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Meant-To-Be Mother
Ally Blake


Single-father James Dillon's life is dedicated to his young son. Then a beautiful, stylish stranger appears on his doorstep and he can't ignore the magnetism between them.Siena Capuletti's homecoming was only meant to be fleeting–the mistakes of her past are still ruling her head. Yet as she spends time with gorgeous James and his adorable son, she knows she's losing her heart to them.Is she the jet-set career girl she's convinced herself she should be…or the bride and mother that she was clearly meant to be?







Happy New Year!

I hope 2007 is going to be a great New Year for you. It certainly is going to be an exciting year for Harlequin Romance! We’ll be bringing you:

More of what you love!

From February, six Harlequin Romances will be hitting the shelves every month. You’ll find stories from your favorite authors, as well as some exciting new names, too!

A new date for your diary…

From February, you will find your Harlequin Romance books on sale from the middle of the month. (Instead of the beginning of the month.)

Most important, Harlequin Romance will continue to offer the kinds of stories you love—and more! From royalty to ranchers, bumps to babies, big cities to exotic desert kingdoms, these are emotional and uplifting stories, from the heart, for the heart!

So make a date with Harlequin Romance—in the middle of each month—and we promise it will be the most romantic date you’ll make!

Happy reading!

Kimberley Young

Senior Editor


Dear Reader,

When the tourism ads claim that Far North Queensland is beautiful one day, and perfect the next, they’re not kidding!

The area is dappled with waterfalls and tropical rain forests, miles of roadside banana plantations and crocodile-infested rivers, pristine white sandy beaches and the glorious blue-green waters of the Great Barrier Reef. And after holidaying in that part of the world last year, the premise for Meant-To-Be Mother was born.

Leisurely Cairns seemed a perfect place in which to drop my feisty, jet-setting heroine, Siena Capuletti, a woman who feeds off the frenetic pace of the city. Or if she had her way, it would be a different city every week. Surrounded by people reveling in the laid-back beach culture, she was bound to go a little stir-crazy.

All I had to do was throw James Dillon in her path—a man who warmed her faster that the North Queensland sun, whose smile was as tummy-tingling as the boat ride to Green Island—and just as worth the wait—and who had a better reason to stay in Cairns than Siena had to leave. Poor thing had no chance!

For more pictures and links to Web sites about the best holiday destination in the world, check out my Web site: www.allyblake.com

Happy reading,

Ally




Meant-To-Be Mother

Ally Blake





www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


Having once been a professional cheerleader, Ally Blake’s motto is “Smile and the world smiles with you.” One way to make Ally smile is by sending her on holidays, especially to locations that inspire her writing. New York and Italy are by far her favorite destinations. Other things that make her smile are the gracious city of Melbourne, the gritty Collingwood football team and her gorgeous husband, Mark.

Reading romance novels was a smile-worthy pursuit from long back. So, with such valuable preparation already behind her, she wrote and sold her first book. Her career as a writer also gives her a perfectly reasonable excuse to indulge in her stationery addiction. That alone is enough to keep her grinning every day! Ally would love for you to visit her at her Web site, www.allyblake.com

“A Father in the Making by Ally Blake has emotional depth that shows the author’s growth and maturity in her craft. The humour and vitality of this novel is a joy to behold and I look forward to more. Not a single thing would I change of this story!”—www.cataromance.com


To my gorgeous genius of a godson, Lachlan. Hugs and kisses from your Auntie Ally.




CONTENTS


CHAPTER ONE (#uf803bed1-b180-551b-8403-b1176bcaadc0)

CHAPTER TWO (#uf68eed6a-6d32-5f1e-a455-83ba20ed43ae)

CHAPTER THREE (#uda101fc3-adaa-5aa7-9aa6-9cc9c0687952)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)




CHAPTER ONE


SIENA CAPULETTI was going home.

And where for most people that would bring about happy thoughts of familiar faces, their own bed and their favourite pillow, the concept had poor Siena in a cold sweat.

Well, okay, so the wet clammy feeling could also have come from the fact that she had just been on the receiving end of a well-flung can of cola courtesy of a pouting kid in the aeroplane seat next to her.

But still…clammy was clammy. Uncomfortable. Hot and cold all at once. Nope. It was definitely thoughts of home making her feel that way. Home just didn’t bring about warm and fuzzy feelings in Siena.

The splotch of insidious brown beverage inching its way across her Dolce and Gabbana skirt and matching jacket—the only ‘interview outfit’ she had packed for her short trip to her provincial home town—grew larger and overtook the proportion of clean cream tweed.

‘Excellent,’ she said under her breath.

Siena craned her head past the rows of seats as she flapped her sticky outfit away from her damp body. Where was a flight attendant when she needed one? Nowhere. That’s where.

It was a sign. She wasn’t meant to be heading to Cairns on that day seated on a plane; she ought to have been suited up in her usual baby-blue skirt suit, matching pillbox hat and beige high heels, working the aisle as a Cabin Director for MaxAir rather than finding herself at the mercy of one.

But when Maximillian Sned, the eccentric septuagenarian owner of MaxAir—the funky, cosmopolitan, fun-and-games airline for which she worked—had summoned her to meet him to discuss a ‘fabulous career move’—his words—at his palatial home north of Cairns, what choice had she had? Even though, if the rumour mill was correct, and let’s face it, it usually was, his offer was going to entail a fabulous move to Cairns to stay.

Double excellent.

A hard kick to the shins brought Siena back to the less than pleasant present.

Blithely ignoring the pint-sized, cola-flinging, kick-boxing champ to her left, Siena tried to remember the meditation class she had once taken—close your eyes, take deep calming breaths and think of a happy place. A beach hut in Hawaii? A Swiss ski resort? That shoe shop on Madison Avenue she couldn’t walk into without spending a week’s pay?

But Siena was surprised to find she could barely recollect the shapes and colours and sensation of being anywhere but the inside of a plane—

‘I am soooooo sorry it took me so long! We have a guy in the back row who can juggle soft drink cans. Seriously, soft drink cans! He was teaching me and I almost had it down.’

Siena opened one eye to find a perky, blonde, perfectly groomed flight attendant with ‘Jessica’ scrawled on to her name badge. She smiled prettily as she handed over a baby-blue box of MaxAir brand moist towels to Siena and another drink to the pouting kick-boxer at Siena’s side.

Her vague happy place feelings slipped away to naught as Siena realised her day was not about to get any better.

Seven years as a sky girl and Siena could read people at first glance. She knew which passenger would try to sneak an illegal cigarette puff in the bathroom, which one would be a white knuckle flyer who would need a Bloody Mary as soon as they took off, and which one would try to pinch every female bottom and thus would be fast shifted to a window seat.

Jessica had just given the kid beside her a new can of cola. Crayons and warm milk would have been the better option. Siena could read that Jessica was sweet but entirely hopeless.

She wondered briefly if she ought to let Maximillian know when she met him. But no. Siena didn’t do meddling. Growing up with a brother twelve years her senior shoving unwanted advice down her neck her whole life had cured her of that.

‘Now, Freddy,’ Jessica cooed, ‘this time we have a cool bendy straw in the can so you can suck it up without spilling a drop.’

Spilling? That whole move earlier had nothing do with spilling!

Once Freddy was sucking away, Jessica smiled at Siena in apology. ‘You look awfully familiar,’ she said. ‘Do we know each other?’

Here we go again…Siena was used to being recognised. For the past year her symmetrical, clear-skinned face had been smiling from billboards above motorways all over the country advertising the supreme, sassy, fun-in-the-air customer service one could expect from a MaxAir flight. For a small gig that had taken an hour in a photographic studio near her apartment in Melbourne, she suddenly feared it might well change the course of her life.

Would Max really offer the promotional gig on a full-time basis, thus meaning a permanent move to Cairns as everyone expected? If he insisted, would she really have to turn her back on the company that had completely moulded her since she left school?

Her identity, her friendships and her entire life were so intertwined with her job she so hoped it wouldn’t come to that, but then a move back to Cairns was utterly, sincerely, outright not an option…

‘Maybe from a work Christmas party,’ Siena said, telling the truth but skirting the issue all the same. ‘I’m a sky girl for Max too. On the international runs.’

‘Oh, okay!’ Jessica bubbled. ‘That must be it. Are you on annual leave or is it just a weekender to the beach?’

If she mentioned her job interview word would be all over the Far North Queensland operation before they hit the tarmac. ‘My brother and his family live in Cairns,’ Siena said. ‘They just had a new baby.’ She kept back the fact that she hadn’t ever met Rick’s four-year-old twins either.

‘Gee,’ Jessica said, and, ‘wow!’

But Siena could tell the girl wasn’t really listening. Siena only hoped for the airline’s sake that she was still new.

‘Okay then, well, happy trails,’ Jessica said, her eyes searching out the juggler in the back row again already.

‘Happy trails,’ Siena parroted back the MaxAir motto.

She watched Jessica bounce her way back down the skinny domestic aisle, her French tipped fingernails clawing on to the backs of passengers’ seats for balance and her blonde ponytail bouncing.

Siena blinked. It had been a long while since she had mastered the ability to walk an aisle in two-inch heels without needing a thing to help her balance.

She was a pro. A lifer. Born to fly. Far far away…

If only Max saw that she could be more to the company than a smiling face on a billboard. If only the rumour mill had Max offering her Rome.

Siena sighed and slid further down in her seat. She took a deep breath and closed her eyes. Cool, cosmopolitan Rome was at the heart of the MaxAir international routes. The top of the heap. The pièce de résistance. Now that would be a fabulous career move.

The hum of the engine altered and Siena knew the plane was descending. She looked out the small window to see hilly green land undulating down to twisting white sands and deep blue water peeking back at her from between patchy white cloud cover. Tropical Cairns. Paradise. Home…

Siena peeled her clamped fingers from the armrests and shook life back into them.

Okay, you have a few minutes, now deep breathe and focus on happy thoughts.

As the overhead lights called for everyone to do up their seat belts, Siena toed her fake red Kelly handbag further under her seat. Shopping in Hong Kong was a happy place. Why hadn’t she conjured that thought? Next time. And she had a feeling she would be needing many of those next times over the coming weekend.

Out of the corner of her eye, Siena noticed that young Freddy was sitting staring at his open seat belt with one half in each of his hands as his cola balanced precariously between his knobbly knees. He had a cola moustache on his upper lip and beads of sweat stood out on his forehead. But her friendly neighbourhood flight attendant was nowhere to be seen.

What sort of parents deemed him independent enough to look out for himself at the age of five? She’d seen it time and again in her job and had never been able to understand such thought processes. She of all people knew just how such an assumption of early independence could turn the poor kid—hostile, erratic, doing anything and everything to get attention. To get discipline. To get a parent to tell him no.

She found herself experiencing an unexpected moment of empathy. Well, the kid hadn’t spilt anything on her in the last five minutes and she had to give him kudos for that.

‘Would you like me to help you with that?’ she found herself asking.

‘Yes, please,’ the boy said with a cherubic lisp.

Siena shuffled in her seat and took a hold of the two halves of the seat belt. The young boy lifted his thin arms and Siena had a whiff of something sweet like a mix of cola and biscuits.

When the belt clicked into place he gave a little sniff and Siena realised that two tracks of shiny tears were sliding down his cheeks. Oh, heck. A sniffly kid, and now tears? Was she being punished for something?

In the end empathy won out again. For the next fifteen minutes she talked the kid down from his cola high, and up from his lonely low, so that when the plane landed, and Jessica and her bouncing ponytail took him away, she was sure that he had been replaced by a completely different kid.

Siena waited until the plane was all but empty to grab her carry-on and suit bag containing her uniform for the working flight back to Melbourne on Saturday evening. She wasn’t in any hurry.

When she disembarked on to the tarmac the Far North Queensland heat hit her like a slap in the face. The air was thick, hot and wet. She could taste her own sweat on her lips. The tangy scent of the nearby sea hung heavy in the air. She could feel her dark curls frizzing by the second, her feet sweating in her designer shoes and the cola in her dress weighing her down as all evaporation ceased in the humid air.

Inside the thankfully air-conditioned terminal, a wiry silver-moustachioed man in a three-piece suit and hat in MaxAir’s incongruous powder-blue, completely unsuitable in the temperate climate, stood waiting with a sign reading ‘CAPULETTI’.

A driver? Max was pulling out the big guns. But, though it was a nice gesture, it only made Siena’s heart sink all the further.

‘I’m Siena Capuletti,’ she said, approaching slowly.

The man nodded. ‘Rufus,’ he said in a deep baritone. ‘Maximillian has asked that I be at your disposal for the weekend, Ms Capuletti.’

‘Right. Well. Excellent.’ Siena moved into the flow of the crowd, making her way through the backwater ‘international’ terminal, along tracts of unfashionable carpet long since in need of updating. She kept Rufus, who’d insisted on taking her baggage, in the corner of her vision. He had a look about him that made Siena think that if she pointed at another passenger and said, ‘Kill,’ he wouldn’t have any trouble obeying.

‘I have to make a quick call,’ she told him just before they left the air-conditioning. Rufus stopped where he stood like a dog who had been told to stay, though he had all the warmth of a German Shepherd police dog.

Siena found a quiet corner and made the call she had been dreading for days.

‘Hello,’ her brother Rick’s deep voice rumbled.

For a moment she thought about hanging up. Why did she have to tell him she was back? It was a flying visit anyway. He didn’t even have her mobile number, so he wouldn’t even know it was her—

‘Anyone there?’ he asked, and Siena gave in.

‘Rick, it’s Siena.’

After a long pause he came back to her. ‘Well, well, well. Piccolo. It’s been some long while since I have heard your lovely voice.’

Rick’s passive aggressive comment was almost enough to have Siena switching off her phone and turning right around.

‘Una momento,’ Rick said, and she heard a crash of something kitcheny followed by the shouts of two young boys in the background. It gave her a moment to recollect herself.

‘Michael! Leo! Stop that,’ Rick’s voice cried somewhere near the phone. ‘Sit at the table and your mama will bring your cereal in a second. Sorry, Piccolo, breakfast is like a battle zone around here. So where are you today? Paris? London?’

Here goes… ‘I’m at the Cairns Airport.’

She was met with deathly silence. It seemed he was as shocked that she was back after all this time as she was.

‘Well, I’ll be…Our little bird has returned to the nest. Does this mean I get to see your pretty face for real, not just on those big posters near the airport?’

Siena closed her eyes and leant her forehead against her fist. ‘I’m here until Saturday evening, so, sure. Why not? I have a meeting with Maximillian tomorrow afternoon but, apart from that, this little bird is, well, as free as a bird.’

‘Great. Tell me which terminal and I’ll pick you up.’

‘No, it’s okay. I have a driver.’ She felt a mix of pride and stupidity in admitting as much and she cringed as she awaited Rick’s usual unimpressed laughter. But it never came.

‘But you are staying here,’ he said, not even a hint of a question in his commanding tone. ‘Tina can make up the spare room.’

She thought of the big king-sized bed and Egyptian cotton sheets that would be awaiting her at the suite Max had organised for her at the Novotel Resort in the beachside haven of Palm Cove, and imagined the chintz comforter, sagging single bed and recriminations no doubt awaiting her at the Capuletti home. Hmm, tough decision.

‘Come,’ he said, hearing her pause. ‘Stay with us. Please. I’m not asking the world of you, Siena, but it is more than time you met your nephews and niece.’

Siena used her spare hand to rub away her frown. It was the please that got her. She couldn’t remember a time when she had ever heard that word come from Rick. Ever. She was more used to: Do this. Be that. If you don’t, one of these days you’ll give poor Papa a heart attack…

‘Sure,’ she said, her throat tight with emotion. ‘But only for a couple of days. I’m in town on a purpose and this meeting tomorrow is really important—’

‘A couple of days would be wonderful, Piccolo.’

Siena nodded even though he couldn’t see her.

‘Do you have our new address?’ he asked.

Siena was embarrassed to realise she had no idea. She knew they had sold the family home a few years before. Her half of the money from its sale was still sitting untouched, unwelcome, gathering interest and dust, in a bank account. But she hadn’t a clue where they were living now.

‘You may as well give it to me again,’ she said, reaching into her handbag for her PDA.

Rick reeled off his suburban address in a new estate Siena hadn’t even heard of and she typed it in under his name. Well, it had been seven years since she’d lived there…

‘We’re heading off soon to take the kids to Tina’s mother’s for the day, then we both have to work, but we’ll leave you a key under the mat. Make yourself at home.’

Home. Again that small word clenched at deep dark places inside Siena’s chest as suppressed visions of the old family house took root in the corner of her mind.

‘I’ll see you later tonight?’ Rick asked.

‘See you then.’ She hung up and turned to find Rufus watching her quietly. He approached, making a dead-straight beeline through the departing crowd.

‘Straight to Palm Cove, then, Ms Capuletti?’

‘Change of plan, Rufus. Unfortunately Palm Cove is going to be a no go.’

‘But Maximillian—’

‘I can always catch a cab if it’s too much trouble,’ she said, staring him down. Siena could read people in a heartbeat and, though she figured this guy had secrets she didn’t even want to know about, she knew that pleasing Max’s guests was now priority number one.

He raised one thick silver eyebrow, as though asking if she was going to be this stubborn all weekend. She grinned back at him.

For Siena stubborn was a promise.

An hour later Siena made plans for Rufus to pick her up the next day for her interview, took his business card in case she needed him for anything—car trips, tourist outings, dinner reservations, hits on annoying family members—and let herself into Rick’s home.

It was just as she had expected. Within the freshly painted walls of the brand new house lived ancient mismatched furniture from the old family home mixed with assorted Ikea decor. And there was an inherent scent of tomato pasta on the air.

Family pictures littered the top of their old piano, its keys yellowed by time. Memories crowded in on her as she remembered Rick forcing her to practice at that very piano every single night. While her friends had been at the mall or going to movies, from the day he’d become her legal guardian she had been chained to her weekly routine like a prisoner serving out a sentence for a heinous crime.

Siena lumbered up the stairs, dragging her small case into the obvious spare bedroom where she found a set of keys and a note reading: ‘The keys are for the green car. Dinner’s at seven.’

After changing into a thankfully cola-free filmy sleeveless black top and skinny dark designer jeans, she searched the Yellow Pages for the name of a dry cleaner. Grabbing her grimy suit and the keys for the green car—not wanting to bother poor Rufus for a quick trip to town, especially since she wasn’t entirely sure if she was partial to him or if she was slightly scared of him—she headed out.

The innocuous sounding green car turned out to be a great, hulking, Kermit-green, eight-cylinder Ute which looked so neat and sparkly clean it couldn’t have been used to haul anything more gritty and cumbersome than plants for Tina’s garden.

She started up the monster, took a few moments to familiarise herself with the feel of the pedals as it was the first right-hand-drive car she had driven in months, then backed out of the driveway.

She had to admit it was a beautiful day. Hot and sunny, like every day in Cairns—a huge tourist destination, poised on the edge of the magnificent Great Barrier Reef, one of the seven wonders of the natural world. It really was paradise. For some. For others the hot air felt heavy, smothering, suffocating…

She switched on the air-conditioning, her breathing coming easier when the car smelt less like the past and more like the inside of a plane.

After about five minutes of driving Siena passed an intersection with an antique shop on one corner and an antiquated milk bar on the other and felt a massive wave of déjà vu.

Ignoring the map on the display of her PDA, she took a right turn down a familiar-feeling suburban street, shady with gigantic overhanging gum trees. The stillness of the place washed over her as she meandered deeper along the windy road past lovely large two-storey homes with gables and shutters and front porches and grassy front gardens. It was a picture postcard neighbourhood for a young family.

But familiarity soon morphed into prickly realisation.

This was her old street. The home she had lived in for the first eighteen years of her life. The home in which she had grown up as a late child with a bossy older brother and an absentee father…

She rumbled down the street in second gear. Piano music pealed from one house, making her feel giddy. She peered at numbers on letterboxes to draw her focus elsewhere.

And then she found it. Fourteen Apple Tree Drive. Even the street name was picture perfect. But she knew that the lives going on behind such façades weren’t anywhere near perfect.

A flash of movement loomed at the corner of her vision and she looked up from the letterbox to see a kid riding his bike out into the street.

Swearing loudly, she slammed on the brakes, the big car tugging and shuddering as she held on for all her might. But her unpractised arms couldn’t keep the car straight.

The wheels locked and skidded sideways and, with a crunching jolt, she mounted the kerb. The car slammed to a halt when it came face to face with a hundred-year-old tree in a mass of screeching tyres, grinding metal undercarriage on concrete gutter and the acrid smell of burnt rubber.

Siena’s shallow breaths couldn’t dull the sound of her thudding heart.

Then she remembered the kid on the bike. She looked through the windscreen.

Nothing.

She looked out the driver’s window, then craned her neck to see over her shoulder to the road behind.

Neither child nor bicycle were anywhere to be seen.




CHAPTER TWO


JAMES was sure he heard the screech of car tyres over the sound of his electric sander. He let the sander whirr to a slow stop and whipped his protective goggles to the top of his head.

He stared through the sun-drenched dust floating in the air about him in his backyard workshop, listening.

But there was nothing bar the regular sounds of suburbia—a creaky Hills Hoist clothes-line twirling in the tropical breeze, noisy miner birds fighting over scraps, an amateur pianist a few houses over practising his scales…

He must have imagined it.

His hand moved back to the goggles on his head, ready to get back to work, when he heard a car door slam in his front garden.

He was out of his workshop and sprinting down the driveway before his work gloves even hit the ground.

The first thing he saw was a green Ute mounted halfway up the kerb, its driver’s side door open wide, its front bumper crunched in against his front tree and a soft wisp of smoke spiralling from the bonnet.

The second thing he saw was Kane’s bike lying on its side on the street behind the car.

The image ripped through him like someone tearing a photograph in half. If Kane was taken from him too…

Determined to just know, his numb feet took him to the kerb, and once there he saw enough to stop him from thinking such dreadful thoughts.

Kane sat on the road, leaning back against the far side of the car. He was alive. He was animated. And he was talking to a young woman who was crouching down in front of him, running frantic hands over his limbs and head.

A slight young woman with shaggy brown curls finishing just below her ears. A gauzy sort of black top sat high on her back as she crouched, revealing a wide band of olive skin above the waistline of her tight dark jeans.

James stared at the skin, realising in a completely unexpected flash of awareness that it was the first time he had seen that part of a woman’s anatomy in an age.

James brought the disturbing thought and his feet to a very definite stop with a crunch of work boot on gravel.

Kane looked over, his pale brown eyes widening as he saw that he and his new friend weren’t alone. Instant tears ensued as though the magnitude of what had happened was only realised once James was there to witness it.

‘Dad?’ Kane said, his high voice cracking.

‘I’m here now,’ James said as he willed his feet to pick up where they had left off.

One step at a time, he repeated in his head with each footfall.

He had no idea where he had picked up such a mantra—Kane’s varied counsellors, late night Internet browsing or even Dr Phil—but it seemed the right mantra for that moment.

He moved towards his son, still not ready to find blood or pain or cracked bones. ‘Buddy, are you okay?’

Kane nodded and stood as though he knew James needed to see that he was in one piece. ‘I’m fine. I scraped my arm but, as I told Siena, it hardly hurts.’

At the mention of the woman’s name, James looked back to find her face drawn with apprehension, her thin eyebrows arched into a frown, her stunning ocean-green eyes wide and blinking and a full lower lip hooked guiltily beneath her two front teeth.

She wiped shaking hands down her tight jeans as she stood, her slim legs wobbling on ridiculously high fire-engine-red pointy heels. Why anyone would drive in such contraptions he had no idea. He fought down a sudden urge to tell her exactly that. To yell, to let loose with every thought that was streaming through his frantic mind, to twist his recent fright back into much more comforting anger.

But every thought that crossed his mind flitted across her remarkable face and he knew that he didn’t have to. He saw mortification. Embarrassment. Something else so quick he missed it, but he caught the tail-end of it through a brief flash of pink across her cheeks.

And then, with an almost imperceptible shake of her head, he recognised the moment she reached the ‘get over yourself and go talk to the guy’ phase.

‘I’m Siena Capuletti,’ she said in a lilting voice, holding out a thin hand.

‘James Dillon,’ he said in return, moving to her to shake.

Her hand was warm. And almost impossibly delicate. This was a hand that had known more manicures than manual labour. For the first time ever he actually felt self-conscious of the work-hardened calluses marring his own large hands.

He let go first but she whipped her hand back with equal speed. As she tucked it into the back pocket of her dark low-rise jeans, James caught a flash of flat tanned stomach.

His insubordinate gaze flickered upward, but he then had to contend with those eyes. Big, green, framed by the darkest thickest lashes he had ever seen. Suddenly he wasn’t quite sure where to look.

‘This is my car,’ the woman said, pointing at the green Ute when he said nothing. ‘Well, it’s my brother Rick’s. I would never buy a T-shirt in such a colour, much less a sixty thousand dollar car. I was only going slowly, thank goodness, but I didn’t see Kane until he was upon me and when I did I braked as hard as my size sevens would allow, and I swerved, and I missed him completely.’

Suddenly she turned at the waist and pinned Kane with a stare. ‘You are quite sure I missed you completely?’

Kane nodded earnestly, watching Siena with extreme interest, and James could see that the kid was as captivated as he was himself.

‘Oh, thank God,’ she continued, crossing herself with a flourish. ‘This car is just so bloody big and powerful and…excuse my French. I think I may have hurt your gutter and I have definitely hurt the car and Rick is going to kill me but I will, of course, pay for any damage to your garden, or driveway, or tree or anything.’

It took James a few moments to realise she had come to the end of her speech. He looked back down at Kane, who was now leaning beside the car, sniffling but no longer crying. He was cradling his elbow but, of the two of them, James was pretty certain Siena Capuletti had come out of it the more afflicted of the pair.

James offered the woman a smile by way of acceptance of her apology. Thankful for the reprieve, she smiled back, her eyes glittering like the sun off the coral-laden waters off Green Island.

He stamped out his own smile before his imagination got the better of him. He leant over and picked up the bike and rested it against his thighs, creating a wall between himself and the winsome stranger.

‘If Kane says you missed him,’ he said, ‘then you missed him. He shouldn’t have been riding out on to the road as it is.’

She shook her head, her riotous dark curls swishing about her ears. ‘I should have been more careful, especially driving down a suburban street.’

She looked up at his house, staring at it for a few moments, her face haunted, overly so he believed, considering how little damage had been done to either person.

She swallowed and then looked back over at him, her big green eyes blinking nineteen to the dozen. He couldn’t help himself—he just stared right on back. Was it because she was familiar? Perhaps she lived locally and he had seen her at the supermarket.

No. That wasn’t it. He had never seen this woman before. But there was definitely something tugging at him. Something potent enough that he found a sudden need to drag his eyes away and down to Kane.

‘Now, what have you done to your arm, buddy?’

Kane twisted his arm to show him the nasty scrape. And blood. Seeing blood dribbling down Kane’s arm clouded James’s mind until he felt as if he was watching the world through a pinhole.

At the behest of each and every counsellor who had drifted in and out of Kane’s life over the past year—the first recommended by the hospital, yet another organised through Kane’s school and even a private one who James thought smelled of his old gym bag but Kane liked him and that was recommendation enough—James had pared his life back to one core mission: devoting himself to Kane. To protect him. To keep him safe. To shield him from all further pain. So how the hell had he allowed this to happen?

‘Maybe we should whip you down to the emergency room to make sure.’

As soon as the words left his mouth James knew it had been exactly the wrong thing to say. Kane’s pale eyes grew as big as saucers and his face lost the last vestiges of colour.

Damn it! Over a year of being a single dad and he still managed to find new and interesting ways of screwing it up.

The last time the poor kid had seen his mother she had been in the care of a pair of smiling ambulance drivers on her way to the hospital for tests. And she had never come home.

James ran a quick hand back and forth over his short hair. This wasn’t the time for all that. Late at night, while Kane slept, he could kick himself for any mistakes he’d made before and since to his heart’s content, but in daylight hours it was all about keeping Kane on an even keel.

‘What was I thinking?’ he said, bending down until he was at eye level with his son. He reached out and tucked his hand behind Kane’s thin neck. ‘A bit of Dettol and a bandage ought to do it. It might sting a bit, but you can take it, can’t you, Buddy?’

Kane nodded, the fear in his eyes dampening. ‘’Course I can.’

‘I know first aid,’ a modest voice said from behind them. ‘Only last week I took my yearly refresher course.’

James turned to find Siena shuffling from one high-heel-shod foot to the other, wringing her slender hands together so hard he could see her knuckles turning white.

‘This is entirely my fault,’ she said, decreasing the distance between the two of them until she was close enough that he could smell her perfume. Subtle. Expensive. Drinkable. ‘Please let me make it up to you.’

Her stormy eyes beseeched him and in that moment he could not remember what she was referring to. A moment was all it was, but that moment was significant. For in that moment he had no memory. No memory of sadness, or loss, or a life put on hold. All he knew in that moment was the exact colour of her eyes.

He wiped the back of his hand across his hot forehead and was not at all surprised to find fresh beads of sweat had gathered there and they had little to do with the Cairns weather. Tropical temperatures he was used to; this unfamiliar woman he was not.

Worried that she was about to fret herself into a dead faint on his front lawn, and knowing she couldn’t go anywhere in the Ute as it was, James gave in.

‘Come on in out of the heat. I’ll call someone to check out your car. I think we could all do with a cool drink of lemonade.’

James held out an arm and Kane leant against him without argument. He tucked Kane’s slight warm body against him and took the wobbly bike up the driveway, not quite sure how it had come to be that he of all people had invited a perfect stranger into his house when even his closest friends had not been inside those walls in months.

Siena ran around to the open driver’s side door, quickly shoved her PDA into her handbag and slammed the door shut. She didn’t bother locking it; at that point if anyone wanted to try to drive the car away they were welcome to it.

She then found herself following a stranger and his son into Fourteen Apple Tree Drive.

Shock. The only reason she was even contemplating walking into that house again had to be shock.

So why wasn’t she just waiting by the car while the guy called her a cab and a tow truck so that she and her wobbly legs could be on their way? She had somewhere else to be. She had a Dolce and Gabbana suit fermenting on the back seat of her car, for goodness’ sake! She even had Rufus’s business card floating about the bottom of her handbag, and she was certain he could be at her side faster than any cab.

But no. For some reason she was following this man into her house…his house, for lemonade, when she could really do with a strong gin and tonic to calm her seriously taut nerves.

She intently ignored the curved driveway her father had poured the year she’d turned nine and the black shutters on the second floor which she had broken twice when trying to climb out the window after curfew.

Instead she kept her gaze tight on the back of a dusty black T-shirt stretched across a broad back, patches of hair on tanned muscular arms glowing in dappled sunshine, scruffy back pockets of worn old jeans moulded to the lean lines of long legs.

As she neared her father’s beloved rose bushes, which she had deflowered completely to load on his breakfast tray one Father’s Day, Siena focused as close as someone could on the back of James’s neck where short ash-brown hair had been recently shaved into a perfectly straight line revealing a strong tanned neck with a couple of sexy crinkles thrown in for good measure.

Okay, so this was wasn’t going to be easy. But did she really need to be focused on sexy neck creases and moulded jeans to get her through? The guy was a father, for goodness’ sake. No wedding ring—like any self-respecting single woman she had noted that the moment she had seen the guy. But he was definitely the antithesis of what she normally preferred in the male friends she made on her brief stints in different countries around the world.

She liked men in suits. Clean-shaven, single men with time and money and ambition who knew what they wanted and went after it. Men not unlike her.

If her first impression was spot on, and it always was, this guy was a labourer of some sort; the rough pads on the palms of his hands had given that away.

But, remarkably for her, that was as much as she had figured about him. Whether on purpose or through circumstance, this one had a pretty solid wall shielding strangers from seeing too far past that half-smile of his.

Nevertheless she could tell that he was covered in what looked like sawdust, he was way too polite for the likes of her and he lived in Cairns. Therefore he was utterly out of bounds.

As they reached the front door, James casually kicked off his work boots to reveal black socks with matching holes in the toes. Kane then held on to the other side of the doorway and mirrored James’s actions precisely, pulling off his sneakers by the heel using the toes of his opposite foot.

From nowhere Siena was hit with a wave of vulnerability that was almost stronger than the apprehension repelling her from going inside her childhood home. The charming scene touched her, creating a ball of something entirely new deep in her stomach.

It felt a heck of a lot like longing, but for this focused, no-strings-attached, jet-setting career girl that was unlikely.

Maybe it was nausea. She’d been in a car accident after all! Surely such a thing would make anyone a little woozy around the edges and it would explain the wobbly knees, intense interest in the backs of strangers’ necks and weird cravings cramping at her innards.

When she stopped in the shade of the portico, the object of her woozy feelings smiled at her—the same odd half-smile he had afforded her earlier. Up close and personal, his smile didn’t seem so free and easy—it was cool, aloof, barely reaching his slate-grey eyes. Suddenly she wasn’t so sure that she had been sensing the ghosts of her own childhood when driving by this house after all.

‘Da-a-ad,’ Kane said, tugging on James’s arm, and it was enough for his smile to kick up a bare notch, a sliver, a millimetre, but even that tiny alteration turned some sort of switch inside him. And inside her.

With that new low burning light came flecks of the palest blue into James Dillon’s grey eyes, a captivating crease appeared from nowhere in his carved right cheek, and suddenly Siena couldn’t remember what she had been worrying about in the first place.

‘Come on in. We don’t bite,’ James said, bathing her in the affectionate smile meant for his son. He then turned and followed his son into the house, leaving the door open for her to follow.

She had to go ahead with this. There was no way she wanted to feel beholden to these guys. Or guilty for almost running the kid down. Especially not guilty. She’d swum through enough of that to know one could never come out clean at the other side.

If she could confiscate cellphones from Fortune 500 CEOs, tell sheikhs to sit down and shut up and show million-dollar football players how to use their airsickness bags, she could do this.

With a determined flourish she kicked off her red Jimmy Choos, tucked them neatly against the doorway with a quick prayer to the fashion gods that no suburban housewife with a discerning eye for designer footwear might happen by, and with her hot bare feet curling against the cool tiled floor she followed him inside.

Her feet slowed once she realised that, though on the outside she never would have mistaken her old home, on the inside the ground floor was absolutely nothing like it had once been.

Whereas the home she grew up in had been dark and overstuffed with fake Italian statues, old furnishings and too many rugs, James Dillon’s home was like the perfect summer day. Buttermilk-yellow walls, soft cream carpet and a collection of the most beautiful highly polished wooden chairs and side tables and cupboards created the illusion of endless space. Walls had been knocked down to create an open flow throughout a house which to her had always felt claustrophobic. She could see all the way through to skylights and bronze hanging pots in the spotless white and wood kitchen and a sunroom had been added to the back of the house, housing a small cane sofa overloaded with scatter cushions.

Finding herself alone, she wandered to a shiny black piano, eerily situated exactly where hers had once been. And, just like hers, it housed a bunch of framed photos scattered across the closed lid.

She laid her red handbag on the piano lid and leant in to get a closer look.

James now wore his brown hair short with a sprinkle of ash throughout, but in the main photo he had longer hair curling about his face, he wore frayed shorts and a T-shirt and had Kane thrown over his shoulder as they ran down a tract of perfect white sand at the beach. She sighed, recognising the landscape as Palm Cove—the peaceful little hamlet where she ought to have been if Rick hadn’t guilted her into staying with him in the ’burbs.

Her eyes devoured other photos in which James fished, jumped from planes and taught Kane how to ice-skate. And, in all of the photos, he was smiling. All big white teeth, pink wind-burned cheeks and crinkling blue-grey eyes.

‘Well, there you go,’ she said aloud, her voice echoing in the lofty space. Whereas polite, quiet James of the half-smiles and worn clothes was a looker, Action James was a true blue—no doubting it—gorgeous son of a gun.

Siena gulped down a strange thickness in her throat. The very fact that she was thinking such thoughts about some guy with a kid should have sent her walking out of the house then and there.

As her hand reached for the handle of her bag and her itchy feet made a move to do just that, Siena suddenly caught sight of a photo of a woman hidden amongst the two dozen of Kane and James. She reached in and took it in her hand.

Sunlight gleamed off thick tousled blonde hair. Rows of neat white teeth beamed from a wide smile. Brown bedroom eyes looked not at the camera but at the person behind the lens.

‘Siena?’ James said from somewhere out of sight.

‘Coming!’ she called out, quickly placing the photo back on to the piano lid.

‘Through here,’ he called back.

She followed the sound of his voice and found Kane sitting on a closed toilet seat while James was on his haunches searching through a cupboard in an airy bright white downstairs bathroom where her dingy old laundry room had once been.

And, though there was a picture of a beautiful blonde on his piano, and she had almost hit his son with her car, and she had somewhere else to be, and it was none of her business, she couldn’t help taking a moment to reconcile James with the guy in the photographs.

Okay, so there was definite gorgeousness still there, only in sepia rather than full Kodak-colour. He looked up to find her staring at him and his grey eyes flickered and narrowed.

Siena blinked several times over, before doggedly turning her attention to the job at hand. Around a dozen different antiseptic creams, lotions and bandages lay on the wide bench top at his side.

‘Are you bunking in for a nuclear winter?’ she blurted out.

‘Somehow I don’t think this part of the world is at the top of the nuclear hit list, if it ever comes to that,’ he returned, his voice unexpectedly laced with sarcasm. And, since Siena was quite partial to a bit of that herself, she felt her stomach flutters returning.

‘Fine. But then what’s with the personal pharmacy?’ she shot back.

‘I’m thorough. Is there something wrong with that?’

‘Hey, I’m not complaining. Only a silly woman would put down thoroughness. Just making an observation.’

James’s brow furrowed ever so slightly, his mouth hooked up at one corner, and he blinked long and slow. And, just like that, she sensed the game was on.

‘And what else have you observed?’ he asked, moving to sit back on his haunches, one muscular arm leaning casually along the top of the cupboard door.

She glanced at a much safer Kane, who was watching her with big sad puppy dog eyes, completely trusting. ‘Well, I’ve learned that it’s always the big strapping ones who fall apart at the sight of a bit of blood. Now, are you going to sit there with your head in the cupboard all day or will you just move over and let me do it?’

She gave James a little shove on the shoulder and he duly stood and moved to the far side of the room. She then grabbed a bottle of familiar brown liquid, which Rick had preferred when Siena the tomboy had come inside crying after getting in the middle of scrappy fight with local boys.

She felt the temperature in the room change as James moved to sit on the tiled edge of a neat oval spa bath—watching her.

‘If I drop a dollop on this perfect white floor,’ she said, not looking his way, ‘I’m scared that sirens will blast and water will stream from jets in the ceiling.’

‘Don’t panic,’ he said. ‘We have a cleaner.’

‘Oh, do we now?’ she asked, pulling a la-di-dah face at Kane. Kane grinned back at her, all too-big teeth and goofy dependence, and her stomach flutters coagulated back into that odd sensation of longing.

‘His name is Matt,’ Kane explained. ‘He comes in most days and vacuums and gardens and turns on the dishwasher.’

‘The dishwasher?’ she repeated, sneaking a look at James. ‘My, oh, my. Whatever would we do without him?’

She was surprised to find that the engaging half-smile had not left James’s face. She looked determinedly away.

‘And he picks me up from school,’ Kane continued, oblivious to the undercurrents swirling about the small room. ‘And he stays on sometimes when Dad has a job to finish or has to go out to see clients.’

‘I see,’ she said, though she clearly didn’t. The image of tousled blonde hair came to mind and she wondered briefly what the sunshiny, piano-top woman in their lives did when James had to finish a ‘job’ or see clients.

But that hardly mattered. She was feeling decidedly better about being in the house of teenage hell than she would ever have expected—and there was no point in pushing her luck.

She picked up a cotton swab.

‘Ouch!’ Kane was already wincing before the swab was within a foot of his elbow.

‘You are making me feel mean, Kane!’

‘Matt did a first aid course because he used to be an ambulance driver,’ Kane, said, his eyes growing huge. ‘Why did you?’

‘I am a Cabin Director with MaxAir—you know the airline with the light blue planes? And I have to look after any people who become unwell whilst flying, so I do an extensive first aid course every year. Did you know that way back in the beginning, the first ever flight attendants were actually nurses?’

Obviously Kane was not nearly as impressed with her qualifications as he was with Matt’s so she decided on another tack. ‘If it makes you feel any better, I have taken a zillion other courses too.’

‘Like what sort?’

‘I have taken lessons on fixing leaking taps, self-defence, I have a scuba licence and I can speak four languages.’

‘Four?’ Kane asked, his pale brown eyes growing large.

‘Yep. My parents were both born in Italy so I knew Italian before I knew English, but I can also speak conversational German and French.’ I can also juggle, even soft drink cans, which would have sent Jessica into a fit had she been told; I can do the splits and tango with the best of them, she thought, feeling a bit like a circus clown.

Kane’s eyes all but popped out of his head.

‘Would you like me to teach you how to say one to ten in Italian?’ she asked.

Kane nodded.

‘Excellent. Okay. Uno…’ Siena dabbed at the scrape with the soaked cotton wool, wiping away specks of dried blood and gravel and doing her dandiest to keep Kane’s eyes on her mouth as she spoke, not on her hands as she tended his stinging wound.

‘Due…’ Siena cleaned the scrape and patted it dry.

‘Tre…’ Siena unwound the child-proof lid of the top of the antiseptic bottle.

‘Quattro…’Siena tipped a healthy amount of antiseptic on to a fresh hunk of cotton wool.

‘Cinque…’Siena dabbed at the scrape, turning Kane’s arm a dull brown.

‘Sei…’ Siena put the lid back on to the bottle.

‘Sette…’ Siena tore a hunk of bandage.

‘Otto…’ Siena placed the bandage over Kane’s arm.

‘Nove…’ Siena ran a soft hand over the bandage, making sure it was in place.

‘Dieci! Well done! To the both of us. Now, can you remember them all?’

He shook his head. ‘Tell me again.’

Siena did so and had Kane repeat after her. Halfway through she felt a tingle on the back of her neck and she realised it was because James was watching her still. She glanced at him sideways. His half-smile had graduated into something not bigger but warmer and she felt a ridiculous flash of satisfaction.

A few moments later Siena realised she was still staring, caught up in James’s complex gaze for so long that she now knew he had a ring of midnight-blue around his silvery pupils.

James swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his strong throat, and Siena had the distinct feeling he would have been able to describe the exact colour of her eyes too.

‘Teach me another language!’ Kane insisted, shattering the extraordinary tension that had cocooned the room.

‘Not now,’ James said, as he took Kane by the hand and drew him off the seat. ‘I, for one, am in need of a drink.’

And, by the gravel echoing in his voice, Siena had the feeling that if it were not for the presence of Kane, a gin and tonic would have suited him better than lemonade too.

‘Can I tempt you?’ he asked.

She stood, shoving her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. She knew he was talking about something as innocent as lemonade, but the implications of what it could have meant in a parallel universe resonated through her.

‘With lemonade?’ she qualified. ‘You bet.’

‘Yippee,’ Kane said. ‘Then I can show you my bedroom.’

And, just like that, Siena’s breath was sapped from her lungs.




CHAPTER THREE


‘UM, I don’t know, Kane…’ Siena said, backing away physically and mentally.

Before she could duck out the door Kane reached out and grabbed her hand, small, hot, sticky fingers closing over hers. ‘But I just got a new computer and it plays games and songs and stuff.’

His pale brown eyes began to glisten. His bottom lip trembled. A screaming kid she could handle. She’d been a pretty competent screaming kid once herself. But a kid with big brown eyes welling with tears? First she’d felt empathy for Freddy the cola-flinger and now this? It seemed that, despite the protestations of some of her cabin crew, she was only human after all.

‘You know what,’ Siena said, backtracking frantically, ‘I would love to see your backyard more. The reason I was driving down this street in the first place was because when I was your age I used to live in this very house.’

‘You did?’ Kane asked, his expression now wary.

‘I did. And the backyard was my favourite place. We had a swing set and a pool, and there was this one fence paling that was never attached properly and when I was not much bigger than you I could slip right through the hole it made.’

‘I know! Dad fixed it though when we first moved in. Wow, how cool. Which room was yours?’

‘The front room, I’d hazard to guess,’ James said.

Siena turned to him and nodded. ‘How’d you guess?’

‘When we repainted it took me a week to plug up all the holes left by poster pins.’

She grinned. ‘I was madly in love with several grunge rock bands for quite some time and I proved my love by covering every spare inch of pink floral wallpaper.’

‘I’ve no doubt,’ he said, the half-smile drawing her in. ‘And now?’

‘My tastes have become more…grown-up.’

‘R and B?’

‘No. Reality,’ she said.

He laughed, the sound rolling over her like an ocean wave on the hottest day of summer, and Siena felt herself warming from the inside out. Okay, now she recognised what this feeling was. It was the zing that came from flirting, and flirting well.

But there was a kid, and a blonde, and crucial dry cleaning to consider. She determinedly switched conversational tack. ‘My brother Rick sold this place about three years ago. Rick Capuletti. Did you buy it from him?’

‘Dad bought this house for Mum as a wedding present,’ Kane all but shouted, delighted to be able to nudge his way back into the conversation.

Her gaze switched straight from Kane to James to find herself drowning in the suddenly unfathomable depths behind his cool grey eyes. Before her eyes his clear-cut edges blurred, the sharpness that had earlier seduced her into easy flirtation dissolving until Siena had to fight the urge to reach out and tug him back to the present.

‘Oh,’ she said, unable to dredge up a trace of eloquence. Oh, indeed. So the sunshiny blonde was not just a ring-in. She was a bona fide Dillon family member. And she was Kane’s mother. And, of all things, she had been given a rather pricey house as a wedding present.

Wait a second…

‘But we only sold this place—’ Too late she shut her trap. Three years ago, she had been about to say. But the implication was there all the same. Kane had not been a honeymoon baby. Suddenly it was obvious that he had come from the same gene pool as the brown-eyed woman in the photograph, but it was entirely possible that Kane was not James’s natural born kid.

James’s cheek twitched and she knew he was following the trail of her thoughts without any trouble. She felt herself burning up. Blushing. She! Forthright, tough as nails, unflappable she.

James stood, drawing Kane in front of him as a wall. Kane took the attention blindly, hugging on to his dad’s arms as he blinked ingenuously up at Siena.

‘Kane, how about you show Siena your new trampoline while I organise the lemonade?’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ she said, torn halfway between mortification for somehow upsetting her host and a more selfish gratitude that a tour of the upstairs bedrooms had gone by the wayside.

Kane tugged her hand again and they jogged together through the kitchen, leaving James setting some glasses and a plate of packet biscuits on to a tray.

‘First I’ll show you Dad’s shed,’ Kane said, taking her to a large rendered concrete outbuilding, which was a new addition to the beautifully manicured backyard. She barely had time to take in the elegant landscaping around their old kidney-shaped in-ground pool as Kane gave the shed’s heavy side door a big heave-ho.

And inside?

Inside was a cave of wonders.

Sunlight streamed in through high windows, collecting waves of flying wood dust as it settled upon sharp, clean, oil-soaked tools residing in neat rows along the far wall. A long oak work table was clear of debris and bric-a-brac but was coated with splotches of paint and notches from slipped tools. A sander and a set of clear plastic goggles lay strewn on the bench as though forgotten in the middle of a job. Chunks of wood and chopped tree trunks with the bark still attached lay in neat piles all along the left wall.

‘What does your dad do out here?’ Siena asked, her voice a little breathless.

‘He makes cabinets.’ Kane swished his hand like a model on a game show displaying white goods.

She ran her hand along the bench, the soft pads of her fingers tingling at the feel of the rough worn wood. When she reached the end of the bench she found something large hiding beneath a dusty old sheet. She barely hesitated before giving the cloth a tug.

A small gasp escaped her lips as it fell away to reveal the most beautiful piece of furniture she had ever seen.

It was a baby’s changing table—waist-high, with five drawers, resting on stubby little legs. The name Lachlan was carved in a heavy neat scrawl along the top drawer and pictures of teddy bears and rattles were carved randomly about the piece.

The detail and craftsmanship was spectacular. In amongst the thousand and one classes she had crammed into her days off, she had taken wood shop. She had lovingly created what she had thought to be a truly beautiful wooden ashtray, though nobody she knew smoked. It had taken days to carve the simple round shape, buff it to a polish and then carve her initials into the bottom.

But this was a whole other dimension. Each piece of wood was obviously chosen for its peculiar grain, with the graded waves of colour and knots working to form a beautiful inclusive whole.

It was exquisite. The work of someone with patience and imagination. Siena had thought James Dillon a simple labourer, but for once her first impression had been wrong. The man was a creator.

She looked over her shoulder and through the large window which gave an unimpeded view of the backyard and the rear of the two-storey house.

The man in question ambled past the kitchen window with the phone to his ear—calling for a tow truck? Calling for a cab to take her home?

Her heart slipped in her chest and she felt something akin to loss at the thought of leaving so soon. A hand fluttered to her ribs and she swallowed hard. That sensation was the most unexpected of all.

She stepped back, needing to distance herself from all of the unwelcome feelings tumbling inside her and she bumped into a small work desk in the corner. A battered, dust-covered laptop resting on the corner of the desk slipped and she turned and caught it before it fell.

She righted it upon its small metal desk and saw that it was loaded on to a simple black webpage with a neat cream font. She knew by the format that it was a web-based diary—a blog. She’d trawled online blogs often as many of her workmates used them to keep their families apprised of their adventures travelling.

This page was simply called ‘DINAH’ and the dates below the title told Siena it was dedicated to a woman who had died a little over twelve months before. Cold fingers of dread crept up the back of her neck.

Needing to know, to make sure that what she was thinking was true, she ran her finger over the mouse pad to shuffle down the webpage and she randomly chose an entry dated a few months before.

I’ve been feeling a little anxious over the past few days. I can’t put my finger on the reason why, but part of it involves Kane complaining off and on about not feeling well.

Siena looked over her shoulder. Kane was busy in the corner, babbling away about how he helped his dad every Saturday morning and his dad let him choose the sandpaper and that he made five dollars a day when he worked with him. But it soon became white noise as Siena ached to read more. To know more.

She licked her dry lips, her heart suddenly beating so hard she could hear it thrumming in her ears.

But wasn’t this like reading the guy’s diary? Well, no. By definition a blog was out there, on the World Wide Web for all and sundry to stumble upon and read.

Convinced enough, she read on.

Sometimes it is a stomach ache, sometimes a sore throat, sometimes a headache.

I know that this can be a symptom that his counsellors are looking for to say he needs more intensive therapy, but it’s winter and a lot of colds are still going around so maybe I am overreacting.

To tell you the truth, I think I know how he feels.

Having moved my business to my backyard after they convinced me it would be in Kane’s best interests, having cut down time spent with friends and colleagues so that Kane can have every ounce of attention I can give, I have come to a point where there are days when I don’t see the point in getting up early or showering, I don’t want to eat breakfast, much less make it for someone else, and the thought of going outside the front door leaves me in a cold sweat.

But then I think of that sad little face, of those big brown eyes, so like his mother’s, and of that one important day a year ago when he asked me ever so politely not go to work so far away again, and my love for him takes over.

For him I can and will do anything.

One step at a time.

Siena blinked.

Dinah. Dinah was the beautiful blonde with the bedroom eyes in the photograph on the piano. Dinah was Kane’s mother, the woman who had been given a whole house as a wedding gift. And she was gone.

‘Hey, do you want to see my swings? They’re way better than the ones you left behind.’

Siena spun around to find Kane standing at her back, staring at her with big brown eyes full of innocence. If she thought her heart was thrumming earlier she’d had no idea. She could feel it slamming against her chest. Her palms were sweating. Her face had turned beet-red with guilt.

What was she thinking in reading James’s blog? Was she insane? Obviously the humidity was sending her barmy.

‘Sure, Kane,’ she said, spinning him on the spot and giving him a little shove towards the door with one hand as she closed the laptop behind her with the other. ‘But we’ll have to be quick as it’s time for me to go.’

James hung up the phone from calling a tow-truck.

He leant his palms against the kitchen bench and watched his son dragging Siena out of his workshop and over to the trampoline.

She padded behind him on bare feet, her heavy dark curls bouncing, the hem of her long jeans dragging in the dirt, but she seemed not to notice or care.

Kane clambered up on to his new toy and she stood by, hands on hips, as Kane bounced up and down and chatted away about goodness knew what.

James breathed in deep through his nose.

Siena Capuletti was something else, and, no matter which way he looked at it, they had been engaged in some pretty darned enjoyable flirting back in the bathroom. He didn’t even really know whether he had started it or her, but before he’d even known what he was doing he’d found himself in one heck of a natural rhythm.

He rolled the kinks out of his shoulders, quite liking the feeling that he had stretched some muscles that hadn’t been stretched in a good long time.

He didn’t have time to think on it much more as suddenly Siena was jogging back through the kitchen door.

‘I can’t believe how thirsty I am,’ she said as she leaned against the kitchen bench at his side. ‘It’s so hot out there. But, then again, it’s hot out there every day here.’ She glanced pointedly at the tray of drinks which had never gone further than the kitchen. ‘May I?’




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