Beauty and the Wolf / Their Miracle Twins (29 page)

She didn’t pull back. ‘A bit. You’re not quite what I thought.’

‘And what did you think?’

‘That you just didn’t like being told what to do …’ This close she could see the machinations of his mind behind his stormy eyes. And her unsteady breath practically made the candle flame dance.

‘I don’t.’

‘… and that you were doing this for your mother.’

‘I’m doing this for my whole family.’

‘I don’t think it’s that simple.’

‘Really?’ His raised eyebrows said
go on
but the darkened eyes beneath them glittered
dare you
. Bel had always appreciated a good dare.

But then, just as she opened her mouth to speak, he lifted one of his large hands off the table and reached up to drag the backs of his fingers along her jaw. The unexpected caress stole the air out from under her and made it impossible to speak. Not that she could remember what she’d been about to say.

All she knew was the feel of those work-roughened fingers brushing along her skin. The riotous tingles it caused. The strength in his hand as she leaned her face just slightly into him on instinct.

She pulled back, blinking. Flushing. ‘What are you doing?’

Flynn curled his fingers tightly into his palm and cleared his throat. ‘Experimental touching. They’re not going to buy it if you jerk away whenever I get close.’

More heat flooded her cheeks. The way she’d pressed her cheek into him at first … Though she knew he was right. His
family were perpetually on the edge of asking uncomfortable questions now. ‘A little warning next time, huh?’

‘Maybe we could use a coded signal.’ His lips twisted. ‘What say I quack like a duck when I’m about to touch you.’

Despite the baffling sensations still rippling through her, despite the tense conversation they’d just been having, Bel found it hard not to smile at the image of a man like Flynn imitating a duck. The widening of her lips caused fissures to open up in the serious mask she often wore around him and tiny chunks broke free and fell away. Her skin hauled in a relieved breath for the first time since she’d arrived here.

‘And what if I’m about to touch you?’ she asked.

‘Are you planning on it?’

‘Well, it’s going to look a little strange if I don’t ever reciprocate …’

‘Just go ahead and touch. I don’t need a code.’

‘I was thinking more along the lines of a subtle glance five seconds out.’

‘So you can get all tense in those five seconds? Maybe better that we just get all the touching out of the way now so the ice is well and truly broken.’

‘Yeah,’ she muttered. ‘Because that’s not weird at all.’

He pushed his chair back from the table and Bel flinched. What was he going to do, embrace her?

‘Let’s go check on the platypus.’

Her eyes flew immediately to the clock. Where had those hours gone? They were nearly an hour late for prime platy-viewing time.
Damn …

Bel was up in a heartbeat and Flynn could feel her presence following close behind him, out onto his back deck. As she went to skip down the steps ahead of him he reached out and stalled her with gentle fingers around her forearm. She paused and glanced back up at him.

‘Quack,’ he said, far too late, and then his fingers slid down the bare skin of her wrist, across her palm and interlaced
with her shock-stiffened ones. ‘Relax. It’s just in case anyone watches us crossing the lower paddock.’

She lifted an eyebrow. ‘You think they’ll be sitting by the window with binoculars waiting for signs of us being cosy?’

‘I wouldn’t put it past Nan.’

‘Holding hands isn’t exactly caught-in-the-act material.’

‘Holding hands is as good a place to start as any.’

She was as stiff as the freshly starched sheets they used in the chalets, walking beside him, her careful hold limper than a dead fish in his. That wasn’t going to fool anyone.

‘Now who’s got the plague?’ he said in a low voice.

She responded a moment later by resettling her fingers more comfortably in his and taking a deep fortifying breath. It was a start. The two of them were going to have to do much more before the month was out if his family were going to believe they’d been intimate enough to create a new life. Somehow he had to infuse his casual touches with enough subtext to convince his wily nan that touching was a poor substitute for what he really wanted to be doing to the woman who was supposed to be his girlfriend.

Soon-to-be fiancée …

And she was going to have to get used to having his hands on her.

Which made him smile. Unaccountably.

Flynn took the lead on the darkened pathway and kept Bel’s hand tucked in close to his thigh, his fingers tangled firmly in hers. They were slim and warm and neatly manicured and they fitted his perfectly. She wasn’t a jewellery wearer, unlike her bling-happy sister, and so it was skin on unbroken skin wherever they touched.

The cheek thing had been an impulse. Nothing at all to do with ice-breaking and everything to do with being drawn to the fiery challenge in her eyes and the flush of colour their spirited discussion had caused. He wanted to touch the place
in her skin that the colour came so richly to life. The place she bled her emotion.

And he was a man used to acting on his impulses. Even the bad ones.

Her footsteps fell into line with his own as they wandered down towards the spring, ending the push-pull of being out of step. It made their whole movement more easy, less like a tug-of-war and more synchronised. Fluid. Like good sex.

And they were only walking.

That boded well for some casual contact over the next few weeks. It was the show that counted, but some visceral enjoyment was pure bonus. Perhaps not surprising; regardless of everything else he’d thought about up-herself Gwen Rochester, he had always understood what Drew saw in her physically. Petite and stacked and blonde.

His fingers tightened around Bel’s. Maybe the chemistry between the Rochesters and the Bradleys was universal, regardless of what sister it came in? Chemistry wasn’t something he would have expected to discover with Bel.

Any more than her genuinely meshing with his family.

He’d seen enough of her interactions with them to know her protestations that first night were true. She
did
enjoy their company. And though she wasn’t enjoying the deceit that was necessary for the moment, she wasn’t
hating
it here in Oberon and she wasn’t looking down her nose at them all the way her sister had. Small mercies. But, despite her apparent bad fit in her own family, this apple wouldn’t have fallen too much further from the Rochester tree than her older sister.

Different, but the same.

He glanced behind them to make sure the line-of-sight from the house was interrupted by the trees along the banks of the spring and then loosened his fingers and let hers fall free. She shifted away immediately.

‘Have we missed them?’ she asked, disappointment staining her voice.

Despite growing up in a cosmopolitan megalopolis, she did get appealingly excited by small moments of simple pleasure. The platypus foraging. Releasing a hand-reared joey into the juvenile roo paddock. Sunrises. He had to remind himself that while her grandmother’s money meant she could lie around and do nothing all day if she wanted to, she chose to work with injured wildlife back home rather than party with the beautiful people by night and sleep by day.

Just like she chose to have herself implanted with her sister’s babies.

She was a whole mass of contradictions wrapped up in a tall, lean, flaming package.

‘Let’s give it a few minutes. Sometimes they wait for the moon to get higher.’

She sank down onto the bank below a eucalypt tree and stared at the water as if her focus would make the platypus materialise through sheer perseverance.

‘So …’ she finally said, not looking at him. ‘About this touching …’

Here we go …

‘I agree we need some ground rules. Boundaries really. What kind of touching are you talking about?’

Her voice was a low, husky whisper to keep from disturbing the platypus but it did a mighty job of disturbing him. He shook the thought free. ‘You want me to spell it out?’

‘Yes. Please. So I know what to expect.’

And what to slap him for, probably.

She took a deep breath. ‘Hand-holding, obviously.’

‘Obviously.’

She turned to stare at him expectantly. She seriously wanted him to list it. Okay … ‘Ah, my hand on your lower back, maybe. Or your shoulder.’

‘All right …’

Okay, this was good. Weird but manageable. ‘I might … brush your thigh.’

‘Really?’

‘Not saying it’s guaranteed.’

‘Thigh-brushing. Check.’ The husk in her voice seemed a hint tighter.

Which matched the tautness of his body perfectly. He pushed to his feet and moved next to her and sank down, sliding his glance sideways at her. ‘Chances are I’d lean into you at some point. Just briefly.’

Bel nodded. And swallowed. Her enormous eyes seemed extra blue in the moonlight. ‘Uh-huh …? Would I lean back?’

‘You might. If the situation warrants it.’ His eyes fell to her hair, where tiny loose strands clung defiantly to her cheek. They seemed to multiply as he watched. ‘I’d probably stroke your hair away from your face.’ His eyes dropped lower and he swallowed hard. ‘Or your throat.’

The stream burbled in the silence and when she finally spoke it was softer than he’d ever heard it. ‘Sounds convincing …’

Her gaze slid lower to where his hands hung between his knees, itching to enact his thoughts. ‘That’s the idea.’

She lifted her eyes and locked with his. ‘What else?’

She wanted more?
Careful what you wish for, sweetheart …

‘If I thought we had an audience, I might sit behind you on the bank here, pull you back against me …’ the more he said, the more the words thickened in his throat; her lips fell open, just a hint, and his eyes leapt straight to them ‘… and rest my chin on your head.’

‘Really?’ Breathless this time. ‘Why?’

‘Just to be close.’ He frowned. ‘Just to
seem
close.’

‘What would I do? To seem close?’

What he wished in that moment she’d do and what he thought in a million years she’d allow were very different things. ‘You’d probably hook your arms around my knees and pull them close. Just to complete the circle.’

Her eyes were like black full moons as she stared at him. ‘Okay.’

He forced air through his tight chest.

‘And when they think we don’t know they’re watching I’d almost certainly graze my thumb across your lips. As though I was about to kiss you.’

Hell, he could feel it now. The fullness of her bottom lip, spongy and sweet against his rough thumb. His mouth dried.

‘Which you wouldn’t.’ Her blink was slow motion but there was definite wariness behind it.

‘Never in front of my family.’

‘Why not?’

He leaned closer. Murmured, ‘Because a kiss is something personal, between two people. Something intimate. Not something to be aired in public.’

‘People kiss in public all the time.’

‘Not my kind of kisses.’

Her tongue stole out to wet her lips and she stared at him long and hard. Was her body reacting like his was? As if they’d actually done every one of those things?

She blew a puff of air out between tight lips. ‘Wow. I’m glad I checked. That’s quite a performance.’

Performance.
Right.

Her meaning couldn’t have been clearer if she’d shoved him headlong into the frigid stream tumbling past their feet. ‘That’s the plan. We’ll give a new definition to the term
faking it
.’

She almost winced. But then those plump lips split in a broad smile. ‘Well, there’s nothing too untoward there.’

‘You’re comfortable with all of that?’

‘I’m …’ she groped around for the right word and sat up straighter, breaking the filaments of attraction that had formed between them ‘… as eager as you are to end the suspicion in your family’s eyes. So yes. All of that will be acceptable.’

Acceptable.
It was a term straight out of the Gwen Rochester dictionary and a healthy reminder that no matter how brightly
her eyes sparkled as the sun set, or the platypus splashed, or the candle flickered, Belinda was still a Rochester deep down.

And she was a temporary necessity. A diversion. An incubator.

Nothing more.

‘O
NLY
twenty minutes now.’ Flynn shot her a tight smile—the
in private
one, the one not full of artificial promise—then turned his eyes back to the endless expanse of Australian highway stretching out ahead.

Twenty minutes before they rumbled back over Bunyip’s Reach’s rickety stock grid and drove the long winding gravel track to the Bradley homestead. Twenty minutes before they faced the inevitable moment of confessing their pregnancy to his family, and followed it up with their intent to marry straight away. Twenty minutes before they compounded the lies they’d already told and complicated things for both of them tenfold …

Because they
were
still pregnant. And thanks to what her Sydney gynaecologist called the ‘healthiest young uterus’ she’d ever seen,
both
embryos had held on past the risky period and were now surviving and thriving deep inside her.

She turned to look out of the side window and closed her eyes.

Twins, Gwen …
Two healthy children. What her sister and Drew had only dreamed of.

She’d known multiples were possible, or even none, but in her head and heart she’d convinced herself that one would survive. All her imaginings of her life going forward included a single pram. A single cot. A single pair of cut sandwiches. A
single little person jogging off for their first day at primary school.

One she could manage.

But two …

She swallowed hard.
Alone …

Two
tiny young lives needing her constant care and support. Twice as scary. What if she wasn’t up to it? What if she failed them like she’d failed so many others in her life? Including herself.