Free The Wedding Date by Ally Blake Page A

singing and dancing lessons for four years because Mum wanted me to—even though I’m tone deaf with two left feet. In compensation, when I did have my moments, I made the most of them—usually in front of the entire town.’
    ‘Coming in?’ the bouncer asked.
    Hannah looked up to find they were at thefront of the line. And she was still leaning back against her boss as though they were in the middle of a crushing crowd.
    She pulled herself upright, rolled her shoulders and said, ‘You betcha.’
    The bouncer smiled. ‘Knock ‘em dead.’
    Hannah gave him a bright smile, feeling for the first time that night as if maybe she could. As if she was no longer the naked two-year-old, or the gawky, soccer-playing tomboy kid of the local beauty queen. ‘You know what? I’m going to do just that.’
    The guy cleared his throat and blushed.
    Only when she nodded did he open the door.
    Bradley placed his hand against the small of her back and gave her a not too subtle shove. In fact she practically had to trot to stop from falling over.
    ‘Somebody has a fan,’ Bradley murmured against her ear once they were inside and the
doof-doof-doof
had become music so loud she could barely hear herself.
    ‘I do not.’
    ‘That big, burly bouncer back there thinks you look more than fine tonight. He thinks you look downright gorgeous. And you know what?’
    Hannah was feeling so dizzy from the effectsof that voice skimming her ear she was amazed she had the ability to speak. ‘What?’
    ‘He has a point.’
    Then the door swung shut behind them, and it was too loud to do anything but shout to be heard.
    The club was rocking. Tasmania-style.
    There were men with burnt-orange copper mine dust stained into their jeans and the grooves of their hands, mixed with women and men in business suits, twenty-somethings in classic black club attire, and tourists in sensible layers.
    And then there was Hannah.
    Bradley might not have been to a wedding in his life, but he had seen his fair share of bachelor parties. Leaving studious, polite and pleasing Hannah to her own devices at such a do, looking the way she did, was never going to happen.
    Smoky make-up and glossy pink lips. Tousled hair that seemed to shimmer every time she moved. And an outfit that seemed demure at first glance only to cling in all the right places the second she breathed.
    Not that his imagination needed help. All that talk of her running naked down Main Street had brought her dash from the bathroom back to the front and centre of his mind. In full 3D. Technicolor. As for her perfume … It had hisnostrils flaring like a horse in heat every time she moved.
    If she’d come to the wilds of Tasmania looking for a wild fling then she was going the right way about it. Hell, without even turning his head he could see a dozen men checking her out, and the look in their eyes was creating a red mist behind his.
    Because
he
had her back. He’d promised he would, and he was a man of his word.
    He moved in closer, putting his hands on her shoulders as she began to snake a path through the club, so he wouldn’t lose her in the crowd. Her hair spilled over his fingers, silky soft. His thumbs rested against the back of her warm neck.
    The fact that those men with room keys burning holes in their pockets might consider his touch some kind of brand was their problem.
    And possibly, he admitted, his.
    It would only take one of those goons to show her the time of her life this long weekend and she’d have reason to wonder if sixty-hour weeks working for a stubborn perfectionist was actually a form of sado-masochism.
    Resolve turned to steel inside him. Hannah must have felt it in his grip. She glanced back at him, eyebrows raised in question. He tilted his head towards the bar, and lifted a hand off her shoulder to motion that he needed a drink.
    She gave him a thumbs-up and a wide, bright smile. Even in the smoky half-darkness the luminosity in those eyes of hers cut through. Showing the