LITMIR.BIZ

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Dwayne. His new girlfriend was a blonde. Charlotte had never intended to keep it that way. She’d been planning on cutting it short afterwards and returning to her natural colour.

      But her plans had changed on meeting Gary, and eight months later she was still a blonde. A blonde with dark roots and split ends.

      Charlotte wished now she hadn’t put off doing the roots till the day of her wedding. She should have had them done yesterday. And had a trim. And put in a treatment.

      ‘I have to use the bathroom,’ Louise said with a yawn. ‘Why don’t you go make me some coffee, in exchange for which I’ll blow-dry your hair for you?’

      ‘Do you think you could give me a quick trim and an instant treatment as well?’ Charlotte pleaded.

      ‘What am I, your fairy godmother? OK, OK, just go get that coffee.’

      One hour later Charlotte looked as good as she could, under the circumstances. But, truly, if she kept bleaching and blow-drying her hair so ruthlessly it would start breaking off, as Louise had pointed out.

      ‘If Gary really loves you,’ Louise had added drily, ‘he wouldn’t care if your hair’s long or short. Or if you’re a blonde or a brunette.’

      Louise’s words echoed in Charlotte’s mind during the short drive to the airport.

      If Gary really loves you…

      It wasn’t the first time Louise had expressed doubts over the reality of Gary’s love for her. And vice versa.

      Charlotte could understand her friend’s misgivings. Most of her relationship with the good-looking American lawyer had developed over the internet, which was a trap in itself. Exchanging emails wasn’t the same as actually spending time with each other. It was easy to put your best foot forward with words, rather than action. Charlotte did understand that.

      But theirs hadn’t been a strictly email romance. Their initial meeting had been in the flesh. Unfortunately, their time together had been brief. It had been the last night of her holiday on the Gold Coast. The last night of Gary’s trip to Australia as well. He had been due to return to LA the next day. Gary had spied her across a crowded room—actually, it was a smoke-filled club—and zeroed in on her straight away. He’d asked her to dance and the rest, as they say, was history.

      They’d spent the whole night together. Not in bed or anything like that. Charlotte had never been the sort of girl to jump into bed at the drop of a hat, especially with some smooth-talking American out here on holiday. There was no doubt Gary wouldn’t have minded, but he’d seemed impressed when she’d resisted his advances to have sex. Instead, they’d walked along the beach for hours, hand in hand, just talking. As they’d watched the sun come up together, he told her she was the girl he’d waited for all his life.

      Later that day she’d accompanied Gary to the airport, where he’d promised to call her as soon as he got home. His passionate goodbye kiss had sent her head spinning, repairing some of the damage Dwayne had perpetrated on her battered self-esteem.

      Louise had warned her when she came back to Sydney that men met on holiday rarely contacted you afterwards. But Gary had. He’d called Charlotte as soon as he’d returned to Los Angeles and they’d been in constant contact ever since, sometimes by phone, but mostly by email.

      Charlotte felt she knew Gary much better than she’d even known Dwayne, the rat on whom she’d wasted the previous two years of her life. He’d eventually dumped her for some gym bunny, whom he’d got pregnant.

      When Gary asked her to marry him last November, Charlotte hadn’t hesitated to say yes.

      Maybe she would have hesitated if he hadn’t been prepared to marry her here in Sydney, and make his life here.

      Or if you weren’t thirty-three, another nasty little voice whispered in her head. And beginning to believe that you would never find a husband.

      Charlotte swiftly brushed that no longer relevant thought aside.

      She was getting married. Tomorrow. And in considerable style.

      Charlotte hoped Gary wouldn’t mind. He’d requested a simple wedding. No church. Just a celebrant, and only a small guest list. He himself had no close family; his parents had been killed in a tragic house fire when he was a teenager.

      But Charlotte’s father hadn’t waited thirty-three years to give his youngest daughter away in anything less than a white wedding with all the trimmings.

      Secretly, Charlotte had been glad her father had insisted on this. Her two older sisters had both been beautiful brides with white wedding gowns, and Charlotte hadn’t really wanted to settle for anything less. The church part she’d managed to skirt around, her parents reluctantly agreeing to a celebrant. But everything else was to be very traditional, complete with a proper reception, a three-tiered wedding cake, the bridal waltz. The lot!

      Charlotte hadn’t informed Gary of any of this. She reasoned that once he was here, she could explain that it wasn’t her doing. It was her parents’ idea. And it wasn’t as though he had to pay for any of it. Her father had footed the bill, dear sweet man that he was. All Gary had to do was be fitted with a rental tux today—a fitting had been arranged for this afternoon—then show up in it tomorrow.

      Charlotte didn’t think that was too much to ask. Not of a man who really loved her. And he did. He must really love her, otherwise he wouldn’t be coming all this way to marry her. Or have sent her such a lovely sapphire and diamond engagement ring.

      Just the sight of it on her ring finger was reassuring.

      Half an hour later, Charlotte was pacing back and forth outside the arrivals gate to which Gary’s flight had been allotted, her eyes darting continuously to the ramp down which her fiancé would walk any moment now. His plane had only touched down ten minutes earlier—it had been late landing—but business class passengers were rarely held up in Customs.

      She couldn’t stand still. Nerves had her stomach in knots. But was she excited or afraid, afraid that she was about to rush into marriage with a man she hadn’t even been to bed with?

      Still, maybe that was a good thing. She’d eventually slept with most of her other boyfriends and none of them had proposed marriage. Perhaps because she’d always ultimately disappointed them, sexually. Her lack of enjoyment seemed to bother her boyfriends more than it did her.

      She’d been totally honest with Gary and he’d reassured her he wasn’t marrying her because she was a sexpot, but because she was beautiful and warm and sweet and wanted what he wanted. A family. At the same time, he seemed extremely confident that everything would turn out fine on their wedding night.

      Charlotte hoped so, hoped that this time she would feel the earth move the way Louise was always talking about.

      If she didn’t? Well…as Gary said, they would work on it together.

      There! There he was!

      She started jumping up and down, waving and smiling.

      ‘Here! Here! Over here!’

      When he turned his darkly handsome head from where he’d been looking over to one side, Charlotte’s hand froze mid-air, her smile instantly fading.

      Because it wasn’t Gary at all. Just someone who looked like him. In broad strokes, that was. About the same height. Gary was over six feet. Similar hair. Dark brown. Short. No parting. Rather similar in profile as well. High forehead, strong nose, square jaw.

      But when this man stared straight at her, Charlotte could see his eyes were nothing like Gary’s. This man’s were deeper set, and very penetrating. Not blue, either, but brown. Almost black when they narrowed underneath his dark straight brows.

      They were narrowed right now. On her.

      Never in her life had Charlotte been looked at the way this man was looking at her. The focused intensity in his gaze was nothing short of blistering.

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