He's My Husband! - Lindsay Armstrong [30]
And he involved Nicola in it all, although he wouldn’t let her move.
‘How was that?’ he asked finally, stretched out on the blanket with his head propped on his hand, having built up the fire again and replenished their glasses-Nicola hugged her knees. The woodsmoke was aromatic, drifting against the darkened sky in wreaths of pale grey. The glow of the fire was not only warming but comforting, and the tide was lapping against the beach. There was a pale, prim little new moon rising over the ocean, and the two bobbing circles of torchlight made sure they knew where Sasha and Chris were.
‘It was very nice. Thank you.’
He sat up. ‘Do I detect a slight reservation in your voice?’
She picked up her glass and sipped some wine. ‘If you really want to know, I couldn’t think of anything I’d rather be doing—under normal circumstances. But...’ She shrugged. ‘Oh, well, it doesn’t matter.’
‘Tell me.’
The firelight was bronzing his hair and the skin of his long bare legs, and she was gripped suddenly by a fantasy of her own. That they could be on a deserted beach anywhere in the world, just the two of them. Perhaps—thinking of Africa—even with wild animals prowling around, kept at bay by the fire.
How marvellous it would be to crawl into a tent with him. To strip her top and her costume off by the light of a lantern and to see his hands on her bare skin, darker and lean and strong as they slid around the ivory skin of her breasts to the pale rose of her nipples...
‘Nicola?’
She swallowed and looked up at last, hoping desperately that the warmth of the fire would account for the colour she felt prickling the surface of her cheeks. She cradled her glass in her hands and wished she could apply the chill to her face. ‘I...perhaps I don’t bounce back from encounters like last night quite as readily as you do, Brett. That’s all.’
‘I thought we’d laid it to rest.’
‘All the same I felt...I felt a bit cheap,’ she confessed.
He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘This morning I could have sworn you were fighting mad.’
She tossed her hair back. ‘I was, but that was because you provoked me.’
‘And—just now?’ he queried idly, but with a faint frown in his eyes.
‘What do you mean?’ But her heart had started to beat uncomfortably.
‘You were deep in thought and then thoroughly embarrassed.’
Damn you, Brett Harcourt, she thought, and she only just stopped herself from asking him how he could tell. ‘It...’ She paused. ‘Well, if you can concoct fantasies, so can I. Indeed—’ she looked at him with a spark of irony ‘—if you hadn’t done so in the first place, I—well...’ She drained her glass, put it down and jumped up restlessly to start to pack up the picnic basket.
He stayed where he was. ‘About us? And this beach?’
She didn’t answer, but started to shake out towels.
‘Do you know what would happen tonight if we were properly married?’ He studied her meditatively. ‘I mean—and here’s something for you to think about, Nicola—we’d go to bed together.’ He paused, and his gaze lingered on her bare legs, then lifted to meet her eyes. ‘And because of the romantic elements of a night like tonight, most husbands would not be able to keep their hands off you.’
‘Why—should I think about that?’
‘I’m not sure if you realise,’ he said slowly, ‘that once you allow a man the freedom of your body, you can’t always call all the shots.’
She stared down at him wide-eyed as his clever hazel gaze roamed up and down her again, leisurely, almost as if he were imagining having the freedom of her body, and it sent the blood surging through her veins once more.
‘Nothing to say to that, Nicola?’ he queried.
She threw the towel down and put her hands on her hips. ‘Brett, don’t...’ Her shoulders slumped suddenly. ‘This is difficult. Don’t