A Groom For The Taking: The Wedding Date

‘We’ve monopolised her terribly,’ Virginia said, blinking at him coquettishly over a glass of champagne—clearly not her first.

Through clenched teeth Hannah said, ‘Virginia’s been telling Roger all about my lack of flair for any of the Young Tasmanian pageant sections she aced as a kid.’

‘Has she, now?’ Bradley asked, frowning at Virginia. It didn’t make a dent.

It seemed it would take more than his presence to give Hannah the upper hand. All he could think of for her to do was the same thing he’d done in order to shake off the shackles of his own mother’s disappointment. Prove to her, himself and the world that it didn’t matter.

‘On that note,’ he said, ‘did you forget we’re up next?’

‘Up?’

‘Karaoke.’

‘But I thought you couldn’t sing,’ Roger said.

‘I can’t,’ Hannah said, hand to her heart, eyes all but popping from her head.

‘She’s not kidding. She really can’t.’ That was Virginia.

Having seen enough, he reached in, took Hannah by the hand and dragged her from the local axis of evil. He shot them a little over-the-shoulder wave before he took their plaything away.

He skirted his way through the crowd in silence. Hannah kept close, tucking in behind him when things became overly cramped. Her small hand in his felt good. Really good.

‘Maid of honour business all finished?’ he asked, his voice gruff.

‘It is, thank you,’ she said stiffly. ‘Now where are you taking me?’

‘I said we were going to sing, so now we have to sing.’

Suddenly his arm was almost yanked from its socket. He spun to find she’d dug in her heels and was refusing to budge.

He glanced towards the cocktail lounge. ‘It we don’t they’ll just think it was a dodgy excuse for you to ditch them.’

‘Wasn’t it?’

‘Only if you’re happy with them thinking so.’

Two little frown lines appeared above her nose, and she nibbled at her full lower lip. He found himself staring. Imagining. Planning.

Finally she shook her head. ‘But I really can’t sing.’

‘Can they?’ He motioned to the wannabe boy band who could barely slur out a sentence yet still had a rapt and voluble audience. ‘Now, pick a song. Something you can recite in your sleep.’

‘Oh, God. This is really happening, isn’t it? Umm. In my dreams when I audition for random TV talent shows I’m always singing something from Grease.’

He felt a grin coming at the thought of such innocent dreams, and struggled to bite it back.

Apparently not well enough. Her face fell. ‘You don’t know Grease, do you? Well, I am not going up there on my own.’

‘You’re safe. I had the biggest crush on Olivia Newton-John when I was a kid.’

The manic tugging relaxed instantly as she gawped at him. He used her moment of distraction to drag her to the edge of the stage.

‘I love it!’ she said, grinning from ear to ear. ‘You used to sing her songs into your mum’s hairbrush, didn’t you? You can tell me. I promise I won’t tell a soul. Well, bar Sonja, of course—and you know how discreet she is.’

She shook her head, her thick dark hair curling over her shoulders—sexy, unbridled, exposing a curve of soft golden skin just below her right ear that was crying out for a set of teeth to sink into it.

He stared at the spot, finding himself wholly distracted by the imagined taste of her spilling into his mouth. Better that than to brood over the fact that somehow he’d promised to leap onto a spotlit stage and in the act of performing beg a crowd of strangers for their superficial devotion.

He took solace in Hannah’s luscious creamy shoulder as he pulled her closer—close enough to lose himself in the last subtle trails of her scent as he whispered in her ear, ‘What the lady wants, the lady gets. Grease it is.’

Then he turned her in his arms and pointed to the stage, looming dark and high in front of them.

Her smile disappeared and she swallowed hard. ‘So we’re really doing this?’

‘One song. Show them that even though you have no flair for pageantry you have pluck to spare.’

‘You think I have pluck?’

He turned away from the stage at the softness in her voice, only to find himself drowning in the heat of her eyes. ‘To spare.’

She blinked at him. Long dark lashes stroked her cheek, creating flutters as he imagined their light graze caressing his skin as she kissed her way up his—

She breathed deep and shook out her hands. ‘Let’s do it. Now. Quick. Before I change my mind.’

He went to move away and she grabbed his hand again. Hers was warm, soft, small—and shaking. Trusting.

Holding on tight, he had a quick word in the ear of the guy in charge of the karaoke lineup, and slipped him a twenty so that they could get this over and done with as soon as humanly possible.

‘Okay,’ she said, bouncing from foot to foot, tipping her head from side to side to ease her neck. Warming up as if she was about to do a triple-jump, not a little show tune. ‘We’ve established that I’m doing this because I’m a cowardly pleaser. But why are you?’

‘When in Rome …’

She shook her head. ‘I’ve worked right by your side for nearly a year now, Bradley. I know you. Putting yourself up there like some piece of meat to be picked over must be akin to torture.’

She was so close to the truth—a truth he had no intention of sharing with her or anyone—he shut his mouth and avoided those big, clear, candid eyes.

‘Fine,’ she said. ‘Don’t tell me. I’ll figure it out eventually.’

And then she smiled. The smile of a woman who knew him. Who cared enough to try to know him. A woman who didn’t care if he knew it too.

Dammit. He was in the middle of a bar without a drink, and if he’d ever needed Dutch courage the time was now.

Lucky for her the thing propelling him forward was his inability to stand by and allow her to be so summarily dismissed. He’d rewritten his story. He wasn’t merely a little orphan boy any more. He was a man who conquered mountains and showed others how to do the same.

What Hannah had yet to realise was that in going up on that stage it wouldn’t matter if she proved her mother right by not holding a tune. What would matter was that her story would no longer be about being her mother’s great disappointment. Her story would be the time she summoned the kind of guts she never knew she had in order to belt out a song at her sister’s fabulous pre-wedding party.

And, in the spirit of watching her back, if he had to endure a little excruciating drama to give that to her, then so be it.