ she told the wall.
But somehow it had sounded far more sophisticated in her head than it did out loud. Out loud it sounded as though the time was nigh for her to get a life.
She determinedly put the lathered soap on the tray and turned off the taps.
She then reached for her towel—only to find in her rush she’d left it hanging on a hook on the back of her bedroom door.
She glanced at the musty PJs piled on the lid of the toilet, and then at the minuscule handtowel hanging within reach. She let her head thunk back against the shower wall.
The pipes in the pre-war building creaked as the shower was turned off in Hannah’s bathroom.
Finally. Bradley had told her they only had forty-five minutes, and the damn woman had been in the shower for what felt like for ever.
Bradley loosened his grip on the magazine he’d been clutching the entire time the shower had run—to find his fingers had begun to cramp.
‘Coffee?’ Sonja said, swanning out from nowhere.
He’d been so sure they were alone—just him in the lounge, Hannah in the shower, nothing but twelve feet of open space and a thin wooden door between them—he jumped halfway out of his skin.
‘Where the hell did you spring from?’ he growled.
‘Around,’ Sonja said, waving a hand over her shoulder as she swept towards a gleaming espresso machine that took up half the tiny kitchen bench. It was the only thing that looked as if it had had any real money spent on it in the whole place.
The rest was fluffy faded rugs, pink floral wallpaper, and tasselled lampshades so ancient-looking every time his eyes landed on one he felt he needed to sneeze. He felt as if he was sitting in the foyer of an old-time Western brothel, waiting for the madam to put in an appearance.
Not what he would have expected of Hannah’s pad—if he’d ever thought of it at all.
She was hard-working. Meticulous. With a reserve of stamina hidden somewhere in her small frame that meant she was able to keep up with his frenetic pace where others had fallen away long before.
What she wasn’t was abandoned, pink … froufrou.
Or so he’d thought.
‘I’m making one for myself so it’s no bother.’
Bradley blinked to find he was staring so hard at Hannah’s bathroom door it might have appeared as though he was hoping for a moment of X-ray vision. He threw the magazine on the table with enough effort to send it sliding onto the floor, then turned bodily away from the door to glance at Sonja.
‘Coffee?’ Sonja repeated, dangling a gaudy pink and gold espresso mug from the tip of her pink-taloned pinky.
It hit him belatedly that the apartment was pure Sonja. Of course. He vaguely remembered her telling him Hannah had at some stage that year moved in with her.
For some reason it eased his mind. The trust he had in Hannah’s common sense hadn’t been misplaced.
He glanced at his watch and frowned. Though if she didn’t get a hurry on he was ready to revise that thought.
‘A quick one,’ he said.
Coffees made, Sonja perched on the edge of the pink-striped dining chair that sat where a lounge chair ought. ‘So, you’re schlepping our girl to the wilds of Tasmania?’
‘On my way to the New Zealand recce.’
‘Several hundred miles out of your way.’
‘What’s your point?’
‘It’s not my job to have a point. You pay me to build mystery and excitement,’ she said, grinning. ‘And what’s more exciting and mystifying than you and Hannah heading off to have a wild time in the wild?’
‘A wild—?’ This time his frown was for real. He sat up as best he could in the over-soft old chair, and pointed two fingers in the direction of Sonja’s nose. ‘She works damned hard. I’m saying thanks. So don’t you start cooking up any mad stories in that head of yours. You know how I don’t like drama.’
Sonja stared right back, and then, obviously realising he was deadly serious, nodded and said, ‘Whatever you say, boss.’
And with that she got up and strode back towards what must have been her bedroom.
‘So long as you promise I’m the first one you’ll tell when you have something else to say. About New Zealand,’ she added, as an apparent afterthought.
And with a dramatic swish of silk she was gone.
Bradley sank slowly back into the soft couch and downed the hot espresso in one hit, letting it scorch the back of his throat.
If the woman wasn’t so good at her job …
But he hadn’t been kidding. He abhorred gratuitous drama. He’d gone miles out of his way to avoid it his whole life. Up remote mountains, down far-flung rivers in the middle of nowhere, deep into uninhabited jungles. Dedicating his life to concrete pleasures. Real challenges he could see and touch. Facing the raw and unbroken parts of the world in order to discover what kind of man he really was, rather than the kind life had labelled him the moment he was born.
Far, far away from the histrionics he’d endured as a kid, both before and after his hypersensitive mother had decided that being his mother was simply too hard. Leaving him to the mercy of whichever relative had had the grace to take him that month and increasing the drama tenfold. Every one of them had expected him to be volubly and effusively grateful they’d taken on such an encumbrance as he. The telling of it had become a daily litany. But that had been nothing compared with the horrendously uncomfortable drama that rocked each household the moment the inhabitants realised that they were not, in fact, as altruistic as they’d imagined they were.
Then they’d each and every one whispered behind half-closed doors, perhaps it wasn’t their fault. His own mother had given him away after all …
A flash of something appeared out of the corner of Bradley’s eye, slapping him back to the absolute present. He sat forward, leant his elbows on his knees, and ran his hands hard and fast over his face in an effort to rub the prickly remnants of memory away.
Then all thought fled his mind as he realised what the flash had been. Hannah. Dashing from the bathroom into her bedroom. Naked.
He slowly turned his head to look at the empty spot where the vision had appeared. Piece by piece it slipped into his mind.
A wet female back, a pair of lean wet legs, and a small white handtowel covering nought but what must have been wet naked buttocks.
Hannah. Naked. And right at that moment behind that door, towelling down with something about the size of a postage stamp.
From nowhere a swift, steady heat began to surface inside him. An unmistakable heat. The kind he’d usually invite with open arms.
He dragged his eyes back to the front and stared hard at a pink quilted lamp covered in so many tassels it made his eyes hurt. Better that than focus on the image seemingly burned into the backs of his eyes.
Hannah was hard-wo
rking, meticulous, with a reserve of stamina … He stopped when he realised he was repeating himself to himself.
A loud bang came from Hannah’s room, after which rang out a badly muffled oath and what sounded like hopping.
He found himself coughing out a laugh. Relief flooded through him, and the unfortunate heat brimming inside him dissipated, somewhat. That was the Hannah he knew. Hard-working, meticulous, and singularly likely to snap him out of the labyrinth of his mind right when he needed it most.
At that moment Hannah came bounding out of her room. Fully dressed. In fact she appeared to be wearing a grey blanket as she dragged a big black suitcase behind her.
He managed to pull himself from the clutches of the soft couch to stand, just as she plonked her suitcase by the door and turned to face him. Lips parted, breathless. From the suitcase? The hopping? The exertion of running to her room wet and naked?
He gave himself a mental slap.
‘You made yourself coffee?’ she said, staring at the coffee table.
‘Sonja.’
‘Oh. Oh!’ Her eyes opened unnaturally wide, then flicked to the room into which Sonja had disappeared. ‘Did she …? Did you …?’
He raised an eyebrow.
But she just shook her head, a new pinkness staining her cheeks and a telling kind of darkness in her eyes. It was the kind of look that told a specific story without need for words. It was the kind of look, when added to the image of naked female flesh, that could turn a man’s blood to hot oil.
Though it was far more likely he simply hadn’t fully moved on from the ‘flash’ after all.
You’re a man, he growled to himself, not a rock. Don’t be so hard on yourself.
Suddenly Hannah held up a finger and headed over to the small round table behind the couch, flicked through a bunch of papers. Ignoring him completely. He gave his head a short, sharp shake.
As she moved, Hannah’s voluminous blanket—which turned out to be some kind of poncho—shifted, revealing that in lieu of her usual filmy, elegant work number she wore dark skinny jeans tucked into cowboy boots, and a fitted black and red striped, long-sleeved top. Truly fitted. Giving him glimpses of the kind of gentle curves that her filmy, floaty, elegant work numbers had clearly never made the most of.
Curves he’d glimpsed naked, with no embellishment. Curves he could almost feel beneath his hands.
Gritting his teeth, Bradley leant his backside against the edge of the couch and waited. And watched. With the early-morning sun streaming through the old window behind her she looked so young, so fresh. Her nose was pink in the morning cold, her cheeks even pinker. Her lips were naturally the colour of a dark rose. She had a smattering of freckles across her nose he’d never before noticed. And her usually neat, professional hair was kinky and shaggy, as if she’d come from a day at the beach. As if she’d just rolled out of bed.
She glanced up to find him staring. After a beat she smiled in apology. ‘Two seconds. I promise.’
He cleared his throat. ‘If I didn’t know better I’d think you were purposely delaying getting moving.’
She blinked at him, several times, super-fast. Then shook her head so quickly he wondered if his sorry excuse for a joke had actually hit its mark. But he knew so little about her outside of how well she did her job he couldn’t be sure.
‘Sonja is clueless about paying bills,’ she went on. ‘It’s too cold a winter for me to risk her getting the heating cut off—even though I can think of a dozen reasons why she might deserve it.’
He found himself stepping over a line he didn’t usually breach as he asked, ‘Why do I get the feeling there’s some other reason you’re avoiding heading out that door?’
‘I—’ She swallowed. Then looked him dead in the eye for several long seconds before offering a slight shrug and saying, ‘It’s not that I don’t want to go back home. I love that island more than anything. I’m just bracing myself for what I am about to encounter when I step across the Gatehouse threshold.’
‘The Gatehouse?’
‘The hotel.’
‘Regretting your choice?’
That earned him a glance from pale green eyes that could cut glass. ‘You truly think I would organise for my only sister to get married in some dive?’
‘I guess it depends if you like your only sister. How long did you say it’s been since you’ve seen her?’
Her cheeks turned pinker still: a bright, warm, enchanting pink as blood rushed to her face. But she chose to ignore his insinuation. ‘The Gatehouse, I’ll have you know, is a slice of pure heaven. Like a Swiss chalet, tucked into a forest of snow-dappled gumtrees. A mere short hike to the stunning Cradle Mountain. A hundred beautiful rooms, six gloriously decadent restaurants, a fabulous nightclub, a cinema, a state-of-the-art gym. And don’t even get me started on the suites.’
Her eyes drifted shut and she shuddered. No, it was more like a tremble. It started at her shoulders and shimmied down her form, finishing up at her boot-clad feet, one of which had lifted to tuck in tight behind her opposite calf.
Sensation prickled down his arms, across his abdomen, between his thighs. He could do nothing but stand there, grit his teeth, and hope to high heaven she’d soon be done and he could get away from this crazy pink boudoir before it fried any more of his brain cells.
Hell. Who was this woman, and where had she put his trusty assistant?
If it were not for those wide, wide, frank pale green eyes that looked right into his, not the tiniest bit intimidated by his infamy, bull-headedness or insularity, he’d be wondering if he was in the right apartment.
That would teach him to try and do something nice for somebody else. Another lesson learnt.
Her foot slid down her calf, and as though nothing had happened she went back to the pile of papers.
‘Okay,’ she said. ‘I think we can safely assume Sonja will survive till Tuesday.’ She ruffled a hand through her hair, and it ended up looking even more loose and carefree and sexy as hell. ‘I’m ready.’
She ruffled a hand through her hair, and it ended up looking even more loose and carefree, and sexy as hell.
His hands grew restless, as if he wasn’t quite sure where to put them. As if they wanted to go somewhere his brain knew they ought not.
So he gave them a job and grabbed the handle of her suitcase. One yank and his stomach muscles clenched. ‘What did you pack in here? Bricks?’
A hand slunk to her hip, buried somewhere deep beneath acres of grey wool, temptingly hiding more than they revealed.
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I have filled the bag with bricks—not, as one might assume, a long weekend’s worth of clothes, shoes and under-things that will take me from day to night, PJs to wedding formal. Have you never been to a wedding before?’
‘Never.’
‘Wow. I’m not sure if you’ve missed out or if you’re truly the luckiest man alive. While you’re trekking through some of the most beautiful scenery in the world—bar Tasmania’s, of course—I’ll be changing outfits more times than a pop singer in a film clip.’
Bradley closed his eyes to stop the vision that throwaway comment brought forth before it could fully manifest itself inside his head.
‘Car’s downstairs,’ he growled, hefting the bag out through her front door. ‘Be there in five minutes or your—’
Underthings that will take you from day to night.
‘Your gear and I will be gone without you.’
‘Okey-dokey.’
With a dismissive wave over her shoulder she went looking for Sonja to say her goodbyes.
Feeling oddly as if a small pair of hands had just unclenched themselves from the front of his shirt, Bradley was out of that door and away from all that soft velvet, stifling frills and froufrou pink that had clearly been chosen specifically in order to scramble a man’s brains.
To the airport, up in the plane, drop her off, thanks gifted—and then to New Zealand he and his research crew would go. He, his research cre
w, and a juvenile intern who could spend half the day discussing ‘underthings’ and not affect his blood pressure in the slightest.
CHAPTER THREE
HANNAH stood in the doorway of the Gulf-stream jet.
Place? Launceston, Tasmania.
Time of arrival? Mid-morning.
Temperature? Freezing.
She breathed in the crisp wintry air though her nose. Boy, did it smell amazing. Soft, green, untainted. She could actually hear birds singing. And the sky was so clear and blue it hurt her eyes. A small smile crept into the corners of her mouth.
She hadn’t been sure how she’d feel, stepping foot back on Tassie soil after such a long time in Melbourne. How parochial the place would feel in comparison with her bustling cosmopolitan base.
It felt like home.
A deep voice behind her said, ‘What? No “welcome home” banner? No marching band?’
‘Oh, Lord,’ she said as she jumped. Then, ‘I’m going, I’m going! You can get on your way. Go back inside. It’s freezing.’
‘I’m a big boy. I can handle the cold.’ Bradley threw the last of a bag of macadamia nuts into his mouth as he looked over her shoulder. ‘So this is Tasmania.’
She looked out over Launceston International Airport. One simple flat-roofed building sat on the edge of acres of pocked grey Tarmac. A light drizzle thickened the cold air. Patches of old snow lay scattered in pockets of shade, while the rest of the ground was covered in little melted puddles.
As far as first impressions went it was hardly going to ring Bradley’s adventure-savvy bell.
‘No,’ she said, ‘this is an airport. Tasmania is the hidden wonder beyond.’
‘Get a move on, then. I don’t have all day.’
She shook her head. ‘Sorry. Of course. Thanks. For the lift. But, please, I don’t need one back. I’ll see you Tuesday.’
With that she gave him a short wave, before jogging down the stairs—only to see the pilot had her bags plonked on the Tarmac next to another set of luggage that looked distinctly like Bradley’s.
