Amy Andrews - Hot Single Docs - Blinded By The Boss

‘You’re so much better at it than I am.’

‘Think so? You dip beautifully.’ He leaned towards her.

She couldn’t do this. Not with Isaac just yards away—even if he was paying them no attention.

She ducked out of the circle of his arms, feeling the wind suddenly chill her. ‘Are you hungry?’

Edward chuckled. ‘Ravenous.’

She fixed him with a glare. Even the thought of Peter’s quiet charm, and the way that had worked out, wasn’t enough to calm the insistent thunder in her veins. Peter was like a faded shadow of a man next to Edward. Edward was different. Different from pretty much everyone she’d ever met.

‘Would you like an apple?’ She gritted her teeth and doggedly refused to take any notice of the alternative interpretation of hungry that the curve of his eyebrow suggested.

‘In a minute. I’ve got my hands full at the moment.’ His gaze left her, flipping over towards Isaac. ‘Steady on, there, chief...’

Charlotte ran to her son, helping him to pull on the string so that the kite fluttered upwards again. ‘Enjoying yourself, sweetie?’ She whispered the words tremulously in his ear.

‘Yes, Mum.’ Isaac’s attention was on the kite, its tail shimmering and sparkling in the sunshine. He submitted to a hug for a moment and then wriggled free.

‘Good. I’m glad.’

She could have cried. The scared little boy who had clung to her when the debt collectors knocked on the door was gone. In his place a child who was enjoying himself so much that he had no time for his mother’s cuddles.

‘All right over there?’ Edward nodded over to Isaac.

‘Just fine. He loves this.’

‘Yeah. Me, too.’

* * *

Edward sat at the piano, his fingers wandering across the keys, playing a soft melody of his own composition. He’d had a great time. The kite had flown better than he’d expected once he’d made a few adjustments to the lines which had altered its angle of flight slightly. Isaac had liked his kite, too, and had insisted on taking it to bed with him. And Charlotte...

He’d planned to give her a great day—help her forget about the troubles of the past week. And she’d shone in the sunshine like a beautiful jewel, full of life and light. But however hard he tried to please her he seemed to end up only pleasing himself, as the echoes of her joie de vivre washed over him.

Charlotte. The chords seemed to sing out her name. A sudden slip into a minor key lent an element of yearning to the music that hadn’t been there before.

‘Why so sad?’

He hadn’t noticed her behind him, standing in the doorway which led from the kitchen. He stopped playing abruptly, aware that the music had given away much more than he had ever intended. ‘It’s a slow piece of music.’

A slight frown of disbelief. It seemed that he could lie to the rest of the world, but Charlotte caught him out every time.

‘I recognise it. You’ve played it before.’

When he’d played it before it had been just a dalliance with the keys. Now it was a full-blown, passionate love affair, full of all the conflicting emotions in his heart. ‘It’s a work in progress. It changes every time.’

She nodded. Walked over to him. ‘Will you play it again?’

‘No.’ She couldn’t lure him in like that. If the music insisted on betraying him, then he’d stick to other people’s compositions. ‘I mean...I need to think about it a bit more.’

She nodded and he beckoned her over. This time she sat down next to him on the piano stool as if it was the most natural thing in the world.

‘Would you like something else?’

‘If you want.’ She smiled. ‘Whatever you want.’

‘Your turn to choose.’

She grinned. ‘What was it you were playing the other night?’ She hummed a few chords, her voice clear and tuneful.

‘You’ve got a good ear. Most people don’t get that bit right.’ He reproduced the chords she’d sung and she smiled, singing along with the music.

He’d played this song thousands of times before. Kathy had liked this one, too, but it had never felt like this. Never as if he was caressing someone with the music. Never so head-swimmingly erotic.

He hadn’t thought about Kathy in years. If asked, he would have said that he’d forgotten her, but it seemed that she’d just lain dormant in his memory, waiting to emerge and reprimand him for having ignored the lesson she’d taught him.

‘What’s the matter?’

Charlotte was closer now, and Edward realised that he’d stopped playing.

He shrugged. ‘This song reminds me of...someone I used to know.’

‘Should I be sorry?’

He shook his head. ‘I don’t think so. It was a long time ago. When I was at university.’

‘Which time?’

‘The second. Kathy was a medical student.’

She nodded. ‘First love?’

He shrugged. ‘I suppose so.’

It had been more like a first friendship, really. Kathy had been quiet, studious, so like him that everyone had reckoned they were made for each other and it was just a matter of time before they got married.

When she’d left him, citing a lack of emotional commitment on Edward’s part as her reason, it had been proof positive to all their friends that Edward was the cold fish they’d always marked him down as being.

She nodded. ‘My first love was Isaac’s father. That didn’t work out too well.’

‘But you loved him once...’ The words almost choked Edward.

‘You know they say that love is blind?’ She looked up at him and he nodded. ‘Well, I don’t think so. I think that real love sees everything.’

‘Do you think you can really ever see everything about someone?’

‘I don’t know. In the absence of any substantive evidence either way, I’ll have to say that it’s just a theory. But they say that true love lasts, and I don’t love him now.’ Her mouth twisted, as if the joke was really on her.

Something inside him raged in bitter triumph. The impulse to tear Charlotte’s ex limb from limb de-escalated to wanting to give him a more minor, if acutely painful, set of injuries. If she didn’t care about him any more then Edward could live with that.

‘You can’t regret all of it. Isaac...’

‘Isaac’s the best thing that ever happened to me.’ She laid a finger on his shoulder, as if alerting him to something. ‘Good things do come from bad.’

‘If you make them.’

Charlotte had that ability. As for himself... Nothing good or bad had come from his time with Kathy. Just a lingering doubt about whether he really could ever commit to anyone. After everything that had happened today that doubt suddenly seemed to matter a great deal.

She was looking steadily at him. That silent interrogation which he found so difficult to withstand. Why didn’t she just ask?

‘How long were you and Kathy together?’

‘Three years.’

She nodded. Seemed to be about to ask more, and then didn’t. That was as well, really. The nagging feeling of failure whenever Kathy’s name was mentioned made him uncomfortable.

‘So we’re two of a kind, then.’ She gave a little sigh.

‘What makes you say that?’ Charlotte was warm, bubbly—everyone knew without even thinking about it that there was nothing she didn’t know about emotional commitment.

‘Both still waiting for the right one to come along.’

It felt as if the right one was sitting next to him. But that must be another mistake, because Charlotte clearly didn’t think so.

‘No. I’m not waiting.’ Edward told himself, with less conviction than normal, that he had everything he needed. His work, his books. The textured, multicoloured, harmonic flow of the world around him, perfect in all its intricacies.