Husband Rollover (Husband Series Book 4)

by Cusack,Louise

  I tried to look innocent. “What?”

  “Were you checking me out?”

  “No. Maybe. No?”

  He shut the fridge and crossed his arms. “You’re a terrible liar. Try harder than that.”

  I swallowed and sat straighter on my chair. Challenge. Okay. “I was trying to see the label on your jeans because I want to…buy a pair for…a friend.”

  He was looking at me pityingly. “Blimey. I hope you never have to talk your way out of a parking ticket.”

  “Oh, I can do that easily enough,” I said, then I remembered who I was speaking to and my cheeks went hot.

  His expression stiffened. “Is sex your answer to everything?”

  I frowned. “It’s not such a big deal—”

  “Until someone gets jealous.”

  “Are you jealous?”

  “Right now? Yes I am.” He breathed through his nose for almost a minute while I squirmed, then he added, “This isn’t what I want, to be wondering if every man I meet in Australia has seen the inside of your bedroom.”

  It wasn’t just men that I’d been sleeping with, but I figured that was a piece of information I could withhold for now, because it had been just that one time with a girl and I hadn’t really liked it.

  So I said, “I told you, I don’t fuck in my room. That where I sleep.”

  His expression shifted subtly. “So you don’t sleep with these men after you fuck them. You come home to sleep.”

  I nodded.

  “Why?”

  I frowned at him, so not ready to get into a whole psychoanalysis when I was feeling loved up and sleepy, so I said, “You can’t distract me from an empty belly. Are you going to cook me food?”

  “Yes,” he said straight away, which surprised me. I’d expected him to try and pin me down to a diagnosis of nymphomania, which was totally sexist. When men slept around that much they were considered lucky, not mentally ill.

  But instead, he cooked, and I loved the way his broad shoulders moved inside that soft sweater when he chopped, the tilt of his head when he was frowning at something, the brief flash of his tongue when it came out to rest on his top lip, only for a second before those prim lips were pursed again in concentration.

  Unfortunately, that was enough to remind me all too vividly of his tongue on me, and although I’d been feeling warm and tired when I came indoors, now I was starting to wake up, and to wonder how I could get that mouth on my body again.

  He turned abruptly to look at me, as if he’d been sensing my attention, and I could see from the color on his cheekbones that he was thinking about sex too.

  “Do you want to touch me?” I asked, and pulled open my wrap. “Or kiss me. Anywhere.”

  He turned back to the sink and said quietly, “I must be bonkers to imagine I’ll get through the next hour, let alone the whole night.”

  “…of sleeping next to me,” I tacked on.

  I saw his shoulders stiffen, but he only said, “Do up the robe,” and kept on with the food, sautéing onions and leeks, adding random limp vegetables he’d found in the fridge and spices from the pantry. I did as I was told and simply watched him, admiring his adaptability to my haphazard collection of cooking implements as the kitchen started to smell amazing and my stomach grumbled in earnest.

  “I had no lunch,” I complained at last.

  “Not my fault.”

  “I’m hungry now. All that sex that you didn’t have, but I did, made me hungry.”

  “Can we stop talking about sex?” His back faced me as he stirred something on the stovetop.

  “Will that help you stop thinking about it?”

  “No. But a different conversation might. Tell me about the friend you rang. Was it a woman?”

  “Yes.”

  His shoulders visibly relaxed. “Tell me about her.”

  So I did. While he cooked, I talked about how Jill, Angela, Louella and I had met at school in Dakaroo and been friends for twenty years. How we’d each decided to leave the outback for something better. How their relationships/marriages had folded in recent years, yet they’d managed to find new husbands.

  I must have ended up my little tale with a sad note to my voice, because he stopped what he was doing and turned back to me. “Do you want to get married one day?”

  I nodded immediately, because it was true. “I got drunk at Angela’s wedding because I felt sorry for myself. Stuck on the shelf.”

  “With the limp vegetables and dried out condiments.”

  I knew he was trying to make me smile, but the only person I’d met who I’d even think of embarking on an adventure like marriage with was him, and he was clearly reluctant to get involved with me.

  Actually, reluctant was too weak of a word. He sounded adverse. He thought I was a delicate flower, a forest nymph who wouldn’t survive in the world of food critics and their enemies. And because I didn’t want to believe this weird connection of ours was going to end tomorrow, I said, “Haven’t you ever wanted to be married?”

  He shook his head. “Never,” he said, and it was so vehement, it sounded like the Max Banks of Pariah in the Pantry—the Max Banks who ripped chefs apart if their soufflé wasn’t regulation height.

  “Weren’t your parents happily married, until your dad died?” I added. “You said your mother missed him terribly.” Surely his role model of marriage was better than what I’d had.

  “No.” He crossed his arms. “I said she’d never gotten over his death. I doubt that she missed him.” His eyes narrowed and he tried to pin me with a glance that said clearly, no more talk about that.

  So I shrugged. “Then do you want children one day?”

  “Why are we having this conversation?”

  “You wanted to be distracted from sex. I assumed talking about children would do that.”

  “I see.” His frown faded. “Thank you.”

  “I wasn’t angling for you to make me a wife and mother,” I said pompously, deliberately mocking him now because he was making me cranky with all his hot-and-cold behavior, when all I wanted was to have sex with him. Hungry and cranky wasn’t a good combination.

  His frown came back immediately. “Why? Because it might cramp your style?”

  “I don’t have a style,” I snapped, starting to get sick of him rubbing my nose in my sluttery. It wasn’t as if I pinged him about being an ass on television.

  So I went on self-righteously with, “And why would you even say that? You don’t want sex with me, let alone—”

  “I can’t stop thinking about sex with you,” he interrupted hotly. “I literally, can’t think past that.”

  “Then just do it. Get it out of the way—”

  “No! No,” he said again, more softly this time as his frown gentled. “I want to keep my options open.”

  I shook my head, confused.

  “I want you to want me,” he clarified, “…to want to have sex with me, to want to be married to me, to want to spend the rest of your pixie existence with me.”

  We stared at each other in shock, and I was sure he was just as stunned as I was that he’d actually said that out loud. I couldn’t stop myself asking, “Is that what you want?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. But I want my options open. If I do want that, I don’t want you turning me down. I’m not good with rejection.”

  I just sat at the table and stared at him. Then I swallowed and said, “I think that’s the most honest conversation I’ve ever had. Do your really mean all that?”

  He nodded. “I can’t believe I said it, but yes. For some reason, I felt impelled to, and…I knew you wouldn’t use it against me.”

  A hot wave of emotion rose in my chest and the next thing my eyes were prickling. No man had ever exposed his soft underbelly to me that way, and I was humbled that he trusted me, and suddenly terrified of all that I could lose. “Don’t take this away tomorrow,” I demanded. “Don’t give me this…feeling, and then snatch it back. That’s too cruel.”


  He came around the table and I bumbled out of the chair and into his arms and then he was stroking my hair and my back and I was breathing in the amazing scent of his body, my breath hitching as I tried not to cry.

  My cheek pressed into that soft, soft sweater with the hard chest underneath, and I wanted to howl for all the times I’d felt empty and cold, even while I was getting hot and sweaty with some faceless stranger. None of them had been able to fill the gaping hole inside of me the way Max could with a handful of words.

  I didn’t cry. I managed to hold that back and when I registered his steady heartbeat and focused on that, I came down from the edge of hysteria and settled. My arms around him felt so good, and when I squeezed, he kissed the top of my head.

  “Are you alright now, poppet?” he said, and pulled me back. “Because I’ve got food burning, and I can’t bear it when people criticize my cooking.”

  I hiccupped a laugh, and nodded. “Yes, thank you. Crisis averted thanks to your chivalry.”

  He cupped my cold face with his warm hands and looked deep into my eyes. “No matter what happens…” He frowned, as if he wasn’t sure what to say, “I’m here for you. Do you understand? I’m giving you my private contact details and wherever I am, whoever I’m with, I will stop what I’m doing to talk to you.”

  I swallowed down another lump of emotion and said, “Ditto,” my voice scratchy.

  His smile was slow and so delicious it made my lips tingle. His beautiful brown eyes were glinting wickedly. “That’s a given,” he said. “Me being who I am and all. Of course you’d stop what you were doing to answer my call.”

  I grinned back at him. “Hey, I’m a legend in my own lunchtime, you know.”

  He nodded. “Sure you are.” Then he patted me on the head and went back to the stove, humming Teddy Bears’ Picnic to himself.

  I sat down, still grinning, and thought, He loves me.

  I don’t know why or how I knew, but…I could feel something easy and fun and yet powerful flowing between us. Surely that had to be love. And I opened my mouth to say it, but then I didn’t. A vision of Jill’s face, frowning, shaking her head, popped into my mind, and yes, I guessed there were valid reasons to not mention the L word in the first ten minutes you’d met someone.

  Well, Max and I were up to eight hours now, but still. It made sense to keep some mystery in the proceedings, so I just smiled to myself as he finished cooking and plated up the most fragrant and visually appealing curry I’d ever seen.

  “Wine?” he said.

  I shook my head. “I’ve only got whisky in case Jill visits. I don’t drink much. Sorry.”

  “Don’t be. I can’t have alcohol with painkillers anyway.” He placed my plate down in front of me at the scrubbed timber table and said, “I call it The Banks Cleanup Curry.”

  “I think I’ve heard of that,” I said, and inspected the meal. “But I don’t recognize my ancient vegetables.”

  “No meat,” he said and shrugged, sitting opposite me. “But it still should be tasty.”

  His serving was smaller than mine, but he’d eaten toast before, and perhaps didn’t want to overload his system after the gallstone thing.

  “Grace?” he said.

  I nodded. “Two, four, six, eight. Bog in don’t wait!”

  He shook his head in mock disapproval. “Colonials.”

  I ignored his jibe to eat, and when I had the first mouthful, I was stuck marveling at the flavors. In fact, it was probably bad manners, but I mulched it around in my mouth for the longest time, trying to decipher exactly what was in it. I knew the spices in my pantry, but I didn’t recognize this combination.

  “Good?” he said casually, and because I was looking at him when he said it, I saw the ‘too nonchalant’ expression on his face. So he was vulnerable about this too?

  I swallowed. “Fantastic,” I replied. “The best curry I’ve ever tasted, in fact.”

  He shrugged, managing to look humble and yet completely unsurprised at the same time.

  “But you knew that,” I added. “You knew it was good.”

  He finally met my gaze. “I’m more interested in you thinking it’s good. I’m trying to impress you,” he admitted.

  “Then fuck me.” I was sure to be impressed by that.

  He blinked, then shook his head. “Audacious to the end. Whatever happened to you promising not to tempt me?”

  I waved a fork. “I’m making conversation. If I wanted to tempt you I’d be lying naked on the table right now with curry smeared all over me.” I glanced down at my robe. “Particularly on my breasts. I really liked it when you had your mouth there. That was amazing. And then of course, later—”

  I glanced up to find him gazing at me with an expression I didn’t recognize. His eyes were very intense, but the rest of his face was still, and his cheeks were reddening.

  “Did I go too far?”

  He nodded and put down his fork.

  I felt myself go still, wondering if this was where he ravished me, because I could see it banking up in his eyes. So I could either inflame the situation by continuing to talk about all the amazingly hot things we could do with each other, or I could eat my dinner.

  You promised.

  I frowned, wishing I didn’t have Jill’s voice inside my head, reminding me of what I should do. As if I didn’t have my own conscience…

  “Alright,” I said. “I’ll just concentrate on dinner.” So I lowered my head and ate, focusing on the delicious textures and flavors he’d combined with what looked like carrot, leek, onion, mango and sweet potato. The initial flavor was spicy and sweet, but the aftertaste was darker, like aniseed or fennel. I wasn’t sure I’d had either of those spices in my pantry, so I couldn’t see how he’d accomplished that, but I was in awe of it, especially because the dark flavor was as sexy as sin.

  Either that, or everything was arousing me.

  In any case, I savored the meal, taking my time to chew and mulch the food around before I swallowed it, wanting to have the whole sensory experience of his cooking, even if I wasn’t going to be allowed to enjoy his body the same way.

  When I was finished, I picked up the plate and said, “Can I lick it?”

  His expression grew pained.

  “Not the iron bar. I’m talking about the chinaware.” In lieu of a magical refilling curry pot, I wanted every morsel I could get.

  “No,” he said clearly. “I’m already at the limit of my endurance. Watching that delicious pink tongue sliding back and forth over any surface is going to make me explode. So we’re not going there.” He took the plate out of my hands and stood.

  Then he looked around the kitchen. “There’s no dishwasher.”

  “That will be why I don’t cook.”

  He turned back to me, but I was staring at the front of his snug jeans which were bulging in an impressive way. When I finally met his gaze, those cheekbones were slashes of red again.

  “So,” I drawled. “Is that dessert? Or are we really doing this platonic thing?” He gave me a dirty look. “It’s the last time I ask, I promise.”

  “Finally.” He glared at me again for good measure, then he put down the dishes and stalked out.

  I heard his heavy footsteps in the hallway, then the bathroom door closed. A minute later the shower started, and I blinked back surprise. Was he really having a cold shower? I’d heard the expression so many times, but I’d never known anyone to actually do it.

  “Impressive,” I said to myself, then I realized it was simply the last in a long list of impressive things he’d done. And it inspired me to jump up from the table and grab the chalk out of the knick-knack tin in the cutlery drawer. Then I started listing details on the front of the fridge which I’d covered in blackboard paint—Things that impress me:

  Being polite to my shitty father

  Being honest when it’s hard

  Kissing me like you mean it

  Opening gates and doors for me

  Making me come,
in technicolor

  Letting me cry

  Kissing me sweet and slow

  Cooking amazing food

  Wanting to be with me (even if we don’t have sex)

  And finally I had to add, even though I didn’t like it, that I was seriously impressed by:

  Resisting sex in the face of serious provocation.

  Under that I put in brackets (come and tuck me in before I go to sleep).

  Then I brushed my teeth at the kitchen sink, because doesn’t everyone have a toothbrush in the kitchen in case they’re running late and can’t be bothered to go to the bathroom? After which, I went into my bedroom and left the light off, threw the robe on the chair where he’d see it—I didn’t want him to get any uncomfortable surprises—and snuggled into bed naked, loving the fact that it smelt of him.

  Of course, I wanted him there naked too. But what was happening between us was so lovely, I didn’t want to push for more, didn’t want him to think it was all too hard. So I set my mind to sleep and, with a tummy full of delicious food and a seriously satisfied body, it wasn’t difficult.

  Sometime later I awoke from a doze to feel him moving the quilt around me, tucking me in, and I stretched out like a kitten, twitching a little before I curled back into a ball. But I was awake enough to tilt up my cheek and murmur, “Kiss goodnight?”

  He leant down and kissed my cheek, smelling of that delicious scent that could have been aftershave or deodorant, or simply him. Then he kissed my eyelid, brushed back my hair to kiss my forehead, then my nose, and in that deep, grumbling voice of his he said, “Goodnight freckles.”

  That made me smile, and I whispered. “Stay and snuggle. I want you to snuggle me to sleep.”

  “Will you add that to your list?”

  I nodded, eyes closed, so he eased himself onto the bed and, with the quilt between us, he pulled me backwards into his arms so we were spooning.

  And it was heaven…

  I sighed. Then I said dreamily, “You filled up my love tank.” Orgasms. Amazing food. And now being cuddled to sleep. Was there more a woman could ask for? If there was, I couldn’t think of it just then, and even when I felt that iron bar pressing against my ass through the quilt, I only smiled.