‘You’re not telling me all those reporters are single?’
He laughed. ‘No, of course not, but they find it hard to have a normal family life. I didn’t want anything in the way. And anyway, I’d never met anyone who made me feel like settling down.’ He tipped his head on one side. ‘So tell me about you. I know about Pete but what did you do before you met him? How old were you then?’
‘Twenty-four. I’d finished my degree, decided biology didn’t really qualify me for anything and, anyway, I’d discovered I loved gardens, and so I did a garden design course and started work.’
‘Here.’
She laughed. ‘Well, yes, my father let me do their garden, and I did some others, and then I worked for one of the garden centre chains—the sort of thing you were threatening me with yesterday.’
He grinned. ‘Hardly threatening.’
‘Blackmailing, then. Anyway, that’s what I was doing when I met Pete.’
‘And you stopped when you had Beth?’
‘Only for a while,’ she told him, remembering her reluctance to go back to work full time. ‘I wanted to freelance, to break out on my own and work from home, but he said we couldn’t afford the risk. What he really meant was that he wasn’t prepared to fund me while it got off the ground, but Pete never really said what he meant—not until he walked out, and even then he didn’t discuss it.’
Harry shook his head. ‘I can’t believe he just legged it while you were at the supermarket.’
‘Pausing only to stop the credit card,’ she reminded him. ‘Still, water under the bridge and all that. And I’m much happier now than I was then.’ Except for the fact that she couldn’t afford to house her children without her parents’ generosity. That was a bit of a killer, always nagging at the back of her mind.
As if he’d read that mind, he said quietly, ‘And the house? I don’t imagine if you weren’t living here your parents would want to keep something this big on into their retirement.’
She shook her head. ‘No. Ideally they want to downsize and buy somewhere in Portugal, as well, to be near my grandparents. Well, my mother does. My father would be quite happy here, pottering in his garden, but he loves her, and whither thou goest and all that.’
He frowned. ‘I can’t imagine a woman in the world who’d want to follow me wherever I go.’
Or a woman, presumably, who he’d follow?
‘To the ends of the earth,’ she murmured, realising that, were things different, if she hadn’t had the children and if he’d asked her, she would follow him anywhere he asked her.
‘It sometimes feels like it,’ he replied. ‘And, like I say, no sane woman would want that.’
No sane woman, possibly, but where Harry was concerned she could never be accused of being sane. If she was sane, she wouldn’t have ended up sharing her roof with him, making him welcome, feeding his child for heaven’s sake!
‘So how’s Dan?’
Dan? ‘He’s fine,’ she said, reining in her rambling mind and concentrating on her brother. ‘He’s working in New York. He breezes in from time to time, sometimes without warning—he’s got a partner, Kate, but there’s no sign of them getting married, to my mother’s disappointment. She wants to see her firstborn settled, she says, before she turns up her toes.’
His eyes narrowed. ‘Is she sick?’ he asked, and she laughed.
‘No, not at all. She’s just despairing of Daniel. No, she and Dad are fine. Enjoying life.’ And she was holding them back, interfering with their plans for retirement. Oh, damn.
‘Em, are you OK?’
She met his eyes, gentle and concerned, and could have crumpled, but she didn’t. ‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she said. ‘Just a bit tired.’
‘Why don’t you turn in?’ he suggested.
She gave a wry smile. ‘Another appointment with Buttercup before I can go to bed, but I’ve got half an hour or so to kill, at the least. I might go and sort out the washing and tidy the kitchen.’
But the kitchen was tidy, and the washing could wait for the morning so she could put it on the line, so she just pulled it out of the machine into the plastic basket ready for the morning. She’d stick it by the door and then she wouldn’t forget, she thought, but he was in there with her, right behind her again, so that when she straightened up and stepped back with the washing basket in her hands, she cannoned into him and felt her head connect with his chin.
‘Ouch!’
‘Oh, Harry, I’m sorry!’ she said, turning to see if she’d hurt him, and found him ruefully rubbing his jaw, the fingertips rasping over the stubble and sending shivers skittering over her nerve endings.
He took the laundry basket out of her hands and put it down again. ‘I think it needs a magic kiss,’ he murmured. ‘Like the ones you give Beth and Freddie when they hurt themselves.’
‘Big baby,’ she teased. She must be mad. She shouldn’t rise to it, he was just being silly. She hadn’t really hurt him. Still, she lifted his fingers away, went up on tiptoe and pressed her lips to the spot, just because it was so irresistible.
‘There. Magic kiss, all better now,’ she said softly. And just as softly he replied, ‘You missed. It was here,’ and, turning his head, he touched his lips to hers.
For a moment her heart lodged in her throat, but then it broke free, beating wildly against her ribs, deafening her with the clamour of its rhythm. Deafening her to reason, certainly, because instead of moving away, taking herself out of reach, she went back up on tiptoe, slid her arms around his neck and kissed him right back.
He groaned softly, easing her closer, and she felt his fingers thread through her hair and cup her head, anchoring it against the onslaught of his mouth. Then the kiss gentled, and he lifted his head a fraction, dropping a daisy chain of hot, open-mouthed kisses over her cheek, her eye, down the side of her jaw. He traced a line around her ear, his breath teasing her hair and making it stand on end, then he moved on, down the side of her neck, across her throat, pausing over the wild fluttering pulse before continuing down, down, across her collar-bone, her shoulder, the slope of her breast.
He lifted his head and stared down at her. ‘You’ve caught the sun,’ he murmured, one finger trailing over the sensitive skin of her cleavage. ‘Do you have any idea,’ he went on gruffly, ‘just what you’ve been doing to me all day, running about in that little scrap of black Lycra?’
He traced the line the costume had followed, down, up—back down again…
She sucked in a breath and her ribs lifted, bringing his knuckles into contact with her breast, and he groaned again, his hands sliding down to bracket her waist, easing her closer as he trailed his tongue over the sun-warmed skin, leaving fire and ice in its wake. With a muttered oath he lifted her vest top out of the way, unclipped her bra and tenderly, reverently, cradled the burgeoning fullness of her breasts in his hard, hot hands.
He sucked in a breath, his head lifting so he could stare down at her, and his pupils were huge, his eyes dark as midnight with desire. His thumbs dragged over her nipples, sending sensation arrowing through her and bringing a cry to her lips, and slowly he lifted his hand and stared at it.
There was a bead of moisture on his thumb, pearly white, and as she watched he lowered his head and touched his tongue to it.
His eyes were still locked on hers, smouldering with unspoken need, but the touch of his hands had triggered her natural response, and she felt the milk beading on her nipples.
‘Harry, no,’ she moaned, anguished, and lifting her hands to his shoulders, she pushed him away, her heart clamouring, her body aching for him but common sense, finally,