style="font-size:15px;"> ‘It’ll brush off easily enough,’ Jessie told him blithely. ‘Here… Look…’
He stiffened when she started brushing him down.
‘I think the sand’s all gone now,’ he said curtly after a minute’s torture.
She kept on doing it. ‘I don’t want you blaming me for ruining your lovely suit. Italian, is it?’
‘Yes.’ He named its designer.
She rolled her eyes at him. ‘I should have guessed.’
At last, she took her hands off him.
‘OK, you’ve been returned to your usual sartorial splendour. Let’s walk.’
Kane was very relieved to walk. Still, his reaction to her merely brushing his hands down over his chest gave him an inkling of how incredible it would be to have her touch him without clothes on.
‘It’s fun!’ Emily’s excited voice brought Kane back to the moment in hand. He’d loved riding on his father’s shoulders as a child.
‘It’s a bit like horse-riding,’ he said. ‘Have you ever been horse-riding, Emily?’
‘Yeah, I take her every weekend,’ Jessie muttered under her breath beside him. ‘When I can fit it in between the ballet and the violin lessons.’
Fortunately, Emily didn’t hear her mother’s sarcasm.
‘No, I haven’t,’ she said politely. ‘Mummy, can I go horse-riding?’ she asked in all innocence.
‘There aren’t any horses in the city, sweetie,’ Jessie replied. ‘We’d have to drive out into the country and we’d need a car for that. We don’t have a car.’
‘I’ll take you,’ Kane said, and was rewarded with the most savage glare from Jessie.
‘You don’t have to do that,’ she bit out.
‘But I want to,’ he said. ‘I’d enjoy it.’
And it was true. He would enjoy it.
‘When?’ Emily chimed in. ‘When?’
‘Soon,’ Kane promised.
‘Not till after Christmas,’ Jessie intervened abruptly. ‘We’re all too busy before Christmas. On top of that, Mr Marshall would have to get a proper child seat before we could go anywhere in his car. Such things take time.’
Her slightly smug smile suggested to Kane that she thought that getting a car seat would be just too much trouble.
‘Kane,’ he said firmly. ‘You are to call me Kane. Not Mr Marshall.’
‘Very well. This way…Kane.’
She led him round a corner that brought them into a tree-lined street that was much quieter than the road the day-care centre was on. Emily had fun picking leaves off the trees, her happy chatter distracting the two adults from their verbal foreplay.
Because that was what it was. Kane knew it, even if Jessie didn’t. She wanted him as much as he wanted her. She was just too cynical about men to give in to her desire and just go with the flow. She thought if she delayed the inevitable, Christmas would come, he’d leave Wild Ideas and that would be that. Out of the office and out of her life.
Kane refused to be deterred. The more difficult she was, the more he was determined to have her, not just in his bed, but in his life. His feelings might not be true love as yet, but they were more than lust. Oh, yes, much more.
Five minutes later, she stopped to open the front gate of a delightful old Federation house. It had a lovely rose garden on either side of a paved front path that led up to an enclosed front porch and a front door with stained-glass panels on either side.
Dear Dora, it seemed, was not exactly poor. Homes like this in Roseville were not cheap. Kane wondered if she rented out her granny flat to Jessie and Emily more for the company than the money.
‘I’ll have to put you down now, Emily,’ he said as he approached the front steps. ‘Otherwise you’ll hit your head on the porch roof.’
Jessie’s heart turned over as she watched Kane lift Emily off his shoulders and set her gently down. The look of adoration that her child gave him made her want to hit the bastard.
Because that was what he was being. A right bastard. Using Emily to get to her.
Well, it wasn’t going to work. She wasn’t going to bed with him now, no matter how much she’d wanted to when she’d been brushing him down a few minutes back. The man was built, all right. Clearly, he worked out a lot.
Dora must have heard them arrive because she whisked open the front door before anyone rang the bell.
Jessie had to laugh at the look on her face when she saw Kane.
‘This is Mr Marshall,’ Emily piped up. ‘Mummy’s new boss. But he likes to be called Kane. He wanted to drive us home but he didn’t have a car seat for me, so Mummy said no. But his car is lovely,’ she rattled on. ‘It’s very shiny and silver. He’s going to take me in it to go horse-riding after Christmas. He’s going to have a car seat by then. He wanted to buy us pizza tonight but Mummy said no. Can he come to dinner, Dora? You always cook too much food. Mummy said so last Monday night.’
Jessie was besieged by a mixture of pride that her four-year-old daughter could talk so well, and embarrassment at the ingenuous content of her chatter.
Dora just laughed. She was used to Emily. Kane looked genuinely enchanted, which confused Jessie to no end. Was he that good an actor, or did he really like Emily?
She would have thought a man who didn’t want his own children would be more impatient and less kind.
He must really want to go to bed with me an awful lot, Jessie decided, not sure if she felt flattered or infuriated.
‘I’ll have to pop a few extra potatoes in,’ Dora said. ‘It’s roast lamb tonight. Do you like roast lamb, Mr Marshall?’
‘Love it. And it’s Kane, remember?’
‘Kane,’ Dora repeated. ‘But I thought…’ And she threw Jessie a frowning glance.
‘Would you believe Kane has a twin brother named Curtis?’ Jessie replied. ‘An identical twin brother? He’s married, whereas Kane is divorced.’
‘Really?’ Dora said, enlightenment in her eyes. ‘Fancy that!’
‘Yes,’ Jessie agreed drily. ‘Fancy that.’
‘I haven’t got any brothers or sisters,’ Emily said with a sigh. ‘That’s because my daddy died.’
‘Yes, your mummy told me about that, Emily,’ Kane said, squatting down to her height. ‘That was very sad. But you’re sure to get a new daddy one day. Your mummy’s a very pretty lady. Would you like a new daddy?’
Before
