Single Dads Collection. Lynne Marshall
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unspoken need, but the touch of his hands had triggered her natural response, and she felt the milk beading on her nipples.
‘Harry, no,’ she moaned, anguished, and lifting her hands to his shoulders, she pushed him away, her heart clamouring, her body aching for him but common sense, finally, making itself heard.
And he dropped his hands and stepped back, swallowing convulsively, and turning on his heel he strode away, up the stairs and into his room, closing the door softly but emphatically behind him.
With a whimper Emily crumpled against the worktop, her hands trembling too much to deal with the breast pump for a moment. And so she stood there, her legs like jelly, until her breathing had slowed and the world had righted itself and her hands were hers again.
Then she gathered all the bits and pieces from the steriliser, went into her study and shut the door every bit as firmly. Two doors between them was the minimum they needed at the moment.
She sat down, set up the equipment and reached for her CD player to relax her—and then remembered that her favourite, most relaxing CDs were in the sitting room.
And she’d never be able to listen to them again without thinking of him.
Five more nights, she told herself. That was all it was. Five more nights until he was back in his own home and she had her house back to herself.
It couldn’t come a moment too soon.
‘THAT’S a bit more like it!’
Em stood back and studied Harry’s work, and nodded. ‘You’ll get there. Take the cut down another notch and run over it again. You never know, you might even find a lawn in there!’
And she turned back to her surveying, measuring, checking sight lines and jotting notes on a pad. Busy. Busy, busy, busy since the sun had crept over the horizon and he’d been dragged out of bed by Kizzy’s first whimpering cry. She’d been up minutes later, going downstairs while he’d fed Kizzy and tried so hard not to think about last night.
The feel of her. The taste.
The look of longing in her eyes before she’d pushed him away and stepped back, bringing their unscheduled and very unwise kiss to an end in the nick of time.
More or less. His dreams had been colourful, to say the least, and he’d been glad to get up just to get away from them.
Then while he had been changing Kizzy’s nappy and looking out of the window, she’d taken the washing down the garden and hung it out in her nightshirt and bare feet, standing in the dewy grass and stretching up to the washing line so that her nightshirt rose up and gave him the occasional glimpse of her smooth, firm bottom encased in its sensible white knickers.
Since when had sensible white knickers been such a turn-on?
Not that he’d been looking, of course. Just glancing down the garden while he’d changed the baby’s nappy and put the kettle on to make them tea and loaded the washing machine with his clothes and emptied the dishwasher—anything that just happened to give him a view out of one of the back windows!
Then she’d come back in, stood with one foot rested on the other like a child, staring at the floor for a moment until she’d lifted her head, sucked in a breath and said, ‘About last night.’
And without giving her a chance to get in first, he’d said, ‘I know. I’m sorry. It was stupid of me. It won’t happen again.’
And she’d stood there, opened her mouth again, shut it, and then finally said, ‘Good. Right. So. About your garden.’
And that was that.
No more talk of the kiss. They’d shut the door on it, walked away and now they were laying waste to the jungle that had been his grandparents’ pride and joy.
‘Right. That looks better. OK, I’ve done the survey. I just want to walk you through these shrubs and agree which ones should come out and which ones we can prune and rescue.’
‘Is August the time to prune?’
She shook her head. ‘No, not really. It’s too hot. We need to wait a bit, but we can trim them. There are rules, for spring and summer flowering shrubs, for roses, for evergreens. But I think when you’re talking this drastic, you just have to do what you have to do and hope they make it through. Most of them do. Right. Let’s make some decisions and mark them up.’
And she picked up a can of yellow spray paint and headed down the garden, relentless.
Ten minutes later and the yellow kiss of death was on many of the bushes. ‘Your job, I think. I’ll put them through the shredder and keep an eye on the children. Beth, put that down, darling, it’s sharp. Freddie, no!’
She took the secateurs from Beth, the dirty stick from Freddie before he put it in his mouth again, and handed Harry some very businesslike pruners. ‘Get to it, then.’
He lifted a brow, tugged his forelock and set about the mammoth task of flattening the garden.
She really didn’t need this.
She was sitting in the shade with the children, Freddie napping on her lap, the baby asleep in the carrier beside her, Beth sitting cross-legged playing a game with stones and talking happily to herself, and in front of her Harry was stripped to the waist and digging.
Rippling muscle, smoothly tanned skin glistening with sweat, streaks of dirt across his forehead where he kept lifting his arm and wiping away the trickles that threatened to run down into his eyes. And the way he threw the spade down into the hole, over and over, slicing through the roots and then grasping the stem and heaving it over, trying again, cutting another root, another tug, another cut, and all the time those muscles bunching and gleaming and driving her crazy.
Finally, victorious, he heaved the rootball of a huge old vibernum out of the ground and straightened, grinning at her. ‘At last,’ he said, his breath sawing in and out, and he strolled over, dropped down beside them and reached for a glass of fresh lemonade.
‘Oh, bliss,’ he said, rolling it over his chest and then lifting it to his lips, his throat working as he swallowed it in one.
‘I hope you never go to wine-tastings,’ she said drily, and he chuckled.
‘Oh, I can swill and spit with the best of them, but ice-cold real lemonade on a hot day with a raging thirst? No way. It would be a sin to spit it out.’
‘Want another?’
He grinned. ‘I thought you’d never ask.’
He held out the glass while she filled it from the Thermos flask, then took a long, reflective swallow and smiled. ‘Gorgeous. Nice and sharp. I hate it too sweet.’
‘It’s got honey in it,’ she told him.
‘It’s lovely. Thank you.’
She dragged her eyes away from him, from those twinkling, smiling eyes, the stubbled jaw—she hadn’t given him time to shave she’d been in such a hurry to keep moving—the beads of sweat caught in that fascinating, arrowing hair just above his battered old jeans…
No!
‘Want to have a look at the plan? It’s only a doodle so far—nothing formal yet—but I’d like your feedback.’
‘Sure.’
And he lifted the tray out of the way, set it down on the other side of him and shuffled closer.
Too close. She could smell him, the tang of fresh sweat, the warmth of his skin, the lemons on his breath—intoxicating. She hauled her pad over and picked up a pencil.
‘I thought this might work,’ she said, and forced herself to concentrate.