BEST FRIEND’S BROTHER

She wriggled her shoulders, as if trying to ease the tension out of them, and hair shimmered. Worse than that-it drew his attention to the heavy fullness of her breasts. He felt the hot flame of desire, and dampened it down to a dull smolder.

“You started it by talking about me while I was out of the room!”

“Eavesdroppers never hear any good about themselves,” she said serenely. “Anyway, we were just discussing where you’re going to sleep.” She smiled, and looked at the appropriately modest suitcase he had carried in with him. “Like me to show you your room?”

“Okay.” Feeling a little like a man going off to his own execution, he followed-noticing now how the pregnancy had added a little extra flesh to her bottom. But the added curves suited her, he decided. Maybe too much. He hadn’t been in her place since the day they’d made love, and he felt the blood heating his face as they reached her bedroom door.

The image of that evening was burned indelibly into his memory, and it came on him when he least expected it or wanted it. Like when he was sitting round a table in the middle of some stuffy meeting and he would get a flashback of those smooth, beautiful limbs entwined around him, or her soft hair spread all over the pillow.

Out of anger, he’d had convinced himself that not only was she bad for him-they were bad for each other. He had regretted that night just as much as he’d reveled in its sweet, erotic memory. He had thought that not seeing her would make that memory recede and that distance would enable him to put her out of his mind-the way he had managed to do the past few weeks. But nothing seemed that simple any more. Nothing.Upstodatee from Novel(D)ra/m/a.O(r)g

Sasha saw him tense and guessed what he might be thinking-maybe because she was thinking pretty much the same thing herself. “This is where it all started,” she observed softly as they drew up outside the spare room.

But he shook his head. “Oh, it started long before this, Sasha. It started when I came back home and saw you walk out of that pool, dripping wet. Looking so beautiful and sexy.”

She forced herself not to be seduced by the memory. Or his words. She led him quickly past the room which was to be his, and threw open the door of her own bedroom, and Kaleb opened his eyes in surprise-as much at the room itself as the fact that she had allowed him access to it.

It was painted a soft buttermilk, with white muslin curtains billowing like clouds at the window and a snowy drift of a duvet lying like a great heap of snow on the bed. On the wall she had pinned different straw hats-some with flowers, some with ribbons, some battered, one scarcely worn.

“I buy a new hat every summer,” she explained, when she saw him looking at them.

“Which one did you buy this year?”

She pointed to the newest-looking one, which was decked with shiny red cherries and a scarlet ribbon. “That one.”

“Put it on now,” he coaxed softly.

“No.”

“As the acting manager of your establishment, I command you to put it on!” he said sternly.

Funny how he could make putting a hat on seem like a highly erotic invitation. “No, I won’t! Finish looking at the rest of my room instead! I don’t think you registered anything the last time you were in here,”

He grinned at her, catching her joke. Aching, he complied. His eyes took in everything. From her pretty couch to the dressing table-with a small stool which stood in front of it. Overall the effect was simple, clean and stylish. She looked at him, searching his face for a reaction.

“So what do you think?”

“I like it. It’s a very attractive room. Feminine without being in the least bit frilly.”

“Is it what you were expecting?”

“I don’t know what I was expecting. I wasn’t expecting to have a baby with you… Or anyone for that matter… not at this point in my life,” he smiled. “I’ve learnt to expect the unexpected from you, Sasha-you’re not an easy woman to stereotype.”

She shrugged as she moved towards him. “I didn’t expect this either, but it has happened and I’m going to deal with it. I like the person I am today, so I can’t regret it. Any of it.”

He reached out and captured her face, cupping it gently in the palm of his hand. “I like the person you are today, too.”

“Well, that’s a good start.” She replied.

He rubbed his thumb thoughtfully over the base of her chin. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “About the way I reacted when you told me about the baby. You are even more trapped by the situation than I am. It isn’t your fault that you got pregnant. Anyway, there’s no point in regrets. That’s history-not reality. Our reality is here, and now.”

“Yes, I know.” Her words filled a silence made more intense by the realization that he was still within touching distance. The desire to kiss her was stronger than anything he had ever felt in his life, but now was not the right time to give in to temptation. Kisses led to inevitable conclusions. She was still pale, and fragile-no matter how much she protested to the contrary.

“Why don’t you lie down and rest,” he suggested easily, “while I go and see what needs doing downstairs? Who knows what horrible thing Tilly must have done by now,”

Sasha chuckled, “Oh, Give her a break,” she said.

“I try” Kaleb replied as he opened the door, “I try”

————

For the first three weeks after Kaleb moved in, he and Sasha walked on eggshells-behaving as politely as two people who had just met instead of two people who were soon to become parents. Somehow their lives managed to be both intimate and separate at the same time.

Kaleb even went over to his house every morning to shower and shave. He told Sasha that bathrooms were especially private places and that he wouldn’t invade her space. Sasha thought he meant that her bathroom was too small-which it was-and tried not to feel offended- but she did.