Single Dads Collection. Lynne Marshall

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СКАЧАТЬ 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. Enjoying life.’ And she was holding them back, interfering with their plans for retirement. Oh, damn.

      ‘Em, are you OK?’

      She met his eyes, gentle and concerned, and could have crumpled, but she didn’t. ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Just a bit tired.’

      ‘Why don’t you turn in?’ he suggested.

      She gave a wry smile. ‘Another appointment with Buttercup before I can go to bed, but I’ve got half an hour or so to kill, at the least. I might go and sort out the washing and tidy the kitchen.’

      But the kitchen was tidy, and the washing could wait for the morning so she could put it on the line, so she just pulled it out of the machine into the plastic basket ready for the morning. She’d stick it by the door and then she wouldn’t forget, she thought, but he was in there with her, right behind her again, so that when she straightened up and stepped back with the washing basket in her hands, she cannoned into him and felt her head connect with his chin.

      ‘Ouch!’

      ‘Oh, Harry, I’m sorry!’ she said, turning to see if she’d hurt him, and found him ruefully rubbing his jaw, the fingertips rasping over the stubble and sending shivers skittering over her nerve endings.

      He took the laundry basket out of her hands and put it down again. ‘I think it needs a magic kiss,’ he murmured. ‘Like the ones you give Beth and Freddie when they hurt themselves.’

      ‘Big baby,’ she teased. She must be mad. She shouldn’t rise to it, he was just being silly. She hadn’t really hurt him. Still, she lifted his fingers away, went up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to the spot, just because it was so irresistible.

      ‘There. СКАЧАТЬ