Katya watched him go. He was broad, strong looking, but that didn’t necessarily count against him. The man who had ruined her career and put her in her own hospital, as a patient rather than a nurse, hadn’t been all that imposing. It was the eyes that mattered and there was kindness in this man’s dark eyes.
‘Luke.’ Katya too was being watched, and Olenka unglued herself from the doorway to the stockroom, letting it drift closed behind her.
‘So Peter’s getting a kitten, eh?’ The best thing to do was to ignore Olenka. The man was easy on the eye but his name was immaterial. All she needed to know about him was that he liked his latte with two shots.
‘Yes, he’s wanted one for a long time. He’s old enough to look after it properly.’ Olenka had switched back into Polish. Although Katya was a Londoner, whereas her cousin Olenka had been born and brought up in Poland, they shared a love of the language. It reminded Katya of her father, and Olenka of home.
‘It’ll do him good to have something to look after. What kind of kitten?’
Olenka shrugged. ‘Lucasz says they’re a bit of everything. There are seven kittens and they’re all different, so I’m going to take Piotr to go and choose one.’ She quirked her lips downwards. ‘Next week. Lucasz can’t rush nature and neither can I.’
‘Thought you said his name was Luke.’ Katya slipped back into English to make her point.
‘I like him. It is a compliment.’ Olenka narrowed her eyes. ‘You like him?’
‘He seems nice enough. I don’t really know him.’
Olenka dismissed her with a gesture. ‘It only takes one look to find out if you like a man.’
Katya had thought the same once upon a time. ‘I don’t do first impressions, Ola. My judgement isn’t that good.’
Olenka shook her head. ‘You made one mistake …’
‘One’s enough.’ Katya hadn’t suspected for a moment that everything had been about to blow up in her face so badly when she’d tried to help a patient. You didn’t get to make mistakes like that and still keep your faith in your own judgement.
Olenka groaned in frustration. Just the way Katya would have done before it had all happened, but now she knew differently. ‘You can look. You don’t need to touch.’
That was the trouble really. Katya was beginning to feel that she did need to touch. ‘He’s not that good-looking.’
‘Pftt. Are you blind?’ Olenka gave Katya’s comment exactly the consideration it deserved.
A clatter at the doorway came to her rescue and Katya turned, smiling at the man who was hurrying towards the counter. The first of the eight-thirty coffee rush. No time now to think about Luke’s dark, slightly dishevelled curls or his kind eyes. Or wonder whether those broad shoulders really were enough to keep someone safe. In all likelihood they were. Just not this someone.
PETER WAS SITTING obediently at the corner table of the coffee shop, one of his mother’s special hot chocolate drinks and a computer game in front of him. Katya took her eyes off him long enough to serve two women who couldn’t decide which drink was lowest in calories, and when she flipped her gaze back across the counter, Luke was sitting opposite him.
‘Peter … Peter …’ Peter was rummaging in his backpack and ignored her completely, but Luke looked up. Fair enough. This was a coffee shop and she worked here. There was no reason why she shouldn’t ask Luke herself. ‘Would you like something to drink?’
‘The hot chocolate looks nice.’ He got to his feet.
‘That’s okay. Stay there, I’ll bring it across.’ Katya made his drink carefully, creamy and rich with shaved chocolate sprinkled on top. When she set it in front of him he smiled appreciatively.
‘Thanks. What’s the damage?’
‘It’s on the house.’ Katya allowed herself a smile in his general direction. ‘I hear that the kittens are at home for visitors today.’
‘Yeah. Peter tells me he’s going to photograph them—’ He broke off as Peter passed his new camera across the table, and Luke turned it over in his hands to inspect it carefully. ‘Nice one, Peter. You’ll be able to take some great pictures with that.’
‘Aunt Katya bought it for my birthday,’ Peter piped up before Katya could stop him. ‘She’s not really my aunt, though.’
‘No?’ Luke gave the boy a conspiratorial smile.
‘No. She’s not my mother’s sister, she’s my mother’s cousin.’ Peter was counting on his fingers, the way he always did when he was trying to get a difficult detail exactly right. ‘But I call her Aunt.’
‘Fair enough.’ Luke nodded, clearly fighting to keep his face straight.
‘She’s going to help me look after the kitten.’ Peter was on a roll now, information leaking out of every new sentence. ‘Aunt Katya’s come to stay with us for a while.’
Luke already knew her name and now he knew where she lived and who her family were. It wasn’t Peter’s fault and Katya stopped herself from chiding him for it. She didn’t want to teach the boy to be fearful.
She reserved the right to be cautious herself, though. Katya turned, more quickly perhaps than she should, and bolted back behind the counter. Back to her own space, where she was just an anonymous face, who smiled, brewed coffee and took the customers’ money. She could feel Luke’s eyes on her and she ignored him. Olenka would be finished in the office soon, and Peter would not allow Luke and his mother to stay here a moment longer than necessary. He would be gone soon enough.
Katya followed Luke’s SUV as it bumped down the dirt track that led towards a high, brick-built barn standing commandingly on the brow of a hill, a little way back from the road. It was obviously in the midst of renovations and the SUV came to a halt on a levelled area of gravel with a couple of portable cabins at its edge, painted green in an attempt to blend in with the landscape.
Katya had wondered whether it would be forgivable to stay in the car but dismissed the idea. Olenka was embroiled in a crisis with one of her suppliers and Katya had promised her that she would help Peter choose his kitten. That undertaking could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be accomplished from the car so she followed Luke and Peter past the main door at the front to the back of the barn, where the downward slope of the hill revealed an entrance into another storey beneath the one she’d seen from the road. Inside, the large space had been partitioned and washed down, ready to be decorated.
‘Which one do you think, Katya?’ Luke had made sure that Peter knew how to handle the kittens and then left him to the task of carefully stroking each one of them, taking up a vantage point next to her in the corner of the room.
‘The little one with the black patch over his eye looks like a pirate.’ The tiny creature was the least outgoing of the brood, keeping to the large box that had been lined with cushions and an old rug.
‘Doesn’t he just. Unfortunately he really is blind in that eye.’
‘He was born that way?’
Luke grimaced, shaking his head. ‘Nope. They were abandoned and when someone found them and brought them here, he had an eye infection. We managed to save one eye, but the infection got to the optic nerve in the other and he’s completely blind on that side.’
‘He’ll be difficult to find a