Wedding Wishes: A Wedding at Leopard Tree Lodge. Liz Fielding

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      CHAPTER SIX

      The dress. Individual, unique, it is a statement of everything the bride feels about herself. A matter for secrecy, intrigue and speculation…

      —The Perfect Wedding by Serafina

      March

      JOSIE steeled herself for the usual prurient inquisition—was it rape or abuse? No man had ever asked her if he’d done something to turn her off. Not that Gideon had. For a moment she had so utterly forgotten herself that she was still shaking with a surge of need unlike anything she’d ever experienced.

      But the question never came.

      ‘Don’t worry about it, Josie,’ he said, so casually that if she hadn’t been so relieved she might have felt insulted. ‘It was nothing.’

      Nothing?

      ‘You don’t have to apologise. Or explain.’

      ‘No?’

      Easy for him to say. He probably had women throwing themselves at him all the time. Not that she had. Thrown herself. She’d had a giddy spell, had been off balance physically and mentally or she would never have reacted so wantonly to his closeness.

      The kiss had not been forced upon her. It had been inevitable from the first moment she’d set eyes on him. She’d recognised the danger, thought she could control it…

      ‘No,’ she said, turning the word from a question to a statement as she eased herself carefully to her feet—she didn’t want a repeat of that giddy spell…‘Nothing at all.’ Then, because he hadn’t moved, ‘Do you need a hand up?’

      He looked up at her for a moment as if considering the physics of the skinny girl/big bloke leverage situation.

      ‘Not a good idea.’

      No. It would be too easy to repeat that tumble and it was obvious that he didn’t want to risk that.

      Nor did she, she told herself hurriedly.

      ‘Shall I call someone?’

      ‘Forget about me,’ he said, apparently content to sit on the deck, his back against the hard frame. ‘You’ve got a bride to worry about.’

      ‘Yes…’ She backed slowly away—any injudicious move was likely to stir up all those hormones swirling about her body, desperate for action. ‘Did she say where she’d be?’

      ‘Her room, I imagine.’

      ‘Her room?’ She finally snapped out of the semi-inert state where her brain was focused entirely on Gideon. ‘This is her room!’ she declared.

      ‘Yes, well, that was the other thing I was about to tell you. Before you threw yourself on me.’

      ‘What a pity I didn’t do more damage.’

      ‘Is that any way to speak to a man who, while you were snoring your head off, has single-handedly sorted out your accommodation problems?’

      She was fairly sure that the snoring slur was simply his attempt to put up a wall between them and who could blame him?

      Ignoring it, she said, ‘What did you do? Rub a magic lamp and produce another tree house out of thin air?’

      ‘Is that what you do when, on the morning of the wedding, the bride tells you that a long lost cousin from New Zealand has arrived with all his family and you have to find room for half a dozen extra people at a reception?’

      ‘I don’t need magic to produce an extra table,’ she snapped back. ‘It’s my job.’ Then, because this was no way to cool things down, she extended a hand, palm out like a traffic cop. ‘Stop.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Back up.’ He waited, a questioning tilt to one of those devilish brows while she took another breath. Started again. ‘Thank you so much for involving yourself with my accommodation problem, Gideon. Would you care to update me?’ she enquired politely.

      She got an appreciative grin for her efforts and all those escaped hormones stampeded in his direction and she took a step forward as she almost overbalanced.

      Maybe he noticed because he said, ‘Sit down and I’ll fill you in.’

      She did but only, she told herself, because he was having to peer awkwardly up at her in a way that must be hurting his back. Not that he’d been feeling pain a few minutes ago…

      Stop. Oh, stop…

      Ignoring the low lounger—she wasn’t risking a second close encounter with all those free roaming pheromones—she crossed to a canvas director’s chair that David had fetched so that they could have a cosy chat over her supine body.

      Tempted as she was to pitch in with yet another sarcastic comment, she suspected he was waiting for it and, since she hated being predictable, said, ‘When you’re ready?’

      ‘The best man and his new girlfriend have been allocated the captain’s cabin aboard the river boat. It’s not like this, but they’ll have the deck for game viewing and the pool if they want to cool off.’

      ‘What about the captain?’ she asked.

      ‘He СКАЧАТЬ