Falling For The Single Dad

‘You couldn’t get me a drink, could you?’ she said, her voice soft, and he nodded and cleared his throat.

‘Yeah. Sure. Of course. What do you want?’

‘Tea? I’d better not have juice, it might upset her.’

He stood up, his legs a little unsteady, and went out to the kitchen, put the kettle on and leant his head against the wall cupboard while the world shifted back gradually onto an even keel.

He’d fantasised about this.

For the past two days, whenever she’d been carrying the baby or holding her like that, turned in to her body, he’d fantasised about her breastfeeding his child.

Not that Kizzy was his, except he couldn’t imagine her being any more important to him whatever her parentage, and Em certainly wasn’t his to fantasise over, but that hadn’t stopped him, and now she’d brought his fantasy to life.

Only the once, he reminded himself. She’d probably never do it again, and why should she, really? It was a hell of a tie, and Kizzy was nothing to do with her. Anybody else would have shut her in a bedroom and left her to cry herself to sleep.

But not Em. His Emily had always been fiercely protective of children, breaking up squabbles on the beach when she was only ten, leading crying toddlers back to their distraught parents—he couldn’t remember a time when she hadn’t mothered something, be it a child or an animal.

That was the first time he’d been in the summerhouse, when she’d shown him a hedgehog with a damaged leg. She’d put it in a box in the summerhouse, and she had been feeding it on cat food bought out of her pocket money. He’d helped her look after it, and they’d both ended up with fleas.

He laughed softly at the thought, and her voice behind him caught him by surprise.

‘Penny for them.’

He turned with a smile. ‘I was remembering the fleas from the hedgehog you rescued. And here you’ve got another little stray.’

‘Hopefully not with fleas.’ She chuckled and handed him the baby. ‘Anyway, she’s your little stray and she needs her nappy changed. I’ll make the tea—or do you want something else?’

A large bottle of Scotch? Nothing else would blot out the hellish day—but Emily had, with her gentle smile and her loving kindness to his daughter.

‘Tea would be lovely,’ he said, his voice suddenly rough, and took the baby upstairs to change her and put her in her cot. He checked the others, went back downstairs and found Em in the sitting room, the mugs on the table in front of her. She was sitting on the chair, not one of the two sofas, retreating, he imagined, to a place of safety, a place where it wouldn’t be so easy for him to sit beside her, draw her into his arms and kiss her senseless.

For a second he was tempted to scoop her up out of the chair and sit down in it with her on his lap, but then common sense prevailed—better late than never—and he dropped into a corner of one of the sofas, facing her.

‘Bad day?’

‘Probably nearly as bad as yours,’ he confessed with a wry smile.

‘So how was your boss?’

His laugh sounded humourless, probably because it was. ‘Let’s just say she could have been more accommodating. I’ve taken a month’s unpaid leave to give me time to sort things out. Let’s just hope it’s long enough.’ He picked up his tea and cradled the mug in his hand, his head resting back against the cushion and his eyes closed. ‘Oh, bliss. It’s good to be home,’ he said, and then almost stopped breathing, because that was exactly what it had felt like—coming home.

For the first time in his adult life.

He straightened up and turned his attention to the tea. ‘So how did the decorators get on?’ he asked, once he was sure he could trust his voice.

‘OK. They’ve stripped out all the old carpets and put them in a skip, and they’ve started work on the windows. Here, colour charts.’

She pushed a pile of charts towards him on the table, and he put down his tea and picked them up, thumbing through them. ‘What do you think?’

‘I have no idea. I don’t know what your taste is, Harry. I haven’t seen you since you were twenty one, at your grandmother’s funeral. Our minds weren’t on décor.’

No. They’d been on other things entirely, he remembered, and wished she hadn’t brought it up, because he was straight back to the summerhouse, scene of many a moonlit tryst in their teens, stolen moments together on a voyage of discovery that now seemed so innocent and then had seemed so daring, so clandestine. Except that night, after he’d buried his grandmother, when things had got just that bit closer.

‘Neutral,’ he said, dragging his mind back from the brink. ‘Or should children have bright primary colours to stimulate them?’

She shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I go with instinct, and my instinct is earth colours, unless you’re talking about toys, but they can be put away and leave the place calm.’

‘Calm, then.’

‘I think so.’

He nodded and tried to pay attention to the colour charts, but all he could think of was their first kiss and their last—until last night, that was, only twenty-four hours ago, and still much too fresh in his mind. Coupled with coming home—there he went again—and finding Emily feeding Kizzy, he was having a hard time keeping his mind off sex and on the subject.

No. Not sex.

Emily. Emily in his arms, Emily’s lips on his, Emily holding the baby, suckling her, the image still so powerful it was going to blow his mind.

He threw the colour charts down. ‘I’ll look at them tomorrow. See them in context. I can’t even remember what colour sofas I chose now.’

She laughed, reaching for her tea and curling back up in the chair, her legs folded so that her feet were tucked up under that lovely curve of her bottom. ‘Brown,’ she told him. ‘Bitter chocolate in that thick, bumpy leather—the tough stuff.’

‘Right.’ Concentrate on the sofas. ‘So shoe buckles and toys don’t scratch them. I remember. So we probably don’t want to paint the walls black, then.’

She laughed again, and he felt it ripple right through him. ‘Probably not. So, tell me about your boss.’

He shook his head. ‘She was tough—tougher than the leather. I knew she would be. Don’t worry, I can deal with her. It was the journey home that was so awful. There was a woman on the train who recognised me, and I was trapped with her for hours. I was getting ready to strangle her. She was creepy. I got the feeling that if the sun set I wouldn’t have been safe.’

Em spluttered with laughter. ‘Was she after you, Harry?’

‘I think she might have been,’ he confessed drily. ‘Then again it might just be paranoia.’

‘Or your ego.’

‘Or my ego,’ he conceded with a grin. ‘Yeah, she was probably just a nice woman who was bored as hell and thought she could tell me her life story because she knew me. That’s the trouble with spending your evenings in everybody’s living rooms—they think they know you, and I suppose to a certain extent they do. Depends how much you give away to the camera.’

She tipped her head on one side, studying him. ‘How much do you give away?’

He shrugged, trying to be casual because he knew the answer was that he gave away too much of himself, even if it didn’t show on camera. ‘Depends. As little as possible, but sometimes things really get to you—like the earthquakes and the mudslides and things. Hideous. You can’t keep that under wraps. Not if you’re human. And then there are the fantastic moments when they pull a child out alive days later—I can’t just tell it deadpan, but you have to bear in mind you’re reporting the news and not making a social commentary. That’s not my job, and if I have feelings or allegiances, I have to ignore them. It’s all about being impartial, about giving people the facts and letting them make their own minds up. So I try not to give my own feelings away, but sometimes—well, sometimes I fail.’

He laughed softly and put his mug down on the table. ‘Sorry—getting a bit heavy here. Tell me about your day.’

She studied him thoughtfully for a moment, then smiled, allowing him to change the subject. ‘Well—let’s just say I’ve had better. Freddie was a nightmare, Beth decided it was going to be one of those days when she wanted to make things with her mummy and so wanted my undivided attention, Kizzy was miserable and the decorators wanted tea.’

‘Just another peachy day in suburbia, then,’ he said with a suppressed smile, and she chuckled.

‘Absolutely.’

‘So you didn’t get a lot of work done.’

‘Not so you’d notice.’

He nodded, feeling the prickle of guilt for the umpteenth time that day. ‘Sorry. That’s my fault. How about I have the kids for you tomorrow so you can rest and do a bit of work and get your head together?’

‘That would be fantastic. I’ve got a roof terrace design to deliver to Georgie and Nick—the one I was working on last night—and if you could bear it, I’d like to take it over to them in the morning and discuss it. It’s up to you.’

‘That’s fine. You do that. I’ll cope, I’m sure.’

Except it didn’t quite work like that.

Kizzy had other ideas. She woke at eleven, and he fed her, but she didn’t seem to want her feed, and then she woke again just after twelve, and he was trying to get her to take the bottle when Em appeared in the kitchen, her eyes tormented.

‘Harry?’ she said softly.

‘She just won’t take it.’

‘Want me to try?’

He shrugged and handed her the baby and the bottle, but she spat it out and turned to Em, nuzzling her.

And Em turned those tormented eyes on him and said, ‘Oh, Harry, I have to…’

She was going to feed her. Again. Bare her breast and put the baby to it, and he was standing there in the kitchen in his boxers and it was all just too much.

He swallowed hard and nodded. ‘Sure. Go on up to bed with her and I’ll bring you tea,’ he said, and the moment she was up there, he ran up, found a long T-shirt and pulled it on to give his emotions a little privacy. Then he went back down, made two mugs of tea and carried them up to her room, putting hers down on the bedside table.

‘Call me when you’re finished, I’ll change her,’ he said, and was heading for the door when her quiet voice stopped him.

‘Stay and keep me company?’

‘Don’t you mind?’

She shook her head. ‘It’s not like it’s anything you haven’t seen before, is it? The places you go in the world, women do it all the time in public.’

But not her. Not his Em, feeding his child. But she was right, it was nothing he hadn’t seen before, and so he sat down on the other side of the bed, propping himself up against the headboard and trying not to stare at the little puckered rosebud lips around her nipple.

‘I don’t think I’ve got enough milk for her,’ Em said regretfully after a few minutes.

‘Is that going to be a problem?’

She shook her head. ‘No, not really. I’ll be able to give her comfort, if nothing else, and she can get her feeds from you.’

Except she wouldn’t. Not then, not later, not in the morning. It seemed she was a baby of discernment, and she’d decided only Emily would do.

Well, she’d made a rod for her own back with that one, Emily thought, and wondered where they went from there.

At best, she was feeding every three hours. At worst, it was more like one and a half or two hours. And, OK, at the moment Harry was living there, but once the decorators had finished and gone and he moved back, was he going to come through the gate in the fence every two or three hours through the night to bring the baby to her to feed?

Or, worse, leave the baby with her?

No way.

She loved Kizzy, wouldn’t harm a hair of her fuzzy little head, but she wasn’t hers, she hadn’t asked for this and there was no way she was taking on responsibility for her. And she was in no doubt that Harry would put up a token fight and then give in and let her if she so much as hinted that she was willing.

She needed an exit strategy and, frankly, until she could convince Kizzy to take the bottle again, she wasn’t going to have one. And another thing. How would she explain it to her children? Sure, they’d accept it, but would they then go and tell the world? Kids were so open. OK, not Freddie, although he might be jealous and start wanting to feed again, as well, but Beth might very well say something at playgroup or to Georgie or the boys.

She closed her eyes and stared sightlessly down at the little scrap busy making herself at home with her adopted milk bar. ‘Oh, Kizzy,’ she murmured. ‘Why me?’

But she knew why her. Because nobody else would have been rash enough. They would have let her yell and handed her straight back to her father the minute he walked through the door.

It was her own fault, and she was going to have to deal with the consequences.

Just until she could talk Kizzy out of it. And in the meantime, she was supposed to be going to a business meeting with Georgie and Nick, and how the hell was she going to explain this to them? She’d just have to time it exactly right…

Damn.

Kizzy was yelling again, Freddie wanted to make another sandcastle with a moat and couldn’t make the sand pile up because it was too dry, Beth wouldn’t help him get water because she was busy pestering Harry for help with putting stickers on a book, and he was ready to rip his hair out.

How on earth would Em cope?

He took a deep breath, thought about it and went into the kitchen, stuck a bottle in the microwave—just for a quick blast on low—filled the plastic jug with water and took it to Freddie, helped Beth line up two stickers down the edge of the book and went back and grabbed the bottle.

Slick.

Except she wouldn’t take it, Freddie spilt the water and Beth wasn’t happy with just two stickers, she wanted more and she wanted him to help her stick them on.

Great. Fantastic. Where the hell was Emily? He glanced at his watch and was stunned. She’d only been gone three quarters of an hour!

‘Are you OK? You look really tired.’

She gave Georgie a weak smile and flannelled. ‘Harry and the baby are staying with me at the moment, and the baby was up a lot in the night.’

Georgie tipped her head on one side and studied her thoughtfully. Too thoughtfully. ‘You’ve still got a thing for him, haven’t you?’ she said softly. ‘And he’s staying with you? Is that wise?’

Not in the least, but she wasn’t telling Georgie that!

‘It’s fine,’ she lied, ‘but I really ought to get back.’

‘Rubbish. He can cope. It does them good—they find hidden strengths. Look at Nick. Fifteen months ago he didn’t have a clue about children. Now he’s an expert. It’s just practice.’

‘Well, I don’t need him practising on my children,’ Emily said firmly, and scooped up her bag and keys. ‘Are you sure about the design? Quite happy with it?’

‘Absolutely. You’ve seen the place in London, you know what Nick likes and you’ve come up with a design that works for him and for the site. What’s not to be happy with?’

Emily nodded. ‘OK. Great. Thanks. And I haven’t forgotten the bit round the back you want looked at. I will get round to it. It’s just that at the moment with Nick’s commercial stuff and with Harry and the baby…’

‘It’s fine. It’ll keep. We won’t do anything with it till the autumn anyway, so relax. And go back to him, if you have to. I must say if I were you and there was a hunk like that waiting for me, I wouldn’t want to hang around having coffee with a chum!’

‘But I do,’ she said, meaning it. ‘I’d love to have time with you, talk to you…’ She trailed off, and Georgie’s eyes sharpened.

‘Em, are you sure everything’s OK?’

For a moment she hesitated, wondering whether to say anything, but Georgie probably wouldn’t understand. This was her first pregnancy, she’d never fed a baby—she might be horrified. ‘I’m sure,’ she lied again, and, kissing Georgie’s cheek, she bent to touch Maya’s head and smile at her, then headed home.

And just in the nick of time.

She could hear Kizzy as she turned onto the drive, and her let-down reflex was working overtime. She squashed her nipples with the heels of her hands and ran into the house, dumped her bag and went out into the garden, to find Freddie yelling and throwing sand out of the sandpit, Beth sulking over her stickers and Harry pacing helplessly with the flailing baby in his arms.

The look of relief on his face was comical.

‘You’re back,’ he said needlessly, and without a word she took Kizzy and the bottle, went down to the seat under the apple tree and tried to fool her. Not easy, with Freddie climbing up her legs and Beth hanging round her neck from behind and Kizzy busy spitting out the teat.

‘Hey, kids, how about some juice and biscuits?’ she suggested, and looked up at Harry pleadingly.

‘Good idea,’ he said, picking up on it immediately. ‘Come into the kitchen and we’ll see what we can find. And you’d better wash your hands first. Come on, young man, let’s go and find that biscuit tin,’ he added, prising Freddie off her legs and setting him on his feet, then herding him towards the kitchen.

Now, then. She tried again with the bottle, but it was futile, so she hitched up her vest top, unclipped her bra—a front-fastener, dug out of the bottom of her underwear drawer—and plugged the baby in.

Peace. And with any luck she’d get enough food inside her before her children came back out and saw what she was doing. Not that she had any problems with them knowing, it was the rest of the world, and since she didn’t intend to let this become a long-term thing—like, more than today, if possible!—there didn’t seem any point in them finding out.

All she had to do was convince Kizzy that the bottle was just as good.

She tried sneaking the teat of the bottle in beside her nipple, but Kizzy was smarter than that. She spat it straight out and went back to the real thing.

So much for Plan A.

CHAPTER FIVE

‘HOUSTON, we have a problem.’

It was the evening, and she’d spent the day dodging her children every time she’d fed the baby, while he’d struggled to keep them entertained and out of mischief.

Which, to give him credit, he’d managed very well, but it was getting silly, and she’d had a lot of time to think about it.

He cocked an eyebrow at her. ‘Want to elaborate?’

‘This feeding thing. It’s not going to work. Not long term. I shouldn’t have started it, it’s my own fault, but now I have, I have to find the way out.’

‘So what do you suggest?’ he asked, his eyes troubled. ‘Any ideas?’

‘I’m going to see if I can get hold of a breast pump. I’ve used one before, when I had Freddie, because I had tons of milk and they were desperate in our local special care baby unit.’

He nodded, and she realised he would have known about it from his time there with Kizzy. His next words confirmed it. ‘They had one in our SCBU,’ he said, smiling crookedly. ‘That’s where Kizzy’s milk came from—they called the thing Daisy. I doubt if you’d get one like that, though.’

‘Oh, no, but I’m sure there’s one I can get to use at home, but I don’t know where from. I’m going to talk to the health visitor in the morning. I know her—she’ll sort it if she can. But once your house is decorated, you’ll be moving back, and we’re going to have a problem if she still wants me. We have to wean her off me, Harry—and fast.’

He was frowning. ‘So what’s the plan? Give her bottles with your milk in until she gets used to the bottle again, then switch back to formula?’

She nodded. ‘That’s the idea.’

He pressed his lips together, ran a hand through his hair and nodded agreement. ‘Yeah. Well, it makes sense. I can’t expect you to do it for ever. Or at all.’

She sensed there was something he wasn’t saying, but she didn’t push it because she didn’t want to be talked out of it. Wouldn’t be talked out of it. No matter how sorry she felt for Kizzy.

‘Can I borrow your computer and go online?’ he asked abruptly.

‘Sure.’

She watched him leave the room, and dropped her head back with a sigh. How on earth had she got herself in this mess?

Five minutes later he stuck his head round the door. ‘Come and see,’ he said, and she got up and followed him to her study.

‘Breast pumps,’ he said, pointing at the computer with the air of a magician. ‘Manual, electric, single, double—tons of stuff. Bras to hold them in place so you can work while you do it—whatever. Order what you want—and get the works. It comes next-day delivery and I’ll pay. It’s the least I can do.’

The stuff turned up the following afternoon, and she disappeared with it to experiment. He tried not to think about it. He was getting fixated, and it was ridiculous.

‘Hey, Freddie, come here, little man. Let’s put some more suncream on you and you need that hat on.’

‘No!’ he screamed, throwing himself over backwards and flailing. ‘Not hat! Not cream! Go’ way!’

A window flew open upstairs and Em leant out, clutching a towel to her chest. ‘Is he OK?’

‘He’s fine. He doesn’t want sunblock.’

‘Bribe him,’ she advised, and shut the window.

Huh? Bribe him? A nineteen-month-old baby? With what?

‘He likes bananas,’ Beth said softly in his ear, and giggled. ‘So do I. And biscuits.’ Specially chocolate ones.’

‘Is that right?’ he said, slinging an arm round her skinny little shoulders and hugging her. ‘And I suppose you want one, too?’

‘Course,’ she said, wriggling free and grabbing his hand. ‘C’mon. Freddie, let’s get a biscuit.’

‘No! Want Mummy!’ Freddie yelled, and Beth just shrugged and headed up the path to the kitchen, towing Harry in her wake.

‘No biscuit if you don’t come. Or banana. Come on, Harry. Let’s have a tea party. We’ll make some for Mummy, too.’

So he went with her—no choice, really, unless he let go of her hand, which he was curiously reluctant to do—and they made tea and put biscuits and fruit out on plates while he watched Freddie out of the window to make sure he didn’t come to any harm.

He’d rolled onto his front, and he was still sobbing, but at least now he was in the shade and he wouldn’t come to any harm.

‘What’s Mummy doing?’ Beth asked while she was arranging the biscuits for the fourth time.

‘Um—feeding Kizzy, I think,’ he said, hoping she wouldn’t go upstairs, but she just carried on arranging the biscuits until she was satisfied.

‘There. Shall we take them in the garden and wait for Mummy?’

‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘Have you got a picnic blanket?’

Her eyes lit up. ‘So we can have a picnic under the tree! Um—Mummy has—it’s upstairs, I’ll get it,’ she said, and before he could stop her, she was gone.

He groaned inwardly, but there was no point going after her and, anyway, he couldn’t take his eyes off Freddie that long. Hopefully Emily would have finished by now…

‘What are you doing?’

Emily looked up at Beth, standing in the doorway swinging on the doorhandle and watching her, and gave up.

‘Kizzy needs milk, but she doesn’t like the milk from the shops, and she hasn’t got a mummy.’

‘So are you giving her your milk?’

‘Yes. Like I did when Freddie was small, and I went to the hospital and gave them milk for the tiny babies so they could have it in their bottles.’

‘Because Kizzy’s tiny, isn’t she?’

Emily nodded.

‘So why don’t you just feed her like Freddie?’ she asked, looking puzzled.

Why not, indeed? Except that she wasn’t her child, and cradling her that close, suckling her, was going to make it all the harder when Harry took her away.

‘Because I can’t. Harry needs to move back to his house when it’s decorated, and I’ve got to work. And I don’t want to be up all night, I’m tired.’

‘Oh. Won’t she mind?’

Probably, but it was tough. ‘She’ll be fine,’ she said firmly, hoping it was true. ‘Did you come upstairs for anything in particular?’

‘Picnic blanket. Harry and me made biscuits and bananas and tea and juice—oh, and strawberries. We’re having a picnic in the garden. Are you coming, Mummy?’