The Secret Wedding Dress. Ally Blake

men who dared enter it would be at their own peril.

      Not that he needed any such warning. Three seconds after he signed whatever his business partner, Nate, wanted him to sign he’d be on the kerb whistling for a cab to get him back to the airport. Not even the kick of chemistry that had turned the small space of the lift into a travelling hothouse would change that.

      Gabe rehitched his bags, then shoved his hands into the deep pockets of his jacket, closed his eyes and leant back into the corner of the lift. As the memory of where he was, and why he’d left in the first place, pressed against the corners of his mind he shook it off. And, merely because it was better than the alternative, he let his thoughts run to the cool blonde instead.

      About the way she’d nibbled at her full lower lip, as if it tasted so good she couldn’t help herself. And the scent of her that had filled the small space, sweet and sharp and delicious, making his gut tighten like a man who hadn’t eaten in a week. As for the way she’d looked at him as if he was some great inconvenience one moment, and the next as if she wanted nothing more than to eat him up with a spoon …?

      ‘Wow,’ he shot out, eyes flying open, hands gripping the railing that ran hip high along the back of the lift, feet spread wider to combat the sudden sense that his centre of gravity had shifted. The lift had rocked. Hadn’t it? Try as he might he felt nothing but the gentle sway as it rose through the shaft.

      Jet lag, he thought. Or vertigo. He sniffed out a laugh. He had Hitchcock on the brain. The guy was no dummy and was also clearly terrified of cool blondes. Did one thing inform the other? No doubt. If a woman looked like trouble, chances were she’d be trouble. And Gabe was a straight-up guy who preferred his pleasures the same.

      He pulled himself to standing and ran both hands over his face. He needed sleep. Clearly. He imagined his custom-built king-sized bed which a week earlier he’d had shipped back from South America. The deal there was done anyway, and he’d ship it out again the second the next investment opportunity grabbed him. He imagined falling face down in the thing and sleeping for twelve hours straight.

      For some, home was bricks and mortar. For others it was family. For Gabe it was where the work was. And wherever in the world he got wind of an exceptional business idea in need of someone with the guts and means to invest, that was where he sent his bed. And his pillow—flattened to the point he probably didn’t even need the thing. And his mattress with the man-shaped dint right smack bang in the middle that fitted his spreadeagled body to perfection.

      Moments before he fell asleep on his feet the lift deposited him neatly at his floor. Exactly as it was made to do.

      Gabe yawned till his ears popped, fumbled for the keys to the apartment he’d never seen. The apartment he’d bought to shut Nate up, when Nate had maintained he needed a place in Melbourne considering the company they jointly owned was based there.

      He stood in the open doorway. Compared with the bare-bones hotel room that had been home the past few months it was gargantuan, taking up the entire top floor of the building. And yet somehow claustrophobic with its dark colour palette and the huge grey windows along one wall that matched the drizzly grey world outside them.

      ‘Well, Gabe,’ he said to his blurry reflection, ‘you’re certainly not in Rio any more.’

      He slid the carry-on and laptop bags from his shoulder onto the only piece of furniture in the whole room, a long L-shaped black lounge that cut the space in half. Only to be met with a loud ‘Arghuraguragh!’

      Jet lag and/or vertigo gone in an instant, Gabe spun on his heel, fists raised, heart thundering in his chest, to find a man reposing on his couch.

      ‘Nate,’ Gabe said, bent at the waist, hands on his knees as he dragged his breath back to normal. ‘You scared me half to death.’

      Gabe’s best mate and business partner sat up, his hair sticking up at the side of his head. ‘Making sure you got here in one piece.’

      ‘Making sure I arrived at all, more like.’ Gabe stood, cricked his back. ‘Tell me you went one better and filled my fridge.’

      ‘Sorry. Did get doughnuts though. They’re on the bench.’

      Gabe glanced at the familiar white box as he passed it on the way to the silver monolith of a fridge, opening it to find it was empty bar the maker’s instructions. A frisson of disquiet skittered down his spine. If that wasn’t ready …

      He strode across the gargantuan space towards the great double doors he could only assume led to the bedroom, whipped them open to find—

      No bed.

      Swearing beneath his breath, Gabe ran his hand up and down the back of his neck so fast he felt sparks.

      Nate’s hand landed upon his shoulder a half-second before his laughter. ‘Your couch looks a treat but it’s not in the least bit comfortable.’

      ‘You didn’t seem to mind a moment ago,’ Gabe growled.

      ‘I can power-nap anywhere. It’s a gift born of chronic insomnia.’

      Gabe slowly and deliberately shut the bedroom doors, unable to even look at the space where his bed ought to be.

      ‘Hotel?’

      ‘The thought of going back out into that cold is making my teeth ache.’

      ‘I’d offer my couch, but it’s my decorator’s cruel joke. Godawful leather thing with buttons all over it.’

      ‘Thanks, but I’d be afraid I’d catch something.’

      Nate grinned and backed away. ‘I have seen with my own two eyes that you’re here, so my work is done. Catch you at the office Monday. Remember where it is?’

      Gabe’s answer was a flat stare. He was lucky—or unlucky more like—to end up in Melbourne once every two or three years, but he knew where his paychecks came from.

      Nate clicked his fingers as he wavered at the front door. ‘Almost forgot. Need to make a right hullabaloo now you’re back. Housewarming party Friday night.’

      Gabe shook his head. He’d be long gone by Friday. Wouldn’t he?

      ‘Too late,’ said Nate. ‘Already in motion. Alex and some of the old uni gang are coming. A few clients. Some fine women I met walking the promenade just now—’

      ‘Nate—’

      ‘Hey, consider yourself lucky. I’m so giddy you’re here I contemplated dropping flyers from a plane.’

      And then Nate was gone. Leaving Gabe in his dark, cavernous, cold, empty apartment. Alone. The grey mist of Port Phillip Bay closing in on his wall of windows like a swarm of bad memories, pretty much summing up how he felt about the possibility that he might still be there in a week’s time.

      Before he turned into a human icicle, Gabe tracked down the remote for the air-con and cranked it up as hot as it would go.

      He found some bed linen in a closet, then, back in his bedroom doorway, looked glumly at the empty space where his bed ought to be. He stripped down to his smalls and made a pile with blankets and a too big pillow and lay down on the floor, and the second he closed his eyes fatigue dragged him into instant sleep.

      And he dreamt.

      Of a cool feminine hand stroking the hair at the back of his neck, a hot red convertible rumbling beneath his thighs as he eased it masterfully around the precarious roads of a cliff face somewhere in the south of France. When the car pulled into a lookout, the cool owner of the cool hand slid her cool blonde self onto his lap, her sweet sharp scent hitting the back of his mouth a half-second before her tongue followed. Gabe’s dream self thought, Hitchcock, eat your heart out.

      That night at The Brasserie—one of a string of crowded restaurants lining the New Quay Promenade—when Mae told her fiancé, Clint, about Paige’s little purchase, he choked on his food. Literally. A waiter had to give him the Heimlich. They made quite a stir, ending