Читать книгу Christmas at Jimmie's Children's Unit - Meredith Webber - Страница 2

The thing about Kate, he’d discovered, was that she refused to be beaten by what life threw at her. She kept going, kept smiling, always positive, always upbeat, seeing the best in situations, the best in people.

Angus was not sure where all this rational thinking was getting him, although he now had a much fuller picture of the woman he loved.

Loved?

He set the cup back carefully in its saucer, certain it had been about to slip from his grasp.

Loved?

How could he love her? He barely knew her. But even as this excuse sprang from his brain, another part of his mind was denying it. Of course he knew her.

He pictured her on the yellow sofa, an arm around his son, and remembered the stab of jealousy he’d felt. But what he should have felt was pleasure—that finally he’d found a woman who would make the ideal mother for his son…

Emily dropped a kiss on her mother’s cheek. ‘Isn’t it fun having Dad around?’ she whispered, and suddenly Clare’s spring of happiness wasn’t bubbling quite as high.

She knew it wasn’t jealousy she was feeling, but disappointment of some kind—disappointment that the life she’d been providing for her daughter hadn’t measured up…

‘You need my pearls—the ones Gran gave me,’ Emily declared as she inspected her mother for the last time. ‘Wait here.’

She ran off to her bedroom and returned with the pearls that had been her great-grandmother’s, making her mother sit on the bed so she, Emily, could fasten them.

‘There,’ she said, ‘you’re beautiful. Dad will surely want to marry you now.’

Clare knew the words were nothing more than childish enthusiasm, but once again the joy of the morning dimmed, and despair wormed its way into her heart.

How could she resist if it became a matter of two against one?