BEST FRIEND’S BROTHER

Self-control was one thing, but the strain of being so close to her and not being permitted to lay a finger on her was beginning to tell. He didn’t know how she did it, but her inbuilt sensuality seemed to have grown along with the baby- and he would defy any normal, red-blooded male not to have felt the same as he did.

Not that they had been doing anything likely to fan the flames of passion-quite the opposite, in fact. They spent long lazy evenings and weekends together. Kaleb cooked and Sasha continued to eat enough for two- sometimes three. They played cards and watched television -though the channel was swiftly changed if there was anything on it which was even remotely connected to sex.

They read books-sometimes they even read the same books and then they discussed them afterwards.

Sometimes the discussions were amicable, when they agreed on something. More often than not they could only have been described as ‘heated’.

And heated was also the only way he could describe the way she left him feeling most evenings when she demurely went to bed-at some unholy hour. Sometimes as early as nine o’clock! He would try to concentrate on something other than how soft and pale and beautiful and lonely she must be feeling, upstairs underneath that snowy-white duvet. While he sat alone, mocked by memories.

“Are you hungry?” he asked her, with a gentle smile.

“Not really.” She lay back against the cushions and clasped her hands over her belly. “It doesn’t feel as if there’s very much room in there tonight. Certainly not for food. Ouch!”

Kaleb brightened. “Baby moving?” he asked.

“Baby making an attempt on prenatal kick-boxing championship, more like!”

“Can I feel?”

There was barely a flicker of hesitation before she said, “Of course.” She had never said no to him before, but then he hardly ever asked, even though she sensed he was dying to feel his child moving. She suspected that he found it just as difficult and distracting as she did. She sat up a little straighter and shifted up the sofa to make way for him, dreading the feel of his warm hand on her belly. Well, not dreading it so much as wondering whether she would manage to sit through it without wriggling-but then it was such an intimate thing to do, when you thought about it.

He nestled up close and gently put the flat of his hand down on her belly, and almost immediately the baby aimed a healthy kick at it.

“Ouch!” He retracted the hand in mock-pain. “I can see what you mean! Sasha, it must hurt like hell.”

She shook her head. “No, it doesn’t. It’s a funny, fantastic feeling. I can’t really describe it.”

“Damn” he exclaimed, and bent his dark head to study the bump intently. “This is… I … mean… What your body is doing is just amazing!” he sounded as excited as a little boy whose favorite team had just won the league!

Sasha smiled. He put his hand back over her umbilicus and just let it rest there, then turned his head to look at her.” Do you think it’s a boy?”

“Yes,” she nodded. “Or a girl!”

“Sasha!”

“Kaleb!” she teased.

“Do you wish we’d found out?” he asked.

During one of her routine scans they had been asked whether they wished to know the sex of their child, and they had looked at one another and shaken their heads at exactly the same time and said, “No thanks.”Contentt bel0ngs to N0ve/lDrâ/ma.O(r)g!

“No, I don’t,” said Sasha. “I want there to be a nice surprise at the end of all that labor!”

His heart leapt with anxiety. “I wish I could do it all for you, sugar.”

“Well, you can’t. You’re not biologically programmed to!” She snuggled back comfortably against the cushions. “But it’s sweet of you to say so.”

He wondered if she was as aware as he was that his fingers were within touching distance of her breasts, which had been growing bigger by the day. He ached to touch them.

She was wearing a maternity dress that he had bought for her in London. He had traveled up for a meeting- very reluctantly-and only after making water-tight arrangements ensuring that Sasha would be well looked after. He had been heading for the Tube, walking down one of those fancy streets in the center of the city, when he had seen the maternity shop.

He had wandered in without really knowing what he wanted. If anything. But there had been several very helpful sales assistants who had fussed around him as if he were the first father since the world began. They’d asked what color hair Sasha had. And what color eyes. And they’d complimented him on his descriptive powers, claiming that most men didn’t have a clue what color their wives’ eyes were! And he hadn’t corrected them.

He had ended up buying a knee-length velvet dress- the pale green color of a new leaf, expensive and highly impractical. It was fitted on the bust, from where it fell in softly draped folds to just above the knee, showing off her magnificent legs. He thought it made her look like some contemporary Grecian goddess.

“That dress looks wonderful,” he said in a throaty voice.

“Does it?”

“Mmm. You look like a green bud, about to burst into leaf.”

“It’s far too good to be wearing around the house like this, but I keep thinking that there are only three months to go-so I’d better get as much wear as I can from it.”

“Mmm,” he said again, hardly hearing a word she said, aware only of his child growing deep inside her. Sasha realized that his hand was still lying over her stomach, and she would have moved except that he seemed so content like that, and to be truthful-she liked it. She felt safe. Protected.

Kaleb held his breath. He had been expecting her to shift uncomfortably away from him, but he felt no resistance-not even passive resistance. Through the soft green material of her dress he could feel the baby-not belting its limbs around any more, but obviously just squirming around happily.

Sasha relaxed. Why not just lie back and enjoy what was a perfectly relaxed and conventional pose between two parents-to-be? Okay-they might be not be the most conventional couple in the world, but so what?