Single Dads Collection. Lynne Marshall
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and cuddled up, her head on his shoulder, worried about the bruises.
‘Doesn’t that hurt?’ she asked, but he shook his head.
‘Not so much that I’m going to let you go.’ He turned his head and kissed her, just a brush of his poor, bruised lips against her brow, and she lifted her head and touched her mouth to his.
‘Oh, Em,’ he sighed, and his arm eased her closer. ‘I thought I’d never see you again. I lay there, listening to Rom crying in the darkness, and I wondered if any of us would get out of there alive.’
‘Rom?’
‘Ismael’s wife. She’d got a two-week-old baby in there with her. Em, if you’d seen the look on that man’s face—heard his voice…’
‘I did,’ she told him. ‘Tim was filming it. He filmed it all, right up to the aftershock, and then he put the camera down and left it running while he got help and joined in. Someone else picked it up and carried on filming, and they interviewed him, but he wouldn’t talk, he wanted to help. They showed it live. I was watching when it all went shaky and the buildings shuddered, and I knew you were in there…’
She couldn’t go on, couldn’t relive it, and his arm tightened. ‘Shh, it’s OK, I’m here,’ he said, and his mouth found hers again, his kiss urgent in the darkness.
He rolled towards her, his cast bumping against her hip, and she lifted her hand and cradled his jaw. ‘Harry, we can’t. It’ll hurt you.’
‘You’ll have to be gentle, then, won’t you?’ he replied, and drew her tighter against his body. ‘Because I need you, Em. Don’t imagine for a moment that once was ever going to be enough.’
She took a ragged breath and let it out. ‘I thought…it was goodbye.’
‘No way. There’s something you have to know. I’ve handed in my notice. You were right. It isn’t what I am, it’s just what I do. What I did. But there are other things, more important now. Other people can do my job. It’s time for a change. In all sorts of ways.’
He shifted, his bandaged right hand stroking up and down her back, the touch strangely soothing. ‘About Kizzy,’ he said softly. ‘How would you feel about adopting her?’
For a moment she thought she hadn’t heard him right, because until that moment it had sounded as if there was hope for them, but this…?
‘You ought to know, though,’ he went on, his hand still stroking her, ‘that she comes complete with her father. So if you did feel you wanted to take her on, you’d be taking me on, too. For better, for worse etcetera. And if you agreed, I’d very much like to adopt Beth and Freddie, too. So we all belonged to each other. Because I’ve realised that home isn’t a place, it’s the people, and my home is with you. You and Kizzy and Beth and Freddie. And I want to come home for good, Em. To you.’
He was holding his breath, she realised. His chest had frozen under her cheek, his heart thudding wildly.
‘Oh, Harry,’ she whispered, unable to speak. Instead she lifted her face to his, and kissed him.
‘Well?’ he demanded, his voice shaking, and she gave a funny little laugh that cracked in the middle.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said unsteadily. ‘Yes, please. I can’t think of anything I’d like more.’
His mouth found hers, cutting her off, and she lifted herself up so she could kiss him back better. Then gently, tenderly, so as not to hurt him, she eased out of his arms and settled down beside him.
‘Hey!’
‘Shh,’ she told him. ‘Just rest now. There’s no hurry. We’ve got the rest of our lives ahead of us.’
And snuggling against his side, her hand over his, she listened as his breathing eased into sleep. He gave a soft snore, and her mouth kicked up into a contented smile.
So he did have some habits she’d have to get used to, she thought, but she didn’t care. She’d embrace every one with joy.
Harry was finally home.
Jessica Hart
‘GUESS who I bumped into in town?’
Beth bounced down the steps into the garden and plonked herself onto the lounger next to Alice.
Alice had spent a blissful morning by the pool, feeling the tension slowly unwinding as the tropical heat seeped into her bones, and guiltily enjoying some time on her own. There was a puppyish enthusiasm about Roger’s wife that could be quite exhausting at times, and, ever since she had arrived two days ago, Alice had been conscious of how hard Beth was trying to distract her from the fact that Tony was getting married tomorrow.
No one could be kinder or sunnier-natured than Beth, though, and Alice would have been very fond of her even if she wasn’t married to Roger. And this was, after all, Beth’s pool that she had been lying beside all morning. A good guest would be opening her eyes and sitting up to take an interest in her hostess’s morning.
On the other hand, Beth had told her to relax before she’d gone out. Alice had done as she was told, and was now so relaxed she honestly couldn’t summon the energy to open her eyes, let alone care which of Beth’s many acquaintances she had met in town.
‘Umm…Elvis?’ she suggested lazily, enjoying the faint stir of warm breeze that ruffled the parasol above her.
‘No!’ Beth tsk-tsked at Alice’s failure to take her exciting news more seriously, but she was much too nice to take offence. ‘Someone we know…At least, I think you know him,’ she added, suddenly dubious. ‘I’m pretty sure that you do, anyway.’
That meant it could be anybody. Beth was unfailingly sociable, and gathered lame ducks under her wing wherever she went. When Roger and Beth had lived in London, Alice had often been summoned to parties where Beth fondly imagined her disparate friends would all bond and find each other as interesting as she did.
Sadly, Alice was by nature as critical and prickly as Beth was sweet and kind. She settled herself more comfortably on her lounger, resting an arm over her eyes and resigning herself to one of her friend’s breathless accounts of someone Alice had met for five minutes several years ago, and who she had most likely hoped never to see again.
‘I give up,’ she said.
At least she wouldn’t have to pay much attention for the next few minutes. Beth’s stories tended to be long, and were often so muddled that she would get lost in the middle of them. All Alice would be required to do was to interject an occasional ‘Really?’ or the odd ‘Oh?’ between encouraging murmurs. ‘Who did you meet?’ she asked dutifully.
It was the cue Beth had been waiting for.
‘Will Paxman,’ she said.
Alice’s eyes snapped open. ‘What?’ she demanded, jerking upright. ‘Who?’
‘Will Paxman,’ Beth repeated obligingly. ‘He was a friend of Roger’s from university…Well, you must have known him, too, Alice,’ she went on with an enquiring look.
‘Yes,’ said Alice in a hollow voice. ‘Yes, I did.’
How strange. She had convinced herself that she’d forgotten Will, or at least succeeded in consigning him firmly to the past, but all it had taken was the sound of his name to conjure up his image in heart-twisting detail.
Will. Will with the quiet, serious face and the stern mouth, and the disconcertingly humorous grey eyes. Will, who had made her heart jump