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