Page List

Font Size:

‘Oh my God.’ Hannah’s hands flew to her mouth, doing nothing to hide her smile. She glanced down at the blanket he’d handed her back at the car, clearly a ruse. ‘Did you set this up yourself?’

‘Mmm-hmm. Right before I came to pick you up, so hopefully the bottle is still cold.’ His face fell. ‘That is if you like champ—’

‘I love it.’ Something akin to a popping cork exploded in her belly, surprise bubbling all the way up to her temples. ‘It’s very romantic.’

A blush darkened Cole’s cheeks. Despite his rugged good looks, he really was quite self-effacing. Modesty was a lovely quality in a man.

‘It’s a great place to watch the sun set.’ He gestured towards one of the seats. ‘After you.’

She settled into the chair while he opened the champagne. He really had thought of everything.

‘Cheers.’ He handed her a full glass, clinked his own against hers. ‘Here’s to new—’ He stopped short, mouth partially open.

‘Beginnings?’ She could have added ‘friends’, but that was not what they were going to be.

‘To new beginnings.’

She took a sip from her glass, let the dryness of it sizzle inside her mouth and ran the tip of her tongue over her bottom lip, never once taking her eyes off him. Openly flirting. But she wasn’t here for shits and giggles. Lenore’s unsolicited counselling session seemed to have had the desired effect. Life was fleeting and there was no time to waste.

In fact, time was of the essence.

Hinging at the hips, she shifted her glass to one side and pressed her lips to his.

Tentatively at first—probably blindsided, hopefully pleasantly—the corners of Cole’s mouth curved upwards. In an instant, his lips parted and their tongues met in a furtive, blissfully slow dance. Her eyes closed, a burst of orange light exploding behind her lids as his hand cupped the back of her neck, molten lava boiling in her belly, heat building between her thighs.

A splash dampened her knee and she righted herself. ‘Oops.’ She brushed the spilled champagne from her jeans.

Cole grinned, taking a deep inhale as he shook his head. ‘Even better than I’d imagined.’

‘You imagined it? Kissing me?’ Technically they’d already kissed but that had only been a shabby prelude to the real thing.

‘Ever since I laid eyes on you.’

Should she admit she’d thought about it too? Was that pushing things too far, too fast? She’d always taken relationships slowly, been one hundred percent sure before she’d committed. But there was something about this moment, the narcotic warmth of the summer evening, the hush of quiet birdsong through the bush, the instant giddiness the champagne seemed to be eliciting … And there was something about this man.

‘I’ve thought about you too. More than kissing.’ The whispering of it, the intoxicating potency of the admission, the wicked brazenness of sharing her secret, almost tipped her over the edge. If they did take this further, it wouldn’t take more than a brush of his hand over her skin to have every one of her senses erupting.

Cole cleared his throat. The bob of his Adam’s apple was captivating. ‘Maybe we should eat.’

‘Good idea.’ It wasn’t. A better idea would be to rip their clothes off and get down to business right here and now but he’d gone to so much trouble. And the anticipation would make it even better.

Crossing her ankles and squeezing her legs together as subtly as she could went some way to dampening her ‘enthusiasm’.

Cole laid out a banquet of gourmet cheeses, crackers, dips, sliced carrots and celery, crusty bread and sliced fruit alongside two sets of plates and cutlery. ‘I hope this is okay. I wasn’t sure what you liked or how hungry you would be.’

Her brain immediately gave his words a sexual slant and set off an eruption of giggles.

Cole looked up, perplexed, but then a light went on in his eyes.

This time his face turned beetroot red. ‘Oh, I meant—’

‘It’s fine.’ She rested a hand on his forearm and gave it a squeeze. ‘I know what you meant and this looks amazing. Thank you.’

‘Dig in.’

The poor guy probably thought he was out with a man-eater. And he wasn’t far wrong. She needed to rein in her sex-deprived self and concentrate on getting to know more about his life. At least for the time being.

‘How was it that you became a farrier?’ This was the first date she’d ever been on with a man who didn’t have a university degree. If anyone was going to break down that particular bias, it was him.