‘But the tomato sauce—’
‘Will keep until tomorrow, won’t it?’
She nodded.
‘Great. I’m in charge of food this evening.’
She started to stand again. ‘No way! I’ve tasted your so-called cooking, remember?’
‘Trust me. You’ll live.’
He opened a bottle of wine and poured a glass for her. ‘First, you are going to sip this. Then you are going to have a long, hot soak in the bath while I make sure madam has finished her homework and gets ready for bed. Then we’ll eat. Deal?’
Gaby took a sip of wine and looked up at him through her lashes, evidently wary of this new, polite Luke. ‘Deal.’
Luke scraped the pasta sauce into a large bowl and left it to cool. He could feel Gaby watching him as he washed up the sauté pan. She must think he was ready to revert to his grumpy old self at any time.
He picked up a dish towel to dry his hands. Her teeth were biting the corner of her lip, as if she were trying to decide whether she should say something or not.
‘From now on I’m not going to call you Dr Armstrong. I’m going to call you Dr Jekyll.’
Luke grinned, and then he laughed. Even Gaby gave a reluctant smile and looked away.
‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said, and walked out of the room.
Gaby tried to turn the hot tap with her toe, but it was wedged fast. She swiped some of the bubbles away and reached forward to top up the bath with hot water.
Luke Armstrong was a surprise. It took a real man to be able to admit when he was wrong. David had raised his voice to her on a predictably regular basis, yet he had never once said sorry. How she’d ever thought he was a man worth sticking around for was a mystery to her. She shook her head and picked up a book to read while she waited for the water to go cold.
Later, as she was dressing in her comfy old tracksuit, she noticed the house was oddly quiet. She walked across to Heather’s bedroom, knocked gently on the door and turned the handle.
Heather looked up from the book she was reading. ‘Hi.’
‘Hi there. You’re being very quiet.’
‘I’m allowed to stay up fifteen minutes longer if I read quietly in bed. Luke…Dad said I could.’
Gaby smiled. It was great to hear Heather call him Dad, even if it didn’t yet fall out of her mouth naturally. She kissed Heather on the forehead. ‘I’ll be up later to turn out the light, okay?’
‘Okay. But don’t rush. This book is really good.’ With that, she turned the page and carried on reading, and Gaby crept out and made her way downstairs. Luke was nowhere to be seen. She padded into the lounge, sank into one of the large comfortable sofas and tucked her legs up under herself. The fire had been lit, and the feel of its glow on her face was soporific. She hadn’t even realised she’d closed her eyes until she heard the front door bang and they snapped open.
It was Luke. He stuck his head through the lounge door and smiled at her. Her stomach did a weird little bellyflop. What was that all about?
‘There you are.’ He walked into the room and deposited a couple of plain carrier bags on the coffee table.
‘What have you got there?’
One side of his mouth drew upwards in a wry smile. ‘Humble Pie.’
She smiled back at him as he unloaded the bags. From the delicious smells wafting her way, she was certain it was Chinese takeaway. He opened all the cartons and disappeared into the kitchen for plates and chopsticks, while Gaby peered in each container to see what was what.
Salt and pepper king prawns! Her absolute favourite.
Luke returned and they set about demolishing his ‘pie’. She almost forgot as she sat there, legs crossed on the sofa, that he was her employer. A very stupid thing to do. But, as they talked and ate and laughed, she couldn’t help seeing him as the man who was slowly becoming her friend.
Luke watched Gaby as she reached over for the last king prawn. She looked totally at home here. In fact, this old house hadn’t felt like a home at all until she’d arrived. And, all he’d done was grump and bark at her. He’d been a Grade A pain in the backside. Well, from tonight, all that was going to change. It was about time he polished up his social skills, and Gaby certainly deserved to be the one who got to see them first.
So he made a real effort to be nice and charming and talkative. And all of a sudden, he wasn’t trying, he was just doing it. And it all felt so natural that he couldn’t believe he’d forgotten how. With Gaby it was easy.
Just look at her now, smiling as she pushed her plate away and took a sip of her wine.
‘I haven’t really told you how much I appreciate all you’ve done with Heather.’
‘I haven’t done anything special.’
Oh, no? Then why couldn’t he duplicate it? Why was it so hard for him to connect with his daughter the way she did? He threw the carton he was scraping out back on to the coffee table.
‘Do you think we’re ever going to find some common ground, Heather and I?’
‘Luke—’ Gaby shook her head and laughed ‘—I can’t believe you don’t see it! The pair of you are so alike, you’re practically carbon copies. Of course, you’ll find some common ground.’
‘We are? I mean, we will?’
‘Yes! She’s a mini version of you. A baby control freak.’
‘I’m sorry. Did you say “control freak”?’
Gaby nodded. She looked as if she were trying not to laugh. ‘That’s why you clash so much. Neither one of you is willing to give an inch sometimes. She needs to be in charge of her destiny just as much as you do.’
He opened his mouth to contradict her, but closed it again and stared at the ceiling. ‘You think?’
‘You just need to ease off a bit and she’ll calm down. Stop trying to do everything for her. She’s not the little six-year-old you left behind any more. And you can’t make up for lost time by treating her as if she were.’
‘And you think this will improve things?’
‘It certainly won’t hurt. You’ve already started doing it a little. Just keep going, a step at a time.’
‘How do you know all this stuff? Is this what they teach you at nanny school?’
Gaby shuffled in her seat a little. She seemed to be embarrassed. ‘Let’s just say that, as a child, I used to feel a lot like she did. I know what it’s like to have your whole life mapped out for you. It’s suffocating. Every little thing had to be just so, or it was the end of the world. I don’t know how I stood it as long as I did.’
Somehow the conversation had shifted and he knew she wasn’t talking about her childhood any more. It had to be the ex-husband. What an idiot.
‘Earlier on…’
‘I thought we weren’t going to talk about earlier on, Luke.’
‘Let me finish, woman. I was going to ask you about your drawing—the one you had in the pad when you came in.’
‘It wasn’t very good. I threw it away. I’m a bit rusty.’
‘Better than me. I have problems drawing a straight line.’
‘Painting