be too sure.
It was a long time since she had been kissed by a man as if she was a woman, Claire acknowledged—a very, very long time. In fact, she couldn’t remember ever being kissed quite so… quite so…
Her heart started to hammer frantically against her ribs as the firm, warm pressure of a kiss meant to impose silence on her somehow or other became the slow and deliberate exploration of her mouth by lips that seemed to sense, to know… to understand… She felt herself starting to respond, her own lips suddenly pliant and soft.
With a small, outraged cry Claire wrenched herself away, her face burning not just with indignation and shock but with something far more intimate and far more worrying.
‘Look, I’m sorry… I never meant… I didn’t intend…’ he started to apologise.
‘You had no right,’ Claire stormed, but he wouldn’t let her finish, shaking his head and agreeing firmly.
‘No, I didn’t, and I’m sorry. I overstepped the mark… It should never have happened… It’s just that you made me so damned mad, ripping up at me like that…
‘I didn’t walk away from you because of the kids,’ he told her quietly. ‘Or at least not in the way that you meant. That bench over there is pretty small—not much room for me and the three of you, and so I did what I thought was the gentlemanly thing and decided to move on to give you your own space. It’s the kinda thing we do where I come from,’ he told her pointedly.
Claire could feel her flush deepening. She had never felt more mortified or embarrassed in her life, and not just because she had totally misjudged his actions.
She turned to walk back to the children, who were still waiting patiently and anxiously by the bench, and as she did so she realised that the man had fallen into step beside her. As they reached Paul’s wheelchair he crouched down beside him and, giving him a warm smile, told him conversationally, ‘I spent a few months in one of those a good while back.’
Whilst Claire watched, Paul’s small, thin face glowed with happy colour as he slowly showed his new friend all the things his chair could do.
Janey didn’t miss out on the unexpected attention either, disengaging her hand from Claire’s and going up to Paul’s chair, flirting coyly.
It was only later, when Claire had delivered both children to their respective homes and she had time to herself to review the entire incident, that a horrid thought struck her.
That man, the American, he couldn’t possibly be Tim’s new boss and her prospective lodger, could he? No, of course he couldn’t, she reassured herself. Tim’s boss wouldn’t be sitting on his own in a small park watching children, dressed in a T-shirt and a pair of faded jeans… He wouldn’t, would he?
If it had been him—if it had been—she had probably solved the problem of trying to wriggle out of her agreement to offer him a temporary home. Irene would probably kill her, she decided faintly. No, not probably—Irene would kill her!
‘You look very… er… formal. Where on earth are you going?’ Hannah asked curiously, surveying the heavy calf-length black skirt that Claire was wearing, and its equally businesslike and repressive-looking tailored black jacket.
‘Dinner at Irene and Tim’s to meet my prospective lodger,’ Claire told her.
‘Help! Poor man!’ Hannah exclaimed, gulping back laughter. ‘One look at you in that outfit and he’ll think he’s moving in with a Victorian matron. Where on earth did you get that suit…?’
‘I bought it for John’s funeral,’ Claire told her quietly, adding quickly when she saw the guilty chagrin in her friend’s eyes, ‘Oh, it’s all right… I was in such a state at the time I just bought the first black suit I could find.’
‘Yes… well… for a funeral… but why are you wearing it tonight? You’ll be boiled alive in it, for one thing.’
‘Irene wants me to make a good impression on Tim’s new boss,’ Claire explained.
‘In that? You’ll terrify the life out of him,’ Hannah protested. ‘You can’t possibly wear it. What about that pretty knitted three-piece—the one with the little waistcoat? You look lovely in that…’
The oatmeal knitted outfit in question did suit her, Claire acknowledged. Sally had been with her when she had bought it and had insisted on her getting it, even though Claire herself had been inclined at first to think that it was too sexy for her.
‘I don’t think Irene would totally approve,’ Claire told Hannah hastily.
‘Irene might not but I’ll bet your new lodger certainly will,’ Hannah countered forthrightly. ‘The honour of the close is at stake here, Claire; there is no way I can allow you to go out of here wearing that suit. No way at all…’
Claire gave a faint sigh, smiling ruefully at her friend.
‘All right,’ she agreed. ‘I’ll go and get changed…’
‘Into the knit,’ Hannah prompted.
‘Into something,’ Claire prevaricated.
‘Into the knit,’ Hannah said emphatically. ‘And I shall come with you to make sure that you do.’
It was going to be easier to give in than to argue, Claire recognised, and if she didn’t she was going to be late, which would really please Irene.
‘Very well, then, the knit,’ she agreed cravenly.
There was absolutely no logical reason at all for her to fear that her American—the American of the park—might be Tim’s boss, Claire assured herself firmly as she parked her car in her sister-in-law’s drive, behind Tim’s large Volvo and the unexpectedly ordinary Ford which she assumed must belong to the American. After all, he had hardly looked as though he might be Tim’s boss and an important, high-ranking executive with a successful go-getting American company, did he? He had looked… He had looked…
Hastily Claire dismissed the startlingly explicit and detailed printout that her brain immediately produced of the American’s physical attributes and concentrated instead on the probable appearance of Tim’s boss. He would in all likelihood be an American version of Tim—middle-aged, well fed, business-suited, going slightly bald.
A kind enough man, she was sure, she acknowledged quickly. He must be, given the brief, potted history that Irene had given her, but hardly the sort to wear the casual garb of youth with such devastating sexiness—which her American had, and with far more masculinity than the vast majority of those young men who did wear it, Claire admitted as she wove her way between the closely parked cars and headed for the house.
Irene had obviously been waiting for her because she was opening the door even before Claire knocked, beckoning her inside, telling her in a low voice that Tim and Brad were in the garden.
‘Brad, apparently, is a keen gardener, so at least that’s one thing you’ll have in common,’ she told Claire firmly as she led the way through the house to the small sitting room at the back where French windows led out onto a sunken patio with steps up onto the lawn.
Two pairs of male legs were currently descending those steps, both of them
