A Wedding At Windaroo

‘Surely you don’t want me snooping around like some kind of private eye?’

Michael lifted his shoulders in a helpless little shrug. ‘She’s a babe in the woods. There are wolves out there.’

‘I’ll cramp her style.’

But Michael had a trump card up his sleeve. ‘I’m a dying old man. Can’t you do this for me?’

Gabe’s eyes narrowed. He’d never realised Michael Delaney was such a crafty old beggar.

‘You’ll promise me this one thing, won’t you, boy?’

Gabe sighed. ‘I don’t know how long I’m going to be in the district—but OK, it’s a deal.’ Then he shot to his feet.

‘Something smells good,’ Michael said. ‘I’m sure our breakfast’s ready.’

But the conversation had curbed Gabe’s appetite. ‘I need to get back home,’ he said. ‘Jonno’s expecting me to give him a hand with some stockyard work today.’

In the kitchen, Piper was carrying toast and butter to the table when she caught sight of her reflection in a battered old mirror that hung near the hat pegs. She gasped at the sight of herself with her hair all wild and loose around her face like a silky halo.

With hardly a thought to where she dumped the toast, she drifted closer to the mirror. How different she looked. For a moment she forgot the embarrassment of her foolish behaviour last night. She was thinking instead of the gentle, caressing way Gabe had threaded his fingers through her hair and the way he’d stroked her skin.

A tide of pink rose from her neck to her cheeks and she looked happy and rosy. Almost glowing—like a computer-enhanced picture in a glossy magazine.

Idiot!

She had nothing to make her smile. Nothing to go all vain and gooey about. How could she have been so stupid as to ask Gabe to kiss her? Gabe, who’d been kissed and seduced by squillions of sexy women.

She swung away from the mirror. Last night had merely reinforced what she already knew. She had a long way to go before she worked out the finer points of catching a man.

Hurrying into the bathroom, she grabbed her hairbrush and set about flattening her hair, then pulled it back tightly with another elasticised band.

One thing was certain. Next time she practised flirting she’d make sure Gabe Rivers was nowhere near.

CHAPTER FOUR

‘IT’S not me. I’m not this sophisticated. I feel strange.’ Piper stood in her grandfather’s bedroom and stared at her reflection in the full-length mirror. What she saw was beyond anything she could have imagined.

‘You look fantastic, darlin’,’ Michael reassured her from the doorway. His smile was so bright it would have glowed in the dark. ‘You look like a princess.’

‘You don’t think I’ve gone too far? I’m showing so much bare skin.’

‘Nonsense. Anyway, your skin’s lovely. It should be seen. You’ll knock ’em dead tonight.’

She turned sideways to check her gown from a different angle and told herself it was too late to back out now; she’d taken the bull by the horns. She was going to the Mullinjim Spring Ball to start her husband-hunt. In earnest.

Knowing she desperately needed help in matters of make-up, hairstyles and ballgowns, she’d followed up an advertisement in the local paper and hired the services of a travelling beauty and grooming consultant. The whole process had been a steep learning curve!

April, the consultant, had been quite definite.

‘White,’ she said. ‘The dark vamp look is so last century. You should certainly wear white. It’s dramatic and it’s classy and you have the perfect youthful complexion for it. Not everyone can wear white successfully, you know.’

It crossed Piper’s mind that a white gown would scream virgin to the entire population, but she held her tongue.

‘And you’re slim and fit, so a tight, low-necked, low-backed gown will be best, to show off your figure and that beautiful pale skin,’ April continued with growing enthusiasm. ‘And your shoulders are so nicely defined you’ll only want the tiniest halterneck strap to hold everything up.’

‘What about…?’ With a grimace, Piper indicated her inadequacies in the chest department.

‘You wait till you see the dress I have in mind. Your curves will be shown off to their best advantage,’ April reassured her, and then she winked. ‘At least you should be grateful you have firm breasts that haven’t started heading south yet. Most women have the opposite problem.’

So the dress had been couriered out from a Cairns boutique, and this afternoon April had attended to the final details of hair and make-up.

‘You need after-dark glamour to bring out your eyes. They’re a pretty blue, but they could look a bit quiet at night, so I’ll apply shadow to define them. And then we’ll add false eyelashes.’

‘Oh, no, we won’t!’ Piper knew when enough was enough. ‘I couldn’t possibly wear false eyelashes.’

‘You wait till you see the way I do it, ducks. I’m a genius. I cut them and just apply a few extra lashes to your outer lid. It gives you a sexy, long-lash look, but I promise you won’t look like a drag queen.’

Pushing a host of doubts aside, Piper had bravely submitted to the superior knowledge of an expert. Now, as she viewed the results, she had to agree that April was indeed a genius. A very expensive genius, but she was definitely up there with fairy godmothers when it came to transforming tomboys into princesses.

The white gown was a silken dream. It seemed to give Piper’s body a sexy allure she’d never imagined possible. She’d expected to leave her hair down, the way Gabe had suggested, but April had done it in an elegant twist— ‘To show off your neck and shoulders.’

Her face looked amazing. She’d been worried that her eyes would look overly painted, but April’s artwork was subtle. She turned away from the mirror to see Michael regarding her tenderly.

‘I have one last thing that will add the finishing touch to make you look beyond perfect,’ he told her as he stood there with his hands behind his back.

‘What is it?’

With a little boy’s look-at-me-Mum smile, he brought his hands forward. ‘These were Bella’s.’

Piper’s heartbeats quickened. Michael had never before shown her anything that had belonged to her mother apart from photos. Now, sitting in the palm of his old callused hand, she saw elegant earrings—beautiful teardrop pearls suspended from tiny circles of diamonds.

‘Oh, Grandad, they’re gorgeous.’ She threw her arms around him, and the only thing that stopped her from crying was fear that her make-up would run. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘I never knew my mother had such lovely things. But I don’t suppose she was ever a rough and tumble tomboy like me.’

‘Oh, Bella was a tomboy all right,’ Michael said with a wistful smile. ‘Right up until the day Peter O’Malley arrived in our valley and swept her off her feet. Suddenly there was a flurry of buying dresses and fixing hair and you would have been pushed to recognise her. She turned from a sunburnt and dusty jillaroo into a beautiful princess overnight.’

Piper felt a twisting ache around her heart as she thought about her parents falling in love. Her glance darted to her reflection in the mirror.

‘Yes. You look just as suddenly grown-up and pretty as she did, sweetheart. I’ve always known that you’d steal hearts one day. Your sweet blue eyes are exactly like Bella’s and you have a beautiful, proud profile like my Mary’s…and your father’s yellow hair.’

He cupped his hand and tipped it from side to side so that the earrings caught the light and the diamonds sparkled. ‘Peter bought these for Bella to wear on her wedding day. They were married right here at Windaroo, under the jacaranda tree next to the front steps. It was the prettiest wedding you could ever imagine.’

‘Oh, Grandad, don’t make me cry.’

‘Sorry, Piper. I guess seeing you looking so lovely made me nostalgic.’ As he handed her the earrings he grinned. ‘I should warn you that I have a hankering to see another wedding on Windaroo some time soon.’

‘Don’t get your hopes up, old feller,’ she said, shooting him a warning glance.

He chuckled, and then, as if to change the subject, said, ‘Hey, that’s nice man-bait you’re wearing.’