making idle conversation to make his planned immediate departure seem less precipitate. The thought of returning to that cold, empty house, leaving the warmth, the homely scent of baking, leaving her, leaving all the questions unanswered, was starkly unappealing.
But his seemingly casual question seemed to have thrown her. She looked as if he’d been speaking in Swahili. Her finely drawn brows tugged together and the green of her eyes deepened as she muttered, ‘Twins?’ and shook her head. ‘Do they look like twins? Guy is my employers’ son. I’ve been his nanny since he was six months old. He and James were brought up together.’ She relaxed just a little, smiling slightly as she confided, ‘Guy’s mother is expecting a new arrival any time now. She wants a home birth, so we all thought it best if I brought the boys away and gave them a proper Christmas here. So it’s just us. I don’t have a husband. James’s father and I never married.’
Then she dragged her lower lip between her teeth and bit it. Hard. Why couldn’t she keep her big mouth shut? But the tension she’d read in his face had been wiped away, she noted uncomprehendingly. Because of what she’d said? She had no idea.
The trouble was, she had always found him so easy to talk to. Nothing had changed there. She should have had her wits about her—invented a husband—a father for her son—who was working overseas—and put him off the scent. But lying to anyone simply never occurred to her. Never had and never would.
Her eyes wide and troubled, she watched him pull a chair from beneath the old wooden table and sit down, uninvited, one arm hooked over the backrest, his long legs outstretched. He was smiling that slow, utterly disarming smile of his now, and his eyes were as warmly intimate as she’d always remembered them.
He was wearing a soft leather jacket over a dark polo sweater and sleek cord jeans he might just as well have been poured into. If he’d been a film star he’d have had women swooning in the aisles!
Her stomach squirmed and tightened in a sensation she’d almost forgotten it was possible to experience. Raw sexual attraction, she decided, deploring the fact that he could still have this effect on her.
‘Tell me more,’ he invited smoothly. ‘As I said, it’s been a long time. You and I have a lot of catching up to do.’
‘I—’ Aware that all her nerves were standing to attention, her breathing shallow and fast, Beth made a conscious effort to relax. Behaving like a cat on hot bricks would only make him suspicious. She pulled in a slow breath and offered, ‘I was just about to make tea. Would you like a cup?’
‘Love one. It’s been a long day.’ His eyes narrowed as he watched her turn away to take the now furiously boiling kettle from the hotplate. The girl who had woven herself into his dreams for so many years had matured into quite a woman. Five feet five inches of seductive, enticingly feminine curves. Why hadn’t the father of her son married her? She was lovely to look at and had a nature to match. He couldn’t think of a man on the planet who wouldn’t be proud to call her his wife.
Unless her lover had been already married.
He would never have put her down as the type to get involved with some other woman’s husband. She’d been so sweet, innocent and trusting. Which was why he’d been so ashamed of himself for taking something so rare and precious and sullying it.
He frowned heavily, black brows meeting over darkening eyes. Her son was seven years old. He didn’t need a degree in advanced mathematics to work out that she must have jumped out of his bed and straight into another’s! Had the air of innocence and openness that had so enthralled him been nothing but a clever act?
Jealousy and a sense of bitter disappointment twisted a sharp knife deep inside him—and that was both warped and ridiculous! For heaven’s sake, what had happened was well in the past. He had been married himself in the intervening years; he had no damned right to have any feelings whatsoever about what she might or might not have done with her life!
Oblivious, Beth settled a knitted cosy on the teapot and reached cups and saucers from the dresser, milk from the fridge. In the bedroom overhead she could hear the boys clumping about. From long experience she knew that getting washed and changed could take anything from twenty manic seconds to an eternity.
The latter today, she devoutly hoped. They would surely spin the chore out as long as humanly possible in view of the telling-off they were due to receive the moment they presented themselves downstairs!
Which would give Carl time to drink his tea and her time to make a more normal impression—make something approaching normal conversation. After all, they had been childhood friends. He would think it odd if she didn’t make some attempt to do some of the catching up he’d talked about. Not too much, though. She needed him out of here before James reappeared and gave him time to note the almost uncanny resemblance between the two of them.
‘I was sorry to hear of your uncle’s death,’ she said quietly as she set the tea in front of him. ‘I liked him a lot. He always had a kind word for me and apparently a bottomless pocketful of toffees!’ Her smile was unforced; she had genuinely happy memories of Marcus Forsythe.
‘I miss him,’ Carl admitted heavily, his smoky eyes darkening. ‘He was one of the best.’ He gave her a slight smile. ‘I think the fact that we were both without parents drew us together when we were kids. But you drew the short straw. Your grandparents were pretty forbidding.’
‘They did what they thought was best,’ Beth said defensively, soft colour washing over her cheeks. They had been good to her after their own fashion, and she wouldn’t hear a bad word against either of them. In spite of saying she’d washed her hands of her, Gran must have felt something for her. Otherwise, why would she have left this cottage to her? She could have willed it to the church she’d been such a staunch member of, or any number of charities.
Her chin lifting, Beth met Carl’s eyes across the table and earnestly explained, ‘I think they must have both been born with a strong Puritanical streak—it was in their nature, so they can’t be blamed for the way they were. And after what had happened with their only child, my mother, they were doubly strict with me.’
As pain flickered briefly in her lovely eyes Carl instinctively reached over the table and took her hand. ‘I remember how upset you were when your gran told you the truth about her,’ he said softly.
Home from school for the Easter break, he had found her sobbing her heart out down by the stream, where the wild primroses grew. Gradually she’d blurted it all out. Her mother, a first-year student at a Birmingham college, had got pregnant. The first Beth’s grandparents had known about it had been when their daughter had arrived at Keeper’s Cottage with a newborn baby. Twenty-four hours later she had walked away and had never been back.
A card—the only one that had ever been sent—had arrived to mark Beth’s first birthday, with a note enclosed for Frank and Ellen Hayley saying that their daughter had met and married an Australian and would be going to live in Darwin.
Carl had been fourteen years old to Beth’s twelve and he hadn’t known what to say to ease her misery, so he’d simply hugged her. And she’d clung to him until she was all cried out. Looking back, that was when his feelings for her had begun to change. Certainly during the next few years he’d felt awkward in her company, increasingly inclined to blush, get tongue-tied and sweaty.
His fingers tightened around hers now, and something sweet coiled around his heart as she responded with increased pressure of her own. ‘It was a tough nut to swallow, knowing your mother hadn’t wanted you, but it didn’t make you bitter and twisted—I admire you for that.’
