‘No, there tends to be a sense of panic.’ He said it as though he knew. Dan handed her one of the cups of tea. ‘Sit down, Jessica.’
Jess sat. She didn’t think she could drink the tea, yet she found herself sipping the sweet brew and taking comfort from its warmth. But Dan. Why wasn’t Dan yelling? Or very cold towards her? Something?
‘You’re going to sack me kindly but there’s no way anyone is to blame but me.’ That knowledge stabbed right through Jess’s heart. ‘I let Annapolly go to the bathroom and left it several minutes before I thought about the fact that she hadn’t come back. You must have been worried when you got Luke’s text message.’
‘I don’t know what’s got into that boy—’ Dan broke off, drew a tight breath and started over. ‘I was worried.’ His jaw tightened. ‘And I admit, I did feel angry for a minute when I realised you were all at the hospital. I wanted to blame you for not watching them properly, for potentially risking harm to one of them.’
As Luke had blamed her. Well, in this case Luke had the right of it. Jess forced herself to sit straight and not lower her gaze. She deserved this. Every bit of chewing over that Dan needed to hand out. ‘You have every right to be angry.’
‘What I am is human, Jess.’ Dan rubbed his hand over the back of his neck. ‘I pushed my worry out into irrelevant anger for a brief moment. But the fact that Annapolly stuffed her nose with paper doesn’t make you a negligent caregiver, no matter what my overactive mind might have tried to tell me to the contrary.’
Jess barely took in his words. ‘I’m the one—’
‘Who had to deal with the drama this time.’ Dan shook his head. ‘There’s five of them, Jess. They range in age from four up to fifteen. It’s a big house. No matter how good you are at your job there’ll be times when more than one of them is where you can’t see them. I do understand that. As their father, I live that on a daily basis. You can’t tie them all to chairs in the kitchen all day. And I asked you to help out with housekeeping and other duties as well.’
‘I guess so.’ Jess frowned. ‘Luke wanted to be left here by himself this morning and I wouldn’t agree. I didn’t think you’d want that.’
‘No.’ Dan put his tea down and leaned forward to face her across the kitchen table. His hazel eyes searched her grey ones. ‘Annapolly is more than capable of using the bathroom on her own. You let her do that. She pushed tissue paper into her nostrils while she was in there. She came out in distress, you got her to blow it out and took her to the hospital to make sure there was nothing still lodged up there and to find out whether any serious damage had been done.’
He reached briefly to touch Jess’s hand. ‘I’m not sacking you, Jess. It was an accident, and Annapolly is okay. In the end that’s what counts.’
He wasn’t going to sack her. Dan wasn’t furious. He’d had his bout of anger and that had been because of fear.
‘Thank you.’ Jess’s words were husky with relief, and with consciousness of Dan’s determination to be fair.
And of Dan himself…
And because that was so very unwise, she got to her feet.
Dan stood at the same time and Jess looked at him, overwhelmed for a moment. ‘I’ll work harder to keep a better watch on things in the future.’
Dan searched her face. ‘You’re all right about it now? ‘
No, she wasn’t, but Jess would be all right. She would make that be so, somehow.
Maybe Dan read her confusion and uncertainty. Maybe he forgot for a moment that she wasn’t one of his children in need of a comforting hug, because somehow his arms had opened and Jess was inside them with her nose pressed to his chest.
Jess was enveloped by the solid feel of him, of his broad shoulders making a protective curve while he drew her close to his body. There was tension in Dan’s body. More when Jess wrapped her arms around him and hugged him back.
Maybe she shouldn’t have done that, but she did, and their hug changed right at the end to something that wasn’t entirely about comfort.
‘I’ll pack the rest of the cookies away into a tin.’ Jess spoke the words with the length of the kitchen between them. She’d got herself out of Dan’s arms and a distance away very quickly. She shouldn’t have hugged him in the first place.
‘Just as soon as I’ve checked on everyone.’ She cleared her throat. ‘Thanks, Dan, for your kindness and understanding. There won’t be a repeat where you have to come to the hospital, because of something like this.’
Jess would make sure of it. He didn’t need that. Jess wasn’t so foolish that she couldn’t imagine that Dan would have had to go to a hospital or more than one, when his wife died.
Jess didn’t know what had been wrong with his wife or how she had died, but she’d seen how the children retreated into worried silence in Randurra’s emergency department this afternoon. Some of Luke’s anger had been about that, too, Jess suspected.
And she couldn’t have stayed within that embrace. Not without risking Dan realising how it was impacting on her. They had a working relationship and needed to stick to it, for so many reasons! ‘And I’d like to take the children back to the hospital very soon for a visit. We can take a gift to donate to the children’s ward. It’ll be a chance for the kids to see a brighter side of the hospital.’
Dan murmured an agreement. Jess hoped she could convince Luke to agree to this. She went to check on the girls, and then Dan’s sons. Rob was fine. Luke was playing a computer game in his room, screeching a racing car around corners on the screen. Would that help him get out his aggression? Should Jess try to speak to him?
She knocked on his door and waited for his head to turn. ‘Luke—’
‘Dad told me you’re staying.’ He’d paused the game for the moment it took him to speak the words. ‘Doesn’t mean I have to like it.’
‘No. It doesn’t mean that.’ Jess pushed back a sigh and left him to it.
When she came back, Ella was stirring in the travel cot and Jess got her up and took care of her needs and set about watching over everyone while she organised a meal. Everyone except Luke, who was still in his room.
Annapolly was okay. And Jess still had a job. She was more than grateful about that. Dealing with Dan’s eldest was no doubt going to be even more difficult now, but Jess wasn’t about to give up. She could see a good boy in there beneath Luke’s aggression.
And the reason for his aggression, Jess? The fact that he didn’t like the vibe he noticed between you and his father? What about the fact that vibe hasn’t gone away?
In the end, it would be irrelevant and Jess had to hope that Luke would see that eventually. Whether Jess was aware of Dan as a man or not and even if Dan was aware of her as a woman, it wasn’t something that could or should be pursued between them.
If Jess thought that Luke should allow his father to do whatever he wanted when it came to women, she was smart enough to know that she should not interfere.
Dan watched Jess settle his family in for the evening. She’d whipped up a meal for everyone while she kept a close eye on what all the children were doing, and kept her baby daughter happy, but he could see the tension was still within her.
Rebecca had looked just as devastated after the first trip to the hospital over a hurt child.
But Jess wasn’t Rebecca, wasn’t anything like Dan’s late wife. Dan had hugged Jess because she’d looked as if she needed it, and he had rapidly realised the hug could easily have become more for him. He’d wanted so much