‘Look how he’s standing,’ Mae said, her voice a growl.
As if used to keeping himself upright in stormy seas, Paige thought.
Mae had other ideas. ‘Like he needs all that extra room for his package.’
‘Mae!’
Mae shrugged. ‘Don’t look at me. Not when you could be looking at him.’
Paige tried not to look, she really did. But while her head knew it was best to forget about him, her hormones apparently had fuzzier principles. She looked in time to see him push a flap of his leather jacket aside and glide his phone from an inside pocket, revealing a broad expanse of chest covered by a faded T-shirt. Paige wasn’t sure which move had her salivating more—the brief flash of toned brown male belly as his T had lifted, or the rhythmic slide of his thumb over the screen of his phone.
And then he turned, his dark eyes scouring the large space.
‘Get down!’ Paige spun around and hunkered down in her seat until she was half under the table. It was only when she realised neither of her friends had said anything that she glanced up to find them both watching her with their mouths hanging open.
‘Whatcha doin’ down there?’ Mae asked.
Paige slowly pulled herself upright. Then, wishing she had eyes in the back of her head, she muttered, ‘I know him.’
‘Him? Oh, him. Who is he?’
‘Gabe Hamilton. He’s moved in upstairs. We met in the lift this morning.’
‘Annnnndddd?’ Mae said, by that stage bouncing on her chair.
‘Sit still. You’re getting all excited for nothing. I tried to shut the door on his fingers. He suggested the lift and I were trapped in a passive-aggressive romantic entanglement. It was all very … awkward.’
Mae kept grinning, and Paige realised she was squirming on her seat.
She threw her hands in the air. ‘Okay, fine, so he’s gorgeous. And smells like he’s come from building his own log cabin. And there might have been a little flirting.’ When Mae began to clap, Paige raised a hand to cut her off. ‘Oh no. That’s not the best part. This all happened right after you dropped me off. While. I. Was. Carrying. The. Wedding. Dress.’
‘But didn’t you explain—?’
‘How exactly? So, sexy stranger, see this brand new wedding dress I’m clutching? Ignore it. Means nothing. I’m free and clear and all yours if ya want me.’
‘That’d work for me,’ Clint said, nodding sagely.
Mae smacked him across the chest. He grinned and went back to pretending he wasn’t listening.
‘I blame you, and your man-drought theory,’ Paige said. ‘I would have been hard pressed not to flutter my eyelashes at anyone at that point.’
‘Like if Sam the Super had turned up she would have wanted to ravage him in the lift?’ Mae muttered, shaking her head as if Paige had gone loco.
Paige couldn’t stop feeling as if the world was tilting beneath her chair. Mae, of all people, should have understood her need for absolutes. The old Mae would, what with her own father’s inability to be faithful. This new Mae, the engaged Mae, was too blinded by her own romance to see straight.
Paige fought the desire to shake some sense into her friend. Instead she reached for her cocktail, gulping down a mouthful of the cold tart liquid.
‘It’s all probably moot anyway,’ Mae said, sighing afresh. ‘That man is from a whole other dimension. One where men date nuclear physicists who model in their spare time. Or he’s gay.’
‘Not gay,’ Paige said, remembering the way his gaze had caressed her face. The certainty he’d been moving closer to her the whole ride, inch by big hot inch. Jet lag or no, there’d been something there. She took a deep breath and said, ‘Anyway. It doesn’t matter either way. A man who flirts with a woman holding a wedding dress ought to be neutered.’
‘Well, my sweet,’ said Mae, perking up, ‘you’ll have the chance to tell him so. Because he’s coming this way.’
Gabe had been about to leave when he’d seen her.
Well, he’d seen her dinner companion first—a redhead with wild curls and no qualms about staring at strangers. After which he’d noticed his fine and fidgety neighbour’s blonde waves tumbling down a back turned emphatically in his direction. If she’d given him a smile and a wave he might well have waved and gone home. But the fact that the woman he’d planned to ignore was ignoring him right on back tugged at his perverse gene and sent him walking her way.
‘Well, if it isn’t Miss Eighth Floor,’ he said, resting a hand on the back of her chair.
Paige turned, her eyebrows raised, her smile cool. But the second her deep blue eyes locked onto his, his blood thickened, his lungs got tight, and he felt a sudden surge of affection for the hard floor of his room.
Hitchcock be damned, he thought as the memory of those cool blonde waves tickling his chest as she’d ridden him in his convertible slammed into his head. It might only have been a dream but his libido clearly didn’t give a lick. ‘When I said I’d see you around I wasn’t expecting it to be quite so soon.’
‘Living in the same building we’ll be bound to run into one another.’
‘Lucky us.’ He gave her a smile, the kind he knew gave off all the right signals. Her eyes flared, but she physically pulled her reaction back. In fact from her pale pink fingernails gripping the table, to the ends of her gorgeously tousled hair, she screamed high maintenance. Complication. Trouble.
And yet the smile tugged higher at the corners of his mouth.
Maybe it was the challenge. Maybe it was the dream. Maybe it was that he suddenly had time on his hands, time he’d rather spend in doing than thinking. But as Gabe looked into those hot and cold blue eyes he knew he was going to get to know this woman.
A loud clearing of the throat sent them both looking to Paige’s friend.
Paige said, ‘Gabe Hamilton, this is my friend Mae. Her fiancé, Clint.’
Leaning across the table to shake hands with enthusiasm, Mae said, ‘I hear you’ve just flown in from overseas.’
When the table shook and Mae scrunched up her face, Gabe got the feeling she’d been duly kicked under the table. So Little Miss Cool had been talking about him to her friends, had she? Perhaps this would be easier than he thought. Though rather than that taking the edge off the challenge, the energy inside coiled tighter still.
He sourced a spare chair at the next table and dragged it over, sliding it next to Paige, who pretended she’d suddenly found a mark on her dinner plate fascinating.
‘Brazil,’ he said to Mae, pressing his toes into the floor as Paige sat straight as an arrow in the seat beside him. ‘I’m just back from Brazil.’
‘Seriously?’ said Mae. ‘Hear that, Paige? Gabe’s been to Brazil.’
Paige glared at her friend. ‘Thanks, Mae. I did hear.’
Mae leant her chin on her palm as she asked, ‘Back for good, then?’
‘Not,’ he said. Not that he was about to tell these nice people that given the choice he’d rather be neck deep in piranha-infested waters than stay in their home town. ‘Here on business for a few days.’
‘Pity,’ said Mae, while Paige said nothing. Those bedroom eyes of hers remained steadfastly elsewhere. Until Mae added, ‘Paige has a total thing for Brazil.’
‘Does