Before Him

“I’m not stalking him sounds exactly the kind of thing a stalker would say.” April’s smug smile is about half a mile wide.

“I just love his Aussie accent,” Chelsea, one of April’s friends from home, cuts in, bored the conversation isn’t about her. Maybe I’m being unfair. Small and blond, Chelsea looks like a champagne cocktail. Next to her, I feel like a plain old root beer. But wait, she loves his accent. Has she spoken to him?

I push away the thought and glance around. The hotel bar is all dark walls, plush seating, moody lighting, and even moodier music. The beers are oddly named, and artsy cocktails overpriced. Fancy is not my wheelhouse, but I’m determined to drink in the experience of April’s twenty-first birthday break and make the memories merry ones. Especially given I’ll be living on crackers and tinned soup until my bank recovers from the cost.

“I just find an Aussie accent so dang sexy,” Chelsea adds. The other girls agree. “I wonder if they’re on vacation or working over here.”

“I guess we’ll never know.” Urgh. How can we have the same taste in men? I bring my glass to my lips as I consider how, from this distance, her fluttering lashes probably make her look like she has a tic.

“Oh, but we will.” April is of the opinion that a girl should only ever have to pay to get half drunk before attracting a man hoping to get her the rest of the way. I might be a little tipsy myself, but even I can see her lack of logic. Just because she wants them to pay for our drinks doesn’t mean—“Because I invited them to join us.”

I almost choke on the sweetly sticky contents of my glass, unable to stop myself from swinging around for a more thorough second glance. My Aussie crush looks like a model in a Tom Ford ad. His pale-coloured shirt is open at the neck, and his dark suit hugs him in all the right places. Shoulders. Biceps. Thighs. It might not be my favourite look on him, but it comes a very close second to what he’d been wearing at the pool.

Two words: wet swim shorts.

Okay, that’s three, but I don’t think a hundred words could do justice to how delicious he looked. I allow my gaze to meander up his body, and I physically start as my eyes meet his. He smiles lazily at me, and when he pushes away from the bar, I’m surprised I don’t pass out. Except, I’m not the swooning type.

“Australians do do it hotter,” I find myself murmuring.

“I heard, Australians do it down under, if you know what I mean.” April snickers, holding up her hand for a high-five.

“Sign me up for some of that,” titters one of the other girls as their hands meet.

“I blame Chris Hemsworth.” April fluffs her hair.

I send a confused glance her way. “Really?” He’s not even blond . . .

But then my Aussie crush is here, standing at the edge of our booth. Tall enough to scale like a pole, his broad chest tapers to narrow hips, his physique definitely muscular but not brawny. Tight, my mind supplies, slipping to the image of him in those shorts again. There’s something raffish about him, which seems the antithesis of Hemsworth’s blond and wholesome thing.

I glance at my drink, wondering if sweet and girly cocktails are to blame for my whimsy tonight, throwing around words like raffish and torrid. It doesn’t stop there because I also seem to think there’s something almost European about him. I mean, how? It’s not like I’m an extensive traveller or mingle in international. But maybe his name is at fault rather than my drink. Or maybe it’s the other way around, and his name is just perfect for him.

Roman.

I know this, thanks to a little Starbucks eavesdropping. Though it suddenly occurs to me that he might’ve given the barista a fancy false name because his real name is something awful. Maybe he’s a Bart. Or a Chad. Or, yikes, maybe Abner.

“That’s a pretty smile.” I look up, startled by the sound of his voice. It’s rich and deep and has a cadence like molasses. More startling still is the fact he’s looking at me. “But I have to ask,” he says, grabbing a chair from a nearby table and positioning it at the end of the booth. “What did he do?”

“I’m sorry.” I shake my head, my brain working on a delay. “What did who do?”

“Chris Hemsworth. What are we blaming him for?” His gaze flicks to April. “Apart from the rising prices of real estate in Byron Bay.”

“There’s no way you heard that,” I find myself answering.

“Maybe I can read lips.” One corner of his mouth curls. “It’s Kennedy, right?”

My eyes widen as butterflies the size of eagles swoop through my insides. The cute boy knows my name, too! Man. The cute man knows my name.