Kids Included

‘Until you suggested one.’

He looked down at his hands. ‘Nick had asked me, years ago, if I’d have their kids if anything happened to them. I was married then, they’d only had only Seb and Amy, and I said yes. Nick had it put in his will, but Jan thought everything had changed so much I wouldn’t have them—not all four. As I saw it, they needed me even more. I suggested we got married, and I adopted the children. It was what Nick would have wanted, and it gave Jan the security she needed to die in peace.’

‘And the children?’

‘Amy and Tom were OK, and Nicky was too tiny to know what was going on.’

‘And Seb?’

He sighed. ‘Seb thought it was awful. He couldn’t understand why they couldn’t go to his grandparents and he could look after them all there. He was twelve, too young to cope, too old to be told what to do without questioning it. And he didn’t like the thought of me touching his mother.’

‘And did you?’

He shot her a searching look. ‘Hardly. She was my best friend’s wife, a real one-man woman. She was dying of cancer. Of course I didn’t touch her. I didn’t want to. That wasn’t what it was about.’

Molly felt relief for a moment, but there was another question she and her foolish mouth just had to ask. ‘Did you love her?’

‘Yes. As a friend, as a wonderful mother to my godson, as an incredible and beautiful human being—yes, I loved her. As a woman—no. Not in that way. I never once looked at her and envied Nick anything but his relationship with her. That I would have given my eye teeth for, but Jan herself? No. She wasn’t my type. Does that answer your question?’

Her smile was wry. ‘I think so. And Nick’s parents—did they take it lying down?’

Jack laughed humourlessly. ‘You are joking. They went up the wall. They wanted the children, said they could cope. Now, they won’t even have them all at once for the weekend because they’re too much!’

‘And are they too much for you?’ she probed softly.

He chuckled and threw a little stone into the lake, watching the ripples spread. ‘Only most of the time. Sometimes—usually when they’re asleep—I can almost cope.’

She could hear the love and despair in his voice, and wanted to hug him. Instead she slid her hand over the mossy turf and threaded her fingers through his, squeezing silently.

‘I think you’re amazing taking them on,’ she said quietly. ‘Most men would have handed them over to their grandparents with a heartfelt sigh and legged it.’

‘Nick would have had mine,’ he said, and something in his voice said it all.

She wanted to cry for him. ‘He must have been a good friend.’

‘He was the best.’

His voice sounded raw and hurt, and his fingers tightened on hers. She returned the pressure, offering wordless comfort, and after a moment the pressure eased and he sighed. ‘It’s crazy, I still miss him.’

‘I’m sure you do.’ Her mind rambled on, dealing with the nitty-gritty, imagining life in his household—imagining a week-day morning in term-time, with everybody’s homework lost on the kitchen table, three lunches to get, Nicky to wash and dress, buses to catch—hideous. ‘It’s a good job you were already writing,’ she added. ‘You couldn’t have looked after the children if you’d been at work.’

‘I was at work. I gave up. Luckily my writing was just taking off and I was able to pull out of the force and just about manage to live on my earnings.’

She shifted a little, turning towards him. ‘But the children must be provided for—you don’t have to pay everything for them, do you?’

He shook his head. ‘No. There is a fund I can call on, but I’m trying not to. They’ll need it when they’re older. It’s their inheritance.’

He slipped his fingers out of hers and stood up, holding his hand out again to draw her to her feet. ‘Walk?’ he suggested, and she cast an anxious glance back at her cabin, where her children were sleeping.

The sun had set now, and the village was settling into darkness. She didn’t like leaving them, but she sensed Jack needed this time out from his brood. She nodded. ‘All right—but just a little way—not out of sight.’

‘OK.’

They strolled along the water’s edge, not talking, not quite touching, sharing a companionable silence. Every now and then one of them scuffed a little stone, and it would roll into the water and send a ripple out across the surface.

‘It’s so peaceful,’ Jack murmured.

‘Mmm.’ She looked across the lake to the village centre, a hub of activity even this late at night, and at the edge, beside the water, she could see a restaurant. Lights from it twinkled in the lake, and she could see the faint flickering glow of candles on the tables.

‘It looks very romantic,’ she said, and could have kicked herself for the wistful tone in her voice.

She needn’t have worried. Jack was looking at it just as wistfully. ‘It would be nice to have a meal there without the kids,’ he murmured. ‘How about it? Shall we share a babysitter, order the kids pizza and go and paint the town red?’

The thought was wonderful. ‘Sounds good,’ she replied, gazing across the water. ‘Do you suppose they do babysitters?’

‘I think so. We can ask tomorrow. What’s on your agenda?’

She laughed. ‘I have no idea. Babysitting Nicky while you’re doing man stuff with Seb, otherwise I don’t know. The kids are sailing again, I think, and I might have a totally lazy day or maybe go swimming.’

‘Sounds good. The paintball game is first thing—if you’re sure about Nicky?’

‘If she’ll come to me.’

‘She will. She’s used to it, bless her—and then, if we can, we’ll go out tomorrow night and try and remember how we misspent our youth!’

Molly laughed. ‘Speak for yourself. My youth was exemplary.’

‘High time you started living a little, then,’ he murmured, and his voice slithered down her spine like melted chocolate, leaving a shiver in its wake.

And Molly suddenly had the feeling that a quiet dinner a` deux in the candlelit restaurant by the lake might be a very foolish move indeed…

CHAPTER THREE

AS JACK had promised, Nicky was quite happy to be left with her. A placid, cheerful child, she was perfectly content up to her elbows in flour and biscuit dough.

They baked, and, because Nicky wanted to play with the leftovers, Molly found leaves and helped her press them into the dough to make patterns of veins. They used coins and keys and all sorts of things to make patterns, and Nicky thought it was wonderful.

They had to make up more dough, and ended up with more on the child than on the table. Then they cooked the messy bits of dough for the ducks, cleaned up a bit and sat down to eat some of the proper biscuits which they’d made first.

The ducks were delighted with the bits and pieces, and Molly’s soft heart warmed watching Nicky laughing as the ducks pecked up the crumbs. She was so sweet, so spontaneously cheerful, so delicious. Her mother would have loved her dearly.

Oh, blast.

She sniffed and blinked, swallowing the tears, and, taking the trusting little hand in hers, they went for a wander by the lake. She’d brought some of the left-over biscuits with her, and gave them to Nicky to throw out into the water for a family of ducklings that hovered just out of range, curious but a little wary.

They got braver, until finally one came and pecked a biscuit right out of Nicky’s fingers.

Her shriek of delight sent it scurrying back to Mum, and Nicky turned her laughing face up to Molly. ‘It pecked my finger!’ she said, quite undaunted, and Molly laughed and hugged her.

‘Come on, let’s go and see what else we can find.’

They locked up and set off on foot for the toddlers’ adventure playground that was located near their cabins. Nicky had fun, scrambling over the logs and climbing little ladders, crawling through tunnels, sliding down miniature slides.

She was wary of the chain and log bridge, a swinging, jangling, somewhat unstable structure that had Molly crossing her fingers and hovering at the side, but she did it in the end, and after a couple of tries she was running across it, laughing as it bounced and swayed under her weight.

After she’d sat in a tyre swing and Molly had pushed her till her arms ached, they strolled back to the cabin through the woodland, watching a squirrel for a few minutes as it skittered around on the pine-needle floor before disappearing up a tree.

‘Hungry,’ Nicky announced as they let themselves in. ‘Nicky have lunch.’

‘OK.’ Molly opened the fridge and looked. Thank goodness she’d been shopping again and taken her brain with her. She shuffled the contents. Peanut butter. Better not, she didn’t know if the child was allergic to it, and, if she’d never had peanuts, Molly didn’t want to be the one to find out!

They had a quick-fix tuna and pasta bake in the end, and a nice crunchy salad that she was pleased to see Nicky ate quite happily. All through the messy eating of her yoghurt the little girl rubbed her eyes, and so when they were finished Molly took her to the bathroom, then snuggled down with her on the sofa in front of the television.

There was a children’s channel with a lovely little cartoon, and after a few minutes Molly felt Nicky go heavy beside her. A tiny snore escaped her, and with a smile she settled the little one down on a cushion, made herself another cup of tea and wondered if they would be going out that night. Jack was going to see if he could make a reservation and arrange a babysitter, and she wouldn’t know until he got back.

And if he’d been able to set it all up, there was another problem—what was she going to wear?

A quick glance through the wardrobe proved what she’d already known—she had nothing with her suitable for knocking the socks off a man with lazy, sexy eyes and a mouth she was just aching to kiss!

Jack was sore. He’d been scratched and bitten in the undergrowth, shot at from all directions and generally tortured by the whole experience. Running at a crouch, zigzagging through the bracken and crawling flat on his stomach were things from his past, things he’d done long ago and thought he’d left behind.

And he’d enjoyed it.

Perverse! Seb had enjoyed it, too, and seemed particularly proud that neither of them had been ‘killed’ by the ‘enemy’. Jack was glad they’d both got through it without getting hurt or lost. He wondered how the younger kids were, and if they’d been all right left for the day. They’d had a packed lunch, and all of them were doing water-sports for the whole day, so they were together at least.

And Nicky, he thought, was with Molly and would be fine.

Funny how he just knew that. He’d had to trust people with her over the past couple of years, just to get anything done in his life, but he’d hated doing it. Now, leaving her with Molly, he felt completely at ease.

Because she was a woman, not a child. A real woman, with children and responsibilities and common sense.

And the sexiest legs he’d seen in ages, and soft curves, and a wide, smiley mouth that nearly did him in.

He groaned, and Seb shot him a curious glance. ‘You all right?’

‘I’ll live—just a few aches. I’m not as young as you,’ he flannelled, and cuffed Seb gently round the head. ‘You all right, sport?’

‘Yeah—that was cool. We trashed them,’ he added victoriously.

‘Mmm. I think we ought to get back—make sure Molly’s all right. I expect by now Nicky’s driving her up the wall.’

Seb chuckled. ‘Probably. We could always buy pizza or something tonight so we don’t have to cook to make up for it.’

‘Ah—I need to check something on the way home. I was going to take Molly out for a meal as a thank-you and get a babysitter for all you kids together, with a few pizzas and some popcorn or something.’

Seb looked utterly unimpressed. ‘A babysitter,’ he said flatly.

‘For her children, really,’ Jack added, hastily soothing his ruffled feathers. ‘We thought it would be more fun for Amy and Cassie and Tom and Philip if they were together, and if it’s in our cabin then Nicky can just go to bed, and I felt it was too much to ask you to cope with all of them alone.’

Seb screwed up his face thoughtfully. ‘Do I have to be there?’ he asked.

Jack recognised the tone of voice. There was something else coming—some hidden agenda that was probably going to have emerged later. ‘Where else did you want to go?’ he asked carefully.

Seb scuffed a stone with his toe and shrugged nonchalantly. ‘There’s a disco in the village square—fourteens to eighteens. I thought I might give it a look.’

‘What time?’

‘Eight till eleven.’

Jack nodded slowly. ‘Well, I don’t see why not. You’re sensible. Can you make your own way there and back? We’ll be at the Lakeside Restaurant—if they can find a babysitter for us, that is. You can always come and find us.’

Only please don’t, he added mentally as they climbed into the minibus that took them back to the village centre. Let me have this one evening alone with her—just a little time out, a glimpse of how it used to be, when I had the time and the energy and the opportunity for socialising.

Nothing else, though. Not with Molly. It wouldn’t be fair.

Well, maybe a kiss. Just one.

Or two.

Nothing more…

‘It’s all arranged,’ Jack told her, lounging in the doorway as he picked Nicky up. ‘Babysitter’s coming at seven-thirty and so’s the pizza, Seb’s going out at eight to the disco in the village square and our table’s booked for eight-thirty, so if we leave once the pizza arrives, we can have a drink first.’

Molly smiled a little stiffly. ‘Great. Thanks,’ she murmured. Her heart was thumping, her head ached and all she could think was that she didn’t have a decent dress to wear and she wanted to look her best—

‘What is it?’

He looked worried, studying her searchingly with those eyes that could see the slightest nuance of her emotions. Policeman’s eyes that missed nothing. She shrugged and tried to laugh. ‘I’m being silly. I haven’t really got anything to wear.’

His face cleared and he smiled, reaching out to graze his knuckles gently over her cheek. ‘You’ll be fine in anything. Have you got a skirt?’

She nodded. ‘I’ve got a dress, but it’s a sundress really. I suppose if I wear a cardigan over it to cover up the bare bits…’

‘Seems a shame,’ he murmured, and she was reminded of his remark about it being time she learned to enjoy life.

Oh, lawks.

‘Maybe if I wear enough make-up and jewellery it won’t look odd,’ she mused.

‘I’m sure you’ll be fine. It doesn’t matter, anyway. So long as you aren’t downright scruffy they won’t worry.’

But I will, she thought, because I haven’t had a date in what feels like a hundred years, and for some reason this really does matter to me. She looked up into his grey eyes, their expression gentle and reassuring, and all of a sudden she didn’t care because she knew he didn’t.

Perhaps he didn’t see it as a date.

Somehow, that didn’t comfort her as it should have. She thought about it all through bathing the children and getting them ready for bed, through putting on her sundress—a plain white dress with scoopy neck and no sleeves that was a little short for elegance—through fiddling with the bead necklace that dressed it up a little, through the last critical glance in the mirror that probably wasn’t necessary, and then she told herself to stop fretting and trundled them along to Jack’s at seven twenty-five.

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