This was what Nadine had wanted from him. What he hadn’t been able to give, although now he was doing it for his best friend’s child because he simply had no other choice. Except to walk away, which he couldn’t bring himself to do.
He couldn’t imagine Nadine doing this, even though he knew she’d wanted a baby of her own. She wouldn’t have been comfortable exchanging her sharp business suits and designer dresses for jeans and a T-shirt. Dylan simply couldn’t see her on the floor playing with a baby, or singing songs.
Unlike Emmy. Emmy, who’d been all soft and warm and cute...
He shook himself. He hadn’t wanted children with Nadine. So her ultimatum of baby or divorce had given him an obvious choice. And he didn’t want to think about his relationship with Emmy. Because, strictly speaking, it wasn’t actually a relationship; it was a co-guardianship. They were here for Tyler, not for each other.
‘Emotions and relationships,’ he said softly to the baby, ‘are very much overrated.’
When the baby had finished feeding, Dylan burped him in accordance with Emmy’s instructions, then carried him up to the nursery and put him in his cot. There was a stack of books by the cot; Dylan found one in rhyme and read it through, keeping his voice soft and low. Tyler’s eyelids seemed to be growing heavy; encouraged, Dylan read the next two books. And then finally Tyler’s eyes closed.
Asleep.
Good. He’d managed it.
He touched the baby’s soft little cheek. ‘Sleep well,’ he whispered.
Then he headed for the study and knocked on the open door.
Emmy looked up. ‘How did you get on?’
‘Fine. He’s asleep. Dinner in ten minutes?’
‘That’ll be great. I’ll just finish up here.’
She joined him in the kitchen just as he was serving up.
‘OK if we eat in here, tonight?’ Dylan asked.
‘That’s fine.’ She took her first mouthful. ‘This is very nice, thank you.’
He flapped a dismissive hand. ‘It wasn’t exactly hard—just stir-fry chicken, noodles, vegetables and soy sauce.’
‘But it’s edible and, more importantly, I didn’t have to cook it. It’s appreciated.’
There was an awkward silence for a few moments.
Work, Dylan thought. Work was always a safe topic. ‘I saw that necklace you were making. I had no idea you made delicate stuff like that.’
‘You mean you thought I just stuck some chunky beads on a string and that was it?’ she asked.
He felt his face colour with embarrassment. ‘Well, yes.’
She shrugged. ‘There’s nothing wrong with a string of chunky beads.’
He thought of his mother, and wanted to disagree.
‘But no, I do mainly silverwork—and I also work with jet. I carve animals.’
‘Like those ones on the shelf in Tyler’s room?’
She nodded. ‘Ally wanted a Noah’s ark sort of thing, so I’d planned to do her one a month.’
‘They’re very good.’
‘Thank you.’ Emmy inclined her head at his compliment but he noticed that she accepted it easily. She clearly knew she was good at what she did. Just as he was good at what he did. Something they had in common, then.
‘Why jet?’ he asked.
‘We always used to go to my great-aunt Syb’s in the school summer holidays, up in Whitby.’
‘Dracula country,’ he said.
She smiled. ‘Well, it’s known for that nowadays, but it’s also the Jurassic coastline, full of fossils—that’s why there’s lots of jet and amber in the cliffs there.’
‘Amber being fossilised tree resin, right?’
She nodded. ‘And jet’s fossilised monkey puzzle tree. They used to use it a lot in Victorian times for mourning jewellery, but it’s been used as jewellery for much longer than that. There are some Roman jewellery workshop remains in York, and archaeologists have found gorgeous jet pendants carved as Medusa’s head.’
Dylan noticed how her eyes glittered; this was clearly something she felt really passionate about. For a second, it made him wonder what her face would look like in the throes of passion, but he pushed the thought away. It was way too inappropriate. He needed to keep his focus on work, not on how lush Emmy Jacobs’ mouth was. ‘And that’s when you got interested in making jewellery, at your great-aunt’s?’
She nodded. ‘We used to go beachcombing for jet and amber because Great-Aunt Syb’s best friend Jamie was a jeweller and worked with it. I was fascinated at how these dull-looking, lightweight pebbles could suddenly become these amazingly shiny beads and flowers. Jamie taught me how to work with jet. It’s a bit specialised.’ She grimaced. ‘I’d better warn you, it does tend to make quite a bit of dust, the really thick and heavy sort, but I always clean up after I’ve worked.’
If she’d said that a week ago, he would’ve scoffed; from what he’d seen, Emmy Jacobs was as chaotic as his mother. But now, having shared a house with her for a day and discovered that she ruled her life with lists and charts, he could believe it. She might appear chaotic, but she knew exactly what she was doing. ‘How do you sell your jewellery? Do you have a shop?’ He hadn’t thought to ask before.
‘No. I sell mainly through galleries—I pay them a commission when they sell a piece. Plus there’s my website.’
‘So what’s the plan—to have a shop of your own?’
She shook her head. ‘If I had a shop, I’d need to increase production to cover all the extra expenses—rent, utilities and taxes, not to mention staffing costs. And I’d have to spend a lot of time serving customers instead of doing the bit of my job that I like doing most, creating jewellery. And then there’s the worry about who’d cover the shop when an assistant was on holiday or off sick...’ She grimaced. ‘No, I’d rather keep it this way.’
She’d clearly thought it all through, taking a professional view of the situation, Dylan thought. He would never have expected that from her. And it shook him to realise how badly he’d misjudged her. He’d always thought himself such a good judge of character. How wrong he’d been.
‘So what actually do you do?’ she asked. ‘I mean, Pete said you’re a computer guru, but I assume you don’t actually build computers or websites?’
He smiled. ‘I can, and sometimes that’s part of a project, but what I do is software development—bespoke stuff for businesses. So I talk to them about their requirements, draw up a specification, then do the architecture.’
‘Architecture?’ She looked puzzled.
‘I write the code,’ he said, ‘so the computer program does what they want it to do. Once the code’s written, you set up the system, test it, debug it, and agree a maintenance programme with the client.’
‘So businesses can’t just buy a software package—say like you do with word-processing, spreadsheets and accounting programs?’
‘Obviously those ones they can, but what my clients tend to want is database management, something very specific to their business. So if they had a chain of shops, for example, they need to have the tills linked with the stock system, so every time they sell something it updates and they can see their stock levels. Once they get down to a certain stock level, it triggers a reorder report, based on how long it takes