AT WORK on Tuesday, Emma paid dearly for the folly of letting Pete make love to her in her dreams.
With Lucy McNichol now safely at home with her mother, and Alethea Childer scheduled for her lifesaving surgery that morning in Melbourne, Emma was rostered on the post-partum side of the unit where Pete currently had a pregnant patient on hospital bed rest.
Liz Stokes was resigned to two or three more weeks in hospital. She was a local real-estate agent, part of the same agency through which Emma had rented out her house, and she was determined to keep involved in her business with minimal disruption.
Now aged thirty-six and taken by surprise with this, her first pregnancy, Mrs Stokes had been a heavy smoker for years. Although she’d stopped as soon as she’d discovered her pregnancy, the damage had already been done.
The fertilised egg had implanted low in the uterus, and the placenta had grown to cover the cervix completely. It was a condition affecting roughly six out of a thousand pregnancies, and was almost twice as likely amongst heavy smokers.
Liz Stokes had had a heavy but painless episode of bleeding in her fourth month of pregnancy, at which point an ultrasound had revealed the poor position of the placenta. At home, in the weeks that followed, however, she’d found herself unable to maintain the bed rest Pete had advised.
‘I kept cheating to see if something would happen, but nothing did,’ she’d said. ‘So I cheated a bit more, and then…’
A second bleed had taken place, heavier and more dangerous this time. Liz had been rushed to hospital, needing a blood transfusion and intravenous infusion of fluids. Pete had refused to send her home after that, and a chastened Liz had agreed.
‘I just can’t seem to slow down, can I, Warren?’
‘Real estate’s a killer of a profession,’ her husband had agreed. ‘Liz was the top agent at Bryant and Wallace last year.’ He was obviously very supportive of his wife.
Now, as Emma prepared to make a routine check of blood pressure, temperature, pulse and baby, Liz was surrounded as usual by laptop, folders, telephone, papers, pens and calculator.
‘Sorry to disrupt your office hours,’ Emma teased. ‘But I’m here again.’
Liz laughed. ‘I’d go nuts if I didn’t have this to do. Our trainee agent at the office is cursing me, though. She has to do all my leg-work and my open houses. I got a new listing this morning, which she’s going to just love!’
‘Well, your blood pressure is good,’ Emma said. ‘Even if hers isn’t destined to be. Shall we listen to the baby’s heart? No one’s brought the machine in for a few days, have they?’
‘No, they haven’t. Yes, let’s, please!’ Liz lifted her top and Emma slid the portable Doppler device over her taut, pale abdomen.
She was at thirty-five weeks now, and it had been seven weeks since the dangerous episode of bleeding. Every time she tried to get out of bed, however, she would feel pain and there would be minor bleeding, so they knew Pete’s approach had been by no means too conservative.
The baby was now a good, healthy size, and Pete would probably order an ultrasound in a couple of weeks to check that lung maturation was complete, before scheduling the Caesarean delivery that was essential in a case of complete placenta praevia like this one. Liz, very vocally, could hardly wait for the remaining days to pass.
The Doppler crackled with static but didn’t pick up the heartbeat both Emma and Liz were listening for. Moving the receiver higher, Emma heard the slower, louder beat of Liz’s own heart, and Liz pricked up her ears.
‘Is that it?’
‘No, that’s you.’
Emma felt for the position of the baby—head down, facing forwards—and adjusted the Doppler’s receiver again. She massaged it quite firmly against Liz’s abdomen, but still couldn’t hear anything.
Liz was looking concerned. ‘Why can’t we hear it?’ She sat up higher. ‘It’s been getting stronger all the time. We should be able to hear it, shouldn’t we?’
Please, don’t let there be a problem, Emma prayed.
There’d been enough of those lately, with Patsy McNichol’s difficult delivery and small baby, and Alethea Childer’s serious heart defect. Like most midwives, Emma preferred the warm, relaxed pregnancies and deliveries that produced healthy babies. Obstetricians might need to stretch their skills with regular challenges, but she didn’t, thanks!
Although Emma knew that the foetal heartbeat could actually become harder to pick up as the baby drew closer to term, when its larger body sometimes blocked the Doppler’s reception of sound, Liz’s anxiety trespassed into her own rational attitude.
The baby had moved perceptibly, just a few minutes ago. There was no reason to suspect that anything was wrong, and yet…
‘These portable things aren’t very sensitive or reliable,’ she said, but it sounded feeble.
‘They’re crummy,’ said Pete in the doorway, and she turned, bathed in heat at once. He was clean-shaven, crisply dressed, hair still a little damp at the ends from his shower. He came forward with a brisk stride, confident and alert. If he was tired and stressed, it didn’t show today. ‘Can’t you find anything?’
‘No.’
He took the little device from Emma, and their fingers touched, just a brief brush, like cool paint. He drew his hand back quickly after the moment of contact, as if he’d noticed it and didn’t want it.
I kissed him, Emma remembered.
Two nights ago, in her dream, with deep, lingering heat and silent passion.
She felt as self-conscious about it as she would have done had the endless kiss been real. The dream Pete had been a powerful enough presence, but the real man was even more so. He gave off an aura of confidence and authority and reliability that she knew she wasn’t the only one to feel. Liz had relaxed markedly already.
‘Let’s see if we can get this thing to behave,’ he said.
Behave? I need to do that! Emma thought. I can’t keep thinking of him this way! It’s got nowhere to go.
She stepped aside, to take herself safely out of the aura of his male body.
‘Everything else looks good?’ he said.
‘Yes, her obs are all fine.’
‘I’ll measure the height of the uterus in a minute, Liz,’ he said.
As Emma had done, he felt the position of the baby and placed the Doppler accordingly, then he fiddled with the controls, slid the receiver back and forth across the hard mound of the pregnancy and at last got a result.
‘Thank goodness!’ Liz said. All three of them listened for some seconds in silence. The beat was strong and fast and steady, over the persistent crackle of the machine.
‘There you go,’ Pete said, smiling. He pulled a tape measure out of the pocket of the doctor’s coat he wore that day, and made a quick measurement. ‘And he’s grown. Not long now, Liz.’
‘To you, perhaps! To me it still feels like half a lifetime.’
He smiled at both women once more, and then he left, and Emma hated the turbulence of her emotions in his wake. She couldn’t afford to feel like this. It was clear that, even during the moments when he felt it too, he didn’t want the awareness between them, and wasn’t ready to act on it in any way.
‘I’m such an idiot!’ she muttered to herself as she returned to the nurses’ station.
The phone rang just as she reached it and, after identifying that this was the post-partum ward, she heard Nell’s voice. ‘Would Dr Croft be in the unit?’ she said in her briskest, coolest tone.
‘Nell, it’s Emma and, no, he’s just left.’
‘When? Because I phoned his surgery and they said—’
‘A minute ago.’
‘Can you chase him?’
I feel as if I already have been. Capturing his soul in my dreams, without his knowledge.
‘It’s urgent, Emma.’ Nell’s voice sharpened. ‘I need him down here in the department right now.’
She dropped the phone, gabbled an explanation to Mary Ellen Leigh and hurried to the stairs—quicker than the lift, since a glance at the lit-up number above it told her that it wasn’t currently on this floor. She caught up to Pete as his car was about to turn left to reach the main hospital driveway, and she had to wave madly to get his attention. She was breathless when she leaned down to the driver’s side window, which had slid down at his press of a button.
‘What’s the problem, Emma?’ He leaned towards her a little, his shoulder tightening and his elbow resting on the sill.
‘Dr Cassidy wants you in A and E immediately. I don’t know why.’
They could both see the accident and emergency department’s ambulance bay from where they were, and they could see a vehicle approaching. It wasn’t flashing lights and there was no siren. It wasn’t even an ambulance but a police car, and when it pulled in and the rear passenger door opened, Pete gave a shocked exclamation.
‘That’s Claire! Hell, what’s wrong?’ His dark-haired wife was weeping and struggling in the arms of the two police officers, clearly distraught. ‘Nell must have been told she was on the way in, and wanted to…’ He stopped.
‘She did sound very concerned,’ Emma said.
‘Where are the girls?’ He let go of the steering-wheel and pressed his hands to his head. ‘Claire’s supposed to have them today. I dropped them off there this morning. Where the hell are they if she’s here, like this?’
‘I have to go back to the unit, Pete.’ Emma didn’t even know if he’d been talking to her, let alone if he expected a reply.
‘Yes, yes,’ he said absently. ‘Go.’ His voice dropped to a harsh rasp. ‘Dear God, what’s Claire done with the girls?’
He was already reversing the car, twisting to look behind him as he manoeuvred the steering-wheel with one hand. He’d found a parking space between two other cars, but he’d approached it a little crookedly in his haste.
Emma opened her mouth to yell, You’re going to hit. But at the last moment he veered again and got safely in, pulling the handbrake on with a jerk. The left taillight of his car came to a stop just a few inches from the adjacent vehicle.
Emma relaxed a fraction. Pete slammed the car door, aimed the key fob roughly at the vehicle and pressed a button. The car gave an obedient whoop, and he began walking rapidly towards the A and E entrance. As she watched, he broke into a loping run, his urgent, angular movements suggesting a strong and capable man at the end of his tether.
Emma could do nothing. She couldn’t even watch him until he disappeared. She’d already stood here, frozen, for too long, and how would that help him anyway? How would this sick feeling in her stomach and this pounding of her heart be of any use to Pete now?
She had a newborn bathing demonstration to give in five minutes, and she didn’t have any of the equipment set up yet. She would need to coax one of the three mums to attend as well, as Meg Snow had had a tough delivery, under Gian Di Luzio’s care, and was more concerned with her own aches and pains at this stage than with learning to care for her big, healthy boy.
Emma gave her demonstration in a distracted state. She was haunted, in particular, by Pete’s distraught, repeated questions about the safety and whereabouts of his daughters. Surely they would be all right! Was it possible that Claire could have harmed them in any way? She’d looked so irrational and out of control, struggling in the arms of the police.
Meanwhile, Meg Snow’s one-day-old son Nicholas did not co-operate with the bathing procedure. He cried and kicked and was so slippery that Emma almost lost hold of him twice.
Mrs Snow was critical. ‘You’ve got soap in his eyes.’
‘Well, as I explained, this isn’t soap,’ Emma answered patiently. ‘It’s very mild and it shouldn’t sting.’ She wiped the baby’s red, wrinkled face with a soft cloth anyway, although she didn’t think he had anything in his eyes.
Where were Pete’s girls? What was happening to Claire?
There was no message from the A and E department when she’d finished the baby’s bath but, then, she hadn’t been expecting one. Nell was hardly going to phone her to gossip about Claire Croft’s emotional state and the reason for her dramatic arrival at the hospital in the hands of the police. Issues of patient confidentiality were, if anything, even more important in a growing, community-minded town like Glenfallon than they were in a large city, and the whole thing was none of Emma’s business.
That didn’t stop her from thinking about it, however, and from worrying about Pete and his daughters far more than she had right or reason to do. Her Paris makeover hadn’t been just in her appearance. It had been far more in her heart. She’d gone away thinking of Pete as a colleague, and she’d returned to discover that she’d…
Yes, admit it. Be honest about it. Look it in the face.
She’d developed a serious attraction, with a rapidity which frightened her.
At the end of the shift there was a message, and it was from Pete himself. Could she phone him at his surgery?
She did so at once, using the public phone in the main foyer as she didn’t want colleagues to overhear, and she was put straight through. His voice was low, as if he also wanted to make sure he wasn’t overheard.
‘Listen, you need to understand what happened this morning, since you were there,’ he said. ‘You must be on your way home.’
‘Just about. Pete, are the girls safe? That’s what I’ve been concerned about all day. The rest is—’
‘They’re fine. She dropped them off at preschool, although it wasn’t their session today. The teachers handled it. Now they’re with me.’
‘Oh, thank goodness!’
‘Look, if it’s convenient, you could drop in to the surgery. I’ve had a couple of cancellations. Hell, that sounds as if I’m slotting you in!’ There was a rough, rusty scratch in his tone.
‘It’s fine, Pete. I’ll be there soon. Not that you owe me an explanation, but if you want to talk…It’s obvious that something’s seriously wrong.’
‘I’ll see you in a few minutes,’ was all he said.
When Emma reached the surgery, he was still with a patient. His girls were here, too, as he’d said, playing on the carpeted floor with the box of toys and books provided for waiting littlies. They recognised Emma, and Jessie said, ‘You live in our rental house, don’t you?’
‘Yes, I do.’
‘It’s nice.’
‘I have to work pretty hard sometimes to keep it nice. I did lots of painting before your daddy lived in it. It was fun, though.’ She was rambling, in a vain attempt to cover her jittery state, but fortunately the girls didn’t notice.
Pete opened his office door, and ushered out the elderly man he’d been seeing. ‘I’ll see you again in two weeks, Mr Carpenter, if you want to make another appointment now.’
He caught sight of Emma, held her gaze for a long heartbeat, then glanced around his waiting room and gave a little nod. ‘Thanks for coming. Girls…?’
‘We’re hungry, Daddy,’ Jessie said.
‘And thirsty, too.’
‘Mrs Meredith will…uh…’ he wiped a hand around his neck and pinched his chin ‘…go over to the shops and buy you some chocolate milk and a banana each. Is that all right, Angela?’ he asked in a quick aside.
‘It’s fine,’ the older woman nodded. ‘They’re getting a little bored, I’m afraid. We don’t have time to read to them. Old Mrs Paston tried, before she went in to see Dr Anderson, but then they started bouncing on her knees and—’
He winced. ‘Right. Lucky nothing got broken. I’ll try my sister again in a minute. Emma…’
His eyes blazed suddenly as he looked at her once more. She nodded, and smiled tentatively. His hair was a mess, as if he’d been running his hands through it all afternoon. His mouth was tight and tired. The energetic, freshly showered look from this morning had gone. He held the door open for her and she passed him into the room, feeling his heat and his tension.
He nudged the door shut with his foot, stepped towards her as she faced him and then pivoted on his heel to turn away again.
‘Claire’s been admitted to the psych unit,’ he said, pressing his fingers to the muscles around his eyes. ‘Nell Cassidy thinks she’ll be diagnosed with bipolar disorder—manic depression, some people still prefer to call it—and from what I know of that illness, it rings so true I’m wondering why I didn’t think of it before. I must have been blind! It came on gradually, I guess, but—’
‘You’re too close,’ Emma said at once. ‘Don’t blame yourself. It’s often like that. Sometimes it takes someone who—’
‘I know.’ He waved her helpless platitudes aside. ‘But I’m a doctor.’
‘And a good one, Pete.’
‘Look, I wanted to tell you because you took that message from Nell when Claire was being brought in. You saw her arrive, and you knew how worried I was about the girls.’
‘Of course you were…’
‘This is going to get out, I imagine. It’s going to be all over town, in all likelihood. She was nearly arrested in the park when she began taking off her—Oh, Lord, it doesn’t matter what she was doing! But then the police officers realised that she was mentally disturbed. I didn’t want you to hear about it at third or fourth hand.’
He sounded very stiff, as brittle as if he might snap in two. She didn’t know whether to reach out and say, Let go. Talk. Cry, if you want to.
He looked as if he needed to, but also as if it would be the last thing he’d let himself do. He’d already shown her last week that he would close up, distance himself, if he regretted a confidence he’d shared. She had no right to push.
Instead, she said, ‘You need someone to mind the girls this afternoon, obviously.’ A concrete offer of practical help was often better than words, she knew.
‘My sister’s not answering her phone or her mobile.’
‘Could I take them, Pete? They don’t know me very well, but they know my house. You can collect them when you’re ready. You probably need to see—’
‘Claire? She won’t. She’s still very manic and out of control. I won’t repeat what she said to me at the hospital, but Nell agreed it was best to wait until she’s on medication and stabilised before I talk to her…before I even see her. There’s a very good chance this illness can be controlled, and that she can live a balanced, normal life, if she’ll accept that there’s a problem and take her medication consistently. She’s…You know, she’s sensible in a lot of ways. I think she will. As for the girls, I can’t ask you to do that.’
‘You’re not,’ she pointed out. ‘I’m offering. I want to, Pete. I want to do something. I care about you,’ she gabbled. ‘And it’s only for a few hours.’
He looked at her, eyes narrowed, then let his face relax a little at last.
How had he taken that admission of care? Emma wondered. It was open to a broad interpretation. Should she have let it slip out, or kept it firmly in? She wasn’t always good at hiding what she felt.
‘That would be great,’ he said. ‘I should finish here by six. Or if I can get hold of Jackie—’
‘Six is fine. Later, if you have errands to run. Save your sister for another day, when you really need her.’
‘She’d appreciate it, I think!’
The girls were happy to go with Emma, and agreed to wait until they got to her place before they ate the bananas and drank the chocolate milk. Emma had correctly suspected that they’d get into a mess.
After they’d washed and snacked and washed again, she played hide-and-seek with them in the garden, and then they were happy to watch children’s after-school television for an hour. Sitting cross-legged on her couch with their eyes fixed on the screen, they looked very young and so vulnerable.
They were just four years old, both blonde, but not identical. They were petite in build, and Emma wondered as she stood in the doorway, watching them, how strong they were in spirit. A child’s resilience to upheaval was hard to measure. Even as watchful and caring a father as Pete might not know how his separation was affecting his daughters. Claire’s newly diagnosed illness would add to their problems.
While the girls watched television, Emma made a spaghetti sauce. She felt like a witch, hoping to lure Pete into staying for a meal with the potent aromas of her cooking. The girls would need something nourishing, and she doubted whether he’d thought about cooking for them. When he turned up at ten past six, however, he brought potent aromas of his own in the form of two large, hot pizzas in square cardboard boxes.
‘And in case the pizza is a nuisance, instead of being a way to say thanks…’ he said, and held out a huge bunch of spring daffodils. He had a bottle of wine tucked under his arm as well.
‘They’re lovely. And the pizzas aren’t a nuisance. I—I was hoping you’d stay, Pete.’
Emma took the flowers and hid her face by bringing them to her nose. They smelt earthy, sweet and full of pollen, and she knew she’d start sneezing any minute if she didn’t take them away. But at least the heat in her cheeks had subsided a little. She’d been too honest with him today.
Pete smiled crookedly, his face tired, watching her reaction to the flowers. He took in a deep breath, the sound of it hissing a little between teeth he’d closed tightly together. She thought he was about to speak, but he didn’t.
‘We’ve got two dinners, actually,’ she said quickly, ‘because I made spaghetti sauce. But that will keep. Come in. You didn’t have to bring any of this. Not as thanks, anyway. The girls have been lovely, and no trouble.’
They were still glued to their television show. The fact that they greeted their father so casually, barely dragging their gazes from the screen, was a reassurance that they felt at home here. Pete leaned over the couch to give them each a quick kiss on the tops of their heads. The fabric of his shirt stretched across his shoulders, and his dark trousers tightened across an already taut rear end. Emma moved deliberately away.
Straightening, he followed her through to the kitchen. ‘I’ve got some beer in the boot of the car as well,’ he said. ‘Would you mind if I had one of those? Would you like one?’
Emma only very occasionally fancied a beer, but she instinctively felt that tonight should be one of those times. As a gesture of companionship, more than anything else. She didn’t want to spout a whole lot of clumsy words of support. It would embarrass him, and would betray too much of what she’d begun to feel so strongly and suddenly. To join him in a beer, though, might be worth more than language right now.
‘Lovely!’ she said.
While he went back out to the car, she set plates and glasses on the table in the sunroom. No cutlery. Pizza was finger food.
And beer, according to Pete, had to be drunk direct from the can. He took several long gulps before he called the girls to the table, and Emma’s gaze was drawn to his stretched, tanned throat and to the long lashes that fringed his half-closed eyes.
The pizza was still piping hot—pepperoni for the girls and Supreme for Pete and Emma. It was a very casual meal. Pete had brought lemon soft drink for his daughters, and Zoe spilled hers. Her father leapt up from the table before Emma could react. He strode to the sink, grabbed a sponge and wiped up the mess with calm efficiency.
‘This is why I only ever put two inches at a time in their glasses,’ he said. ‘Zoe’s elbows don’t behave when she’s thinking about something else.’
‘Naughty elbows,’ Zoe said.
‘My elbows aren’t as naughty, but a bit naughty,’ Jessie came in, not to be outdone.
They were sweet girls—lively and imaginative, but never intentionally naughty. They didn’t mention their mother at any point during the meal, and Emma wondered about that. What had Pete told them, if anything, about Claire’s illness? Perhaps he was waiting for the right time.
Had he always been the steadier parent? The one Jessie and Zoe relied upon, and turned to? He was that sort of man. Not spectacular. Not the sort who needed to be the centre of attention, or the one who always got his own way. But he was as steady as a rock, as steady as the beam of a lighthouse in a storm.
And Claire was evidently the storm—the wild and unpredictable partner in their marriage. Was that what had broken the two of them apart? And if it all changed, once Claire was on medication and emotionally stable again, would their marriage have another chance? Emma didn’t know how recent their problems were, or how long Claire’s illness had been developing.
Her beer tasted over-bitter suddenly. It had gone to her head before the pizza could soak it up, but the lightheaded feeling wasn’t pleasant any more, as it had been at first. She knew that her growing feelings for Pete were feeding on dangerous illusions.
He ate largely in silence, and she didn’t try to chatter. Let him have these few moments of relative peace. Let him enjoy the tasty mouthfuls of pizza and the refreshing, yeasty sting of the beer. She would have done so much more for him than this, if she could, but she knew it wasn’t possible.
This man was still married.
The fact didn’t stop her from offering him tea or coffee after they’d cleared away the meal, and he accepted a decaf.
As for the girls…‘I don’t usually do this, and it’s probably setting a dangerous precedent,’ Pete said, ‘but would you mind if I turned on the TV for them again? I just…don’t have the energy for full-on parenting tonight.’
The weariness and strain were stark in his face for a moment, and Emma said quickly, ‘Of course I don’t mind. There’s probably a sit-com on, or something.’
They sat at the table drinking their coffee, and without the girls there, chattering and unaware of deeper nuances, the silence between them was less comfortable.
Emma asked him, ‘How’s your new place? You wanted to know about paint colours. Are you painting inside or out?’
‘I’m getting some landscaping done,’ he said. He looked relieved at her innocuous and relatively impersonal choice of subject. ‘They started last week, and it’s nearly finished. Paths and terraced stone walls, and a deck with a pergola out the back, which I’ll want to paint.’
‘It sounds lovely.’
‘It’s making the place look less raw. I thought I might cruise some garage sales and go out to the recycling centre at the tip, pick up a couple of old wheelbarrows. I’ll paint them and plant them with flowers or herbs, soften the newness of the house a bit.’
‘They’ll look lovely!’
‘I’ve never done any real gardening before. Know nothing about it. But I have this…’ he frowned, then smiled ‘…deep itch to get my hands dirty, for some reason.’
Emma knew the reason, or thought she did. She’d felt the same six months ago, when her stepmother, Beryl, had finally packed up and gone to live with her daughter in Queensland. Capping months of manipulative, negative behaviour, she’d accused Emma of stealing from her, and Emma had thrown off the sense of obligation—that she owed her father’s widow a home—and had called her bluff.
‘Leave, if you feel that way, if you really think I’d do something like that,’ she had said.
Beryl had left.
There’d been a sense of elation at first, followed by an equally painful sense of emptiness. Beryl’s departure had taken away Emma’s excuses. Faced with the rest of her life, Emma had found it lacking. She, too, had itched to get her hands dirty, make changes and complete projects that she could touch and see.
Sketching all this out to Pete, poking fun at herself a little, she told him, ‘I went crazy around the house. Painted and decorated and gardened. Bought new furniture and linen. Tired myself out, but it was good.’
‘You crave the healthy kind of fatigue, don’t you?’ he said, staring into his coffee. ‘The physical kind, the kind that comes with achievement, instead of the drain of dealing constantly with impossible emotions.’
No. She wasn’t going to let him talk about Claire. She was pretty sure he didn’t really want to.
‘You’ve picked the right season for putting in a garden,’ she said quickly. ‘As soon as your landscaping is done—’
‘Hopefully this week,’ he cut in.
‘You can get things planted. You should phone up the local garden centres and get them to send you their catalogues.’
‘Probably easier than dragging the girls round the garden section of the hardware store.’
‘The hardware store?’ Emma was shocked. ‘You mustn’t buy your plants from there!’
‘No? Why not?’
‘Go to the garden centre on Romney Road. There’s a children’s playground there, and even a café where they do light lunches and Devonshire teas. It’s like an oasis, a slice of Australian bush and an English country garden, all mixed up together. The girls would love it, and there’s much more choice, and better quality.’
Pete pushed his chair back. ‘Speaking of the girls, I should check on them, because they’re being suspiciously quiet out there.’
Emma looked at the clock on the kitchen wall and found it was already after eight. ‘Gosh, yes,’ she murmured, but he’d already disappeared along the corridor in the direction of her living room.
‘They’re asleep on the couch,’ he reported a few moments later. ‘I should get them home to bed. Thanks enormously for this, Emma. I couldn’t have gone straight home tonight.’ He shook his head.
Suddenly, there was a heaviness in the air, and a sense of intimacy. Emma felt her pulses slow and begin to throb. She had put their coffee-cups on the sink a moment ago, and had been about to go through to the living room herself, when she’d met Pete coming back from his check on the girls. He’d stopped with his hand on the doorjamb, just a few feet from her.
Too close. They’d ended up standing too close, and here they still were, not moving.
It was dark outside, and his daughters had gone to sleep. No one would interrupt them. No one need ever know if they closed the small space between them and went to each other, touched and held each other. If they kissed. If they drowned in each other.
She knew he was thinking of it. The evidence was blatant in the soft glimmer of his brown eyes, and the way his lips had parted. It showed in the way he was standing. The hard male contours of his body softened a little, and he leaned closer than he needed to. Their bodies were like magnets, clamouring to draw together.
Emma could hardly breathe. There was no room inside her for rational thought about what should or shouldn’t happen. They wanted this. She knew it. Wasn’t that good enough?
But then Pete looked away, and drew in a rough breath.
‘Gosh. Ten past eight,’ he muttered, as if the clock on the kitchen wall and what it said were the most important things in the room. The muscles in his tanned neck stretched as he craned around.
‘Yes, is it that late?’ she answered obediently.
‘The garden centre idea that we talked about,’ he went on. ‘Are you free on the weekend at all? Would you like to come? You…uh…made it sound so nice, you should get to join in. If you’d like to, that is.’
He looked at her quickly, then looked back along the corridor, as if listening for the girls. He didn’t dare to let his gaze linger on her face for long, Emma realised, because he knew exactly what would happen if they looked at each other again. He’d bend closer, his lips would part, and…
To help him, she began to inspect her fingernails, and tried to make her voice light. ‘Are you looking for a tour guide?’
As he had done, she found herself looking up at him again almost at once, then looking away just as quickly, still feeling the softness in her face, the smile she wanted to give him and didn’t dare.
‘Yes,’ he answered. ‘I’ll pay you in scones and cream.’
She wanted to ask why he was doing this. Why, when he wanted to kiss her and wouldn’t, had he created another opportunity for them to be together? She might almost have asked the question aloud, because his next words answered it.
‘It’s a way of still e-mailing you, Emma,’ he said. ‘Is that OK? It’s selfish. It’s not giving you anything. I just…miss those e-mails. And I miss the sense of peace I had while I was living here.’
‘I miss the e-mails, too,’ she said. ‘I’ve got an afternoon shift on Sunday, but that’s not until three. I’ll be your tour guide at the garden centre with pleasure.’
Their eyes met again. They both watched the kiss hanging in the air, and her face flamed. ‘It’ll be…yes, fun. Can I carry one of the girls to the car for you?’ she asked quickly.
Pete straightened at last, pushing his hand against the doorjamb. ‘Please. They’ll probably wake up. If they don’t, I might just put them to bed in their clothes tonight. Against the rule of good parenting, but—’
‘It’s good to break the rules sometimes.’
‘Let me unlock the car, and we’ll carry them out together.’
The girls didn’t waken.
Later, in her bed, Emma herself didn’t sleep.