silk shirt could have done.
Suddenly it dawned on her. ‘We’re going to your home,’ she said. ‘The house in Barnstaple.’
‘Quite right.’ He reached for her hand and brought it up to his mouth, kissing her knuckles. ‘I thought it was about time you saw where I live.’
‘You live in your flat.’
‘No.’ The blue eyes flashed her way for a moment. ‘I only occupy that. There’s a difference.’
She stared at the dark profile. He’d shaved recently; there was a tiny nick on his chin where he’d cut himself. The rush of feeling this produced was scary.
‘Besides which I thought you might like to meet a few of the family,’ he continued casually.
‘Your family?’
‘I was thinking of the one next door,’ he said with gentle sarcasm. ‘Of course my family. Why? Does that bother you? They’re really quite normal.’
Cory didn’t know what to say. She wanted to ask if he usually took his girlfriends home to meet his family but she didn’t dare. Of course it was highly likely that he did, she warned herself quickly when her treacherous heart did a few cartwheels.
‘It seemed a good time with my mother’s birthday being on Sunday,’ he added.
‘Your mother’s birthday?’ She sat bolt upright in her seat, all the nice floaty sensations that had stayed with her from the episode at the flat gone in a moment. ‘It’s your mother’s birthday and you didn’t tell me? I haven’t got a card or a gift for her.’
‘She won’t be expecting one,’ he said with typical male denseness regarding the niceties of such occasions.
‘Of course she will.’ Cory was horrified. ‘Have you bought her anything?’
‘I’ll get something tomorrow,’ he said calmly, his voice stating there was no need to get in a panic. ‘When I’ve asked her what she wants. Something for the house, maybe.’
Men! Cory shut her eyes for a moment. ‘A nice new vacuum cleaner, perhaps?’
He seemed quite oblivious to the sarcasm.
‘Nick, your mother is a woman, in case you haven’t noticed,’ Cory said evenly. ‘Do you ever get her something for herself? Chocolates? Flowers? A book? Clothes?’
‘Clothes?’ She could have suggested something obscene, such was his scandalised expression. ‘Of course not. I have bought her chocolates and flowers before, though.’
There was some hope for him then. ‘And I bet she loved them, didn’t she?’
‘My mother always loves anything I buy her.’ There was a definite note of hurt in his voice now. ‘It’s the thought that counts, isn’t it?’
So they said. And it must have been a man who coined the phrase. ‘We’ll shop tomorrow,’ she said, ‘for something for you to give her and something for me. What’s she like? Describe her to me.’
‘My mother?’ His mouth twisted in a wry smile. ‘She’s quite a woman.’
She would have to be to have a son like you.
‘She and Dad had the sort of relationship where they’d be hammer and tongs one minute and then falling into each other’s arms the next—two strong minds, you know?’
She nodded.
‘But us kids never doubted how much they loved each other or us. Dad was the more staid, upright one, very conventional—typical lawyer, I guess.’
‘Your father was a lawyer?’ Somehow she’d assumed he would have been a businessman like Nick.
‘A damn good one.’ There was a wealth of affection and pride in his voice and it touched her deeply. ‘Mum…’ He smiled again. ‘Mum is one on her own. A true original. Nonconformist, feisty, stout-hearted. Dad used to say she was sent to keep him humble.’
Cory smiled but she thought Nick’s mother sounded a bit scary. ‘Does she work?’
‘She was involved in animal welfare when Dad first met her but while we were young she did the housewife bit and thoroughly enjoyed it. Once my youngest sister was at school she started doing one of her great loves—painting—and also went back to the animal welfare thing, but in a smaller way. She does voluntary work at a local sanctuary. On the painting side—’ he paused briefly while he executed a driving manoeuvre Cory was sure was illegal and which caused several other motorists to make use of their horns ‘—she’s done very well. She sells all over the country now.’
Cory was feeling more nervous by the minute at meeting this Superwoman. ‘What about your sisters?’ she asked a little weakly, feeling she didn’t really want to hear the answer.
‘Rosie’s thirty years old, married her childhood sweetheart at eighteen and has two kids, Robert who’s ten and Caroline who’s eight. She’s utterly content being a wife and mother and is in nature a carbon copy of our father. Jenny’s twenty-eight, travelled the world with a backpack from eighteen to twenty-three, married an artist who has his own pottery business and had twin girls four months after the wedding.’ He raised a laconic eyebrow. ‘That was a couple of years after Dad died, which is just as well as he’d have blown a gasket.’
Cory giggled. ‘The twins are about three, then?’
‘A few weeks before Christmas.’
‘You sound like quite a family.’
His mouth curved upwards in a crooked smile. ‘When Jenny and Rod called the girls Peach and Pears, Mum thought the names were terrific and Rosie and her husband were horrified. There isn’t a more devoted aunt and uncle than Rosie and Geoff though. Sums us up, really.’
‘What about you?’ she asked interestedly. ‘What did you think about the names?’
‘Jenny had survived what proved to be a traumatic birth when she haemorrhaged and we nearly lost her and the twins were well and healthy. They could have called them Noddy and Big Ears as far as I was concerned.’
Male logic. Cory smiled. ‘I like Peach and Pears,’ she said very definitely. ‘I don’t see why people are locked into tradition about names. Flower names are considered perfectly proper so why not fruit or anything else for that matter?’
‘Do I detect a smidgen of bohemian coming through? Is it possible that in the future you might be considering artichoke or cabbage, or even New York if the unfortunate infant was conceived away from home?’
Her smile faded. She didn’t reply for a moment and then she said flatly, ‘I don’t intend to have children.’
‘Perhaps all for the best if cabbage is a possibility.’
His voice was light and easy and he was smiling, but the warm intimacy in the car was gone and they both knew it. Cory felt a moment of deep regret that she had broken the mood.
The nifty little sports car fairly ate up
