A Flame On The Horizon

by Daphne Clair

  ‘Mmm, you were, rather.’

  ‘I guess all that drive and ambition you so admire is founded on fear, really.’

  ‘Not on a desire to do something well, on the satisfaction of seeing your work used and appreciated?’

  ‘That too,’ Annys admitted. ‘But I can have that without operating a world-wide empire. Since I’ve been pregnant again, I don’t feel quite so committed to expanding the business.’

  ‘Want to concentrate on what’s expanding your waistline for a while?’

  She laughed. ‘Yes. A different kind of creation. I don’t want to lose this baby,’ she added soberly. ‘The doctor says it’s OK to carry on with my normal activities, so long as I don’t get too tired. But I told Kate I’m going to change things a bit, delegate more.’

  ‘That’s hard for you.’

  ‘I’ll learn. You did, didn’t you?’

  ‘Yep. Some things can’t be delegated, though.’

  ‘Such as?’

  ‘Well,’ Reid said. He turned her gently on the bed so that he was above her. ‘This, for instance.’ He bent his head to kiss her lips. ‘What did the doctor say,’ he asked her, ‘about this kind of activity?’

  ‘Making love with a man who’s not my husband, you mean?’ Annys asked innocently.

  ‘I am your husband, in every way that matters.’

  ‘Legally—’

  ‘Legally nothing. I’m the only husband you’re ever going to have, so you may as well get used to the idea. We can fix up the legal details later.’

  ‘Well, in that case, and if you promise to make it legal—again—she said that it’s quite OK.’

  ‘Good.’ His lips were wandering over her face, one hand stroking her breast.

  ‘Of course,’ Annys said as he nestled closer to her, ‘I told her the question didn’t arise.’

  ‘The question just did.’

  ‘Mmm. I noticed something had...’ She looked at him from under lowered lids, a teasing smile on her face.

  Reid laughed. ‘We missed a great opportunity,’ he told her, his fingers finding a button on her blouse and flicking it open.

  ‘We did?’

  ‘We could have had a second honeymoon, on board Toroa, if we hadn’t been so busy competing with each other to see who was the fastest, strongest, bravest...’

  ‘And if you hadn’t been so busy hovering around the gorgeous Xianthe,’ Annys told him, her eyes gleaming with remembered jealousy.

  ‘Gorgeous, is she?’ Reid said. ‘Never noticed,’ he lied blandly.

  Annys made to hit him, and he caught her wrist and bore it back down to the pillows, his lips trailing from there down the inside of her arm to the elbow before wandering to her neck. ‘Anyway,’ he said, his voice muffled. ‘What about you and that slimeball, Tancred?’

  ‘He is not a slimeball! He’s just... an incorrigible, incurable male chauvinist.’

  Reid grunted. ‘So why did you encourage him to hang around you? I wanted to kill him.’

  ‘I didn’t. He was just there. Why did you encourage Xianthe? You might have hurt her badly, you know.’

  He lifted his head for a moment. ‘Rot. I’m much too old for her. And she knew I couldn’t take my eyes off you for a minute. I spent time with her because besides being a nice girl she was the weak link in our team, and I wanted to bring her up to scratch.’

  ‘Determined to beat me, weren’t you?’

  ‘Yep. As much as you were to beat me.’

  ‘Why did we do it?’ Annys asked. ‘It all looks positively childish now.’

  ‘Guess so,’ he agreed. ‘We’re competitive people, you and I. We’ll need to watch that, especially with our kids. We don’t want them to grow up thinking that winning is the only important thing—do we?’

  ‘No.’ Annys shook her head. ‘We never talked about how we would want to bring up our children.’

  ‘We never talked about anything much,’ Reid agreed. He had undone all her buttons to the waist, and slipped his hand inside, caressing her warm skin. ‘That was one of our problems, I guess. Our communication skills on this level were so good, we never bothered a great deal with other ways of communicating.’

  Annys thought about that while she traced a slow line down the middle of his bared chest, watching it with silent absorption. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘We should talk.’ She took her finger away and raised her eyes to his face.

  Reid looked resigned. He removed his hand from the firmly rounded breast where he had just found an interesting hardness in the centre and said, ‘Now?’

  ‘We-ell...’ Annys said, giving him an earnest stare. ‘I mean, we have a lot to decide on, and plan for. Don’t you think...?’

  ‘No, actually—’

  ‘Don’t you think...’ Annys’s hand went to the buckle on his belt ‘... that later would be a good time?’