by Nikki Logan
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.
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘ONLY 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.
‘Are you feeling okay, Bel?’ Her tiny groan must have caught Flynn’s ear.
She dragged her eyes back to his. ‘I’m just—’ terrified ‘—thinking.’
He nodded and turned his focus back to the road. ‘A lot to think about.’
‘For you, too.’ Though raising twins within a supportive three-generation family with two experienced mothers, a house built for youngsters and a property most kids would only dream of wasn’t quite the same as imagining them practically sleeping in drawers in her too-small London flat.
He looked at her strangely. ‘Nothing a few minutes editing the documents won’t fix.’
That brought her head more fully around to him. ‘What documents?’
‘The court documentation. I called them while you were changing. To update the petition.’
She blinked. He’d already notified his lawyers? While she hadn’t even thought beyond the shock of how she was going to manage two children on her own.
‘Fast work,’ she said tightly.
He glanced at her, then dragged his eyes back to the road, resting his hand on the handbrake next to her thigh as they ate up the roads at a hundred kilometres per hour, and she did her best to be unobtrusive as she shrank away from it.
Had she thought for one moment that being touched so often would turn out to be more stressful than continuing to fabricate excuses why Flynn was not touching her, she would have turned and walked away all those weeks ago when he’d first suggested they ramp up the faux intimacy.
They’d eased into it gradually—an indulgent look here, a gentle smile there—and worked their way up to the more serious, now commonplace, contact between the two of them. On some mad, inexperienced level Bel thought it would become easier—like stage directions in the drama club plays at school which became second nature with rehearsal.
But it hadn’t, and not because she couldn’t bear his touch.
Quite the opposite.
Her skin shivered every time Flynn’s earth-roughened fingers brushed it, which was often. He was a good looking, charismatic man and—despite everything going on between them—she was a young, fertile and apparently healthily responsive woman. He touched, she crumbled. He brushed, she shivered. He leaned, she absorbed.
He faked … she believed.
But his family were believing, too. They were delighted and patently relieved when Flynn finally started showing some interest in their guest and the probing questions eased off almost immediately. Now their roused suspicions lay comfortably, quietly snoring.
And twin babies were only going to push the doubt out of their minds for ever.
She turned to face him. ‘So how do you want to handle the marriage?’
‘We’ll go back into Sydney in a couple of weeks. As soon as we get our lice
nce.’
She stared at him. ‘A registery office marriage?’
He frowned at her gaping expression. ‘Don’t tell me you want the full white-dress catastrophe? I wouldn’t have thought—’
‘Not me, Flynn, your mother. From what you told me, she already missed out on one son’s wedding. You can’t seriously be thinking of excluding her from this one? Poor Denise.’
The frown deepened. He turned back to the road and was silent for a long time. They turned off the main road before hitting Oberon and started heading towards Bunyip’s Reach.
‘Are you angry with me?’ she risked after another few kilometres of stony silence.
His lips pressed together and his eyes spat sparks. ‘I’m angry at myself, Bel. I should have thought of that. For Mum.’
Oh. His distress disarmed her entirely. He wasn’t a man to admit to his mistakes often. And he was clearly beating himself up over it.
He looked sideways at her. ‘You’d really stand up at a formal wedding ceremony with me?’
‘It’s still a marriage on paper only,’ she cautioned past suddenly tight breath. ‘Whether there’s a performance to go with it or not is all the same to me. But your whole family’s going to expect it.’
‘There’ll be vows.’
When so much of your life was lies, what were a few more? She twisted her lips. ‘My parents had vows, too. They weren’t terribly binding.’ Love. Honour. Obey …
But Gwen and Drew’s had been. Personally written and heartfelt. She’d cried buckets while they were reciting them. Somewhere deep inside she’d always wondered if she’d find a man like him to pledge himself to her so beautifully. She’d never dreamed that vows could be as fake as touching. Or that she’d wind up exchanging them with Drew’s little brother. It was somehow right and so wrong at the same time.
‘Leave it to me, then. I’ll sort something.’
A twinge yanked deep inside. Why that irritated apathy was hurtful, after everything he’d done … Her lips twisted. ‘How romantic.’
He slid those deep grey eyes her way again but didn’t say a word. Then he steered the powerful car down the long turn that marked the entry to Bunyip’s Reach and everything but the impending tangle of lies fled her mind.
The Bradley dinner table had not been this silent since she’d first sat in Drew’s chair all those weeks ago.
Flynn cleared his throat. ‘Somebody say something. Please.’
It was the first time Bel had seen him anything less than completely composed. His tension showed in the tiny crescent lines at the corners of his mouth and his white-knuckled grip on the table edge. It made her feel a whole lot better about being such a wreck herself.
Four sets of eyes around the table were wide and shocked. But not horrified—Bel was together enough to notice that. But then Denise moved and everyone else exploded into life behind her. She threw her arms around Flynn just as Arthur threw one around Bel.
‘Twins!’ Arthur said, chuffing and puffing and doing what one of them should have done back in Sydney. Being thrilled.
‘A wedding,’ Denise cried, ‘here in Oberon.’ She pushed her son away long enough to stare into his eyes. Her own were wary, preparing for another blow. Her voice lowered. ‘It is here?’
Flynn flicked Bel the briefest of glances before reassuring his mother in a deep rumble, ‘Yes. Here.’
She squealed and turned a delighted face to Bel, who smiled back as best she could. ‘A wedding!’
‘Welcome to the family, Belinda,’ Arthur Bradley said quietly in her ear, and his eyes fell to her belly.
Guilt gnawed hard and vicious on her soul. She’d wanted this sort of reception her whole life but … like this? Knowing she’d have to confess everything later? ‘Thank you, Arthur …’
‘I knew it,’ Alice said, squeezing past her husband to embrace her. ‘I was burning to say something.’
‘The pickled eggs?’
The older woman laughed. ‘The eggs. The way your skin changed. Your hair. The way Flynn was so careful with you.’
‘Oh, no …’ But then she remembered not to deny it. And truthfully she was curious. ‘When?’
‘When you first arrived.’ Alice smiled. ‘Like you were extra-precious. Always hovering. Always watching. I understand now.’
Bel couldn’t remember him being at all careful of her, she could only remember his absence. And his silence.
‘You shouldn’t be working with the wildlife—’
‘No!’ Her fervent plea startled Alice to silence. ‘Please don’t take them away from me. I … need them.’ They were the only things keeping her sane.
‘Need?’
Alice’s lined face creased and Bel rushed in to undo her gaffe. ‘Enjoy. I really enjoy working with them.’
Alice nodded but her frown didn’t ease. ‘Okay. But we might need some health precautions.’
‘Precautions are fine.’ Whatever it took.
The older woman chuckled and dropped her voice, glancing at Flynn discreetly. ‘Though precautions might have been a good idea a few months ago, no?’
Oh, my God … Bel’s laugh was critically tight. Was every single word out of her mouth from now on going to be deceit?
‘Flynn, get over here and join your future wife. Mother of your child!’ Bill’s booming voice rose above the general hubbub.
‘Children!’ Denise cried. ‘Grandchildren!’
Bel’s eyes fell shut briefly, but when they opened he was moving towards her with a warning disguised in the smile he offered. His arm slipped around her middle easily and he pulled her against him, hard. Her skin did its usual tingly thing even though the message was clear.
Stay the course.
She plastered a wide smile on her face, slid one arm around Flynn’s hips and crossed the other one in front of him in a public embrace. He stiffened immediately but she held on. If she was going to burn for the lies she was telling, then she was taking him with her.
He’d be good-looking company in hell.
The ceremony was going to be brief.
That was about the only good thing Bel could think to say about it. Flynn had told her it would be fifteen minutes max, family only. And though he had friends aplenty here in Oberon, Bel didn’t know any of them, and so the only ‘reception’ he’d planned was a family dinner back at the homestead.
Denise and Alice had fussed around her all morning, working hard to be the bridesmaids she was missing out on, being so far from home, seeing to everything so that there wasn’t a thing for Bel to do. It was so kind of them but so painfully awkward, given she was repaying their kindness with deception. Plus, she’d been relying on being busy so that she wouldn’t have to dwell on what was about to happen. What she was about to do.
Marrying Flynn Bradley.
She took another deep breath.
‘Aren’t you the slightest bit curious about where the ceremony is?’ Alice said to her now, just back from doing the rehab chores they hadn’t allowed her to do today because of her perfectly manicured wedding nails. Again, not her idea.
Bel gauged the women’s suspicion level. A bride should be burning with curiosity, she knew, but it was too late to suddenly invent excitement she clearly wasn’t displaying. ‘I trust Flynn,’ she improvised, infusing her voice with artificial tranquillity. ‘He knows exactly what he’s doing.’
In so many ways.
Denise smiled. ‘That he does. He’s always been such a capable boy. And so thoughtful. I’m sure he’ll pick the perfect place for you.’
Actually, it would make this whole thing easier if he chose the least perfect place. Like some glitzy, chrome and glass high rise in the city. Then it would be easy for her to maintain the artifice and go through the motions of yet another lie. Her only condition was that it shouldn’t be a church. Not that she was overtly religious, but lying in God’s House—right under His all-seeing nose—was not something she could bring herself to undertake, regardless of her denomination.
/> Bad enough that she was lying to a group of people who were fast feeling like a proxy family.
‘We could get married in a hole in the ground for all I care—’ the two older women exchanged knowing glances and Bel forced a smile to her face ‘—just as long as Flynn turns up.’
Denise laughed and took her hand. ‘Oh, he’ll come. He’s very excited about all of this.’
Then he’s a better actor than I am if he’s fooling the people who know him best. And apparently without conscience.
‘It may not be the conventional order to do things in, Bel,’ Denise continued gently, ‘but Flynn’s never been a man to do anything he didn’t want to. If he’s asked you to be his then it’s because he wants you to be his.’
It would be so easy to imagine both women knew exactly what was going on. About Drew and Gwen, about their babies. And tempting to imagine that—in full knowledge of everything that was happening—Denise and Bill were happy that their son would be married today to a Rochester girl. Just so that there’d be one fewer untruth lying before her like a darkened pit trap. One fewer thing to worry about stumbling into and not being able to crawl out of. Or that the girl Alice and Arthur thought they were getting was really her. A capable, reliable, lovable Bel Rochester.
Or that the babies she was carrying were really Flynn’s.
Her body tightened immediately at the thought of carrying Flynn’s babies—of making Flynn’s babies—and heat suffused her.
She’d done her best to habituate herself to all the touching, but he was getting so good and frequent at it, it was all too easy to kid herself it might be real. Instead of being about his family and anyone who might be watching. Her mind kept trying to tell the rest of her, but it seemed her body was operating in blissful, intentional ignorance. If it didn’t listen to the truth then her muscles could continue to quiver when he leaned into her as they walked. Her flesh could continue to thrill when his fingers brushed her hair, and her heart could continue to flutter when he leaned close to speak warm breath in her ear.
