there was nobody to disappoint. Nobody to walk away, the way his mother had and Nadine had.
‘I assume you have a set of keys to Pete and Ally’s house?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘You, too?’
‘So I could keep an eye on the place while they’re not there. For emergencies. Which I always thought would be a burst pipe or something like that. Not...’ His throat closed, and he couldn’t get the words out. For the first time in years, he was totally speechless.
To his surprise, Emmy reached across the table to take his hand and squeezed it briefly. With sympathy, not pity. ‘Me, too. I keep thinking I’m going to wake up and discover that this is all just some incredibly realistic nightmare and everything’s just fine. Except I’ve woken up too many times already and found out that it’s not.’
Whatever her faults—and Dylan knew there were a lot of them—Emmy’s feelings for Ally and Pete were in no doubt. Surprising himself further, he returned the squeeze. ‘And we’ve still got the funeral to go through.’
She sighed and withdrew her hand. ‘I guess their parents will want to arrange it.’
‘You said yourself, Pete’s dad is elderly and Ally’s mum isn’t well. They’ll need support. I was going to offer to sort it out for them. If they tell me what they want, I can arrange it.’
‘That’s good of you to take the burden off their shoulders.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Count me in on the support front. Anything you need me to do, tell me and I’ll do it.’
She wasn’t being polite, Dylan knew. The tears were shimmering in her eyes again. And he wanted to get out of here as fast as he could, before she actually started crying. ‘Thanks. I guess we’d better exchange phone numbers. Home, work, whatever.’
She nodded, and took her mobile phone from her handbag. It was a matter of seconds to give each other the details. ‘And we’ll meet at the house after work tomorrow to sort out the rota.’
‘OK. I’ll call you when I’m on my way.’
‘Thanks.’ She drained her cup. ‘I’d better get back to Tyler. See you later.’
He watched her walk out of the café. The woman who annoyed him more than anyone he’d ever met. The woman he was going to move in with tomorrow.
Yeah, life was really throwing him a curveball. And he was just going to have to deal with it. Somehow.
* * *
The next morning, Emmy unlocked the door to Pete and Ally’s three-storey Georgian house in Islington, pressed in the code for the alarm, and put her small suitcase down in the hallway.
‘It’s just you and me for now, Ty,’ she said softly to the baby, who was securely strapped into his sling and cradled against her heart. ‘We’re home. Except—’ her breath caught ‘—it’s going to be with me and Dylan looking after you, from now on, instead of your mum and dad.’
It still felt wrong. But over the course of the day she managed to make a list of the rest of the things she needed to bring from her flat, feed Tyler, give him a bath and put him to bed in his cot, and make a basic spaghetti sauce for dinner so that all she’d have to do was heat it through and cook some pasta when Dylan turned up after he’d finished work.
Home.
Would she ever come to think of this place as home? Emmy thought with longing of her own flat in Camden. It was small, but full of light; and it was hers. From next week, a stranger would be living there and enjoying the views over the local park. And she would be living here in a much more spacious house—the sort she would never have been able to afford on her own—with Dylan and Tyler.
Almost like a family.
Just what she’d always wanted.
Well, she didn’t want Dylan, she amended. But Emmy had envied part of her best friend’s life: having a husband who loved her and a gorgeous baby. Something Emmy had wanted, herself. A real family.
‘But I didn’t want to have it this way, Ally,’ she said softly. ‘I wanted someone of my own. Someone who wouldn’t let me down.’ Someone that maybe somebody else should’ve picked for her, given how bad her own choices of life partner had been in the past.
And that family she was fantasising about was just that: a fantasy. The baby wasn’t really hers, and neither was the house. And she was sharing the house with Dylan Harper, as a co-guardian. She couldn’t think of anyone less likely to be the love of her life, just as she knew that she was the exact opposite of the kind of women Dylan liked. Chalk and cheese wasn’t the half of it.
But then again, Tyler might not be her flesh and blood, but he was her responsibility now. Her godson. A baby she’d known for every single day of his little life. A baby she’d cradled in her arms when he was only a few hours old, sitting on the side of her best friend’s hospital bed and feeling the same surge of love she’d felt for the woman who’d been as close as a sister to her.
She drew her knees up to her chin and wrapped her arms round her legs, blinking away the tears. ‘I promise you I’ll love Tyler as if he was my own, Ally,’ she said softly into the empty room. ‘I’ll do my best by him.’
She just hoped that her best would be good enough. Though this was one thing she really couldn’t afford to fail at. There wasn’t a plan B.
The lights on the baby listener glowed steadily, and Emmy couldn’t hear a thing; Tyler was obviously sound asleep. She glanced at her watch. Hopefully Dylan wouldn’t be too much longer. In the meantime, she had a job to do. She uncurled and headed back to the kitchen, where she took a large piece of card and marked it out into a two-week rota for childcare and chores. She worked steadily, putting in different coloured sticky notes to show which were her slots and which were Dylan’s.
All the way through, she kept glancing at her watch. There was still no sign of Dylan, and it was getting on to half-past seven.
This was ridiculous. Had he forgotten that he was meant to be here, sorting things out with her? Or was he just in denial?
And to think he’d pegged himself as the sensible, organised one.
Yeah, right.
Irritated, she picked up her mobile phone and rang him.
He answered within two rings. ‘Dylan Harper.’ Though he sounded absent, as if his attention was elsewhere.
‘It’s Emmy,’ she said crisply. ‘Emmy Jacobs.’ Just in case he was trying to block that out, too.
There was a pause. ‘Oh.’
‘Are you not supposed to be somewhere right now?’ She made her voice supersaccharine.
‘You suggested we meefairt at the house today after work.’
‘Mmm-hmm. Which is where I am now. So are you expecting me to stay up until midnight or whenever you can be bothered to turn up and sort things through?’
He sighed. ‘Don’t nag.’
Nag? If he’d been fair
