Wear My Ring: The Secret Wedding Dress / The Millionaire's Marriage Claim

‘His father, then?’ Paige pressed. ‘No? His father’s best friend’s war buddy’s pet llama?’

And whether it was the fact that she was apparently willing to suffocate them both before giving up, or the way she looked so soft and smudged in her pretty bare feet and his big jacket, Gabe gave up something he’d never even shared with Nate. ‘My father’s mother was a Gabriella.’

It was a small confidence, but the surrendering of it was felt. He was more than surprised when places inside him seemed to shift to accommodate the newfound space.

Paige’s knee stopped mid-swing and her bottom lip tucked between her teeth, probably to stop herself from grinning at his namesake, but he didn’t much care. The sheen her teeth left in their wake brought on a blood rush of attraction with a vengeance. Screw it. If he was going to die here, he might as well die smiling. Eyes locked onto her mouth, he ambled her way.

She asked, ‘This was the grandmother who made sure your Doris Day knowledge was up to snuff?’

‘Amongst other things. Gabriel had come through several generations, and Gran had no brothers, so …’

‘So not a girlie name, then.’

‘Not.’ He lifted his eyes to hers, to find them darkened. As if she knew exactly what she did to his blood. And his nerves. And the tempo of his breaths. So long as she never realised she had the ability to shake things loose inside him as well.

She shook a lock of hair from her face and the knot tumbled free over one shoulder. ‘Well, I think it’s … sweet.’

‘Do you, now?’

‘Sweet as pie. Sweeter than how my name came about.’ She laughed, but there was no humour in it. And when she frowned and looked down at her bare toes curling and uncurling against the floor Gabe stopped in his tracks.

He wasn’t adept at deep and meaningfuls. In fact they had the tendency to bring him out in hives. But stuck in the lift, their personal space overlapping, it simply felt decent to ask. ‘How’s that?’

Several beats pulsed between them before she flicked her hair from her eyes again and said, ‘Dad was a cricketer. International. Away eighty per cent of the year. Mum figured he’d be away when I was born—which he was. So, in an effort to include him in my birth, she gave him the job of naming me. Carte blanche.’

Her voice was even, but he felt the cool in her as she spoke. Saw the chips of ice in her warm blue eyes. They echoed inside him, banging painfully against the raw edges of the new space there.

‘Want to know who I was named after?’ Paige’s shoulders lifted as she wrapped her arms tighter around herself, and flicked her hair again.

‘More than life itself.’

She laughed even as she frowned at herself for doing so, the husky sound washing over his skin like waves of warmth. ‘The maid who’d turned down his bed at the hotel when he’d got the phone call.’

God. What a prick. Instinct had Gabe wanting to run his thumb across the vertical lines above her nose. Circumspection had him pressing his feet hard into the floor.

She tucked the wayward lock behind her ear. ‘I think Mum had been hoping to rouse some kind of connection in him. Hoping it would encourage him home more. To us.’

‘Did it work?’

Her smile remained, only now it was bittersweet. ‘Not so much. He cheated any chance he got, and she scrubbed the kitchen till it shone. Until one day she had enough, and asked for a divorce. He had the gall to be shocked. And even while she took him for plenty, he left her broken.’ She shook out her shoulders, and scraped her teeth along her tongue as if trying to get rid of a bad taste in her mouth. ‘Anyway. Bygones.’

Bygones, Gabe thought. Things we pretend don’t matter any more. But sweeping them under the rug only creates a lump to be tripped over time and again. He pushed the thought away.

‘Do you see him much? Your dad?’

‘Never. Mum and I are pretty close, though. She’s a good woman, way more forgiving than I could ever be. Yours?’

He should have seen it coming, but he’d been concentrating so hard on Paige the question came out of left field. And he was caught, looking into her big blue bedroom eyes, all liquid, hurting, wanting, patient.

He could practically feel his heart beating in his neck as the words spilled from his lips. ‘They died when I was young. My gran raised me.’

‘Gran Gabriella,’ she said, nodding, even smiling a little, as if the pieces of him slipped into place.

‘She was an amazing woman. Tough. Stubborn. Thank God too. I was a wild kid. Impatient. First to climb the tree. Fastest to the top of the hill. She had a choice to either let me go feral or guide me with a firm hand. All of my focus I owe to her.’

‘Is she in Melbourne still?’

‘She passed several years back. Right about the time my career took off. It broke my heart that she wasn’t around to see it.’ As he breathed out he felt another shift, this one so significant he could practically feel air swirling inside him in the place where he’d harboured that regret for so long.

Paige’s next breath out was long and slow, as if she too was letting things go. He could have kissed her for leaving it there. Hell, he could have kissed her either way. Her hair falling in wisps about her face. Her lips pink from the nibbling.

‘Paige—’ he said, but that was all that came as he wasn’t sure what he wanted to say.

He actually shook his head at the realisation that she’d rendered him speechless. The rainmaker. The silver-tongued seducer of innocent creatives.

No matter the mistakes he’d made in his life, he’d done something right for her to have come into his life at the right moment. This woman who’d looked so relieved earlier when he’d reiterated that he’d be leaving soon, that their affair had a use-by date, even he’d been a little taken aback. Until he’d given himself a swift mental slap.

Paige was warm, sexy, astute, and gorgeous as all get out, but there was a limit to what he could offer. It was a good thing that he’d been forced to remember what a destructive illusion feeling for someone could be. He’d remember with even more biting clarity once he was no longer surrounded by air that smelled so thickly of warm, soft, edible, feminine skin.

He stepped forward and placed his hands on her upper arms. Her warmth seeped from the fabric of his too-big jacket into his skin. Her delicious scent curled beneath his nose. Her big blue eyes looked unblinking into his as her chest rose high and fell hard.

Yes, he thought. That. The touchy-feely stuff had made him feel unexpectedly raw, but it had nothing on pure and simple sexual hunger.

He placed a hand on the wall above her head, and heat arched through him as her lips parted, soft and moist and practically begging for his kiss.

When she licked her lips, and tilted her head, the wanting that swept through him was thick and consuming. Unrelenting. And limitless, filling all the newly shifted places inside him. He closed his eyes on that thought. Gritted his teeth against the insinuation.

Then at the slide of her hand into the back of his hair, the press of her hips to his groin, the sweet shuddering sigh as her breath whispered across his neck, he thought, Oh, to hell with it—

Then the lights flickered. And the lift began to move.

The lift binged, the doors opened, and Paige knew that if she snapped her eyes left she’d see the silver wallpaper of the eighth floor. But she couldn’t snap her eyes any which way, not for all the coffee in Brazil.

Not with Gabe looking at her that way. As if he was looking not at her, but into the very heart of her. She wondered what he saw. If it was a disappointment, all cold and uninviting. Or if it flickered with any of the heat freefalling through her body. If he had any inkling any warmth glowing inside her had been put there by him. She looked away then, and hoped she hadn’t left it too late.

‘We should probably get out of here before the thing changes it mind,’ she said. ‘You’re way too big for me to carry out of here if your claustrophobia gets the better of you.’

‘Funny woman,’ said Gabe, though it was apparently enough to get him to move, as he grabbed a door and ushered her through. Without all that concentrated heat burning a hole right through her, Paige somehow managed to put one foot in front of the other to scoop up her heels and purse and exit the lift.

The recessed lighting made the hallway overly bright to Paige’s eyes, as if she’d spent a year in a cave, not an hour in a perfectly well-lit lift. As if the confidences she and Gabe had shared had all been a crazy dream. She shucked his jacket from her back and held it out to him on the end of a finger. He took it and tucked it over his crooked elbow.

He angled his head towards the ceiling. ‘I’d better head back up, check everyone’s okay. Make sure Nate hasn’t invited everyone to sleep over.’

‘You’re braver than I am.’

‘You kidding? I’m taking the stairs. You?’

She wrapped her arms about herself, missing Gabe’s jacket, missing his nearness. It was enough to have her take a step back as she shook her head. ‘I think I’ve tempted fate enough tonight.’