The Wedding Wish. Ally Blake
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briefcase ended up in the gutter, pens rolled down the road and all my precious papers scattered across the footpath. And as I was on my hands and knees crawling around collecting my materials he had the nerve to tell me to watch where I was going.’
‘Was he cute?’ was Lydia’s instant response.
Not cute, Holly remembered. She pictured early morning sunlight glinting off light flecks in hazel eyes. Tired dark smudges underneath those eyes. Sympathy she had felt at his exhausted expression. His scowl as he had realised she had dropped everything she was carrying. The same scowl that had extinguished her sympathy. The rich, deep voice with a hint of a foreign accent as he had said his piece. No, cute was not the word.
‘Tall,’ Holly eventually established, ‘dark mussed hair. Matching dimples. Smelled nice. But that’s irrelevant.’
‘Irrelevant?’ Beth said. ‘He sounds perfect.’
‘I reckon,’ Lydia agreed.
‘Just when you stop looking where you are going, he finds you. It’s kismet.’
Holly rolled her eyes, picturing Beth reaching for one of her New Age books to justify the incident.
‘He did not find me, Beth, he berated and bruised me. See.’ Holly pointed out a light scrape on her knee to Lydia, who pouted in appreciation.
‘And this is the guy you’re going to marry?’ Lydia asked.
‘No! You’ve both missed the point.’
‘Which is?’
‘The point is, the whole horrible episode brought about an epiphany. My social life consists exclusively of attending parties we coordinate. But instead of meeting men, I meet male party personalities. They mislead me with an attractive, charming, confident disguise but there is never anything more going on behind the eye-catching masks they wear. The gentleman this morning was very attractive, uncompromising, and uncaring and was therefore the embodiment of all that is wrong with the men I meet. It’s a foolproof theory.’
‘I’m confused,’ Lydia said. ‘If not this guy, who on earth are you marrying?’
‘That’s the thing—I’ve decided Ben is going to find him for me.’
‘My Ben?’ Beth asked after a couple of seconds of bewildered silence.
‘Of course. Can’t you see it’s the only way? Ben works in a big company, he’s got plenty of staff under him, mostly young men he has hand-picked, and he knows me better than anyone apart from you guys. He’s the perfect objective observer and if he can find me someone he likes then we can all be friends for ever. You know, live next door to one another, have neighbourhood BBQs, go on camping trips…’
‘You hate camping—’
‘I’m not joking, Beth. Come on, you have to see how flawless a plan it is.’
‘And all of this came from banging into some very attractive, dimpled, nice smelling guy on the street?’ Beth asked.
‘It was like when we collided he smacked some sense into me.’
‘Gave you concussion, more like it,’ Lydia muttered.
Holly shot Lydia an unimpressed look.
‘This guy must have been something to get you of all people talking marriage,’ Beth said.
‘Why me of all people?’
‘Come on, Holly. You are the most controlled, independent woman I know. You keep a colour range of spare pairs of stockings in your office drawer, for goodness’ sake.’
Catching sight of those very packets, Holly casually closed the drawer shut with her foot.
‘And here you are,’ Beth continued, ‘wanting to put your future happiness in someone else’s hands.’
‘Ben is not just someone else and you know that. I trust him to make a good choice.’
‘I can’t believe you are making some sort of sense,’ Beth admitted. ‘All right, come over for dinner tonight so that we can ambush my poor, unknowing husband.’
‘Thanks, Beth. You are the best friend in the whole wide world.’
‘And don’t you forget it.’
After Beth rang off Lydia peeled her lanky form from the chair and loped to Holly’s office door where she turned back to ask, ‘Did he help pick the stuff up?’
Holly dragged her attention away from the beckoning projects on her desk. ‘Mmm, he dropped his bags and bent down to help almost instantly. But he was telling me off at the time so that’s irrelevant too.’
‘And you were walking with your head down, immersed in thoughts of what you had to do today, not looking where you were going, weren’t you?’
‘Sure…’
‘But that’s irrelevant, right?’
Holly narrowed her eyes, willing Lydia not to continue, but her mocking look was to no avail.
‘A tall, dark, handsome stranger bowls you over and then gets down on his hands and knees to help. And you have decided this is a bad thing. I, on the other hand, would spend the rest of the day looking dreamily out the window if that happened to me. But no such luck. My morning consisted of being rubbed up against by a schoolboy on the train.’
Lydia sighed spectacularly and Holly could not help but grin at her amateur dramatics. ‘You do realise that since I am your boss your job is to ooh and aah and say, “poor Holly”, don’t you?’
‘I thought my job was to get you coffee and stand on chairs so that you can drape fabrics over me and hold all incoming calls from any men you may have had uninspiring dates with the night before.’
‘Sure,’ Holly agreed after a moment’s thought, ‘that too.’
Lydia left the room and headed back to her desk to prepare herself for a day of imagining walking up Lonsdale Street and banging into tall, dark, handsome strangers.
Jacob helped the driver haul the last of his luggage into the waiting taxi. As the car pulled away he ran a hand through his mussed hair, leant back onto the headrest, and was surprised to catch such a world-weary reflection peering back at him from the window.
Jacob’s focus shifted and he watched the familiar home-town buildings flick past. He was not yet sure how he felt about being home. So far, so good. And a hot shower and a sleep in his own bed would only make it better. But how long would it be this time before he yearned to move on?
Either way Jacob knew Melbourne was a magnificent city. Take that enchanting woman he had just had an exchange with on the street. Now there was a real Melbourne woman. Pale smooth skin suited to the temperate clime, stylish to a fault, a compelling face, and subtle, easy confidence. You didn’t find women quite like that anywhere else in the world. In any case he hadn’t yet. During the drive home, his thoughts kept coming back to the brunette with the fiery blue eyes who had somehow roused his ordinarily controlled temper.
Jet lag. It had to have been jet lag.
‘Babe?’ Ben’s voice called out from the front hallway.
Holly’s hand leapt to her throat. She had not even heard the front door.
‘In here, darling,’ Beth called, sitting on an armchair they’d dragged into the kitchen to ease her aching back.
Holly understood Beth’s raised eyebrows and tight mouth. This is your last chance to change your mind, her expression said. But Holly was not to be deterred. ‘Just follow the delicious aroma of grilled chicken à la Holly wafting from the kitchen.’
Ben popped his head around the door. He leaned down and kissed his wife, not even asking why their lounge chair was in the kitchen. Holly offered her cheek for a kiss, which she duly received.
‘To