Free A Bride for Christmas by Marion Lennox Page A

can get a smoke machine from Sydney.’
    ‘A smoke machine…’
    ‘It creates the haze without the health risk. I should have everyone smoking either cigars or Gauloise, but I’ll bet you have laws preventing it.’
    ‘We do.’
    ‘There you go, then. A smoke machine it is. Now, let’s look at these dresses and see if any of them might fit without alterations.’
    ‘You’re good,’ she said, on a note of discovery, and Guy stopped making lists and glanced up at her.
    ‘You’re surprised?’
    ‘You said you could even cut hair?’
    ‘There’s nothing I haven’t been landed with in the years I’ve been building this business. I know my stuff, Jenny. I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t.’ He smiled at her look of scepticism. ‘You don’t need to worry,’ he said softly. ‘We’ll look after Kylie. The first Australian Carver Wedding will go off with a bang.’
    ‘It surely will,’ she said, awed, and then suddenly, as if she couldn’t help herself, she slipped out from behind the counter, took two steps forward and kissed him.
    It was nothing like the kiss they’d shared last night. It was a kiss of gratitude, nothing more, and why it had the capacity to make him feel as if his feet weren’t quite on the ground he couldn’t say.
    ‘You’re making Kylie happy,’ she said softly. ‘Thank you.’
    ‘Think nothing of it,’ he said, or he tried to say it, but the words weren’t quite there. He was staring at Jenny as if…
    He didn’t know what.
    This wasn’t the type of woman that attracted him.
    He hadn’t exactly been celibate since Christa had died. What had Jenny said? It was crazy, wearing the willow for someone for fifteen years. He hadn’t. Or maybe he had, but only in the sense that he never got emotionally involved. Where relationships went he used his head and not his heart. It did his firm’s reputation good if he was seen with A-listers on his arm. He chose glamorous women who could make him laugh, but who knew commitment was neither wanted nor expected.
    But Jenny…
    She was dressed like a prim secretary. Like a repressed old maid. Like something she wasn’t. He knew she wasn’t. Because otherwise why would his body be screaming that it wanted this woman—he wanted this woman?
    She was a complication, he told himself desperately, and he’d spent his entire adult life making sure that he had as few complications in his life as possible.
    ‘I need to go check the facilities at Anna’s property,’ he said, and if he sounded brusque he couldn’t help it.
    She grabbed her bag. ‘It’s in the hills, north of town.’
    ‘I’ll find it,’ he said, and she hesitated and then put her bag down again.
    ‘You want me to stay here?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Fine.’ Back to being subservient. ‘I’ll make lists of what’s needed.’ She hesitated. ‘That is, if you want me to?’
    ‘I want you to.’
    ‘Fine.’
    What was it between them? What was this…thing? It felt like some sort of magnetic charge, with both of them hauling away from it.
    ‘Fine,’ he repeated, and he left—but some important part of him stayed behind. And he couldn’t for the life of him think what it was.
    CHAPTER FIVE
    THEY worked brilliantly as a team—apart.
    For the next few days plans for the two weddings proceeded as swiftly as for any function Guy had organised in Manhattan. Most of it was down to Jenny. Guy just had to hint at a suggestion and she had it organised. She seemed to know every last person in a twenty-mile radius of Sandpiper Bay. He needed oysters? She knew the couple who leased the best oyster beds. He wanted lobsters? She knew the fisherman. Fantastic greens? Her husband’s best friend had a hydroponic set-up where they could get wonderful produce straight from the grower.
    Jenny wrote out a menu for Anna’s wedding, and when Guy read it he grinned. It was inspired. Yabbies, prawns, oysters, lobsters, scallops—seafood to die for, and all in enough quantities to make their