He's My Husband! - Lindsay Armstrong [42]
‘So long as I know the mistress of my house is comfortable and reassured, yes. Look at me, Nicola.’
‘Brett,’ she said on a breath, ‘I’m fine.’
‘Nicola.’
She hesitated, then lifted her lashes uncertainly, ‘What?’
Something flickered in his eyes, but she couldn’t read it. He said, ‘I just wanted to tell you that in all the drama earlier you were so...nice, so sane, your father would have been very proud of you.’
‘Now you are going to make me cry,’ she said helplessly.
‘No.’ He took her loosely in his arms. ‘You should feel proud too.’
She shook her head, but felt the emotion gripping her begin to subside. ‘I don’t think I should fall into that trap, actually,’ she said with a grin. ‘I’m sure the Reverend Callam would tell you pride comes before a fall—although he did have some rather un-Christian notions for a—’ She stopped.
‘Who is the Reverend Callam?’ he queried quizzically.
‘Uh...’ Nicola mused regretfully that she should always think before she spoke. ‘Well...’ She hesitated, but encountered a look in Brett’s hazel eyes that was at the same time patient yet fully expectant of receiving an answer. ‘Oh, well, he was the marriage counsellor I went to see.’
One eyebrow shot up as Brett reviewed this piece of information, then he looked at her searchingly. ‘What un-Christian notions did he put into your head?’
‘Nothing terrible, just—I guess you could call it something to do with human nature, that’s all.’
‘The mind boggles,’ he said dryly. ‘Nicola—’
‘No, I’m not going to elaborate,’ Nicola said firmly, ‘so don’t waste your breath, Brett. It...it’s nothing for you to worry about.’
For a moment he remained unimpressed, then a glint of devilry gleamed in his eyes. ‘That’s usually my line.’
She smiled faintly. ‘Perhaps a bit of role reversal wouldn’t do us any harm.’
‘Does that mean you’re about to lecture me on the error of my ways?’ The devilry was still there, although his expression was grave.
‘No. But it can’t hurt to put yourself in someone else’s shoes occasionally,’ she said tartly.
‘Indeed it can’t,’ he replied softly, and ran one hand absently up the back of her neck beneath the fall of her hair. ‘Although I wonder if you’ve ever tried to put yourself in mine?’
Nicola said nothing as two things struck her with unusual force and a sense of poignancy. How many times had she tried to do just that? she wondered. Only to be met by a seemingly impenetrable barrier. And secondly, had he any idea how fragile her neck felt with his hand curved about it, and how the feel of it sent ripples of awareness flowing through her body?
Not only that, it opened up channels of thought, as well as the trickles of arousal running through her. How different, for example, this embrace was from the one three nights ago, with its exchange of hostilities and that electric spark that had flamed between them. How much wanner this felt, and how those channels of her mind were passing messages to her senses.
So that she observed and thought about little things, like the lines beside his mouth, which she’d always loved, and felt her fingertips tingle with an urge to touch them. It was the same with his hair, brown, crisp and clean, giving off chestnut glints beneath the ceiling light, and the darker tips of his eyelashes, and the shape of his chin—which Sasha had inherited, despite the overall look of her mother. A chin which, when she tilted it, left no doubt that she could be quite as determined as her father.
Then there was the fact that to be so close to him in this tranquil way was to be able to breathe in the scent of him and find it fascinating and different.
Just pure man scent, I guess, she thought, with a touch of clean cotton from his T-shirt. Do I have a pure woman scent? she wondered. Or has it been drowned beneath shampoo, conditioner and scented soap? What would it be like to lie on a bed with him? Her thoughts ran on, down a familiar path. To be undressed and to feel his hands run over my skin, to be made love