he said automatically. Although he wasn’t sorry at all to be suddenly in such close proximity to this enchanting woman.
‘No need to apologise,’ she said, not moving away from him.
Her blue eyes glinted with mischief and her lush mouth tilted on the edge of laughter. He was close enough to catch her perfume...sweet, enticing and heady. She didn’t seem in the slightest bit disconcerted by the sudden intimacy. Whereas he was overwhelmed by a rush of sensual awareness. He ached to be closer to her. To kiss her.
He took a step back from temptation, cleared his throat. ‘Why did you stop?’
‘I believe this is the room where the meal is to be served,’ she said in a conspiratorial tone, gesturing to where wide French doors had been flung open to the veranda. She glanced furtively around her in an exaggerated dramatic way.
‘Coast is clear,’ he said, amused by her playfulness.
Drinks were still being served in the garden. They had time before the other guests would flood into the ballroom.
He followed her as she tiptoed with dramatic exaggeration to the threshold of the room. Over her shoulder he could see circular tables set up for a formal meal, with a rectangular bridal party table up top. All elegantly decorated with the Party Queens trademark flair.
‘No one in there,’ Natalie whispered.
‘Okay. Commence Operation Place Card Swap. We’ll make a dash for it. You—’
She put her finger up against her lips. ‘Shh... We have to be covert here. No bride likes her arrangements to be tampered with. We can’t be caught. You go in—I’ll guard the door.’
Finn found Natalie’s place card first and filched it from its silver card holder. Then he searched for the place that had been assigned to him. As anticipated, he had not been seated anywhere near Natalie—four tables away, on the other side of the room, in fact.
Predictably, Eliza had placed him near Prue, a friend of hers from university, who was an attractive enough girl but who didn’t interest him in the slightest—in spite of Eliza’s matchmaking efforts. There was also the fact that Prue often played fast and loose with the truth, and if there was one thing Finn loathed it was a liar. Yet Eliza persisted.
That was the trouble with weddings. There was some kind of myth—promulgated by women—that a wedding was the perfect place to meet a life partner. Love being in the air and presumably contagious. As a result, weddings brought out their worst matchmaking instincts. As if, at the age of thirty-two, the combined efforts of his Italian, Chinese and Irish families to try and get him to settle down weren’t enough, without his friends getting in on the act.
Marriage didn’t interest him. Not now. He’d lost the urge when his first serious love had broken both their engagement and his heart. No one he’d met since had made him want to change his mind. Besides, he was in the midst of such a rapid expansion of his business, opening to exciting new markets, and he did not want the distraction of a serious relationship. International trade could be tumultuous. He had to be on top of his game.
He removed Prue’s place card and deftly replaced it with the one that spelled out Natalie Gerard. Things were definitely looking up. Now he’d be sitting next to the only woman at the wedding who held any appeal for him. The only woman who had sparked his interest in a long time.
‘I’ll put this place card where yours came from and no one will be any the wiser,’ he explained to his accomplice, who had now stepped cautiously into the room.
‘Except Eliza,’ Natalie said.
‘Who I doubt will even notice the swap,’ he said.
Natalie, for all her bravado, seemed unexpectedly hesitant. A slight frown creased her forehead. ‘Is it really the right thing to do?’
‘To sit next to me? Without a doubt.’
‘I mean to mess up the seating plan.’
‘A minor infringement of the wedding planner’s rulebook,’ he said.
‘An infringement all the same. I... I usually play by the rules.’ She averted her gaze, looked down at the pointy toes of her shoes.
‘Perhaps it’s time to live dangerously?’ he said.
Her frown deepened. ‘I’m not sure I know how to do that.’
‘Live dangerously?’
She looked back up to face him. ‘Yes,’ she said uncertainly. The mischievous glint in her blue eyes had dimmed to something distressingly subdued.
‘Then let me be your tutor.’
‘In the art of living dangerously?’ she said.
‘Exactly,’ he said.
She sighed. ‘You can’t imagine how tempting that sounds.’
The edge to her voice surprised him. ‘Don’t you ever give in to temptation?’ he challenged.
Her smile returned, slow and thoughtful, with a sensuous twist of her lips. ‘It depends who’s doing the tempting.’
She was so tempting. Finn held up his hand. ‘Consider the position of your tutor in Living Dangerously for Beginners to be officially filled,’ he said.
She laughed, low and throaty. ‘I hope you find me an apt student.’
He hoped so too.
‘We’ll start by finishing the place card swap. Why don’t you do it? Your first “living dangerously” challenge.’
It would be a step towards others infinitely more interesting.
‘That’s not so dangerous,’ she said, with a dismissive sweep of her perfectly manicured hand.
There was a touch of arrogance to her gesture that surprised and intrigued him. ‘You think so? The sun is setting and I think I can hear people coming up the steps to the veranda. You’ll have to be quick if you don’t want to be caught in the act and bring down the wrath of the bride on your head.’
Any hint of haughtiness gone, Natalie made a sound somewhere between a squeal and a giggle that he found delightful. Without another word he held out Prue’s place card.
Natalie snatched it from him. ‘Mission accepted,’ she said.
He watched as she quickly click-clacked on her high heels—hips swaying—to the table where she’d originally been seated and slid the card into place. When she returned she gave him a triumphant high five.
‘Mission accomplished.’
‘Well done. Now I won’t have to find excuses all evening to visit you at your table.’
‘And I won’t need to take any opportunity to seek you out at yours.’
She coloured, high on her cheekbones, in a blush that seemed at odds with her provocative words.
