Wedding Party Collection: Once A Bridesmaid.... Avril Tremayne

For now she would stop thinking about Leo’s horrible childhood and concentrate on the wedding reception. Not that Jon deserved to have her fussing over it after that email, but...well, she loved Jon. And she was going to make the bastard’s wedding reception perfect if it killed her.

      While she sat in the café, disgruntled, sipping a coffee she didn’t even want, she scanned the checklist. Having the function at South was brilliant, but it did add an extra task: finding accommodation for people who wouldn’t want to drive back to Sydney. She figured they would need two options—cheap and cheerful, and sumptuous luxury. If she could get it sorted quickly, hotel booking details could be sent out with the invitations. She was sure Leo wouldn’t want to traipse through hotels with her, so she would shoot down the coast herself and just keep him in the loop via email.

      Right. The next urgent thing on the list was what Leo was wearing.

      At least it was urgent from her perspective, because his shoe design hinged on it. And so did her outfit.

      She was dying to wear her new 1930s-style dress in platinum charmeuse. It looked almost molten. Hugging her curves—all right, a little dieting might be required—in an elegantly simple torso wrap before tumbling in an understated swirl to the ground. It even had a divine little train. And she could wear her adorable gunmetal satin peep-toes with the retro crystal buckles.

      But there was no good glamming to the hilt if Leo was going to play it down. And so far, aside from his pristine chef’s whites, she hadn’t seen an inclination for dressing up. Just jeans, T-shirts, sweaters. Good shoes, but well-worn and casual.

      She heard a roar, and a second later a motorbike—it had to be his—pulled up outside the restaurant. One economical swing of his leg and he was off, reefing his helmet from his head.

      Her heart jumped into her throat and her stomach whooshed.

      Nope.

      This was not going to work.

      She couldn’t think about clothes or shoes or hotels when he was still riding that damned bike. She was going to have talk to him about it. Again. And again and again. Until he got rid of it.

      She straightened her spine and set her jaw. She was not to going to spend the next seven weeks dreading his death on the road! She stashed the wedding folder into her briefcase, threw some money on the table and exited the café.

      * * *

      Leo saw Sunshine the moment she stepped onto the footpath, his eyes snap-locking on to her from across the road. She looked good, as usual, wearing a winter green skirt suit that fitted her as snugly as the skin on a peach, and high-heeled chocolate-brown pumps.

      ‘Leo, I have to talk to you,’ she said.

      He waited for that smacking kiss to land on his cheek.

      But his cheek remained unsullied. She was clearly agitated—too agitated to bother with the kiss.

      Well, good, he thought savagely. She should be agitated after last night. He certainly was.

      ‘Yep, that was the plan,’ Leo said, and unlocked the door.

      Sunshine was practically humming with impatience as he relocked the door and escorted her to a table in the middle of the restaurant.

      ‘I’ll just check the kitchen and I’ll be back,’ he said, and almost smiled at the way her face pinched. Yeah, cool your jets, Sunshine Smart-Ass, because you are not in control here.

      Not that that he was necessarily in control himself, but she didn’t have to know that he hadn’t been able to think straight since last night—let alone make a decision on her offer of three more pulse-ricocheting bouts of sex.

      He was a man—ergo, it was an attractive proposition. But sex just for the sake of sex? Well, not to be arrogant, but he had his pick of scores of women if that was all he wanted. All right, the sex last night had been fairly spectacular, although hardly his most selfless performance, but it was still a commodity in abundant supply.

      So, did he want more than sex from Sunshine?

      Even as the question darted into his head he rejected it with a big hell no.

      He didn’t like perky and he didn’t like breezy. Perky and breezy—AKA Sunshine Smart—were synonyms for negligent in his book. Choosing the shallows over the depths, wallowing in the past instead of confronting life head-on, the whole sex-only mantra. That kind of devil-may-care irresponsibility described his deadbeat parents, who’d not only offered up their bodies and any scrap of dignity for a quick score, but had been so hopeless they’d dropped dead of overdoses within days of each other, orphaning two sons.

      Okay, the ‘poor little orphans’ bit was overcooked, because he and Caleb had stopped relying on them years before their deaths—but the principle remained.

      So, no—he did not want more than sex from Sunshine.

      And he didn’t need just sex from her either.

      All he needed from cheery, perky, breezy, ditzy Sunshine Smart was a hassle-free seven weeks of wedding preparations, after which he would set his compass and sail on.

      Pretty clear, then.

      Decision made.

      Sex was off the table.

      And the couch. And the bed. And wherever else she’d been planning on frying his gonads.

      And he would enjoy telling her. Quickly—because he’d made this decision several times throughout the day, then gone back to re-mulling the options, and enough was enough.

      But when he sat down across from Sunshine, all primed to give her the news, she forestalled him by saying urgently, ‘Leo, you need to get rid of that motorbike. It’s too dangerous.’

      He took a moment to switch gears because he hadn’t been expecting that. Sex, yes. Clothes, yes. Shoes, fine. But not the motorbike again.

      ‘Yes, well, as it’s my body on it, you can safely leave the decision about my transportation to me.’

      ‘There’s no “safely” about it.’

      He looked at her closely, saw that there was nothing cheery-perky-breezy-ditzy in her face.

      ‘Whoa,’ he said. ‘Let’s take a step back. What’s really behind this?’

      ‘I want you to be alive for the wedding—that’s all.’

      ‘That’s not all, Sunshine. Tell me, or this discussion is over.’

      She dashed a hand across her fringe, pushing it aside impatiently. Looked at him, hard and bright and on edge, and then, ‘My sister,’ exploded from her mouth.

      Leo waited. His hands had clenched into fists. Because he wanted to touch her again. He felt a little trickle of something suspiciously like fear shiver down his spine.

      ‘You may think it’s none of my business—and it’s not, strictly speaking,’ she said. ‘But it’s not my way to stand aside and not say or do something when death is staring someone in the face. How could I live with myself if I didn’t interfere and then something happened to you?’

      ‘And you go around giving this lecture to everyone on a motorbike?’

      ‘No, of course not—only to people I...’ She faltered there. ‘People I...know,’ she finished lamely, putting up her chin.

      Leo considered her for a long moment. Not buying it. ‘Your sister. I want the whole story. I assumed...an illness. Wrong, obviously. I should have asked.’

      ‘I didn’t want you to ask. I didn’t let you ask. Because to talk about that...to you, with your bike...it would have been a link. And I couldn’t... But now...’ Pause...deep breath while she gathered herself together. ‘Sorry. I’m not making sense. I’ll be clearer. Moonbeam had a motorbike. She crashed and she died. I was on the back and I survived. We were the cliché identical twins—inseparable.