shrugged those impressively broad shoulders. ‘I’ve got business with Ben. He asked me to come along tonight.’
She’d anticipated seeing Sam around the hotel, but not seeing him so soon and in a social situation. She couldn’t help a shiver of excitement at the thought. At the same time, she was a little put out she hadn’t been informed of the extra person. Didn’t her friends realise a wedding planner needed to know these things? What other surprises might they spring on her at this late stage?
Ben hadn’t mentioned employing a carpenter. Were they planning on getting Sam to construct a wooden wedding arch on the beach where the ceremony was to be held? She wished they’d told her. They were counting down six days to the wedding.
But she would find that out later. Right now she had to get back to work.
‘I’ll see you tonight, Kate,’ said Sam.
Did she imagine the promise she heard in his voice?
SAM DIDN’T WANT to have anything to do with weddings: whip-wielding wedding planners; mothers-of-the-bride going crazy; brides-to-be in meltdown; over-the-top hysteria all round. It reminded him too much of the ill-fated plans for his own cancelled wedding. Though it had been more than two years since the whole drama, even the word ‘wedding’ still had the power to bring him out in a cold sweat.
If it hadn’t meant a chance to see Kate again he would have backed right out of the meeting this evening.
Now he stood on the sand at the bottom of the steps that led down from the hotel to the harbour beach. Jesse’s directions to Ben’s house, where the meeting was to be held, had comprised a vague wave in the general direction to the right of the hotel. He couldn’t see a house anywhere close and wasn’t sure where to go.
‘Sam! Wait for me!’
Sam turned at the sound of Kate’s voice. She stood at the top of the steps, smiling down at him. For a moment all he could do was stare. If he’d thought Kate had looked gorgeous in her waitress garb, in a short, lavender dress that clung to her curves she looked sensational.
She clattered down the steps as fast as her strappy sandals would allow her, giving him a welcome flash of pale, slender legs. Her hair, set free from its constraints, flowed all wild and wavy around her face and to her shoulders, the fading light of the setting sun illuminating it to burnished copper. She clutched a large purple folder under her arm and had an outsized brown leather bag slung over her shoulder.
She was animated, vibrant, confident—everything that attracted him to her. So different from his reserved, unemotional ex-fiancée. Or his distant mother, who had made him wonder as he was growing up whether she had wanted a son at all. Whose main interest in him these days seemed to be in how well he managed the company for maximum dollars on her allowance.
Kate came to a halt next to him, her face flushed. This close, he couldn’t help but notice the tantalising hint of cleavage exposed by the scoop neck of her dress.
‘Are you headed to Ben’s place?’ she asked.
‘If I knew exactly where it was, yes.’
‘Easy,’ she said with a wave to the right, as vague as Jesse’s had been. ‘It’s just down there.’
‘Easy for a local. All I see is a boathouse with a dock reaching out into the water.’
‘That is the house. I mean, that’s where Ben and his fiancée, Sandy, live.’
‘A boathouse?’
‘It’s the poshest boathouse you’ve ever seen.’ Her face stilled. ‘It was the only thing left after the fire destroyed the guesthouse where the hotel stands now.’
‘Yes. I knew Ben lost his first wife and child in the fire. What a tragedy.’
‘Ben was a lost soul until Sandy came back to Dolphin Bay. She was his first love when they were teenagers. It was all terribly romantic.’
‘And now they’re getting married.’
Kate laughed. ‘Yes. Just two months after they met up again. And they honestly thought they were going to get away with a simple wedding on the beach with a glass of champagne to follow.’
‘That sounds a good idea to me,’ he said, more wholeheartedly than he had intended.
She looked at him, her head tilted to one side, curiosity lighting her green eyes. ‘Really? Maybe, if you don’t have family and friends who want to help you celebrate a happy-ever-after ending. Dolphin Bay people are very tight-knit.’
He wondered what it would be like to live in a community where people cared about each other, unlike the anonymity of his own city life, the aridity of his family life. ‘Hence you became the wedding planner?’
‘Yes. I put my hand up for the job. Unofficially, of course. The simple ceremony on the beach is staying. But they can’t avoid a big party at the hotel afterwards. I aim to take the stress out of it for them.’
‘Good luck with that.’ He couldn’t avoid the cynical twist to his mouth.
‘Good planning and good organisation, more likely than mere luck.’
‘You mean not too many unexpected guests like me?’ he said.
Her flush deepened. ‘Of course not. I’m glad Ben has invited a friend from outside.’
‘From outside?’
‘I mean from elsewhere than Dolphin Bay. From Sydney. The big smoke.’
He smiled. She might see Sydney as ‘the big smoke’, but he’d travelled extensively and knew Sydney was very much a small player on the world stage, much as he liked living there.
‘My business with Ben could be discussed at a different time,’ he said. ‘I honestly don’t know why they want me along this evening.’
‘Neither do I.’ She immediately slapped her hand over her mouth and laughed her delightful, throaty laugh. ‘Sorry. That’s not what I meant. What I meant was they hadn’t briefed me on the need for a carpenter.’
He frowned. ‘Pass that by me again?’
‘You said you were a carpenter. I thought they were asking you tonight to talk about carpentry work—maybe an arch—though I wished they’d told me that before. I don’t know how we’d secure it in the sand, and I haven’t ordered extra flowers or ribbons or—’
‘Stop right there,’ he said. ‘I’m not a carpenter.’
‘But you said you worked in India as a carpenter.’
‘As a volunteer. Yes, I can do carpentry. In fact, I can turn my hand to most jobs on a building site. My dad had me working on-site since I was fourteen. But my hard-hat days are behind me. I manage a construction company.’
He couldn’t really spare the week away from the business in this sleepy,
