Читать книгу Single Dads Collection - Lynne Marshall - Страница 15

‘CAN I ask you an enormous favour?’

Emily lifted her eyes from the baby’s face and met Harry’s clear blue gaze. Maybe one day she’d be immune to watching him with the baby in his arms as he fed her, but not today or any time soon.

‘Sure,’ she said, wondering if her voice was as husky as she suspected.

‘I need to go to London. I didn’t really give them much warning that I was going to be taking time off. I’ll go on the train, I think it’s the quickest, and I shouldn’t be gone more than five hours—six, tops. I’ll leave all the feeds ready for you—the made-up packets are a doddle, even I can manage them, and with any luck she’ll sleep for most of it, but I need to go and talk to my boss, and I can’t really take her with me.’

‘Why not?’ she suggested, just to see what he said and to find out if he’d thought it through. ‘It might be quite useful—you know, make the point of how tiny she is and all that.’

He shook his head, his mouth kicking up in a wry smile. ‘No. My boss is a woman. There’s no way she’d be impressed by that. She’d expect a woman to get child care to cover a meeting. She won’t make an exception for me. And I know it’s a pain, and I promise I won’t make a habit of it. It’s really just this once. And, yes, I could take her and dump her on a secretary or something on the way in, but it isn’t really fair on the secretary and it certainly isn’t fair on Kizzy. I’ve already thought about doing it, and if I didn’t have to ask you, I wouldn’t. I know you’ve got more than enough to do, and I’ll make it up to you—babysit yours so you can get some work done or something. Look after them while you get a massage. Whatever you like.’

She put him out of his misery. ‘Done. You can babysit for me while I work, and I’ll have a massage. And you can pay for it,’ she added, waiting for him to renege, but he didn’t, he just nodded and looked relieved.

‘Thanks, Em. I owe you.’

‘I know. The meter’s running.’

He chuckled and lifted the baby against his shoulder, burping her. Hell, he was getting good at it. Those big strong hands cradled her with a tenderness that made Emily want to weep, and now he was relaxing into the role, Kizzy obviously felt safe. Emily envied her. She’d give her eye teeth to be cradled in his arms with him staring adoringly down at her like that.

She shot to her feet. ‘More tea?’

He shook his head. ‘No, I’m going to turn in. I’m shattered. So—is that OK for the morning, then?’

‘Tomorrow?’ she said, startled, and he nodded.

‘Sorry—didn’t I mention that? Is tomorrow a problem?’

‘No,’ she said, mentally scanning her diary. ‘Except the decorators are starting.’

‘Hell,’ he said softly. ‘Could you keep an eye on them? Make sure they’re OK and don’t do anything silly?’

‘Have you agreed colours?’

‘Colours?’ He looked suddenly overwhelmed, and she took pity on him. He’d had a hard day, and the learning curve must seem to him as steep as Everest.

‘Don’t worry. I expect they’ll be doing preparation for a day or two. I’ll pick up some colour charts for you, or they might have some. If all else fails I’ll decide for you—but don’t blame me if you come back and find the hall sore-throat pink!’

‘You wouldn’t,’ he said, his eyes filled with panic, and she chuckled.

‘Don’t push your luck. Go on, go to bed and we’ll sort the rest out in the morning.’

He nodded and stood up, the baby asleep in the crook of his arm, and he paused beside her and looked down into her eyes. The light was behind him so she couldn’t read his expression, but his voice was gruff.

‘You’re a star, Em. I don’t know what I would have done without you.’

And without warning he bent his head and brushed his lips lightly against hers, then with a murmured, ‘Good night.’ He went upstairs and left her there, still reeling from his touch…

The overhead lines were down.

He couldn’t believe it. He’d had the day from hell. His boss had grilled him like a kipper about when he was going to be able to return to work, he’d had his contract terms pointed out to him in words of one syllable, his mobile phone battery had died and now this.

The train had come to a shuddering halt midway between stations, and there was nothing they could do but wait for the lines to be repaired. And in the meantime the air-conditioning was out of action because the train wasn’t running, and the staff were wandering up and down, handing out bottled water and reassurance while the entire world got on the phone and told their loved ones what was going on.

Except him. Because his battery was flat, because with everything else he’d had to do he’d forgotten to put it on charge. And now Em wouldn’t know where he was or be able to get hold of him, and some woman next to him had recognised him and was hell-bent on making conversation. He would have borrowed her mobile and phoned Em, but her number was in his phone so he couldn’t get it and besides he didn’t want the number registered on the woman’s call log, because there was just something persistent about her that rang alarm bells.

So he sat, stripped down to his shirtsleeves and wondering if it would be rude to take off his shoes and socks, and endured her conversation in the sweltering heat and worried about Kizzy and whether Em was coping, until he could have screamed.

Where was he?

She looked at her watch again, and tried his mobile once more, just in case, but either he was stuck in the underground, it was switched off or the battery was dead.

And Kizzy was refusing her feeds. She’d been sick, she’d spent most of the afternoon with her legs bent up, screaming, and finally Em had got Freddie and Beth off to bed and was pacing up and down, Kizzy in her arms turned against her front for comfort, and she was grizzling and hiccupping and it was tearing Emily apart.

She shifted her from one arm to the other because she was getting cramp, but as she settled her on the other side her breast brushed Kizzy’s cheek and she turned her little head, instinctively rooting for the nipple.

And with her maternal instinct kicking in, Emily’s nipples started to prickle and bead with milk, even though it had been months since she’d given up feeding Freddie.

Months and months, but as far as her body was concerned it could have been yesterday, and she pressed the heel of her hand against the other breast and bit her lips to hold back a whimper.

Oh, she ached to feed her. The instinct was overwhelming, and Kizzy felt it, too, nuzzling her and sobbing, and in the end it was more than she could bear.

How could it hurt? Wetnursing had been around for ever—for as long as mothers had died in childbirth, other women had fed their babies for them, and no one had thought twice about it. It was only now, in this sanitised age where bottle-feeding was an accepted option that anyone would even blink at the idea.

And anyway, she didn’t need food, she needed comfort, poor motherless little scrap, and if Emily could provide comfort for this tragic infant, then who was she to deny it?

She sat down in the middle of the sofa, unfastened her bra and lifted it out of the way, then turned the baby to her nipple, brushing it against her cheek, and as if she’d been doing it all her life, Kizzy turned to her, opened her mouth and latched on.

There. Just like that, peace was restored. The hiccupping sobs faded to nothing, the only sound in the room was the rhythmic suckling of the baby, and cradling her close, Emily stroked the back of the tiny starfish hand pressed against her breast and closed her eyes.

Poor baby. She should have done it hours ago, but she’d thought Harry would be back.

She glanced at her watch, concerned for him. The decorators had been and gone, leaving colour charts behind, and she’d made them tea and chatted over the fence in between feeds and Freddie’s tantrums and Beth’s persistent demands for attention, and somehow the day had disappeared.

Now it was night, almost eight-thirty, and it was getting dark outside.

She was just about to phone him again when she heard a key in the door. She felt a sudden flutter of panic, and glanced down at Kizzy. What if he was angry? What if he didn’t understand? She thought of prising the baby off and reassembling her clothes, but there wasn’t time, and anyway, she couldn’t lie to him. She’d have to tell him, whatever, and she’d just have to hope he could understand.

‘Em, I’m so sorry—the wires were down…’

He trailed to a halt, staring in amazement. She was suckling her! Breastfeeding Kizzy, as if it was the most natural thing in the world, and he felt a huge lump clog his throat.

For a moment he couldn’t move, but then his legs kicked in again, and crossing over to her, he hunkered down and reached out a finger, stroking the baby’s head, then looked up into Emily’s stricken eyes. ‘You’re feeding her,’ he said hoarsely.

‘I’m sorry. She wouldn’t settle—she’s been crying for hours, and it seemed the only sensible thing to do. I’m really sorry, it’s the only time—’

‘Sorry?’ He stared at her in astonishment. ‘For giving her what her poor mother was unable to give her? Emily, no. Don’t be sorry. She had donated milk in SCBU, just to start her off, but of course I couldn’t keep it up. Don’t have the equipment.’ He smiled, and then his smile wobbled a bit and he frowned. ‘I just—It was the one thing I couldn’t do for her, the one thing I’ve felt so really bad about, and I never thought for a moment, never dreamt—’

He broke off, choked, and rested a trembling hand on Kizzy’s head, watching as her damp little mouth worked at Em’s nipple, and a surge of emotion washed over him, so strong it would have taken the legs out from under him if he hadn’t already been down there.

‘You couldn’t get me a drink, could you?’ she said, her voice soft, and he nodded and cleared his throat.

‘Yeah. Sure. Of course. What do you want?’

‘Tea? I’d better not have juice, it might upset her.’

He stood up, his legs a little unsteady, and went out to the kitchen, put the kettle on and leant his head against the wall cupboard while the world shifted back gradually onto an even keel.

He’d fantasised about this.

For the past two days, whenever she’d been carrying the baby or holding her like that, turned in to her body, he’d fantasised about her breastfeeding his child.

Not that Kizzy was his, except he couldn’t imagine her being any more important to him whatever her parentage, and Em certainly wasn’t his to fantasise over, but that hadn’t stopped him, and now she’d brought his fantasy to life.

Only the once, he reminded himself. She’d probably never do it again, and why should she, really? It was a hell of a tie, and Kizzy was nothing to do with her. Anybody else would have shut her in a bedroom and left her to cry herself to sleep.

But not Em. His Emily had always been fiercely protective of children, breaking up squabbles on the beach when she was only ten, leading crying toddlers back to their distraught parents—he couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t mothered something, be it a child or an animal.

That was the first time he’d been in the summerhouse, when she’d shown him a hedgehog with a damaged leg. She’d put it in a box in the summerhouse, and she had been feeding it on cat food bought out of her pocket money. He’d helped her look after it, and they’d both ended up with fleas.

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.’

‘So you didn’t get a lot of work done.’

‘Not so you’d notice.’

He nodded, feeling the prickle of guilt for the umpteenth time that day. ‘Sorry. That’s my fault. How about I have the kids for you tomorrow so you can rest and do a bit of work and get your head together?’

‘That would be fantastic. I’ve got a roof terrace design to deliver to Georgie and Nick—the one I was working on last night—and if you could bear it, I’d like to take it over to them in the morning and discuss it. It’s up to you.’

‘That’s fine. You do that. I’ll cope, I’m sure.’

Except it didn’t quite work like that.

Kizzy had other ideas. She woke at eleven, and he fed her, but she didn’t seem to want her feed, and then she woke again just after twelve, and he was trying to get her to take the bottle when Em appeared in the kitchen, her eyes tormented.

‘Harry?’ she said softly.

‘She just won’t take it.’

‘Want me to try?’

He shrugged and handed her the baby and the bottle, but she spat it out and turned to Em, nuzzling her.

And Em turned those tormented eyes on him and said, ‘Oh, Harry, I have to…’

She was going to feed her. Again. Bare her breast and put the baby to it, and he was standing there in the kitchen in his boxers and it was all just too much.

He swallowed hard and nodded. ‘Sure. Go on up to bed with her and I’ll bring you tea,’ he said, and the moment she was up there, he ran up, found a long T-shirt and pulled it on to give his emotions a little privacy. Then he went back down, made two mugs of tea and carried them up to her room, putting hers down on the bedside table.

‘Call me when you’re finished, I’ll change her,’ he said, and was heading for the door when her quiet voice stopped him.

‘Stay and keep me company?’

‘Don’t you mind?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s not like it’s anything you haven’t seen before, is it? The places you go in the world, women do it all the time in public.’

But not her. Not his Em, feeding his child. But she was right, it was nothing he hadn’t seen before, and so he sat down on the other side of the bed, propping himself up against the headboard and trying not to stare at the little puckered rosebud lips around her nipple.

‘I don’t think I’ve got enough milk for her,’ Em said regretfully after a few minutes.

‘Is that going to be a problem?’

She shook her head. ‘No, not really. I’ll be able to give her comfort, if nothing else, and she can get her feeds from you.’

Except she wouldn’t. Not then, not later, not in the morning. It seemed she was a baby of discernment, and she’d decided only Emily would do.

Well, she’d made a rod for her own back with that one, Emily thought, and wondered where they went from there.

At best, she was feeding every three hours. At worst, it was more like one and a half or two hours. And, OK, at the moment Harry was living there, but once the decorators had finished and gone and he moved back, was he going to come through the gate in the fence every two or three hours through the night to bring the baby to her to feed?

Or, worse, leave the baby with her?

No way.

She loved Kizzy, wouldn’t harm a hair of her fuzzy little head, but she wasn’t hers, she hadn’t asked for this and there was no way she was taking on responsibility for her. And she was in no doubt that Harry would put up a token fight and then give in and let her if she so much as hinted that she was willing.

She needed an exit strategy and, frankly, until she could convince Kizzy to take the bottle again, she wasn’t going to have one. And another thing. How would she explain it to her children? Sure, they’d accept it, but would they then go and tell the world? Kids were so open. OK, not Freddie, although he might be jealous and start wanting to feed again, as well, but Beth might very well say something at playgroup or to Georgie or the boys.

She closed her eyes and stared sightlessly down at the little scrap busy making herself at home with her adopted milk bar. ‘Oh, Kizzy,’ she murmured. ‘Why me?’

But she knew why her. Because nobody else would have been rash enough. They would have let her yell and handed her straight back to her father the minute he walked through the door.

It was her own fault, and she was going to have to deal with the consequences.

Just until she could talk Kizzy out of it. And in the meantime, she was supposed to be going to a business meeting with Georgie and Nick, and how the hell was she going to explain this to them? She’d just have to time it exactly right…

Damn.

Kizzy was yelling again, Freddie wanted to make another sandcastle with a moat and couldn’t make the sand pile up because it was too dry, Beth wouldn’t help him get water because she was busy pestering Harry for help with putting stickers on a book, and he was ready to rip his hair out.

How on earth would Em cope?

He took a deep breath, thought about it and went into the kitchen, stuck a bottle in the microwave—just for a quick blast on low—filled the plastic jug with water and took it to Freddie, helped Beth line up two stickers down the edge of the book and went back and grabbed the bottle.

Slick.

Except she wouldn’t take it, Freddie spilt the water and Beth wasn’t happy with just two stickers, she wanted more and she wanted him to help her stick them on.

Great. Fantastic. Where the hell was Emily? He glanced at his watch and was stunned. She’d only been gone three quarters of an hour!

‘Are you OK? You look really tired.’

She gave Georgie a weak smile and flannelled. ‘Harry and the baby are staying with me at the moment, and the baby was up a lot in the night.’

Georgie tipped her head on one side and studied her thoughtfully. Too thoughtfully. ‘You’ve still got a thing for him, haven’t you?’ she said softly. ‘And he’s staying with you? Is that wise?’

Not in the least, but she wasn’t telling Georgie that!

‘It’s fine,’ she lied, ‘but I really ought to get back.’

‘Rubbish. He can cope. It does them good—they find hidden strengths. Look at Nick. Fifteen months ago he didn’t have a clue about children. Now he’s an expert. It’s just practice.’

‘Well, I don’t need him practising on my children,’ Emily said firmly, and scooped up her bag and keys. ‘Are you sure about the design? Quite happy with it?’

‘Absolutely. You’ve seen the place in London, you know what Nick likes and you’ve come up with a design that works for him and for the site. What’s not to be happy with?’

Emily nodded. ‘OK. Great. Thanks. And I haven’t forgotten the bit round the back you want looked at. I will get round to it. It’s just that at the moment with Nick’s commercial stuff and with Harry and the baby…’

‘It’s fine. It’ll keep. We won’t do anything with it till the autumn anyway, so relax. And go back to him, if you have to. I must say if I were you and there was a hunk like that waiting for me, I wouldn’t want to hang around having coffee with a chum!’

‘But I do,’ she said, meaning it. ‘I’d love to have time with you, talk to you…’ She trailed off, and Georgie’s eyes sharpened.

‘Em, are you sure everything’s OK?’

For a moment she hesitated, wondering whether to say anything, but Georgie probably wouldn’t understand. This was her first pregnancy, she’d never fed a baby—she might be horrified. ‘I’m sure,’ she lied again, and, kissing Georgie’s cheek, she bent to touch Maya’s head and smile at her, then headed home.

And just in the nick of time.

She could hear Kizzy as she turned onto the drive, and her let-down reflex was working overtime. She squashed her nipples with the heels of her hands and ran into the house, dumped her bag and went out into the garden, to find Freddie yelling and throwing sand out of the sandpit, Beth sulking over her stickers and Harry pacing helplessly with the flailing baby in his arms.

The look of relief on his face was comical.

‘You’re back,’ he said needlessly, and without a word she took Kizzy and the bottle, went down to the seat under the apple tree and tried to fool her. Not easy, with Freddie climbing up her legs and Beth hanging round her neck from behind and Kizzy busy spitting out the teat.

‘Hey, kids, how about some juice and biscuits?’ she suggested, and looked up at Harry pleadingly.

‘Good idea,’ he said, picking up on it immediately. ‘Come into the kitchen and we’ll see what we can find. And you’d better wash your hands first. Come on, young man, let’s go and find that biscuit tin,’ he added, prising Freddie off her legs and setting him on his feet, then herding him towards the kitchen.

Now, then. She tried again with the bottle, but it was futile, so she hitched up her vest top, unclipped her bra—a front-fastener, dug out of the bottom of her underwear drawer—and plugged the baby in.

Peace. And with any luck she’d get enough food inside her before her children came back out and saw what she was doing. Not that she had any problems with them knowing, it was the rest of the world, and since she didn’t intend to let this become a long-term thing—like, more than today, if possible!—there didn’t seem any point in them finding out.

All she had to do was convince Kizzy that the bottle was just as good.

She tried sneaking the teat of the bottle in beside her nipple, but Kizzy was smarter than that. She spat it straight out and went back to the real thing.

So much for Plan A.