*The trouble with returning to Wirralong, decided Henry as he nudged open the front door of the farm house with his shoulder, while balancing Rowan in his other arm, was that for the first time since all this began, there was no other adult to step in and help if he needed a hand. Not that he did need a hand, because he had fatherhood under control, thank you very much. Long as he kept young Rowan Aurelia Church fed, watered and dry, she didn’t fuss much. Long as he got enough sleep to stay functional, he didn’t get resentful of her presence.
She was a bright baby, or so he thought. And even if she looked nothing like him, she might be his. The paperwork said she was his. Wasn’t as if he needed to take a paternity test.
‘Hey, little girl. We’re here.’
He’d dropped Tilly at the Moore homestead yesterday and kept the car, promising to bring it over to her in the morning.
Tilly had told him she’d run him off her daddy’s property if he dared, and with her next breath told him to call her if he needed anything. Sweet, generous Tilly with the golden hair and the smiling eyes and a fondness for feeding people.
‘Look, Rowan.’ He hefted the baby a little higher. ‘This is Red Hill Station. Come and let’s find you a bedroom. I’ll even let you choose.’ The homestead had half a dozen of them, but the one closest to his room would probably be the most practical. ‘Okay, I lied. You don’t get to choose until you’re older, and by then we could be living anywhere. How about this one? No? You’re right. Hot as hell in here this afternoon. Let’s head north-east.’
The room he chose for her was across the hall from his. Set up as a visitor’s bedroom, it had a small double bed and one of his grandmother’s ‘good’ sheet sets and bedspread on it, but there was room near the window for a cot, and the bed could double as a change table if he used the portable plastic thing with buffered edges that Tilly had told him was essential.
It took an age to unload the car, primarily because he did it all one handed while carrying the baby with the other. He’d packed the pram first and therefore it was the last thing out of the vehicle, and he was never going to make that mistake again.
‘Oh, don’t you dare whinge,’ he muttered when finally he put Rowan in the pram and set about putting the porta cot up.
But Rowan did dare, and she was still screaming several hours later no matter what Henry did to try and calm her.
A walk around the house paddock hadn’t stopped the screaming, although it did help soothe his frayed nerves. Feeding time had been a debacle. He’d figured an open mouth was an invitation to put food in it, but how wrong could he be? The tiny she-devil had spat mushy apple and pumpkin everywhere and screamed all the louder. The bottle, no. Putting her to bed, no. Doing that cradling two-step thing his grandfather did with her—hell no. Music, no. A bath? He didn’t even want to think about dipping that slippery, squirming body into water. A beer?
Heaven help him he could use one.
Six-and-a-half hours after dropping Tilly off at the door to what she euphemistically called her self-contained apartment—but that actually looked a lot like the western side of the main house—he was pulling up in next door’s driveway again. The verandah lights were off, but the kitchen ones were on and he left the baby in the car and the radio blaring as he cleared the steps in two bounds and lifted his hand to rap on the door frame.
Tilly’s mother opened the door before he’d even had a chance to knock.
‘Henry! What a surprise.’
‘You don’t sound that surprised.’ Yup, that there was a bona fide smirk.
‘We heard you coming.’
‘I’m after Matilda if she’s around.’
‘She’s right here. Come on in.’
‘Can’t. There’s a screaming baby in the car. Somewhere underneath all that music. She won’t settle. At all.’
‘Oh, the poor darling. No wonder she’s out of sorts. So much upheaval for a baby to bear.’
Henry nodded, not trusting his words, which went something along the lines of, Her? HER? What about me?
‘Henry! Come in.’ Now Tilly’s father was at the door. ‘Want a beer?’
‘Please don’t make me weep.’ He couldn’t have a beer ever again. Not and look after a baby as well. Spirits were out. Wines and liqueurs. He would never be able to drink again.
‘They’re teasing you.’ Tilly was in there somewhere, because that was her voice. ‘Come on in.’ And then Tilly slipped past them all and out the door and headed for the car. ‘I’ll bring Rowan in.’
Five minutes later, Henry was on his second beer and Rowan was snuggled up against Tilly’s chest, fast asleep. He thunked his head down on the tabletop and stayed there, fully aware of his wrinkled shirt and unruly hair and those white blobs of milk stains on his crotch that looked like something else, and thank God he was sitting down. He thought longingly of his apartment overlooking Trafalgar Square, with his wine racked in alphabetical order and his clothes all clean, pressed and lined up in neat rows. Could be he’d started to whimper.
‘There, there.’ Someone was patting him soothingly on the back, and it was Tilly’s touch, he’d know it anywhere, and how come she could keep his baby quiet and multitask elsewhere? He sat up with a glare.
Three pairs of eyes regarded him with various levels of amusement. ‘Where’s the sympathy?’
‘Oh. You want sympathy too? I thought you came here solely for the childcare.’
‘Matilda, please. Gloating is so unbecoming,’ admonished her mother.
‘Yeah,’ muttered Henry, feeling all of five years old himself. ‘Unbecoming.’
Tilly snorted and gloated some more. ‘If you want me to come back with you and help tag team your fretful daughter tonight you’ll put up with my gloating and make me an offer I can’t refuse. Like bacon and eggs in the morning and bread fresh out of the oven.’
He wished. ‘I’m good for whatever I can cook in a frypan. Also, teasing and gloating is even more unbecoming.’
‘Also twice as satisfying,’ she informed him.
‘Anyway,’ he began stuffily, because he was a stuffed-shirt ninety-nine per cent of the time and so be it. ‘I need your help. I can offer money, willingly. I can be your delivery pack horse if ever you need one.’ What else could he do? ‘A place to stay whenever you’re in London again.’
‘And don’t forget the car,’ her mother said.
‘Which I’ve already said I can’t accept and you agreed,’ said Tilly indignantly to her mother. ‘It’s too much.’ The baby in her arms stirred.
‘Shhh!’ hissed Henry, and held his breath.
‘To be fair, you phoned me six times on your first night with Rowan,’ Tilly’s mother told her daughter airily. ‘You could cut him some slack.’
Tilly closed her eyes and the chest and the baby on it went gently up and down. He averted his gaze because of untoward speculation about the softness of said chest, and feelings he emphatically didn’t need to be feeling right now. In front of her parents. Who seemed particularly perceptive when it came to him and his unspoken thoughts. ‘One night.’ Who was he kidding? ‘Okay, one week’s worth of staying overnight with me and the demon child while she settles into a new routine, and you can name your price. I’m good for it. You could hold an IOU—it could stretch out years. When you call, I will come.’
God that sounded wrong. ‘Bodies to bury. Banks to rob.’ Doubling down on the many faces of wrong.
‘Done.’
He smiled out of sheer relief and gratitude. Tilly blinked. Her mother laughed. Old Man Moore shook his head and muttered, ‘I’m embarrassed for you, son.’
But half an hour later, with Rowan sleeping peacefully in her new room and Tilly settling into the guest room next to that one, his gratitude came back in force. Enough to take him to the kitchen to pull out a few of his grandmother’s cookbooks and look for a recipe for baking bread.
‘What are you doing?’
If he thought Tilly looked good in day clothes, that was because he’d never seen her in boy shorts and matching cotton T-shirt. Tweety Bird had never looked so good. ‘You said you wanted fresh bread for breakfast.’ He really hadn’t said it just to make her eyes start smiling, but smile they did.
‘Well if your grandmother still has some starter yeast in the cupboard beneath the sink—’ Tilly crossed to the cupboard, dug around inside and took out a brown ceramic coffee cup. ‘—which she does. I can help you there.’
Henry had no idea where the flour was, but knew where the salt lived. He couldn’t find the cooking bowls but Tilly said that as long as it was glass, a salad bowl would do, and he did find one of those. The water had to be lukewarm. The dough had to sit in the water heater cupboard overnight. She didn’t measure anything, so chances were he’d never be able to repeat this experiment. Watching Tweety Bird on a nightly basis, however …
‘Are you attracted to me, Henry?’
He’d forgotten how utterly direct she could be.
‘Because you’re looking at me differently these days and I’m trying to figure out why.’
‘You’re a very beautiful, generous and hardworking woman. I’d be surprised if I wasn’t attracted to you. It’s only logical.’
Her wry smile did not suit her. ‘You left and barely spared anyone a backwards glance, including me. And it was never a secret that I worshipped the ground you walked on, so I have to figure that your new, improved way of seeing me has something to do with your new circumstances. Which leaves me with a problem.’
‘What kind of a problem?’ He wasn’t at his best with these kinds of conversations.
‘I’m scared I’m going to stay to help out here and end up becoming way too attached to you and Rowan. It’d be so easy to do, you see. I’m already halfway there.’
She busied herself at the sink, with her back to him as she got a glass of water from the tap. He wondered if she realised he could still see her reflection in the glass of the nearby window. Such a vulnerable face behind those bold words. ‘And what would you like me to do about that?’
‘Be careful with me, I guess. Don’t lead me on with lazy smiles and greedy eyes if you’re not planning on becoming similarly invested.’
‘And what if I want to be similarly invested? What if I want to see where this leads in spite of everything else happening around us, rather than because of it?’
‘Do you?’
He did. Heaven help him. ‘I’ve never forgotten you, Matilda, no matter how far I’ve travelled, so there’s that. I’m three years older than you, and while that doesn’t matter now, it did when we were younger. If I’d taught you anything more than calculus your father would have had my balls. I know this because he mentioned it a time or two.’
‘Seriously?’
‘Ask him.’ Tilly’s father had known full well where Henry’s thoughts had been heading all those years ago. ‘You’ve had an open invite to visit me in London since you were eighteen years old.’
‘You forgot my eighteenth birthday, Henry. You made that offer one week later, probably out of guilt.’
‘My offer was genuine. But you never did visit and I never did push, and now that I have a daughter to provide for it doesn’t exactly seem like the right time to make my interest known. You might think I’m opting for convenience, rather than finally acting on a long-held attraction towards you. To take on a difficult man, and a motherless child, is a lot to ask of any woman.’
Her eyes met his in the window reflection. ‘I wouldn’t mind.’
He came up behind her and she set her glass down and clutched at the rim of the sink instead, as she watched him draw closer. ‘Turn around,’ he ordered quietly, and she did and he boxed her in with an arm either side, watching her face and reading her body for any signs of resistance. ‘I’d like to kiss you now, and then I’ll say good night and turn in, because what I don’t want to do is pressure you into something you’ll regret tomorrow. You’ve had a crazy few days. So have I. So we’ll take this slow and get it right. That okay by you?’
She nodded, her cheeks flushing and her gaze skipping to his lips, and that was all the encouragement he needed.
Her lips were warm and soft and he started slow, as slow as he could with the fierce need for more riding him hard and turning every muscle in his body taut as an overwound violin string. And then her lips parted beneath his and her hands came up to hold his face in place as she melted against him and feasted, and this time it was his turn to hang onto the edge of the sink as if his life depended on it.
One kiss, just one kiss, and then he’d leave, but his mouth never left hers and the kiss grew deeper and ever more soul consuming, and breathing was for fools. She wasn’t coy. She didn’t hold back her delight. No games. Be it with words or with kisses, her simple honesty floored him.
All he wanted to do was push for more, pin her to the counter and let her sweetness engulf him.
Instead, he pulled back, loving the tousled, freshly kissed look of her. ‘I’m hard work. I’m no one’s prize catch. I’ve been told repeatedly that I don’t trust easily, and nor do I love without reservation. If people are being blunt, they’ll say I don’t know how to love at all.’
‘They’re wrong.’
Stubborn Tilly. Always prepared to believe the best of him. She made him want to believe it too. ‘I want to get this right.’ He kissed her hard and fast. ‘If you hear Rowan fussing tonight, don’t worry about it. I’ll get up for her and, fingers crossed, I’ll deal with it. Consider this step one in my courtship plan. Prove to Tilly that I’m on top of the single fatherhood gig and don’t need rescuing.’
She nodded, bemused. ‘But you do need rescuing. Isn’t that why I’m here?’
‘Not anymore. You’re backup only. I’m a man with a plan.’
She raised her eyebrows but said nothing.
‘Good night, Matilda. Sleep well.’
‘I won’t you know.’ He was halfway down the hall before her tricksy words reached him. ‘I’ll be too busy planning how to seduce you.’
*
Tilly got ready for sleep in her third unfamiliar bedroom for the week. Not that it bothered her this time around and the reason for that was across the hallway in a nearby bedroom. Who knew that all she needed was the presence of Henry in order for the unfamiliar to feel a whole lot like home?
Henry, who may have been labelled mad during his teenage years, but he had never not also been hot. Mad Hot Henry—she saw no reason whatsoever to rethink that assessment. And he was here and now and home for who knew how long, and he wanted her in a romantic way and not just as a babysitter. She wanted to believe that so much.
The way she saw it, she had two choices. Run away and protect her heart, which, admittedly, had been the choice behind her decision to leave Henry to it in Melbourne. Or open herself wide to the possibilities Henry presented. Believe him when he said he didn’t need an insta-wife. Trust that he was following his feelings and not his need for a nanny for his motherless child. Hope that he’d find the kind of happiness in Wirralong that he’d never found before and that he’d want to stay and build his life here. With her. That was the big one. The one that seemed impossible.
Because London, for all its charm and bustle, would never hold her heart. She was addicted to blue skies and red-dirt sunsets. And maybe there were drawbacks to living in a place where memories were long and most everyone knew her name, but Wirralong was growing ever more vibrant and innovative. Maggie’s destination wedding venue drew people from far and wide—people with fat wallets and a love of good coffee and fancy sweet treats that Tilly was more than happy to provide. There was an emerging fine-dining scene, a tiny antique store and a vibrant arts-and-crafts co-op. Tilly wanted to be part of it all for a long time to come. What did Henry want? Could he build a career here? One based on the type of statistical risk analysis work he’d been doing for years? Could he collaborate from afar with others just like him? Be part of a virtual think tank and stay right here in Wirralong. It wasn’t an impossible ask. Was it?
She patted down her hair, took a deep breath, and then headed towards Henry’s bedroom. She knocked on the door, and it opened, and … ah.
Because a shirtless Henry Church had muscles any gun sheep shearer would be proud of—and if fantasy could become reality with the snap of her fingers, breakfast from this day forward would involve her wearing one of Henry’s fancy shirts and him wearing no shirt at all. Just those groovy pyjama bottoms with the elastic round the top that barely hid the tempting cutaway to—
He cleared his throat, a handy reminder that his face was way up there. She’d knocked on his door for a reason, and there were words to speak and possibly hopes to be dashed. Way to kill a relationship before it even began, she thought grimly, but she had to be straight with him. ‘My last relationship failed because Wirralong’s my home and I wouldn’t move away when he asked me to. In the end, that just wasn’t a decision that made sense to me. Maybe I didn’t love him enough, and I don’t quite know how I got on to mentioning that, but Wirralong is where I want to live. You should know that about me before we begin anything.’
For some reason he seemed just as enamoured with Tweety Bird as she’d been with the elastic on his pyjama pants. ‘I do know that. Your family’s here, your roots run deep, and London’s not for you—although I know I could find you a rooftop view that would take your breath away.’ He reached up to run his hand across the back of his neck as if uneasy, but his gaze was direct and clear. ‘Although the farm holds little of interest to me, my family’s here and they need me. Perhaps I need them too. I figure I can be here and care for the farm, my grandparents, and a baby, and start a new business as well. Get into statistical environmental modelling. I can do that from here. There are plenty of questions out there that need answering.’
‘You’re not Superman.’
His smile turned wry. ‘I do, however, have something that’s going to help me achieve those goals.’
‘The ability to exist without sleep?’
‘Money,’ he corrected her. ‘It helps.’
‘So you’re staying in Wirralong?’ She could barely believe he’d made such a decision so quickly. Where was his agony of indecision? The big bit of paper divided into columns of pros and cons? All those checks and balances that he was famed for? ‘For how long?’ Until Beth and Joe passed on? Until Rowan needed better schooling than she would get in a small country town? ‘Because all that modelling you do for your work is about predicting the future, right? Will you be here in ten-years’ time? How about fifty? What happens when you get bored with it again?’ With me.
‘What’s to say we can’t make a traveller out of you yet?’ he countered. ‘With Wirralong as your base. Do you discount it?’
Did she?
‘I’m not saying don’t ask these questions of me, and more,’ he continued quietly. ‘I’ll give you the best answers I can. The way I see it, I’m here until the people that took me in and raised me no longer need me. After that, it’s something we’d have to nut out between us if we were together. There would be a give and take about that discussion. A willingness on your part to venture forth and share new experiences with me. To let your own culinary studies take you far and wide.’ He spread his hands at his side, and there was that body again, such a glorious distraction. ‘A willingness on my part to return, over and over again, to the place that makes you happy. To make it my happy place too. Does any of that sound appealing?’
More than. She nodded vigorously. A bobble-headed, hopeful fool as she took a step back and then another, still facing him. ‘Yes.’ All of it. Intrepid, worldly Tilly, with Wirralong and Henry the pillars on which she built. ‘Yes, it does. Can we have sex now?’
Uh oh. Too soon.
‘Matilda Moore, I am shocked; shocked by your artless attempt to seduce me. Where’s the subtlety, the agony of the slow build, the simmering—oomph!’
The best way to shut him up was to launch herself into his arms and kiss him quiet. She’d been wearing his shirt for weeks now, rifling in his sock drawer, slathering herself with his body soap. Bonding late at night over a sleeping baby. Ogling the sheer glory of him not two minutes ago. Surely the foreplay was done?
He was laughing as he allowed her to nudge him backwards onto the bed, still smiling as she peppered his face with kisses and climbed all over him, and he was gratifyingly hard in all the right places and she could not wait for him to discover all her soft parts. She could help him find them, yes, the thin material of his trousers and the dampness beneath her shorts doing little to disguise how utterly ready she was for more.
‘Do you have any idea how often I imagined you and me in your sexy shower? I have an entire ten-minute fantasy fully imagined and set on standby.’
‘Only ten minutes?’ He had such lovely hands. Devious fingers as they slipped beneath barriers and unerringly found her centre. ‘Give me some credit. You know I’m a high achiever.’
‘Go on then. Challenge my fantasy.’ She didn’t need to be a genius to know that some people rose magnificently to a challenge.
Just magnificently.
There were kisses and plenty of them. Touches and sighs and melting pleasure and piercing heat as she opened for him and softness met velvet-wrapped steel.
He reworked all her fantasies until they were better and surer and dripping with anticipation. There was a finale in there somewhere, a final build of greedy lips at her breast and possessive hands as he took control of her body and put her where he wanted her, playing her to perfection.
Up and up, as she lost all sense of time.
And over.