Julia laughed. 'I will make the ultimate sacrifice and make a detour to a boutique or two. Just for you. Because I am the best friend ever. Let's make it a totally girly day for you as well.'
'Do you think you can help me choose something that subtly straddles the fine line between gagging for it and demure?'
'It's my specialty,' Julia replied with a grin.
Julia delivered on her promise. They drove out of the city in time to navigate the traffic and have Lizzie at her doorstep at six p.m. After a quick shower and some personal grooming, she decided to pour herself a glass of wine and head out to her deck.
This is just dinner, she told herself, looking out to the distant white caps and the deep grey ocean. It was cooler today and clouds were keeping out the heat of the sun. Lizzie sipped and gathered a crocheted rug tighter around her shoulders.
The shopping day in the city hadn't been as stressful as she'd thought. The slightly sick feeling in the pit of her stomach might have been caused by Dan's phone call, rather than the city itself. It was hard to tell. She'd let Julia's excitement bubble over and infect her, too, and had quickly chosen her bridesmaid's dress. It was a pretty, floaty, pale blue cocktail number, with cap sleeves, a fitted bodice and a fifties-style full skirt. When Lizzie had tried it on, she felt like someone right out of Mad Men. Pale blue and floaty wasn't usually her thing but Julia had convinced her that it was just right.
Julia hadn't found it quite so easy to choose her own gown. Lizzie smiled at the memory of Julia parading in and out of the dressing room in a variety of wedding dresses. Some resembled smashed pavlovas; others were sleek and elegant satin. It was still a surprise to Lizzie that a woman who had been so meticulously organised in her working life, who would study and prepare reports for clients on the risks and potential problems in any possible crisis, couldn't make a choice.
'It's nice,' Lizzie had exclaimed. She'd run out of suitable adjectives about six dresses ago. Her back had started to ache from sitting so long and her willingness to witness the fashion parade had begun to wear thin. Julia had stood with her back to the full-length mirror, twisting and contorting herself to judge if her butt looked big under the voluminous bustle.
'Nice? That hurts.' Julia grimaced and propped her hands on her hips, or as close as she could get to them underneath all the fabric. 'For fuck's sake. I can't believe I'm standing here wearing this. This is so not me.' She regarded herself one more time in the full-length mirror.
'I look like "My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding",' she huffed.
Lizzie tried to find a smile at the reference but her nerves were fluttering now, not like butterflies in her stomach. More like ravens.
'To be honest, Jools, I've lost track. What is that, dress number twenty?'
Julia took a step closer to her friend, peered down at her.
'You all right? You look pale.'
Lizzie's hands flew instinctively to her cheek, which was clammy to her touch.
'Just a headache.' She'd forced a smile.
Julia had rolled her eyes. 'This stopped being fun about ten dresses ago. I've had enough too. Let's go.'
A gust of wind picked up, sweeping up the rise behind Middle Point, swirling around Lizzie's deck, goose-bumping her arms and gently playing with her hair. Lizzie was glad to be home. And now, as if the day hadn't been stressful enough, it was time to go in and get ready for her date with Dan.
At precisely ten minutes past eight, Lizzie arrived at the green beach shack. She hadn't meant to be late and didn't believe it was fashionable to keep people waiting. But she'd had a last minute nervous hitch about what to wear. Dinner was just dinner, right? At Middle Point that usually meant someone was going to throw something on the barbie and you'd be lucky if people slipped on their good thongs for the occasion.
Lizzie decided to dress up a little more than that. She looked down at her new jeans, dark denim with a boot leg. They felt good and she liked the top she'd found to go with them, crimson silk, which draped and hugged her in all the right places. It bared her shoulders and dipped down low in front. She'd be lying if she said she hadn't thought of Dan while she was in the changing room, trying it on. She'd seen him checking out her breasts once or twice.
New clothes, a bottle of wine clutched in her hand, a hint of make-up, a spray of perfume and she was ready.
She lifted her hand, knocked three times.
There were footsteps across the room. Lizzie nibbled on her lip.
When Dan opened the door, she lost her breath.
What the hell's happened to Dan McSwaine?
CHAPTER
10
This wasn't Dan, the wild man of Borneo. This was Dan ripped straight from the pages of GQ magazine.
Lizzie saw no point in hiding her enthusiastic study of every bit of him. She drank up the view. The old jeans he wore looked worn and soft, lived in, and sat low on his hips. At the end of them she could see he was barefoot. The three top buttons of his long-sleeved black shirt were undone, giving her a hint of chest, and the cuffs were rolled up loosely, almost to his elbows.
But it wasn't the clothes that sent the bolt of lightning right through her. It was Dan's face. His gorgeous face. That she could now properly see for the first time in months. He'd had a haircut, shorter at the back and sides but left longer at the top. He'd pushed it back off his forehead into a wave of thickness and she could really see his eyes now, emerald green, staring right back at her with a tease of something delicious in them.
And the beard was gone.
'Who are you and what have you done with Dan?' Lizzie whispered in appreciation. She took a step closer to him and reached up with her right hand to touch his clean-shaven cheeks, eager to feel the cool smoothness of his skin beneath her fingertips. Her fingers moved slowly across the soft, soft skin under his eyes and she found the small bump on his nose where it had been broken in the accident. That jaw, now clean-shaven, was strong and irresistible. She cupped his cheek and smoothed her fingers over the strong planes of his face.
Dan turned his head ever so slightly so he was nestling his face into her palm. With a heat in his eyes, he covered her hand with his.
'Hey,' he said.
'You look … ' She so much wanted to say: you look like the old Dan. 'You look great.'
Dan lifted her fingers from his face and kissed the top of her hand with a gentle caress, his lips soft on her knuckles, lingering there as his eyes lifted to meet hers. The simple move made her chest ache, her toes tingle and everything else in between go crazy.
'You look pretty great yourself. Come in.' He led her to the kitchen, where two wine glasses were waiting on the bench. Alongside them, a small white bowl was filled with stuffed green olives and a white platter held gourmet crackers, artfully arranged around a wedge of oozing cheese.
'What do you feel like? Red or white?'
'A white sounds great, thanks.' Lizzie lowered herself onto a bar stool and blinked at the food laid out before her. Dan appeared to be in total command of the kitchen. He retrieved a bottle from the fridge, unscrewed the top and half-filled their glasses. She felt his eyes on her as she tasted the wine.
'Nice,' she murmured, the taste of honey and melon on her lips and palate. 'I love a good, honest riesling.'
Dan's looked at her strangely. 'That's a strange way to describe a drink.'
'No, not at all. It's a riesling, plain and simple. It's not trying to be a fashionable new variety, a complicated blend of new grapes with names we've never heard of it. It is what it is and is proud of it.'
He liked her description. It was a lot like the woman herself.
'None of that was running through my head when I pulled up at the bottle shop. I chose something local from the Fleurieu Peninsula. Isn't that what locals do?'
'You're still a blow-in, my friend,' Lizzie grinned up at him. 'It takes more than buying a bottle of wine to make you a local.'
Man, she had a killer smile. Dan mused if she'd turned it up a notch just to mess with him. Then he wondered if she could tell that he'd been totally messed up about her since the minute he opened the door. She looked incredible and, even now, making small talk about the wine, all he wanted to do was run his fingers up her arms, feel her soft skin, touch the silk of her top and caress her breasts until her nipples hardened under his touch. He wanted to drive her as crazy as he was feeling.
'It's a nice thought, though, supporting our local winemakers.' Lizzie sipped again, stroking the stem of the glass. 'But I have a confession to make.'
'What's that?'
'I do have one exception to the buying local rule.'
Her guilty smile was doing strange things to him.
'You do?'
'Once – and only once a year – I indulge myself and buy a bottle of the best vintage French champagne. The best I can afford, anyway,' she added with a rueful shake of her head.
'Why only once a year?'
'Because New Year's only comes once a year. It's my gift to myself for making it through another twelve months. Every first of January, I sit out on my deck, drink French champagne and toast absent friends. Usually by myself, which means I don't have to share it with anybody.'