The Secret Wedding Dress

The sorry truth was, she’d met enough ‘good guys’ who turned out to be jerks in the end anyway. So wouldn’t it be better to know a guy was trouble from the outset? Wouldn’t it be easier to protect herself if she knew up front exactly what she was in for? Wouldn’t it be something to let go and open up to all that sinful, seductive intensity just once?

Her eyes scrunched tight and she stopped pacing.

Despite evidence to the contrary, Gabe Hamilton didn’t seem like a jerk. He seemed … focused. Sexy as all get out. More than a little bit intimidating. And by his own admission, he was only in town for a bit. Which was a plus. Maybe the biggest plus of all. She wasn’t after a relationship with the guy. Just a safe place to dip her toes into the dating pool. A kiss. Maybe a little messing about. Or a good and proper tumble.

She sucked in a deep breath and let it go.

Anyway, she didn’t have to decide that night. She had till Friday at the very least to think about it, so long as they never shared the lift in that time. Not that it had ever done right by her before.

When the lift made its first stop she twirled her hair over one shoulder, stifled a yawn, glanced at the number to check which floor besides the eighth she’d landed on, then realised the lift had taken her to the top. To the penthouse.

She slowly stood to attention, her hands tight on her purse in an attempt to get a grip on the sensual wave rising through her knowing Gabe Hamilton was close. And with everything she had she willed the lift to descend.

But the lift being the lift, the doors slid open, and stayed open, leaving her standing staring into a large dark entrance boasting two shiny black double doors leading to the only apartment on the floor, one of which bumped as the handle twisted.

Paige shrank to the back of the lift, but there was no hiding. Every last wisp of air bled from her lungs as Gabe stepped through the doorway.

He looked up, saw her, and stopped. A muscle worked in his jaw. It was a testament to how her senses were working nineteen to the dozen that she even noticed that tiny movement, considering what the guy was wearing. Or not wearing, to be more precise.

Pyjama bottoms. Long, soft, grey-checked pyjama bottoms. And nothing else. After that it was like a freeway collision inside her head, the way the gorgeous bits of him piled on top of one another. The deep tan that went all over. The large bare feet. The hair, all mussed and rugged. Arms that looked strong enough to lift a small car. A wholly masculine chest with the kind of muscle definition no mere mortal had the right to possess. And a happy trail of dark hair arrowing beneath his pyjama bottoms …

‘Paige?’ he said, his devil-deep voice putting her knees on notice.

‘Hey,’ she croaked back.

‘I heard the lift.’

‘And here it is.’ Going for unflappable, she cocked a hip and waved a hand towards the open doors like a game-show hostess. She failed the moment the heat rising through her body pinked across her cheeks.

A hint of a smile gathered in Gabe’s dark eyes, tilting his gorgeous mouth. ‘Did you want me for something?’

‘Did I want you—? No. No.’ She laughed only slightly hysterically. ‘I was heading home, but the lift, it—’

‘Brought you here of its own accord.’

‘It’s contrary that way.’

‘So you’ve said,’ he said, planting his feet and crossing his arms across his chest, a broad, brown, beautiful mass of rises and falls that brought a flash flood to the desert that had been her mouth.

Paige dragged her eyes to the huge starburst on the ceiling as she said, ‘It’s late and you must have things to do, bags to unpack, sleep to catch up on.’

He slowly shook his head. ‘I’m used to living out of a bag. And for some reason I’m not all that tired right now.’

‘I could be here a while.’

He leaned against the doorjamb. ‘Or you could come in.’

The blood thundered so hard and fast through her she couldn’t be sure she’d heard him right. ‘Come in?’

‘I can tell you everything I know about Brazil.’

Paige blinked. Simply unable to find the words to—

‘And I have doughnuts.’

And at that she laughed. Loud. Nervous energy pouring from her in waves. ‘Well, that’s original. I mean, I’ve been offered “coffee” before of course. Even a good old-fashioned nightcap on occasion. But never doughnuts.’

He watched her, all dark, and leaning and so much man. Her mouth now watering like Niagara Falls, she swallowed again before saying, ‘What is a nightcap anyway? Sounds like it should be one of those Wee Willie Winkie hats with the pompom on the end—’

‘Paige.’

‘I …’ Her eyes slid to his naked chest as if they’d stayed too long away. ‘I feel overdressed for doughnuts.’

‘Only one way to fix that.’

She realised then that he’d moved aside so that the way through his open front door was clear. Inviting.

Her body waved towards the open lift doors, gripped with a desire to step across that threshold and into the arms of one big hot male, but she caught herself at the last second. She couldn’t. Could she? She’d met him that morning, for Pete’s sake. Knew nothing about him other than his name, address and occupation—Okay, so that was pretty standard. As for the way he made her feel—as if she were melting from the inside out—by looking at her?

The lift binged, the doors began to close, and Paige slipped through the gap, the bump and hum of the lift descending without her echoing through her shaking limbs. Other than that the dark foyer was perfectly quiet. No music. Just the sound of her shaky breath sliding past her lips.

She’d have a doughnut. Get to know him a little. Maybe even grab him at the last for a goodnight kiss. She could handle a guy like Gabe for one night if that was what it took to find her dating legs again; legs that wobbled like a marionette’s as she made her way to his door.

She held her breath as she slipped past him but there was no avoiding that complex masculine scent radiating from his warm naked skin.

Inside, the apartment was darker still. When he went towards the raised kitchen, Paige headed in the opposite direction where cloud-shrouded moonlight spilled through the wall of ceiling-to-floor windows. And he hadn’t been lying when he’d said there was nothing to unpack. In fact there wasn’t much of anything at all.

No lamps, only the light of an open laptop on the kitchen bench. No pictures on the walls. Not even a big-screen TV. Just a couch, a long, sleek L-shaped thing that could fit twenty. And it looked out over the stunning water view, as if the inside of the apartment was irrelevant.

Which maybe, to him, it was. In her experience a man who refused to stamp his own personality on a place wasn’t connected to it. Or those living in it with him. Hence the unrestrained frippery of the home she grew up in. If a home was where the heart was, then Gabe Hamilton’s heart was most definitely not in that apartment. Probably not even in her home city. And while in the past that would have been enough to turn her on her heel without looking back, her heart began to race.

‘Not a big fan of decor?’ she asked, glancing across to find him in the raised kitchen where a single muted down-light now played over his naked torso, making the absolute most of his warm brown skin. He loomed over a huge white box that did, in fact, contain doughnuts. ‘Or furnishings in general?’

He looked around as if he hadn’t noticed how bare the place was. ‘I don’t spend my weekends antiquing, if that’s what you mean.’

‘You don’t have to go that far, but you could do with a dining table. Some kitchen stools. A throw cushion or two.’

‘I’d bet my left foot that no man ever looked back on his life and regretted a lack of throw cushions,’ he rumbled.

‘But they’re like garnish on a dinner plate. You don’t need it to make the meal, but that splash of colour makes your mouth water all the same.’

To that he said nothing, just watched her across the darkness, and her own mouth had never watered as much in her entire life.

‘Is it just me, or is it hot in here?’ she asked, peeling off her shirred blazer, her knobbly scarf, and throwing them over the back of a couch.

‘Air-con’s on heat blast. I’m acclimatising.’

Her eyes fell onto a plate of doughnuts he was piling high. She edged towards the scent of sugar. And him. ‘Turn the heat down and put on a sweater. Much more comfortable.’