One Night Before Marriage. Anne Oliver

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      ‘Why don’t we combine the two and walk to the station?’ she suggested as they walked out into Sydney’s tropical summer evening.

      Streetlights attracted bugs, which hummed in a seething ball around the globes. A languid breeze drifted off the water.

      He glanced at her. ‘Why? Is someone expecting you?’

      If she was going to back out, now was the time. But he was on a first name basis with the concierge, had a room there, and people had seen them leave together. ‘There’s no one.’

      ‘I don’t like the idea of a woman catching a train alone at this time of night. Then a bus, for heaven’s sake. Do you always travel by public transport?’

      ‘Since I sold the car.’

      His hand touched the small of her back as he ushered her to a table at an open-air café. Just a brush of fingertips on the silk of her dress, but the thrill curled her toes inside her four-inch stilettos.

      ‘What would you like?’

      You. ‘Mineral water over ice, thank you.’ She sagged onto the plastic chair he pulled out for her and slipped her bag onto the ground beside her feet. She didn’t need anything stronger to have that dizzy, tipsy rush.

      He paid at the counter, handed her a glass and lowered himself into the chair opposite with a bottle of beer. ‘Here’s looking at you.’

      The way he said that had shivers chasing over her skin. To distract him from her nipples that suddenly puckered painfully into tight little buds against her dress she asked, ‘You like music?’ He didn’t reply and a shadow crossed his eyes. She watched his fist tighten infinitesimally around the neck of his bottle. ‘Okay, you don’t like classical and you’re too polite to say so.’

      ‘Doesn’t matter what it is when it’s played with heart and soul by a woman whose…what colour would you say your eyes are?’

      She blinked, glass poised halfway to her lips. ‘Blue.’

      ‘Blue.’ He rubbed a hand over his jaw, a distinctively masculine sound, as he watched her. ‘I’d say ultramarine. Deep and mysterious. Which begs a question: what do you do when you’re not at the keyboard, Just Carissa?’

      ‘Waitressing and piano take up six days a week. I don’t have time for much else.’

      It amazed her that she could sit here and make reasonable conversation with this man when all she could think of was what he’d look like with every inch of golden skin bared for her pleasure, every working part primed to—Stop right there. She mentally slapped herself and asked, ‘What about you?’

      He glanced at the water, avoiding her gaze. ‘I have a few business interests.’

      She eyed him over her glass. ‘When you’re not being a hero.’

      ‘I beg your pardon?’

      ‘Last night. I was outside the Cove, I saw you.’

      He took a deep gulp of beer. The shadows were back in his eyes. ‘I’m no hero.’

      ‘Wrong. I was there. You risked yourself for others, stopped to help an old lady most people would avoid.’

      ‘No big deal. And it was hardly a risk; the car was gone. Those stupid kids…’ He shook his head. ‘We’ll all end up in the sewer one day.’

      ‘You’re not an optimist, then. You don’t believe good outweighs bad? That everything happens for a reason?’

      He seemed to remember something sad because his mouth thinned even more, and he smiled without humour. ‘I’m more of a realist. Realists are rarely disappointed.’

      He had a point there. A realist would have expected Alasdair to walk. Good-looking guys, whatever their gender preference, didn’t hang around for long. ‘What about your family?’ Is there a fiancée waiting to be jilted somewhere?

      ‘I grew up in Melbourne. Never married, never tempted. Lived in the outback, came to the city a few years ago.’

      ‘Your parents?’

      ‘Mum’s in Melbourne. My father’s dead.’

      End of story. Chewing her lip, Carissa watched him toss back the contents of his bottle. His father’s death must have hit him hard and he didn’t want to talk about it. ‘Are you staying at the Cove long?’

      ‘Not sure yet.’

      She saw the residual tension in his hand as he set the empty bottle on the table with a clunk. The man had problems. Did she want to get involved? But she remembered last night. He was one of the good guys. Besides, she wasn’t getting involved involved.

      ‘Come on,’ he said, slowly reverting to the flirtatious man she’d started out with. ‘It’ll be cooler by the water.’

      They left the glare of lights and wandered to where the air was shadowed and filled with the scent of sea and summer. Carissa took off her shoes and lifted her face to the faint breeze. ‘I’ve worked at the Cove for two years and never walked here.’

      ‘A night for firsts.’

      She almost smiled. He didn’t know the half of it.

      He stopped and looked down at her. ‘Do you know what I was thinking about while I was watching you play?’

      ‘What?’ The word spilled out on a husky, almost breathless exhalation.

      He lowered his mouth till it was a sigh away from hers. ‘This.’ He skimmed her lips with his own, a tantalising hint. ‘Touching you. Tasting you.’

      Oh, yes, she thought, her mouth tingling with the promise. Me too.

      He tangled calloused fingers with hers, watching her. Still watching her, he deliberately pressed his body against hers. One body part in particular. One very thick, very hard, very insistent body part.

      She didn’t step back. He was big, he was male, and, unlike her ex-fiancé, he wanted her. He lowered his lips again, and, dropping her shoes, she leaned into him, her bag skimming her hip as she wound her arms around his neck.

      Her mind shut down. Her senses went into overdrive. The flavour of his mouth, beer and something salty, the textures of tongue and teeth as he deepened the kiss, his roughened fingertips skimming her arms.

      After the first flutter of nerves she relaxed and acquainted herself with the new and exciting sensation of male arousal against her belly. So far, so good, but how would it feel horizontally? With no clothes on?

      She wanted to know how it felt to have a man’s weight on her, to have him pumping all that heat and strength inside her. She wanted to know whether fantasy lived up to reality. And she wanted this man to be the one to show her.

      She’d never have to see him again. If she didn’t ask more personal questions, didn’t get to know him, she could walk away, no emotional ties, the way men did. Her birthday present to herself. She hadn’t taken anything for herself in a long time. And Melanie СКАЧАТЬ