gaze dropped to the cracked paving stones at their feet. ‘Yeah, I know. It was such a shock to see them on the doorstep, and they were so intimidating...’ She looked as if she was about to burst into tears and then visibly pulled herself together.
Turning, she hurried back up the path and opened the front door. ‘I’m really grateful to you, Edward. I’ll...’ She had the grace to flush an even deeper red before she gave him his marching orders. ‘I’m sorry, but I need to go and see how Isaac is. Will you excuse me? I’ll see you on Monday.’
The door closed, and Edward found himself standing alone. What was he supposed to do now? Charlotte had made her intentions more than clear, and he supposed he should leave. But he was damned if he was going to leave a woman and child alone in this situation.
Edward strode to his car, snatched Stinky up from the front seat, and walked back to her front door.
ISAAC WAS WHIMPERING in her arms. He was trying to be brave, but his little body was shaking as he clung to Charlotte. She wanted to go and find those men and punch them. More than once.
There was a noise at the letterbox and she tried not to jump. Isaac fell silent, staring at the door.
‘Charlotte? Charlotte, I have Stinky here. That’s what I came for this morning. He’s too big to put through the letterbox.’
She thought about telling Edward to leave him on the doorstep. She might possibly have been able to, whatever the consequences later on, if she hadn’t seen the look on Isaac’s face. It was as if he’d just seen the cavalry, riding hell for leather over the horizon.
Perhaps he was right. Maybe his five-year-old mind was able to see a little more clearly than hers. She wouldn’t be all that surprised. Edward engendered such a plethora of different emotions in her that her judgement wasn’t to be trusted where he was concerned.
‘I’m coming...’ she called out to him, and took Isaac’s hand, leading him to the door. She took a deep breath and opened it.
She had hardly registered it before, through her tears and her panic, but Edward’s eyes looked a brighter blue than usual. His hair darker. There was less of the suit and tie about him and a great deal more of the enigma, with his dark shirt and jacket giving him an almost dangerous look. Even the blue stuffed toy, grasped lightly in his long fingers, couldn’t dispel the feeling that here was a hero, come somehow to save her.
‘Hey, Isaac.’
He might only have been able to spare her son a half-smile, but it would have melted an ice hotel, launched a battleship, and cracked a grin on the face of a statue.
‘I brought Stinky for you.’
Isaac looked up at him and wiped his nose on his sleeve. Charlotte resisted the impulse to tell him to use a tissue on the grounds that she’d been doing the same herself just a moment ago. This morning Isaac could do anything he liked, as long as she could see just a glimpse of his smile.
‘Thank you.’ Isaac’s voice was small, quavering, and it tugged at Charlotte’s heart.
‘Bit of a morning, eh, little man?’ Edward suddenly seemed to realise that getting down onto Isaac’s level would be a good idea and dropped to one knee, proffering the boy’s toy.
Isaac nodded, reaching for Stinky. Charlotte felt his hand slip out of hers and he walked uncertainly towards Edward, then seemed to throw all caution to the winds and flung his arms around Edward’s neck.
‘Hey... Hey, there.’ For a moment Edward’s hands fluttered awkwardly. Then he wrapped his arms around Isaac, hugging him as if he could hold him tightly enough to make everything all right.
For a moment all Charlotte wanted was to be in on that hug.
‘You know what?’ Edward had got to his feet, taking Isaac with him. Safe and sound in his arms. ‘You and I have a job to do. We’re going to tell your mum that everything’s going to be okay. That we’ll look after her.’
Isaac nodded sagely.
‘I think we could all do with a cup of tea. What do you say?’
‘I want milk.’
‘Good idea. I’ll have some milk, too. And we’ll make your mum a cup of tea.’
‘She likes coffee. The kind with the froth on top.’
Isaac had a tight hold of Edward’s jacket collar, his other arm wrapped around Stinky. Charlotte knew that his tears weren’t too far below the surface, but Edward seemed to be reassuring him with his sheer bulk and unflappability.
‘Okay. Tell you what—we could go out for coffee, if you’d like.’ His gaze moved from Isaac to Charlotte. ‘What do you think?’
‘I...’ She wanted his arms around her so much. His comfort. Charlotte pulled herself upright, squaring her shoulders. ‘We’re all right. Really.’
‘Yeah. I can see that.’ He reached forward, touching her cheek so lightly that she shivered. As his hand dropped to his side his fingers skimmed his thumb, as if he wanted to test the exact nature and volume of the tears he’d brushed away.
‘We can manage, Edward. I don’t know what I would have done if you hadn’t turned up just then, and I can’t tell you how much I appreciate it...’ Good start. That was really going to make him feel that it was okay for him to go away now, wasn’t it?
‘But...?’
‘But I can’t keep you. You must have things to do.’
Edward always had something to do. His head was always buried in a book, or some papers. Even when she’d chanced to see him in the street he was always deep in thought, and half the time he didn’t even acknowledge her, either because he hadn’t seen or didn’t want to see.
‘I don’t think so. In fact I’ve nothing to do today. It’s only fifteen minutes over to my place.’ He pursed his lips, as if he’d surprised himself by the invitation as much as he’d just surprised Charlotte. ‘We’ll get coffee on the way, and we can talk...privately. Perhaps I can help.’
She could have turned his help down for herself, but she had Isaac to think about, and Charlotte had no choice but to grab at any and every offer that came her way. And there was the matter of that nagging need at the back of her head, which wanted her to explain to Edward, tell him that she wasn’t the person that all of this made her seem. She was going to have to swallow her pride and go for coffee.
* * *
Edward had waited in the hallway while she dragged on a pair of jeans, shoved her feet into her sandals and splashed her face with water. Her eyes had looked puffy in the mirror, but she hadn’t wanted to keep him waiting for too long, so she’d dropped her make-up bag into a canvas holdall along with a few of Isaac’s favourite toys to keep him occupied.
They’d stopped at a coffee shop and Edward had ushered them in. Isaac had slipped his hand into Edward’s, tugging at his jacket until he’d lifted him up to see over the counter. He seemed to trust that if he stuck with his new friend no harm
