style="font-size:15px;"> ‘Really?’ She put down her ice cream spoon and sat back, staring at him in amazement. ‘You’re telling me I could bath him in your lovely kitchen?’
‘Why not? Or you could use the utility room. Wherever. It doesn’t matter, does it? He’s only a dog. I can think of worse things. You’re all right, aren’t you, mate?’ he said softly, turning his head and looking at the hearth where Rufus was lying as close to the woodburner as the fireguard would let him. He thumped his tail on the floor, his eyes fixed on Jake as if he was afraid that any minute now he’d be told to move.
But apparently not. Jake liked dogs—and thought it was fine to wash him in the kitchen sink. She stood up and took their bowls through to the kitchen, using the excuse to get away because her eyes were filling again and threatening to overflow and embarrass her. She put all the plates into the dishwasher and straightened up and took a nice steadying breath.
Rufus was at her feet, his tail waving, his eyes hopeful.
She had to squash the urge to hug him. ‘Do you think I’m going to give you something? You’ve had supper,’ she told him firmly. ‘Don’t beg.’
His tail drooped and he trotted back to Jake and sat beside him, staring up into his eyes and making him laugh.
‘He’s not looking convinced.’
‘Don’t you dare give him anything. He’s not allowed to beg, and he’s on a special diet.’
‘I don’t doubt it. I bet he costs more to run than all the rest of you put together.’
She laughed and shook her head. ‘You’d better believe it. But he’s worth every penny. He’s been brilliant.’ She bit her lip. ‘I don’t mean to be rude, but I did promise the children I’d read to them, and I need to change Thomas’s nappy and put him into pyjamas.’
He nodded. ‘That’s fine. Don’t worry. I’ll see you later. In fact, I might just go to bed.’
‘Can I get you anything else?’
He shook his head. ‘No. I’m fine, don’t worry about me. I’ll see you in the morning. If you get a minute before then, you could dream up a shopping list. And thank you for my supper, by the way, it was lovely.’
She felt the cold, dead place around her heart warm a little, and she smiled. ‘My pleasure,’ she said, and took herself upstairs before she fell any further under his spell, because she’d discovered during the course of a glass of wine and a bowl of ice cream that Jake Forrester, when it suited him, could be very, very charming indeed.
And that scared the living daylights out of her.
His bags were missing.
The cabbie had stacked them by the front door, and they were gone. Kate, he thought. She’d been over while he was sleeping earlier, he knew that, and he realised she must have taken them up to his room. Unless Amelia had done it?
Whatever, he needed to go to bed. Lying on the sofa resting for an hour was all very well, but he needed more than that. And it was already after ten. He’d sat and had another glass of wine in front of the fire in the breakfast room, with Rufus keeping him company and creeping gradually closer until he was lying against his foot, and eventually it dawned on him that he was hanging around in the vain hope that Amelia would come back down and sit with him again.
Ridiculous. And dangerous. They both had far too much baggage, and it would be dicing with disaster, no matter how appealing the physical package. And there was no way he wanted any other kind of relationship. So, although he was loath to disturb the dog, he’d finally eased his toes out from under his side and left the room.
And then had to work out, in his muddled, tired mind, what had happened to his bags.
He detoured into the sitting room and picked up his painkillers, then made his way slowly and carefully up the stairs. He was getting stiffer, he realised. Maybe he needed a bath—a long, hot soak—except that he’d almost inevitably fall asleep in it and wake up cold and wrinkled in the middle of the night. And, anyway, he hated baths.
A shower? No. There was the difficulty of his cast to consider, and sealing it in a bag was beyond him at the moment. He’d really had enough. He’d deal with it tomorrow.
Reluctantly abandoning the tempting thought of hot water sluicing over his body, he eased off his clothes, found his wash things in the bag that had indeed arrived in his room, cleaned his teeth and then crawled into bed.
Bliss.
There was nothing like your own bed, he thought, closing his eyes with a long, unravelling sigh. And then he remembered he hadn’t taken the painkillers, and he needed to before he went to sleep or his arm would wake him in the night.
He put the light back on and got out of bed again, filled a glass with water and came back to the bed. He’d thrown the pills on the bedside chest, and he took two and opened the top drawer to put them in.
And there it was.
Lying in the drawer, jumbled up with pens and cufflinks and bits of loose change. Oh, Lord. Slowly, almost reluctantly, he pulled the little frame out and stared down at the faces laughing back up at him—Rachel, full of life as usual, sitting on the grass with Ben in between her knees, his little hands filled with grass mowings and his eyes alight with mischief. He’d been throwing the grass mowings all over her, and they’d all been laughing.
And six months later, five years ago today, they’d been mown down by a drunk driver who’d just left his office Christmas party. They’d been doing some last-minute shopping—collecting a watch she’d bought him, he discovered when he eventually went through the bag of their things he’d been given at the hospital. He’d worn it every day for the last five years—until it had been shattered, smashed to bits against an alpine tree during the avalanche.
An avalanche that had brought him home—to a woman called Amelia, and her three innocent and displaced children.
Was this Rachel’s doing? Trying to tell him to move on, to forget them both?
He traced their faces with his finger, swallowing down the grief that had never really left him, the grief that sent him away every Christmas to try and forget the unforgettable, to escape the inescapable.
He put the photo back in the drawer and closed it softly, turned off the light, then lay back down and stared dry-eyed into the night.
She couldn’t sleep.
Something had woken her—some strange sound, although how she could know the sounds of the house so well already she had no idea, but somehow she did, and this one was strange.
She got out of bed and checked the children, but all of them were sleeping, Thomas flat out on his back with his arms flung up over his head, Edward on his tummy with one leg stuck out the side, and Kitty curled on her side with her hand under her cheek and her battered old teddy snuggled in the crook of her arm.
So not them, then.
Jake?
She looked over the banisters, but all was quiet and there was no light.
Rufus?
Oh,
