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 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. He clenched 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 nice. He was choosing sides in battle. A battle whose lines were fast blurring. Dangerously fast.
It was time to make the boundaries perfectly clear. So that she understood just how close to the fire they were dancing.
‘Honey,’ he drawled, ‘looking out for you this weekend is purely professional insurance. I want you back on dry land this Tuesday, ready to work—not all hung-over and homesick, addled by wedding-induced romantic thoughts. That’s it. End of story. You think your mother is egocentric? She has nothing on me.’
He dropped his hand till it rested just above her shoulder. Edged closer till she had to arch back to look him in the eye. Till his knee brushed against the outside of hers. The rasp of denim on suede shot sparks up his leg which settled with a painful fizz in his groin.
She flinched at the sliding contact. Her cheeks grew red. The crowd jostled, the music blared, and the air around them was so heavy with implication and consequence it vibrated. He was meant to be teaching his protégée a lesson. Instead the effort of keeping himself in check made his muscles burn.
Hannah’s hand slowly flattened to rest against his chest. But she didn’t push him away. If the thunderous thumping of his heart wasn’t enough of a caution to her, he wondered how far he might have to go.
And where the point of no return might be.
It did occur to him—far too late—that he might have walked blithely past it the moment he’d stepped off his plane. The moment he’d made certain they’d be stranded on an island, to all intents and purposes alone.
Suddenly she gave him a hearty shove, then ducked under his arm and took off to the edge of the dance floor. He should have been relieved. But it wasn’t often he had a girl literally bolt from his advances—simulated or otherwise.
Feeling suddenly adrift, he made to follow when the strains of a new song blaring over the speakers stopped him short. That particular combination of notes plucked at something inside him. Something that chased all of Hannah’s latent heat from his veins and chilled him to the bone.
In his mind’s eye he could see a woman standing at a kitchen bench, hand reaching out for an overly full glass of wine, dishtowel thrown over her shoulder, gently swaying from side to side as she quietly sang along with the small radio on the bench at her elbow.
One of his aunts? No. Wrong kitchen.
The woman in his mind turned, but he couldn’t see her face. In the end he didn’t need to. The moment she saw him her whole body seemed to contract in on itself, and the overwhelming sense of rebuff told him exactly who she was.
It was his mother’s kitchen. His mother’s disappointment bombarding him.