Marriage Reunited. Jessica Hart

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ stepped back to let Mac inside.

      ‘This? It’s a mango.’

      ‘No, that,’ he said impatiently, pointing at the camera around Mac’s neck.

      ‘It’s my camera,’ said Mac easily, and pulled it from around his neck. ‘Do you want to have a look at it?’

      Toby nodded and, to Georgia’s consternation, Mac handed him the camera.

      ‘Um…do you think that’s a good idea?’ she said meaningfully. The camera was his livelihood, after all, and professional cameras didn’t come cheap.

      ‘It’s fine,’ said Mac, looping the strap around Toby’s neck. ‘He won’t drop it.’

      Toby frowned down at the camera. ‘It doesn’t look like a camera,’ he said suspiciously. ‘It’s not digital.’

      ‘No,’ Mac agreed solemnly, ‘and you can’t use it to make a phone call, either! This is a camera that just takes pictures.’ He paused. ‘Would you like me to show you how it works?’

      Toby nodded again, and Georgia was too pleased to see him interested to object when Mac sat down with him on the sofa and showed him how to look through the camera and use the telescopic lens.

      So much for clearing up before her visitors arrived. Mac wouldn’t have noticed if he’d had to wade knee-deep through a rubbish tip to get to the sofa. He was as oblivious as Toby to any mess.

      Life must be so much easier if you could just blank out whatever you didn’t want to see, Georgia reflected. She would have loved to have been the kind of person who simply didn’t notice or didn’t care about her surroundings. Sadly, she was obsessive—according to Mac, anyway—about keeping her surroundings clean and tidy, and there was no way she could enjoy her supper with the room looking like this.

      Sighing inwardly, Georgia got down on her knees and began to pick up toys while Mac and Toby bent their heads over the camera. She was too used to Mac continually clicking away to be bothered when they began pointing the camera at her and talking about framing a picture. One thing about being married to a photographer, you never got shy when someone got out their Instamatic and started snapping photos. After a while, it was just background noise and you stopped feeling self-conscious in front of a camera.

      It was oddly comfortable to be clearing up while the man and the boy sat on the sofa, absorbed in what they were doing. It felt almost normal. Was this what it would have been like if she and Mac had had a family? Georgia wondered.

      Wrapped up in her thoughts, she didn’t at first register that Mac was talking to her.

      ‘Sorry?’ she said, sitting back on her haunches and smoothing a stray hair back from her face.

      ‘I was just saying that Toby and I could finish tidying up if you want to go and change.’

      Mac’s blue eyes held a strange expression as they rested on her, and for some reason Georgia flushed.

      ‘It’s all right, thanks,’ she said stiffly, aware for the first time that she was still wearing her work clothes. ‘I don’t usually bother to change any more.’

      Mac frowned. He had always loved the moment when she would change in the evenings. That was when she would unbutton the crisp, cool Georgia and let the secret Georgia out, the Georgia who ate mangoes in a way that made the breath dry in his throat, the Georgia who was warm and loving and so sensuous that it was hard for him to think clearly when she was near.

      ‘Why not?’

      Georgia shrugged. ‘Oh, the usual reason—no time. There’s just too much to do every evening.’

      And there was no one to change for any more, she added to herself as she gathered up some plastic counters that were scattered over the carpet.

      Oh, there was Geoffrey, of course, but he inevitably came from work in his suit and, anyway, he would no doubt think that it was practical of her to stay in her work outfit too. Georgia couldn’t imagine how he would react if she were to greet him at the door wearing one of the little numbers she had used to wear for Mac.

      But she had been younger then, and everything was different now.

      Mac watched her crouching down, piling Toby’s toys into a box, and he felt the old familiar tightening of his chest. Her skirt was tight over her bottom and thighs, and he could see the graceful curve of her spine, the way her silky top rode up slightly as she stretched out.

      He had once asked her why she wore such prim clothes instead of dressing like the warm, sexy woman that she really was. ‘Because when I’m with you it’s the only way I can keep any control over what’s happening,’ she had said. ‘With you, everything’s chaos. I don’t know which way up I am when you’re there, and when you’re not I don’t know where you are or what you’re doing. At least if I get up and put on some suitable clothes to go to work, then I feel as if I’ve got some control over what’s happening.’

      Poor Georgia; it hadn’t been easy for her, Mac thought with some compunction. She liked everything in its place and firmly under control, and she had never got used to the fact that love just didn’t work like that.

      ‘Can I take a picture of Georgia?’ Toby asked him, holding the camera reverently.

      ‘Sure,’ said Mac absently, still thinking about Georgia.

      ‘Look at me, Georgia!’

      Glad to hear him sounding so animated, Georgia looked up dutifully and smiled.

      Toby lifted the heavy camera in his thin hands and pointed it at her, then glanced up at Mac. ‘Now?’

      ‘Well, you could take it now,’ Mac agreed, ‘but she doesn’t really look like Georgia when she’s posing like that, does she? The thing about Georgia is that she’s not an easy person to capture,’ he went on easily, talking to Toby as if he were an interested adult rather than a small boy who simply wanted to press a button. ‘You’ve got to think of it like hunting a wild animal. You have to be very quiet and wait until she’s forgotten that you’re there with a camera, and then—snap!—you can catch her unawares.’

      Toby was listening intently to his advice, although Georgia was sure that he had no idea what Mac was talking about. She did, though. Catching her unawares, the way he had done today, was what Mac had always done best.

      Well, he wasn’t going to capture her this time.

      Over Toby’s head, she met Mac’s amused navy-blue gaze, her own eyes bright with unspoken challenge, and the space between them was suddenly charged with an electric tension that sparked and sizzled alarmingly.

      It was interrupted by the ring of the doorbell. ‘That’ll be Geoffrey.’ Georgia leapt to her feet in relief. ‘Toby, can you just finish putting away the last of the toys?’ she asked, without much hope that he would oblige.

      Toby heaved a sigh. ‘Geoffrey’s Georgia’s boyfriend,’ she heard him mutter glumly to Mac as she headed for the door. ‘He’s boring.’

      Georgia suppressed an equally heavy sigh. She wished Toby would accept Geoffrey. He might not be fun or have a ridiculously expensive camera for Toby to fiddle with, but he СКАЧАТЬ