plates while he opened the bottle of red they’d started the night before last and poured two glasses, and they carried them through to the breakfast room, but then he hesitated.
‘Come and slum it with me on the sofa,’ he suggested, to her surprise, and she followed him through to the other room and sat down at one end while he sprawled into the other corner, his sore leg—well, the sorer of the two, if the bruises were anything to go by—stretched out so that his foot was almost touching her thigh.
And they ate their sandwiches and talked about the day, and then he put his plate down on the table beside him and said, ‘Tell me about your work.’
‘I don’t have any,’ she reminded him. ‘In fact, I was going to ask you about that. I need to write a CV and get it out to some firms. I don’t suppose you’ve got wireless broadband so I can go online and do some research?’
‘Sure. You can do it now, if you like. I’ll help you—if you want.’
She flashed him a smile. ‘That would be great. Thanks.’
‘Any time. Have you got a computer or do you want to use mine?’
‘My laptop—it’s in the breakfast room. I’ll get it.’
He’d sat up by the time she got back in there, so she ended up sitting close to him, his solid, muscled thigh against hers, his arm slung along the back of the sofa behind her. As she brought up her CV, he glanced at it and sat back.
‘OK, I can see a few problems with it. It needs more immediacy, it needs to grab the attention. You could do with a photo of yourself, for a start. People like to know who they’re dealing with.’
‘Really? For freelance? It’s not as if I’d have to disgrace their office—’
‘Disgrace? Don’t be ridiculous,’ he said, leaving her feeling curiously warm inside. ‘And anyway, it’s about how you look at the camera, if you’re open and straightforward and decent.’
‘Or if you have tattoos or a ton of shrapnel in your face,’ she added, but he laughed and shook his head.
‘That’s irrelevant unless you’re talking front of house and it’s the sort of organisation where it matters. In some places it’d be an asset. It’s much more about connecting with the photo. Stay there.’
And he limped out stiffly, drawing her attention to the fact that he was still sore, despite all he’d done today for her and her children. He should have been lying down taking it easy, she thought uncomfortably, not making snowmen and snow angels and construction toys. And now her CV.
He came back with another laptop, flipped it open and logged on, and then scrolled through his files and brought up his own CV. ‘Here—this is me. I can’t show you anyone else’s, it wouldn’t be fair, but this is the basic stuff—fonts, the photo size and so on.’
She scanned it, much more interested in the personal information than anything else. His date of birth—he was a Cancerian, she noticed, and thirty-five this year, five years older than her—and he’d been born in Norwich, he had three degrees, he was crazily clever and his interests were diverse and, well, interesting.
She scanned through it and sat back.
‘Wow. You’re pretty well qualified.’
‘So are you. How come you can’t find a job? Is it that they don’t get beyond the CV?’
She laughed. ‘What, a single woman with three young children and one of them under a year?’
‘But people aren’t allowed to ask that sort of thing.’
‘No, but they ask about how much time you’re able to commit and can you give weekends and evenings if necessary, are you available for business trips—all sorts of sly manoeuvring to get it out of you, and then you can hear the gates slam shut.’
‘That’s crazy. Lots of my key people are mothers, and they tend to be well-organised, efficient and considerate. And OK, from time to time I have to make concessions, but they don’t pull sickies because they’ve drunk too much the night before, and they don’t get bored and go off travelling. There are some significant advantages. I’d take you on.’
She stared at him, not sure if he’d meant that quite how it sounded, because Kate had said in the past that it was a shame he had someone and didn’t need her. So it was probably just a casual remark. But it might not have been …
‘You would?’ she asked tentatively, and he nodded.
‘Sure. I could do with a translator. It’s not technical stuff, it’s more business contract work, but I farm it out at the moment to someone I’ve used for years and she told me before Christmas that she wants a career break. What languages have you got?’
‘French, Italian, Spanish and Russian.’
He nodded slowly. ‘OK. Want to try? Have a look at some of the things I need translating and see if you’ve got enough of the specific vocabulary to do it?’
‘Sure,’ she said slowly, although she wasn’t sure. She wasn’t sure at all if it would be a good thing to do, to become even more involved with a man who her son thought had hung the moon and the stars, and on whose lap her daughter had spent a good part of the day cuddled up in front of the fire.
A man whose heart was so badly broken that he had to run away every Christmas and hide from the pain.
A man, she realised, who she could very easily come to love …
He must be crazy.
It was bad enough having them all descend on him without a by-your-leave, taking over his house and his life and his mind. It was only a step from lunacy to suggest a lasting liaison.
Not that it need be anything other than strictly professional, he realised. It could all be done online—in fact, it could be Kate who dealt with all the communications. He didn’t have to do anything other than rubber-stamp payment of her invoices. It would solve her financial problems, give her independence from the scumbag of an ex-husband who’d trashed her life so comprehensively with his lousy judgement and wild ideas, and give the children security.
And that, he discovered, mattered more to him than he really wanted to admit. It would give them a chance to find a house, to settle into schools—and that in itself would give Edward a chance to join a choir, church or school, or maybe even apply to choir schools for a scholarship. They could live anywhere they chose, because she wouldn’t have to come into the office, and so if he did end up in a choir school he wouldn’t necessarily have to board if she was close enough to run around after him.
And she could afford to look after Rufus.
He glanced down at the dog, snuggled up between their feet, utterly devoted to his mistress.
Hell, he’d miss the dog when they moved. Miss all of them. He’d have to think about getting a dog. He’d considered it in the past but dismissed it because of his business visitors who stayed in the house from time to time, but maybe it was time to think about himself, to put himself first, to admit, perhaps, that he, too, had needs.
And feelings.
‘Think
