Lynne Marshall - Perfect Proposals Collection

And yet … She wasn’t after a dating contract. She needed a springboard from which to leap back into the dating world. And there he stood, beautiful, sexy, and glinting at her like nobody’s business.

She stuck out a hand. ‘Paige Danforth. Eighth floor.’

‘Gabe Hamilton. Twelfth.’

‘The penthouse?’ she blurted before her tongue could catch up with her brain. That was how addled she was; she hadn’t even noticed which floor he’d pressed. The penthouse had been empty since the day she’d moved in. Meaning … ‘You’re not visiting.’

‘Not.’ How the guy managed to make one word evoke so much she had no idea, but he evoked plenty. The fact that he would be sleeping a mere four floors above her being the meat of it.

‘Renting?’ she asked, and his eye crinkles deepened, making her wonder what she’d evoked without meaning to.

‘Mine,’ he drawled.

Paige nodded sagely, as if they were still talking real estate, not in non-verbal pre-negotiations for something far less dry. ‘I hadn’t heard it had been sold.’

‘It hasn’t. I’ve been away. And now I’m back.’ For how long he didn’t say, but the glint sizzling in his dark eyes and making her feel as if steam were rising from her clothes told her he believed it was long enough.

The lift dinged, as lifts were wont to do—normal lifts, lifts that weren’t demonically possessed—right as she was gaining momentum to do something rash. Rash but necessary.

And then the doors opened.

‘Of course,’ Paige muttered as she recognised her own floor by the dotted silver wallpaper, a Ménage à Moi staple. What could she do but step out?

The back of her hand brushed Gabe’s wrist as she shucked past. The lightest possible touch of skin on skin. When little waves of his energy continued crackling through her as she stepped out into the hall, Paige turned back. It was on the tip of her tongue to ask him in for coffee. Or offer to show him the sights of Melbourne. Or any other number of euphemisms for breaking her dating drought.

Then he stifled a yawn.

Like the dawning of the sun it occurred to her that the glint in his eyes had probably been the effect of jet lag the entire time, not some kind of extraordinary instant mutual chemistry between herself and the vision of absolute masculine gorgeousness gracing the lift before her.

If her complexion had been tomato-esque earlier, she’d bet right about then she resembled a fire engine.

Please , she silently begged the lift as they stood facing one another, close now. Just this once. Close .

And it did. The two great silver doors slid serenely towards one another, Gabe’s dark figure growing darker by the second. Until his hand curled around the edge of one door, stopping it in its tracks. Mere mechanics no match for his might.

‘I’ll see you ‘round, Paige Danforth, eighth floor,’ Gabe said, before his fingers slid back away.

Then, as the doors came to a close, he smiled. A dark smile, a dangerous smile, a smile ripe with implications. A smile that sent the dancing hormones inside her belly into instant spontaneous combustion.

Then he was gone.

Paige stood in the elegant hallway, breathing through her nose, feeling as if that smile would be imbedded upon her retinas, and messing with her ability to walk in a straight line, for a long, long time.

The gentle whump of the lift moving up inside the lift shaft brought her from her reverie and she blinked at the two halves of her reflection looking back at her in the spotless silver doors.

Or more specifically at the huge, great, hulking, fluorescent-white garment bag hanging from her right hand. The one she’d completely forgotten about even while her right hand now felt as if it would never feel the same again.

The one with the hot-pink words ‘Wedding Dress Fire Sale!’ glaring back at her in reverse.

‘I’LL be damned,’ said Gabe to the dark wood panelling on the inside of the lift doors as he rubbed at the back of one hand with his thumb where the heat from the touch of his new neighbour’s skin still registered.

During the endless trudge through Customs, the drive from the airport with its view over Melbourne’s damp grey cityscape, then with the winter wind blowing in off Port Phillip Bay and leaching through his clothes to his very bones as he’d waited for the cabbie’s credit card machine to work, Gabe had struggled to find one thing about Melbourne that had a hope in hell of inducing him to stay a minute longer than absolutely necessary.

Then fate had slanted him a sly wink in the form of a neighbour with wintry blue eyes, legs that went on for ever, and blonde tousled waves cool enough to bring Hitchcock himself back to life. Hell, the woman even had the restive spark in her eye of a classic Hitchcock blonde; fair warning to any men who dared enter it would be at their own peril.

Not that he needed any such warning. Three seconds after he signed whatever his business partner, Nate, wanted him to sign he’d be on the kerb whistling for a cab to get him back to the airport. Not even the kick of chemistry that had turned the small space of the lift into a travelling hothouse would change that.

Gabe rehitched his bags, then shoved his hands into the deep pockets of his jacket, closed his eyes and leant back into the corner of the lift. As the memory of where he was, and why he’d left in the first place, pressed against the corners of his mind he shook it off. And, merely because it was better than the alternative, he let his thoughts run to the cool blonde instead.

About the way she’d nibbled at her full lower lip, as if it tasted so good she couldn’t help herself. And the scent of her that had filled the small space, sweet and sharp and delicious, making his gut tighten like a man who hadn’t eaten in a week. As for the way she’d looked at him as if he was some great inconvenience one moment, and the next as if she wanted nothing more than to eat him up with a spoon …?

‘Wow,’ he shot out, eyes flying open, hands gripping the railing that ran hip high along the back of the lift, feet spread wider to combat the sudden sense that his centre of gravity had shifted. The lift had rocked. Hadn’t it? Try as he might he felt nothing but the gentle sway as it rose through the shaft.

Jet lag , he thought. Or vertigo . He sniffed out a laugh. He had Hitchcock on the brain. The guy was no dummy and was also clearly terrified of cool blondes. Did one thing inform the other? No doubt. If a woman looked like trouble, chances were she’d be trouble. And Gabe was a straight-up guy who preferred his pleasures the same.

He pulled himself to standing and ran both hands over his face. He needed sleep. Clearly. He imagined his custom-built king-sized bed which a week earlier he’d had shipped back from South America. The deal there was done anyway, and he’d ship it out again the second the next investment opportunity grabbed him. He imagined falling face down in the thing and sleeping for twelve hours straight.

For some, home was bricks and mortar. For others it was family. For Gabe it was where the work was. And wherever in the world he got wind of an exceptional business idea in need of someone with the guts and means to invest, that was where he sent his bed. And his pillow—flattened to the point he probably didn’t even need the thing. And his mattress with the man-shaped dint right smack bang in the middle that fitted his spreadeagled body to perfection.

Moments before he fell asleep on his feet the lift deposited him neatly at his floor. Exactly as it was made to do.

Gabe yawned till his ears popped, fumbled for the keys to the apartment he’d never seen. The apartment he’d bought to shut Nate up, when Nate had maintained he needed a place in Melbourne considering the company they jointly owned was based there.