Miranda Lee – One Passionate Night: His Bride for One Night / One Night at Parenga / His One-Night Mistress (страница 2)
Two months later he was in a plane circling Sydney, still trying to come to terms with this revised character assessment of himself, trying to justify his past behaviour. Not very successfully. OK, so he hadn’t ever lied to his ladyfriends, or promised anything serious, or betrayed any vows, or abandoned any children. But he’d still hurt the women he’d dated, and who had probably wanted more from him than what he’d been prepared to give.
Daniel understood that he was a good catch, as the saying went. Physically attractive, professionally successful, financially secure. The kind of guy that his married acquaintances were always trying to set up with their single, female, husband-hunting friends.
To give himself some credit, Daniel always steered clear of the more obvious traps, sticking to women whom he’d mistakenly believed were dedicated career girls.
Only in hindsight did he realise that thirty-something girls who’d devoted their lives to their careers often had a change of heart when their biological clocks started ticking. Suddenly, some of them began to want wedding bells and baby bootees, whereas in the beginning all they’d wanted was some stimulating conversation over dinner and some satisfying sex at the end of the night.
Which he was more than happy to provide.
As Daniel stared through the plane window, his eyes glazed over and he started wondering if men ever suffered from the biological-clock syndrome. He’d turned thirty-six last month.
Maybe one day soon, he’d meet some girl and suddenly feel things he’d never felt before. Maybe he’d lose his head through love and desire and uncontrollable passion.
Daniel uttered a small, dry laugh.
Dream on, Daniel. This is
The plane’s wheels making contact with the tarmac startled Daniel. He’d been so wrapped up in his thoughts that he’d stopped following their descent.
His gaze focused again through the window to take in the view of Sydney from the ground.
A large bay of water stretched out before him on the plane’s left, fringed by sand. Directly opposite was an industrial area. To his right, a residential suburb. Airports were usually on the outskirts of cities but Mascot wasn’t far from Sydney’s city centre.
His sister’s house was in the eastern suburbs, at Rose Bay, also near the city centre. She’d promised to meet him, despite the early hour and her advanced pregnancy.
Daniel knew it would do him good to spend a couple of weeks here in Sydney with his sister and her husband. Australians were wonderfully easygoing, and Beth was Australian through and through now.
People blamed the hot weather, but Daniel didn’t believe it had anything to do with the weather. He believed it had something to do with their isolation. They lived so far away that they hadn’t yet been contaminated with the rest of the world’s mad and bad habits. In his experience, Australians didn’t seem to live to work as a lot of Americans did. They worked to live.
Daniel hoped to embrace some of that philosophy during his visit here. He was in danger of becoming a serious workaholic.
All work and no play made Daniel a very dull boy.
A fortnight of total relaxation would do him a power of good.
CHAPTER TWO
CHARLOTTE responded to the annoying beep-beep of her clock alarm as any person would at five a.m. on a Friday morning, especially one who’d only got to bed at two. She flung an arm over her duvet, cut the irritating noise off by hitting the snooze button, then rolled over and curled up again for ten more minutes’ precious sleep.
But before she could return to the bliss of oblivion, Charlotte suddenly remembered why she’d set her alarm at such a God-forsaken hour.
Gary’s flight was due in at six-twenty.
Although it was not a long drive from Bondi to Mascot at that hour of the morning, Charlotte had known in advance that she’d need extra time to make herself look tippy-top to meet her fiancé. Hence her early alarm.
Throwing back the duvet, Charlotte leapt out of bed, swearing when she banged her leg on the corner of her bedside chest. Rubbing her thigh, she limped to the bathroom.
‘Aaah!’ she squawked when she finally saw herself in the mirror above the vanity.
Her screech of alarm was followed by the appearance of an equally dishevelled Louise in the bathroom door. ‘What’s all the noise about?’ her flatmate asked blearily.
‘Look at me!’ Charlotte proclaimed with a despairing groan. ‘This is all your fault, Louise. You should never have insisted on having my hen night only two days before my wedding, and the night before Gary’s arrival. You know what even a few drinks do to me. Not to mention lack of sleep. My God, I look a positive fright!’
Louise snorted. ‘You couldn’t look a positive fright if your life depended on it. You even look good with dark roots.’
Charlotte groaned again. Louise had to be blind! Her hair was nothing short of appalling.
Maintaining herself as the long-haired, golden-locked blonde whom Gary had met and fallen instantly in love with up on the Gold Coast last year had taken its toll. All Charlotte and Louise’s skills as hairdressers could not prevent the damage which had been done to her naturally thick, dark brown hair by continual bleaching.
She’d only gone blonde for that holiday in a fit of pique after her break-up with Dwayne. His new girlfriend was a blonde. Charlotte had never intended to keep it that way. She’d been planning on cutting it short afterwards and returning to her natural colour.
But her plans had changed on meeting Gary, and eight months later she was still a blonde. A blonde with dark roots and split ends.
Charlotte wished now she hadn’t put off doing the roots till the day of her wedding. She should have had them done yesterday. And had a trim.
‘I have to use the bathroom,’ Louise said with a yawn. ‘Why don’t you go make me some coffee, in exchange for which I’ll blow-dry your hair for you?’
‘Do you think you could give me a quick trim and an instant treatment as well?’ Charlotte pleaded.
‘What am I, your fairy godmother? OK, OK, just go get that coffee.’
One hour later Charlotte looked as good as she could, under the circumstances. But, truly, if she kept bleaching and blow-drying her hair so ruthlessly it would start breaking off, as Louise had pointed out.
‘If Gary really loves you,’ Louise had added drily, ‘he wouldn’t care if your hair’s long or short. Or if you’re a blonde or a brunette.’
Louise’s words echoed in Charlotte’s mind during the short drive to the airport.
It wasn’t the first time Louise had expressed doubts over the reality of Gary’s love for her. And vice versa.
Charlotte could understand her friend’s misgivings. Most of her relationship with the good-looking American lawyer
But theirs hadn’t been a strictly email romance. Their initial meeting had been in the flesh. Unfortunately, their time together had been brief. It had been the last night of her holiday on the Gold Coast. The last night of Gary’s trip to Australia as well. He had been due to return to LA the next day. Gary had spied her across a crowded room—actually, it was a smoke-filled club—and zeroed in on her straight away. He’d asked her to dance and the rest, as they say, was history.
They’d spent the whole night together. Not in bed or anything like that. Charlotte had never been the sort of girl to jump into bed at the drop of a hat, especially with some smooth-talking American out here on holiday. There was no doubt Gary wouldn’t have minded, but he’d seemed impressed when she’d resisted his advances to have sex. Instead, they’d walked along the beach for hours, hand in hand, just talking. As they’d watched the sun come up together, he told her she was the girl he’d waited for all his life.
Later that day she’d accompanied Gary to the airport, where he’d promised to call her as soon as he got home. His passionate goodbye kiss had sent her head spinning, repairing some of the damage Dwayne had perpetrated on her battered self-esteem.
Louise had warned her when she came back to Sydney that men met on holiday rarely contacted you afterwards. But Gary had. He’d called Charlotte as soon as he’d returned to Los Angeles and they’d been in constant contact ever since, sometimes by phone, but mostly by email.
Charlotte felt she knew Gary much better than she’d even known Dwayne, the rat on whom she’d wasted the previous two years of her life. He’d eventually dumped her for some gym bunny, whom he’d got pregnant.
When Gary asked her to marry him last November, Charlotte hadn’t hesitated to say yes.
Maybe she would have hesitated if he hadn’t been prepared to marry her here in Sydney, and make his life here.