he went downstairs, she was awake and about to disappear through the front door.
‘Melissa, wait!’ he cried. ‘You can’t stay in that place tonight. I have a spare room that is always kept ready for visitors. I insist you stay in it. I won’t be able to sleep knowing that you’re not somewhere safe, and I’ve had a very exhausting day that I need to recover from before the next one is upon me.’
‘My nightwear is in my case next door,’ she protested faintly.
‘I’ll find you some,’ he offered. Was he going insane to let a strange woman wear something that had belonged to Beth?
He pointed to a gracious curved staircase and said, ‘If you would like to go up, I’ll show you to the guest room. While you are settling in there I’ll find something for you to wear.’
Ryan dug out one of Beth’s plain cotton nightshirts to lend to Melissa. He avoided taking out any of the prettier nightgowns that Beth had favoured.
Melissa took it from him with a subdued smile and said with tears threatening, ‘I hope that one day I’ll be able to repay your kindness, Ryan.’
He smiled. ‘Don’t concern yourself about that. Tomorrow is another day and it just has to be better than this one has been for you.’
With that brief word of comfort he left her and went to a room across the landing. Closing the door behind him, he looked down at his sleeping daughters and wondered just what Rhianna and Martha would think when they saw there was a visitor for breakfast.
As she lay sleeplessly under the covers of the bed in the spare room, Melissa’s thoughts were in overdrive. The future that had looked so bleak seemed slightly less so because of the kindness of a stranger who had taken her in, fed her, and offered her a bed for the night.
So much for keeping a low profile in her new surroundings! The hurts she had suffered over recent months had made her long for privacy, for somewhere to hide. But her meeting with a man with the golden fairness of a Viking and eyes as blue as a summer sky had put an end to those sorts of plans.
It seemed Ryan had children who no doubt were fast asleep, and was in sole charge of them, so where was their mother? Wherever it might be, it was not her business. She had to fix her thoughts on tomorrow and the cleaners, the electricity people, and accepting the delivery of her few remaining belongings some time during the day. With those thoughts in mind she drifted into an uneasy sleep.
The sound of children’s voices on the landing mingling with her host’s deeper tones brought Melissa into instant wakefulness in the darkness of a winter morning. She dressed quickly in yesterday’s clothes and prepared to go down to where she could hear the sounds of breakfast-time coming from the kitchen.
Pausing in the doorway, she saw that Ryan was at the grill, keeping an eye on sizzling bacon, and two little girls were seated at the table with bowls of cereal in front of them, observing her with wide eyes of surprise as she said, ‘Thank you so much for last night. I feel a different person this morning after the meal and the rest. I’m off to find out what happened to the cleaners and the electricity services.’
He smiled across at her. ‘Not before you’ve eaten. You have no facilities for preparing food next door, so take a seat.’
Rhianna, at seven years old and the elder of his two young daughters, was not a shy child, and burst out, ‘Who is this lady, Daddy? She wasn’t here when we went to bed.’
‘No, she wasn’t,’ Martha, two years younger, chirped beside her. At that point Ryan took charge of the conversation.
‘Her name is Melissa and she’s going to live next door to us,’ he explained. ‘Melissa, these are my daughters, Rhianna and Martha.’
‘She can’t!’ Rhianna protested.
‘Why not?’ he asked.
‘It’s haunted!’
‘No way,’ he said laughingly as he pulled out a chair for Melissa to be seated, as if there had been no hesitation in joining them on her part. ‘There aren’t any ghosts in Heatherdale, I promise you that, Rhianna. Now, who would like a bacon roll?’
‘Me!’ the children both cried.
With the day ahead momentarily forgotten, Melissa smiled as the memory surfaced of how, when she’d been at junior school, she and her friends used to pass a creepy-looking empty house on the way there. They had been convinced that there was a human hand on the inside window ledge. It had only been when one of their fathers had gone to investigate that it had been discovered that the ‘hand’ had been a pink plastic glove. There had been much disappointment amongst the children.
She had done as Ryan requested and seated herself opposite him. As she smiled across at his children she saw that they both had the same golden fairness as their father, but their eyes were different—big and brown and fixed on her.
Making her second contribution to the occasion, Martha asked, ‘Are you some children’s mummy? We haven’t got one any more. Ours was hurt by a tree.’
Ryan had just put cereal and a bacon sandwich in front of Melissa and was about to join them at the table. He stilled, and she saw dismay in his expression.
‘Just get on with your breakfast, Martha,’ he said gravely, ‘and no more questions.’
‘It’s all right,’ Melissa told him. ‘I don’t mind. They are delightful.’ She turned to his small daughter.
‘No, Martha, I’m not a mummy, but I do love children. My job is all about making them well when they are sick.’
Their interest was waning to find that she didn’t fit their requirements, but not their father’s. The stranger at their table was full of surprises. What kind of a job was it that she’d referred to?
Bringing his mind back to their morning routine on school days, when the children had finished eating he told them to go and put their school uniforms on and have their satchels ready for when Mollie came to take them to school.
‘Will Melissa be here when we come home?’ Rhianna asked.
She answered for Ryan. ‘I’m afraid not, Rhianna. My house needs cleaning and sorting. But once that’s done everything will be fine and you can come to see me whenever you like.’
Rhianna seemed happy with that answer and she and Martha hopped off to get ready for school.
‘Your daughters are adorable, Ryan,’ she said with a warm smile.
‘They’re the light of my life. A life that would not be easy if Mollie wasn’t around,’ Ryan replied. ‘She’s a good friend as well as my housekeeper. I have a very demanding job but it’s totally rewarding and somehow I manage to give it my best, while organising things at this end to make sure that Rhianna and Martha are happy, though the result is not always how I want it to be. Still, I mustn’t delay you. We both have busy days ahead of us.’
She couldn’t have agreed more. As she looked around her at his delightful home, the gloom of yesterday came back. Dreading what the day would hold for her, she wished Ryan a stilted goodbye and went to ring the cleaning firm and the electricity company.
As Melissa waited for
