‘Eleven days. You don’t mind, do you, Belle?’
No, she didn’t mind. She loved her baby nephew, and she had days off work owing to her.
Six days into the trip, Victoria had been killed in a landslide on the side of a jungle-clad mountain. It was an exotic end to an exotic life, and a difficult start for a little boy. He deserved better, and he was going to get it in future, Annabelle had vowed.
Only now, because of Dylan Calford, he wasn’t.
The electric jug boiled and she poured steaming water onto the little mounds of shiny granules at the bottom of each mug, creating a hissing sound. The coffee smelled good and rich and fresh, but unmistakably like instant. She had real ground beans, and a whiz-bang Christmas-gift coffee-machine, but wasn’t going to waste either the coffee or the machine on Dylan Calford today. The coffee took longer to make that way, and might give him the mistaken impression that she wasn’t furious.
‘Here.’
She handed him the muddy black brew, and plonked a plate of sweet biscuits onto the coffee-table. There wasn’t much room on it at the moment. Duncan was running back and forth between his toy chest and the table, depositing his trucks and cars there one by one in a long, snaking row. His sound effects were loud.
‘Active little boy,’ Dylan commented.
‘He doesn’t have ADHD,’ Annabelle said.
‘Did I say—?’
‘A lot of people have said it. The manager of his child-care centre wanted him assessed.’
‘But you didn’t think it was necessary?’
‘No. Because when he’s with me, he’s fine. Active, yes. Top-of-the-chart active, but I read up on the subject when the issue was first raised, and he doesn’t show any of the other signs of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The psychologist I finally took him to agreed. His concentration is fully engaged when he’s interested in something. He’s not aggressive, unless he’s handled aggressively first.’ Or not often, anyway, she revised inwardly, thinking of a couple of recent incidents at child-care. These were the reason she’d consulted the child psychologist, and she’d found his ideas on the issue very sensible. She summarised them briefly to Dylan.
‘He can’t express his feelings very well yet. His language skills aren’t good enough. So he gets frustrated in a situation where he’s not happy, and there have been a couple of incidents of biting and kicking at his child-care centre. A lot of young children go through a similar stage, and they grow out of it, if it’s handled in the right way.’
If. A big ‘if’, in this case, when Annabelle herself couldn’t be with him, and the staff at child-care didn’t have the resources to give him the extra attention he needed.
Knowing she could talk for minutes on end about Duncan, his difficulties and her feelings, she finished, ‘He just likes to be on the go, to head for the horizon and explore.’
Like Vic had. Perhaps he had received his temperament from her.
‘Parents usually know best,’ Dylan said.
‘I am his parent!’ She glared at him. ‘Or the closest thing he’s got to one, anyhow.’
‘Yes, that’s what I meant. You’d know, and I’m guessing you’re not influenced too much by wishful thinking either. Or not usually.’
He frowned, and Annabelle flushed. Was that a reference to Alex and their marriage plans? It was! She’d blurted out far too much to Dylan yesterday in her anger.
‘Why are you here, Dylan?’ she asked him coldly.
‘To make an offer. Some kind of compensation. I want to cover the cost of the reception at least.’
‘Alex is the one to approach about that, although I doubt he’d accept it. I wouldn’t!’
‘And ask you if there’s any other way I can make up for—’
‘There isn’t,’ she snapped. ‘Short of offering to marry me yourself.’
It had to be one of the most ill-thought-out suggestions she’d ever made, a product of fatigue and stress, and disappointment and anger, and something else she didn’t have a name for. Something new. She didn’t usually come out with wild statements like that.
Dylan laughed. It was a rich, confident sound. In any other circumstances, she would have wanted to join in. ‘Perhaps that’s exactly what I should do,’ he said. ‘The only thing that would really make the grade, right?’
‘I didn’t mean—’
‘Thanks. You’ve made me feel better.’ He was still grinning at her, his dark gaze sweeping over her like a caress. It disturbed her.
‘How?’
‘By proving to me that I did the right thing. The insane thing, under the circumstances, and I hadn’t realised it would be the show-stopping announcement that it was, but if you could propose me as a substitute husband—’
‘I wasn’t serious.’
‘One day later.’
‘I wasn’t serious!’
‘Even as a joke, then doesn’t that tell you—?’
‘Nothing.’ She shook her head sharply, clenched teeth aching. ‘It was a stupid, meaningless thing to say. It doesn’t tell me anything.’
‘I dare you, Annabelle.’ There was a light of challenge and determination in his expression now that made her uncomfortable. He was leaning forward in his seat, his strength casually apparent. ‘I dare you to consider the proposition. I’ve got just as much to offer you as Alex does. Not exactly the same things, perhaps, but equivalent. Better, possibly, in some areas. Think about it.’
And suddenly, graphically, she was.
She was thinking about a wedding—symbol of solved problems—and a wedding night, and a bed with Dylan Calford in it. Naked. Or possibly not quite naked yet, but with some snug-fitting black stretch fabric across his groin. And smiling. The way he was smiling now, with a challenge glinting in his eyes, and a wicked, delicious expression that said, I can read your mind.
She went hot all over. My sainted aunt! She’d never thought of Dylan Calford that way before! He’d been engaged or married or absorbed in his divorce for the entire three and a half years she’d known him, and that had meant he’d been off limits. Not just in her eyes, but in his own.
He didn’t give off the knowing, overtly sexual vibe that available, good-looking men so often exuded. And, anyway, they rarely encountered each other outside the demanding environment of surgery, and never away from the hospital. When they worked together, there was always too much else to think about.
Today was different. There were no patients, no colleagues. His property settlement was at the negotiation stage, with the one-year anniversary of his separation already past. The vibe was there, singing and throbbing like the strings of an instrument. Two contradictory feelings warred inside her.
The first was instinct more than thought, and insisted, You’ll learn more from this than you ever learned from Alex. The second was an impatient need to reject the whole thing as dangerous, untrustworthy and insignificant.
The second feeling won.
‘You don’t mean it,’ she told Dylan flatly.
Hardly aware of what she was doing, she wrapped her arms across her body to try and stroke away the goose-bumps that had risen on her arms. Her nipples ached, and deep inside her there was a heaviness and a heat that hadn’t been there a few minutes ago. Definitely, she didn’t want any of it. Not now.
‘No,’ he agreed. ‘You’re right. I don’t. But you thought about it, didn’t you?’ His eyes were still