Meant-To-Be Mother

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

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

‘Like what sort?’

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

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

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

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

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

Kane nodded.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Sette…’ Siena tore a hunk of bandage.

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

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

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

He shook his head. ‘Tell me again.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Can I tempt you?’ he asked.

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

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

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

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

CHAPTER THREE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘R and B?’

‘No. Reality,’ she said.

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

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

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

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

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

Wait a second…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And inside?

Inside was a cave of wonders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Convinced enough, she read on.

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

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

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

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

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

For him I can and will do anything.

One step at a time.

Siena blinked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

James breathed in deep through his nose.

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

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

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

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

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