‘Yes, thanks,’ he assured her with an unadorned smile. ‘She was right where you told me she would be.’
‘Of course she was,’ she said, and her own smile grew larger. ‘She’s lived there since she was born. A dear girl, Laura. Would do anything to help any of us in a pickle, and if anyone ever dared to hurt her, or her little possum, they would have to deal with the rest of our town as well. Can I get you something to eat while you wait?’
Ryan blinked. It seemed Miss Somervale was not the only one who could so adeptly change tack mid-spiel. Perhaps the idiosyncrasy could even be considered part of the local dialect.
‘I’m happy with my beer,’ he said. ‘Thanks, anyway.’
Jill gave him a sympathetic smile before moving on to the next table. Before he even had the chance to take another sip, he was struck by the intoxicating scent of freshly baked apple pie. He had a famously sweet tooth, and the scent was so delicious he actually sniffed the air as a pair of cake boxes slid across his bench. In their wake came Laura Somervale. He was fairly sure it was her…
Gone were the messy curls, pulled back under a red bandana, and the graceful cotton dress had been replaced with an excessively frilly white shirt. She looked over her shoulder at the little boy peering over the next booth. ‘Liam, your dessert is getting cold.’
The little boy disappeared from sight. Just like that. Wow. He would have to remember that trick. As she sat, Ryan opened his mouth to ask why she had gone to such trouble to dress in disguise, but when their eyes met he was rendered speechless yet again by the most startling difference from her earlier appearance. The sexiest dark smudges of eyeliner framed her pale brown eyes, making them glitter like gold. A searing flash of awareness overcame him. Had the flash come from him or from her?
‘Sorry I’m late,’ she said, her voice as crisp and curt with him as it had been with the little boy, Liam, and he figured any sort of responsiveness had been his alone. ‘I had to get Chloe settled in at a friend’s place first.’
So she hadn’t left Chloe at home. She had sequestered her away somewhere unknown. No matter how promising her words, how valiant her smile, this woman was not as calm and trusting as she made out.
‘So there’s no one else at home who could have looked after her tonight? Your husband, perhaps?’
Laura coughed out a sorry laugh. ‘Hardly,’ she said, flapping a ring-free hand under his chin. ‘Chloe and I are perfectly happy on our own.’
And, just like that, the uncomfortable lump in Ryan’s mid-section faded away.
‘Where are you staying?’ she asked, shifting her weight on the soft leather seat.
‘I have a room upstairs.’
‘Nice?’ she asked, still not looking him in the eye.
‘Not sure. I haven’t seen it yet. I came straight here from your place.’
‘Oh, I just can’t stand this,’ she said suddenly, scrunching her eyes tight and banging her fists on the old wooden table.
Ryan’s hands zoomed out to catch his glass of beer and stop it from overturning.
‘I’m not bred for small talk,’ she said, her voice earnest, her expression pleading. ‘I’ll be honest. Your being here scares the living daylights out of me.’
Ryan tried to disregard the divine scent of apples and sugar, and something else—an unexpectedly exotic perfume wafting from the direction of the woman in the equally exotic costume. ‘You have no reason to fear me, Laura.’
‘I have every reason!’ She snapped her mouth shut, her fists closing tight atop the table. She seemed to collect herself, to temper her anguish. When she looked back at him from beneath her smoky lashes he knew she had found the calm in the eye of the storm.
‘I had no brothers or sisters,’ she continued, her voice now more controlled, though a tiny vibration gave her away. ‘I have no aunts or cousins, distant or otherwise. I understand that there are other people out there who are family to Chloe. You. You are her family. As such, you are the answer to her very dreams. And at least a very tiny, small but noisy part of me is relieved that you have finally come. But, at the same time, you also represent my very greatest fear. Losing her.’
Her anxious words brought about the image of tear stains on lavender paper, and he found it hard not to stare as he reconciled the heartfelt prose on that page with the plucky woman three feet from him now. Her honesty in that letter had amazed him, even while the news shocked him. Several years on, she was just as unwilling or unable to hold back her feelings as she had been then, and just as able to surprise him in person as she had been in print.
‘I need to know your intentions,’ she said. ‘I can take it. I might not like it, but I can take it.’
His intentions? It was such an old-fashioned term but, coming from this wide-eyed country girl, it fitted. Though it made him feel like a rogue, he gave her the only truth he could. ‘I don’t exactly know.’
Her golden eyes glinted back at him in the low light. ‘You’re going to have to give me more than that if you think we can take this matter further.’
‘What more do you want?’
‘Proof that you are as nervous as I am.’ She leaned forward, pinning him with her candid stare. ‘I am an even mix of morbid embarrassment and stiff terror right now. When you wandered up onto my property, in your clean shirt and your new jeans, you must know I didn’t for a second expect you to be…well, you. If you had, in fact, been a male stripper it would have shocked me less.’
‘A male what?’
Laura bit her lip to stop herself from saying anything else she oughtn’t. She filtered back through all the things she had mentally accused him of being, including an aluminium cladding salesman, but, no, the male stripper idea she had managed to keep to herself. Until now. She fluffed a hand over her face to try and divert him from her terminal case of foot-in-mouth disease.
She did want Chloe to meet her uncle. Really she did. For Chloe’s sake how could she not? She was trying to think outside of her own selfish desire to keep her contented little existence intact because the big picture of Chloe’s life meant so much more. Even though none of his superstar family had ever cared enough to write, to call, or to ask if Chloe was okay, she had to give him a chance. But, even so, there was a noisy little voice in her head that told her that he in particular was dangerous. Not cruel. Not insensitive to her fears. But somehow dangerous to her precariously balanced contentment. For a girl who felt as though a wonderful life was never quite within her grasp, she had no idea how to deal with a perpetual winner like the one seated before her.
‘Stick to the subject, Mr Gasper. Why now? Why after all this time have you come?’
‘Your letter brought me here, Ms Somervale.’
Her cheeks warmed as she thought of the words she had written in that letter. The words of a hormone-riddled, deeply sad, terrified, lonely and desperate teenager. But before she had a chance to ask to see the letter, which of course she would shovel into her mouth, chew and swallow so that no one else would ever know it existed, a shadow passed over the table. She looked up to find a man in dark trousers and a grey pullover smiling down at them.
‘Hi, there, Father Grant,’ she said, saving her request for when they were alone again. She glanced over at Ryan and had no idea how to introduce him. Friend? Hardly. Chloe’s uncle? She could barely believe it herself, much less say it aloud. Male stripper in the making? Now, that would probably cause less gossip in town than any of the other options on offer!
‘Dress rehearsal tonight, Laura?’ Father Grant asked.
Laura only then remembered her get-up. Oh, Lord! While Mr Perfect sat there looking so flawless, in his blue button-down shirt that did distracting things to his bluer than blue eyes, she was decked out in a mass