voice sounded raw and hurt, and his fingers tightened on hers. She returned the pressure, offering wordless comfort, and after a moment the pressure eased and he sighed. ‘It’s crazy, I still miss him.’
‘I’m sure you do.’ Her mind rambled on, dealing with the nitty-gritty, imagining life in his household—imagining a week-day morning in term-time, with everybody’s homework lost on the kitchen table, three lunches to get, Nicky to wash and dress, buses to catch—hideous. ‘It’s a good job you were already writing,’ she added. ‘You couldn’t have looked after the children if you’d been at work.’
‘I was at work. I gave up. Luckily my writing was just taking off and I was able to pull out of the force and just about manage to live on my earnings.’
She shifted a little, turning towards him. ‘But the children must be provided for—you don’t have to pay everything for them, do you?’
He shook his head. ‘No. There is a fund I can call on, but I’m trying not to. They’ll need it when they’re older. It’s their inheritance.’
He slipped his fingers out of hers and stood up, holding his hand out again to draw her to her feet. ‘Walk?’ he suggested, and she cast an anxious glance back at her cabin, where her children were sleeping.
The sun had set now, and the village was settling into darkness. She didn’t like leaving them, but she sensed Jack needed this time out from his brood. She nodded. ‘All right—but just a little way—not out of sight.’
‘OK.’
They strolled along the water’s edge, not talking, not quite touching, sharing a companionable silence. Every now and then one of them scuffed a little stone, and it would roll into the water and send a ripple out across the surface.
‘It’s so peaceful,’ Jack murmured.
‘Mmm.’ She looked across the lake to the village centre, a hub of activity even this late at night, and at the edge, beside the water, she could see a restaurant. Lights from it twinkled in the lake, and she could see the faint flickering glow of candles on the tables.
‘It looks very romantic,’ she said, and could have kicked herself for the wistful tone in her voice.
She needn’t have worried. Jack was looking at it just as wistfully. ‘It would be nice to have a meal there without the kids,’ he murmured. ‘How about it? Shall we share a babysitter, order the kids pizza and go and paint the town red?’
The thought was wonderful. ‘Sounds good,’ she replied, gazing across the water. ‘Do you suppose they do babysitters?’
‘I think so. We can ask tomorrow. What’s on your agenda?’
She laughed. ‘I have no idea. Babysitting Nicky while you’re doing man stuff with Seb, otherwise I don’t know. The kids are sailing again, I think, and I might have a totally lazy day or maybe go swimming.’
‘Sounds good. The paintball game is first thing—if you’re sure about Nicky?’
‘If she’ll come to me.’
‘She will. She’s used to it, bless her—and then, if we can, we’ll go out tomorrow night and try and remember how we misspent our youth!’
Molly laughed. ‘Speak for yourself. My youth was exemplary.’
‘High time you started living a little, then,’ he murmured, and his voice slithered down her spine like melted chocolate, leaving a shiver in its wake.
And Molly suddenly had the feeling that a quiet dinner a` deux in the candlelit restaurant by the lake might be a very foolish move indeed…
CHAPTER THREE
AS JACK had promised, Nicky was quite happy to be left with her. A placid, cheerful child, she was perfectly content up to her elbows in flour and biscuit dough.
They baked, and, because Nicky wanted to play with the leftovers, Molly found leaves and helped her press them into the dough to make patterns of veins. They used coins and keys and all sorts of things to make patterns, and Nicky thought it was wonderful.
They had to make up more dough, and ended up with more on the child than on the table. Then they cooked the messy bits of dough for the ducks, cleaned up a bit and sat down to eat some of the proper biscuits which they’d made first.
The ducks were delighted with the bits and pieces, and Molly’s soft heart warmed watching Nicky laughing as the ducks pecked up the crumbs. She was so sweet, so spontaneously cheerful, so delicious. Her mother would have loved her dearly.
Oh, blast.
She sniffed and blinked, swallowing the tears, and, taking the trusting little hand in hers, they went for a wander by the lake. She’d brought some of the left-over biscuits with her, and gave them to Nicky to throw out into the water for a family of ducklings that hovered just out of range, curious but a little wary.
They got braver, until finally one came and pecked a biscuit right out of Nicky’s fingers.
Her shriek of delight sent it scurrying back to Mum, and Nicky turned her laughing face up to Molly. ‘It pecked my finger!’ she said, quite undaunted, and Molly laughed and hugged her.
‘Come on, let’s go and see what else we can find.’
They locked up and set off on foot for the toddlers’ adventure playground that was located near their cabins. Nicky had fun, scrambling over the logs and climbing little ladders, crawling through tunnels, sliding down miniature slides.
She was wary of the chain and log bridge, a swinging, jangling, somewhat unstable structure that had Molly crossing her fingers and hovering at the side, but she did it in the end, and after a couple of tries she was running across it, laughing as it bounced and swayed under her weight.
After she’d sat in a tyre swing and Molly had pushed her till her arms ached, they strolled back to the cabin through the woodland, watching a squirrel for a few minutes as it skittered around on the pine-needle floor before disappearing up a tree.
‘Hungry,’ Nicky announced as they let themselves in. ‘Nicky have lunch.’
‘OK.’ Molly opened the fridge and looked. Thank goodness she’d been shopping again and taken her brain with her. She shuffled the contents. Peanut butter. Better not, she didn’t know if the child was allergic to it, and, if she’d never had peanuts, Molly didn’t want to be the one to find out!
They had a quick-fix tuna and pasta bake in the end, and a nice crunchy salad that she was pleased to see Nicky ate quite happily. All through the messy eating of her yoghurt the little girl rubbed her eyes, and so when they were finished Molly took her to the bathroom, then snuggled down with her on the sofa in front of the television.
There was a children’s channel with a lovely little cartoon, and after a few minutes Molly felt Nicky go heavy beside her. A tiny snore escaped her, and with a smile she settled the little one down on a cushion, made herself another cup of tea and wondered if they would be going out that night. Jack was going to see if he could make a reservation and arrange a babysitter, and she wouldn’t know until he got back.
And
