Her Ideal Husband
Her Ideal Husband
Liz Fielding
Ideal marriage material?Stacey O'Neill was perfectly happy being single. The trouble was, her two little girls wanted a father–and they'd decided on Nash Gallagher!Nash was great with the children, and kissed like a dream–though it would take more than gorgeous lips and a sexy body to tempt Stacey into marriage again! This time she wanted a husband she could trust. And Nash wasn't quite what he seemed….
“You’re perfect.”
Nash put his arm around her waist and did what he’d wanted to do since he’d first set eyes on her. He kissed her. Hard and sweet.
Behind him, Clover was standing in the doorway, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Oh, hell! What had she seen? Say something…anything….
“Is Nash going to be my new daddy?”
Stacey managed a laugh. “New daddy?” she repeated, unable to look at Nash.
“He was kissing you.”
“Oh, yes, well, Nash was trying to cheer me up,” she improvised.
Clover didn’t look convinced. “When Sarah Graham’s mummy was cheered up like that, Sarah had a new daddy and a new baby sister.”
Oh, great. Stacey finally looked at Nash, hoping for a little assistance.
“Would you like a baby sister?” he asked Clover.
Born and raised in Berkshire, U.K., Liz Fielding started writing at the age of twelve, when she won a hymn-writing competition at her convent school. After a gap of more years than she is prepared to admit to, during which she worked as a secretary in Africa and the Middle East, got married and had two children, she was finally able to realize her ambition and turn to full-time writing in 1992.
She now lives with her husband, John, in West Wales, surrounded by mystical countryside and romantic crumbling castles, content to leave the traveling to her grown-up children and keeping in touch with the rest of the world via the Internet.
Look out for
The Bachelor’s Baby
#3666
Her Ideal Husband
Liz Fielding
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
NASH GALLAGHER knew he was crazy. He hadn’t intended to stay. He was just passing through, stopping for a last look at the garden before the bulldozers moved in. Keeping a promise to an old man.
It had been a mistake.
Somehow he’d expected it to be the way it was in his memory. Everything ordered, everything perfect, the one place he had always been sure of in a confusing world.
Stupid.
Gardens weren’t static things.
The walled kitchen garden might have survived the break-up of the estate, but the small garden centre his grandfather had run from it had been closed for nearly two years. Everything had run to seed, gone wild...
He dragged a hand over his face in a vain attempt to obliterate the image. He’d sworn he wouldn’t fall for his grandfather’s attempt at emotional blackmail, but maybe the old man knew him better than he knew himself.
It was the peach trees that did it.
Remembering how, when he was a boy, he’d been lifted up to pick the first ripe fruit, the taste of it, the juice running down his chin...
The memory was so strong that Nash rubbed his chin against his shoulder, as if to wipe the juice away, then he angrily pulled away a handful of the weeds that crowded against an ancient trunk, choking it.
Stupid. In a few weeks it would all be gone.
But the old trees were covered with small fruit, swelling in the sudden burst of hot weather, refusing to give up despite the lack of pruning, despite the thick choking weeds at their roots. Like his grandfather, they refused to give up in the face of the inevitable. He couldn’t leave them like that.
He wanted the men with the bulldozers to know they were smashing something that had once been cared for. It wouldn’t take long. He could spare a day or two for the peach trees.
Except it wasn’t just the peach trees.
There were the greenhouses with their old coke stoves and hot pipes. A wonderful place to play when it was too cold outside. A magic place full of warm, earthy scents.
It still was, despite the damage. A thin cat had given birth to a litter of kittens behind the stove. He’d spotted her once or twice, flashing through the long grass with some small creature clamped in her jaws and, as he stood there, the bravest of the kittens ventured out amongst the broken glass that littered the floor.
He moved it out of harm’s way and then reached for an old broom. He was sweeping up the broken glass, wondering at how swift nature was to reclaim its own, when a ball blasted him out of the past as it smashed through the roof and he swore volubly as the fine shards showered him and sent the kitten flying back to safety of the nest.
For a moment he stared at the ball, big, bright red, intrusive, and an unexpected fury boiled up in him. People were so damned careless. Didn’t they know, didn’t they understand how long this had been here? Care about the generations of men who’d spent their lives working, harvesting, loving the place as he did?
He shook the glass out of his hair, carefully peeled off his T-shirt, then bent to pick up the ball, intent on telling the idiot who’d kicked it without a thought for the consequences, exactly what he thought of him.
‘Mummy, Clover’s kicked the ball over the wall again!’
At the most trying stage of refitting the handle to a freshly painted door, Stacey couldn’t do much about her youngest daughter’s plaintive cry, other than put her on hold.
‘Tell her she’ll have to wait,’ she called back as she tried to juggle the handle and the screwdriver at the same time as fitting a screw with a life of its own into the hole. There were times, she felt, when two hands were simply not enough. But then, she had never been much use at this sort of thing.
Give her something solid to work with, a spade or a hoe, and she was perfectly at home. She could double-dig a vegetable plot, build a compost heap without raising a sweat. But put a screwdriver in her hand and she was all fingers and thumbs.
Not just a screwdriver. She wasn’t much use with a paintbrush. There was more paint on her clothes and her skin than there was on the door.
‘Mummy!’
‘What?’ The screw took advantage of this momentary distraction to make an escape bid. It hit the quarry-tiled floor, bounced once and disappeared beneath the dresser. Stacey only had four screws, the ones she’d taken out of the door plate when she’d removed it. Now she’d have to strip the dresser of china before she could move it and retrieve the wretched thing. Great. She dug screw number two out of her pocket, then remembered that her daughter wanted her for something. ‘What is it, Rosie?’
‘Nothing.’ Then, ‘Clover says not to worry, she’ll climb over and get it herself.’
‘Right,’ she muttered, through teeth clamped around the handle of the screwdriver. If she could just get one wretched screw in place everything would be easier. She jammed it hard into the hole so that it stayed put while she retrieved the screwdriver and then realised what Rosie had said. ‘No!’
As she spun round to make sure she was obeyed, the metal plate pivoted on the screw and gouged an arc out of the freshly painted surface.
For a moment Stacey stared at the scarred paintwork, too shocked even to let slip the kind of word that mothers weren’t supposed to know, let alone say.
Actually, she felt like screaming, but what would be the point? If she succumbed to the temptation to give in to her feelings and scream every time something went wrong, she would be permanently hoarse. Instead she dropped the screwdriver back into the toolbox, took a deep breath and, doing her best to keep calm, walked out into the garden.
It was not the end of the world, she told herself. She would get there one day. She would finish the kitchen. She would tile the bathroom. She would fix the guttering and decorate the dining room. She would do it because she had to. The house was unsellable the way it was. She’d tried it.
People might turn their noses up at twenty-year-old wallpaper, but there was the challenge to make a house over in their own image. Half-finished jobs just turned people off.
If only Mike had ever finished one thing before he’d started something else. But that had been Mike. There was always tomorrow. Except that he’d run out of tomorrows...
‘Mummy! Clover’s doing it!’ Rosie’s yell wrenched her from the beckoning arms of self-pity and she set off down the garden at a run.
Clover, nine years old and growing like a weed, had shimmied up the apple tree and was now dangling by her long skinny arms from the high brick wall that bordered the rear of the garden.
‘Clover O’Neill, get down from there this minute!’
Clover glared at her younger sister, muttering something unappreciative at her, but she did as she was told, dropping from the wall and flattening a couple of foxgloves in the process.
‘Sorry,’ she said, trying to straighten them.
Stacey just sighed, picked the flower stems and firmed the ground around the plants. The advantage of growing what most of her neighbours sniffily considered to be weeds was that they could take pretty much everything that two lively children could throw at them. ‘What on earth do you think you were doing up there?’
‘You said not to disturb you while you were fixing the door, so I was going to get the ball myself.’ She said this as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world. Clover could have won Olympic gold for ‘reason’.
‘Well, that’s very thoughtful of you, sweetheart, but I’d have been a lot more disturbed by a broken leg,’ she reasoned right back, firmly suppressing a shudder. The wall was a couple of hundred years old at least and in some places it was held together by little more than the mossy stonecrop that clung to it. ‘You are never—I repeat, never—to climb on that wall. It’s dangerous.’ Her daughter rolled her eyes, dramatically. ‘I mean it!’
‘But how are we going to get our ball back?’ Rosie asked.
Clover glared at her little sister. ‘If you’d kept your mouth shut, we’d have it back now.’
‘That’s enough. Both of you. You’ll get your ball.’ They’d get it the same way they always did. She would climb over when they weren’t around to see the bad example she was setting them. ‘I’m sure someone will see it and throw it back. They did last time.’
‘But that could take for ever,’ Rosie protested. ‘No one goes in there any more, not since it closed.’
It was true that the garden centre that backed onto their garden was rapidly turning into a wilderness since ill-health had forced Archie Baldwin, the old guy that ran it, to retire a couple of years earlier.
She must find time to go and visit him again soon, she thought guiltily. He’d taught her so much. The least she could do was take him a tin of shortbread, tell him all the latest gossip from the village. And maybe ask him about the depressing rumour going round the neighbourhood that he’d sold the land to a developer.
It would be a lot easier to sell her house if the views could be described as rural.
Attractive detached Victorian cottage-style property in village setting with scope for improvement. Interesting wild flower garden.
It sounded appealing. Until you saw it and understood exactly what ‘scope for improvement’ meant. How much money it would take. And, as her sister was fond of pointing out, most people tried to eradicate buttercups and daisies from their borders.
But the garden really wasn’t the problem. It was the house. The estate agent she’d asked to value the place hadn’t pulled any punches. The house needed some serious attention if it was going to make anywhere near the price it should and a housing estate blocking the view was not going to help. Or light industrial units. Maybe she should stop worrying about her precious wild flowers and plant a fast-growing hedge right now...
‘Mum!’
She let go of future worries and returned to the immediate one. ‘I’m sorry, Clover, but you shouldn’t have kicked your ball over there in the first place.’
‘You can’t play football without kicking,’ Clover pointed out, but kindly, as if to someone who wasn’t expected to understand. ‘Come on, Rosie. Mummy’ll get it for us; she always does. She just doesn’t want us to see her climbing over the—’ she made a sign like quotation marks ‘—great big dangerous wall.’
‘Clover O’Neill, that’s—’
‘It’s no use pretending, Mummy. I saw you last time.’
Stacey was not above circumventing the truth in a good cause, but there was no point in perjuring herself to no purpose, so she didn’t deny it, contenting herself with a firm, ‘You were supposed to have been in bed.’
‘I saw you from the bathroom window,’ Clover said, cheekily, and grinned. ‘You will get it, won’t you? Now?’
Since she’d been caught out, there seemed little point in waiting until the girls were in bed. ‘All right. But I mean it. You are not to do this yourself, ever. Promise?’
‘I promise.’ And Clover solemnly drew a cross over her heart. Just the way Mike used to when he promised he’d fix something tomorrow. Just the way he used to promise he’d take care when he went out on his motorbike...
Stacey swallowed. ‘Okay.’ She dropped the flowers, then approached the wall, jumped and grabbed the top, pulling herself smoothly up to sit astride the crumbling brickwork.
The derelict garden centre had once been the walled kitchen garden of a grand house that had long since been turned into the headquarters of some multi-national corporation.
From the top, she could see the south wall and the ancient espaliered peach trees. There were a couple of big old greenhouses that had lost a fair amount of glass in a bad storm. Until then, she’d used them to raise her own seedlings. Well, Archie had told her to help herself.
Now it all looked so sad, grown wild with frightening speed and run to a riot of weeds that were beginning to flower in the gravel paths and between great clumps of perennials that had burst out of plastic pots and made themselves at home.
She glanced back down at the girls. ‘Stay there and don’t move,’ she said, then jumped down into a mini-meadow of buttercups and dog daisies and began to look about her for the girls’ ball.
It was big and red and should have been easy enough to find. The trouble was, she kept getting distracted. First by a clump of poppies with scarlet silken petals. Great. She’d come back for some seeds later in the summer. If she was still there later in the summer. Maybe she would have sold the house by then. Or maybe not.
It was a depressing thought either way.
She stopped to look at a huge blousy peony. Not her kind of flower but it broke her heart to think of it being torn up by a bulldozer. Even if she lifted it, though, it probably wouldn’t survive. Peonies hated to be moved. They had her sympathy. She didn’t want to move, either. She was comfortable where she was and she’d put down long roots, but, like the peonies, she didn’t have a choice.
At least in her case the move wouldn’t be fatal. Just very painful. And the end of any chance of getting her own wild plant nursery up and running.
She pushed her way along the overgrown paths, looking for the ball and wondering just how far it could have gone, when she caught a glimpse of red beyond a row of overgrown bushes. She pushed through and saw the strawberries. Big and red and luscious.
Nash emerged from the greenhouse and looked around. Nothing. No one. Then at the far side of the garden he saw someone peering over. It was a child. A little girl. Then she disappeared and his anger evaporated with her.
She meant no harm. It was an accident. The place was a wreck and she could hardly make it worse. He began to pick his way around the raised beds, the thicket of waist-high weeds, planning on tossing the ball back over the wall.
He was about halfway there when another, much older girl appeared, her baggy shorts giving him ample opportunity to admire her long legs as she flung them over the wall. Not a little girl, this one, not if the skimpy top she was filling out so nicely was anything to go by. And he found himself grinning as she jumped down to wade through the knee-high flowers, the sun backlighting the strands of chestnut hair that had escaped the little bobble thing she’d used to hold it back from her face.
She was too busy checking the ground to notice him and he remained quite still, watching her as she waded through the long grass looking about her for the ball. Every now and then she would stop to look at a flower. Not picking it, but just looking, gently touching the petals of the big daisies, the vivid poppies as if saying hello.
Definitely not a vandal.
Then, as she stopped by one of the peonies, the sun lit up her face and he saw a look of genuine pleasure lift the corner of her mouth, before her smile faded to sadness. She wasn’t a girl at all, he realised, but a full-grown woman.
He took half a step, opened his mouth to call out to her, but she turned suddenly. And he knew she’d spotted the strawberries.
It would be a criminal waste to leave them to the slugs, Stacey thought. The wretched creatures already feasted like kings in her garden, despite all her environmentally friendly attempts at controlling them. It was only fair to share, she reasoned, as she got down on her hands and knees and picked half a dozen of the biggest strawberries she could find as a treat for Clover and Rosie.
Then she picked one for herself and ate it warm from the sun, the way strawberries should be eaten. The juice dribbled down her chin and she wiped it off with her fingers and then licked them. Heaven. She couldn’t think how the slugs, or the birds, had missed them, but she was glad they had and took one more.
In fact, if the garden was going to be bulldozed for housing, she might as well come back when Clover and Rosie were at school and get some runners; then they could have their own strawberries next year. She checked to see how soon the little plantlets would be ready. Then she stopped.
What was the point? They wouldn’t be there next year.
Okay, so she’d been saying that for the last two years, but time was running out. She might not be saddled with a mortgage, but there was no chance that she could sell enough wild plants to keep up with the outgoings. And if she was reduced to producing boxes of petunias and bizzie lizzies, she might as well get a job in an office. And with that miserable thought, she began to back out of the strawberry bed.
Her feet encountered an obstruction and she stopped, frowning. She hadn’t noticed anything on the path as she’d crawled in amongst the strawberries and, puzzled, she turned to look behind her.
The obstruction was wearing a pair of well-worn boots with thick socks rolled down over them. Above the boots were two long, well-muscled legs with scarred brown knees, hairy thighs and a pair of denim cut-offs, worn duster-soft with use, clinging to the kind of hips that should be carrying a health warning.
‘Can I help?’ The voice that went with the legs was duster-soft, too.
Stacey felt her face turn the colour of the poppies. To be caught trespassing was bad enough. To have a handful of filched strawberries as evidence of her fall from grace rang a loud nine on the Richter scale of embarrassment; yet to abandon them would only compound her crime. She was still trying to think of something to say when Clover rescued her.
‘Mummee! Have you found it yet?’ Her oldest daughter, paying technical lip-service to her promise not to climb the old wall, was instead perched on a branch of an equally ancient apple tree and peering anxiously over the wall.
‘Get down!’ She should have been angry, but her daughter’s appearance at least lent her the cloak of respectability. She was a mother. A widowed mother, moreover. What could be more respectable than that?
She scrambled to her feet and, turning to face her embarrassment head on, found herself looking up at the kind of man who should not only have a health warning tattooed to his backside, but to his chest, his arms and his thoroughly workmanlike shoulders. To say nothing of a lean, tanned face, periwinkle-blue eyes and the kind of floppy sun-bleached hair that had always gone straight to her knees. Which was why she’d been married on her eighteenth birthday and a mother by her nineteenth, sieving vegetables for baby Clover instead of learning the business aspects of growing them at the local agricultural college.
That this delectable hunk of manhood didn’t have a health warning tattooed to his limbs or any other part of him, she could see for herself since, except for a suntan, the cut-offs were all that he was wearing. Apart from the boots and socks. And she had no doubt that his feet and ankles matched the rest of him and were of the killer variety. Like his smile.
‘Is this what you were looking for?’
‘Looking for? Oh, looking for…’ Stacey made a determined effort to drag her chin out of the strawberry bed and get her knees under control. ‘Er, yes.’
‘I was in one of the greenhouses over there when it came through the roof.’ He tossed the football, spun it on one finger, then caught it, balancing it on the palm of his hand. ‘That’s quite a kick.’ His glance measured the distance from the broken panes of the greenhouse roof to the top of the wall. ‘For a girl.’ And he grinned up at Clover, who was still clinging to her tree top perch. ‘Is your dad a professional coach?’
‘No, my daddy’s in heaven.’
Well, as conversation-stoppers went, that took some beating. ‘Clover, if you don’t get down right now,’ Stacey warned, turning away from the disturbing sight of the man’s muscle-packed shoulders, ‘I’ll leave your ball over here.’ Mike had had shoulders like that. All brawn and no brain, her sister had said. Dee had always been the smart one.
While she never learned.
Clover disappeared.
‘I bet she’s a handful.’
‘Oh, no, not really. Just football-mad.’ Other women had dainty little girls who yearned for satin pointe shoes and a starring role at the Royal Ballet. She was usually torn between pride and mortification that her first-born had ball skills that put the boys at her primary school to shame and whose most ardent yearning concerned a pair of football boots way beyond the means of the widow’s mite. His teasing ‘For a girl…’ brought her firmly down on the pride side, for once. ‘She’s captain of the school team.’ Then, ‘Was there much damage?’
‘Damage?’ He needed prompting, too, it seemed.
‘To the greenhouse.’
‘I don’t think one pane more or less will be noticed, do you?’ The grin softened into a smile.
‘N-no, I suppose not…’ she stuttered. A smile like that should be licenced. Then, ‘Oh, Lord, you weren’t…I mean…’ No, of course he wasn’t hurt. She could see for herself that his golden skin was unblemished. Well, apart from the faint white line of an old scar across his collarbone.
Then she saw the sun glint off a shard of glass clinging to his hair and without thinking she reached up and picked it off.
CHAPTER TWO
STACEY stared at the sharp sliver of glass she was holding between her fingers and felt herself go hot all over.
She couldn’t believe she had done that. What on earth was she going to do now?
Despite the fact that she was totally unable to meet his eyes, the hunk seemed to understand her predicament because he dropped the ball and, grasping her wrist to steady a hand that was unaccountably shaking, carefully extracted the sliver of glass from between her fingers. Then he dropped it on the path and ground it to powder beneath his heel.
‘Thanks.’ Her voice was shaking as much as her wrist had done.
‘I think I’m the one who should be thanking you.’ He was still holding her wrist, his long fingers circling it, heating it, melting the bones. For a long moment he kept her his prisoner before suddenly dropping it as if he too were burning, raking his fingers through his hair as if needing to keep them occupied. Then he looked at his hand. ‘See, I’m always doing that. I could have got a nasty cut.’
She shrugged, awkwardly. ‘It’s being a mother,’ she began. ‘You just can’t help yourself.’ She swallowed, and tried to ignore the dangerous tingle where his fingers had touched her wrist. She wasn’t feeling motherly. Oh, no. Not one bit. ‘I, um, helped myself to a few strawberries,’ she said, bringing up the subject before he did. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘I thought you were very restrained not to take more. Were they good?’ He’d been standing there watching her? Her face competed with the poppies again.
‘Mummee!’ Another desperate plea.
‘I think the captain of the team wants to get on with the game,’ he said, stooping to pick up the ball, offering it to her.
‘What? Oh, no, that’s Rosie. She’s only seven. Clover makes her play in goal. She’s not very good.’ She took the ball, tucking it under her arm. ‘I’ll try to keep them under control, but when they’ve been in school all day…’
‘No problem. I’ll be around for a day or two. If the ball comes over again, just give me a shout and I’ll throw it back.’
‘You could be sorry you said that.’ She forced her legs to make a move, to put some distance between her and the temptation to stay and just look at him, but he walked alongside her as she headed back to the wall.
Was he going to offer her a hand up? She tried not to think about his hands around her waist, his breath on her neck.
‘What’s going to happen to this place?’ she asked quickly. To distract herself. ‘Do you know?’ She looked back. ‘I heard it was going to be sold to some awful developer.’ He didn’t say anything. ‘Oh, Lord, is that you?’
‘Would that be a problem?’ The corner of his mouth tugged up into a smile as he glanced sideways at her.
She wished she’d done more than tie her hair back with one of the girls’ bobbles. And put on some mascara. Lipstick even.
To paint a door? Get real, Stacey; this guy is a Grade A hunk and you’re a mother of two with the muscle-tone to prove it...
‘We’d miss the view,’ she said, quickly. Not that it would be hers for long. One wild-flower meadow at the local primary school, no matter how much admired, did not a career make. She really had to stop kidding herself that she could make a business out of her passion for wild flowers and get the house into shape so that she could sell it. He glanced across the garden to the fields rising away to the hazy hills in the distance. ‘Maybe they won’t get planning permission,’ she said, hopefully.
‘They already have.’
‘Oh.’ She’d expected it, but it was still a blow. ‘Houses?’ she asked hopefully.
‘Industrial units.’
‘Oh,’ she repeated dully. Then, ‘Are you working for the developers?’
He shook his head. ‘Just for myself. Nash Gallagher,’ he said, introducing himself, stopping to offer his hand before realising that, between the strawberries and the ball, her hands were now fully occupied. It was probably just as well. She hadn’t recovered from the hand around the wrist yet. Palm to palm was going to leave her reeling. And incapable of climbing that wretched wall.
But she could hardly deny him her name. ‘Stacey O’Neill. And you’ve probably gathered that the nuisances are Clover and Rosie.’
‘Well, I’m glad to have met you. As I said, I’ll be staying here for a few days, in case you see a light and think someone might be up to no good and call the police.’
‘Staying? You mean you’re camping? Here?’ She looked around, saw the small one-man tent pitched in a shady corner and wondered if he had permission. Then decided that it was none of her business.
‘This is the height of luxury compared to some of the places I’ve lived,’ he assured her, evidently mistaking her concern. ‘It’s got running water, plumbing—’
She wanted to ask what places, but restrained herself and wondered if he’d broken into the office to get at the plumbing and running water. Did it matter? If it was all going to be flattened... ‘You’re still sleeping in a tent.’ Then she shrugged. ‘I suppose it’s okay when it’s not raining.’ It had been a very wet spring.
‘Are you suggesting this spell of good weather is unlikely to last?’ he asked, with just a touch of irony in his voice to match the infinitesimal lift of one eyebrow.
‘This good weather has lasted all of a week so far, which, for this summer, is a record.’ Then she relented. ‘But according to the forecast you should be safe for a day or two.’
He glanced up at the cloudless sky for a moment. ‘Let’s hope so.’
‘Mummeeeeee!’
‘They’re getting impatient.’ She tossed the ball over the wall. ‘I’ll try to keep it on our side of wall from now on.’
‘It’s not a problem, really.’
Maybe not, but she had one. Getting over the wall with what remained of her dignity intact while he stood there and looked at her winter-white legs. Winter-white splashed with the forget-me-not-blue gloss that she’d finished the door with. And a scraping of brick dust. And squishy green plant juice on her knees from her expedition into the strawberry bed.
She looked at the strawberries in her hand and wished she left them for the slugs. Now she would have to get over the wall with one hand, or throw them away.
‘Can I help?’ he offered. Again.
She thought about those big hands lifting her, or giving her a push from behind. ‘Er…’ This was getting ridiculous. She was heading at what seemed like break-neck speed towards thirty. She had two children. Blushing was for girls... ‘Perhaps if you hold the strawberries while I climb up?’ she suggested.
He made no move to take them; instead he linked his hands together and offered them as a foothold. She felt a momentary stab of disappointment, then quickly placed her battered tennis shoe into the cup of his palms, and as he lifted her, she grabbed for the wall and was deposited on the top without the usual ungainly knee-skinning scramble.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘My pleasure,’ he replied, grinning broadly as she swung her legs over to the other side. ‘Drop in any time.’
She pretended not to hear, sliding down into her own garden and finishing off the foxgloves in her hurry. And not doing the strawberries much good, either. Despite the lift over the wall, she had still managed to squash them into a juicy mush.
Nash Gallagher watched as his new neighbour swung her lovely legs over the wall and quickly disappeared. She’d been decorating, he’d noticed. There were streaks of blue paint on her thighs and clothes and her fingers, as she’d cupped the strawberries protectively in her hand, still had paint embedded around her nails. Did she just enjoy doing it herself?
With Daddy in heaven, it would seem she had little choice.
Stacey was mashing the strawberries to mix with ice cream for Clover and Rosie’s tea when the abandoned door handle, still dangling by one partly driven screw, gave up the unequal struggle with gravity and fell noisily to the floor.
Clover, finishing off her baked beans, glanced at it. Then she said, ‘What this house needs is a capable man.’ Stacey took her plate and replaced it with the ice cream. ‘Or one with plenty of money.’
‘Clover!’
‘It’s true,’ Rosie added, helpfully. ‘Aunt Dee said so.’
Dee was undoubtedly right, but she wished her sister would keep her thoughts to herself. Or at least not voice them in front of the girls.
Fat chance. Her sister was hell-bent on fixing her up with a new husband, someone who fitted Dee’s idea of what was suitable for a little sister who couldn’t be trusted to choose someone for herself. Someone steady. Someone who wouldn’t, under any circumstances, ride a motorcycle.
An accountant, perhaps. Or, even better, an actuary, like her own husband. A man genetically programmed not to take unacceptable risks.
Unfortunately, much as she liked her brother-in-law, Stacey just couldn’t get terribly excited at the thought of being married to his clone. Her thoughts strayed to the stranger camping on the far side of her garden and she found herself smiling. There were some things that money couldn’t ever compensate for.
But as Stacey handed her younger daughter her ice cream, she promised herself she would have that door repainted, with its furniture in place and working when her sister came to lunch on Saturday. If it killed her.
Actually, though, her encounter with Nash Gallagher had given her an idea. Well, more than one, but she was a realist. Sex among the strawberries was fine when you were young and fancy-free but mothers had responsibilities. Mothers had to be sensible.
She let the tempting thought slip away and concentrated on the sensible one. Her house might not be fit for a feature in one of those ‘beautiful homes’ magazines, and it might not appeal to fussy buyers with a world of houses to choose from, but it was habitable. And she had a spare bedroom. Two, if she included the attic. Nash might be happy to sleep in a tent, but there were plenty of other people who would rather have hot water and clean sheets. Maybe she could let the rooms to a couple of students.
At her present rate of progress it would be a while before she could lick the house into shape and two students would make quite a difference when it came to paying the bills. And if they were a couple of willing lads, or girls, the kind who knew one end of a screwdriver from the other, it would be even better. In return for a little home cooking, they might achieve the same purpose as a capable man without all the disadvantages that went with the kind of husband a widow approaching thirty, with two little girls to bring up, could hope to attract.
Nash found himself grinning as he cleared away the broken glass, smiling as he remembered the way Stacey had coloured up when he’d caught her with her hand in the strawberry patch. He’d have sworn modern women had forgotten how to blush.
He should be feeling guilty for embarrassing her like that: a young widow with two little girls. Thoroughly ashamed of himself. Hell, he was ashamed, but that blush had been worth it.
Then the smile faded as he looked about him.
Industrial units.
Landscaped, low-rise industrial units. On paper it hadn’t sounded so bad. Standing here with the gentle slope of the wheatfield rising to a spinney that broke up the smooth line of the earth against the sky and with the peach trees basking against the centuries-old wall, it wasn’t quite so easy to be dismissive of the destruction.
On paper the choice had looked simple. Putting down roots had no appeal to him. He wasn’t sentimental about the past. His childhood hadn’t been the kind to get sentimental over.
But standing there, surrounded by the few good memories, it wasn’t quite so easy to dismiss.
‘You’re not getting any younger and children are a high-cost luxury.’
‘Make a record, Dee; it’ll save the wear and tear on your vocal cords,’ Stacey said, without rancour. She knew her sister meant well.
‘I would if I thought you’d listen to it. You need a husband and the girls need a father.’
‘I don’t need a husband, I need an odd-job man. And the girls have a father. No one can replace Mike.’
‘No.’ Dee, apparently about to make an unflattering comment about his parenting skills, hesitated, and went for tact instead. ‘Mike’s not here, Stacey,’ she said, kindly. Tact? Kindly? This was more than her usual ‘it’s-time-you-moved-on’ speech. She was up to something, Stacey thought. ‘You owe it to them to find them a father…a father-figure,’ she amended, quickly. ‘Someone who could give them all the advantages they deserve.’ Stacey began clearing the table in an attempt to avoid what was coming next. Dee was not to be distracted. ‘Lawrence Fordham for instance.’
So, this wasn’t just a general buck-yourself-up-and-get-out-there pep-talk. This was altogether more serious.
‘Lawrence?’ she repeated. ‘You want me to marry your boss?’
‘Why not? He’s a nice man. Steady, reliable, mature.’ Adjectives that could, by no stretch of the imagination, have been applied to Mike. But then, at eighteen, Stacey hadn’t been looking for those qualities in a man. Which was just as well, since she hadn’t got them. ‘He’s just a bit shy, that’s all.’
‘Just a bit,’ she agreed. She’d been put next to him at a recent lunch party at her sister’s house... Ah. So that was it. She wouldn’t make an effort, so her sister was making it for her. It should have been funny. But once Dee got an idea in her head she was harder to shake off than a shadow. ‘Small talk drips from his lips the way blood drips from a stone.’
‘That’s not fair. Once you get to know him—’
‘I do know him and you’re right, he’s a nice man.’ If you enjoyed talking about cheese production, or yoghurt culture. ‘I just wasn’t planning on anything more intimate—’
‘Okay, he’s not pin-up material, but let’s face it, sweetie, how many men-to-die-for do you know who are lining up, panting for a date?’
‘He’s panting?’ Stacey enquired, wickedly. ‘Lawrence?’
‘Of course not,’ Dee snapped. ‘You know what I mean!’ Stacey knew. She’d had her man-to-die-for and there was only one of those per lifetime. Which was probably just as well. Now she had to be sensible, but the prospect of dating men like Lawrence for the rest of her life, or worse, settling down with someone like him, was just so depressing.
‘He’s solid, Stacey. He wouldn’t let you down.’
Meaning that if he was inconsiderate enough to die on her, he wouldn’t leave her with a house that swallowed money, two children to bring up single-handed and no visible means of support, Stacey supposed.
‘He couldn’t let me down, Dee. We are acquaintances. Nothing more,’ she added, just to make her position quite clear.
‘Well, that’s about to change,’ Dee replied, ignoring her sister’s position. ‘I told him that you’d be his date for the firm’s dinner next Saturday.’
‘You did what!’ Stacey didn’t wait for her sister for repeat herself. ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’
‘Why? He’s personable. He’s got all his own hair and teeth and no bad habits.’ Stacey wondered if her sister was prepared to guarantee that in writing, but didn’t want to prolong the conversation. ‘He’ll make someone a wonderful husband and you need one more than most.’
‘Husband? I thought we were just talking about a date.’
‘We are. But you’re mature people. You’d be good for Lawrence, bring him out of himself. And he’d be very good for you. He wouldn’t even mind if you turned his garden into a weed patch.’ Because he wouldn’t notice. ‘You do the best you can, but don’t pretend it isn’t a struggle.’ Stacey wasn’t about to. It wouldn’t make a bit of difference if she did, because Dee knew better. ‘You will come on Saturday, won’t you?’
‘Oh, Dee…’
‘Please.’ Please? She was that desperate? ‘I’ll promise not to mention the subject again for a whole month if you do,’ she promised.
‘Good grief, I’m almost tempted. But I haven’t got a thing to wear,’ Stacey said, falling back on the age-old excuse.
‘You can wear my black dress.’
‘Your black dress?’ She should have known that her sister had a fall-back plan to cover her fall-back plan... Then her jaw dropped. ‘You don’t mean the black dress?’
‘Of course I mean the black dress,’ Dee said, calmly, and Stacey finally managed a laugh.
‘Now I’m really worried. Tell me, have you got some enormous bonus riding on your ability to fix Lawrence up with a date for this dinner?’
Dee’s brows quirked invitingly. ‘Would you go out with him if I had?’
‘Would you split it with me?’ Then, quickly, ‘Don’t answer that. I don’t want to be that tempted.’
‘Oh, come on, Stacey. It’s a night out. Gorgeous restaurant, lovely food, rich bloke. How many offers like that do you get these days?’ Not many. Actually, none. ‘He’s completely house-trained, I promise you.’ Dee meant to reassure her, but Stacey didn’t want a house-trained man. What she wanted was someone like Nash Gallagher. All right, not like Nash Gallagher. She wanted him. In person. ‘You’ll be safe enough,’ she promised. ‘Tim and I will be there.’
That’d be fun. An evening with Mr Nice, Mrs Bossy and Mr Deadly-Dull-but-Totally-Dependable...
But Stacey caught a tantalising glimpse of a way out. ‘If you’re going to the dinner, I won’t have anyone to babysit.’ There were many times when she wished her parents hadn’t sold up their business and moved to Spain to grow old disgracefully in the sun. This was not one of them. And Vera, her next-door neighbour and best friend, who looked after the girls on her occasional—very occasional—evening out, worked on Saturday nights at the local petrol station.
‘Clover and Rosie can stay over at our house,’ Dee replied, with all the firmness of a woman who’d made it in business and wasn’t about to take no for an answer. Even from her tiresome little sister. ‘Ingrid is looking forward to having them.’ The firmness of a woman who’d made it to the top in business and the smugness of one who’d got a ‘treasure’ for an au pair. ‘And I’m going to take you for a facial and a manicure, too.’
‘Now that is tempting,’ Stacey said. She glanced at her hands and surreptitiously scraped away the rim of blue paint that was stubbornly clinging to her thumb-nail. Her sister had bought her some horrendously expensive gardener’s handcream a while back; maybe she should start using it. And maybe Dee was right. After all her hard work, she deserved a treat.
A meal she hadn’t had to cook herself, a manicure and a chance to wear a designer label frock certainly came under that heading.
‘Can I really borrow your black dress?’
‘I’ll bring it round tomorrow.’
‘Heavens, Dee, the dinner isn’t until next Saturday…’
She grinned. ‘I know. More than enough time for you to come up with a dozen excuses, but once that dress is in your wardrobe you won’t be able to resist the chance to wear it.’
‘That’s sneaky.’ But maybe she could put it on, do the whole mascara bit and get Clover to kick her ball over the wall... Dee’s voice dragged her back from dreamland.
‘If sneaky is what it takes to get you out of the house, I’ll go as low as it takes.’ And she grinned. ‘Can you spare some more of those strawberries, or are you saving them for the girls?’ She glanced out to where Clover and Rosie were sitting in the long grass, picking daisies and decorating their young cousin, Harry, with daisy chains.
‘Finish them off. They’ve had more than enough.’
Dee scooped the fruit into her bowl. ‘They’re the best I’ve tasted this year. Where did you get them?’
‘Um…from a neighbour.’ And Stacey felt herself blush. She hadn’t seen Nash since the afternoon she’d climbed the wall and been caught with her fingers in the strawberry patch. Only the glow of a camp fire late at night when she’d been going to bed.
And she’d been congratulating herself on resolutely sticking to her guns and refusing to ask Nash to look for the ball when Clover kicked it over the wall just before bedtime, no matter how much her daughter had pleaded. Of course, she hadn’t had the promise of an Armani dress, then.
No, she was determined. She wasn’t looking for Mr Right. And she had had enough experience of Mr Wrong to last a lifetime. The girls would have to wait until he noticed it. And if he took his time about it, maybe Clover would learn to be more careful.
He didn’t, of course.
Clover had found the football in a carrier hooked over a branch of the apple tree first thing that morning. And resting on top of the football had been a large chip punnet full of strawberries.
Dee’s eyes narrowed. ‘A neighbour? What neighbour?’ Her sister’s scrutiny only made things worse. ‘I thought you were the one who handed out all the garden goodies around here.’ Then, ‘Are you blushing?’
Stacey covered her cheeks with her hands. ‘Don’t be silly, it’s just the heat,’ she said, quickly. ‘And I’ve been thinking…’
‘Thinking?’ Dee raised her brows.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Stacey repeated, ignoring her sister’s sarcastic response, ‘about letting out one of my rooms to a student. What do you think?’
Stacey knew exactly what her sister would think, but she needed to change the subject, fast.
‘I think you should put the house on the market and sell it for whatever you can get while the sun’s shining. With luck prospective buyers will be so busy reminiscing about the last time they saw a dog rose, they won’t notice that the paintwork’s peeling and the gutters are falling apart.’ She paused. ‘Cutting the grass might help.’
‘If I took in a couple of students,’ Stacey said, ignoring the sarcasm, ‘my financial circumstances would improve, I would be able to get the house into shape and then, if I decide to sell…when,’ she amended, quickly, before Dee could launch forth on the subject, ‘when I sell, I’ll get a better price.’
‘You’ve been saying that since Mike died.’
‘I know. But there’s a lot to do.’
‘I won’t argue with that.’ Then she shrugged. ‘All right, I’m through nagging for today.’ She stood up. ‘I think you’re mad, but we might as well have a look at what you’ve got to offer.’
Dee was shaking her head over the lack of tiling in the bathroom when Stacey saw Nash on the far side of the wall. He was shifting a heavy wheelbarrow full of rubbish in the direction of a faint curl of smoke; the sun glinting off his sweat-slicked skin, the hard curve of well-developed biceps. As if he’d felt her gaze on him he turned, looked up and their eyes seemed to lock...
‘Actually, you’ve got a point,’ she said, quickly, easing her sister out of the bathroom. She knew exactly what Dee would have to say about Nash Gallagher. He was temptation on legs and she’d fallen once before. ‘I always take care about splashing, but I can’t expect anyone else to bother.’ She threw one last, lingering glance out of the window. ‘I’ll see to it. Will you put a card on the notice board at the university for me on the way home?’
‘If you insist. Maybe you should put a card up in the village shop, too. Or even an ad in the paper. Or…’ Dee remembered that she had other plans for Stacey.
‘Or marry Lawrence and never worry about money again?’ Dee didn’t deny it. ‘What makes you think he’d want to marry me? I’m hardly a prize catch for a man in his position. Even supposing I’d consider marrying a man for his money.’ Her sister, infuriatingly, just smiled, and it occurred to Stacey that she wasn’t the only one being set up. She might actually have felt some sympathy with Lawrence as a fellow victim of her sister’s matchmaking plans, but he was safe enough from her. Besides, she had problems of her own.
Such as what Nash Gallagher would make of the tin of home-made shortbread that Clover had taken it upon herself to leave on top of the wall as a thank-you present for returning her football. The shortbread she’d made for Archie.
By the time she’d discovered it was missing and Clover had admitted what she’d done, it was too late to do anything about it. It had gone.
CHAPTER THREE
‘HAVE you heard what’s happening to the old garden centre, yet?’ Dee asked, as they walked towards her expensive new Italian car.
Unwilling to admit to the industrial units—she’d had enough nagging for one day—Stacey just said, ‘There’s someone working over there, clearing the place up.’
‘They must have got planning permission, then.’ Dee sighed and shook her head. ‘I did warn you. The house will be worth nothing if you don’t sell it quickly.’
‘If I could have sold quickly, I would have done.’
‘No, darling, you wouldn’t. You’ve been putting off the inevitable, hoping your numbers will come up on the lottery so you don’t have to move at all.’
‘Not true. I can’t afford lottery tickets.’
Dee looked startled. ‘Are things that bad? Look, please…’
‘Don’t!’
‘All right, all right,’ she said, quickly backing off from offering money. ‘But you know what I mean. You don’t want to move. All this fiddling about trying to fix up Mike’s do-it-yourself disasters is just your way of putting off the inevitable. Let it go, Stacey. Let it go…’
Stacey picked up her two-year-old nephew and began to fasten him into his car seat, pretending she hadn’t heard. ‘Okay, Harry?’ Harry grinned at her. ‘You are so gorgeous, sweetheart.’ She straightened and stepped back. ‘I wish I had a little boy just like you.’
‘Feeling broody?’ Dee asked, slyly. She hadn’t been... ‘Marry Lawrence and I’m sure he’ll oblige.’
‘Really? Does it have to be a permanent arrangement? I’d be perfectly happy with just the baby.’
‘As if you didn’t have enough troubles.’ But her sister was wearing a suspiciously smug little smile, no doubt counting on Stacey’s hormones to do the dirty work for her. ‘I’ll call round with the dress.’
‘Fine.’
‘You won’t cry off at the last moment, will you?’
‘Don’t nag. I can’t promise to make Lawrence’s night but—’ she paused as Dee’s helpful suggestion that the children stay over at her house with Harry, in the care of the doting Ingrid, suddenly acquired a less innocent interpretation; there was no such thing as a free babysitter ‘—but I won’t let you down.’ She would be making her own babysitting arrangements, though. ‘You won’t forget to put up a notice about the room, will you?’
‘You’re quite sure you want to do this? You might get the tenant from hell.’
‘As long as he can pay the rent, I don’t mind where he comes from.’
Stacey watched her sister drive away, not entirely sure she could trust Dee to put up the ‘Room to Let’ notice for her. Her sister had an entirely different agenda, wanting her safely married to someone who would pay to send the girls to a private school and install them all in a house with every modern convenience, a house where the shelves had been put up by a proper carpenter—or at least someone who knew how to use a level.
She meant well.
Stacey turned and looked at her home with its sharply pointed gables and piecrust bargeboarding. She loved it, but she had to admit that it could have been the prototype for the ‘crooked little house’.
It had been, in that favourite estate agents’ phrase, ‘in need of improvement’ when Mike had inherited it from his uncle. Unfortunately, he was not the man for the job.
Mike had only ever been good at one thing. A husband, a father, needed more than five stars in the good sex guide...
‘What are you looking at, Mummy?’
Stacey dragged herself back to the present. ‘There are some housemartins.’ She stooped down to Rosie’s level. ‘Look, they’ve built a house under the eaves. Can you see?’
‘Wow, that’s so cool.’
‘Yes, isn’t it? If they raise a family there, they’ll come back every year.’ Not quite paying guests, but just as welcome. ‘Run and fetch Clover, will you, sweetheart? I want to walk down to the village.’ Just in case Dee decided not to risk the chance of her plans being upset by a student needing a room this late in the college year, Stacey would put a card in the window of the village shop. Before she lost her nerve.
And when they got back, she’d cut the lawn. Well, trim the heads off the daisies, at any rate, which was all her lawn mower was capable of. University students probably wouldn’t notice, but she didn’t want to risk putting anyone off.
Dear Nash
Mummy says I have to wait until you find my ball, but that mite be forever if you don’t know I’ve lost it. So I’m just telling you I kicked it over the wall again. Sorry. Love, Clover
PS Please don’t tell Mummy I rote this. I’m supposed to be pashunt and wait.
Nash spotted the note, stuck in a crack at the top of the wall, when he emerged from his tent at first light. The football took a while to find, but he didn’t mind that. He’d been looking for an opportunity to further his acquaintance with Stacey O’Neill. He’d hoped the strawberries would do the trick.
She hadn’t responded in person, but the tin of shortbread suggested he wouldn’t be rebuffed if he looked over the wall to say thanks. The sound of a very sick lawn mower was all the excuse he needed.
Stacey was crouched over the mower, feeding its apparently bottomless thirst for oil, when something made her look up. Nash Gallagher was sitting on top of the wall, watching her, his incredible legs just waiting for a invitation to jump down and make themselves at home.
‘Need a hand?’ he said.
‘What I need is a new lawn mower,’ she said, standing up, her face flushed from bending over the ancient machine. Maybe. ‘I just hope I’ve got enough oil to keep it going until I’ve finished.’ The fact that the grass was six inches high wasn’t exactly helping.
He jumped down without waiting for the invitation and gave the mower an exploratory push, then frowned. ‘Have you got a spanner?’
‘Well, um, yes.’ He waited. ‘You want me to fetch it?’
‘It might be a good idea. Unless it’s trained to come when you whistle?’ One corner of his mouth lifted in something like a smile. Like a smile, but a whole lot more.
Oh, good grief. She knew this type. She’d married one of them and apparently six years of living with a sweet-talking hunk with a roving eye hadn’t given her immunity to the breed. ‘You don’t have to,’ she said, quickly. ‘Really. I’ll be fine.’
‘Until you run out of oil.’ And he looked up, shading his eyes against the sun. ‘If you feel bad about it, you always can make me some more of that shortbread.’
‘Oh.’ She had known that the shortbread would be misunderstood. ‘That was from Clover. For returning her ball. Again.’
‘Really?’ He didn’t sound disappointed. Instead he switched the grin to Clover. ‘Nice one, Clover. Tell me, do your talents stretch to making tea?’
Clover giggled. ‘Mum made the shortbread. I just put it there to say thank you. But tea’s easy.’
‘Well, I’m sure your mother could do with a cup. And, since you’re making a pot, I like mine with three spoonsful of sugar.’
Clover giggled, again. Stacey fought, with difficulty, the inclination to join in. Clover had an excuse; she was nine years old. At twenty-eight, she knew better. But she was still glad of the excuse to escape to the garage and get her features under proper control while she fetched the toolbox.
‘I brought the box,’ she said, dropping the toolbox beside him on the grass. They’d inherited it with the house and there was nothing less than fifty years old in it. ‘You should find something that fits.’
He folded himself up, opened the box and checked out the contents, testing a couple of spanners against the nuts. ‘Okay, we’re in business,’ he said. Stacey watched, chewing anxiously on her bottom lip, as he began to strip down the mower. Mike used to begin like that. Full of confidence. Nash glanced up, saw her expression. ‘Don’t look so worried. I’ll put it back together again.’
Stacey swallowed. Mike used to say that too. ‘I’ll, um, get on with trimming the edges of the lawn, then.’
He just smiled and carried on taking her precious, if difficult, mower to bits. She couldn’t bear to watch. Instead she worked her way slowly round the edge of the lawn with a pair of long-handled clippers that, too late, she realised were in dire need of sharpening. She just wasn’t into the razor-edged lawn look.
She struggled on, hoping Nash wouldn’t notice.
It had taken her a while to learn to bite her tongue rather than say, ‘I really could do with a shelf…’ or ‘Have you noticed that cracked tile in the bathroom…’ or ‘Let’s decorate the dining room…’
Mike had thrown himself into everything, but she’d eventually caught on to the fact that his enthusiasm outstripped his competence by a country mile. And that when things went wrong his enthusiasm ran out fast. But he’d been dead for three years and she was out of practice.
She glanced quickly over her shoulder at Nash. If he messed up, she would be in big trouble. She might not keep her lawn short, but she had to keep it manageable so that the girls had somewhere to play. And grass didn’t stop growing just because the mower was out of action.
Clover put a mug of tea down beside her, then carried one across to Nash and stayed beside him to watch what he was doing. ‘Clover, don’t get in the way,’ she called out.
‘She’s fine.’ Nash patted the grass beside him, inviting her to sit down, and began to explain what all the bits were and what they did. Rosie, not to be left out, sidled up and joined them. ‘This is a washer, and this is a nut,’ he began, holding out his hand so that they could check them out. ‘And this bolt goes through here, see?’ He leaned back so that they could have a good look. ‘Then you put the washer on the end of it... Do you want to do that, Rosie?’ Rosie giggled. ‘You are Rosie, aren’t you?’
‘Her real name’s Primrose,’ Clover said. ‘But nobody calls her that.’
‘I like Primrose,’ Rosie protested.
“‘Primrose first-born child of Ver, Merry Springtime’s Harbinger…’’’ he quoted. ‘I bet your birthday’s in March.’
‘It is,’ she said, a little breathless from the attention. ‘It is.’
‘Okay, Primrose.’ He offered her the washer and she took it and put it where he showed her. ‘That’s right. And now the nut goes on here to hold it all together. Clover, can you do that for me?’ Clover carefully screwed it into place. ‘Hey, we’ll have this done in no time.’
Stacey watched, her heart aching for her girls, for the way it should have been for them. Not that it would have been. Their father had never had that kind of patience.
Nash glanced up, and when he saw she was watching he raised his brows, as if saying, Is this okay? She forced her lips into a smile and then turned away and carried on forcing the blunt shears through the lawn edges.
‘Mummy, your tea’s getting cold.’
‘Oh, sorry.’ She stopped, stooped to pick up the mug and, despite herself, turned back to watch. ‘Do you have children of your own, Nash?’ her mouth enquired, before her brain could stop it.
‘No. No children. No wife.’ He handed Clover another nut and looked up. ‘I’m a rolling stone. I’ve never stopped travelling long enough to gather any moss.’
She remembered him saying that he’d stayed in worse places than the garden centre. ‘Where?’
‘All over.’ He must have seen the next question in her eyes, or maybe he just knew what was coming. ‘I started with VSO in South-East Asia... That’s Voluntary Services Overseas,’ he explained.
‘I’ve heard of it.’ Had thought, once, that she would do that after college. Before she’d met Mike and anything but being with him had suddenly seemed pointless.
‘I did a couple of years with them before working on a project with Oxfam. Then I moved on to South America. I’ve been there for about five years.’
‘And now you’re home.’
He thought about that for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’ He sounded surprised. As if he couldn’t quite believe it. ‘Hey, girls, I think this is about done. Let’s give it a whirl, shall we?’
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Liz Fielding
Ideal marriage material?Stacey O'Neill was perfectly happy being single. The trouble was, her two little girls wanted a father–and they'd decided on Nash Gallagher!Nash was great with the children, and kissed like a dream–though it would take more than gorgeous lips and a sexy body to tempt Stacey into marriage again! This time she wanted a husband she could trust. And Nash wasn't quite what he seemed….
“You’re perfect.”
Nash put his arm around her waist and did what he’d wanted to do since he’d first set eyes on her. He kissed her. Hard and sweet.
Behind him, Clover was standing in the doorway, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Oh, hell! What had she seen? Say something…anything….
“Is Nash going to be my new daddy?”
Stacey managed a laugh. “New daddy?” she repeated, unable to look at Nash.
“He was kissing you.”
“Oh, yes, well, Nash was trying to cheer me up,” she improvised.
Clover didn’t look convinced. “When Sarah Graham’s mummy was cheered up like that, Sarah had a new daddy and a new baby sister.”
Oh, great. Stacey finally looked at Nash, hoping for a little assistance.
“Would you like a baby sister?” he asked Clover.
Born and raised in Berkshire, U.K., Liz Fielding started writing at the age of twelve, when she won a hymn-writing competition at her convent school. After a gap of more years than she is prepared to admit to, during which she worked as a secretary in Africa and the Middle East, got married and had two children, she was finally able to realize her ambition and turn to full-time writing in 1992.
She now lives with her husband, John, in West Wales, surrounded by mystical countryside and romantic crumbling castles, content to leave the traveling to her grown-up children and keeping in touch with the rest of the world via the Internet.
Look out for
The Bachelor’s Baby
#3666
Her Ideal Husband
Liz Fielding
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE
CHAPTER TWO
CHAPTER THREE
CHAPTER FOUR
CHAPTER FIVE
CHAPTER SIX
CHAPTER SEVEN
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHAPTER NINE
CHAPTER TEN
CHAPTER ELEVEN
CHAPTER ONE
NASH GALLAGHER knew he was crazy. He hadn’t intended to stay. He was just passing through, stopping for a last look at the garden before the bulldozers moved in. Keeping a promise to an old man.
It had been a mistake.
Somehow he’d expected it to be the way it was in his memory. Everything ordered, everything perfect, the one place he had always been sure of in a confusing world.
Stupid.
Gardens weren’t static things.
The walled kitchen garden might have survived the break-up of the estate, but the small garden centre his grandfather had run from it had been closed for nearly two years. Everything had run to seed, gone wild...
He dragged a hand over his face in a vain attempt to obliterate the image. He’d sworn he wouldn’t fall for his grandfather’s attempt at emotional blackmail, but maybe the old man knew him better than he knew himself.
It was the peach trees that did it.
Remembering how, when he was a boy, he’d been lifted up to pick the first ripe fruit, the taste of it, the juice running down his chin...
The memory was so strong that Nash rubbed his chin against his shoulder, as if to wipe the juice away, then he angrily pulled away a handful of the weeds that crowded against an ancient trunk, choking it.
Stupid. In a few weeks it would all be gone.
But the old trees were covered with small fruit, swelling in the sudden burst of hot weather, refusing to give up despite the lack of pruning, despite the thick choking weeds at their roots. Like his grandfather, they refused to give up in the face of the inevitable. He couldn’t leave them like that.
He wanted the men with the bulldozers to know they were smashing something that had once been cared for. It wouldn’t take long. He could spare a day or two for the peach trees.
Except it wasn’t just the peach trees.
There were the greenhouses with their old coke stoves and hot pipes. A wonderful place to play when it was too cold outside. A magic place full of warm, earthy scents.
It still was, despite the damage. A thin cat had given birth to a litter of kittens behind the stove. He’d spotted her once or twice, flashing through the long grass with some small creature clamped in her jaws and, as he stood there, the bravest of the kittens ventured out amongst the broken glass that littered the floor.
He moved it out of harm’s way and then reached for an old broom. He was sweeping up the broken glass, wondering at how swift nature was to reclaim its own, when a ball blasted him out of the past as it smashed through the roof and he swore volubly as the fine shards showered him and sent the kitten flying back to safety of the nest.
For a moment he stared at the ball, big, bright red, intrusive, and an unexpected fury boiled up in him. People were so damned careless. Didn’t they know, didn’t they understand how long this had been here? Care about the generations of men who’d spent their lives working, harvesting, loving the place as he did?
He shook the glass out of his hair, carefully peeled off his T-shirt, then bent to pick up the ball, intent on telling the idiot who’d kicked it without a thought for the consequences, exactly what he thought of him.
‘Mummy, Clover’s kicked the ball over the wall again!’
At the most trying stage of refitting the handle to a freshly painted door, Stacey couldn’t do much about her youngest daughter’s plaintive cry, other than put her on hold.
‘Tell her she’ll have to wait,’ she called back as she tried to juggle the handle and the screwdriver at the same time as fitting a screw with a life of its own into the hole. There were times, she felt, when two hands were simply not enough. But then, she had never been much use at this sort of thing.
Give her something solid to work with, a spade or a hoe, and she was perfectly at home. She could double-dig a vegetable plot, build a compost heap without raising a sweat. But put a screwdriver in her hand and she was all fingers and thumbs.
Not just a screwdriver. She wasn’t much use with a paintbrush. There was more paint on her clothes and her skin than there was on the door.
‘Mummy!’
‘What?’ The screw took advantage of this momentary distraction to make an escape bid. It hit the quarry-tiled floor, bounced once and disappeared beneath the dresser. Stacey only had four screws, the ones she’d taken out of the door plate when she’d removed it. Now she’d have to strip the dresser of china before she could move it and retrieve the wretched thing. Great. She dug screw number two out of her pocket, then remembered that her daughter wanted her for something. ‘What is it, Rosie?’
‘Nothing.’ Then, ‘Clover says not to worry, she’ll climb over and get it herself.’
‘Right,’ she muttered, through teeth clamped around the handle of the screwdriver. If she could just get one wretched screw in place everything would be easier. She jammed it hard into the hole so that it stayed put while she retrieved the screwdriver and then realised what Rosie had said. ‘No!’
As she spun round to make sure she was obeyed, the metal plate pivoted on the screw and gouged an arc out of the freshly painted surface.
For a moment Stacey stared at the scarred paintwork, too shocked even to let slip the kind of word that mothers weren’t supposed to know, let alone say.
Actually, she felt like screaming, but what would be the point? If she succumbed to the temptation to give in to her feelings and scream every time something went wrong, she would be permanently hoarse. Instead she dropped the screwdriver back into the toolbox, took a deep breath and, doing her best to keep calm, walked out into the garden.
It was not the end of the world, she told herself. She would get there one day. She would finish the kitchen. She would tile the bathroom. She would fix the guttering and decorate the dining room. She would do it because she had to. The house was unsellable the way it was. She’d tried it.
People might turn their noses up at twenty-year-old wallpaper, but there was the challenge to make a house over in their own image. Half-finished jobs just turned people off.
If only Mike had ever finished one thing before he’d started something else. But that had been Mike. There was always tomorrow. Except that he’d run out of tomorrows...
‘Mummy! Clover’s doing it!’ Rosie’s yell wrenched her from the beckoning arms of self-pity and she set off down the garden at a run.
Clover, nine years old and growing like a weed, had shimmied up the apple tree and was now dangling by her long skinny arms from the high brick wall that bordered the rear of the garden.
‘Clover O’Neill, get down from there this minute!’
Clover glared at her younger sister, muttering something unappreciative at her, but she did as she was told, dropping from the wall and flattening a couple of foxgloves in the process.
‘Sorry,’ she said, trying to straighten them.
Stacey just sighed, picked the flower stems and firmed the ground around the plants. The advantage of growing what most of her neighbours sniffily considered to be weeds was that they could take pretty much everything that two lively children could throw at them. ‘What on earth do you think you were doing up there?’
‘You said not to disturb you while you were fixing the door, so I was going to get the ball myself.’ She said this as if it was the most reasonable thing in the world. Clover could have won Olympic gold for ‘reason’.
‘Well, that’s very thoughtful of you, sweetheart, but I’d have been a lot more disturbed by a broken leg,’ she reasoned right back, firmly suppressing a shudder. The wall was a couple of hundred years old at least and in some places it was held together by little more than the mossy stonecrop that clung to it. ‘You are never—I repeat, never—to climb on that wall. It’s dangerous.’ Her daughter rolled her eyes, dramatically. ‘I mean it!’
‘But how are we going to get our ball back?’ Rosie asked.
Clover glared at her little sister. ‘If you’d kept your mouth shut, we’d have it back now.’
‘That’s enough. Both of you. You’ll get your ball.’ They’d get it the same way they always did. She would climb over when they weren’t around to see the bad example she was setting them. ‘I’m sure someone will see it and throw it back. They did last time.’
‘But that could take for ever,’ Rosie protested. ‘No one goes in there any more, not since it closed.’
It was true that the garden centre that backed onto their garden was rapidly turning into a wilderness since ill-health had forced Archie Baldwin, the old guy that ran it, to retire a couple of years earlier.
She must find time to go and visit him again soon, she thought guiltily. He’d taught her so much. The least she could do was take him a tin of shortbread, tell him all the latest gossip from the village. And maybe ask him about the depressing rumour going round the neighbourhood that he’d sold the land to a developer.
It would be a lot easier to sell her house if the views could be described as rural.
Attractive detached Victorian cottage-style property in village setting with scope for improvement. Interesting wild flower garden.
It sounded appealing. Until you saw it and understood exactly what ‘scope for improvement’ meant. How much money it would take. And, as her sister was fond of pointing out, most people tried to eradicate buttercups and daisies from their borders.
But the garden really wasn’t the problem. It was the house. The estate agent she’d asked to value the place hadn’t pulled any punches. The house needed some serious attention if it was going to make anywhere near the price it should and a housing estate blocking the view was not going to help. Or light industrial units. Maybe she should stop worrying about her precious wild flowers and plant a fast-growing hedge right now...
‘Mum!’
She let go of future worries and returned to the immediate one. ‘I’m sorry, Clover, but you shouldn’t have kicked your ball over there in the first place.’
‘You can’t play football without kicking,’ Clover pointed out, but kindly, as if to someone who wasn’t expected to understand. ‘Come on, Rosie. Mummy’ll get it for us; she always does. She just doesn’t want us to see her climbing over the—’ she made a sign like quotation marks ‘—great big dangerous wall.’
‘Clover O’Neill, that’s—’
‘It’s no use pretending, Mummy. I saw you last time.’
Stacey was not above circumventing the truth in a good cause, but there was no point in perjuring herself to no purpose, so she didn’t deny it, contenting herself with a firm, ‘You were supposed to have been in bed.’
‘I saw you from the bathroom window,’ Clover said, cheekily, and grinned. ‘You will get it, won’t you? Now?’
Since she’d been caught out, there seemed little point in waiting until the girls were in bed. ‘All right. But I mean it. You are not to do this yourself, ever. Promise?’
‘I promise.’ And Clover solemnly drew a cross over her heart. Just the way Mike used to when he promised he’d fix something tomorrow. Just the way he used to promise he’d take care when he went out on his motorbike...
Stacey swallowed. ‘Okay.’ She dropped the flowers, then approached the wall, jumped and grabbed the top, pulling herself smoothly up to sit astride the crumbling brickwork.
The derelict garden centre had once been the walled kitchen garden of a grand house that had long since been turned into the headquarters of some multi-national corporation.
From the top, she could see the south wall and the ancient espaliered peach trees. There were a couple of big old greenhouses that had lost a fair amount of glass in a bad storm. Until then, she’d used them to raise her own seedlings. Well, Archie had told her to help herself.
Now it all looked so sad, grown wild with frightening speed and run to a riot of weeds that were beginning to flower in the gravel paths and between great clumps of perennials that had burst out of plastic pots and made themselves at home.
She glanced back down at the girls. ‘Stay there and don’t move,’ she said, then jumped down into a mini-meadow of buttercups and dog daisies and began to look about her for the girls’ ball.
It was big and red and should have been easy enough to find. The trouble was, she kept getting distracted. First by a clump of poppies with scarlet silken petals. Great. She’d come back for some seeds later in the summer. If she was still there later in the summer. Maybe she would have sold the house by then. Or maybe not.
It was a depressing thought either way.
She stopped to look at a huge blousy peony. Not her kind of flower but it broke her heart to think of it being torn up by a bulldozer. Even if she lifted it, though, it probably wouldn’t survive. Peonies hated to be moved. They had her sympathy. She didn’t want to move, either. She was comfortable where she was and she’d put down long roots, but, like the peonies, she didn’t have a choice.
At least in her case the move wouldn’t be fatal. Just very painful. And the end of any chance of getting her own wild plant nursery up and running.
She pushed her way along the overgrown paths, looking for the ball and wondering just how far it could have gone, when she caught a glimpse of red beyond a row of overgrown bushes. She pushed through and saw the strawberries. Big and red and luscious.
Nash emerged from the greenhouse and looked around. Nothing. No one. Then at the far side of the garden he saw someone peering over. It was a child. A little girl. Then she disappeared and his anger evaporated with her.
She meant no harm. It was an accident. The place was a wreck and she could hardly make it worse. He began to pick his way around the raised beds, the thicket of waist-high weeds, planning on tossing the ball back over the wall.
He was about halfway there when another, much older girl appeared, her baggy shorts giving him ample opportunity to admire her long legs as she flung them over the wall. Not a little girl, this one, not if the skimpy top she was filling out so nicely was anything to go by. And he found himself grinning as she jumped down to wade through the knee-high flowers, the sun backlighting the strands of chestnut hair that had escaped the little bobble thing she’d used to hold it back from her face.
She was too busy checking the ground to notice him and he remained quite still, watching her as she waded through the long grass looking about her for the ball. Every now and then she would stop to look at a flower. Not picking it, but just looking, gently touching the petals of the big daisies, the vivid poppies as if saying hello.
Definitely not a vandal.
Then, as she stopped by one of the peonies, the sun lit up her face and he saw a look of genuine pleasure lift the corner of her mouth, before her smile faded to sadness. She wasn’t a girl at all, he realised, but a full-grown woman.
He took half a step, opened his mouth to call out to her, but she turned suddenly. And he knew she’d spotted the strawberries.
It would be a criminal waste to leave them to the slugs, Stacey thought. The wretched creatures already feasted like kings in her garden, despite all her environmentally friendly attempts at controlling them. It was only fair to share, she reasoned, as she got down on her hands and knees and picked half a dozen of the biggest strawberries she could find as a treat for Clover and Rosie.
Then she picked one for herself and ate it warm from the sun, the way strawberries should be eaten. The juice dribbled down her chin and she wiped it off with her fingers and then licked them. Heaven. She couldn’t think how the slugs, or the birds, had missed them, but she was glad they had and took one more.
In fact, if the garden was going to be bulldozed for housing, she might as well come back when Clover and Rosie were at school and get some runners; then they could have their own strawberries next year. She checked to see how soon the little plantlets would be ready. Then she stopped.
What was the point? They wouldn’t be there next year.
Okay, so she’d been saying that for the last two years, but time was running out. She might not be saddled with a mortgage, but there was no chance that she could sell enough wild plants to keep up with the outgoings. And if she was reduced to producing boxes of petunias and bizzie lizzies, she might as well get a job in an office. And with that miserable thought, she began to back out of the strawberry bed.
Her feet encountered an obstruction and she stopped, frowning. She hadn’t noticed anything on the path as she’d crawled in amongst the strawberries and, puzzled, she turned to look behind her.
The obstruction was wearing a pair of well-worn boots with thick socks rolled down over them. Above the boots were two long, well-muscled legs with scarred brown knees, hairy thighs and a pair of denim cut-offs, worn duster-soft with use, clinging to the kind of hips that should be carrying a health warning.
‘Can I help?’ The voice that went with the legs was duster-soft, too.
Stacey felt her face turn the colour of the poppies. To be caught trespassing was bad enough. To have a handful of filched strawberries as evidence of her fall from grace rang a loud nine on the Richter scale of embarrassment; yet to abandon them would only compound her crime. She was still trying to think of something to say when Clover rescued her.
‘Mummee! Have you found it yet?’ Her oldest daughter, paying technical lip-service to her promise not to climb the old wall, was instead perched on a branch of an equally ancient apple tree and peering anxiously over the wall.
‘Get down!’ She should have been angry, but her daughter’s appearance at least lent her the cloak of respectability. She was a mother. A widowed mother, moreover. What could be more respectable than that?
She scrambled to her feet and, turning to face her embarrassment head on, found herself looking up at the kind of man who should not only have a health warning tattooed to his backside, but to his chest, his arms and his thoroughly workmanlike shoulders. To say nothing of a lean, tanned face, periwinkle-blue eyes and the kind of floppy sun-bleached hair that had always gone straight to her knees. Which was why she’d been married on her eighteenth birthday and a mother by her nineteenth, sieving vegetables for baby Clover instead of learning the business aspects of growing them at the local agricultural college.
That this delectable hunk of manhood didn’t have a health warning tattooed to his limbs or any other part of him, she could see for herself since, except for a suntan, the cut-offs were all that he was wearing. Apart from the boots and socks. And she had no doubt that his feet and ankles matched the rest of him and were of the killer variety. Like his smile.
‘Is this what you were looking for?’
‘Looking for? Oh, looking for…’ Stacey made a determined effort to drag her chin out of the strawberry bed and get her knees under control. ‘Er, yes.’
‘I was in one of the greenhouses over there when it came through the roof.’ He tossed the football, spun it on one finger, then caught it, balancing it on the palm of his hand. ‘That’s quite a kick.’ His glance measured the distance from the broken panes of the greenhouse roof to the top of the wall. ‘For a girl.’ And he grinned up at Clover, who was still clinging to her tree top perch. ‘Is your dad a professional coach?’
‘No, my daddy’s in heaven.’
Well, as conversation-stoppers went, that took some beating. ‘Clover, if you don’t get down right now,’ Stacey warned, turning away from the disturbing sight of the man’s muscle-packed shoulders, ‘I’ll leave your ball over here.’ Mike had had shoulders like that. All brawn and no brain, her sister had said. Dee had always been the smart one.
While she never learned.
Clover disappeared.
‘I bet she’s a handful.’
‘Oh, no, not really. Just football-mad.’ Other women had dainty little girls who yearned for satin pointe shoes and a starring role at the Royal Ballet. She was usually torn between pride and mortification that her first-born had ball skills that put the boys at her primary school to shame and whose most ardent yearning concerned a pair of football boots way beyond the means of the widow’s mite. His teasing ‘For a girl…’ brought her firmly down on the pride side, for once. ‘She’s captain of the school team.’ Then, ‘Was there much damage?’
‘Damage?’ He needed prompting, too, it seemed.
‘To the greenhouse.’
‘I don’t think one pane more or less will be noticed, do you?’ The grin softened into a smile.
‘N-no, I suppose not…’ she stuttered. A smile like that should be licenced. Then, ‘Oh, Lord, you weren’t…I mean…’ No, of course he wasn’t hurt. She could see for herself that his golden skin was unblemished. Well, apart from the faint white line of an old scar across his collarbone.
Then she saw the sun glint off a shard of glass clinging to his hair and without thinking she reached up and picked it off.
CHAPTER TWO
STACEY stared at the sharp sliver of glass she was holding between her fingers and felt herself go hot all over.
She couldn’t believe she had done that. What on earth was she going to do now?
Despite the fact that she was totally unable to meet his eyes, the hunk seemed to understand her predicament because he dropped the ball and, grasping her wrist to steady a hand that was unaccountably shaking, carefully extracted the sliver of glass from between her fingers. Then he dropped it on the path and ground it to powder beneath his heel.
‘Thanks.’ Her voice was shaking as much as her wrist had done.
‘I think I’m the one who should be thanking you.’ He was still holding her wrist, his long fingers circling it, heating it, melting the bones. For a long moment he kept her his prisoner before suddenly dropping it as if he too were burning, raking his fingers through his hair as if needing to keep them occupied. Then he looked at his hand. ‘See, I’m always doing that. I could have got a nasty cut.’
She shrugged, awkwardly. ‘It’s being a mother,’ she began. ‘You just can’t help yourself.’ She swallowed, and tried to ignore the dangerous tingle where his fingers had touched her wrist. She wasn’t feeling motherly. Oh, no. Not one bit. ‘I, um, helped myself to a few strawberries,’ she said, bringing up the subject before he did. ‘I hope you don’t mind.’
‘I thought you were very restrained not to take more. Were they good?’ He’d been standing there watching her? Her face competed with the poppies again.
‘Mummee!’ Another desperate plea.
‘I think the captain of the team wants to get on with the game,’ he said, stooping to pick up the ball, offering it to her.
‘What? Oh, no, that’s Rosie. She’s only seven. Clover makes her play in goal. She’s not very good.’ She took the ball, tucking it under her arm. ‘I’ll try to keep them under control, but when they’ve been in school all day…’
‘No problem. I’ll be around for a day or two. If the ball comes over again, just give me a shout and I’ll throw it back.’
‘You could be sorry you said that.’ She forced her legs to make a move, to put some distance between her and the temptation to stay and just look at him, but he walked alongside her as she headed back to the wall.
Was he going to offer her a hand up? She tried not to think about his hands around her waist, his breath on her neck.
‘What’s going to happen to this place?’ she asked quickly. To distract herself. ‘Do you know?’ She looked back. ‘I heard it was going to be sold to some awful developer.’ He didn’t say anything. ‘Oh, Lord, is that you?’
‘Would that be a problem?’ The corner of his mouth tugged up into a smile as he glanced sideways at her.
She wished she’d done more than tie her hair back with one of the girls’ bobbles. And put on some mascara. Lipstick even.
To paint a door? Get real, Stacey; this guy is a Grade A hunk and you’re a mother of two with the muscle-tone to prove it...
‘We’d miss the view,’ she said, quickly. Not that it would be hers for long. One wild-flower meadow at the local primary school, no matter how much admired, did not a career make. She really had to stop kidding herself that she could make a business out of her passion for wild flowers and get the house into shape so that she could sell it. He glanced across the garden to the fields rising away to the hazy hills in the distance. ‘Maybe they won’t get planning permission,’ she said, hopefully.
‘They already have.’
‘Oh.’ She’d expected it, but it was still a blow. ‘Houses?’ she asked hopefully.
‘Industrial units.’
‘Oh,’ she repeated dully. Then, ‘Are you working for the developers?’
He shook his head. ‘Just for myself. Nash Gallagher,’ he said, introducing himself, stopping to offer his hand before realising that, between the strawberries and the ball, her hands were now fully occupied. It was probably just as well. She hadn’t recovered from the hand around the wrist yet. Palm to palm was going to leave her reeling. And incapable of climbing that wretched wall.
But she could hardly deny him her name. ‘Stacey O’Neill. And you’ve probably gathered that the nuisances are Clover and Rosie.’
‘Well, I’m glad to have met you. As I said, I’ll be staying here for a few days, in case you see a light and think someone might be up to no good and call the police.’
‘Staying? You mean you’re camping? Here?’ She looked around, saw the small one-man tent pitched in a shady corner and wondered if he had permission. Then decided that it was none of her business.
‘This is the height of luxury compared to some of the places I’ve lived,’ he assured her, evidently mistaking her concern. ‘It’s got running water, plumbing—’
She wanted to ask what places, but restrained herself and wondered if he’d broken into the office to get at the plumbing and running water. Did it matter? If it was all going to be flattened... ‘You’re still sleeping in a tent.’ Then she shrugged. ‘I suppose it’s okay when it’s not raining.’ It had been a very wet spring.
‘Are you suggesting this spell of good weather is unlikely to last?’ he asked, with just a touch of irony in his voice to match the infinitesimal lift of one eyebrow.
‘This good weather has lasted all of a week so far, which, for this summer, is a record.’ Then she relented. ‘But according to the forecast you should be safe for a day or two.’
He glanced up at the cloudless sky for a moment. ‘Let’s hope so.’
‘Mummeeeeee!’
‘They’re getting impatient.’ She tossed the ball over the wall. ‘I’ll try to keep it on our side of wall from now on.’
‘It’s not a problem, really.’
Maybe not, but she had one. Getting over the wall with what remained of her dignity intact while he stood there and looked at her winter-white legs. Winter-white splashed with the forget-me-not-blue gloss that she’d finished the door with. And a scraping of brick dust. And squishy green plant juice on her knees from her expedition into the strawberry bed.
She looked at the strawberries in her hand and wished she left them for the slugs. Now she would have to get over the wall with one hand, or throw them away.
‘Can I help?’ he offered. Again.
She thought about those big hands lifting her, or giving her a push from behind. ‘Er…’ This was getting ridiculous. She was heading at what seemed like break-neck speed towards thirty. She had two children. Blushing was for girls... ‘Perhaps if you hold the strawberries while I climb up?’ she suggested.
He made no move to take them; instead he linked his hands together and offered them as a foothold. She felt a momentary stab of disappointment, then quickly placed her battered tennis shoe into the cup of his palms, and as he lifted her, she grabbed for the wall and was deposited on the top without the usual ungainly knee-skinning scramble.
‘Thanks,’ she said.
‘My pleasure,’ he replied, grinning broadly as she swung her legs over to the other side. ‘Drop in any time.’
She pretended not to hear, sliding down into her own garden and finishing off the foxgloves in her hurry. And not doing the strawberries much good, either. Despite the lift over the wall, she had still managed to squash them into a juicy mush.
Nash Gallagher watched as his new neighbour swung her lovely legs over the wall and quickly disappeared. She’d been decorating, he’d noticed. There were streaks of blue paint on her thighs and clothes and her fingers, as she’d cupped the strawberries protectively in her hand, still had paint embedded around her nails. Did she just enjoy doing it herself?
With Daddy in heaven, it would seem she had little choice.
Stacey was mashing the strawberries to mix with ice cream for Clover and Rosie’s tea when the abandoned door handle, still dangling by one partly driven screw, gave up the unequal struggle with gravity and fell noisily to the floor.
Clover, finishing off her baked beans, glanced at it. Then she said, ‘What this house needs is a capable man.’ Stacey took her plate and replaced it with the ice cream. ‘Or one with plenty of money.’
‘Clover!’
‘It’s true,’ Rosie added, helpfully. ‘Aunt Dee said so.’
Dee was undoubtedly right, but she wished her sister would keep her thoughts to herself. Or at least not voice them in front of the girls.
Fat chance. Her sister was hell-bent on fixing her up with a new husband, someone who fitted Dee’s idea of what was suitable for a little sister who couldn’t be trusted to choose someone for herself. Someone steady. Someone who wouldn’t, under any circumstances, ride a motorcycle.
An accountant, perhaps. Or, even better, an actuary, like her own husband. A man genetically programmed not to take unacceptable risks.
Unfortunately, much as she liked her brother-in-law, Stacey just couldn’t get terribly excited at the thought of being married to his clone. Her thoughts strayed to the stranger camping on the far side of her garden and she found herself smiling. There were some things that money couldn’t ever compensate for.
But as Stacey handed her younger daughter her ice cream, she promised herself she would have that door repainted, with its furniture in place and working when her sister came to lunch on Saturday. If it killed her.
Actually, though, her encounter with Nash Gallagher had given her an idea. Well, more than one, but she was a realist. Sex among the strawberries was fine when you were young and fancy-free but mothers had responsibilities. Mothers had to be sensible.
She let the tempting thought slip away and concentrated on the sensible one. Her house might not be fit for a feature in one of those ‘beautiful homes’ magazines, and it might not appeal to fussy buyers with a world of houses to choose from, but it was habitable. And she had a spare bedroom. Two, if she included the attic. Nash might be happy to sleep in a tent, but there were plenty of other people who would rather have hot water and clean sheets. Maybe she could let the rooms to a couple of students.
At her present rate of progress it would be a while before she could lick the house into shape and two students would make quite a difference when it came to paying the bills. And if they were a couple of willing lads, or girls, the kind who knew one end of a screwdriver from the other, it would be even better. In return for a little home cooking, they might achieve the same purpose as a capable man without all the disadvantages that went with the kind of husband a widow approaching thirty, with two little girls to bring up, could hope to attract.
Nash found himself grinning as he cleared away the broken glass, smiling as he remembered the way Stacey had coloured up when he’d caught her with her hand in the strawberry patch. He’d have sworn modern women had forgotten how to blush.
He should be feeling guilty for embarrassing her like that: a young widow with two little girls. Thoroughly ashamed of himself. Hell, he was ashamed, but that blush had been worth it.
Then the smile faded as he looked about him.
Industrial units.
Landscaped, low-rise industrial units. On paper it hadn’t sounded so bad. Standing here with the gentle slope of the wheatfield rising to a spinney that broke up the smooth line of the earth against the sky and with the peach trees basking against the centuries-old wall, it wasn’t quite so easy to be dismissive of the destruction.
On paper the choice had looked simple. Putting down roots had no appeal to him. He wasn’t sentimental about the past. His childhood hadn’t been the kind to get sentimental over.
But standing there, surrounded by the few good memories, it wasn’t quite so easy to dismiss.
‘You’re not getting any younger and children are a high-cost luxury.’
‘Make a record, Dee; it’ll save the wear and tear on your vocal cords,’ Stacey said, without rancour. She knew her sister meant well.
‘I would if I thought you’d listen to it. You need a husband and the girls need a father.’
‘I don’t need a husband, I need an odd-job man. And the girls have a father. No one can replace Mike.’
‘No.’ Dee, apparently about to make an unflattering comment about his parenting skills, hesitated, and went for tact instead. ‘Mike’s not here, Stacey,’ she said, kindly. Tact? Kindly? This was more than her usual ‘it’s-time-you-moved-on’ speech. She was up to something, Stacey thought. ‘You owe it to them to find them a father…a father-figure,’ she amended, quickly. ‘Someone who could give them all the advantages they deserve.’ Stacey began clearing the table in an attempt to avoid what was coming next. Dee was not to be distracted. ‘Lawrence Fordham for instance.’
So, this wasn’t just a general buck-yourself-up-and-get-out-there pep-talk. This was altogether more serious.
‘Lawrence?’ she repeated. ‘You want me to marry your boss?’
‘Why not? He’s a nice man. Steady, reliable, mature.’ Adjectives that could, by no stretch of the imagination, have been applied to Mike. But then, at eighteen, Stacey hadn’t been looking for those qualities in a man. Which was just as well, since she hadn’t got them. ‘He’s just a bit shy, that’s all.’
‘Just a bit,’ she agreed. She’d been put next to him at a recent lunch party at her sister’s house... Ah. So that was it. She wouldn’t make an effort, so her sister was making it for her. It should have been funny. But once Dee got an idea in her head she was harder to shake off than a shadow. ‘Small talk drips from his lips the way blood drips from a stone.’
‘That’s not fair. Once you get to know him—’
‘I do know him and you’re right, he’s a nice man.’ If you enjoyed talking about cheese production, or yoghurt culture. ‘I just wasn’t planning on anything more intimate—’
‘Okay, he’s not pin-up material, but let’s face it, sweetie, how many men-to-die-for do you know who are lining up, panting for a date?’
‘He’s panting?’ Stacey enquired, wickedly. ‘Lawrence?’
‘Of course not,’ Dee snapped. ‘You know what I mean!’ Stacey knew. She’d had her man-to-die-for and there was only one of those per lifetime. Which was probably just as well. Now she had to be sensible, but the prospect of dating men like Lawrence for the rest of her life, or worse, settling down with someone like him, was just so depressing.
‘He’s solid, Stacey. He wouldn’t let you down.’
Meaning that if he was inconsiderate enough to die on her, he wouldn’t leave her with a house that swallowed money, two children to bring up single-handed and no visible means of support, Stacey supposed.
‘He couldn’t let me down, Dee. We are acquaintances. Nothing more,’ she added, just to make her position quite clear.
‘Well, that’s about to change,’ Dee replied, ignoring her sister’s position. ‘I told him that you’d be his date for the firm’s dinner next Saturday.’
‘You did what!’ Stacey didn’t wait for her sister for repeat herself. ‘You’ve got to be kidding!’
‘Why? He’s personable. He’s got all his own hair and teeth and no bad habits.’ Stacey wondered if her sister was prepared to guarantee that in writing, but didn’t want to prolong the conversation. ‘He’ll make someone a wonderful husband and you need one more than most.’
‘Husband? I thought we were just talking about a date.’
‘We are. But you’re mature people. You’d be good for Lawrence, bring him out of himself. And he’d be very good for you. He wouldn’t even mind if you turned his garden into a weed patch.’ Because he wouldn’t notice. ‘You do the best you can, but don’t pretend it isn’t a struggle.’ Stacey wasn’t about to. It wouldn’t make a bit of difference if she did, because Dee knew better. ‘You will come on Saturday, won’t you?’
‘Oh, Dee…’
‘Please.’ Please? She was that desperate? ‘I’ll promise not to mention the subject again for a whole month if you do,’ she promised.
‘Good grief, I’m almost tempted. But I haven’t got a thing to wear,’ Stacey said, falling back on the age-old excuse.
‘You can wear my black dress.’
‘Your black dress?’ She should have known that her sister had a fall-back plan to cover her fall-back plan... Then her jaw dropped. ‘You don’t mean the black dress?’
‘Of course I mean the black dress,’ Dee said, calmly, and Stacey finally managed a laugh.
‘Now I’m really worried. Tell me, have you got some enormous bonus riding on your ability to fix Lawrence up with a date for this dinner?’
Dee’s brows quirked invitingly. ‘Would you go out with him if I had?’
‘Would you split it with me?’ Then, quickly, ‘Don’t answer that. I don’t want to be that tempted.’
‘Oh, come on, Stacey. It’s a night out. Gorgeous restaurant, lovely food, rich bloke. How many offers like that do you get these days?’ Not many. Actually, none. ‘He’s completely house-trained, I promise you.’ Dee meant to reassure her, but Stacey didn’t want a house-trained man. What she wanted was someone like Nash Gallagher. All right, not like Nash Gallagher. She wanted him. In person. ‘You’ll be safe enough,’ she promised. ‘Tim and I will be there.’
That’d be fun. An evening with Mr Nice, Mrs Bossy and Mr Deadly-Dull-but-Totally-Dependable...
But Stacey caught a tantalising glimpse of a way out. ‘If you’re going to the dinner, I won’t have anyone to babysit.’ There were many times when she wished her parents hadn’t sold up their business and moved to Spain to grow old disgracefully in the sun. This was not one of them. And Vera, her next-door neighbour and best friend, who looked after the girls on her occasional—very occasional—evening out, worked on Saturday nights at the local petrol station.
‘Clover and Rosie can stay over at our house,’ Dee replied, with all the firmness of a woman who’d made it in business and wasn’t about to take no for an answer. Even from her tiresome little sister. ‘Ingrid is looking forward to having them.’ The firmness of a woman who’d made it to the top in business and the smugness of one who’d got a ‘treasure’ for an au pair. ‘And I’m going to take you for a facial and a manicure, too.’
‘Now that is tempting,’ Stacey said. She glanced at her hands and surreptitiously scraped away the rim of blue paint that was stubbornly clinging to her thumb-nail. Her sister had bought her some horrendously expensive gardener’s handcream a while back; maybe she should start using it. And maybe Dee was right. After all her hard work, she deserved a treat.
A meal she hadn’t had to cook herself, a manicure and a chance to wear a designer label frock certainly came under that heading.
‘Can I really borrow your black dress?’
‘I’ll bring it round tomorrow.’
‘Heavens, Dee, the dinner isn’t until next Saturday…’
She grinned. ‘I know. More than enough time for you to come up with a dozen excuses, but once that dress is in your wardrobe you won’t be able to resist the chance to wear it.’
‘That’s sneaky.’ But maybe she could put it on, do the whole mascara bit and get Clover to kick her ball over the wall... Dee’s voice dragged her back from dreamland.
‘If sneaky is what it takes to get you out of the house, I’ll go as low as it takes.’ And she grinned. ‘Can you spare some more of those strawberries, or are you saving them for the girls?’ She glanced out to where Clover and Rosie were sitting in the long grass, picking daisies and decorating their young cousin, Harry, with daisy chains.
‘Finish them off. They’ve had more than enough.’
Dee scooped the fruit into her bowl. ‘They’re the best I’ve tasted this year. Where did you get them?’
‘Um…from a neighbour.’ And Stacey felt herself blush. She hadn’t seen Nash since the afternoon she’d climbed the wall and been caught with her fingers in the strawberry patch. Only the glow of a camp fire late at night when she’d been going to bed.
And she’d been congratulating herself on resolutely sticking to her guns and refusing to ask Nash to look for the ball when Clover kicked it over the wall just before bedtime, no matter how much her daughter had pleaded. Of course, she hadn’t had the promise of an Armani dress, then.
No, she was determined. She wasn’t looking for Mr Right. And she had had enough experience of Mr Wrong to last a lifetime. The girls would have to wait until he noticed it. And if he took his time about it, maybe Clover would learn to be more careful.
He didn’t, of course.
Clover had found the football in a carrier hooked over a branch of the apple tree first thing that morning. And resting on top of the football had been a large chip punnet full of strawberries.
Dee’s eyes narrowed. ‘A neighbour? What neighbour?’ Her sister’s scrutiny only made things worse. ‘I thought you were the one who handed out all the garden goodies around here.’ Then, ‘Are you blushing?’
Stacey covered her cheeks with her hands. ‘Don’t be silly, it’s just the heat,’ she said, quickly. ‘And I’ve been thinking…’
‘Thinking?’ Dee raised her brows.
‘I’ve been thinking,’ Stacey repeated, ignoring her sister’s sarcastic response, ‘about letting out one of my rooms to a student. What do you think?’
Stacey knew exactly what her sister would think, but she needed to change the subject, fast.
‘I think you should put the house on the market and sell it for whatever you can get while the sun’s shining. With luck prospective buyers will be so busy reminiscing about the last time they saw a dog rose, they won’t notice that the paintwork’s peeling and the gutters are falling apart.’ She paused. ‘Cutting the grass might help.’
‘If I took in a couple of students,’ Stacey said, ignoring the sarcasm, ‘my financial circumstances would improve, I would be able to get the house into shape and then, if I decide to sell…when,’ she amended, quickly, before Dee could launch forth on the subject, ‘when I sell, I’ll get a better price.’
‘You’ve been saying that since Mike died.’
‘I know. But there’s a lot to do.’
‘I won’t argue with that.’ Then she shrugged. ‘All right, I’m through nagging for today.’ She stood up. ‘I think you’re mad, but we might as well have a look at what you’ve got to offer.’
Dee was shaking her head over the lack of tiling in the bathroom when Stacey saw Nash on the far side of the wall. He was shifting a heavy wheelbarrow full of rubbish in the direction of a faint curl of smoke; the sun glinting off his sweat-slicked skin, the hard curve of well-developed biceps. As if he’d felt her gaze on him he turned, looked up and their eyes seemed to lock...
‘Actually, you’ve got a point,’ she said, quickly, easing her sister out of the bathroom. She knew exactly what Dee would have to say about Nash Gallagher. He was temptation on legs and she’d fallen once before. ‘I always take care about splashing, but I can’t expect anyone else to bother.’ She threw one last, lingering glance out of the window. ‘I’ll see to it. Will you put a card on the notice board at the university for me on the way home?’
‘If you insist. Maybe you should put a card up in the village shop, too. Or even an ad in the paper. Or…’ Dee remembered that she had other plans for Stacey.
‘Or marry Lawrence and never worry about money again?’ Dee didn’t deny it. ‘What makes you think he’d want to marry me? I’m hardly a prize catch for a man in his position. Even supposing I’d consider marrying a man for his money.’ Her sister, infuriatingly, just smiled, and it occurred to Stacey that she wasn’t the only one being set up. She might actually have felt some sympathy with Lawrence as a fellow victim of her sister’s matchmaking plans, but he was safe enough from her. Besides, she had problems of her own.
Such as what Nash Gallagher would make of the tin of home-made shortbread that Clover had taken it upon herself to leave on top of the wall as a thank-you present for returning her football. The shortbread she’d made for Archie.
By the time she’d discovered it was missing and Clover had admitted what she’d done, it was too late to do anything about it. It had gone.
CHAPTER THREE
‘HAVE you heard what’s happening to the old garden centre, yet?’ Dee asked, as they walked towards her expensive new Italian car.
Unwilling to admit to the industrial units—she’d had enough nagging for one day—Stacey just said, ‘There’s someone working over there, clearing the place up.’
‘They must have got planning permission, then.’ Dee sighed and shook her head. ‘I did warn you. The house will be worth nothing if you don’t sell it quickly.’
‘If I could have sold quickly, I would have done.’
‘No, darling, you wouldn’t. You’ve been putting off the inevitable, hoping your numbers will come up on the lottery so you don’t have to move at all.’
‘Not true. I can’t afford lottery tickets.’
Dee looked startled. ‘Are things that bad? Look, please…’
‘Don’t!’
‘All right, all right,’ she said, quickly backing off from offering money. ‘But you know what I mean. You don’t want to move. All this fiddling about trying to fix up Mike’s do-it-yourself disasters is just your way of putting off the inevitable. Let it go, Stacey. Let it go…’
Stacey picked up her two-year-old nephew and began to fasten him into his car seat, pretending she hadn’t heard. ‘Okay, Harry?’ Harry grinned at her. ‘You are so gorgeous, sweetheart.’ She straightened and stepped back. ‘I wish I had a little boy just like you.’
‘Feeling broody?’ Dee asked, slyly. She hadn’t been... ‘Marry Lawrence and I’m sure he’ll oblige.’
‘Really? Does it have to be a permanent arrangement? I’d be perfectly happy with just the baby.’
‘As if you didn’t have enough troubles.’ But her sister was wearing a suspiciously smug little smile, no doubt counting on Stacey’s hormones to do the dirty work for her. ‘I’ll call round with the dress.’
‘Fine.’
‘You won’t cry off at the last moment, will you?’
‘Don’t nag. I can’t promise to make Lawrence’s night but—’ she paused as Dee’s helpful suggestion that the children stay over at her house with Harry, in the care of the doting Ingrid, suddenly acquired a less innocent interpretation; there was no such thing as a free babysitter ‘—but I won’t let you down.’ She would be making her own babysitting arrangements, though. ‘You won’t forget to put up a notice about the room, will you?’
‘You’re quite sure you want to do this? You might get the tenant from hell.’
‘As long as he can pay the rent, I don’t mind where he comes from.’
Stacey watched her sister drive away, not entirely sure she could trust Dee to put up the ‘Room to Let’ notice for her. Her sister had an entirely different agenda, wanting her safely married to someone who would pay to send the girls to a private school and install them all in a house with every modern convenience, a house where the shelves had been put up by a proper carpenter—or at least someone who knew how to use a level.
She meant well.
Stacey turned and looked at her home with its sharply pointed gables and piecrust bargeboarding. She loved it, but she had to admit that it could have been the prototype for the ‘crooked little house’.
It had been, in that favourite estate agents’ phrase, ‘in need of improvement’ when Mike had inherited it from his uncle. Unfortunately, he was not the man for the job.
Mike had only ever been good at one thing. A husband, a father, needed more than five stars in the good sex guide...
‘What are you looking at, Mummy?’
Stacey dragged herself back to the present. ‘There are some housemartins.’ She stooped down to Rosie’s level. ‘Look, they’ve built a house under the eaves. Can you see?’
‘Wow, that’s so cool.’
‘Yes, isn’t it? If they raise a family there, they’ll come back every year.’ Not quite paying guests, but just as welcome. ‘Run and fetch Clover, will you, sweetheart? I want to walk down to the village.’ Just in case Dee decided not to risk the chance of her plans being upset by a student needing a room this late in the college year, Stacey would put a card in the window of the village shop. Before she lost her nerve.
And when they got back, she’d cut the lawn. Well, trim the heads off the daisies, at any rate, which was all her lawn mower was capable of. University students probably wouldn’t notice, but she didn’t want to risk putting anyone off.
Dear Nash
Mummy says I have to wait until you find my ball, but that mite be forever if you don’t know I’ve lost it. So I’m just telling you I kicked it over the wall again. Sorry. Love, Clover
PS Please don’t tell Mummy I rote this. I’m supposed to be pashunt and wait.
Nash spotted the note, stuck in a crack at the top of the wall, when he emerged from his tent at first light. The football took a while to find, but he didn’t mind that. He’d been looking for an opportunity to further his acquaintance with Stacey O’Neill. He’d hoped the strawberries would do the trick.
She hadn’t responded in person, but the tin of shortbread suggested he wouldn’t be rebuffed if he looked over the wall to say thanks. The sound of a very sick lawn mower was all the excuse he needed.
Stacey was crouched over the mower, feeding its apparently bottomless thirst for oil, when something made her look up. Nash Gallagher was sitting on top of the wall, watching her, his incredible legs just waiting for a invitation to jump down and make themselves at home.
‘Need a hand?’ he said.
‘What I need is a new lawn mower,’ she said, standing up, her face flushed from bending over the ancient machine. Maybe. ‘I just hope I’ve got enough oil to keep it going until I’ve finished.’ The fact that the grass was six inches high wasn’t exactly helping.
He jumped down without waiting for the invitation and gave the mower an exploratory push, then frowned. ‘Have you got a spanner?’
‘Well, um, yes.’ He waited. ‘You want me to fetch it?’
‘It might be a good idea. Unless it’s trained to come when you whistle?’ One corner of his mouth lifted in something like a smile. Like a smile, but a whole lot more.
Oh, good grief. She knew this type. She’d married one of them and apparently six years of living with a sweet-talking hunk with a roving eye hadn’t given her immunity to the breed. ‘You don’t have to,’ she said, quickly. ‘Really. I’ll be fine.’
‘Until you run out of oil.’ And he looked up, shading his eyes against the sun. ‘If you feel bad about it, you always can make me some more of that shortbread.’
‘Oh.’ She had known that the shortbread would be misunderstood. ‘That was from Clover. For returning her ball. Again.’
‘Really?’ He didn’t sound disappointed. Instead he switched the grin to Clover. ‘Nice one, Clover. Tell me, do your talents stretch to making tea?’
Clover giggled. ‘Mum made the shortbread. I just put it there to say thank you. But tea’s easy.’
‘Well, I’m sure your mother could do with a cup. And, since you’re making a pot, I like mine with three spoonsful of sugar.’
Clover giggled, again. Stacey fought, with difficulty, the inclination to join in. Clover had an excuse; she was nine years old. At twenty-eight, she knew better. But she was still glad of the excuse to escape to the garage and get her features under proper control while she fetched the toolbox.
‘I brought the box,’ she said, dropping the toolbox beside him on the grass. They’d inherited it with the house and there was nothing less than fifty years old in it. ‘You should find something that fits.’
He folded himself up, opened the box and checked out the contents, testing a couple of spanners against the nuts. ‘Okay, we’re in business,’ he said. Stacey watched, chewing anxiously on her bottom lip, as he began to strip down the mower. Mike used to begin like that. Full of confidence. Nash glanced up, saw her expression. ‘Don’t look so worried. I’ll put it back together again.’
Stacey swallowed. Mike used to say that too. ‘I’ll, um, get on with trimming the edges of the lawn, then.’
He just smiled and carried on taking her precious, if difficult, mower to bits. She couldn’t bear to watch. Instead she worked her way slowly round the edge of the lawn with a pair of long-handled clippers that, too late, she realised were in dire need of sharpening. She just wasn’t into the razor-edged lawn look.
She struggled on, hoping Nash wouldn’t notice.
It had taken her a while to learn to bite her tongue rather than say, ‘I really could do with a shelf…’ or ‘Have you noticed that cracked tile in the bathroom…’ or ‘Let’s decorate the dining room…’
Mike had thrown himself into everything, but she’d eventually caught on to the fact that his enthusiasm outstripped his competence by a country mile. And that when things went wrong his enthusiasm ran out fast. But he’d been dead for three years and she was out of practice.
She glanced quickly over her shoulder at Nash. If he messed up, she would be in big trouble. She might not keep her lawn short, but she had to keep it manageable so that the girls had somewhere to play. And grass didn’t stop growing just because the mower was out of action.
Clover put a mug of tea down beside her, then carried one across to Nash and stayed beside him to watch what he was doing. ‘Clover, don’t get in the way,’ she called out.
‘She’s fine.’ Nash patted the grass beside him, inviting her to sit down, and began to explain what all the bits were and what they did. Rosie, not to be left out, sidled up and joined them. ‘This is a washer, and this is a nut,’ he began, holding out his hand so that they could check them out. ‘And this bolt goes through here, see?’ He leaned back so that they could have a good look. ‘Then you put the washer on the end of it... Do you want to do that, Rosie?’ Rosie giggled. ‘You are Rosie, aren’t you?’
‘Her real name’s Primrose,’ Clover said. ‘But nobody calls her that.’
‘I like Primrose,’ Rosie protested.
“‘Primrose first-born child of Ver, Merry Springtime’s Harbinger…’’’ he quoted. ‘I bet your birthday’s in March.’
‘It is,’ she said, a little breathless from the attention. ‘It is.’
‘Okay, Primrose.’ He offered her the washer and she took it and put it where he showed her. ‘That’s right. And now the nut goes on here to hold it all together. Clover, can you do that for me?’ Clover carefully screwed it into place. ‘Hey, we’ll have this done in no time.’
Stacey watched, her heart aching for her girls, for the way it should have been for them. Not that it would have been. Their father had never had that kind of patience.
Nash glanced up, and when he saw she was watching he raised his brows, as if saying, Is this okay? She forced her lips into a smile and then turned away and carried on forcing the blunt shears through the lawn edges.
‘Mummy, your tea’s getting cold.’
‘Oh, sorry.’ She stopped, stooped to pick up the mug and, despite herself, turned back to watch. ‘Do you have children of your own, Nash?’ her mouth enquired, before her brain could stop it.
‘No. No children. No wife.’ He handed Clover another nut and looked up. ‘I’m a rolling stone. I’ve never stopped travelling long enough to gather any moss.’
She remembered him saying that he’d stayed in worse places than the garden centre. ‘Where?’
‘All over.’ He must have seen the next question in her eyes, or maybe he just knew what was coming. ‘I started with VSO in South-East Asia... That’s Voluntary Services Overseas,’ he explained.
‘I’ve heard of it.’ Had thought, once, that she would do that after college. Before she’d met Mike and anything but being with him had suddenly seemed pointless.
‘I did a couple of years with them before working on a project with Oxfam. Then I moved on to South America. I’ve been there for about five years.’
‘And now you’re home.’
He thought about that for a moment. ‘Yes, I suppose I am.’ He sounded surprised. As if he couldn’t quite believe it. ‘Hey, girls, I think this is about done. Let’s give it a whirl, shall we?’
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Liz Fielding
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: Ideal marriage material?Stacey O′Neill was perfectly happy being single. The trouble was, her two little girls wanted a father–and they′d decided on Nash Gallagher!Nash was great with the children, and kissed like a dream–though it would take more than gorgeous lips and a sexy body to tempt Stacey into marriage again! This time she wanted a husband she could trust. And Nash wasn′t quite what he seemed….