Falling For The Single Dad. Jessica Hart

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      He laughed softly at the thought, and her voice behind him caught him by surprise.

      ‘Penny for them.’

      He turned with a smile. ‘I was remembering the fleas from the hedgehog you rescued. And here you’ve got another little stray.’

      ‘Hopefully not with fleas.’ She chuckled and handed him the baby. ‘Anyway, she’s your little stray and she needs her nappy changed. I’ll make the tea—or do you want something else?’

      A large bottle of Scotch? Nothing else would blot out the hellish day—but Emily had, with her gentle smile and her loving kindness to his daughter.

      ‘Tea would be lovely,’ he said, his voice suddenly rough, and took the baby upstairs to change her and put her in her cot. He checked the others, went back downstairs and found Em in the sitting room, the mugs on the table in front of her. She was sitting on the chair, not one of the two sofas, retreating, he imagined, to a place of safety, a place where it wouldn’t be so easy for him to sit beside her, draw her into his arms and kiss her senseless.

      For a second he was tempted to scoop her up out of the chair and sit down in it with her on his lap, but then common sense prevailed—better late than never—and he dropped into a corner of one of the sofas, facing her.

      ‘Bad day?’

      ‘Probably nearly as bad as yours,’ he confessed with a wry smile.

      ‘So how was your boss?’

      His laugh sounded humourless, probably because it was. ‘Let’s just say she could have been more accommodating. I’ve taken a month’s unpaid leave to give me time to sort things out. Let’s just hope it’s long enough.’ He picked up his tea and cradled the mug in his hand, his head resting back against the cushion and his eyes closed. ‘Oh, bliss. It’s good to be home,’ he said, and then almost stopped breathing, because that was exactly what it had felt like—coming home.

      For the first time in his adult life.

      He straightened up and turned his attention to the tea. ‘So how did the decorators get on?’ he asked, once he was sure he could trust his voice.

      ‘OK. They’ve stripped out all the old carpets and put them in a skip, and they’ve started work on the windows. Here, colour charts.’

      She pushed a pile of charts towards him on the table, and he put down his tea and picked them up, thumbing through them. ‘What do you think?’

      ‘I have no idea. I don’t know what your taste is, Harry. I haven’t seen you since you were twenty one, at your grandmother’s funeral. Our minds weren’t on décor.’

      No. They’d been on other things entirely, he remembered, and wished she hadn’t brought it up, because he was straight back to the summerhouse, scene of many a moonlit tryst in their teens, stolen moments together on a voyage of discovery that now seemed so innocent and then had seemed so daring, so clandestine. Except that night, after he’d buried his grandmother, when things had got just that bit closer.

      ‘Neutral,’ he said, dragging his mind back from the brink. ‘Or should children have bright primary colours to stimulate them?’

      She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I go with instinct, and my instinct is earth colours, unless you’re talking about toys, but they can be put away and leave the place calm.’

      ‘Calm, then.’

      ‘I think so.’

      He nodded and tried to pay attention to the colour charts, but all he could think of was their first kiss and their last—until last night, that was, only twenty-four hours ago, and still much too fresh in his mind. Coupled with coming home—there he went again—and finding Emily feeding Kizzy, he was having a hard time keeping his mind off sex and on the subject.

      No. Not sex.

      Emily. Emily in his arms, Emily’s lips on his, Emily holding the baby, suckling her, the image still so powerful it was going to blow his mind.

      He threw the colour charts down. ‘I’ll look at them tomorrow. See them in context. I can’t even remember what colour sofas I chose now.’

      She laughed, reaching for her tea and curling back up in the chair, her legs folded so that her feet were tucked up under that lovely curve of her bottom. ‘Brown,’ she told him. ‘Bitter chocolate in that thick, bumpy leather—the tough stuff.’

      ‘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.’

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