He's My Husband! - Lindsay Armstrong [57]
‘Brett?’ she said, blinking furiously. ‘Is it you or am I dreaming—?’ She broke off abruptly.
‘Yes. Dreaming?’ he said, and moved forward so she could see him clearly.
He wore a grey suit, white shirt and a charcoal tie with gold stripes, and he had a briefcase which he dropped to the floor.
‘I...I didn’t hear the car, or the door, and I certainly wasn’t expecting you,’ she said. ‘So that’s why I thought I was dreaming.’ She stopped again, and clasped her hands together.
‘You didn’t think I’d forgotten your birthday, Nicola?’ he said dryly, and sat down opposite her.
She licked her lips, and to gain time and composure studied him. Although he looked well-groomed enough to take his place in a courtroom, there were lines of weariness beside his mouth—and she said the first thing that came to mind. ‘That’s a new tie and suit. At least, I don’t think I’ve ever seen them before.’
His lips twisted. ‘I left in such a rush, I had to kit myself out in Brisbane.’
‘Of course. So it’s over—have they settled out of court or something?’ she asked, wide-eyed.
‘No. If anything, they’ve dug in for a long and bitter battle.’
‘I don’t understand,’ she whispered.
‘I’ve replaced myself. With Tara.’ He grimaced
‘I wondered why you didn’t do that in the first place,’ Nicola said honestly. ‘Not that I know the finer points of it, or that it’s any of my business—’
‘As a matter of fact, it is.’
Nicola stared at him. He had his arms stretched along the armrests, his legs sprawled out in front of him, and he was beating a little tattoo with the fingers of one hand on the oatmeal linen. He was watching his fingers, with his head inclined downwards and sideways, and once again the lamplight was picking out the chestnut in his brown hair.
‘In what way?’ she asked uncertainly.
He said nothing for a moment, then looked up with something in his hazel eyes that she couldn’t decipher, except to wonder whether she was imagining that it was sheer, self-directed mockery. ‘It was the only way I could devise to...keep my hands off you until your twenty-first birthday, Nicola.’
Her lips parted incredulously and her heart started to beat heavily. ‘Why?’
‘Why?’ A glint of irony lit his eyes and a nerve beat in his jaw. ‘Because none of the strategies I’ve employed over the last two years were the least help once I’d—kissed you. You may remember what happened two days after Marietta got home?‘
‘But...’ Her voice failed her.
‘Still don’t understand, Nicola? Then I’ll explain. Shades of Richard Holloway,’ he said grimly, ‘but I realised I was in love with you the night I asked you to marry me.’
She gasped. ‘That can’t be true!’
‘Oh, it’s true,’ he murmured.
‘But what...but why...?’ Her eyes were huge and dark with incomprehension.
He laid his head back tiredly. ‘I made a promise to your father when he was dying that I would do my level best to stop you from marrying until you were at least twenty-one. I broke the letter of that promise, but I knew I could never break the spirit of it. Not only on his behalf but on my own—and especially on yours.’
Nicola was transfixed. ‘He...did that? He didn’t tell me.’
‘Naturally not,’ Brett said quietly.
She bit her lip. ‘You could have told me.’
He only looked at her.
She stood up shakily. ‘Brett, if this is true, do you mean to tell me you’ve...put me through two years of a marriage of convenience just because of a—a date?’
Something flickered in his eyes. But he said evenly, ‘Not just a date, Nicola. The defining of a period for you to settle after the trauma of his death, to find your feet without being burdened down with loneliness—loneliness that might have caused you to seek solace unwisely.’
‘To grow up—you missed that one,’ she said hoarsely.
He shrugged wearily. ‘Nineteen is not so grown up.’
‘But... but once it happened, once you did kiss me...’ she stammered. ‘I was almost twenty-one anyway.’
‘And Richard Holloway was on the horizon,’ he pointed out significantly. ‘You