Читать книгу Kindergarten Cupids - Vivienne Wallington, Vivienne Wallington - Страница 10

Mardi groaned as she dumped the charred remains of her pie and cake on the sink. Tonight’s dinner ruined! She couldn’t afford disasters like this.

She rushed to the window and opened it, then began fanning the air with a tea towel.

“This is my fault,” Cain Templar apologized from behind, and she swung round, not realizing that he’d followed her to the kitchen.

“Well, yes, it is,” she agreed, in no mood for her usual politeness. What was she going to do about tonight’s dinner? “But there’s nothing much you can do about it.” She turned back to the sink. The pie was completely shriveled and dried out, but maybe she could cut off the charred edges of the cake and examine it to find out if the interior was still edible.

But she certainly wasn’t going to try that in front of Cain Templar! It would look ridiculously penny-pinching to someone with his millions. If it happened to him, he’d simply go out and buy another pie and another cake. At one time, she might have, too.

“Oh, there must be something I can do,” Cain said smoothly. “Look, I promised to take Benjamin to McDonald’s tonight…” He grimaced. “Not my own cup of tea, but he’s been nagging me for a burger for ages and I couldn’t keep fobbing him off and saying no. Why don’t you and your son join us?” he invited, though there was little emotion in his voice, as if he had no more wish to see more of the Sinclairs than Mardi did of the Templars.

“Ben talks about Nicky incessantly,” he added as she started to shake her head. “I gather they were close mates at kindergarten last term.”

Mardi sighed. “Yes, they were,” she said, stressing the past tense. “And thanks, Mr. Templar, but—”

“Cain,” he murmured coolly.

“Cain. Thanks, but there’s no need for you to take pity on us. It’s my own fault for not removing the pie and the cake from the oven earlier. And I really don’t think—” She stopped, waving a helpless hand. “Look, we can’t talk in here.” The smoke-filled air and the charred smell were making it impossible. “Let’s move to the front of the house.”

Nicky, hopefully, would stay out in the garden with Scoots until Cain Templar had gone. He need never know that the man who’d called had been his friend Ben’s father.

As they turned to leave the kitchen, her grandfather hobbled in, a gnarled hand curled round his walking stick.

“What’s burning?” he demanded in his thin, wavery voice.

“It’s just the pie and cake I was baking, Grandpa.” Just? She saw Grandpa frowning up at the tall dark man at her side and remembered her manners. “Oh…this is Cain Templar, Grandpa. He’s here to discuss a—a business matter.” Her eyes warned her visitor not to dispute her statement. She didn’t want Grandpa rushing out and blabbing to Nicky that the father of his beloved Ben was here.

With luck, Grandpa, who was getting a bit hard of hearing, wouldn’t have caught the name “Templar” or made the connection with Sylvia Templar—that Jezebel, as he called her. It would be too embarrassing if he launched into a savage tirade on man-hungry wives who ran off with other women’s husbands.

“My grandfather…Ernie Williams.” She was edging toward the passage as she spoke.

“How do you do, sir?” Cain started to extend a hand, and then, as if fearing the old man would let go of his stick and topple over, let it drop, giving a brief nod instead.

The old man gave a cackle of laughter. “Long time since anybody called me ‘sir.’ Doesn’t feel right. Call me Ernie.”

“Right. Ernie.”

Mardi sensed that Cain, well mannered as he was, would have no wish to hang around making polite conversation with her aging relative. Just as she had no wish to keep him here. “Grandpa,” she said gently, “would you mind running Nicky’s bath and calling him inside when it’s ready? And please be careful in the bathroom,” she warned. The last thing she needed was for Grandpa to fall and do even worse damage to his hip.

“Sure, love.” She felt his squinting gaze lingering on them as she ushered Cain Templar away. Grandpa still felt protective of her, as he’d been for most of her life. And since Darrell’s betrayal, he’d eyed all smart-suited businessmen with mistrust—though Cain Templar’s polite charm seemed to have disarmed him, at least for the time being.

She led Cain to the front lounge room and waved him in. The room was attractively furnished—Darrell had made sure of that—but the furniture didn’t belong to her, she’d discovered after the funeral, any more than the house did. Unknown to her, Darrell had never paid for any of it, and now the house and the new furniture were being repossessed.

The walls and shelves had already been stripped of the expensive oil paintings and decorative ornaments Darrell had insisted on buying—another sore subject—though she’d sold them for far less than he’d paid for them. Some hadn’t been paid for, and she’d been faced with the bill.

She didn’t invite Cain to sit down. That would be making him too welcome. “I don’t think it would be a good idea for Nicky and Ben to see each other again,” she said without preamble. “We’ll be leaving here in a couple of weeks—sooner, if I can find another place before then. Our house is already sold….” But the money had gone to the bank, not to her.

Cain narrowed his eyes as he looked down at her for a disconcertingly long moment. “Too many bitter memories?” he asked finally, a hint of his own bitterness evident in the twist of his mouth.

She shrugged. Let him think that was why she was selling up and moving away. It was close enough to the truth. The house did have bitter memories. Especially the queen-size bed in the main bedroom. Darrell had stopped making love to her about the time he’d started seeing Sylvia Templar. He’d made excuses about having to work late, or having to entertain business clients until late, pleading tiredness when he came to bed, if she happened to be still awake.

At first he’d made token apologies for leaving her alone so often, insisting he was doing it all for her—for her and Nicky. But as the weeks went on, he’d stopped seeming to care, becoming irritable and touchy, and finding fault with everything she did.

When he’d started comparing her openly with Sylvia Templar, she’d finally lost her patience—and her temper.

“If she’s so perfect, why don’t you go and live with her?”

He’d thrown up his hands in disgust. “Heaven help me, Mardi, sometimes I wish I could. At least she and I are on the same wavelength!”

Mardi had felt a coldness brush down her spine, the unpalatable truth hitting her—her husband had fallen in love with Sylvia Templar! Or with what she represented. Wealth, luxury, the best connections. “So I’m not good enough for you anymore?” she’d flung back, her self-esteem at an all-time low.

“Oh, for pity’s sake, Mardi, don’t be so suburban. You’re becoming such a nag and a bore. I don’t need these kind of hassles. I need a wife who’ll support me, not pull me down and hold me back.”

She felt as if he’d struck her. “When have I ever pulled you down or tried to hold you back? I’ve let you do whatever you want to make a success of your life. I’ve looked after the house and the garden, I’ve raised Nicky practically single-handedly, I’ve made most of our own clothes and I’ve taken on a part-time job to make ends meet. All this to give you the time and the space to become the successful lawyer you want to be.”

“You ungrateful witch! If it wasn’t for Nicky—” He’d stopped abruptly, glowering at her. “Oh, hell, I’m going out! A man can’t come home for peace and quiet anymore.”

It was two weeks later that he’d gone to the Blue Mountains for the so-called legal-ethics conference he’d never returned from, and amid the shock of his death, and the death of his female passenger, the truth of his double life had come out.

Bitter memories? Yes…she still felt bitter that her husband had left his family so badly in debt, and equally bitter—more bitter than heartbroken—about his affair with Sylvia Templar. But she also wondered if she could have been partly at fault herself, as Darrell had accused her. Had she driven him into Sylvia’s arms through not being supportive enough, not wanting the kind of high-flying life he’d wanted, not attending more social functions with him? But he hadn’t wanted her to. She hadn’t fit in, hadn’t “played the game.” The truth was, she hadn’t felt comfortable with his shallow, social-climbing, money-mad friends. They’d left her cold.

Maybe she should have tried harder to keep up with him. Her lip curled at the thought. To live beyond her means, as he’d lived beyond his? To lie and cheat and fool people into believing she was richer and more important than she was? To fawn on people she despised? No, she thought, recoiling. She would have been lowering herself, not lifting herself to her husband’s level. She would have been as bad as he was, as dishonest, as shallow. She refused to feel guilty about the way she’d handled her life.

But her confidence had been battered, as well as her trust in men. In husbands. In love. It would be a long time before she would ever trust another man. Or feel confident enough in herself to take the risk of trusting another man.

Her eyes clouded. How would she ever find peace of mind until her husband’s massive debts were paid off…until Nicky had his infected tonsils removed and was fit and healthy again…until Grandpa’s painful hip was replaced?

Cain Templar watched the changing expressions in Mardi’s long-lashed amber eyes and wondered if it was repressed anger he was seeing, or a deeply buried pain and heartbreak. It was hard to tell.

She was a surprise to him. He’d been half expecting Darrell Sinclair’s widow to be a mousy little thing with a whining voice and little personality—a downtrodden, wishy-washy woman who’d been completely under her unfaithful husband’s thumb. But there was a natural warmth and vibrancy about her, a spontaneous spring in her step, which even her husband’s betrayal and the shock of his death hadn’t managed to quench.

And he’d seen her before, he realized. He’d bumped into her at Ben’s kindergarten last September, on the morning he’d left for New York. He’d had no idea who she was then, or that the boy with her was Ben’s friend Nicky. Normally his wife or a babysitter had driven Ben to and from kindergarten each day, but on that particular day he’d had a late-morning plane to catch and had taken Ben to St. Mark’s himself.

He’d barely glanced at the woman at the gate—an ordinary, unremarkable woman, he’d thought in that first fleeting glimpse. And then his gaze had collided with hers, and the unusual amber color of her eyes, beneath her long golden lashes, had caught his attention for an unsettling instant, the morning sunlight turning her eyes to pure gold. Her soft brown hair, pulled back in a neat ponytail—far neater than it was now—had caught the sun, too, and gleamed with honeyed highlights.

Little did he know then that their lives would become entwined a few months later in the most bitter of ways. Her husband…and his wife. His chest heaved. And their sons, by a cruel twist of fate, were best friends.

Which was why he was here now. The only reason he was here, he reminded himself sharply.

“As I said, I’m here because of Benjamin, my son.” Cain’s voice was harsher than he’d intended it to be. He felt oddly off balance, struck again by the steady warmth of those unusual amber eyes, regarding him unblinkingly through wayward honeyed strands from her loosening ponytail.

Annoyed at his reaction, he flicked his gaze away, letting it sweep down her flour-smudged T-shirt to her equally grubby shorts, which looked as if she’d wiped her floury hands on them.

“My son’s becoming uncontrollable,” he admitted grimly, trying not to look at the long, lightly tanned legs below the short shorts. Disgusted with himself for even noticing them, he snapped his gaze away from her altogether, to stare at the wall behind. What was it about this ordinary suburban housewife that was causing this edginess in him?

“Ben’s very moody,” he muttered, dragging his thoughts back to his son. “He won’t do as he’s told, he has temper tantrums like a two-year-old and he’s been through at least five baby-sitters since my—since Christmas.”

Five baby-sitters? Mardi felt a rush of compassion for the small boy who’d lost his mother and been left with strangers since. Why hadn’t his father taken time off work and cared for the boy himself during the long summer holidays?

“I’ve tried everything,” Cain Templar growled. “I’ve even taken odd days off myself, when an incompetent baby-sitter has let me down.”

Odd days off… How magnanimous of him, Mardi thought in scorn. Obviously today wasn’t one of those odd days. She glared at his immaculate business suit and tie, guessing that he’d come here straight from his office. No rushing home to his son first….

“Where is Ben now?” she asked, feeling for the boy.

“He’s with a new baby-sitter.” Cain grimaced. “I’ve spoken to Ben on the phone and he says he hates her already. I had to dangle the bait of McDonald’s to calm him down.” He shook his head. “It’s not as if he’s had nothing to do during the holidays. He’s been to playgrounds and kids’ movies and the beach, and I’ve arranged for our friends’ children to come and play with him, but he doesn’t seem to care about anything or anyone.” His mouth tightened. “Anyone except—”

“He’s just lost his mother!” Mardi cried, wanting to forestall what she guessed he was about to say. Anyone except his friend Nicky. Ben, she thought regretfully, would have to forget Nicky.

Cain Templar’s blue eyes grew remote, unreadable, at the mention of Ben’s mother. “It’s been weeks now. He’s getting worse, not better.”

“The long summer holidays can drag for a small child. He should be okay once he starts school.” Only, he won’t find Nicky there. “There’s only another week to go,” she said brightly.

“It’s not his mother or St. Mark’s that Ben’s missing,” Cain said flatly.

Mardi held her breath, at a loss to know how to stop what she knew was coming. “It’s his friend Nicky. Your son, Nicky. Ben keeps asking if he can play with him. I’ve tried every diversion I can think of. I was sure you wouldn’t want to encourage their friendship any more than I do.”

She shook her head vigorously. At least they agreed on that!

His chest swelled in a sigh. “But keeping Ben away from Nicky hasn’t worked. It’s just made him more rebellious and difficult. I don’t know if Nicky’s been missing Ben, too….”

His eyes pierced hers and she found herself floundering. How could she deny it? “Mmm…”

He looked satisfied. “Well, the only solution, as I see it, is to let them play together and hope they’ll get sick of each other before long, as young children do.”

She swallowed. “And if they don’t?”

He drew in his lips. “Once they’re both back at St. Mark’s, with other children around, they’ll make other friends.”

She took a deep breath. “Nicky won’t be going back to St. Mark’s this year.”

His eyebrows shot up. “Why not? Even if you move out of the area, you’ll still want to send your son to St. Mark’s, won’t you, where he’ll be with children he knows? It would be a shame not to go back…it’s a very good school.”

Very good, and very expensive, Mardi thought, but as she began to shake her head, Cain gave a wry smile.

“Keep them apart and they’ll only go on pining for each other.”

She puffed out a sigh. Heck, Cain Templar was persistent. “Throw them back together and they’re more likely to get closer to each other, if I know Nicky.” Nicky was loyal to a fault. “Look, it’s best if they don’t see each other at all. Nicky won’t be going back to St. Mark’s, so there’s really no more to be said.”

“But why not, for pity’s sake? You haven’t even found another place to live yet. Why not send him back until you do?”

“Because I can’t aff—” She stopped, on the brink of blurting out the shameful truth.

He frowned. “Can’t afford it?” The expression in his eyes changed. Hardening, rather than softening. “Are you saying that your husband didn’t leave you and your family sufficiently provided for? I thought he was a successful lawyer.” He glanced round at the expensive furnishings, the new carpet, the impressive built-in shelves lining an entire wall.

She spread her hands helplessly. “He had…a lot of expenses. Overwhelming expenses.” She wasn’t going to run down Nicky’s father…not now that Darrell was gone and unable to harm them any further. She was determined to keep his image as a loving, caring father intact for his son’s sake. “Please…I don’t want to talk about it.”

Cain regarded her speculatively. She must have loved the creep…and must love him still, despite the bitterness and hurt he’d inflicted on her. Poor woman. And it was his wife who’d taken Mardi’s husband from her, his wife who was responsible for her pain. In some odd way, it made him feel responsible, too.

“Look…whether you send Nicky back to St. Mark’s or not, the boys can still see each other…if you’ll let them,” he argued on his son’s behalf, though in his heart he didn’t want the boys thrown back together any more than she did. Seeing more of the Sinclair family—of Darrell Sinclair’s widow in particular—would be a constant and humiliating reminder of their spouses’ shoddy affair.

But what he thought or felt or wanted didn’t matter. It was Ben who mattered…the son he’d taken little notice of in the past five years. The ruthless quest for wealth, success and position—and damn it, for parental approval, too—had taken over his life, coming close to alienating him from his son. Ironic, when he thought about it. He’d been so determined that history wouldn’t repeat itself.

Mardi saw his mouth tighten and felt a shiver brush down her spine. Cain Templar would be a dangerous man to get mixed up with.

“Doesn’t Ben have any grandparents who can help out?” As the question left her lips, her eyes grew pensive. Nicky had never known any of his grandparents, only his great-grandfather Ernie. Her parents had died when she was six, and Darrell’s widowed father, who’d been in a nursing home for years, unable to recognize anyone, had died early last year.

“No.” A cold, unequivocal no. “Sylvia had no parents, and my father and stepmother live in New Zealand.” A sudden chill turned his blue eyes to ice. “We’re not close.”

Mardi’s gaze searched his. Was there pain under the ice? Anger? It was impossible to tell. She shivered again, the coldness in his eyes seeming to chill the very air around her.

“You didn’t get on with your stepmother?” she ventured, injecting sympathy into her voice, hoping it might make him reveal a bit more about himself.

“I didn’t get on with my father.” His face was granite hard, his frosty eyes clearly warning her Subject closed.

She backed off. “I didn’t realize you were a New Zealander,” she said lightly. She would never have picked it from his accent, which sounded more Australian, or even slightly English.

“I’m not. I’m a naturalized Australian.”

“But you were born and brought up in New Zealand?”

“I left when I was eighteen, to go to Sydney University.” His eyes grew remote again, and even more discouraging.

But this time she didn’t take the hint. “And you haven’t been back since then?”

She almost took a step back as his powerful frame tensed, his face darkening. “Once,” he ground out at length. “When Ben was about eighteen months old.” He’d thought, more fool he, that the sight of his first grandchild might have softened his father’s stony heart, but it hadn’t—any more than his own growing wealth and success had impressed his narrow-minded parent.

Mardi swiftly brought the conversation back to Ben. “Well, what about aunts and uncles? Do you have any brothers or sisters who could help you with Ben? Or cousins who could play with him?”

“No.” As sharp and implacable as before. “I have a couple of stepsiblings, but as far as they’re concerned, I don’t exist. And vice versa,” he said with grim satisfaction, crushing any pity she might have had for him.

“Look…” His tone changed, the grimness wiped out as if it had never been. “Our two boys still have a week before school starts,” he reminded her. “If we allow the boys to see each other, a week should be long enough, hopefully, for them to get over their obsession with each other…and calm Ben down a bit.”

Mardi shook her head doubtfully. “I still don’t think it’s a good idea….”

His brow lowered again. “You’re being very hard on the boys. I thought you’d have more compassion.” A hard, silvery glint kindled in his blue eyes. He looked almost threatening for a second. A man, Mardi thought unsteadily, not used to losing his battles…and not liking it when he did.

“So what if they do get closer?” Cain threw out the challenge. “If it helps my son—and he badly needs help—it’s worth taking that risk.” A betraying roughness edged his voice.

It was the first real emotion he’d shown and it pierced her own fragile armor. Especially his accusation that she didn’t feel for the boys.

She tilted her chin. “I am thinking of the boys. They’ve been apart since before kindergarten broke up last year. Why throw them back together now, when we know it will only be for a short time?” Why throw the two of us together, she wanted to add, when it will only keep the bitter memories alive for both of us?

But Mardi knew in her heart that it wasn’t bitter memories she was worried about. It had more to do with a tall, handsome, potently attractive man with cobalt-blue eyes who’d been haunting her dreams for months. Why did that stranger at the gate have to turn out to be Sylvia Templar’s husband and Benjamin Templar’s father? And why did he have to turn up here, making demands that would force her to see more of him?

“They’re only five years old,” he said, visibly changing tack, the hard light in his eye softening a trifle. “They don’t understand what’s happened, or why they’re being kept apart. They only know they want to see each other again.”

He leaned forward, using the full force of his compelling blue gaze. “I know it will be as difficult for you as it will for me, Mrs. Sinclair, but I think we should put our own feelings aside…for the sake of our sons.”

For the sake of our sons. Mardi felt a tremor, recalling Nicky’s plaintive pleas to see Ben again. Was she being selfish by keeping the boys apart? Was she thinking more of herself than two little boys in need? “Mardi,” she reminded him absently, as she found herself wavering.

“Mardi.” He gave a brief smile, and her eyes flickered under its impact. What, she wondered dazedly, would a real smile be like?

“Look, let the boys see each other…for as long as you’re still here.” Cain injected a note of pleading into his voice. “Come to dinner with us tonight. A casual meal together to break the ice.”

She thought of Nicky’s unhappy face, of his constant pleas to see Ben, and felt herself weakening even more. But she wasn’t going to cave in yet. “We—we can’t come tonight. There’s my grandfather to—”

“Maybe he’d enjoy it, too.”

She shook her head, her eyes wistful. “I don’t think so. He doesn’t go out much. He has a bad hip and it’s too painful for him. He’s—” She was about to say “waiting for an operation,” but Cain Templar wouldn’t understand why anyone should have to wait. He’d have private health insurance and wouldn’t even know about waiting lists at public hospitals.

“Besides,” she continued, “Grandpa doesn’t eat much these days.” Which was just as well, with tonight’s dinner lying in ruins. She still had some vegetable soup she’d made a couple of days ago, she remembered. She could add some potatoes—she had one or two left. And she had bread in the freezer. That would have to do for tonight. Followed by whatever she could salvage of her carrot cake.

Cain thrust his face closer, and she felt her breath stop for a disturbing second. “Then let Nicky come and play with Ben tomorrow. At our home. It’s Saturday and I’ll be home all day.” He pinned her with his magnetic blue gaze. “I’ll come and pick him up in the morning, give the boys lunch and drop Nicky home again later in the day.”

She hesitated, biting her lip. “I—I’d prefer to have the boys here—” she faltered “—where I can keep an eye on them myself. I—I like to know exactly where Nicky is and what he’s doing.” She wasn’t sure she trusted Cain Templar. He obviously wasn’t used to looking after small boys. What if Nicky fell over and broke his glasses and no one was there to help him? What if Ben had a temper tantrum and Nicky couldn’t deal with it?

Cain looked faintly surprised, which didn’t unduly surprise her. He and his wife, she was well aware, had been in the habit of leaving their son with baby-sitters—though Sylvia had shown more interest in Ben, she reflected caustically, when she’d started her involvement with Darrell. Their sons, wanting to play with each other after kindergarten or at weekends, had given them a perfect cover, a perfect excuse to see each other.

Of course, they’d soon found an even more convincing excuse to see each other—alone. The lonely, neglected wife, needing legal advice from her new lawyer friend. Darrell had never told Mardi what kind of legal advice Sylvia Templar had sought.

Perhaps Sylvia Templar had been seeking a divorce from her husband and Darrell had been giving her advice, or even setting the wheels into motion.

Had she? Mardi’s teeth clamped down on her lip. And had Darrell—besotted as he’d been with this rich, beautiful, perfect woman, whose home he’d described as a palace—been planning to divorce his wife? His boring suburban housewife?

Mardi jumped as she felt Cain Templar’s hand on her arm. “I meant for you to come, too…naturally,” he said, his voice gentler than she’d heard it so far. But his eyes were unreadable, projecting little warmth. Well, perhaps hers weren’t, either, she thought wryly. They were, after all, arranging this reunion purely for the sake of their sons.

“Ah…” was all she could say, the last of her arguments crumbling.

“How about I pick you both up at ten-thirty?” he suggested, a gleam of satisfaction in his eyes. “Is that too early?”

“No…ten-thirty’s fine,” she said faintly, wondering what she was getting herself into. To spend a whole day with Cain Templar…How unwise was that? And why would he want to spend his time with her? Simply because she’d insisted on being there to watch over her son?

Her eyes flickered in quick suspicion.

“If I’m coming, too, there’s no need for you to come and pick us up,” she said firmly. “I have my own car.” She could always park it a few doors down the street so that Cain Templar wouldn’t be embarrassed by her old bomb. Darrell had bought her a secondhand car under sufferance, when she’d insisted on going back to work part-time. Her husband hadn’t believed in working wives. Wives were meant to stay at home and run the household. In return for his “generosity,” she’d had to agree to the purchase of his ill-fated BMW.

“As you wish.” Cain’s blue eyes were as cool as his tone. “Well, I must go,” he said, and she nodded, pleased that he seemed anxious, finally, to get home to his son.

Next minute he was gone, leaving the air crackling and swirling in his wake. She had to take several deep breaths on her way to the bathroom. Cain Templar was a forceful, dynamic presence and an incredibly persuasive man. Determined as she’d been not to get involved with the Templar family, he’d swept all her arguments aside.

But his motives weren’t so clear. Did he genuinely love and care about his son—the son he’d left recently for eight long weeks? The son he’d left so often with baby-sitters? Or did he simply want a more controllable son and a more peaceful, undemanding life at home?

She sighed as she trudged back along the passage.

About twenty minutes later, as she was drying Nicky’s hair after his bath, she heard the front doorbell ring again.

“Oh, no,” she groaned. “Who is it now?”

“I’ll get it,” Grandpa shouted from the den, and she heard his stick tap-tapping along the passage.

“Well, be careful,” she yelled out. “Take it slowly.” Grandpa tried so hard to help her, but every movement was painful for him, every step a hazard.

“I am, I am!”

A few moments later she heard voices, and footsteps coming along the passage to the kitchen. One was Grandpa’s voice and the other a deeper voice that sounded suspiciously like—

Her hands froze midair.

“Mummy, you’ve stopped rubbing!”

“Sorry.” She resumed her rubbing, but with her ears pricked, trying to pick out what the two men in the kitchen were saying. Why had Cain Templar come back? Had he left something behind? Or had he already changed his mind about tomorrow? Maybe he’d remembered something more important he had to do.

Mardi tightened her lips, wondering if he was in the habit of letting his son down. She just hoped he hadn’t told Ben in advance that he intended to visit Nicky.

She frowned, straining to hear. She could only hear Grandpa’s voice now, and she would have sworn he was thanking the other man for something. But for what? Had Cain told him about tomorrow’s planned reunion for the two boys? Grandpa knew how much Nicky wanted to see Ben again. But would he be thanking Cain for bringing that Jezebel’s son back into their lives?

She heard her grandfather calling out goodbye with a gusto she hadn’t heard from him for some time, then firm footsteps—not Grandpa’s—sounded again in the passage and a moment later the front door slammed shut. Cain Templar had gone.

She released the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding. Well, he obviously hadn’t come back to see her. She wasn’t sure if she felt disappointment or relief.

She heard the tap-tap of Grandpa’s stick coming from the kitchen, and a moment later his head poked round the bathroom door. “That was your friend again. He brought us dinner.”

“He brought us what?”

“He said it was his fault you burned our dinner, and he’s brought us another pie and another cake, from some homemade cake shop, he said.”

Mardi rose slowly to her feet, touched, despite herself, by Cain’s thoughtful gesture. Or was it more that he felt sorry for her, because he’d guessed that she was hurting financially? She flushed, glad that she hadn’t had the embarrassment of having to accept his offer herself. She didn’t want anyone’s charity! Especially not his.

“Wow! Let’s go and look!” Nicky made a dash for the kitchen, with Grandpa, broadly smiling, hobbling behind. Mardi didn’t follow immediately, cleaning the tub and tidying up first. But despite her misgivings about accepting charity from a virtual stranger—from a Templar—it was a load off her mind to have another pie and cake to give to her family for dinner.

She hadn’t had too many loads taken off her mind lately.