The Aristocrat and the Single Mom (5 page)

‘Are you free tomorrow night?’ he asked.

Tomorrow was Saturday. Reluctantly she shook her head. ‘The weekends are our busiest days on
The Merry Dolphin
.’

He frowned. ‘The what?’

‘My boat—
The Merry Dolphin
. Look—’ she pointed ‘—there she is.’

She watched
The Merry Dolphin
glide through the entrance to the marina before glancing back at Simon. His jaw had dropped. ‘That’s your boat?’

‘It is.’ She couldn’t contain a surge of pride. ‘Lovely, isn’t she?’

‘Yes.’

But he was looking at her, not the boat. She tucked a nonexistent strand of hair behind her ear self-consciously. ‘If you like, you could spend the day on the boat with me tomorrow.’

‘I’d like that. And Sunday?’

‘I’m working a half day this Sunday. I should be finished by two o’clock. I’m free in the evening.’

There was that sexy grin of his again. She scrambled to her feet before she could do something stupid—like kiss him again. ‘And now I have to meet with my accountant.’ She needed to get away, give herself a sensible talking-to.

They arranged to meet back at her office in a couple of hours and, although she did have a long overdue appointment with her accountant, although she knew she needed to give herself a darn good talking-to, she found her feet dragging as she walked away from Simon in holiday-maker mode.

S
IMON
couldn’t keep the anticipation out of his step as he turned into the arcade that led down to Kate’s office. On cue, as if she’d sensed him near, she stepped out of her door and locked it.

Desire fire-balled low down in his stomach. Immediately. Without giving him time to draw breath. He stopped and feasted his eyes on her and decided breathing didn’t matter. It’d kick in again when it needed to.

She was lovely. Utterly lovely. Blonde-haired and blue-eyed, lithe and strong. But it was more than how she looked. It was her essence, something innate to her, that drew him—the light in her eyes, the abandon with which she threw chips and turned cartwheels. He’d never seen the like in his life. Nobody had ever made him laugh so quickly and easily. Nobody had made him feel so accepted for who he was rather than what he was. Nobody had ever made him feel so alive.

Staying in her house, taking her out to dinner, was probably folly.

Of course it was folly.

Kate chose that moment to turn and when she saw him her whole face lit up. It made him feel ten feet tall. It made him want to sweep her up in his arms and kiss her again.

He didn’t. He said, ‘Did you have a good meeting with your accountant?’ instead.

Boring. Predictable. Felice would take him to task over his lack of imagination.

‘Yes, thank you.’ Kate didn’t take him to task for boringness or predictability. She smiled as if she appreciated his interest.

They stared at one another for a long moment. Simon’s mouth went dry with longing. Then Kate shook her head with a laugh, took his arm and led him back the way he’d come. ‘Now I’m guessing you have a hire car somewhere nearby?’

‘It’s just down the road a little way. Where’s your car?’ He tried to pull his mind back to practicalities, tried to steel himself against the light touch of her hand tucked into the crook of his arm. It fitted there so snugly he couldn’t resist pulling it in against his side more securely.

‘My car is stowed safely in the garage at home.’ She smiled up at him and her eyes danced. ‘I walk to work.’

‘Good.’ It meant he didn’t have to let go of her just yet. It meant he didn’t have to lose sight of her for even a few minutes.

‘Ooh, very nice,’ she said when he led her to the Mercedes E class he’d hired.

He opened the passenger door with a flourish. ‘Your chariot, my lady.’

He watched her settle back against the seat and run her hands appreciatively over the leather. Mind-boggling images scorched themselves on his brain. Images of her hands running over his body like that. Images of her naked against the pale creamy leather and—

‘Ooh, sat nav! Jesse is going to love this car.’

Her words snapped him back. ‘Jesse?’

She glanced up and her smile widened. ‘Jesse. My son.’

He closed the door. Quick and sharp. Without realising he’d meant to.

She had a child!

He stumbled around the back of the car, his movements jerky and uncoordinated as if his body didn’t belong to him any
more, as if gravity had taken a tighter hold on him and was trying to pull him right down through the earth.

He paused, resting his hands on his knees. A child? This lovely woman, with her wide smile and her blonde ponytail that bounced as she walked, had a child? A son?

No! He wanted to shout the denial to the sky. He’d misheard. He had to have misheard.

He forced himself upright, forced his legs forward until he stood by the driver’s door, then he forced himself inside the car. He prayed his face did not betray him. ‘You said you have a son?’

‘That’s right. He’s seven and, like all boys, loves gadgets.’ She rolled her eyes and gestured to the satellite navigation device. ‘Didn’t Felice tell you about him?’

‘No.’

She turned in her seat to face him more fully. The spot between her eyes, just above her nose, crinkled. ‘Simon, what exactly did Felice tell you?’

Next to nothing, or so it would seem. ‘Her notes were…brief,’ he admitted. Talking about Felice suddenly seemed a whole lot safer than discussing the fact that Kate had a child.

‘Simon?’

He turned and met her gaze.

‘When did you arrive in Australia?’

‘This morning.’

Her eyes widened. ‘This morning, but…Wow! You must be shattered.’

That just about summed it up.

‘Well, chop-chop.’ She clapped her hands. ‘The sooner we’re home, the sooner you can have a shower and start feeling like a normal human being again.’

Her enthusiasm—her essence—wrapped around him and he found himself smiling back at her. He couldn’t help it. The woman was a witch. She was irresistible.

She had a child. His smile disappeared.

‘And wait until you see the view from my back garden,’ she
said as he started the car. ‘It’s to die for. Turn right up here at the roundabout.’

He followed her directions.

‘I promise it will pep you up like nothing else. A shower, then a beer in the back garden—how does that sound?’

‘Pretty good.’ It did.

Except—where did her kid fit into that scenario? He tried to tell himself it didn’t matter, but he knew he was lying.

‘Left and then a quick right,’ she said when they reached a T-junction. ‘And…here it is. Home.’

She pointed to the right. Ramshackle was the first word that came to Simon’s mind. He swung the Mercedes into the drive and pulled it to a halt beneath a carport attached to the double garage. Only Kate’s house wasn’t rundown ramshackle—it was more sprawling ramshackle. It was white weatherboard and its shape didn’t conform to any style of architecture Simon had ever heard about.

Two architect-designed double-storey, cement-rendered monstrosities sat at either side—one in shades of apricot and pink, the other in blues and greys. They should’ve dwarfed Kate’s house, but they didn’t. Their windows were firmly closed to maintain air-conditioned perfection. Kate’s house wasn’t shut up. In fact, all the windows Simon could see were open, revealing sheer white curtains that stirred on the slightest movement of the air. In a breeze those curtains would probably flutter right out of the windows to fly like flags.

Kate grinned at him as if she could read his thoughts. The dolphin charm she wore on a silver chain around her neck glittered in the afternoon sunlight. ‘It was just a tiny two-bedroom weekender with a sleep-out veranda when my father bought it. He added to it over the years.’

‘It’s created an…interesting effect.’

The dolphin charm suited her perfectly—graceful, strong, with just a hint of mischief. He wanted to reach out and touch the spot where it nestled in the creamy hollow of her throat.

‘C’mon, I’ll show you something that will really blow your mind.’

She
blew his mind. And, suddenly, he didn’t want her to. She had a child. He didn’t want his skin tightening up whenever she smiled at him. He didn’t want to notice how she walked with fluid grace as if the air were water.

And he had no business imagining what she’d look like naked. No business at all.

He grabbed her arm before she reached the front door. ‘Are you married? Is there a…a father for this child of yours?’

She stared at him for a moment. Finally, she smiled. It threw him. ‘Of course this child of mine has a father. It wasn’t an immaculate conception, Simon. But no, I’m not married. I’m single.’

That spot between her eyes crinkled up again. ‘Do you really think I would’ve kissed you if I was involved with someone else? Agreed to go out on a date with you? I’m aware your social circles are probably far more sophisticated than mine, but I don’t appreciate what you’re suggesting.’

She glanced down at the hand that encircled her arm and he hastily released her. ‘No, of course not.’

She rubbed her arm at the spot where his fingers had curved around her flesh and he wondered just how tightly he’d held her. Shame hit him. ‘I’m sorry.’ She had been nothing but kind to him today. She didn’t deserve this. ‘I just…’

‘Panicked?’

He thought about that, then nodded. ‘Yes.’

She smiled at him again. ‘Crazy.’

The whole day had been crazy. Thoughts of him and this woman together the craziest of all. But they did have a fortnight. And, if she was willing…After all, the child had to go to bed at some time, didn’t he?

Something about that thought seemed off kilter. He dragged a hand down his face. He’d think about it tomorrow, after he’d had a decent night’s sleep. At the moment, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to form a sensible thought to save himself.

Kate led him through the house via a crooked, higgledy-piggledy hallway to a double glass sliding door at the back. She pulled it open and stepped outside. ‘There.’ She flung her arms wide. ‘What do you think?’

Simon forced his gaze from the tempting curves and delights of her body, from the ravishing vision of having those arms wrapped around him, and forced his eyes to the view she indicated.

He blinked and sucked in a breath. When he let it out again a sense of calm—totally at odds with the storm raging through him moments before—descended over him.

‘Amazing, isn’t it?’ she whispered.

‘Utterly.’ He found himself speaking quietly too, not wanting to break the stillness, the sense of tranquillity. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt so at peace.

‘When she first saw this view, it was one of only two times I ever saw Felice at a loss for words.’

He could understand that. Spread out before them, calm and smooth, touched with orange and gold as the sun started to set, was a bay as wide as he’d ever seen. The view was unimpeded all the way out to the sea horizon. Below them was a strip of green—a park lined with gums and flame trees—and, beyond that, away to the right, a strip of white beach.

‘What was the second?’

‘The second what?’

She didn’t turn to meet his gaze, but continued to gobble up the view, to guzzle it as if it renewed her somehow, topped up the reserves the day had depleted. Simon suddenly wished he’d left the question unasked, that he’d left her to enjoy her view in peace.

‘Second what?’ she repeated, glancing at him.

‘The second time you saw Felice at a loss for words?’

Her eyes became gentle at some memory, but she shook her head. ‘That isn’t a story for today. I’ll leave Felice to tell it.’

‘Mum!’

Simon swung around to find a sandy-haired boy racing
towards them from the garden next door. When he glanced back at Kate, a smile lit her face with so much joy it stole his breath.

The child flung his arms around her waist. ‘I got a six! I got a six!’

‘Woo hoo!’

Simon blinked as he watched them do a victory dance. At least that was what he figured the tangle of limbs and jumping in the air was meant to indicate.

‘And I clean bowled two of them!’

They performed more victory dancing. Over Jesse’s head Kate grinned at him, completely oblivious to his consternation—for which he was grateful.

‘Jesse is cricket mad,’ she explained.

Then she waved to someone who stood on the deck of the house next door. ‘Thanks, Flora. I hope he wasn’t any trouble.’

‘None at all. He and Nick keep each other occupied.’

Good Lord—there was another child? He could tell at a glance that this one wasn’t Kate’s, though.

With a wave, Flora and the child disappeared back inside their house.

‘Flora minds Jesse for me most afternoons. Just for an hour or so until I get home.’ She cuddled her son close. ‘And this, of course, is Jesse.’

An ache thumped to life in Simon’s chest and was echoed behind his eyes. Why did mothers always expect a person to find their children adorable?

‘Jesse, this is Felice’s brother…’

She glanced up at him expectantly. He shifted his weight from one foot to the other, not sure what she expected from him. Most of his friends kept their children firmly hidden. Which suited him just fine.

‘Would you prefer Simon or Mr Morton-Blake?’ she started slowly, as if he were a child too. Her eyes suddenly danced mischief. ‘Or Lord—’

‘Simon will be fine,’ he cut in quickly.

He stared at Jesse. Jesse stared back at him. Then, because he didn’t know what else to do, and Kate quite clearly expected something from him, he shot out his hand towards the child. ‘I’m pleased to meet you.’

Jesse’s eyes widened. He pressed into his mother’s side, but when she nudged him he reached out to shake Simon’s hand.

Simon gripped the child’s hand briefly. Then let it go. Fast. Children were so small and vulnerable, so noisy and destructive. And he didn’t want anything to do with this one.

‘I…um…would it be all right if I took that shower now?’

‘Of course.’

Kate beamed at him. It made the ache in his chest and behind his eyes thump harder.

‘I’ll show you your room.’

‘You have your own bathroom,’ Jesse said, trailing into the house after them.

Simon glanced back at him uneasily, then rolled his shoulders. ‘Excellent,’ he managed. At least he wouldn’t run into this pint-sized pocket of energy in that particular room of the house.

Kate opened one of the doors off the higgledy-piggledy hallway. ‘Here it is.’ She stood aside to let him enter, then pointed. ‘En suite is through that door there.’

‘Thank you.’

‘We’ll be back down that way in the kitchen or family room—’ she hitched her head in the direction they’d come ‘—when you’re finished.’

‘Okay.’

‘Oh, and I’d better grab you a towel.’

She disappeared back down the hallway. Jesse followed her and Simon heard him ask, ‘Is he really Felice’s brother?’

‘He sure is.’

‘Cool!’

It was Jesse who reappeared clutching a fluffy white bath towel. ‘Here you go.’ He handed it to Simon shyly.

Simon took it. ‘Thank you.’

‘Do you play cricket?’

Simon didn’t know what to say so he opted for the truth. ‘Yes.’ Then, because he didn’t know what else to do, he closed the door in the child’s face.

The shower made him feel cleaner, but not back to normal. He turned the heat up as far as he could stand it before finishing with a blast of cold. For penance. Only he couldn’t remember what he was paying penance for. He dragged the towel over his hair and scrubbed until his scalp tingled. A good night’s sleep—that was all he needed. He’d feel right again tomorrow.