met that gaze unflinchingly. ‘Did you have a good sleep?’ he enquired.
Almost as if he knew it had been the early hours of the morning before sleep finally claimed her! ‘Very good, thank you,’ she said tersely, going down the steps into the garden.
Liam watched her progress down the lawn as she walked towards them, his eyes narrowed on her slenderness in the black denims and deep blue jumper. She knew soft wisps of her dark hair were framing the paleness of her make-upless face.
Well, she hadn’t realised they would have a visitor so early on a Sunday morning!
Laura met his gaze unflinchingly. ‘Enjoying yourselves?’ she asked.
‘Isn’t it great?’ Bobby was the one to enthuse, obviously thrilled with his new toy, ‘I’ve always wanted a kite of my own,’ he explained with a grin looking up at Liam.
Laura felt that pain in her chest again as she looked at the two of them. How could they possibly have become so close in the hour or so Liam had been here? A natural gravitation to each other…? Whatever it was, that ache in her chest was starting to become a permanent feature!
‘I trust you thanked Liam for his gift?’ she asked Bobby, completely avoiding looking at Liam now.
Anyone looking at them, Laura knew, who was unaware of the real circumstances, would have assumed they were a family: mother and father with a much-loved son. But anyone would be wrong. Very wrong!
‘Of course I did,’ Bobby replied with obvious surprise; one thing he had known from an early age were good manners.
Her resentment at Liam’s presence here was starting to show, even to Bobby, Laura realised guiltily. But how else was she supposed to feel? Liam should not be here!
‘All little boys love to have a kite of their own to fly,’ Liam chuckled.
But it felt like a slap in the face to her that Liam had been the one to realise—and rectify!—the lack of a kite in her son’s life. It seemed to bring into glaring focus her own inadequacies as a single mother, concerning the upbringing of the little boy. A father would have realised about the kite. Robert, for all he had lacked experience in the role until the late arrival of Bobby into his life, would have realised.
Laura couldn’t help wondering what other oversights, as a lone female bringing up a male, she might have made…
‘Don’t start beating yourself with a stick,’ Liam said softly at her side, his gaze soft on her face now as Bobby moved off down the garden, holding tightly to the string of his kite. ‘I would be just as lost if you happened to have a daughter rather than a son,’ he assured her.
Laura looked up at him. ‘That situation will never arise,’ she told him distantly.
Dark brows rose over mocking blue eyes. ‘You aren’t even thirty yet, Laura!’
Old enough to know she would never have any more children. After her earlier mistake she knew she would have to be married for that to happen.
The only man she had ever loved in a romantic way had walked out of her life without even a glance backwards. The man she had married, although she hadn’t loved him in the same way, had been the most wonderful man she could ever hope to meet. To expect she could ever find both those things in another man was just expecting too much…
‘Old enough to know better,’ she retorted.
Liam seemed to have lost interest in the subject as he turned his attention back to Bobby.
At least, it seemed that he had until his next remark.
‘Would you have married me, Laura, if I had asked you eight years ago?’
Laura gasped at the unexpectedness of the question, all the colour draining from her cheeks as she looked up at him with widely hurt eyes.
She had told Amy that Liam had never asked her to marry him, but would she have married Liam eight years ago if he had?
Like a shot came the instant answer. She had lived for him eight years ago, would have done anything for him. Had done anything for him. If he had asked her to marry him she would have become his slave for life!
She breathed deeply and evenly, desperately trying to regain control over her shattered composure. He had no right! No right at all to say things like this to her!
‘I was very naı¨ve and inexperienced, Liam,’ she finally answered.
‘That’s no answer, Laura,’ he responded. ‘Besides, you assured me—only yesterday, wasn’t it…?—that where I was concerned you were never a child.’
‘It’s possible to be naı¨ve and inexperienced at any age, Liam,’ she came back. ‘But to answer your question…’ She drew in a sharp breath. ‘I suppose it would have to be yes,’ she bit out with distaste. ‘And what a pretty mess that would have made of both our lives!’
Liam looked down at her searchingly. ‘Do you really believe that?’ he finally asked.
She gave him a pitying look. ‘Don’t you?’ she derided. ‘Liam, I meant so much to you then that you were married to someone else within weeks of leaving England—’
‘A mistake I definitely wouldn’t have made if I had already been married to you!’ He reached out to grasp the tops of her arms. ‘You might just have been what I needed to keep my feet on the ground!’
Laura shook her head ruefully. ‘And I might just have got myself trampled to death in your stampede to get out of any marriage between the two of us!’
Liam gave a perplexed frown, shaking his head. ‘You don’t regret a thing, do you…?’ he realised slowly, his hands dropping away from her arms.
In a word—no. If she had never been involved with Liam then she could never have given Robert, a man she had already owed so much, the family he had so desired. Her marriage to Robert was something she would never regret. If she regretted anything at all, then it was meeting Liam again—
Was it?
Did she really wish that had never happened?
She looked up at him searchingly, at the changes in him, the obvious signs of physical maturity. But hadn’t he changed in other ways too? Hadn’t he shown concern for her yesterday morning over that newspaper article? An article he was completely responsible for, though, she acknowledged hardly. But he could have had no idea of how far Janey Wilson would play up the possibility of a personal relationship between the two of them.
More to the point, much as she might like to try to deny it, even to herself, hadn’t she responded to Liam yesterday morning? Hadn’t she forgotten everything but the two of them, totally lost in the aching need, the long forgotten emotions Liam had roused in her? What would have been the conclusion of that meeting if Bobby hadn’t interrupted them?
She swallowed hard, her eyes meeting Liam’s unwaveringly. ‘There’s no point in regrets, Liam,’ she told him flatly. ‘The past is gone, never to return. The future is unknown, for all of us. Which only leaves the present. I’m quite happy with my present exactly the way that it is.’ She looked across
