The Wedding Date

Still on the clock, she turned her concentration back to the woman who might as well have had her boss at knife-point he was sitting so eerily still.

She scraped her chair back and intervened, before Bradley managed to perform the first ever case of human osmosis and disappeared through the holes in his wrought-iron chair.

The woman only noticed her existence when Hannah slung an arm around her shoulders and none too gently eased her to the kerb.

‘Do you know him?’ the woman asked, breathless.

Glancing back at Bradley, Hannah felt her inner imp take over. Leaning in, she murmured, ‘I’ve seen the inside of his fridge. It’s frighteningly clean.’

The woman’s still glittering eyes widened, and she finally focussed fully on Hannah. She was very thorough in her perusal of the kinks that always managed to appear in Hannah’s straightened hair by that time of the afternoon. The countless creases in her designer dress. The chunky man’s diving watch hanging loosely around her thin wrist. The cowboy boots poking out from beneath it all.

Then the woman smiled.

With a none too comfortable flash of realisation it hit Hannah that she was being compared unfavourably to the daughter who never got off the couch. Her inner imp limped back into hiding.

Eight hours earlier she’d looked the epitome of personal assistant to Australia’s most successful television producer—even despite the little odes to her tomboy roots. You could take the girl out of small-town Tasmania, but.

But she didn’t say any of that. With a shrug she admitted, ‘I’m Mr Knight’s personal assistant.’

‘Oh.’ The woman nodded, as if that made so much more sense than a man like him choosing to spend time with her—because when he said jump, she knew how high without even having to ask.

After a little more chat, Hannah turned the woman in the opposite direction, gave her a little push and waved goodbye as, like a zombie, she trudged away down the street.

She brushed off her hands. Another job well done. Then she turned, hands on hips, to find Bradley running long fingers beneath his eyes, sliding his sunglasses almost high enough to offer a teasing glimpse of the arresting silvery-grey eyes beneath. But not quite.

Then slowly, achingly slowly, his rigid body began to unclench. Muscle by hard-earned muscle, limb by long, strong limb, down his considerable length until his legs slid under the table and his large shoes poked lazily out at the other side.

The apparent languor was all an act. The effort of a private man to restrain whatever it was that drew people to him like moths to a flame. Unfortunately for him it only made the restrained power seething inside him more obvious. More compelling. A familiar sweep of sensation skipped blithely across her skin again—a soft, melty, pulsing feeling.

Even the fact that she knew she was about to bear the brunt of the dark mood he’d be in after the one-way love-in didn’t make her immune.

At least it hadn’t yet.

Time was what she needed. Time and space, so that the boundaries of her life weren’t defined by the monstrous number of hours she spent deep inside Bradley’s overwhelming creative vision. Thanks heavens for the long weekend!

Actually, time, space and meeting a guy would do it for sure. A guy who might actually stand a chance in hell of feeling that way about her.

He was out there. Somewhere. She was sure of it. He had to be. Because she absolutely wasn’t going to settle for anything less than everything. She’d seen first-hand what ‘settling’ looked like in the first of the three marriages her mother had leapt into after her father passed away. It wasn’t pretty. In fact it was downright sordid. That wasn’t going to be her life.

She blinked as her boss’s beautifully chiselled face came into such sharp focus her breath caught in her throat. He was something. But any woman who hoped in Bradley Knight’s direction was asking for heartache. Many had tried. Many more yet would. But nobody on earth would topple that mountain.

She grabbed the wayward swathe of hair flickering across her face and tucked it behind her ear, plastered a smile across her face, and bounded back to the table. Bradley didn’t look up. Didn’t even flicker a lash. He probably hadn’t even realised she’d left.

‘Wasn’t she a lovely lady?’ Hannah sing-songed. ‘We’re sending her daughter a signed copy of last season’s Voyagers.‘

‘Why me?’ Bradley asked, still looking into the distance.

She knew he wasn’t talking about posting a DVD. ‘You were just born lucky,’ she said wryly.

‘You think I’m lucky?’ he asked.

‘Ooh, yeah. Fairies sprinkled fortune dust on your cradle as you slept. Why else do you think you’ve been so ridiculously successful at everything you’ve ever set your heart on?’

His head swung her way. Even with the dark sunglasses between them, the force of his undivided attention was like a thunderclap. Her heart-rate quadrupled in response.

His voice was a touch deeper when he said, ‘So, in your eyes, my life has nothing to do with hard work, persistence, and knowing just enough about man’s primal need to prove himself as a man?’

Hannah tapped a finger on her chin and took a few seconds to damp down her own latent needs as she looked up at the cloudy blue sky. Then she said, ‘Nah.’

The appreciative rumble of his laughter danced across her nerves, creating a whole new wave of warmth cascading through her. Enjoying him from the other side of the mile-high walls he wore like a second skin was imprudent enough. Enduring the bombardment of his personal attention was a whole other battle.

‘If you really want to know why you are so lucky, give that lady’s daughter a call. Take her to dinner. Ask her yourself.’ She waved the piece of paper with the woman’s address and phone number on it. ‘Talk about a PR windfall. “Bradley Knight dates fan. Falls in love. Moves to suburbs. Coaches little league team. Learns to cook lamb roast.”’

She could sense his eyes narrowing behind his sunglasses. He then took his sweet time sitting upright. He managed to make the move appear leisurely—inconsequential, even—but the constrained power pulsing through every limb, every digit, every hair was patently clear to anyone with half an instinct. She could feel the blood pumping through her veins.

‘At this moment,’ he said, his voice a deep, dark warning, ‘I am so very, very glad you are my assistant and not in charge of PR.’

Hannah slid the paper into her overstuffed leather diary and said, ‘Yeah, me too. I’m not sure there’s enough money in the world that could tempt me to take on a job whereby I’d have to spend my days trying to convince the world how wonderful you are. I mean, I work hard now—but come on …’

Frown lines appeared above his glasses as he leaned across the table till his forearms covered half the thing. He was so big he blocked out the sun—a massive shadow of a man, with a golden halo outlining his bulk.

Hannah’s fingertips were within touching distance of his. She could feel every single hair on her arms stand to attention one by delicious one. Her feet were tucked so far under her chair—so as to not accidentally scrape against his—she was getting a cramp.

‘Aren’t we in a strange mood today?’ he asked.

His voice was quiet, dropping so very low, and so very much only for her ears she felt it hum in the backs of her knees.

He tilted his chin in her direction. ‘What gives?’

And then he slid his sunglasses from his eyes. Smoky grey they were—or quicksilver—entirely depending on his mood. In that moment they were so dark the colour was impenetrable.

The man was such a workaholic he never looked to her without a dozen instructions ready to be barked. But in that moment he just looked at her. And waited. Hannah’s throat turned to ash.

‘What gives,’ another voice shot back, ‘is that our Hannah’s mind is already turned to a weekend of debauchery and certain nookie.’

Hannah flinched so hard at the sudden intrusion she bit her lip.

Yet through the stinging pain, for a split second, she was almost sure she saw a flicker of something that looked a heck of a lot like disappointment flash across Bradley’s face. Then his eyes lowered to her swollen lip, which she was lapping at with her tongue.

Then, as though she had been imagining the whole thing, he glanced away, leaned back, and turned to the owner of that last gem of a comment.

‘Sonja,’ he drawled. ‘Nice of you to show up.’

‘Pleasure,’ Sonja said.

‘Perfect timing,’ Hannah added, her voice breathier than she would have hoped. ‘Bradley was just about to offer me your job.’

Sonja didn’t even flinch, but the flicker of amusement in Bradley’s cheek made her feel warm all over. She shut down her smile before it took hold. Not only was Sonja Bradley’s PR guru, she was also Hannah’s flatmate. And the only reason she knew how to use a blowdryer and had access to the kind of non-jeans-and-T-shirt-type clothes that filled her closet.