Elyse—all grown-up and irreverent with it. Her mother—not unhappy to see her. A pleasant kind of warmth that had nothing to do with flickering fires or Boston Sours or even Bradley Knight began to spread through her.
Until a hotel room key slid in front of Hannah’s face, with Bradley’s long, tanned fingers on the other end.
‘What is that?’ she asked, her drink threatening to come back out the way it had gone in.
‘Do you really need to ask?’ Bradley drawled as he slid around behind her, the lapels of his jacket brushing against her back, causing her spine to roll in delicious anguish, before he straddled the bar stool beside her.
She spun on her seat to glare at him. Her knees knocked his before he shifted, placing a hand on her knee and allowing it to tuck neatly between his. Even then he didn’t let go—just rested a hand there as if it was nothing.
As cool as she could manage, Hannah said, ‘If you promised the man your firstborn son you’ve lost all my respect.’
The smile in his eyes gave her hot chills. As if she was sitting on the edge of a volcano. The kind from which you knew you ought to flee if only you could just let go of the primal urge to jump right in.
‘I didn’t do anything drastic,’ he said. ‘Or illegal. I simply negotiated. The only way I could get a room was to get us a suite.’
‘I’m sorry, did you say us?’
Bradley glanced at the bartender, who poured a fresh packet of peanuts into a small glass bowl. ‘Separate rooms off a shared lounge. Better even than the honeymoon suite, or so I’ve been told.’
While he was crowing, she was fast turning to a wobbly mess. But what could she say? They’d shared suites on numerous occasions before—at TV trade fairs or in pre-production on new shows—using the joint lounge as a makeshift office. Of course they’d been constantly surrounded by the half-dozen odd staff who travelled everywhere with him. Who were right now in New Zealand.
Her unimpressed air must have been crystal-clear, because he added, ‘From what I heard they only let the Platinum Suite to their most favoured VIPs.’ She narrowed her eyes. ‘That’s my mother’s suite. I had to schmooze like crazy to make sure she got that room in the first place.’
Something that seemed a heck of a lot like a blush washed across Bradley’s face. But Hannah was too infuriated to take any heed.
‘I bumped into Virginia at the desk. She overheard my predicament and offered to swap rooms. She now has your single, and we have her suite.’
Hannah had her face in her hands and was rocking on her chair by that stage.
Bradley’s thumb curving over her knee brought her out of her trance. She ran her hands down her face and did her best to act as though it was irrelevant that he was touching her at all.
She turned to glare at him, only to find glints throwing out specks of silver in his dark grey eyes. He said, ‘Turns out that despite Virginia’s predilection for … what was it?’
‘Pink cardigans and cocktails with umbrellas in them,’ she muttered.
‘That’s right. I couldn’t remember beyond rhinestones. It turns out that she’s an entirely sensible woman.’
Sensible? Sensible?
‘Oh, no, no, no,’ Hannah said, waggling a furious finger in front of his face. ‘Don’t you go falling for her act. Virginia is the very opposite of sensible. She’s a narcissistic, selfish, hurtful creature who always has an agenda. And it always revolves around how any situation can benefit her.’
Her harsh words seemed to echo in the large space, coming back at her and back at her, like some kind of horrible Groundhog Day moment.
Bradley’s hand slipped away from her knee and she felt the cool slap of his silence. She hunched her shoulders in mortification and stared unseeingly at a patch of carpet.
‘Evidently,’ he drawled into the painful silence, ‘until this moment I wasn’t aware just how deeply the issues run between your mother and you.’
She ran her fingers through her hair, needing to shake off the crazies. ‘Well, now you are.’
Suddenly Hannah felt very, very tired. As if her years in the city, working her backside off, building an impeccable professional reputation, creating a life for herself from nothing, doing her best to forget the period of her life at home after her dad died, were catching up with her in one fell swoop.
With a groan, she let her head fall to the bar with a thunk.
Out of the corner of her eye she saw Bradley’s fingers fiddling with the room key. Maybe one good thing had come from her pyscho rant. Maybe he was realising the level of drama he’d be subjecting himself to by standing anywhere near a Gillespie girl in full flight. Maybe he was thinking of leaving her and her mad family in peace.
She lifted her head and swept her hair from her eyes. He was looking into the middle distance, the expression in his eyes pure steel. Whatever he was thinking there would be no talking him out of it.
She breathed in deep and waited.
Finally he turned to face her, and said, ‘I’m coming to your sister’s wedding.’
She moved to let her head thunk against the bar again—only this time he saw it coming. He took her by the shoulders, holding her upright. She wobbled like a marionette.
She must have looked as pathetic and wretched as she felt because his hands slid to cradle her neck, to slip beneath her hair, his thumbs touching the soft spots just below her ears. He had to be able to feel her pulse thundering in her neck at his gentle but insistent touch, but he didn’t show it.
He just looked her right in the eye—serious, determined, beautiful. ‘By the sound of things you’re walking into a lions’ den this weekend, with no back-up. It wouldn’t be showing you any kind of thanks for having my back all these months if I just walked away and let that happen. Especially after exacerbating the problem. I’ll be your wing man.’
His hands dropped to her shoulders, and then away.
Hannah wondered if a person could get jet lag from a one-hour flight. Because, blinking slowly at Bradley’s mouth, that was just how she felt—woozy, off-kilter, slipping in and out of a parallel universe. Surely the fact that Bradley Knight had just offered to be her wing man was a hallucination.
She glanced at her drink. It was still three-quarters full.
‘Hannah—’
She closed her tired eyes and held up a hand. ‘I’m thinking.’
‘About?’
About the fact that she couldn’t twist his offer to mean anything other than what it meant. There was no punishment for rhinestone comparisons at play. By offering to throw himself in the path of the drama tornado, for her, he was being nice. Thoughtful. Selfless. Things she’d taken pains to remind herself he was not.
She took a deep breath and said, ‘It’s a really nice offer, Bradley. Truly. But this holiday is not all about my family. It’s about taking a break from work … and those I work with.’
She glanced up at him with one eye open.
Taciturn, stoic, unreadable as ever, he said, ‘Meaning me?’
She opened the other eye and nodded. ‘You. And Sonja. And dealing with prima donnas all day. And Spencer following me around like a lovesick puppy while I’m trying to work. And sixty-hour weeks. And no sleeping-in—’
‘Okay. I get it. I hadn’t realised you found your job such a hardship.’
Grrr! That one man could be so smart one minute and so dumb the next