with buttons all over it.’
‘Thanks, but I’d be afraid I’d catch something.’
Nate grinned and backed away. ‘I have seen with my own two eyes that you’re here, so my work is done. Catch you at the office Monday. Remember where it is?’
Gabe’s answer was a flat stare. He was lucky—or unlucky more like—to end up in Melbourne once every two or three years, but he knew where his paychecks came from.
Nate clicked his fingers as he wavered at the front door. ‘Almost forgot. Need to make a right hullabaloo now you’re back. Housewarming party Friday night.’
Gabe shook his head. He’d be long gone by Friday. Wouldn’t he?
‘Too late,’ said Nate. ‘Already in motion. Alex and some of the old uni gang are coming. A few clients. Some fine women I met walking the promenade just now—’
‘Nate—’
‘Hey, consider yourself lucky. I’m so giddy you’re here I contemplated dropping flyers from a plane.’
And then Nate was gone. Leaving Gabe in his dark, cavernous, cold, empty apartment. Alone. The grey mist of Port Phillip Bay closing in on his wall of windows like a swarm of bad memories, pretty much summing up how he felt about the possibility that he might still be there in a week’s time.
Before he turned into a human icicle, Gabe tracked down the remote for the air-con and cranked it up as hot as it would go.
He found some bed linen in a closet, then, back in his bedroom doorway, looked glumly at the empty space where his bed ought to be. He stripped down to his smalls and made a pile with blankets and a too big pillow and lay down on the floor, and the second he closed his eyes fatigue dragged him into instant sleep.
And he dreamt.
Of a cool feminine hand stroking the hair at the back of his neck, a hot red convertible rumbling beneath his thighs as he eased it masterfully around the precarious roads of a cliff face somewhere in the south of France. When the car pulled into a lookout, the cool owner of the cool hand slid her cool blonde self onto his lap, her sweet sharp scent hitting the back of his mouth a half-second before her tongue followed. Gabe’s dream self thought, Hitchcock, eat your heart out.
That night at The Brasserie—one of a string of crowded restaurants lining the New Quay Promenade—when Mae told her fiancé, Clint, about Paige’s little purchase, he choked on his food. Literally. A waiter had to give him the Heimlich. They made quite a stir, ending up with the entire restaurant cheering and Paige hunching over her potato wedges and hiding her face behind both hands.
Clint recovered remarkably to ask, ‘So what happened between us pouring you into a cab after drinks last night and this morning to have cured you of your no-marriage-for-Paige-ever stance? Cabbie give you the ride of your life?’
Paige dropped her fingers to give Clint a blank stare. Grinning, he put his hands up in surrender before smartly returning to checking the footy scores on his phone.
She didn’t bother telling him there had not been any curing her doubt as to the existence of happily ever afters. But she neglected to say that there had been one ride she couldn’t seem to wipe from her mind. A ride in a lift with some kind of tall, dark and handsome inducement that got a girl to thinking about all sorts of things she wouldn’t admit out loud without the assistance of too many cocktails.
She dropped her hands to her belly where she could still feel the hum of his deep voice.
As she’d done a dozen times through the day, she brought her thoughts back to the fluoro white bag covered in hot-pink writing currently hanging over the back of her dining chair.
The fact that Gabe Hamilton had got his flirt on while she was carrying a wedding dress made him indiscriminate at best. And the kind of man she wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole. Fidelity meant a great deal to Paige. She’d worked for the same company since uni. Had the same best friend since primary school. She’d drive twenty minutes to get her favourite Thai takeaway. She’d watched her own mum crumble before her very eyes as her father confirmed his own disloyalty again and again and again.
‘Humona humona,’ Mae murmured, or something along those lines, dragging Paige back to the present. ‘Move over, Captain Jack, there’s a new pirate in town.’
Clint glanced up. Whatever he saw was clearly of little interest as he saw his chance to sneak a pork rib from Mae’s plate then went back to his phone.
Paige gave into curiosity and turned to look over her shoulder, her heart missing a beat, again, when she found Mr Tall, Dark and Handsome himself warming his large hands by the open fire in the centre of the room, his dark hair curling slightly over the collar of his bulky jacket, feet shoulder width apart.
‘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—?’
