Jessica Hart - Falling For The Single Dad

‘Of course he can—but he didn’t know where Freddie’s stuff was. I just popped a few of the baby’s things in to make up the load.’

Oh, she was going to be struck by lightning in a minute, and Georgie, who’d known her for years, was giving her a very odd look. She didn’t say anything, though, and Nick was getting out of the water and attending to the barbeque, the children were heading for the shower—one mess she was glad she wouldn’t have to clear up!—and Freddie was pulling the sort of face that meant she had just a few seconds to get him to a potty.

‘Oops. Got to fly,’ she said, and hoisted Freddie out of the pool, hauled herself up onto the side, grabbed him and ran.

‘That was a great evening.’

She smiled warily. ‘Yes, it was.’

‘They’re lovely people.’

‘Yes.’

‘You’re lucky to have such good friends close by. Mine are scattered all over the world.’

And whose choice was that? she could have said, but she didn’t, she bit her tongue and headed for the kitchen. ‘Tea or wine?’ she asked, and he shrugged.

‘Whatever. I’ve had wine and beer already today. If you’re drinking I’ll join you, but I’m quite happy with tea.’

‘Tea it is, then,’ she said, glad she’d had the excuse of driving to refuse the wine, because while she was still expressing milk for Kizzy she didn’t want to drink.

And it would be lovely to reach a point where she didn’t have to take that into account at every moment of her life!

With a little sigh she put the kettle on, reached for the mugs and bumped into Harry.

‘Sorry,’ he said, throwing her an apologetic smile. ‘I was getting the mugs for you.’

But the damage was done. After a day of watching him running around on the beach and at the Barrons’ three parts naked, water sluicing off his powerful body and beading like tiny gems in the dark hair that covered his legs and arrowed down his abdomen, just the brush of his body against her was enough to start a wildfire that no amount of common sense was going to be able to put out. She’d nearly blown a fuse when his leg had brushed against hers in the hot tub, but she’d been safe there, with Georgie and Nick to chaperone and keep order. Here, there was no one to hold them back, nothing to stop them. Except her fleeting common sense.

Emily turned back to the tea, her fingers trembling, and dropped a teaspoon on the floor.

They bent together, bumped again and he laughed and apologised and moved away, giving her room to breathe at last and her heart time to slow.

‘So—fancy having a look at the garden tomorrow?’ he said after a long moment that sizzled with tension.

‘Sure. If you have the kids.’

‘I thought we could do it together—talk it through. It’s not as if it’s far away. The kids can come, too. After all, it’s the weekend. The painters won’t be there.’

‘No. OK. What did they say about the kitchen, by the way?’ she asked, desperately trying not to think about that arrowing hair on his washboard abdomen.

‘Oh, he’d been going to suggest it,’ he said, taking his mug from her. ‘Thought it was a good idea for a short-term fix. He’s going to do it.’

‘Colour?’

Harry shrugged and grinned. ‘I have no idea. Maybe sort of duck-egg, I think he was suggesting, but I can’t say I’ve taken an interest in kitchens, really. My flat’s got a stainless-steel and lacquer-red high-gloss laminate kitchen that’s a mass of fingermarks and a living nightmare to work in—not my choice, I have to add. It was the developer who put it in. The only bit of it I like is the walnut worktop, because it goes with the floor. Anyway, it doesn’t matter. This kitchen can’t look worse than it does at the moment, so duck-egg or cream or whatever, it has to be an improvement.’

They went through to the sitting room and she picked up the TV remote. ‘Want to watch something, or shall I put music on?’

‘Music would be nice,’ he said, and she went into her study and came back with a couple of CDs that she used for background while she was working—compilation albums of soft, easy-listening tracks, female singers mostly, but she’d never noticed just how intrinsically romantic all the songs were until that moment.

Damn. She should have chosen something different—something classical. She buried her nose in her mug and tried not to look at him. For a few minutes they sat in silence, then the third track came on, less romantic, and with an inward sigh of relief she shifted slightly so she could see him better and said, ‘Tell me about yourself. What have you been doing since I last saw you? Apart from the obvious, of course.’

He gave a quiet huff of laughter. ‘Nothing much. Flying about all over the world. It doesn’t leave time for much, really.’

‘You’d just left uni when your grandmother died, hadn’t you? You must have been twenty-one, I suppose.’

He nodded. ‘Nearly twenty-two. And you were nineteen, and home from uni for the summer.’

And they’d watched the sun rise, and then that night…

The memory was written on his face, and she looked away. ‘So what did you do then? After you left?’

He shrugged. ‘Bummed around. Took the gap year I’d never had, saw some of the world, worked in a radio station in Brisbane, got a job on a newspaper in Rio, linked up with a television crew in Nepal, and that was it, really. I started doing odd bits for them, earning a living but nothing great, working as a news researcher when I came home. Did a bit of local television news, then got the break into overseas reporting when I was about twenty-five. I’ve been doing it for six years now.’

‘And you’ve never married?’

He shook his head. ‘Well, except for Carmen, and she didn’t really count, because I’d realised by then that I’d never marry. It just doesn’t fit with the job.’

‘You’re not telling me all those reporters are single?’

He laughed. ‘No, of course not, but they find it hard to have a normal family life. I didn’t want anything in the way. And anyway, I’d never met anyone who made me feel like settling down.’ He tipped his head on one side. ‘So tell me about you. I know about Pete but what did you do before you met him? How old were you then?’

‘Twenty-four. I’d finished my degree, decided biology didn’t really qualify me for anything and, anyway, I’d discovered I loved gardens, and so I did a garden design course and started work.’

‘Here.’

She laughed. ‘Well, yes, my father let me do their garden, and I did some others, and then I worked for one of the garden centre chains—the sort of thing you were threatening me with yesterday.’

He grinned. ‘Hardly threatening.’

‘Blackmailing, then. Anyway, that’s what I was doing when I met Pete.’

‘And you stopped when you had Beth?’

‘Only for a while,’ she told him, remembering her reluctance to go back to work full time. ‘I wanted to freelance, to break out on my own and work from home, but he said we couldn’t afford the risk. What he really meant was that he wasn’t prepared to fund me while it got off the ground, but Pete never really said what he meant—not until he walked out, and even then he didn’t discuss it.’

Harry shook his head. ‘I can’t believe he just legged it while you were at the supermarket.’

‘Pausing only to stop the credit card,’ she reminded him. ‘Still, water under the bridge and all that. And I’m much happier now than I was then.’ Except for the fact that she couldn’t afford to house her children without her parents’ generosity. That was a bit of a killer, always nagging at the back of her mind.

As if he’d read that mind, he said quietly, ‘And the house? I don’t imagine if you weren’t living here your parents would want to keep something this big on into their retirement.’