The Wedding Date. Элли Блейк

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-working, 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.