Free The Wedding Date by Ally Blake Page B

lightness of spirit that made her easy to have around.
    The goons could go hang. She’d be damned hard to replace.
    The crowd bumped and jostled. Then out of nowhere lumbered a guy carrying a tray of beers who looked as if he’d drunk a keg by himself already that night. Instinctively Bradley slid an arm around Hannah’s slight waist and lifted her bodily to one side. She squeaked as she avoided having a cup of beer spilled over her in its entirety by about half a hair’s breadth.
    He found a breathing space in the gap around a massive pillar covered in trails of fake ivy, and let her down slowly until her back was against the protective sconce.
    His breaths came heavily. Then again, so did hers. Her chest lifting and falling, her lips slightly parted. Pupils so dark he couldn’t find a lick of green.
    A wisp of hair was stuck to her cheek. He casually swept the strand back into place, tucking it behind her ear where he knew she liked it. But there was nothing casual about the sudden burst of energy that coursed through his finger, as if he’d had an electric shock. He folded his fingers into his palm.
    ‘You’re making a habit of coming to my rescue this weekend,’ she said, shifting until the hand that had remained on her hip nudged at her hipbone. ‘A girl could get used to it.’
    ‘Don’t,’ he growled, shocked at the ferocity of the urge to slide his hand up to her waist to see if it was as soft and warm as the sliver of skin he touched indicated. ‘I’m no Galahad. I was thinking of myself the whole time. Of the griping I’d have to put up with if you ended up soaked head to toe in beer.’
    He pictured it now.
Her skin glistening. Her white top rendered all but see-through. Her tongue sliding between her lips to clean away the amber fluid shining thereupon.
    He’d never felt himself grow so hard so fast.
    But this was Hannah. The woman whose job it was to de-complicate his life. Hannah, whose hair smelt of apples. Whose soft pink lips were parted so temptingly. Who was looking up at him with those wide, bright and clear open eyes of hers. Unblinking. Unflinching. Unshrinking.
    He stood his ground for several beats, then slowly, carefully, removed his hands from her body, sliding one into a safe spot in the back pocket of his jeans and placing the other on the column above her head.
    ‘Now,’ he said, his voice as deep as an ocean, ‘do you still want that drink?’
    She nodded, her hair spilling sexily over her shoulders. It took every ounce of his strength not to wrap his fingers around a lock and tug her the last few inches it would take for those wide, soft pink lips to meet his.
    ‘Boston Sour, right?’ he asked.
    She nodded again. A waft of that killer perfume slid past his nose. He gripped the pillar so hard he felt plaster come away on his fingernails.
    ‘I’m guessing beer for you,’ Hannah said. ‘Imported. Sliver of lime.’
    Her words carried a slow smile, and behind that a hesitant note of flirtation he’d never heard from her before. He knew her drink of choice. She knew his. And now they both knew it.
    ‘Stay here,’ he demanded. ‘Don’t move. I didn’t save you from that booze-soaked clod so that some other mischief might befall you the second I leave you alone.’
    He’d moved to push away, to get her drink and whatever they could pour quickest for himself, when she lifted a hand and flicked an imaginary speck from his shirt. ‘Whether you want to admit it or not, beneath the tough guy exterior you are, in fact, an honest-to-goodness nice guy.’
    Through the cotton of his shirt her fingernails scraped against the hair on his chest, which sprang to attention at her touch. Heclenched his teeth so hard a shot of pain pulsed in his temple.
    Nice?
Hardly. The truth was her tough relationship with her mother had unexpectedly slid beneath his defences and connected with his own. And in a rare fit of solidarity he’d felt he had no choice but to help.
    He wasn’t being