The Secret Wedding Dress

Quitting while she was behind, Paige shut her mouth and made room, plastering herself as far to one side of the small lift as possible. The sooner he got to wherever he was visiting, the better.

Naturally the lift was narrow, complementing the dinky design of the boutique apartment building, and the sizeable stranger seemed to fill every spare inch of space all by himself. Even the bits he didn’t physically invade seemed to pulse with his energy. Every time he breathed in the hairs on Paige’s arms stood on end.

‘What floor?’ he asked.

‘Eighth,’ she said, her voice gravelly as she waggled a finger at the number-eight light that was lit up all hopefully.

The stranger ran a hand across the back of his neck and then the corner of his mouth lifted.

Paige held her breath while her hormones whooped up a series of cat-calls deep in her belly. But it wasn’t a smile. Not officially. Even though it sure hinted at the kinds of eye crinkles that had a habit of turning her knees to water.

‘Long flight,’ he said, his deep voice rumbling through the floor of the lift and all the way up her legs. He lifted one ridiculously broad shoulder over which a leather satchel and a laptop bag hung. ‘Not all here.’

Not all here? Any more of him and Paige would be one with the wall.

When the stranger leaned across to press the button to shut the doors Paige’s skin tingled and tiny pinpricks of sweat tickled down her neck and spine. She breathed in and caught the scent of leather. Of spice. Of fresh chopped wood. Of sea air. Sweat that wasn’t her own.

Outside it was the depth of winter, yet she yanked her scarf away from her neck and thought about ice cream and snowball fights to counteract the certainty that she was about to overheat. Yet something about him, something dark and dangerous dancing in his eyes, in the way her skin hadn’t stopped thrumming from the moment she’d laid eyes on him, made her quite sure, no matter how many snowballs she imagined, it would never be enough.

He pulled back and grunted when the lift didn’t move, and finally Paige’s brain caught up with her hormones. ‘Oh, no, no, no,’ she said, ‘there’s really no need to press that button. Or any button. This lift is completely contrary. It rises and falls as it pleases, with no care at all for—’

With its usual impeccably bad timing, the lift doors slid neatly closed, the box juddered and after an infinitesimal drop it took off. Paige glared in disbelief at the indicator light above the doors, which lit up in actual sequential order as it rose smoothly towards the sky.

Rotten, stinking, little—

‘You were saying?’ the stranger said.

Paige’s eyes cut to his to find humour now well and truly lighting them, creating fiery glints in the dark depths. As if he was about to smile at any second.

Okay, so that deal she’d made earlier to herself, it had been more like a set of guidelines than a promise. What if some pimply sixteen-year-old on a skateboard had smiled first? Or if it had been the guy with the scraggly beard and the rat on his shoulder who walked up and down the Docklands promenade yelling at seagulls? Clearly her deal needed tweaking before it went into official effect.

She lifted a shoulder, trying for nonchalance as she said, ‘This lift has it in for me, clearly. While you, on the other hand, have the touch. Want a job as a lift operator? I’d pay you myself.’

The stranger’s expression warmed. No, burned. As if the temperature of the glint in his eye had turned up a notch.

‘Thanks for the offer,’ he said, ‘but I’m set.’

And had he moved closer? Or merely shifted his weight? Either way the lift suddenly felt smaller. The hairs on the back of Paige’s neck now joining the party as they stood to attention.

‘Oh, well. It was worth a shot.’

When the beautiful bow of his top lip began to soften sideways, Paige smartly turned to watch the display as the floor numbers rolled over all too slowly.

‘You live in the building?’ the stranger asked.

Paige nodded, biting her lip so as not to shiver as that dark velvety voice rolled over her skin in delicious waves.

‘That explains your … relationship with the lift.’

Before she could help herself, her eyes slid back to the stranger, fully expecting to find him looking at her as if she might wig out at any second, as Sam the Super always did when she made a complaint. But the stranger’s gaze was making its way over her hair, the curve of her neck, pausing a beat on her mouth, before coming back to connect, hard, with her eyes.

Her next breath in was long and deep, and once again filled with the scents of spice, and all things deeply masculine. Maybe she wasn’t hallucinating. Perhaps he was a fighter pilot/lumberjack/yachtsman by trade. It could happen.

‘It started out slow,’ she said, sounding as if she’d run a mile in a minute flat, ‘a missed floor here and there. But now it’s all the time. I keep pressing the button knowing it’ll make not a lick of difference, as I refuse to stop hoping it will one day simply start acting like a normal lift. While it won’t stop refusing to be one.’

‘Such friction,’ he said, laughter lighting his eyes. ‘A clash of equal and opposite wills. Like something out of a Doris Day and Rock Hudson flick.’ He glanced at the computerised electronic display of her nemesis. ‘With a sci-fi bent.’

Completely unexpectedly, Paige laughed out loud, the sound bouncing off the walls of the tiny lift. And this time when her eyes snagged back on his they stuck. Such dark eyes he had, drawing her in so deep, so fast, she wouldn’t have noticed if the lift started humming Pillow Talk.

The only explanation she had for her reaction to him was her dating drought. He was so against type. She normally gravitated to men who were so clean cut they were practically transparent. Men who’d not have blinked had she slipped them a dating contract: three nights a week, split checks, no idealistic promises.

Whereas this man was so dark, enigmatic, and diabolically hot every nerve in her body was fighting against every other nerve. His big body that made her palms itch, and his scent that made her want to lean in and bury her face in his neck. ‘Getting back on the horse’ with a man like that would be akin to falling off a Shetland pony at the fair and getting back on a stallion jostling at the starting gate of the Melbourne Cup.

And yet … She wasn’t after a dating contract. She needed a springboard from which to leap back into the dating world. And there he stood, beautiful, sexy, and glinting at her like nobody’s business.

She stuck out a hand. ‘Paige Danforth. Eighth floor.’

‘Gabe Hamilton. Twelfth.’

‘The penthouse?’ she blurted before her tongue could catch up with her brain. That was how addled she was; she hadn’t even noticed which floor he’d pressed. The penthouse had been empty since the day she’d moved in. Meaning … ‘You’re not visiting.’

‘Not.’ How the guy managed to make one word evoke so much she had no idea, but he evoked plenty. The fact that he would be sleeping a mere four floors above her being the meat of it.

‘Renting?’ she asked, and his eye crinkles deepened, making her wonder what she’d evoked without meaning to.

‘Mine,’ he drawled.

Paige nodded sagely, as if they were still talking real estate, not in non-verbal pre-negotiations for something far less dry. ‘I hadn’t heard it had been sold.’

‘It hasn’t. I’ve been away. And now I’m back.’ For how long he didn’t say, but the glint sizzling in his dark eyes and making her feel as if steam were rising from her clothes told her he believed it was long enough.

The lift dinged, as lifts were wont to do—normal lifts, lifts that weren’t demonically possessed—right as she was gaining momentum to do something rash. Rash but necessary.

And then the doors opened.

‘Of course,’ Paige muttered as she recognised her own floor by the dotted silver wallpaper, a Ménage à Moi staple. What could she do but step out?

The back of her hand brushed Gabe’s wrist as she shucked past. The lightest possible touch of skin on skin. When little waves of his energy continued crackling through her as she stepped out into the hall, Paige turned back. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him in for coffee. Or offer to show him the sights of Melbourne. Or any other number of euphemisms for breaking her dating drought.

Then he stifled a yawn.

Like the dawning of the sun it occurred to her that the glint in his eyes had probably been the effect of jet lag the entire time, not some kind of extraordinary instant mutual chemistry between herself and the vision of absolute masculine gorgeousness gracing the lift before her.

If her complexion had been tomato-esque earlier, she’d bet right about then she resembled a fire engine.

Please, she silently begged the lift as they stood facing one another, close now. Just this once. Close.

And it did. The two great silver doors slid serenely towards one another, Gabe’s dark figure growing darker by the second. Until his hand curled around the edge of one door, stopping it in its tracks. Mere mechanics no match for his might.