Best Man And The Runaway Bride

She bit her tongue to stop herself from offering to help him choose a style that suited him. Not a good idea.

Instead she gave impersonal advice. ‘There are a few shops selling hats up on the main street. Well, it’s the only street, really.’

‘I saw a place that seemed to sell everything including hats near the warung where I plan to have lunch.’

‘You’re having lunch here? I was going to have lunch in the village as well. I like to have a change from eating in Frangipani Bay.’

They fell suddenly, awkwardly silent. Nikki looked up into his blue, blue eyes. She was aware of the gentle swishing of the water on the sand. People from the boats calling to each other in Indonesian. Laughter that would soon turn to squeals from the tourists decked out in orange life jackets climbing aboard the banana float that would be towed out to sea at speed by a small boat.

The words hung unspoken between them. Why not have lunch together?

When she finally spoke she knew her words were tumbling over each other too fast. ‘Obviously that plan is out the window. I’ll go straight back to Big Blue and grab a bite there. But I have a favourite café here. Excellent food. You must try it. I’ll tell you the name.’

He frowned. ‘Why should you miss your lunch? You go to your café. If my warung is too close, I’ll find another one. I’m sure it’s not the only one serving nasi goreng.’

Again the nervous giggle. What was wrong with her? ‘It most certainly wouldn’t be the only one. Nasi goreng and mie goreng are probably the most commonly served meals on the island.’

‘What’s the difference?’ he asked.

‘Nasi goreng is a spicy fried rice served with vegetables and maybe prawns or chicken and usually an egg. But then you know that as you’ve already tried it. Mie goreng is fried noodles made in a similar way. I actually prefer it.’

‘Do you speak Indonesian?’

‘A little. Quite a lot, actually. Maya taught me when we were at school. I’m much better at it than I was when I first arrived.’ Well, that was stating the obvious. ‘There are differences in Balinese and Lembongan, of course. You won’t need to worry. Everyone dealing with visitors speaks English. They learn it in school.’

If Max thought she was gabbling he didn’t show it. Again that slow, lazy smile. ‘That’s useful to know. I wish—’

‘You wish what?’

Time seemed to stop as he looked down into her face. ‘You could be my guide to all things Lembongan,’ he said slowly.

A dangerous thrill of anticipation shot through her. She would like that very much. ‘But that can’t be,’ she said, stamping down firmly on that feeling.

‘I know,’ he said, regret underscoring his words.

‘We both know we can’t spend time together. Not if we don’t want to risk ending up sharing headlines again. I don’t think I could deal with a new onslaught of that kind of attention.’

‘If we had met under different circumstances, if we were different people, perhaps—’ She felt her heartbeat trip up a gear. What was he saying?

‘Perhaps?’

‘It would be a different story,’ he said abruptly. Nikki wasn’t sure that was what he had intended to end his perhaps with but there was little point in pursuing it. It was enough to know that the spark of interest wasn’t completely one-sided. Not that she could do anything about it.

‘So how should we handle this, Maxwell James? Pretend we don’t know each other?’

‘That could work,’ he said.

‘We’ll make it work,’ she said. ‘We’ll have to take Maya and Kadek into our confidence. She was there on the church steps. She saw it all.’

His eyes narrowed. ‘Can you trust her?’

‘Absolutely without question,’ she said. She took a deep breath, took a step back from him. ‘We need to start as we mean to continue. You go your way and I go mine. Strangers who happened to chat with each other on the beach about the difference between fried rice and fried noodles.’

‘Yes,’ he said. Was that regret shadowing his eyes? Or just the reflection of her own feelings?

‘How did you get here to the village?’ she asked.

‘I rode one of the hotel’s mountain bikes.’

‘That was brave of you. The roads in some places are more potholes than surface and there doesn’t seem to be much in the way of road rules.’

‘I noticed,’ he said in the understated way she was beginning to appreciate. ‘You?’

‘The hotel truck will come to pick me up when I’m ready.’

‘The troop carrier?’

She smiled. ‘That’s one way of describing the taxis here.’

Transport on the island comprised mainly open-backed trucks where the passengers sat facing each other on parallel benches in the back. No seat belts. No safety rules like back home. It had taken some getting used to. But the drivers were considerate and courteous. And now Nikki never gave the fact she could be risking her life every time she climbed on board a second thought. That was how you lived here and there was a certain freedom to it that she liked. There were different risks and perils back in Sydney.

She reached down to pick up her backpack from where it rested on the sand. Max leaned down at the same time. ‘Let me carry that for you.’ Their hands brushed just for a moment as he reached for the strap but long enough for that same electric feeling that had tingled through her when he’d carried her over the threshold. She snatched her backpack back to her.

‘That’s very chivalrous of you. Again. But to see you carrying my bag might kind of give the game away, mightn’t it?’

‘I get that,’ he said. ‘But it goes against the grain to let you lift that heavy pack.’

‘Must be your rural upbringing,’ she said. It was part of the Max Conway mythology that he’d started playing tennis on a rundown community court in a tiny town in the central west of New South Wales.

‘There’s that. But I grew up seeing my father treat my mother well. He would have done that wherever we lived.’

‘How refreshing,’ she said, unable to suppress the note of bitterness from her voice. She seemed to have spent a good deal of her twenty-nine years around men for whom treating women well was not a priority. Like her father—now divorced from wife number three. Like her cheating high-school boyfriend with whom she’d wasted way too many years in a roller coaster of a relationship. And then there was Abominable Alan.

‘It’s not always appreciated,’ he said. Nikki remembered that as part of the ‘best man betrayal’ frenzy, one of the big women’s magazines had run an interview with Max’s hometown girlfriend who had nursed a grudge against him. Just another in a line of ‘love cheat’ stories about him.

‘Trust me, I would appreciate it,’ she said with rather too much fervour. ‘But I’ve been looking after myself for a long time and am quite okay about carrying my own backpack.’

She picked up the bag and heaved it onto her back. It would have been crass to shrug off his help with getting the straps in place across her back. Even if she did have to grit her teeth against the pleasurable warmth of his touch through the fine cotton fabric of her top.

‘Feel okay?’ he asked as he adjusted the strap.

‘Fine,’ she said as nonchalantly as she could manage with the sensation of his fingers so close to her skin. It wasn’t the balance of the backpack that felt fine but his touch. ‘It’s not very heavy, anyway.’

She straightened her shoulders. ‘Now you need to go your way and I need to go mine. You head off up the alley through those two shops. It will take you onto the street. The café I like is to the right, so you turn to the left. About six shops down there’s a great little warung serving Balinese food.’

‘Hey, that’s the place I was heading for with the great nasi goreng. Seems you know what pleases me.’

‘Just a lucky guess,’ she said, flustered by his tone, not wanting to meet his gaze.