one.’
Hannah snapped her mouth shut. If she’d been in charge of setting his itinerary she would have said the same. But she was on holiday. Out of the loop. And, yes, she was in need of a ride.
She threw her hands in the air and headed for the terminal.
He followed, his long legs catching up with her in two short strides.
She swallowed down the lick of envy at the happy tone in his voice. ‘This car that Spencer hired had better be something big and solid. The roads on this island can get mighty windy.’
‘It’s a black roadster. Soft-top.’ His large hands waved slowly through the air, as though he was tracing its curves in his mind.
Never before had Hannah felt so jealous of a machine.
‘Are you kidding me? Seems to me he’s passed on his drooling habits.’
A gentle kind of laughter tickled her ears.
She walked faster. But with his long, strong legs the blackguard kept up without any effort at all.
‘ARE we there yet?’ Hannah muttered, stretching as much of herself as she could in the confined space of the ridiculous sports car Spencer had blithely allowed their valuable boss to zoom around in. She’d be having a talk with him when they got home!
‘Turn left in eight hundred metres,’ said the deep Australian drawl of the GPS.
‘Ken,’ she said, ‘you are, as ever, my hero.’
‘Who on earth is Ken?’ Bradley asked, uttering his first words in nearly two hours. His mind was undoubtedly focussed on the embarrassment of gorgeous scenery they’d passed from Launceston to the mountain.
‘Ken’s the GPS guy.’
‘You’ve named him?’ he asked.
‘His mother named him. I just chose his voice when you were busy pretending to check the car for prior damage while actually drooling over the chassis. I’m certain you would have preferred Swedish Una, or British Catherine, but it seemed only fair that, since you and my mother have railroaded me over and over again today, I got my way about one tiny part of my holiday.’
‘Your way is Ken?’
‘Don’t you use that tone when you talk about Ken. I’ll have you know I have him to thank for getting me out of many an oncoming tram disaster when I first moved to Melbourne.’
He glanced her way, giving her nothing more than a glimpse of her reflection in his sunglasses. ‘So your idea of the perfect man is one with a good sense of direction?’
‘I have no idea what my idea of the perfect man is. I’ve yet to meet one who even came close.’
She watched Bradley from the corner of her eye, waiting for his reaction to her jibe. He just lifted his hand from the windowsill and ran it across his mouth.
She fluffed her poncho till it settled like a blanket across her knees and said, ‘Though Ken is reliable. And smart. And always available. And he cares about what I want.’
‘Turn left. Then you have reached your destination,’ Ken said, proving himself yet again.
Before she even felt the words coming Hannah added, ‘And, boy, does he have the sexiest voice on the planet.’
Bradley’s hand stopped short. Mid-chinstroke. It slowly lowered to the steering wheel. ‘And there I was thinking he sounds a bit like me.’
He moved the car down a gear. Slowed. Then turned from the road onto a long, gumtree-lined drive. Hannah stared demurely ahead and said, ‘Nah.’
But the truth was that Ken’s deep, sexy Australian drawl reminded her so much of Bradley’s she’d often found herself turning her GPS on even when driving home on the rainy days she drove her little car to work rather than take a tram. She’d told herself it was the comfort of feeling as if there was someone else in the car when driving dark streets at night.
She’d lied.
And then, appearing from between a mass of grey-green flora sprinkled in glittering melting white snow, there was the Gatehouse. A grand façade dotted with hundreds of windows, dozens of chimneys and fantasy turrets. It was like something out of a fairytale, rising magnificent and fantastical out of the Australian scrub.
‘If this is the Gatehouse,’ Bradley said, slowing to a stop so that the sports car rumbled throatily beneath them, ‘what’s behind the gate?’
Hannah placed a hand on his arm, doing her best to ignore the frisson scooting through her at even the simplest of contacts, and pointed to their left. Between two turrets there was a glimpse of the reason a chalet-style hotel could exist in such a remote place.
The stunning, stark, ragged peaks of Cradle Mountain.
Bradley slid his glasses from his face, eyebrows practically disappearing beneath his hairline. ‘God must be a cinematographer at heart to dream up this place.’
‘I know!’ Hannah said, practically bouncing on her seat. When she realised she was tugging at his sleeve, she let go and sat back and contained herself.
Bradley’s eyes slid to the building towering over them. ‘How many rooms?’
‘Enough for cast and crew.’
He finally dragged his eyes from the picture-perfect view to look at her. They were gleaming with the thrill of the find. The buzz of adventure. It was the closest he ever came to revealing anything akin to real human emotion. Moments like those were the reason her impossible crush sometimes felt like it was veering towards something just a little bit more.
Her hand shook ever so slightly as she tucked her hair behind her ear. ‘It’s perfect, right? Rugged and yet accessible. And wait till you get a load of the mountain up close. You’ll never want to leave. For me that moment will no doubt come the minute I step foot in the corner spa in my room.’
A crease, then three, dug grooves into his forehead.
Okay, so maybe she was laying it on too thick. But if he understood her enthusiasm for the place, for the project, then come Tuesday she might be in with a chance for the promotion to actual producer she’d so blithely flung out there the day before.
He put the car back into gear and curved it around the circular drive until they pulled to a stop in front of a sweep of wide wooden stairs. Finally her holiday—read ‘Bradley-free time’—could begin in earnest.
When he got out of the car at the same time as her, she gave him a double-take. It turned into a triple when she realised he wasn’t dragging her luggage from the boot. He was eyeing the hotel’s front doors.
Her stomach sank. She waved a frantic hand at the hotel. ‘No, no, no! First you show up at my apartment and practically drag me here on your plane. Then
