it was not a long drive from Bondi to Mascot at that hour of the morning, Charlotte had known in advance that she’d need extra time to make herself look tippy-top to meet her fiancé. Hence her early alarm.
Throwing back the duvet, Charlotte leapt out of bed, swearing when she banged her leg on the corner of her bedside chest. Rubbing her thigh, she limped to the bathroom.
‘Aaah!’ she squawked when she finally saw herself in the mirror above the vanity.
Her screech of alarm was followed by the appearance of an equally dishevelled Louise in the bathroom door. ‘What’s all the noise about?’ her flatmate asked blearily.
‘Look at me!’ Charlotte proclaimed with a despairing groan. ‘This is all your fault, Louise. You should never have insisted on having my hen night only two days before my wedding, and the night before Gary’s arrival. You know what even a few drinks do to me. Not to mention lack of sleep. My God, I look a positive fright!’
Louise snorted. ‘You couldn’t look a positive fright if your life depended on it. You even look good with dark roots.’
Charlotte groaned again. Louise had to be blind! Her hair was nothing short of appalling.
Maintaining herself as the long-haired, golden-locked blonde whom Gary had met and fallen instantly in love with up on the Gold Coast last year had taken its toll. All Charlotte and Louise’s skills as hairdressers could not prevent the damage which had been done to her naturally thick, dark brown hair by continual bleaching.
She’d only gone blonde for that holiday in a fit of pique after her break-up with Dwayne. His new girlfriend was a blonde. Charlotte had never intended to keep it that way. She’d been planning on cutting it short afterwards and returning to her natural colour.
But her plans had changed on meeting Gary, and eight months later she was still a blonde. A blonde with dark roots and split ends.
Charlotte wished now she hadn’t put off doing the roots till the day of her wedding. She should have had them done yesterday. And had a trim. And put in a treatment.
‘I have to use the bathroom,’ Louise said with a yawn. ‘Why don’t you go make me some coffee, in exchange for which I’ll blow-dry your hair for you?’
‘Do you think you could give me a quick trim and an instant treatment as well?’ Charlotte pleaded.
‘What am I, your fairy godmother? OK, OK, just go get that coffee.’
One hour later Charlotte looked as good as she could, under the circumstances. But, truly, if she kept bleaching and blow-drying her hair so ruthlessly it would start breaking off, as Louise had pointed out.
‘If Gary really loves you,’ Louise had added drily, ‘he wouldn’t care if your hair’s long or short. Or if you’re a blonde or a brunette.’
Louise’s words echoed in Charlotte’s mind during the short drive to the airport.
If Gary really loves you…
It wasn’t the first time Louise had expressed doubts over the reality of Gary’s love for her. And vice versa.
Charlotte could understand her friend’s misgivings. Most of her relationship with the good-looking American lawyer had developed over the internet, which was a trap in itself. Exchanging emails wasn’t the same as actually spending time with each other. It was easy to put your best foot forward with words, rather than action. Charlotte did understand that.
But theirs hadn’t been a strictly email romance. Their initial meeting had been in the flesh. Unfortunately, their time together had been brief. It had been the last night of her holiday on the Gold Coast. The last night of Gary’s trip to Australia as well. He had been due to return to LA the next day. Gary had spied her across a crowded room—actually, it was a smoke-filled club—and zeroed in on her straight away. He’d asked her to dance and the rest, as they say, was history.
They’d spent the whole night together. Not in bed or anything like that. Charlotte had never been the sort of girl to jump into bed at the drop of a hat, especially with some smooth-talking American out here on holiday. There was no doubt Gary wouldn’t have minded, but he’d seemed impressed when she’d resisted his advances to have sex. Instead, they’d walked along the beach for hours, hand in hand, just talking. As they’d watched the sun come up together, he told her she was the girl he’d waited for all his life.
Later that day she’d accompanied Gary to the airport, where he’d promised to call her as soon as he got home. His passionate goodbye kiss had sent her head spinning, repairing some of the damage Dwayne had perpetrated on her battered self-esteem.
Louise had warned her when she came back to Sydney that men met on holiday rarely contacted you afterwards. But Gary had. He’d called Charlotte as soon as he’d returned to Los Angeles and they’d been in constant contact ever since, sometimes by phone, but mostly by email.
Charlotte felt she knew Gary much better than she’d even known Dwayne, the rat on whom she’d wasted the previous two years of her life. He’d eventually dumped her for some gym bunny, whom he’d got pregnant.
When Gary asked her to marry him last November, Charlotte hadn’t hesitated to say yes.
Maybe she would have hesitated if he hadn’t been prepared to marry her here in Sydney, and make his life here.
Or if you weren’t thirty-three, another nasty little voice whispered in her head. And beginning to believe that you would never find a husband.
Charlotte swiftly brushed that no longer relevant thought aside.
She was getting married. Tomorrow. And in considerable style.
Charlotte hoped Gary wouldn’t mind. He’d requested a simple wedding. No church. Just a celebrant, and only a small guest list. He himself had no close family; his parents had been killed in a tragic house fire when he was a teenager.
But Charlotte’s father hadn’t waited thirty-three years to give his youngest daughter away in anything less than a white wedding with all the trimmings.
Secretly, Charlotte had been glad her father had insisted on this. Her two older sisters had both been beautiful brides with white wedding gowns, and Charlotte hadn’t really wanted to settle for anything less. The church part she’d managed to skirt around, her parents reluctantly agreeing to a celebrant. But everything else was to be very traditional, complete with a proper reception, a three-tiered wedding cake, the bridal waltz. The lot!
Charlotte hadn’t informed Gary of any of this. She reasoned that once he was here, she could explain that it wasn’t her doing. It was her parents’ idea. And it wasn’t as though he had to pay for any of it. Her father had footed the bill, dear sweet man that he was. All Gary had to do was be fitted with a rental tux today—a fitting had been arranged for this afternoon—then show up in it tomorrow.
Charlotte didn’t think that was too much to ask. Not of a man who really loved her. And he did. He must really love her, otherwise he wouldn’t be coming all this way to marry her. Or have sent her such a lovely sapphire and diamond engagement ring.
Just the sight of it on her ring finger was reassuring.
Half an hour later, Charlotte was pacing
