she didn’t think it would be any time soon, but all too quickly reality was going to intervene and she’d have to start sending out her CV again and trying to get another job. Maybe Jake would let her use the Internet so she could do that.
But not now. It was Christmas, and she was going to keep smiling and make sure everyone enjoyed it.
Jake included.
He thought the day would never end.
It had been fun—much more fun than he could have imagined—but it was also painful. Physically, because he was still sore from his encounter with the trees and the rocks in France, and emotionally, because the kids were great and it just underlined exactly what he’d lost.
And until that day, he’d avoided thinking about it, had shut his heart and his mind to such thoughts.
But he couldn’t shut them out any more; they seeped in, like light round the edges of a blind, and while Millie was putting the children to bed he went into his little sitting room and closed the door. There was a video of them all taken on Ben’s second birthday, and he’d never watched it again, but it was there, tormenting him.
So he put it on, and he watched his little son and the wife he’d loved to bits laughing into the camera, and he let the tears fall. Healing tears—tears that washed away the pain and left bittersweet memories of happier days. Full days.
Days like today.
And then he took the DVD out and put it away again, and lay down on the sofa and dozed. He was tired, he realised. He’d slept well last night, but not for long, and today had been a long day. He’d go to bed later, but for now he was comfortable, and if he kept out of the way Amelia wouldn’t feel she had to talk to him when she’d rather be doing something—probably anything—else.
She’d done well. Brilliantly. The meal had been fabulous, and he was still full. Maybe he’d have a sandwich later, start on the pile of cold turkey that would be on the menu into the hereafter. Turkey and cold stuffing and cranberry sauce.
But later. Not now. Now, he was sleeping …
‘That was the best day,’ Edward said, snuggling down under the quilt and smiling at her. ‘Jake’s really cool.’
‘He’s been very kind,’ she said, wondering how she could take Jake gently off this pedestal without shattering Edward’s illusions, ‘but we are in his way.’
‘He doesn’t seem to mind.’
‘That’s because he’s a very kind man, very generous.’
‘That’s what Kate said—that he was generous.’ He rolled onto his back and folded his arms under his head. ‘Did you know he went to choir school?’
‘Yes—I heard him tell you,’ she said. ‘I’d just come downstairs.’
‘He said it was great. Hard work, but he loved it there. He was a boarder, did you know that? He had to sleep there, but he said his mum and dad used to fight, and he was always in the way, so it was good, really.’
She was just opening her mouth to comment when Edward went on diffidently, ‘Were we in the way? Was that why Dad left?’
Her heart aching, she hugged him. ‘No, darling. He left because he realised he didn’t love me any more, and it wouldn’t have been right to stay.’
He hadn’t loved the children either, but there was no way she was telling Edward that his father had used them as a lever to get her to agree to things she wouldn’t otherwise have countenanced. Things like remortgaging their house so riskily, because otherwise, he said, they’d be homeless.
Well, they were homeless now, and he’d had to flee the country to escape the debt, so a lot of good it had done to prolong it. And why on earth she’d let him back last year so that she’d ended up pregnant again, she couldn’t imagine. She must have been insane, and he’d gone again long before she’d realised about the baby.
Not that she’d send Thomas back, not for a moment, but life had become infinitely more complicated with another youngster.
She’d have to work on her CV, she thought, and wondered what Jake was doing and if he’d let her use the Internet to download a template so she could lay it out better.
‘You need to go to sleep,’ she said softly, and bent over and kissed Edward’s cheek. ‘Come on, snuggle down.’
‘Can we play in the snow again tomorrow?’ he asked sleepily, and she nodded.
‘Of course—if it’s still there.’
‘It will be. Jake said.’
And if Jake had said …
She went out and pulled the door to, leaving the landing light on for them, and after checking on the sleeping baby she went back downstairs, expecting to find Jake in the breakfast room or the drawing room.
But he wasn’t, and his study door was open, and his bedroom door had been wide open, too.
Which left his little sitting room. His cave, the place to which he retreated from the world when it all became too much.
She didn’t like to disturb him, so she put her laptop in the breakfast room and tidied up the kitchen. The children had had a snack, and she was pretty sure that Jake would want something later, so she made a pile of sandwiches with freshly cut bread, and wrapped them in cling film and put them in the fridge ready for him. Then she put Rufus’s new coat on and took him out into the snow for a run around.
He should have been used to it, he’d been outside several times today, but still he raced around and barked and tried to bite it, and she stood there feeling the cold seep into her boots and laughed at him as he played.
And then she turned and saw Jake standing in the window of his sitting room, watching her with a brooding expression on his face, and she felt her heart miss a beat.
Their eyes locked, and she couldn’t breathe, frozen there in time, waiting for—
What? For him to summon her? To call her to him, to ask her to join him?
Then he glanced away, his gaze caught by the dog, and she could breathe again.
‘Rufus!’ she called, and she took him back inside, dried his paws on an old towel and took off her snowy boots and left them by the Aga to dry off. And as she straightened up, he came into the kitchen.
‘Hi. All settled?’
She nodded. ‘Yes. Yes, they’re all settled. I wasn’t sure if you’d be hungry, so I made some sandwiches.’
‘Brilliant. Thanks. I was just coming to do that, but I wasn’t sure if I could cut the bread with one hand. It’s all a bit awkward.’
‘Done,’ she said, opening the fridge and lifting them out. ‘Do you want them now, or later?’
‘Now?’ he said. ‘Are you going to join me? I thought maybe we could have a glass of wine and a little adult conversation.’
His
