Page 57 of Bride Under Contract

Waiting to rue the offer he’d made.

Even as they shared the bathroom he kept waiting to feel as if she was invading his space, and yet it was Carter who wanted to invade hers... To climb into the bath and feel that slippery body...to be with her again. Now!

‘What about this?’ he asked and she glanced over. ‘It says “Hair Masque”.’

She sat up and held out an impatient hand, but just as she grabbed it he pulled it away. ‘Please...’ he reminded her.

‘Please,’ she said, and with slippery hands tried to open it.

She soon gave in and now it was she who held it out, for him to open.

‘Please!’ she repeated, and then she caught his eye and they both smiled.

This was the smile she gave only now and then, and he found himself giving back a new smile.

Then the smiles faded, but their eyes remained locked.

The water was still, as was Grace, and there was no fan powerful enough to erase the unseen mist of desire descending.

As he handed Grace the opened hair masque he saw that her flush was darker and that the nipples that had been flat were now puckering and pointing as if the steaming water was cold.

‘Do you need help?’ he offered.

Carter loved the way her neck corded in tension as she nodded.

He didn’t do this, Carter reminded himself as he collected a comb from the selection on offer. Usually women arrived dressed and scented...or he woke to the spritzed version.

‘Move.’

He gestured and she scooted forward, and as he climbed into the bath behind her there was just a little slosh as his six-foot-three frame lowered. She leant over to survey the spillage, her skin gleaming, wet, and he reached for her waist, pulled her between his legs.

No, he had never done this, Carter thought, massaging the thick cream through her hair, then slowly combing it through.

‘My comb broke,’ Grace explained, feeling a little embarrassed, but far less so than she would have been under the critical eye of a hairdresser tomorrow. ‘Well, it kept snapping,’ she told him. ‘I’m nervous about tomorrow,’ she admitted, somehow finding it easier to talk as he combed her hair, to admit her thoughts. ‘Not just about the hairdresser.’

‘Why?’

‘I don’t know anything about make-up, clothes...not lately anyway. I feel like there’s a big gap in my knowledge—a six-year yoga-pants-and-baggy-T-shirt-shaped gap.’

‘Let the stylists here help?’ he suggested.

She nodded, but the gentle mood changed when he must have hit a rather difficult knot. ‘Ow!’

‘Sorry...’

He paused long enough to kiss her shoulder and the last traces of awkwardness and embarrassment simply faded away. Even if he thrilled her, there was something incredibly relaxing about Carter—a quiet knowledge that he wouldn’t be doing this unless he chose to. He wouldn’t be combing her hair and holding her between his thighs for any reason other than that he wanted to.

And she wanted him there too.

‘I’m not used to long hair,’ he explained as he resumed.

And perhaps it relaxed him, too, because he seemed to be dwelling on that thought.

He’d only ever combed his own hair.

Certainly he wasn’t used to combing long, thick, curly hair until it hung heavy, smooth and glossy down her back.

‘There,’ he said.

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