He's My Husband! - Lindsay Armstrong [60]
‘Dangerous?’
‘Brett, don’t you remember? That very morning you’d been to see someone in the watch-house who had almost shot his wife.’
‘Oh that. Yes, I remember, but—’
‘You said—“Who knows what we’re really like under the surface?” I thought you meant that underneath you could be in trouble with what you felt for Marietta—especially since she’d taken to parading a toy boy in front of you.’
‘I...’ Some the lines eased beside his mouth and he took her hand. ‘I was in trouble, Nicola, but only because I was very tempted to...pick you up and run. off with you. Away from Marietta and her machinations and her toy boys, and even from her children.’
Nicola gasped. ‘Your children, too.’
‘I know, I know. It was only a momentary impulse. But when you looked like that...’ He stopped and sighed. ‘I was confronted by another problem. I was going to have to let you go.’
‘Brett—’ her hand moved in his ‘—if I can believe what you’ve told me, can you believe what I told the Reverend Callam?’
A faint smile lit his eyes. ‘I’m beginning to have nightmares about the Reverend Callam.’ The smile died. ‘What did you tell him, Nicola?’
‘That while I may have been in love with you I wasn’t so young and immature as to let you see it, and that what it really amounted to was my pride wouldn’t let me show you.’
‘He—believed you?’
‘He believed me. Are you going to? Because if you’re trying to tell me I need longer to grow up, or something like that, I’ll die a little, I think. Two years is a very long time to be pretending... Oh, thank God,’ she whispered as he suddenly swept her up into his arms.
‘Happy birthday,’ he said softly, later—quite some time later.
‘Have I really made it?’
She was lying in his arms; they were lying together on the settee. Her robe was open and his hands were beneath it. He’d kissed her until she could no longer have a single doubt that this was a man who’d wanted her for two long years.
‘I asked you how you did it,’ she murmured, and traced the line of his jaw.
‘Kept my hands off you?’
‘Mmm...but I had the same problem,’ she confided. ‘So, whilst Tara may have given me the impetus to do it, it was only what I’d been secretly dying to do for so long.’
‘Kiss me?’
‘Yes, Brett,’ she said demurely, although her eyes sparkled with laughter. But she sobered abruptly. ‘Then I felt terrible.’
‘You didn’t know what I was going through,’ he commented. ‘Can I tell you what one of my worst moments was?’
She pillowed her head on her arms and he played with her locket, then his fingers slipped downwards. ‘Yes,’ she said, but with a tremor.
‘That night on the beach. I was seriously tempted to forget any promises I’d ever made because there was something about you in the firelight that was...’ He stopped, then held her hard.
‘You must—you were a mind-reader. Because I’d had this extraordinary fantasy, about a tent and just the two of us on a wild beach with wild animals...’ She trailed off ruefully as he lifted his head and looked into her eyes quizzically. ‘Well, you were the one who taught me about fantasies.’
‘There was another time that was an extreme test of my self-control.’
‘There was?’
‘Yes,’ he agreed gravely. ‘After that school presentation. When you were so annoyed, then so sweet and so amused to think how you’d surprised me. And you walked away from me down the drive, swinging your hat—I very nearly made this a very proper marriage in every sense of the word there and then. And that was before I kissed you for the first time, my darling Nicola—but this is no fantasy, is it?’ he said, suddenly sober.
She took her hands from behind her head and slid them round his neck. ‘No. Because I can’t wait to be taught how to make love to you, Brett. And if you ever have any doubts, will you think of this? The only reason I wanted to give you back to Marietta was because I loved you too much to think of you living with second best—and