He's My Husband! - Lindsay Armstrong [43]
‘Nicola?’
She blinked. ‘Yes?’
‘What were you thinking?’
‘Nothing much,’ she answered slowly.
‘It didn’t look like it.’
Don’t blush, she warned herself, and shrugged slightly—a delicate disclaimer.
But their gazes locked—she found she couldn’t look away as his eyes probed the depths of hers. ‘You looked,’ he said, ‘surprised and—assessing.’
‘I did?’
‘But not unpleasantly surprised. And thoughtful as well.’
She moved at last, and he took his hand away from her neck but kept her within the circle of his arms. ‘That’s quite a combination of looks,’ she said wryly, but her heart was beating strangely, and she was very much afraid he would see it in the pulse at the base of her throat.
But he said easily, ‘Going to tell me?’
She chewed her lip. ‘No.’
‘So it’s something else I don’t need to worry about?’
‘No. I mean, no, you don’t have to worry,’
He raised an amused eyebrow. ‘I’d still rather know.’
‘Brett, don’t be difficult,’ she protested. ‘It...wasn’t anything much.’
‘All the more reason not to want to hide it from me,’ he countered mildly but he tilted his chin that Sasha had inherited.
She clicked her tongue frustratedly. ‘You’re impossible. All right, but don’t blame me if you don’t like it I was wondering—just as a natural impulse—what it would be like if we...made love, that’s all.’
‘All?’
‘Well—’ she tilted her own chin ‘—it was something you yourself suggested only the day before yesterday, and this is a...a fairly intimate position to be in with you, I guess—that’s why it came to mind. If men can be men, girls probably have the same prob-
She moved unhappily and wished she had Sasha to cuddle, but Sasha had obviously been reassured by her mother, which led Nicola to think of Marietta, and that tense little stand-off between her and Tara.
Why would two women take such a dislike to each other on sight? There had to be a common denominator and it had to be Brett, didn’t it? she asked herself. She was quite sure in her own mind that Tara had divined the state of their marriage somehow, be it gossip, rumour or whatever, and had her own agenda in mind for Brett. Was that what Marietta had divined? And, if so, did she resent it on Nicola’s behalf... or on her own?
She turned over, then sat up and pulled her pillow into her arms as another scenario took shape in her mind. Assuming Marietta had known all along that this was a marriage of convenience, did it suit her own ends, if she had plans to try to win Brett back after five years? Had she seen it as a way of keeping him free from other women, of ensuring the children were happy? And just possibly, knowing Marietta, Nicola thought with some wryness, as a way of keeping me out of harm’s way?
But what about this boyfriend? A double-barrelled attempt to get Brett back? Make him jealous in other words?
Oh, no! Dear Reverend Callam, if only you knew what a can of worms you opened up. Well, is it any wonder I can’t think straight?
She couldn’t help thinking with some irony that it was an uncomfortable household she was mistress of the next morning.
lem sometimes—don’t say it,‘ she warned, unable to stern the flood of colour that came to her cheeks this time, although her eyes were sapphire-blue and imperious.
‘How the hell do you know what I was going to say?’ he asked roughly.
‘I’m sure I’ve heard it before.’ She gazed at him defiantly. “‘Don’t be childish, Nicola.” Or that other gem—“You’re testing your powers of attraction, Nicola!’”
He released her abruptly. ‘And you don’t think it’s either of those things?’
‘I think,’ she said, with a great effort at control, although her heart was hurting, ‘that you shouldn’t put me in these unfilial positions with you when all you see yourself as is standing in for my father.’
He swore, and she took a step backwards at the blazing, almost murderous expression in his eyes and the hard, white line of his mouth. ‘You seem to forget who started this,’ he ground out, then swung on his heel and walked out.
Nicola stared at the door and put her hands to her mouth. What have I done? she asked herself, and