Jessica Hart - Falling For The Single Dad

‘Right.’ Concentrate on the sofas. ‘So shoe buckles and toys don’t scratch them. I remember. So we probably don’t want to paint the walls black, then.’

She laughed again, and he felt it ripple right through him. ‘Probably not. So, tell me about your boss.’

He shook his head. ‘She was tough—tougher than the leather. I knew she would be. Don’t worry, I can deal with her. It was the journey home that was so awful. There was a woman on the train who recognised me, and I was trapped with her for hours. I was getting ready to strangle her. She was creepy. I got the feeling that if the sun set I wouldn’t have been safe.’

Em spluttered with laughter. ‘Was she after you, Harry?’

‘I think she might have been,’ he confessed drily. ‘Then again it might just be paranoia.’

‘Or your ego.’

‘Or my ego,’ he conceded with a grin. ‘Yeah, she was probably just a nice woman who was bored as hell and thought she could tell me her life story because she knew me. That’s the trouble with spending your evenings in everybody’s living rooms—they think they know you, and I suppose to a certain extent they do. Depends how much you give away to the camera.’

She tipped her head on one side, studying him. ‘How much do you give away?’

He shrugged, trying to be casual because he knew the answer was that he gave away too much of himself, even if it didn’t show on camera. ‘Depends. As little as possible, but sometimes things really get to you—like the earthquakes and the mudslides and things. Hideous. You can’t keep that under wraps. Not if you’re human. And then there are the fantastic moments when they pull a child out alive days later—I can’t just tell it deadpan, but you have to bear in mind you’re reporting the news and not making a social commentary. That’s not my job, and if I have feelings or allegiances, I have to ignore them. It’s all about being impartial, about giving people the facts and letting them make their own minds up. So I try not to give my own feelings away, but sometimes—well, sometimes I fail.’

He laughed softly and put his mug down on the table. ‘Sorry—getting a bit heavy here. Tell me about your day.’

She studied him thoughtfully for a moment, then smiled, allowing him to change the subject. ‘Well—let’s just say I’ve had better. Freddie was a nightmare, Beth decided it was going to be one of those days when she wanted to make things with her mummy and so wanted my undivided attention, Kizzy was miserable and the decorators wanted tea.’

‘Just another peachy day in suburbia, then,’ he said with a suppressed smile, and she chuckled.

‘Absolutely.’

‘So you didn’t get a lot of work done.’

‘Not so you’d notice.’

He nodded, feeling the prickle of guilt for the umpteenth time that day. ‘Sorry. That’s my fault. How about I have the kids for you tomorrow so you can rest and do a bit of work and get your head together?’

‘That would be fantastic. I’ve got a roof terrace design to deliver to Georgie and Nick—the one I was working on last night—and if you could bear it, I’d like to take it over to them in the morning and discuss it. It’s up to you.’

‘That’s fine. You do that. I’ll cope, I’m sure.’

Except it didn’t quite work like that.

Kizzy had other ideas. She woke at eleven, and he fed her, but she didn’t seem to want her feed, and then she woke again just after twelve, and he was trying to get her to take the bottle when Em appeared in the kitchen, her eyes tormented.

‘Harry?’ she said softly.

‘She just won’t take it.’

‘Want me to try?’

He shrugged and handed her the baby and the bottle, but she spat it out and turned to Em, nuzzling her.

And Em turned those tormented eyes on him and said, ‘Oh, Harry, I have to…’

She was going to feed her. Again. Bare her breast and put the baby to it, and he was standing there in the kitchen in his boxers and it was all just too much.

He swallowed hard and nodded. ‘Sure. Go on up to bed with her and I’ll bring you tea,’ he said, and the moment she was up there, he ran up, found a long T-shirt and pulled it on to give his emotions a little privacy. Then he went back down, made two mugs of tea and carried them up to her room, putting hers down on the bedside table.

‘Call me when you’re finished, I’ll change her,’ he said, and was heading for the door when her quiet voice stopped him.

‘Stay and keep me company?’

‘Don’t you mind?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s not like it’s anything you haven’t seen before, is it? The places you go in the world, women do it all the time in public.’

But not her. Not his Em, feeding his child. But she was right, it was nothing he hadn’t seen before, and so he sat down on the other side of the bed, propping himself up against the headboard and trying not to stare at the little puckered rosebud lips around her nipple.

‘I don’t think I’ve got enough milk for her,’ Em said regretfully after a few minutes.

‘Is that going to be a problem?’

She shook her head. ‘No, not really. I’ll be able to give her comfort, if nothing else, and she can get her feeds from you.’

Except she wouldn’t. Not then, not later, not in the morning. It seemed she was a baby of discernment, and she’d decided only Emily would do.

Well, she’d made a rod for her own back with that one, Emily thought, and wondered where they went from there.

At best, she was feeding every three hours. At worst, it was more like one and a half or two hours. And, OK, at the moment Harry was living there, but once the decorators had finished and gone and he moved back, was he going to come through the gate in the fence every two or three hours through the night to bring the baby to her to feed?

Or, worse, leave the baby with her?

No way.

She loved Kizzy, wouldn’t harm a hair of her fuzzy little head, but she wasn’t hers, she hadn’t asked for this and there was no way she was taking on responsibility for her. And she was in no doubt that Harry would put up a token fight and then give in and let her if she so much as hinted that she was willing.

She needed an exit strategy and, frankly, until she could convince Kizzy to take the bottle again, she wasn’t going to have one. And another thing. How would she explain it to her children? Sure, they’d accept it, but would they then go and tell the world? Kids were so open. OK, not Freddie, although he might be jealous and start wanting to feed again, as well, but Beth might very well say something at playgroup or to Georgie or the boys.

She closed her eyes and stared sightlessly down at the little scrap busy making herself at home with her adopted milk bar. ‘Oh, Kizzy,’ she murmured. ‘Why me?’

But she knew why her. Because nobody else would have been rash enough. They would have let her yell and handed her straight back to her father the minute he walked through the door.

It was her own fault, and she was going to have to deal with the consequences.

Just until she could talk Kizzy out of it. And in the meantime, she was supposed to be going to a business meeting with Georgie and Nick, and how the hell was she going to explain this to them? She’d just have to time it exactly right…

Damn.

Kizzy was yelling again, Freddie wanted to make another sandcastle with a moat and couldn’t make the sand pile up because it was too dry, Beth wouldn’t help him get water because she was busy pestering Harry for help with putting stickers on a book, and he was ready to rip his hair out.

How on earth would Em cope?

He took a deep breath, thought about it and went into the kitchen, stuck a bottle in the microwave—just for a quick blast on low—filled the plastic jug with water and took it to Freddie, helped Beth line up two stickers down the edge of the book and went back and grabbed the bottle.