Chapter 12

There needed to be classes in How To Talk To Your Fated Mate. Ollie was almost sure bringing up the idea of having kids a mere 24 hours after meeting his mate wasn"t the right approach, but he was realizing that despite people talking about how great and wonderful it was to meet their mate, they never really discussed the awkward parts.

Like how to explain his inner koala wasn"t metaphorical, for example.

I"m eucalyptical,the koala said, offended. The fact that it had no idea what "metaphorical" meant was completely beside the point. It saw a chance for offense and took it.

And Ollie simply laughed. Yeah, you are. Too bad there are no eucalyptus trees around here. I"d get you a treat.

Tiffany is a treat,the koala said hopefully.

"Probably," Ollie said out loud, "but not the kind you get for a koala. C"mon, let"s go see where else there is to eat in this town besides the hotel. We"ve got a date tonight."

Of course, Tiffany would be hot and sweaty after her day"s work. She might only want to go out to the hotel"s outdoors restaurant again, but Ollie wanted to be prepared, just in case. He was checking the maps app on his phone when a family text message came through, reminding everybody that the wedding rehearsal dinner was starting at seven and to be at the hotel on time for it.

Oooooh, you"re in trouble now,his koala said in delight. C"mon, let"s you and them fight! You can"t go to a rehearsal dinner! You"ve got a DATE!

"I can"t not go to the rehearsal dinner," Ollie said faintly. They didn"t do them as a thing in Australia, but this had been made very clear: members of the wedding party went to the rehearsal dinner in America. Or Else. "Steve would string me up by my toes."

I can take "im! Lemme at "im!

"You can"t take him. He outweighs you by three hundred kilos."

But I got spirit!

Despite himself, Ollie laughed. No one in the entire world could doubt that his koala did, in fact, have spirit. It would take on a mountain lion without hesitation. It would probably fight a gazebo, given the opportunity.

I can take it!

Ollie gestured to the under-repair gazebo. "That"s a gazebo. It"s not something to fight."

Tiffany was climbing the gazebo"s scaffolding at the moment, her biceps flexing and literally gleaming in the sunshine as she went up to examine something in the roof"s repairs. She moved beautifully, her motions economical, and her confidence obvious as she swung onto a walkway, talking animatedly with one of her crew. She was really genuinely the most beautiful woman Ollie had ever seen. All he wanted to do was go right back to her side and stay there forever.

A wonderful idea trickled through his mind. Before he could think about it any more closely, because he knew it was also a terrible idea, he hurried back to the construction site and waved vigorously toward Tiffany. He didn"t want to shout and distract her when she was three meters off the ground, but after a minute he remembered he had her phone number, and sent her a text message. Come talk to me when you have a minute?

Then he hung on the outside of the safety fencing, fingers pressed uncomfortably against the safety mesh, and waited. His koala was for once completely content: it liked hanging on things and doing nothing else in particular.

Tiffany took her phone out, glanced at it, then, with furrowed eyebrows, glanced toward Ollie. He gave her a thumbs up that made her smile, and she went back to work. It was almost half an hour before she could come talk to him, but the truth was, he loved every minute of watching her, whether she was discussing things with her crew or hauling things around. All he moved around were numbers. It wasn"t nearly as physically attractive.

She was smiling at something her crew had said when she finally made it back over to him. "This must be good. You"ve been waiting here for ages."

"I forgot I"ve got a rehearsal dinner tonight and I was wondering if you"d come to it with me." Ollie blurted it all out because he was afraid if he let himself consider what an over-the-top idea it was, he wouldn"t be able to talk at all.

And indeed, Tiffany"s pale eyebrows rose until they all but disappeared under her hardhat. "You…are asking someone you met yesterday…to come to your cousin"s wedding rehearsal dinner with you?"

See, that was why Ollie hadn"t wanted to let himself think about it. He"d been afraid that was an escalation. Nobody invited somebody they"d just met to a wedding, he knew that, he wasn"t stupid, after all, but he didn"t know any of the rules about wedding rehearsals. Apparently it was pretty close to the same level as inviting her to the wedding itself. Still, he grimaced hopefully. "Yes?"

She stared up at him through the safety mesh. She was so small and delicious that for a moment Ollie couldn"t think at all, not even about what a ridiculous thing he was asking. He just wanted to pick her up and convince her to do things with him that people probably shouldn"t do on construction sites, and definitely shouldn"t do in public. A couple of curls were visible at her temples beneath the line of the hardhat, dark gold with sweat that trickled down her jaw and toward her throat. It was possibly the sexiest thing Ollie had ever seen.

Tiffany, as if still working her way through this, said, "You"re asking me to a huge, important family event as our second date?"

"Third date," he reminded her. "Lemonade yesterday afternoon, dinner last night, now wedding rehearsal dinner tonight. Three dates."

She laughed. "Oh, well, if it"s our third date…" She hesitated. "What time?"

"Seven."

Her face fell. "We"re going to be working until dark. I"m sorry, Ollie. I don"t think I can."

"Boss." Parker, the big guy who had saved the bee-stung man the day before, had been loitering and obviously eavesdropping. Ollie had known it; Tiffany, who jerked toward him with surprise, clearly hadn"t. "Boss, we can build a gazebo without a site manager," Parker said dryly. "We"ll knock off at dark and you can come inspect our work in the morning. It"ll be fine. Go have a good time."

Responsibility conflicted with longing in Tiffany"s expression. A burst of hope bloomed in Ollie"s chest at the fact that she evidently wanted to go to the dinner with him, and Parker, who was now Ollie"s best friend in all the world, shot him an amused, exasperated look before saying, "Go on, Boss, or do you need me to get the whole crew over here telling you to go have fun?"

"No! Jeez, no. Fine. Fine! I don"t have anything to wear." She turned back to Ollie, and from behind her, Parker gave him a wink and a thumbs up before turning away as Tiffany said, "It"s dressy, right? I don"t have anything dressy. Why would I have something dressy? I wasn"t planning to go to a wedding rehearsal dinner."

"You know what, if you need to wear jeans, that"ll be fine, but Charlee isn"t very tall and I bet she might have something you could borrow."

"I am not borrowing the bride"s clothes the night before her wedding! Especially not after wrecking her gazebo!"

"There is a tailor"s shop over there," Parker said in the still-exasperated voice of a man who was pretending he wasn"t listening. "Didn"t somebody say there"s some fashion designer who"s got a workshop here?"

"Why would anybody have a workshop in Virtue?" Tiffany demanded. "Also, why are you still here? Don"t you have work to do?"

Parker smiled beatifically at her. "I am working. I"m working to make sure my boss remembers that there"s something in life besides work. Somebody has to set a good example for us worker bees, right?"

"It"s not that dressy tonight," Ollie said hastily. "Not formal-formal. No thongs and shorts, but?—"

"Thongs? At a wedding rehearsal? I should hope not! I don"t have a swimsuit with me but even if I did why would I wear it at the wedding rehearsal? And I"m certainly not going in my underwear!"

Ollie stood, half-frozen with confusion and a little alarm. "Thongs...underwear? Oh! Oh! No, thongs!" He lifted a foot. "That you wear on your feet! Sandals with a toe thong!"

"You mean flip-flops?"

"Why do Americans even call them that?" Ollie demanded, half outraged.

"Because they go flip-flop, flip-flop, when you walk!"

Ollie opened his mouth and shut it again. He had to admit there was a certain logic to that, but Australians never used two syllables where one would do. "Ah. Well, all right. But no thongs of any kind at the reception dinner. I don"t know. Maybe it"s just a bad idea."

NO IT ISN"T!

"No it isn"t!" Parker and Ollie"s koala spoke at the same time, startling him. Parker was eyeing his boss now. "You"ve always got something decent to wear. She likes dressing up," he informed Ollie. "It"s an antidote to all the testosterone she works around."

"Why are you talking about me like I"m not here?" Tiffany asked indignantly. Not very indignantly, though. She really looked like she was somewhere between embarrassed and trying not to laugh. "Okay, all right, I guess might have a couple of dresses with me in case I had a chance to go out to dinner when I wasn"t sweaty and disgusting."

"You"re glowing," Ollie said a little sappily. She eyed him. He examined her briefly, then made a face. "Okay, fine, you might be a little sweaty." To his amusement, she looked much more satisfied with that than his attempt at romantic politeness.

"I told you," Parker said with considerable satisfaction. "Go get gussied up, Boss. You"ll have fun."

"All right, all right. If anything goes wrong!" Tiffany spun toward Parker with a lifted finger and he raised his hands in a promise.

"I"ll text, I promise. But come on, Boss, we can handle a gazebo. Go!" Parker opened the safety gating, which Ollie suspected might have been the only reason Tiffany actually left.

"What on earth is your family going to say about you bringing a total stranger to the wedding rehearsal?" Tiffany asked under her breath, and then in a more normal voice, except alarmed, "Oh my God, is it a set dinner? Did you tell them in advance you were bringing a date? You can"t just mess with wedding numbers, Ollie!"

"I—oh. I don"t know. And no. I didn"t. Because I didn"t know I was bringing a date until now. But I will! It"ll be fine, right?"

If it"s not I"ll bite somebody!

For just the briefest moment, Ollie let himself enjoy that idea. He had no intention of letting the koala bite anybody, but the thought of the little beast rampaging and ravaging through the hotel kitchen amused him. "If it"s not," he said, "I"ll speak to the manager. We"ll work something out." He grinned at Tiffany suddenly. "We"ll get burgers from the main restaurant and drag a kiddie table in and sit over to the side like we"ve been badly behaved. See? A solution."

"You can sit at the kiddie table," she said dryly. "I"ll take your assigned seat at the grown-ups table, because I tell you what, being this short gets you treated like you"re younger and dumber than you are, so I"m not going to play into that. But…yeah, it"s a solution." She smiled up at him, and Ollie had to look down to make sure his feet were still on the ground. He felt like he was floating.

If your feet aren"t on the ground they"re in a tree, his koala said, baffled. Koalas don"t float.

And that brought him right back down to earth with a laugh. "No kiddie tables, then. I"m sure it"ll be fine. They"ll make room for you, Tiffany."

That much he knew. His family would make room, even if the hotel"s catering services protested. Tiffany Wright belonged with him, and Ollie with her. Everything else would fall into place.

"If you say so," she said dubiously. "Look, it"s already after five. If I"m going to dinner with a bunch of strangers I desperately need a shower before I go, so I"ll…what, meet you at the hotel at a quarter to seven, or something?"

"I could walk you back," Ollie offered. "I have to let them know I"m bringing a date, and if anybody"s going to argue, I should be the one to deal with that."

She cast a funny little look up at him. "You"re a funny one, aren"t you?"

"Am I?"

"You"re really calm, but you don"t back down from a fight, either. You just don"t get all in-your-face about it. I get in people"s faces."

"Well." Ollie hesitated as they left the square and took the shadier side of the street on their walk toward the hotel. "Don"t take this wrong, but you"re much smaller than I am. You probably have to be more assertive to be taken seriously."

"And yeah, I do, and I"m a woman, so that"s another thing to overcome, but boy, I tell you what, it"s really nice to hear somebody say "assertive" instead of "bitchy.""

"I haven"t seen you being bitchy," Ollie said, feeling on more solid ground now. "You just know what you need, and don"t take any bullshit getting there."

It"s so HOT,his koala whispered. Ollie tried not to smile too obviously, although he was in complete agreement with the beast. "Your team seems to work well with a woman in charge, though, so you must have a lot of support."

"I wouldn"t keep crew who had a problem with me. That would be dumb. But yeah." Tiffany pulled a face. "I mean, they also push me around and tell me to go on dates, so I dunno, but…"

Ollie laughed. "Do they do that a lot?"

"Actually, no, never. You must have made a good impression on Parker. He"s a good dude. Really solid. If he likes you, I probably can"t go too wrong."

"Did you think you were going wrong?"

They were almost at the hotel, so Ollie was surprised when Tiffany turned and put her hand on his chest, looking up at him quite solemnly. "No. Not for a minute."

His heart leaped so hard Ollie was almost sure she would feel the lurch under her palm. "Good," he whispered. "Me either."

They stood there, gazing at each other in the hot evening sun, until the koala yelled KISS HER, FOR GOD"S SAKE!, which reduced Ollie to a huge smile. "Okay, so I"ll deal with the dinner arrangements and text you to let you know everything"s okay? And then we"ll meet in the lobby."

"It sounds…" Tiffany paused. "Insane, because who takes somebody to a wedding event on the third date?"

"Me," Ollie said with confidence, and Tiffany smiled at him.

"Well, in that case, it sounds perfect."