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CHAPTER THREE

HE HADN’T realised just what an expedition it would be, shopping with three children.

Kizzy was more than enough trouble, but by the time he’d got her fed and settled and Freddie had woken up, Beth had come back from playing with a friend, so they were all going together.

And then, of course, because she was so tiny and seemed to be hungry every three minutes or so, he needed to take feeds for Kizzy, and because she was just like a straw he’d need nappies, and because he was so rubbish at putting the nappies on she’d need a total change of clothes…

He bet they took less equipment on an Arctic expedition.

‘You OK there?’

He gave Emily what he hoped was a smile and nodded. ‘Sure. I’m fine. I’ve got everything, I think.’

She eyed the bulging bag dubiously. ‘Got wipes?’

Of course not.

He found them and put them in, then straightened up, baby carrier in hand. ‘Will I need the sling? Because I still don’t think I know how to put it on.’

‘I’ll help you. Bring it,’ she instructed, and so he followed her out—to her car, not his, because it was set up with baby seats for her two. Beth and Freddie were already strapped in, reaching across and poking each other and giggling, and they looked up and beamed a welcome at him and Kizzy that made him feel—just for a second, until he reminded himself that he wasn’t—as if he was a part of their family.

As if he belonged.

And the pain hit him in the chest like a sledgehammer.

He sucked in a breath. ‘Hi, kids,’ he said, leaning over Freddie to put the baby carrier in the middle, and Freddie reached up and grabbed his face and planted a wet, sticky kiss on his cheek.

‘Harry!’ he said happily, and Harry straightened up and ruffled Freddie’s hair and swallowed hard.

No. They weren’t his kids. He wasn’t going to get involved. Look what had happened the last time he’d got involved in someone’s life…

‘All set?’

He clipped on his seat belt and nodded. Emily started the car and headed for town.

It was a good job he had her in tow, she thought.

He was fingering a lovely pale pure wool carpet with a thoughtful look on his face.

‘Imagine it with baby sick and play-dough on it,’ she advised sagely, and he wrinkled his nose and sighed heavily.

‘So what would you suggest?’

‘Something a little darker? Something scrubbable? There are some you can pour bleach on. Maybe a tiny pattern, just to break it up? Or a heather mix, so it’s not a flat, plain colour.’

He was glazing over, she could tell. Poor baby. For the first time in his life he was up against having to consider something other than his own taste. And he didn’t like it.

‘I want wood, really. I’d like to strip the boards, or put down an oak strip floor, perhaps. I’ve got solid walnut in my flat and it’s gorgeous. And you can wipe it clean.’

‘Hard to fall on, and it can be a bit cold. Anyway, they probably couldn’t do a really nice floor that fast.’

‘Oh, damn,’ he said, ramming his hands through his hair and grinning ruefully. ‘I tell you what, you choose. You’ve had more experience than I have. So long as it covers the floor and I can have it next Tuesday, I don’t care.’

So she chose—a soft pale coffee mix that would stand children running in and out—and then wondered what on earth she was thinking about because the only child running in and out would be Kizzy and she was less than two weeks old! He’d probably replace the carpet before she was walking.

‘Next?’

‘Furniture? I haven’t got any.’

So she took him to a place that sold beds and sofas and dining furniture, and he ordered the best compromise between what he wanted and what was available at short notice, and then right on cue Kizzy started up.

Freddie was wriggling around in the buggy, wanting to get out, and Beth was hanging on her hand and needed the loo.

‘How about lunch?’ she suggested. ‘Then we can tackle curtains and bedding—a bit more retail therapy for you.’

‘Retail therapy?’ He gave a snort. ‘Not in this lifetime—but lunch sounds good,’ he said, the air of hunted desperation easing slightly at the suggestion of reprieve, and she nearly laughed out loud.

Poor Harry. Anyone less in touch with their feminine side she had yet to meet, but she had to hand it to him. He was taking it on the chin and giving it his best shot, and she felt a strangely proprietorial sense of pride in him.

Swallowing a lump in her throat, Emily tucked her arm through his and steered him into the little café next door, sat him and Beth down, found a high chair for Freddie and took Kizzy from the sling on Harry’s chest, rocking her while the waitress heated the bottle. Then she fed her while her children played with their bendy straws and Harry sat back and closed his eyes and inhaled a double espresso with the air of a condemned man taking his last meal.

It was all she could do not to laugh.

‘Well, that was painless.’

‘Painless?’ He cracked an eye open and studied her for signs of lunacy. ‘I thought we’d never get them settled. I’m exhausted.’

‘You’ll get used to it,’ she promised. ‘I did.’

‘You’re a woman. You have hormones.’

‘Yes—and usually they’re a hazard,’ she said with a chuckle in her voice, and he opened the other eye and sat up a little.

They were in her sitting room, all three children sound asleep, and his few possessions were now installed in Dan’s bedroom, which just happened to be next to hers. Unfortunately. He could have done with being at the other end of the hall, or downstairs, or even at the end of the garden—

No. He couldn’t afford to think about the summerhouse. Not now, when he was alone with her for the first time in years, and there was soft music flowing all around them and all he wanted to do was take her in his arms and carry on where they’d left off…

‘Are you OK?’

‘Sure. Why?’

‘You’re scowling.’

He tried to iron out the muscles in his face and struggled for a smile. ‘Sorry. Thanks for today. I don’t suppose you enjoyed it any more than I did,’ he said, and then realised it was actually a lie, because in some bizarre way he had enjoyed it, all of it. And because he couldn’t lie to her, because he never had, he shook his head and smiled again, properly this time. ‘Actually, it was fun, in a strange way,’ he admitted, and she smiled back, her eyes soft with understanding.

‘You’ll get used to it, Harry. It’s not so bad after a while.’

‘Because it’s so long since you’ve done anything for yourself that you forget to miss it?’ he suggested, and she gave a wry chuckle.

‘Got it in one. And the kids are lovely. They give you back all that love in spades.’

He studied her, wondering about her love life, if it consisted solely of cuddles with her adorable children or if there was a man somewhere.

‘You’re scowling again.’

He laughed. ‘Sorry. Tell me about your garden design business. Did you do your parents’ garden? I noticed it was different—better.’

‘Do you like it? I did it years ago. It was one of my first projects. The swing seat had broken, and the garden needed a thorough overhaul. My father asked me if I wanted to do it as my first commission, when I was finishing my course. I would have done it anyway, but he insisted on paying me—said I had to live and he was sick of supporting me!’

Harry laughed with her, picturing her father, gruff and loving, always supportive, and her mother, warm and motherly and generous to a fault, like a younger version of his grandmother Grace.

‘You’re very lucky to have such loving parents,’ he said, his own voice a little gruff, and she nodded, her eyes searching his face and missing nothing, he was sure. He looked away. ‘So how’s business now?’

‘Good,’ she said. ‘I’ve done quite a bit for Nick and Georgie, both in their garden and in the development behind their house, and Nick’s got some other projects under way that I’m drawing up some ideas for, and I’ve done a few other domestic jobs around the area.’

‘Enough to live on?’

‘I manage,’ she said, but there was something in her voice that made him wonder how tight it was and how dependent she was on her parents for accommodation, or if it simply suited them all. He wondered if the rat who’d fathered her children and then legged it made any kind of contribution, and thought probably not.

‘No, he doesn’t,’ she said, and his head jerked up.

‘Did I say that out loud?’ he said guiltily, but she shook her head, her smile wry.

‘No. You didn’t have to. You were scowling again.’

‘Ah.’ He pressed his lips together, but the words came out anyway. ‘Tell me about him.’

She shrugged. ‘Nothing to tell. I met him at a party—no surprises there. He’s always been a party animal. We lived together for a year, and I became pregnant with Beth. He wanted me to get rid of her, as he put it, but I wouldn’t. I told him it was too late, and I really thought he’d come to love her, but he was pretty indifferent to her.’

‘So why didn’t you leave him?’

Her laugh was humourless and a little bitter. ‘I had nothing to live on. I didn’t think it was fair to come home to my parents. They were enjoying being free of responsibility, and they were taking all the holidays they couldn’t afford while Dan and I were at home. So I stayed with Pete, and two years later I was pregnant again.’

‘And he left you.’

‘Mmm. I told him on Saturday morning, and on Saturday afternoon he packed up and moved out while I was at the supermarket. He left me with the flat, the rent was due and I had no money for food. He’d stopped my card so I couldn’t use it at the supermarket, and when I got home with no food after an embarrassing fiasco at the checkout, he was gone.’

‘So what did you do?’

‘I came home. My father collected us and brought us home, my mother looked after Beth so I could go back to work until I had Freddie, and they’ve been fantastic. I don’t know what I would have done without them.’

Her voice was soft and matter-of-fact, but underneath he could sense a wealth of pain and he ached for her. He knew what it was to be unwanted, knew how it felt to be an unwanted child, and having heard her story he was more than ever sure that Beth and Freddie were better off without their father.

‘You don’t need him,’ he said, and she smiled.

‘I know. And you don’t have to sound so cross. He did me a favour, really. Without him I wouldn’t have had my children, and at least he had the decency to go off and leave us alone, instead of hanging around and being cruel…’

He felt his legs bunch. ‘He hit you?’

She laughed and shook her head, leaning over to push him back onto the sofa. ‘Relax. There are other ways of being cruel.’

Oh, yes. And he’d met many of them in his time. He relaxed back against the sofa and sighed, then patted the cushion beside him. ‘Come here.’

She hesitated a second, then she sat beside him, snuggling against his side as she’d done so very many times before. ‘I’ve missed you,’ she said softly. ‘I see you on the telly and wonder how you are, if you’ll ever come back to Suffolk…’

‘And I have.’

‘Mmm. With Kizzy. I might have known you’d find a waif and rescue her. You were always a softie.’

He thought of Carmen, how she’d looked after she’d been attacked, and how she’d looked in the chapel at the mortuary, her young face finally at peace.

‘I don’t think I did her any favours,’ he said gruffly. ‘Maybe if I’d left her there, or handed her over to the aid agencies…’

‘Then what? She would have had a child and no way of supporting it except prostitution. Would you want that for her?’

He shook his head. ‘But she didn’t deserve to die.’

‘Of course not, but life’s a bitch, Harry. You gave her hope, gave her a home—and you’ve given her baby a home and a father, safety and security for the rest of her life.’

‘We have yet to survive it, of course,’ he said wryly. ‘Only time will tell.’

‘You’ll survive it.’ She tipped up her face and smiled at him, her hand coming up to cradle his jaw with gentle fingers. ‘You’ll be a wonderful father, Harry. Give yourself time.’

He nodded slightly, not sure if he could believe her but no longer really thinking about it, because her eyes were tender, her mouth was full and soft and, oh, so close, and without thinking, without giving himself time to analyse or argue or reason, he lowered his head and touched his lips to hers.

Oh, dear heaven, she tasted the same. All these years and he could remember her taste, her scent, the feel of her lips under his, the soft stroke of her tongue against his, the tiny sigh, the warmth of her breath, the frantic beating of her heart against his fingertips as his hand glided down over the hollow of her throat and settled against a soft, full breast, fuller than before, her body a woman’s now, lush and generous, the curves just right for his hand.

And he wanted her as he had never wanted her before, as an adult, a man who knew all the joys in store instead of a hormonal youth who simply hoped to find out. And the knowledge was almost enough to destroy his self-control, to push him over the edge.

But then, just as he was about to let her go, when his mind was already pulling back even as his hand curled against her breast, she lifted her head away, her eyes confused, and said, ‘Kizzy.’

Kizzy? What had Kizzy to do with it?

And then he heard her crying, her screams getting louder by the second.

He jerked himself to his feet, strode towards the door and bounded upstairs, his heart racing and his body clamouring to turn round and go back and finish what they’d started…

Emily sagged back against the cushions and lifted her hand to her lips. Had it really always felt that good? And if so, how on earth had they ever stopped?

She closed her eyes and waited for her heart to slow, listening to his voice, a soft rumble on the stairs as he carried Kizzy down. Her cries subsided for the moment, a cuddle enough to comfort her for now.

Emily nearly laughed aloud. A cuddle from Kizzy’s father was nothing like enough to comfort her. She wanted more—much more—but she’d be insane to let this crazy situation go any further, because whatever else she knew about Harry, she knew that Yoxburgh wouldn’t be enough to satisfy him for long.

He’d always talked about seeing the world—a result of his restless upbringing, trailing round the globe in the wake of his parents who had been too busy to pay attention to their little son. So although he’d never had their love, he’d had experiences in spades, and the wanderlust that was a part of his father’s make up was part of his also.

And so he’d go—maybe not now, maybe not for a while, but eventually, when it all got too dull and easy and the world beckoned. And she’d be left, broken-hearted as Pete could never have left her, because although she’d thought she’d loved Pete, she knew full well that an affair with Harry had the potential to bring her far more joy and far more sorrow than Pete could ever have done, because he’d never had that unerring capacity to touch her soul.

So she simply wasn’t going to go there, not now, not ever. And if they’d got scarily close on the night of his grandmother’s funeral, they weren’t getting that close again. No way. It was far too dangerous.

She could hear him in the kitchen, hear Kizzy starting up again, and taking a deep breath to steady her, she got to her feet and went through. ‘Want a hand?’

‘I’m OK,’ he said, his back to her and his voice tight.

Damn.

‘I’m going to do some work, then,’ she said, and went into the study and shut the door a little more firmly than was quite necessary, just to be on the safe side.

‘Oh, Kizzy, what did I go and do that for?’ he murmured, staring down at his tiny daughter with regret. ‘We were getting on so well, and now I’ve gone and screwed everything up, but she was just there, you know, and I just wanted to kiss her. Nothing else. What a silly daddy.’

He took the bottle out of her mouth and propped her up against his shoulder, rubbing her back until she burped gloriously in his ear, then he gave her the rest of the bottle, cuddled her for a minute and then took her back up, changed her and put her down in the travel cot Em had found in the loft.

Kizzy went out like a light, without a murmur, which left him nothing to do but go back downstairs and sit and watch the study door and wonder if Emily was mad with him.

He paused in Freddie’s doorway, staring down at the sleeping boy. He was huge compared to Kizzy, but he was still a baby really, his steps sometimes unsteady, his chin only too ready to wobble if things went wrong. Beth wasn’t that much older, either, but quite different, bright and beautiful and full of mischief, her sparkling eyes just like Em’s.

Beth was lying sprawled across the bed, too close to the edge, and he shifted her back and covered her again before heading downstairs with all the enthusiasm of a French aristo going to the guillotine.

He owed Em an apology, and he wasn’t sure if he dared be in the room with her long enough to make it. At least not without a table between them to keep them apart.

He went into the kitchen, made some tea and tapped on the study door. ‘Em?’

‘Come in,’ she said, turning towards him with a wary look in her eyes as he pushed the door open and went in, tray in hand.

‘I’ve brought you tea.’

‘Thanks.’

He hung on to the tray, because if it was in his hands he couldn’t do anything else with them. ‘My pleasure. And we haven’t eaten. Want me to cook something?’

She swivelled her chair a little farther and reached for the tea. ‘What can you cook?’

He laughed. ‘Probably nothing English. What have you got to work with?’

‘All sorts. I did a big shop the other day. Go and have a look. I just want to finish this off and I’ll come and give you a hand.’

He nodded and went out, sighing with relief that the awkwardness seemed to have gone and their friendship was back on track.

Unless he poisoned her! He opened the fridge and studied the contents. Peppers, chicken breast, onions, tiny cherry tomatoes, salad, apples in the fruit bowl, couscous in the larder cupboard and spices in the rack next to the hob.

Excellent.

‘Smells good.’

He jumped, turning towards her with a laugh lighting up his eyes and the knife pointing towards her threateningly, but she didn’t feel threatened. ‘Do you have to creep up on me?’

‘Sorry.’ She grinned without remorse and perched on the stool at the breakfast bar. ‘Found all you need?’

‘I think so. Did you get your drawing done?’

‘Yes. I was just making a few changes to the planting. So what are you cooking?’

‘Moroccan chicken and couscous. I wasn’t sure if you liked things spicy, so I haven’t made it too hot, but it’s fruity so it takes the edge off it. Here—try a bit.’

And he held out a fork with a little pile of couscous on for her to taste. She leant forward, closed her lips around the fork and wondered if he’d been tasting it, if his lips had closed on the prongs of the fork, too, if he’d…

‘Wow! That’s gorgeous!’

‘Not too hot for you?’

She shook her head, putting her hormones back in their box and concentrating on the food. ‘No, it’s lovely.’

‘Good. I’ll just finish off the chicken and I’ll be done.’

‘Want a hand?’

‘No. Just stay there and keep me company.’

So she sat there, watching him work, her eyes drawn to the muscles in his shoulders flexing as he stirred and flipped the chicken in the pan, his buttocks taut when he shifted from foot to foot, crouching to lift out the plates from the oven and then straightening, thighs working…

Damn. She was going to drool in a minute.

He threw the chicken into the couscous, scraped the juices into the mixture and stirred it through then piled it into the bowls and set them down on the breakfast bar in front of her, hooking his foot round a stool and drawing it closer before sitting opposite her.

Their knees brushed and she pulled away, just as he did, and he apologised automatically and then he met her eyes and smiled wryly. ‘Actually, I’m sorry for all of it. For landing on you like this—for kissing you.’ Then he shook his head and laughed softly under his breath. ‘No, that’s a lie. I’m not sorry. I’m sorry I’m not sorry, if you see what I mean. I didn’t mean to kiss you, and I shouldn’t have done, but I can’t be sorry I did. Not unless it gets in the way of our friendship, because that means too much to me to mess with it. Ah, that was the most garbled speech in the world, but—I guess what I’m trying to say is, forgive me?’

Forgive him? For kissing her so tenderly, so beautifully, so skillfully?

‘There’s nothing to forgive,’ she said, her voice a little unsteady, and picking up her fork, she turned her attention to the food before she said or did anything she’d regret…