Outback Husband. Jessica Hart

They were brown and strong, and there were fine golden hairs at his wrist.

      He wasn’t handsome, Juliet told herself. Not handsome in the way Hugo had been, anyway. Really, he was quite ordinary. Brown hair, grey eyes, nothing special.

      There was something implacable about him, though. Something hard and strong and steady. A quiet coldness that mesmerised and unnerved her at the same time. Beneath her lashes, Juliet’s eyes rested on his mouth. That wasn’t the mouth of a cold man, she found herself thinking, and she remembered how he had smiled at the twins. The memory snaked down her spine, and something shifted deep inside her so that she jerked her gaze away.

      She tried to concentrate on how obvious he had made his distaste, but all she could think about was him lying in the bed she had made, his long brown body bare against the cool sheet. She could imagine it so clearly that she sucked in her breath, and the tiny sound made Cal turn his head to find her eyes wide and dark and startled, as if she had just thought of something shocking.

      ‘What is it?’ he asked.

      ‘Nothing.’ Juliet’s fingers trembled as she pulled out the plug and made a big deal of rinsing out the sink. She had to get a grip of herself! ‘That is…’ She stopped. No, that wasn’t a good idea.

      ‘What?’

      ‘It doesn’t matter.’

      Cal frowned irritably. If she had something to say, why didn’t she get on with it? ‘What doesn’t?’

      Driven into a corner, Juliet wiped her hands on a tea-towel and wished she had never opened her mouth. But Cal obviously wasn’t going to let it drop, and maybe it needed saying after all.

      ‘I was just thinking that it might be a good idea if we established a few ground rules.’ She pushed her hair behind her ears, absurdly nervous for some reason.

      He looked at her with that infuriatingly unreadable expression. ‘Ground rules?’

      ‘Yes. I mean, we’re going to be living together until we can get the manager’s house cleaned up, so perhaps we should agree a few things now.’

      ‘What sort of things?’

      ‘Well,’ she said, ‘I presume you don’t want to cook separately, so we need to decide about meals, that kind of thing and…well, you know…how we ensure that we both have some privacy,’ she finished lamely. It had seemed so sensible when she started, but under Cal’s dispassionate gaze she found herself faltering for some reason.

      ‘You’re very keen on rules, aren’t you?’ he said sardonically, and she flushed and lifted her chin.

      ‘Sometimes they save awkwardness.’

      ‘I don’t see what’s awkward about sharing a few meals.’

      ‘I didn’t just mean that,’ said Juliet. ‘I meant the situation generally.’

      ‘What situation?’ asked Cal, exasperated.

      ‘You know what I mean!’ she flared. He was being deliberately obtuse! ‘The fact is that the two of us will be alone together here for much of the time.’

      ‘Ah!’ he exclaimed, suddenly enlightened—as if he hadn’t known all along exactly what she was talking about, Juliet thought sourly. ‘You want some rules to make sure I don’t take advantage of you, is that it?’

      ‘Yes…no!’ she corrected herself frantically as Cal raised an eyebrow. ‘Of course not,’ she said more calmly. ‘All I’m trying to say is that we’re both adults, both single. If we don’t acknowledge that now, I can see a situation arising where we might…might…’ She could feel herself floundering again and wished she’d never opened her mouth. ‘Well, we might…might wonder…’

      ‘Might wonder what it would be like if I kissed you?’ Cal suggested in a hatefully calm voice, but she was too relieved to have the sentence completed for her to resent him.

      ‘That kind of thing, yes.’

      She was standing by the cooker in her turquoise dress, hugging her arms together self-consciously and wearing a defensive expression that made her look very young. Cal looked at her thoughtfully for a moment, then laid his tea-towel over the back of a chair.

      ‘Let’s find out now,’ he said, coming over to Juliet.

      She looked at him blankly. ‘Find what out?’

      ‘What it would be like if I kissed you.’ He took her hands and unfolded her arms so impersonally that he had taken hold of her waist before Juliet had quite realised what was happening. ‘Then we won’t need to wonder,’ he explained briskly, drawing her towards him, ‘and we won’t need any rules.’

      And with that he bent his head and kissed her.

      Juliet’s hands came up quite instinctively to clutch at the sleeves above his elbows for support as his mouth came down on hers and the floor seemed to drop away beneath her feet.

      It was a hard, punishing kiss, a kiss meant to teach her a lesson. Juliet knew that, but she was unprepared for the searing response that shot through her at the feel of his lips and his hands hard against her. It seemed to leap into life, jolting between them like electricity, at once shocking and dangerously exciting, so that the kiss which Cal had intended to be so brief somehow took on a life of its own and he tightened his arms around Juliet, moulding her against him as her lips parted beneath his.

      Cal slid one hand up to the nape of her neck, tangling his fingers in the silky hair. He had forgotten how she exasperated him, forgotten her stupid rules, forgotten everything but how warm and soft and pliant she felt in his arms. Caught off-guard by the piercing sweetness of her response, Cal was in the middle of gathering her closer and deepening his kiss when the realisation of just how close they both were to losing control stopped him in his tracks as effectively as a bucket of cold water.

      Literally dropping Juliet back to earth, he stepped away from her and took a deep, steadying breath. Juliet was left to collapse back against the cooker, dazed and trembling. They stared at each other for a long, long moment.

      ‘Well, now we know,’ said Cal, when he could speak. ‘We won’t need to waste any more time wondering about it, will we?’ He could see Juliet’s mouth shaking, and the temptation to pull her back into his arms and forget everything else once more was so strong that he had to make himself turn away.

      Juliet was still leaning against the cooker when he reached the door. ‘Thanks for the meal’, he said, and then he was gone.