Single Dads Collection. Lynne Marshall
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for second best with Beth? Will hoped not. He liked Roger’s wife. She deserved better than that.
What was Alice doing, snuggled up to Roger like that? Will scowled. Did she know how Roger felt about her? Had she guessed?
‘I’m looking for Mr Right,’ she had told him with that bright, brittle smile he hated. Easy to see how Roger might fill that role for her. He was kind, loyal, funny, the rock Alice had fallen back on more than once. It wouldn’t be hard to imagine the scales falling from her eyes as friendship turned to love…
But Alice wouldn’t do that to Beth, would she? Will’s frown deepened. The old Alice would never do anything to hurt her friends, but what did he know of her now? The old Alice wouldn’t have stood that close to Roger, either.
She would have been standing close to him, leaning against him, touching him.
Will pushed the thought aside and got abruptly to his feet. ‘It think it’s time we went,’ he said.
‘What did you think of Dee?’ Beth asked Alice when Will had chivvied a disappointed Lily and Dee out to the car.
‘Not much,’ said Alice, unimpressed. She felt oddly disgruntled. It wasn’t that she had wanted to see Will, but he could have stayed a bit longer instead of rushing them off like that. It wasn’t very fair on Lily. ‘She tries too hard. You can tell she’s desperate to impress Will.’
Beth looked at her strangely. ‘You can?’
‘Well, it’s a classic, isn’t it?’ Alice sniffed. ‘Child, nanny, single father…alone together on a tropical island…Of course she’s going to fall for him!’
‘It’s interesting you should say that,’ said Beth. ‘I wouldn’t have said that she was the slightest bit interested in Will. He’s too old for her.’
‘Old?’ repeated Alice, outraged. ‘He’s not old! He’s only thirty-five!’
‘I expect that seems old to Dee,’ said Beth, choosing not to comment on how well Alice remembered Will’s age. ‘She can’t be much more than twenty. I’d say she was much more impressed by that hunk who taught her how to snorkel yesterday. Didn’t you hear her going on about him?’
‘No.’ Alice frowned. She wasn’t as openly friendly as Beth, and had frankly tuned out most of Dee’s prattling. She wasn’t quite ready to believe that Dee had no interest in Will, either. He might be a bit older, but Dee could hardly have failed to notice that he was an attractive man—any more than Will would have missed the fact that she was young and very pretty. One could accuse Will of being lots of things, but unobservant wasn’t one of them.
‘I don’t know how Will could possibly have thought she would make a suitable nanny,’ she said crossly.
Beth laughed. ‘Nannies aren’t buxom old ladies in mob caps any more, you know! Dee is young and friendly and enthusiastic. I expect Will thought she would be fun for Lily to have around.’
‘Or fun for him to have around?’ suggested Alice, her voice laced with vinegar. ‘You’re not going to tell me he didn’t clock those long legs and that body when he interviewed her?’
‘She’s certainly a very pretty girl,’ Beth agreed equably. ‘But it wasn’t Dee he was watching today, and it wasn’t Dee he couldn’t take his eyes off yesterday.’
Alice, who had prowling restlessly around the room, stopped and stared at Beth, who smiled blandly back.
‘I don’t think you need to worry about Dee,’ she said.
‘I’m not worried about Dee,’ snapped Alice, severely ruffled. ‘Will can do what he likes. I don’t care. We don’t even like each other any more.’
‘Ah.’ Beth nodded understandingly. ‘Right. That’ll be why you both spent the entire time watching each other when you thought the other one wasn’t looking.’ She paused. ‘I think there’s still a real connection between you.’
Alice flushed. ‘There’s no connection,’ she insisted. ‘Not any more.’
And there wasn’t, she reminded herself repeatedly over the next few days. Will had hardly spoken to her at the tea, and she certainly hadn’t been aware of him watching her. Whenever she’d happened to glance at him—and it wasn’t that often, no matter what Beth had said—he’d seemed intent on talking to Roger or Beth, or watching Lily and Dee. If he’d even noticed that she was in the room, he’d hidden it extremely well, she thought grouchily.
There certainly hadn’t been any opportunity for her to tell him that she was sorry for her tactless comments at the party.
Not that Will would care whether she apologised or not. He had made it very clear how he felt about her now. Beth’s idea of a connection between them was ludicrous, Alice thought more than once over the next week, refusing each time to consider why the realisation should make her feel so bleak. Any sense of connectedness that had once existed between her and Will had been broken long ago, and there was no hope of repairing it now.
And she wouldn’t want to, even if it had been possible, Alice reminded herself firmly. She hadn’t been lying when she had told Will that this time in St Bonaventure was her chance to think about what she really wanted out of life. Redundancy and Tony’s rejection had brought her to a crossroads, and, if the last miserable few months had taught her anything, it was that she needed to look forward, not back.
There was no point in hankering after the past or what had been. Of all the options that lay open to her now, the one route she wouldn’t take was the one she had already travelled. She had to make her own future, and that certainly didn’t include resurrecting old relationships that had been doomed in the first place.
No, she was going to have a good time while she was here, Alice decided, and then she was going to go home and rebuild her life so that it was bigger and better than before. She would get herself a really good job. She might even sell her flat, and make a fresh start somewhere new where memories weren’t lurking behind every door, waiting to ambush her when her resistance was low.
And she would do it all by herself. She wasn’t going to rely on anyone else to make her happy this time. The only way to be sure was to do it alone.
In spite of all her resolutions, Alice found her mind wandering to Will uncomfortably often over the next few days. Having been catapulted back into her life without warning, Will had disappeared again so completely, it left Alice feeling mildly disorientated.
Had that really been Will standing there, after all these years? Sometimes she wondered if she had dreamt the entire episode, but she knew that she hadn’t made up Lily. That guarded little face with the clouded dark eyes were all too vivid in her memory. Alice hoped that she was adjusting to her new life and learning to trust Will. She kept thinking about the look in his eyes when he had seen his daughter smiling, and every time it brought a lump to her throat.
She would have liked to be able to help them understand each other, but then she would remind herself that they didn’t need her help. They had Dee, and no doubt they were already well on the way to being a happy little family.
Alice imagined Will going home every night to Dee, who would already know how he liked his tea—strong and black. By now she would know that he hated eggs, and his gestures would be becoming familiar to her. She would recognize how he rubbed his hand over his face when he was tired, how amusement would light the grey eyes and lift the corner of his mouth.
Oh, yes, Lily and Will would be fine without Alice. They didn’t need her when they had Dee.
Which left her free to enjoy her holiday.
She should have been delighted at the prospect, but instead Alice felt scratchy and increasingly restless as the days passed. She had longed and longed for a few weeks doing absolutely nothing in the sunshine, but the truth was that she was getting a bit bored of sitting by the pool all day.
Beth had a full social agenda, and Alice