at the Morgan family table, surreptitiously holding hands under cover of the tablecloth.
‘When the moment is right,’ Jesse said, keeping his voice very low, pretending not to be too interested in what she was saying. ‘You’ll need to be diplomatic.’
‘Aren’t I always diplomatic?’ she started to say in a huff.
He smiled. ‘You can’t pride yourself on being both blunt and diplomatic at the same time.’ He squeezed her hand to emphasise he didn’t mean it as an insult.
‘Point taken,’ she said.
Again she marvelled at how quickly Jesse had got to know her. She didn’t feel she knew him as well but was enjoying each revelation of what lay beneath the heartbreakingly handsome exterior. So far she’d discovered he was a thoughtful, highly intelligent man with a good heart, a good head for business and a whole lot of common sense. That was on top of being a master kisser.
‘Do you know what I’m missing?’ she said. ‘The music. I wish I could get up and dance with you. Do you remember how we danced together at the wedding?’
‘How could I forget?’
‘I think dancing with you was when I—’ She swallowed the words that bubbled to the surface. When I thought I might have found someone special.
‘When you...?’ Jesse prompted.
‘When I...when I realised you were so much more than the best man who I, as the chief bridesmaid, was obligated to spend time with.’
And now? Now she was falling in love with him. She’d fought it so hard she hadn’t let herself recognise it. Could you fall in love this quickly?
‘You okay?’ asked Jesse. ‘You seem flustered.’
‘Yes. Yes. Of course I’m okay.’ How did she deal with this?
‘I want to dance with you too,’ said Jesse in a husky undertone. ‘The evening is winding up. In half an hour we leave separately, then—’
‘Yes?’ she asked, her heart thudding.
‘Then we have our own private dance on the beach.’
JESSE WAITED UNTIL a moment when his mother had got back up onstage and was introducing the audience to the dogs. She held up a particularly cute puppy with one ear that flopped all the way over. All attention was on the puppy as the other guests oohed and aahed at its cuteness. He didn’t think anyone would notice him slip away and make his way out of the hotel.
Ten minutes later he saw Lizzie creep out of the Hotel Harbourside exit and cross the road to where he waited. For a moment she didn’t see him and her wary look made his heart leap.
He couldn’t have anticipated how fast things were moving with her. But he was a man used to making quick life-or-death decisions. He had decided he wanted to take a chance on Lizzie Dumont—and no obstacle was going to be allowed to stand in the way of them becoming a couple. That included his own doubts.
She caught sight of him and smiled—a joyous smile tinged with mischief, just like the smile he had fallen for when he had first met her at the pre-wedding outing. She ran over the road to meet him under the palm tree that edged the beach. ‘I feel like a naughty schoolgirl sneaking out like this,’ she said with a delightful giggle.
Funny, he hadn’t been attracted to her when she was a schoolgirl. It was the woman she’d become who’d caught his attention.
‘So where’s the dance floor?’ she asked.
‘Down there.’ He indicated the beach with an expansive wave of his hand. ‘If we dance down there and to the left we’ll be out of sight of the hotel.’
Her gasp of pleasure was the biggest reward he could have asked for. ‘So we twirl and whirl on the sand,’ she said.
She balanced on his shoulder as she leaned down to unbuckle the straps on her silver shoes and slip them off. She tucked them alongside his own shoes, socks and bow tie where he’d discarded them at the base of the palm tree.
‘The wet sand near the edge of the water will be firmer,’ he said with his engineer’s brain.
The full moon was high in the sky and its reflection lit a shimmering path of palest gold from the horizon, over the water to where the tiny waves of the bay sighed onto the sand.
‘Magic by moonlight,’ she breathed.
It was so light he could clearly see Lizzie’s eyes, her face pale, uplifted to the moon, her hair glinting like silver. She looked ethereal, like some kind of fairy princess in her shimmering dress.
Jesse could hardly believe he was thinking such thoughts. He was an engineer. Practical. Mathematical. Madness by moonlight, more like it.
She wound her arms around his neck. ‘I feel like I’m in some kind of enchanted world,’ she whispered. ‘And you’re the handsome prince spiriting me away to dance on moonbeams. Have I found my way onto the pages of one of Amy’s fairy tale books?’
He kissed her, lightly, possessively. ‘If that’s the case, you’re the fairy princess.’ Had he actually said that?
‘I had no idea you were so romantic, Jesse,’ she murmured.
‘I’m not usually,’ he said. ‘It...it’s you.’
This was the Lizzie who had captivated him at the wedding. During the last ten days he’d got to see the other sides of Lizzie. And the more he got to know her, the more he wanted her in his life.
She laughed and the slightly bawdy edge to her laughter reminded him how utterly real and womanly she was. ‘Where’s the music, Prince Charming? Can you conjure it up from the moonlight?’
‘The prosaic engineer in me would tell you I can play music through my smartphone.’
‘Whereas Prince Charming might say we can dance to the music of the stars,’ she suggested.
‘And the rhythm of the waves,’ he said.
‘With those chirping crickets adding some bass.’
He laughed. ‘If you say so.’
‘It’s perfect,’ she whispered.
She went into his arms and together they danced barefoot on the cool, wet sand with the occasional tiny cold wave swishing over their feet and making her squeal. They danced not with the expertise of ballroom dancers—he’d never mastered that art—but in their own rhythm, making up their steps as they went along, her glittering skirt twirling around them.
‘I don’t know that the music of the moon and stars is enough; it hasn’t quite got a beat,’ she murmured. ‘Shall I hum? I can’t sing, so humming will have to do.’
‘Go ahead and hum,’
