precious little freedom there, certainly nothing like the kind of freedom a boy could experience in the countryside. And as for herself, living in someone else’s home, no matter how elegant or how kind her employers were, wasn’t like having the independence of living under her own roof.
Besides, she had the gut feeling that she would find herself unemployed in the not too distant future.
And living so close to Bewley Hall wouldn’t be a problem, she reassured herself as she placed the last of the scones on the cooling tray. Sadly, old Marcus Forsythe had died a few weeks before Gran had succumbed to pneumonia, and she’d learned from Mrs Fraser at the greengrocer’s in the village that the Hall was to be sold at auction early in the New Year.
So there was no danger of her or, more importantly, James bumping into Carl Forsythe.
Turning to the deep stone sink, she filled a kettle and put it on the hotplate. Time for tea. Way past time, she thought, her breath catching and a frown appearing between her thickly lashed green eyes.
The boys had wanted to play in the garden, making a den in the ramshackle shed right down at the bottom. ‘Just for half an hour,’ she’d told them. That had been three o’clock. A glance at her watch told her an hour and a half had passed since she’d watched them scamper down the path between overgrown fruit bushes and rank weeds, then turned back to her baking.
Her anxiety level hitting the roof, Beth cursed herself for being all tied up with working out how she and James could make the cottage their permanent home while time had slipped dangerously by. She snatched a torch from the dresser drawer and dragged open the kitchen door to be met by a blast of freezing air and Carl Forsythe’s condemnatory, ‘I believe these are yours.’
CHAPTER TWO
GUY put his tousled blond head down and scampered inside, his lower lip trembling, and Carl, the son he didn’t know he had still at his side, said ‘Beth?’ as if he couldn’t believe the evidence of his eyes.
‘What—what happened?’ It was as much as Beth could do to get the words out, her throat was so tight. Her panic, followed immediately by bitter self-castigation because the two boys had been out in the dark and the cold for far longer than she’d realised and coupled with seeing Carl Forsythe again after all this time had sent her into shock.
And he was just staring—glints of piercing light in those sexy, smoky-grey eyes, his mouth a tight line, a muscle contracting at the side of his hard jawline. He was mesmerising her; she couldn’t look away. It was James who tentatively broke the stinging silence.
‘We were exploring his house, Mum. We really thought no one lived there.’ His young voice wobbled as he added, ‘He said it was all right to go with a stranger ’cos we were in his house and he had to bring us back home.’
Beth’s eyes misted with pride. Her son was being so brave, confessing to his naughtiness, explaining why he had broken the strict rule of never going anywhere with someone unknown to him.
That this particular stranger happened to be his own father was something only she knew. Even so, she would make sure that she explained the rule far more stringently. Her eyes swept from her son’s face to Carl’s and swiftly back again. They were so alike. She bit her lip. Would Carl see the resemblance? She hoped to heaven he wouldn’t!
‘I’ll speak to you later,’ she warned as sternly as she was able, given the panicky emotions that were replacing her initial shock. ‘Go to your rooms now, both of you. Get washed and then change into something clean. I’ve never seen either of you look so grubby.’
As James walked past her he flicked her a look of mute misery which she made herself ignore, and Guy piped up, ‘There were spiders in that shed. Massive humungous ones. So we can’t make a den until you get them out for us.’ As if that explained and excused everything.
He was sitting on the floor, laboriously undoing the laces of the trainers he wouldn’t be seen dead without. Beth flattened her mouth to stop the smallest flicker of amusement showing and reiterated firmly, ‘Upstairs. Now. Both of you.’ And she watched them scuttle up the wooden staircase that led directly up from the kitchen and felt just a little bit safer.
Then she forced herself to give her attention to Carl. She had tried so hard to forget him in the past, but it had proved quite impossible. How could she be expected to forget him when her darling James was so obviously his father’s son?
Carl had changed, and yet he hadn’t. He was still drop-dead gorgeous, yet his shoulders had widened, and he now wore his thick black hair cropped closely to his head, accentuating the savagely handsome features that were harsher than she remembered. His eyes, the colour of storm clouds, were colder and sharper than they had been before.
Belatedly remembering her manners, she said quickly, ‘Thank you for seeing the boys home safely. I can only apologise for their bad behaviour and for wasting your time.’
And then, because it would look mighty suspicious if she continued to treat him as if he were a stranger to whom she was obligated but of whom she wanted to get rid as quickly as possible, she invited, ‘Won’t you come in?’
She hoped he’d say no.
The lecture on parental responsibility Carl had meant to deliver had disappeared like a footprint covered by a fresh fall of snow. Seeing Beth in the flesh after she’d haunted his dreams on a regular basis had stunned his brain.
Her lovely eyes were wide and troubled, her narrow shoulders tense beneath the soft jade-green sweater she was wearing, and the way she’d scooped her long blonde hair back, coiling it haphazardly on the crown of her head, emphasised the tender hollows beneath her high cheekbones and made her slender neck look achingly young and vulnerable.
How could he lecture her when all he wanted to do was fold her in his arms and comfort her, tell her not to get uptight because boys would be boys as long as the world went round? It was no big deal.
‘It’s been a long time, Beth,’ he remarked softly, and wanted to add, Too long, but didn’t. ‘You were the last person I expected to see. For all anyone knew you’d disappeared off the face of the earth, so I guess I took it for granted that the cottage had been sold after your grandmother died.’
Moving past her into the warm brightness of the cosy old-fashioned kitchen, he sensed her slender body flinch and his throat clenched painfully. Was his presence so unwelcome? Because she didn’t want to be reminded of that one-night stand all those years ago? In this day and age it seemed a bit farfetched.
Unless, of course, her husband was around—the father of the twins. Knowing Beth and her open nature, she would have confessed her past relationships—if one night of out-of-this-world passion could be called a relationship, he amended drily.
She might be embarrassed at the prospect of having to introduce a past lover to her husband. That could be why she was so uptight.
He wouldn’t put her in an awkward position, not for all the gold in Fort Knox, so he’d take himself off, relieve her of his unwanted company. He’d spout a few conventional platitudes first, because it would look weird if he just marched straight back out again, even though she might be hugely thankful if he did just that!
‘Are you and your husband spending Christmas here?’ he asked as casually as he could when she turned from securing the door. He noted with entirely masculine approval the way her jeans clipped the shapely outline of her long slender legs.
