He's My Husband! - Lindsay Armstrong [8]
He released her abruptly. ‘I do. Goodnight, Nicola.’
But something stopped her from moving immediately, something that made her look at him fleetingly, into his eyes, to discover that everything—the amusement and everything else—had been leached from his expression so that it was like looking at a blank wall.
‘Goodnight, Brett,’ she said then, quietly and evenly, and slipped away.
Brett Harcourt stood in the same spot for some moments and wondered, as he’d found himself wondering from time to time over the last two years, if his wife was essentially naive and genuinely had no idea how attractive and desirable most men found her. Because it was true that he couldn’t accuse her of appearing to have much interest in men at all, although he’d been right about her effect on them.
But was it something she still had to grow into? he mused. Or had this marriage of convenience been even more successful than he’d thought, from the point of view of keeping the daughter of a man he’d admired immensely safe? But safe in an ivory tower?
He stared at nothing for a moment, then shrugged.
CHAPTER TWO
SUNDAY dawned clear and hot, although not nearly so hot as Cairns could get. May was one of the nicest months in the far north of Queensland, Nicola often thought. By May the threat of cyclones had receded, the stingers and box jellyfish were removing their deadly tentacles from beaches and the weather was generally cooler and dryer—if not exactly autumnal by southern standards. Although she’d been brought up in Cairns, there was no doubt the hot steamy summers took their toll.
She walked out onto the veranda and absorbed the view.
Brett Harcourt had built a house at Yorkeys Knob, a northern beach suburb of Cairns dominated by a small, steep and wooded headland—the Knob. He’d built his house on the Knob to take in spectacular views of the ocean, as well as the cane fields, of which he owned a large slice, that stretched inland to the range. Sugar cane was not his only investment. He owned banana and avocado plantations, as well as mango farms—for that matter, so did she.
But it was not the injustice of having her inheritance in someone else’s hands until she was twenty-three that was on her mind as she gazed at the view, it was only how lovely it all was that preoccupied her.
Out to sea there were magic reefs and cays, not visible at this distance, but once you’d visited them they stayed in your mind whenever you looked out. Michaelmas Cay, Upolo—a lovely little hoop of pale gold sand in a turquoise sea studded with coral—Green Island, Arlington Reef, and to the north Batt and Tongue Reefs, the Low Isles, Agincourt Reef and many more as the Great Barrier Reef rose from the depths of the Coral Sea.
Closer to home to the north was Trinity Beach and Palm Cove on the mainland, then Buchans Point—the venue for lunch today. And the Range, cloaked in its dense, dark green foliage, rose majestically behind them to Kuranda and the Atherton Tablelands.
The other advantage of having a house on the Knob was the wonderful privacy. The road was actually above their roof level, and their neighbours were hidden by a glorious tangle of tropical shrubbery: pink, purple and white bougainvillaea, yellow allamanda and scarlet poinsettia. There were palm trees and causurinas on the front lawn, and beyond, a sheer drop down to the sea.
She breathed the clear, sparkling air deeply and turned to look at the house. Built on two levels in a mixture of stone, timber and glass, it blended well with the hillside and made the most of the wonderful views. The upper level, containing the bedrooms and where she was now standing, had its own deck around the front of the house, whilst the lower level opened onto a paved terrace with an in-ground pool and a thatched open barbecue pavilion. There were big terracotta pots scattered about, in which Nicola grew flowering perennials, and some flourishing pandanus palms.
Louvred doors onto the deck and terrace, as well as simple cotton blinds, let the