Falling For The Single Dad. Jessica Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ 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.’

      She shook her head. ‘No. Ideally they want to downsize and buy somewhere in Portugal, as well, to be near my grandparents. Well, my mother does. My father would be quite happy here, pottering in his garden, but he loves her, and whither thou goest and all that.’

      He frowned. ‘I can’t imagine a woman in the world who’d want to follow me wherever I go.’

      Or a woman, presumably, who he’d follow?

      ‘To the ends of the earth,’ she murmured, realising that, were things different, if she hadn’t had the children and if he’d asked her, she would follow him anywhere he asked her.

      ‘It sometimes feels like it,’ he replied. ‘And, like I say, no sane woman would want that.’

      No sane woman, possibly, but where Harry was concerned she could never be accused of being sane. If she was sane, she wouldn’t have ended up sharing her roof with him, making him welcome, feeding his child for heaven’s sake!

      ‘So how’s Dan?’

      Dan? ‘He’s fine,’ she said, reining in her rambling mind and concentrating on her brother. ‘He’s working in New York. He breezes in from time to time, sometimes without warning—he’s got a partner, Kate, but there’s no sign of them getting married, to my mother’s disappointment. She wants to see her firstborn settled, she says, before she turns up her toes.’

      His eyes narrowed. ‘Is she sick?’ he asked, and she laughed.

      ‘No, not at all. She’s just despairing of Daniel. No, she and Dad are fine. СКАЧАТЬ