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A hand on her arm stopped her flight and she jumped. ‘And how about we discuss it now?’
She looked up at him, his brow was brooding over dark narrowed eyes and a jaw set like concrete. She tested his grip with just one tiny tug on her arm and found no give, no weakness. ‘I can’t afford to miss my flight.’
‘Why are you so opposed to holding the wedding here?’
She swallowed. ‘Can you blame me for being a little reluctant to agree to your every whim? May I remind you that you were the one who said there would be no wedding?’
He made a sound like a growl. ‘We’ve been through that. Getting married here is what Moni really wants.’
‘And we have a booking Monica agreed to. Somewhere else.’
‘This is my sister we’re talking about.’
‘And Monica is my client. I’ve acted in accordance with her wishes. Thank you for your advice and your tour, Mr Caruana; I will pass on your thoughts to my client, but I’m afraid I must leave. I have a plane to catch.’ She looked pointedly down at the hand that still maintained an iron grip on her arm. ‘If you wouldn’t mind?’
He said nothing, but she sensed his anger in his heated breath, in the flare of his nostrils as his chest expanded with every intake of air and in the red-hot brand of his fingers pressing into her arm.
It was only her arm he was holding, she had to remind herself, so why did her skin prickle from her scalp to her toes? And why did heat ribbon and curl in dark and secret places until she was sure she would ignite?
Then something sparked in his eyes and he let her go so suddenly she almost lost her balance. ‘As you wish. I will take you to the helicopter.’
Breath whooshed into her lungs as she regained her balance. ‘Thank you.’ But she doubted he heard her. He was already striding away when her phone rang.
She pulled her mobile from her bag and checked the number, breathing a sigh of relief that it was Meg at the office calling and not a new client looking for the perfect day—the only perfect daze she was qualified to talk about right now was the one she was currently in.
‘Meg, what’s up? I’m on my way to the airport right now.’
Her assistant took her own sweet time answering—long enough for Daniel to have come looking for her, no doubt wondering why someone so desperate to leave was now dragging her feet. She turned away from his storm-cloud presence. ‘Meg? What’s wrong?’
‘That all depends,’ came the tentative response. ‘Do you want the good news or the bad news?’
CHAPTER SIX
SOPHIE swallowed. Things went pear-shaped in the wedding planner business all the time—wedding cakes missing a layer, string quartets going their own separate ways and citing irreconcilable differences, limousines breaking down. There wasn’t much they hadn’t seen and there wasn’t much they couldn’t deal with. So why Meg sounded so shell shocked… ‘So, what’s the good news?’
‘You don’t have an eight a.m. meeting tomorrow morning at the Gold Coast any more.’
‘What? Okay, what time is it scheduled for then?’
She could almost hear Meg’s anguish in the silent prelude to her reply. ‘Well, that’s kind of the bad news. You don’t need another time. They’ve cancelled the booking.’
‘Cancelled? But they can’t do that!’
‘I’m sorry, Sophie, I really am. But a girl—Annaliese, I think she said her name was—just called and said they had someone who could book out the entire function centre, not just the gazebo and reception room, and they paid up front in full so they had no choice but to take it.’
‘But they can’t do that,’ she repeated. Surely they couldn’t do that? ‘I’ll call them. Annaliese is only new there. She probably got her dates mixed up.’
‘Good luck,’ came Meg’s voice down the line. ‘Only she sounded so certain. I hope you’re right.’
‘Problem?’ Daniel’s voice intruding into her thoughts was the last thing she needed right now. Daniel’s presence was the last thing she needed, point blank.
‘Excuse me a moment,’ she said, drawing away, needing distance. ‘I have to make an urgent call.’
He made an exaggerated play of checking the gold watch at his wrist, a small frown creasing his brow. ‘You did say you had a plane to catch.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she hissed, wheeling away. ‘Please, this won’t take long.’
Her mind was racing, her heart thumping loud in her chest as she retrieved the number. Her teeth gnawed at her bottom lip as she waited in turn for the connection, then the pick-up, and then the seemingly interminable wait for the transfer to the functions manager. She registered the metallic taste of blood, realised her lip was stinging, and willed herself to take a deep breath to relax. At this rate she could chew her way right down to her jaw.
