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  ‘But why did you make me think that you were in love with Dan?’

  ‘I was jealous of Kate. She’s so nice and so intelligent. I thought you were in love with her.’

  ‘With Kate? No, Kate’s only ever had eyes for John since she met him.’

  ‘I didn’t know that, did I?’ said Freya defensively. ‘Lucy told me you had been living with someone in Tanzania who your mother wanted you to marry. I just assumed it was Kate.’

  ‘That was Jilly,’ said Max. ‘She’s working for UNESCO now.’

  Another high flyer, thought Freya, depressed.

  ‘Jilly’s great,’ he went on, ‘but I’m not in love with her.’

  ‘You’re not?’ she said hopefully.

  ‘No. You see, I’m in love with someone else.’

  ‘Oh.’

  That was that then. Freya stared desperately out towards the lagoon.

  ‘Someone with green eyes that shine. Someone I spend half my time wanting to beat and the other half wanting to drag off to bed. Someone with the best smile and the best kisses.’ Max paused, and at last she could hear the under-current of laughter in his voice. ‘Someone a bit like you, really,’ he added conversationally.

  Very, very slowly she turned to look at him.

  Without a word, Max took the beer bottle from her hand and set it carefully on the table, before pulling her out of her chair and over onto his lap. ‘Someone exactly like you, in fact,’ he said, his eyes alight with a warmth she had never seen there before.

  Freya had a moment’s doubt. Was she dreaming? But it felt so real. His strong legs beneath her, his hand warm through the thin material of her dress, sliding down to her knee, and under her skirt, smoothing tantalisingly up her bare thigh…It felt more than just real. It felt fantastic.

  ‘Me?’ she said cautiously, still half convinced that she was going to wake up any minute and find that her fantasies had played a cruel trick on her.

  ‘Yes, you,’ said Max.

  And then he kissed her, and Freya knew it was real after all. His kiss was so warm, so exciting, so right. Nobody could imagine anything that wonderful! Sinking into him, she wound her arms around his neck and kissed him back, kiss after glorious kiss, until she was breathless and giddy with happiness.

  ‘I wish I’d known,’ she mumbled against his ear between kisses.

  ‘I thought it was obvious,’ he said, tightening his arms around her. ‘It was to Kate. She knew I was in love with you before I did, and I’ve got a nasty feeling Lucy knows too.’

  ‘Lucy?’ Freya sat up straight in outrage. ‘If I thought Lucy knew and didn’t tell me…!’

  ‘Perhaps she thought you were still in love with Dan,’ suggested Max. ‘I know I did.’

  ‘Is that why you were so grumpy?’ she asked, subsiding blissfully back against him.

  ‘I was jealous.’ He stroked her hair and kissed her again. ‘As you kept saying, he’s good-looking and glamorous and that ace reporter act of his is hard to compete with. In spite of everything Kate said, I couldn’t see why you would ever look at me while he was sniffing around.’

  Freya rested her face against his throat with a contented sigh. ‘Why did you agree to help me come out here and see him then?’

  ‘I must be a masochist,’ said Max. ‘It was just a chance to be near you. Did you really not guess?’

  ‘I thought you were only interested in roads.’

  He laughed. ‘We may not have a huge budget, but we don’t need to rely on winning flights in competitions! I could have come any time, but I wanted to come with you.

  ‘It was Kate who suggested it. She guessed how I felt about you, and thought you might get over Dan if I hung around long enough. I wasn’t so sure. You kept going on about him, and it wasn’t until he abandoned you in the middle of London that I began to hope that I might have a chance after all.’

  ‘Why didn’t you say something to me then?’

  ‘I was terrified of making the wrong move, and scaring you off,’ said Max frankly. ‘And I thought Dan would hurt you sooner or later. I was hoping he would have lost interest by the time you got here, so I could offer you a shoulder to cry on again.’

  ‘Like at Lucy’s twenty-first?’ Freya teased.

  ‘Exactly,’ he said with a grin.

  She sat up again to look at him seriously. ‘You wouldn’t have walked away this time, would you?’

  ‘No,’ said Max. ‘I won’t leave you again,’ he said, and kissed her to seal the promise.

  ‘It was different six years ago,’ he went on when Freya was comfortably snuggled into him once more. ‘You were tired and drunk and upset about your boyfriend, and you didn’t know what you were doing, but I did.

  ‘I’d always had a bit of a thing about you,’ he confessed to Freya’s astonishment. ‘Even when you were just some schoolfriend of Lucy’s, there was something about you. I couldn’t take my eyes off you at her party. I’d been away and I came back to find that you’d grown up. When you practically threw yourself at me…well, I’d have had to be Superman to resist.’

  ‘Then why did you go?’

  ‘I felt guilty about taking advantage of you while you were upset,’ said Max. ‘I thought the last thing you’d want was me hanging around making you feel uncomfortable. It wasn’t as if you’d ever liked me or anything. On the few occasions I saw you again after that, you seemed to make a point of avoiding me, so I decided that you regretted what had happened.’

  He paused. ‘I told myself it was just one of those things and got on with my life. It’s not like I had a broken heart or anything. But then I had to come back, and there you were, in my flat, in my bed, obsessed with another man again. I was angry that I couldn’t stop thinking about you. That’s what made me so irritable.’ He smoothed the hair behind Freya’s ear. ‘I know I wasn’t exactly easy to live with, but I’ll make it up to you, I promise.’

  Freya smiled, deeply pleased. ‘How are you going to do that?’ she teased.

  ‘Well, it just so happens that I’ve got a very expensive wedding ring that fits you perfectly…’

  ‘Expensive?’ she queried in mock outrage. ‘You told Lucy it was cheap!’

  ‘I lied,’ said Max simply. ‘I was going to buy a cheap band, but when it came down to it, I couldn’t do it. I wanted to give you something beautiful, even if you only wore it for a day.’

  ‘I loved it.’ Freya looked down at her bare hand where the ring had been. ‘I didn’t want to take it off.’

  Max took hold of her hand and lifted it to his lips. ‘Then let’s get married again,’ he said urgently. ‘That way you can wear it for ever. We’ll have our honeymoon first, send that damned photograph to Dream Wedding and go home to a real wedding…what do you say?’

  Freya pretended to consider. ‘I suppose it would give Lucy a chance to wear her hat again. Can we invite our parents this time?’

  ‘We can invite anyone you want,’ said Max, smiling as he drew her back against him. ‘I’ll even ask Pel to be my best man since he did such a good job last time round!’

  ‘Oh, he’ll be thrilled!’

  ‘So you’ll marry me?’

  ‘Of course I will,’ said Freya, kissing him, a long, sweet kiss warm with the promise of the years to come.

  ‘There is just one problem, though,’ she said breathlessly some time later.

  ‘What’s that?’ asked Max, lips and hands drifting deliciously, making her arch her head and gasp with pleasure.

  ‘I’d set my heart on a wild, passionate affair before I settled down,’ Freya told him unevenly as she kissed her way down his throat, and she shivered as she felt Max smile against her skin.

  ‘You’ve still got at least two weeks as a single woman,’ he said, tipping her off his lap so that he could lead her in to where the big bed waited, shrouded in its mosquito net. ‘I think we can do something about that…’

  ISBN: 978-1-4603-6567-0

  THE HONEYMOON PRIZE

  First North Ame
rican Publication 2002.

  Copyright © 2002 by Jessica Hart.

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  *Outback Brides trilogy