Meant-To-Be Mother. Ally Blake
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for goodness’ sake. No wedding ring—like any self-respecting single woman she had noted that the moment she had seen the guy. But he was definitely the antithesis of what she normally preferred in the male friends she made on her brief stints in different countries around the world.
She liked men in suits. Clean-shaven, single men with time and money and ambition who knew what they wanted and went after it. Men not unlike her.
If her first impression was spot on, and it always was, this guy was a labourer of some sort; the rough pads on the palms of his hands had given that away.
But, remarkably for her, that was as much as she had figured about him. Whether on purpose or through circumstance, this one had a pretty solid wall shielding strangers from seeing too far past that half-smile of his.
Nevertheless she could tell that he was covered in what looked like sawdust, he was way too polite for the likes of her and he lived in Cairns. Therefore he was utterly out of bounds.
As they reached the front door, James casually kicked off his work boots to reveal black socks with matching holes in the toes. Kane then held on to the other side of the doorway and mirrored James’s actions precisely, pulling off his sneakers by the heel using the toes of his opposite foot.
From nowhere Siena was hit with a wave of vulnerability that was almost stronger than the apprehension repelling her from going inside her childhood home. The charming scene touched her, creating a ball of something entirely new deep in her stomach.
It felt a heck of a lot like longing, but for this focused, no-strings-attached, jet-setting career girl that was unlikely.
Maybe it was nausea. She’d been in a car accident after all! Surely such a thing would make anyone a little woozy around the edges and it would explain the wobbly knees, intense interest in the backs of strangers’ necks and weird cravings cramping at her innards.
When she stopped in the shade of the portico, the object of her woozy feelings smiled at her—the same odd half-smile he had afforded her earlier. Up close and personal, his smile didn’t seem so free and easy—it was cool, aloof, barely reaching his slate-grey eyes. Suddenly she wasn’t so sure that she had been sensing the ghosts of her own childhood when driving by this house after all.
‘Da-a-ad,’ Kane said, tugging on James’s arm, and it was enough for his smile to kick up a bare notch, a sliver, a millimetre, but even that tiny alteration turned some sort of switch inside him. And inside her.
With that new low burning light came flecks of the palest blue into James Dillon’s grey eyes, a captivating crease appeared from nowhere in his carved right cheek, and suddenly Siena couldn’t remember what she had been worrying about in the first place.
‘Come on in. We don’t bite,’ James said, bathing her in the affectionate smile meant for his son. He then turned and followed his son into the house, leaving the door open for her to follow.
She had to go ahead with this. There was no way she wanted to feel beholden to these guys. Or guilty for almost running the kid down. Especially not guilty. She’d swum through enough of that to know one could never come out clean at the other side.
If she could confiscate cellphones from Fortune 500 CEOs, tell sheikhs to sit down and shut up and show million-dollar football players how to use their airsickness bags, she could do this.
With a determined flourish she kicked off her red Jimmy Choos, tucked them neatly against the doorway with a quick prayer to the fashion gods that no suburban housewife with a discerning eye for designer footwear might happen by, and with her hot bare feet curling against the cool tiled floor she followed him inside.
Her feet slowed once she realised that, though on the outside she never would have mistaken her old home, on the inside the ground floor was absolutely nothing like it had once been.
Whereas the home she grew up in had been dark and overstuffed with fake Italian statues, old furnishings and too many rugs, James Dillon’s home was like the perfect summer day. Buttermilk-yellow walls, soft cream carpet and a collection of the most beautiful highly polished wooden chairs and side tables and cupboards created the illusion of endless space. Walls had been knocked down to create an open flow throughout a house which to her had always felt claustrophobic. She could see all the way through to skylights and bronze hanging pots in the spotless white and wood kitchen and a sunroom had been added to the back of the house, housing a small cane sofa overloaded with scatter cushions.
Finding herself alone, she wandered to a shiny black piano, eerily situated exactly where hers had once been. And, just like hers, it housed a bunch of framed photos scattered across the closed lid.
She laid her red handbag on the piano lid and leant in to get a closer look.
James now wore his brown hair short with a sprinkle of ash throughout, but in the main photo he had longer hair curling about his face, he wore frayed shorts and a T-shirt and had Kane thrown over his shoulder as they ran down a tract of perfect white sand at the beach. She sighed, recognising the landscape as Palm Cove—the peaceful little hamlet where she ought to have been if Rick hadn’t guilted her into staying with him in the ’burbs.
Her eyes devoured other photos in which James fished, jumped from planes and taught Kane how to ice-skate. And, in all of the photos, he was smiling. All big white teeth, pink wind-burned cheeks and crinkling blue-grey eyes.
‘Well, there you go,’ she said aloud, her voice echoing in the lofty space. Whereas polite, quiet James of the half-smiles and worn clothes was a looker, Action James was a true blue—no doubting it—gorgeous son of a gun.
Siena gulped down a strange thickness in her throat. The very fact that she was thinking such thoughts about some guy with a kid should have sent her walking out of the house then and there.
As her hand reached for the handle of her bag and her itchy feet made a move to do just that, Siena suddenly caught sight of a photo of a woman hidden amongst the two dozen of Kane and James. She reached in and took it in her hand.
Sunlight gleamed off thick tousled blonde hair. Rows of neat white teeth beamed from a wide smile. Brown bedroom eyes looked not at the camera but at the person behind the lens.
‘Siena?’ James said from somewhere out of sight.
‘Coming!’ she called out, quickly placing the photo back on to the piano lid.
‘Through here,’ he called back.
She followed the sound of his voice and found Kane sitting on a closed toilet seat while James was on his haunches searching through a cupboard in an airy bright white downstairs bathroom where her dingy old laundry room had once been.
And, though there was a picture of a beautiful blonde on his piano, and she had almost hit his son with her car, and she had somewhere else to be, and it was none of her business, she couldn’t help taking a moment to reconcile James with the guy in the photographs.
Okay, so there was definite gorgeousness still there, only in sepia rather than full Kodak-colour. He looked up to find her staring at him and his grey eyes flickered and narrowed.
Siena blinked several times over, before doggedly turning her attention to the job at hand. Around a dozen different antiseptic creams, lotions and bandages lay on the wide bench top at his side.
‘Are you bunking in for a nuclear winter?’ she blurted out.
‘Somehow I don’t think this part of the world is at the top of the nuclear hit list, if it ever comes to that,’ he returned, his voice unexpectedly laced with sarcasm. And, since Siena was quite partial to a bit of that herself, she felt her stomach flutters returning.
‘Fine. But then what’s with the personal pharmacy?’ she shot back.
‘I’m thorough. Is there something wrong with that?’
‘Hey, I’m not complaining. Only a silly woman would put down thoroughness. Just making an observation.’
James’s brow furrowed ever so slightly, his mouth hooked up