They stared at each for a long moment, until he added, ‘Don’t forget, that was the other object of this exercise—to protect your fair name from being dragged through the mud.’
‘And on that properly grateful note—’ she got up and curtseyed ‘—I’ll take myself to bed, sir!’
He said nothing, but his eyes were suddenly cynical and cold.
Don’t say it, Nicola warned herself. But, as so often happened, she failed to take her own advice—although she did manage to sound fairly clinical instead of rashly impassioned. ‘There are times when I hate you, Brett.’
‘I know.’ He picked up his glass and drained it.
‘Doesn’t it ever bother you?’
He set the glass down on the desk, stared at it for a moment, then raised his eyes to hers. There was so much amusement in them now, she caught her breath at the same time as a little frisson ran down her spine. A frisson of awareness that she despised herself for but couldn’t help, because Brett Harcourt did that to her even when he laughed at her.
‘No, Nicola. You remind me of Sasha, actually. She often hates me when she doesn’t get her own way. Why don’t you go to bed? You not only sound tired and cross, you look it.’
She opened her mouth, then bit her lip and walked past him. But he put out a hand and closed it round her wrist. ‘Good thinking,’ he said with soft satire, then genuinely laughed at her expression. ‘OK, OK, I’m sorry! Of course you don’t remind me of Sasha, that was tit for tat, but there is nothing on earth for you to be in a state about.’
They were very close-close enough for Nicola to see the little golden flecks in his eyes and feel that frisson of awareness grow into something stronger as his lean, strong fingers moved on the soft skin of her inner wrist.
‘If you say so, Brett,’ she murmured colourlessly, and removed her gaze from the line of his shoulders beneath the bone-coloured shirt, hoping and praying at the same time that he had no idea what the strong column of his throat and those broad shoulders sometimes did to her—evoking an erotic little desire to explore them with her fingertips and follow that trail with her lips.
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 air flow through the house as well as giving it a slightly Oriental air. The floors inside were all sealed timber or polished slate, and the rooms were uncluttered to minimise the heat but furnished beautifully, with a mixture of modern and colonial. Curiously, the fact that some of it had been Marietta’s doing didn’t offend Nicola.
There was also a garden for the children, a shed and a kiln for her pottery, and a shady, secretive courtyard outside the front door that was definitely Oriental in design and a delight to Nicola. More of her pottery pots and most of her statues ended up in it, and she grew herbs, lemon trees in tubs, impatiens, and miniature capsicum and chillies beneath a magnificent tree that was at present a blaze of bloom and spreading a pink carpet on the uneven tiles that surrounded it.
The sight of a small face at her bedroom doorway, which was instantly whisked away, alerted her. She waited a couple of moments, then padded back to her room silently and sneaked up to the bed that now had two still mounds beneath the covers. She fell on the bed, causing screams and loud gurgles of laughter to emanate as the mounds wriggled joyfully and they all ended up in a heap.
‘Who’s been sleeping in my bed?’ Nicola demanded, feigning utter surprise.
‘You knew, you knew!’ Chris, short for Christian, chanted.
‘How could she know?’ his sister contradicted, coming up for air. ‘We didn’t make a sound. We didn’t even breathe!’
‘I bet you she knew—’
‘OK.’ Nicola gathered them on either side of her and plumped up the pillows. ‘Let’s not start the day with a fight. How about a song instead? Let’s see...’
They sang ‘The Teddy Bears’ Picnic’, then, because The Wiggles were such a hot topic, embarked on one of their songs about a dog that barked all day and night. They sang the chorus with great gusto and much hilarity, alternating from basso profondo to a shrill, scratchy falsetto.
