him. Not this battered mess of a life. Luke let out one more heart-wrenching sigh and then she felt his muscles slacken. She was pretty sure he was over the worst now, but she’d better stay put for another few minutes, just to make sure.
How arrogant she’d been to think she could fix this family. In truth, she didn’t know where to start. She was way out of her depth. One thing she could do was make sure he got a good night’s sleep. She’d bet he didn’t get too many of those.
So she lay snuggled against him and cried for the wasted years and the horrors he must have endured. And, when she had finished, she placed one tender kiss on his back and closed her eyes.
Something was tickling her face.
She swatted it away, but it didn’t do as it was told. A few seconds later a small puff of air lifted a strand of hair that lay across her cheek. Stupid David! He was always waking her up by breathing on her like this.
And then it struck her that she had been divorced for nearly a year and it wasn’t David who was breathing on her. Her eyelids shot up.
Luke! She was in bed with Luke.
She fought the urge to bolt out of bed and kept completely still. She would just have to do her cringing on the inside. If he woke up and found her here, she’d never be able to face him again.
She took a calming breath—well, as calming as she could—and tried to work out which arms and legs belonged to her and which didn’t. She was lying on her back and Luke was facing her, one arm draped possessively across her torso. Pale grey light was filtering through the curtains. It was only just dawn and she had a good chance of escaping unnoticed if she kept her cool.
She inched out from under his arm, holding it aloft slightly so it didn’t drag across her, then placed it carefully back down on top of the duvet. Moments later her feet touched carpet. She almost smiled with relief. Almost. Luke stirred and she froze. His hand searched the empty space next to him. Thankfully, it landed on the extra pillow she’d thrown aside and grabbed that.
Gaby held her breath for a few seconds more and, when she was convinced he had settled back down, she tiptoed out of the room.
The toast had just popped out of the toaster when Gaby heard Luke enter the kitchen. She blushed. Thank goodness she was leaning over the counter and he couldn’t see her face.
‘Morning, Gaby.’
‘Morning,’ she replied, lowering her head slightly as the blush raged more fiercely.
Anyone would think this was a different kind of morning after!
The thing was, her brain was refusing to recognise last night for what it had been—a friend helping a friend in need. It had all seemed so simple at the time. But now her emotions were weaving themselves into complex knots. She wasn’t sure what she felt. Only that she was embarrassed and aware of him in a way she hadn’t been before.
Sharing a bed with someone, even if it were just for comfort, was an incredibly intimate thing. The barriers she’d erected to stop herself becoming emotionally entangled had been mown down by one nightmare.
Professional distance? Give me a break!
Worst of all, she couldn’t stop thinking about the feel of his skin against hers, the warmth their bodies had generated together. It had been so nice to hold him, to have some of the human contact she had missed in the last year.
Yes, that was it. She was just starved of affection. She was just reacting as any normal person would in the situation.
And normal people got into bed with their bosses, did they? Who was she kidding?
Well, whatever had happened, she was finding it hard to see him as her boss any more. Or the poor downtrodden man she’d come to save from himself. She let out a little huff of a laugh as she buttered her toast. Luke had put his finger on it the first time they met. In some grandiose daydream she’d seen herself as his guardian angel, swooping in to rescue him, then flitting off again when the job was done.
Only she wasn’t an angel. She was just a woman. And now she was having trouble forgetting Luke was just a man underneath all the labels she’d pinned on him: employer, struggling father, charity case. The realisation he possessed a Y chromosome was starting to fuzz her brain.
‘Could you pop a couple of slices in for me, please?’
Gaby swung round to face him. ‘Huh?’ She must look completely gormless, standing there with a buttery knife aloft and her mouth hanging open.
‘Toast. Could you stick some in the toaster for me?’
‘Oh! Of course.’ She smiled.
‘What’s so funny?’
‘Nothing, really. It’s just that you said “toast”.’
He eyed her suspiciously. ‘And toast is hysterically funny, because…’
She reached for two slices of bread and dropped them in the slots. ‘It’s stupid really. I always say I’m going to put toast in the toaster, but really it’s bread that goes into the toaster. It’s only toast when it pops out again. It used to drive me mad when…someone I knew…insisted on correcting me. Never mind. I told you it was silly.’
And now she was babbling.
Luke was smiling. And that made the babble reflex even worse.
‘Sorry, I’m wittering on, aren’t I? I don’t think I slept very well and it always has this kind of effect on me.’ And now look! She’d swerved on to the subject she’d been determined to avoid. Oh, nicely done, Gaby.
‘Really?’ Luke ran his hands over his face. ‘I think I slept pretty well last night—at least much better than I usually do.’
Her eyebrows shot up.
He must have seen them, because he added, ‘I have nightmares sometimes. And…other kinds of sleep disturbance.’ He was saying it so matter-of-factly. As if it were nothing. ‘Not unusual for ex-prisoners, I’ve been told. I didn’t wake you up, did I?’
She was saved from answering by the toast popping up.
‘Marmite or jam?’ she said, reaching for the knife and contorting her face into a perky smile.
‘Neither. Just butter, if that’s okay.’
He stopped and looked at her for a few silent seconds. His eyes narrowed. Gaby’s heart began to pound.
‘What?’
‘I just thought I remembered…’ He looked off into space, as if he were trying to capture a fleeing memory. ‘No. It’s gone. Never mind.’
Gaby turned to pick the toast out of the toaster. What if he remembered something? She was pretty sure he’d been in another realm of consciousness the whole time, but she was no expert on these kinds of things.
She
