Read Online The Wedding Date by Ally Blake - Free Book Online Page B

was irrelevant that he was touching her at all.
    She turned to glare at him, only to find glints throwing out specks of silver in his dark grey eyes. He said, ‘Turns out that despite Virginia’s predilection for … what was it?’
    ‘Pink cardigans and cocktails with umbrellas in them,’ she muttered.
    ‘That’s right. I couldn’t remember beyond rhinestones. It turns out that she’s an entirely sensible woman.’
    Sensible? Sensible?
    ‘Oh, no, no, no,’ Hannah said, waggling a furious finger in front of his face. ‘Don’t
you
go falling for her act. Virginia is the very opposite of sensible. She’s a narcissistic, selfish, hurtfulcreature who
always
has an agenda. And it always revolves around how any situation can benefit
her.’
    Her harsh words seemed to echo in the large space, coming back at her and back at her, like some kind of horrible Groundhog Day moment.
    Bradley’s hand slipped away from her knee and she felt the cool slap of his silence. She hunched her shoulders in mortification and stared unseeingly at a patch of carpet.
    ‘Evidently,’ he drawled into the painful silence, ‘until this moment I wasn’t aware just how deeply the issues run between your mother and you.’
    She ran her fingers through her hair, needing to shake off the crazies. ‘Well, now you are.’
    Suddenly Hannah felt very, very tired. As if her years in the city, working her backside off, building an impeccable professional reputation, creating a life for herself from nothing, doing her best to forget the period of her life at home after her dad died, were catching up with her in one fell swoop.
    With a groan, she let her head fall to the bar with a thunk.
    Out of the corner of her eye she saw Bradley’s fingers fiddling with the room key. Maybe one good thing had come from her pyscho rant. Maybe he was realising the level of drama he’dbe subjecting himself to by standing anywhere near a Gillespie girl in full flight. Maybe he was thinking of leaving her and her mad family in peace.
    She lifted her head and swept her hair from her eyes. He was looking into the middle distance, the expression in his eyes pure steel. Whatever he was thinking there would be no talking him out of it.
    She breathed in deep and waited.
    Finally he turned to face her, and said, ‘I’m coming to your sister’s wedding.’
    She moved to let her head thunk against the bar again—only this time he saw it coming. He took her by the shoulders, holding her upright. She wobbled like a marionette.
    She must have looked as pathetic and wretched as she felt because his hands slid to cradle her neck, to slip beneath her hair, his thumbs touching the soft spots just below her ears. He had to be able to feel her pulse thundering in her neck at his gentle but insistent touch, but he didn’t show it.
    He just looked her right in the eye—serious, determined, beautiful. ‘By the sound of things you’re walking into a lions’ den this weekend, with no back-up. It wouldn’t be showing you any kind of thanks for having my back all these months if I just walked away and let that happen.Especially after exacerbating the problem. I’ll be your wing man.’
    His hands dropped to her shoulders, and then away.
    Hannah wondered if a person could get jet lag from a one-hour flight. Because, blinking slowly at Bradley’s mouth, that was just how she felt—woozy, off-kilter, slipping in and out of a parallel universe. Surely the fact that Bradley Knight had just offered to be her
wing man
was a hallucination.
    She glanced at her drink. It was still three-quarters full.
    ‘Hannah—’
    She closed her tired eyes and held up a hand. ‘I’m thinking.’
    ‘About?’
    About the fact that she couldn’t twist his offer to mean anything other than what it meant. There was no punishment for rhinestone comparisons at play. By offering to throw himself in the path of the drama tornado, for
her,
he was being nice. Thoughtful. Selfless. Things she’d taken pains