Celebrity Wedding of the Year

But he knew why. Just like four weeks ago, he couldn’t stop looking at her. Her thick fall of straight black hair, her curvy body, the way she tossed a quick smile over her shoulder, still did things to him he couldn’t say out loud. Not to mention that she still had the sweetest butt he’d ever laid eyes on. Why couldn’t she have put on twenty kilos and be all dimpled with cellulite?

“How old was the pizza?”

Her glasses slipped down her nose as she worked around the kitchen—the same glasses that always made him ache to kiss that slightly stubby little nose … and the rest of her … “Huh … what?” He rubbed his forehead. Right. Pizza. Age of pizza. “I’m not sure.”

He reared back when she crouched in front of him, her face filling his line of vision with its little crinkle between her brows that sent a shaft of unwanted tenderness through him. So serious, so practical, and somehow so adorable—and he was the same sucker for her he’d been a decade ago.

“The doctor needs someone to look after him.” She touched his hand, and the whole dizzy-and-inarticulate thing got worse—he was an incoherent wreck. “Coffee will be ready in twenty—along with a decent breakfast. Go shower, shave, and change into something ready for sleep. You know you want to,” she added with a glimmering smile over her shoulder as she stood again and turned back to the kettle.

She really shouldn’t smile like that at a guy with little to no control over his body’s responses. “Thanks.” The word was like a growl. Man, he hoped she thought it was tiredness. Because if she gave him that ol’ cockroach look …

She took his hands and lifted him from the chair. “You’re really exhausted. Go sleep, C.J. Shower and eat when you wake up. We’ll talk later. I’ll still be here.”

“That’s supposed to help me sleep?” he muttered. He lifted a hand when he saw her mouth fall open in obvious surprise. Mia’s open lips acted on him like Mia and bed in one sentence, and he was way too tired for this. “Scratch that. I’m going.”

At the door, memory—and curiosity—returned. “I won’t sleep until I know. How’s Billy—and why are you here? A call would have sent me to visit him.”

She knew that. How many times had she called him in the past, only to see him running? And not only to see Billy, if only she knew it. Any chance to just look at her, to have her smile at him because he’d put himself out for Billy again, gave him a combination of soaring higher than on any medical substance he knew and weeks of frustration, because it never went further than a single smile. He’d lived on her last hug for weeks.

What a sucker.

She turned back from the coffeepot, and gave him the serious look he still adored after all this time. “Dad’s got Hep B.”

C.J. closed his eyes for a second. It didn’t need deciphering—not with Billy’s age and years of body abuse factored in. “He never took the vaccines I recommended?”

She shook her head. “He thought cleaning up his act was good enough. Dad and needles never got on.” Her smile was rueful, accepting.

“What’s he on?” He named the newest wonder-drug for treatment of the disease.

“He’s on all the best cocktails. That’s not the problem. He needs months of total rest—and since his wedding to Nicole …”

Again, he didn’t need things spelled out. He knew all about groupies and media frenzies, which was why he’d left the life after four years.

Not that he regretted his time with the band. He still counted the guys among his closest friends, and his songs and royalties still gave him, his parents and his sister’s family the luxuries in life whenever they wanted them. Not bad for a kid from the second-poorest suburb of Sydney. Auditioning for End Game had changed his life.

“Martin won’t come out yet?” he asked, not really needing her head-shake. “So what can I do?” She wouldn’t be here if she didn’t need something from him. It couldn’t be for his medical skills. Billy had the best.

“I was hoping you’d ask.” The glow in her eyes was relief and hope—and a touch of admiration. She needed him at last … and it acted like a trip switch on him. Yes, Mia, I’ll do whatever you want if you keep looking at me like that!

“Just spill,” he said gruffly, hating the power she still held over him, when she couldn’t care less. “I’ve worked thirty-six hours straight, I’m half-asleep, and this is a serious situation. What do you want?”

“I know it’s serious,” she snapped. “He’s my father!”

His brows rose. Placid Mia hadn’t given him that amused, sort of indulgent look, as if she was removed from the human race and all its over-the-top emotions. She’d snapped back. What was going on here? Despite there being no cure for Hep B, it wasn’t as if Billy would die any time in the next decade, given the quality of treatment these days.

“So …?” he prodded deliberately. “Come on, Mia. We both know you’re not here out of love for me. What do you want?”

To his surprise she blushed, and fiddled with the teaspoon in her hand. The way she worried her lower lip with her teeth made him want to find ways to stop her worrying so much all the time—but everything about Mia got to him. Always had, probably always would. He’d come to terms with it years ago, when she’d made it more than clear that she’d always be off-limits to him.

“Just say it, Mia,” he repeated, more gently this time. “You know I’d do anything to help Billy.”

She drew in a deep breath and smiled that hopeful smile at him again, like he’d become her personal savior.

Bad mistake to unleash that on a tired, aroused man—or maybe it was calculated? Damn, damn, damn. Now he almost wanted the cockroach look back. Anything to stop this crazy tangle of thoughts in his head.

Showers-bed-Mia. Wet and smiling at him …

Then her words soaked into his fogged skull and shock ran right through his body, like someone had used crash cart paddles on him. “What did you say?” He hung onto the door lintel for support.

He’d fallen asleep. That was what it was. He was dreaming of her again.

Then the words came back to him, like a tennis ball rebounding in his face over the net.

“I want you to elope with me.”

CHAPTER TWO

ALL her life Mia had loved peace and silence, but when you were waiting for a man to answer a proposal of marriage it got downright unnerving. C.J. was staring at her as if she was an interesting disease he’d like to cure—if only he could work out what kind.

“Well?” she said—or squeaked—when she couldn’t stand it any more.

He gave her a slow smile. “I’m waiting.”

“For what?” Hadn’t she said enough?

“The rest,” he said patiently. “You never call me unless Billy needs something. You never could stand the sight of me. Even the other week at the wedding you wouldn’t look at me or talk to me. There must be a reason why you picked me to elope with.”

Couldn’t stand the sight of him?

The sight of C.J. Hunter couldn’t revolt any woman. Even in ancient black track pants, a crumpled polo shirt and runners that had seen better days, he was too easy to watch. Lithe and quietly athletic, with a runner’s build instead of a weight-lifter’s, his once shaggy, reddish-brown rocker’s hair was short and dark … and those eyes, deep and green, and his lazy, just crooked smile—

No. The sight of him wasn’t anything she could complain about. She’d always appreciated his looks—what girl couldn’t?—but that was as far as she’d allowed it to go, with her mother’s grim example in front of her all her life.

Okay, so she’d been a bit disapproving of all rock stars. And she’d assumed he’d end up like her dad … but then, she hadn’t known Dad well enough to see that his love for Nicole had governed his behavior for years. She hadn’t known about C.J.’s ambitions for the rest of his life.

The universe was obviously teaching her the stupidity of assuming anything.

“It wasn’t personal.” Her gaze fell from the compelling honesty in his. “I was sixteen when we met. I judged you by the other party animals around me, and not for yourself. I’m sorry if I was rude.”

“You were never openly rude, Mia. Bad manners were beneath you. You just didn’t want to know me. You always kept me at a distance.” He shrugged. “I always want to sing ‘She’s So High Above Me’ when you’re around.”

Despite her best will, she felt the blush creeping up her cheek, but she gave him a straight look, demanding answers. “What’s that got to do with—with—?” She tried to say “my proposal” and hated herself for chickening out. “With what I just said?”

He shrugged, and how he made it look sexy she’d never know. But with C.J., it was another of life’s annoying mysteries. “Why me?”

Now her heart pounded so hard she could almost feel it hitting her throat. Her negotiation skills would never be more needed than now. “It’s to help Dad. I need someone really famous who’s walked from that life. If you’d been a fame-chaser it might have created a stir, but you with your second Grammy the other week, and me with my—” She skidded to a halt. No one apart from Dad, Nicole, Uncle Martin and Uncle Dane knew her secret yet. Though the first book was done, and due for release in a few months, she knew they’d fall all over it if she added a final chapter as Mia Hunter—if she could get C.J. to go along with this caper. “Um, and both of us being on the reclusive side—”

“Instant sensation. Got it—and good thinking,” he said dryly. “It seems my past comes in handy for something. Is that the only reason?”