Helen took advantage of these brief few minutes to take a closer look at the father. His hair was slightly wet to look at, the blue and black checked shirt he wore also appearing slightly damp, as if he had been exerting himself beneath the hot sun before the disappearance of his young child.
Well, whatever he had been doing at the time, he had no right to have been doing it when it had obviously distracted his attention from keeping the necessary watchful eye on his baby; she was still shaking from the horror of almost running the tiny child down!
The man, finally reassured that no bodily harm had befallen the child, looked up at Helen. ‘I can’t thank you enough——’
‘Thank me!’ Helen repeated harshly, breathing heavily in her agitation as delayed shock began to set in; she could have killed this adorable baby! ‘What on earth were you doing allowing the child to wander off in that way?’
‘Look, I understand you’re upset——’
‘Upset?’ she cut in again, green eyes bright with anger. ‘I don’t think upset even begins to cover it,’ she dismissed scathingly. ‘I could have—could have——’ She broke off shakily, breathing deeply. ‘Don’t you realise I actually had to swerve to avoid hitting the baby?’ Her voice was slightly shrill.
The man paled again, turning slowly to look at her car parked at an awkward angle on the side of the road. ‘I hadn’t realised…’
‘Obviously not,’ she snapped.
‘I was hedge-cutting when——’
‘You had no right to bring a small child out here with you when you’re working,’ Helen reprimanded him incredulously, too disturbed herself at the moment to feel remorse for the way her bluntness had caused that almost grey tinge to the man’s skin.
‘I had him in a play-pen,’ the man attempted to explain.
‘Obviously not securely enough,’ Helen bit out impatiently. ‘And I’m sure your employer can’t approve of your bringing such a young child to work with you.’
‘I think I should explain, Miss——’ Dark brows rose enquiringly over those deep blue eyes.
‘Foster,’ she supplied impatiently. ‘Although I don’t see what my name has to do with anything,’ she dismissed coldly. ‘I think your employer might be more interested to learn your name——’
‘I should have realised immediately that you’re David’s daughter,’ the man murmured thoughtfully, his eyes warm now. ‘You have the same colouring, and he did mention that you might be coming down this——’
‘The fact that you appear to have an acquaintanceship with my father doesn’t alter for one moment the fact that I intend to see that nothing like this ever happens again.’
‘You have to realise that it won’t,’ he protested cajolingly.
Helen’s mouth firmed. ‘I intend to see that it doesn’t,’ she told him coldly. ‘You may be known to my father but so is Mr Jones—and I intend to inform him of your irresponsible behaviour at the earliest opportunity.’
‘But——’
She held up one slender hand in a silencing movement. ‘I don’t want to hear any further excuses. For now I would suggest you take the baby home where it belongs, preferably leaving it with its mother, or at least someone with more sense than you appear to have——’
‘But if you would just listen to me——’
‘I don’t think you have anything more to say that I would care to listen to,’ she told him coldly. ‘Now if you’ll excuse me,’ she added with haughty dismissal, ‘I would like to complete my journey.’ Her father was just expecting her some time today and wouldn’t even realise she had experienced this delay, but she was feeling too sickened by the horrific accident that had almost occurred to want to talk to this man any more.
‘Of course.’ He nodded, looking more than abashed. ‘I really am sorry for what happened. There must be a fault with the play-pen——’
‘I would say it’s more probable that the baby managed to climb out of it in some way,’ she said disparagingly, one glance at the mischievous smile on the baby’s angelically innocent face telling her the child was more than capable of doing such a thing.
The man glanced down at the baby too, the fingers on one tiny hand pulling playfully at the dark hairs on his chest. ‘You could be right,’ he agreed frowningly. ‘I hadn’t noticed any fault on the pen itself earlier, I just assumed… I’m beginning to realise it doesn’t pay to assume anything with you, you little monkey!’ He tickled the baby’s tummy as he spoke, its shrill giggles quickly filling the air.
‘I’ll be on my way,’ Helen told him abruptly, turning on her heel.
A hand on her arm stopped her just as she reached the car, and she looked up at the man with coolly questioning eyes.
‘I really am grateful,’ he said gruffly. ‘If anything had happened to Sam…’ He re-pressed a shudder. ‘I couldn’t have lived with myself.’ He shook his head.
He wouldn’t have been able to live with himself! Dear lord, if she had harmed one hair on that baby’s head…
‘Just think yourself lucky that I don’t drive on this road often enough to risk speeding along it, otherwise we might have been having a vastly different conversation from this one!’ With that final verbal reprimand Helen got back into her car, firmly closing the door behind her to restart the engine, just wanting to be on her way now that the crisis was over.
She took one final glance at father and baby in her driving mirror before she turned the corner and they were no longer in view.
Irresponsible man, to let a young child wander off in that way.
She still hadn’t found out his name, but there couldn’t be that many men in this area that her father knew with those looks and an adorable baby like Sam. She wasn’t normally a person who interfered in other people’s lives, mainly because she never welcomed any intrusion into her own life, but what had happened this afternoon had been too serious to ignore, let alone forget.
She hadn’t relaxed at all by the time she had driven the two miles further on to Cherry Trees, turning in at the driveway of the mellow-bricked house, taking a few minutes after parking to just sit and look at her childhood home.
She never ceased to feel a warm glow whenever she came back to this house, probably because it had always been so much more to them all: the haven for her parents’ marriage, her own warm cocoon of childhood, the garden and surrounding trees that had given the house its name having been her own private playground.
The house itself was low and rambling, the bricks a mellow sandstone, the windows and twin balconies on the second storey, either side of the front porch, newly painted, she noted.
She had no doubt her father had done the painting himself, despite her request for him not to do so after the last time two years ago when he had fallen off the ladder and broken his ankle. Nagging him didn’t seem to get her anywhere, but she would have to mention it to him again anyway. Maybe just for once he might listen. He wasn’t getting any younger, for goodness’ sake, and it was about time he realised it!
As if her thinking about him had alerted him of her arrival her father stepped out of the house into the sunshine, and it was difficult at that moment to think of him as anything but young. The sunlight glinted on hair as golden blond as her own, his face still handsome and reasonably unlined despite his fifty-five years, his step jaunty, his body having retained the litheness of his youth.
‘Going to sit out here all day?’ he teased lightly, bending down to her open window. ‘I saw you from the balcony in my bedroom,’ he