emotions a little privacy. Then he went back down, made two mugs of tea and carried them up to her room, putting hers down on the bedside table.
‘Call me when you’re finished, I’ll change her,’ he said, and was heading for the door when her quiet voice stopped him.
‘Stay and keep me company?’
‘Don’t you mind?’
She shook her head. ‘It’s not like it’s anything you haven’t seen before, is it? The places you go in the world, women do it all the time in public.’
But not her. Not his Em, feeding his child. But she was right, it was nothing he hadn’t seen before, and so he sat down on the other side of the bed, propping himself up against the headboard and trying not to stare at the little puckered rosebud lips around her nipple.
‘I don’t think I’ve got enough milk for her,’ Em said regretfully after a few minutes.
‘Is that going to be a problem?’
She shook her head. ‘No, not really. I’ll be able to give her comfort, if nothing else, and she can get her feeds from you.’
Except she wouldn’t. Not then, not later, not in the morning. It seemed she was a baby of discernment, and she’d decided only Emily would do.
Well, she’d made a rod for her own back with that one, Emily thought, and wondered where they went from there.
At best, she was feeding every three hours. At worst, it was more like one and a half or two hours. And, OK, at the moment Harry was living there, but once the decorators had finished and gone and he moved back, was he going to come through the gate in the fence every two or three hours through the night to bring the baby to her to feed?
Or, worse, leave the baby with her?
No way.
She loved Kizzy, wouldn’t harm a hair of her fuzzy little head, but she wasn’t hers, she hadn’t asked for this and there was no way she was taking on responsibility for her. And she was in no doubt that Harry would put up a token fight and then give in and let her if she so much as hinted that she was willing.
She needed an exit strategy and, frankly, until she could convince Kizzy to take the bottle again, she wasn’t going to have one. And another thing. How would she explain it to her children? Sure, they’d accept it, but would they then go and tell the world? Kids were so open. OK, not Freddie, although he might be jealous and start wanting to feed again, as well, but Beth might very well say something at playgroup or to Georgie or the boys.
She closed her eyes and stared sightlessly down at the little scrap busy making herself at home with her adopted milk bar. ‘Oh, Kizzy,’ she murmured. ‘Why me?’
But she knew why her. Because nobody else would have been rash enough. They would have let her yell and handed her straight back to her father the minute he walked through the door.
It was her own fault, and she was going to have to deal with the consequences.
Just until she could talk Kizzy out of it. And in the meantime, she was supposed to be going to a business meeting with Georgie and Nick, and how the hell was she going to explain this to them? She’d just have to time it exactly right…
Damn.
Kizzy was yelling again, Freddie wanted to make another sandcastle with a moat and couldn’t make the sand pile up because it was too dry, Beth wouldn’t help him get water because she was busy pestering Harry for help with putting stickers on a book, and he was ready to rip his hair out.
How on earth would Em cope?
He took a deep breath, thought about it and went into the kitchen, stuck a bottle in the microwave—just for a quick blast on low—filled the plastic jug with water and took it to Freddie, helped Beth line up two stickers down the edge of the book and went back and grabbed the bottle.
Slick.
Except she wouldn’t take it, Freddie spilt the water and Beth wasn’t happy with just two stickers, she wanted more and she wanted him to help her stick them on.
Great. Fantastic. Where the hell was Emily? He glanced at his watch and was stunned. She’d only been gone three quarters of an hour!
‘Are you OK? You look really tired.’
She gave Georgie a weak smile and flannelled. ‘Harry and the baby are staying with me at the moment, and the baby was up a lot in the night.’
Georgie tipped her head on one side and studied her thoughtfully. Too thoughtfully. ‘You’ve still got a thing for him, haven’t you?’ she said softly. ‘And he’s staying with you? Is that wise?’
Not in the least, but she wasn’t telling Georgie that!
‘It’s fine,’ she lied, ‘but I really ought to get back.’
‘Rubbish. He can cope. It does them good—they find hidden strengths. Look at Nick. Fifteen months ago he didn’t have a clue about children. Now he’s an expert. It’s just practice.’
‘Well, I don’t need him practising on my children,’ Emily said firmly, and scooped up her bag and keys. ‘Are you sure about the design? Quite happy with it?’
‘Absolutely. You’ve seen the place in London, you know what Nick likes and you’ve come up with a design that works for him and for the site. What’s not to be happy with?’
Emily nodded. ‘OK. Great. Thanks. And I haven’t forgotten the bit round the back you want looked at. I will get round to it. It’s just that at the moment with Nick’s commercial stuff and with Harry and the baby…’
‘It’s fine. It’ll keep. We won’t do anything with it till the autumn anyway, so relax. And go back to him, if you have to. I must say if I were you and there was a hunk like that waiting for me, I wouldn’t want to hang around having coffee with a chum!’
‘But I do,’ she said, meaning it. ‘I’d love to have time with you, talk to you…’ She trailed off, and Georgie’s eyes sharpened.
‘Em, are you sure everything’s OK?’
For a moment she hesitated, wondering whether to say anything, but Georgie probably wouldn’t understand. This was her first pregnancy, she’d never fed a baby—she might be horrified. ‘I’m sure,’ she lied again, and, kissing Georgie’s cheek, she bent to touch Maya’s head and smile at her, then headed home.
And just in the nick of time.
She could hear Kizzy as she turned onto the drive, and her let-down reflex was working overtime. She squashed her nipples with the heels of her hands and ran into the house, dumped her bag and went out into the garden, to find Freddie yelling and throwing sand out of the sandpit, Beth sulking over her stickers and Harry pacing helplessly with the flailing baby in his arms.
The look of relief on his face was comical.
‘You’re back,’ he said needlessly, and without a word she took Kizzy and the bottle, went down to the seat under the apple tree
