A Mother by Nature

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She looked up, startled, and found Adam looking at her curiously.

‘Hi,’ she said weakly.

‘Hi. Thought it was you. Is there something wrong with my trolley?’

‘Your—No, of course not! I didn’t know it was yours. I was looking in it for inspiration, actually.’

He gave a wry snort of laughter. ‘I should give it a miss, in that case. I buy what the kids will eat, which sometimes seems like utter rubbish. It’s the au pair’s job, of course, but she’s having the evening off, so it’s down to me to buy the junk food today.’

‘It doesn’t look too bad. At least you’re going for the low-fat options.’

‘Ever the conscientious father,’ he said with a fleeting smile. ‘Which reminds me, they’re running riot in the next aisle. I must go.’

She watched him disappear round the end of the aisle and, because she was only human and curiosity was part of human nature, she found herself drifting after him. They’d vanished, but she soon found them.

He was lifting a little boy off the top of the bread display unit, smiling apologetically at a disapproving member of staff and throwing a packet into the trolley with one hand while he clamped the protesting child to his side with the other.

‘No, if you can’t behave then you’ll have to stay here with me where I can keep an eye on you.’

‘I’ll look after him,’ a little girl promised, and Adam put the boy down. ‘Stay right next to me,’ she told him sternly, and he nodded and slipped his hand into hers.

Big sister, Anna thought with a gentle smile.

‘Daddy, can we have supper here, please?’

The middle one, Anna thought, looking at the little face shining up at him with obvious devotion. What a lovely family. A huge lump formed in her throat, and she was just about to slide round the corner of the aisle and find a little privacy to get herself under control when Adam turned and saw her.

‘Um—yes, sure,’ he said distractedly, and smiled at her. She wondered if he knew he’d just been conned, and had to hide her own smile of amusement behind a smile of greeting. ‘My brood,’ he said, waving at them. ‘Skye, Danny, Jasper, this is Miss Long. I work with her.’

‘Anna,’ she corrected, and directed her smile to the children. ‘Hi. Are you making sure he buys all the right things?’

‘No, they’re making sure I buy all the wrong things,’ he said with a laugh.

‘We’re going to have supper here,’ Danny told her. ‘Do you ever do that?’

‘I have done,’ she said, willing Adam to ask her to join them. He didn’t need to. Danny did it.

‘You could have supper with us—couldn’t she, Daddy?’ He swivelled his head round, leaning over backwards and nearly toppling into the bread.

Adam reached out and steadied him, and gave Anna a helpless look. ‘If you’d like to—you’re more than welcome to join us, if you can stand it. It’ll probably be egg, beans and chips if they get their way.’

Thank you, God! ‘Egg, beans and chips sounds good,’ she said with a bright smile. ‘If you mean it.’

‘Of course I mean it,’ he said, his eyes softening. ‘You’re more than welcome. Are you all done?’

‘Yes,’ she lied. To hell with doing the shopping. She’d get the rest another time. This was much more interesting!

They went through the checkout, parked their trolleys and joined the queue, and Danny chatted ingenuously all the way through the selection procedure and most of the way through the meal. He was a sweet, open child with spiky, untidy hair the same dark brown as his father’s, and a direct blue gaze that cut straight to her heart.

Jasper was similar—smaller and quieter, or perhaps simply overwhelmed by his big brother, hanging on his sister’s every word.

And Skye—Skye was different. She had soft, lustrous brown hair, not quite as dark as the others, and the same penetrating blue eyes, but there the similarities ended.

Her eyes were distrustful. That was the difference, Anna decided. Skye was guarded, she hardly spoke except to Jaz, and she was politely distant with Anna.

That was fine. She didn’t need the instant trust of every child in the world, but she sensed that Skye’s reticence hurt Adam, and for some reason she didn’t want to go into that hurt her, too.

There was only one awkward moment, when she wondered if she really ought to have been there. Skye looked at Adam and said softly, ‘Is Anna your girlfriend?’

He looked startled for a second, then shook his head. ‘No. We work together. She’s a nurse.’

Skye glanced at her consideringly, then went back to her meal without another word, leaving Anna thoughtful. It hadn’t sounded, from her tone of voice, as if a girlfriend was something Skye wanted Adam to have. Because she felt threatened? Because she was jealous? Or because he had a constant stream of them and Skye didn’t like it?

The table was crowded, and Anna was more than ever aware of Adam’s long legs tangling with hers every time he moved. Finally the children were finished, and he met her eyes over the litter of dirty plates and cups of fizzy drinks and smiled distractedly.

‘We have to get back. We’ve got frozen food in the trolley—or we did have. I expect it’s all thawed by now.’

She nodded, conscious of a silly little spurt of disappointment. Of course he had to go—Jasper was yawning, Skye was bored and uneasy, and they couldn’t possibly sit there all night. She conjured a bright smile. ‘Yes, you’d better get back. Thank you so much for asking me to join you. I enjoyed it.’

He gave a disbelieving snort of laughter. ‘You’re too polite. Come on, kids, on your pins, let’s make a move.’

She followed him out of the shop, looking like the Pied Piper with the children trailing behind him raggedly. Jasper kept wanting to look at things, and had to be dragged screaming past the little rocket ride just outside the door, with its coaxing invitation, ‘Come on, climb aboard and we’ll head for the skies!’

‘I want to have a go!’ Jasper sobbed, and Adam scooped him up into his arms and hugged him, walking resolutely away.

‘It’s too late. You can have a go next time. It’s too cold to hang about waiting, and we can’t do everything in one night.’

‘Don’t want to do everything! Want to go in the rocket!’

‘Jasper, Daddy said no,’ Skye told him firmly, and the screaming subsided to an unhappy sobbing. They paused at the edge of the car park, and Adam rolled his eyes at Anna in mock despair.

‘I’ll see you tomorrow,’ she said, and he nodded, hesitated a moment and then spoke as if on impulse.

‘You could come back for coffee—if you could stand the chaos of bedtime and a house that needs cleaning and decorating from attic to cellar.’

A slow smile spread over her face. She could stand anything if it meant spending time with him and his family and getting to know him better. ‘I should think I’ll cope with that,’ she said softly.

‘Follow me,’ he said.

Oh, yes, she thought. I’ll follow you. I’ll follow you to the ends of the earth if you ask me to. Just say the word.

Then she caught the look on Skye’s face, and wondered why the little girl was so unhappy about her presence. She needed to know more about the situation, and perhaps this was one way to find out.

CHAPTER THREE

‘OH, IT’S gorgeous!’

Adam looked mildly disbelieving, but Anna shook her head at him and laughed, gazing around, enraptured, at the lovely, welcoming hallway with its high ceilings and gleaming mahogany handrail. ‘It is! It’s truly wonderful—oh, it’s going to be so lovely. It just feels—I don’t know, right.’

‘That’s what I felt. It’s why I bought it,’ Adam said with a smile, but then the smile grew wry. ‘Emphasis on ‘‘going to be’’, though. If and when I ever get the time and the money—not to mention the energy. Right, kids, upstairs and get yourselves ready for bed, please. It’s way past your bedtime. I’ll be up in five minutes.’

They ran up, and Adam seized several of the shopping bags from the hall floor and headed towards the back of the house. Anna picked up a couple more and followed him.

‘You’ll do it—don’t be so defeatist. It’s early days—heavens, most people wouldn’t even have unpacked yet!’

‘I haven’t, not entirely. The dining room’s still stacked up with boxes, but they’re mainly books destined for shelves that don’t yet exist and the dining room doesn’t really matter. We don’t exactly dine in style.’

‘Shame on you,’ Anna teased, then cocked her head on one side. ‘Can I help?’

‘Please—put the kettle on. I just want to put the frozen stuff away and check the kids, then we’ll sit down for a bit of peace and quiet.’

She looked around at the kitchen. It was lovely, but it needed help. The units were awful, but they were easily replaced, and if the doorway from the breakfast area could be moved to the other side of the chimney breast, then the table could sit by the window and that would be much better.

The house looked, from the little she’d seen, as if it had been ‘modernised’ in the fifties, and it certainly needed some sympathetic restoration, but the potential was huge. Her curiosity was running riot. What was the rest of the house like?

‘Right, that’s that lot. How’s the kettle?’

‘Not boiled,’ she told him. ‘Can I have a guided tour?’

His face fell comically. ‘Oh, lord,’ he groaned, rolling his eyes in obvious embarrassment. ‘I hate to think what a mess it is, and Helle’s rooms will be chaos gone mad.’

‘I’m not looking at the mess—I’m looking at the house, at the potential,’ she coaxed, her avid curiosity unwilling to remain unsatisfied. ‘If you really, really mind I’ll let you say no, but I’d love to see it if you can bring yourself to let me.’

He hovered, just for a second, then squared his shoulders. ‘Oh, what the heck, come on, then. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you,’ he grumbled, and she laughed softly.

‘I promise.’

‘You can give me some advice. Skye’s bedroom is first on the list, and I don’t know what to do.’

‘Ask her,’ Anna said promptly, cautious of becoming involved. ‘It’s her room—she’s more than old enough to have ideas.’

‘If only she would share them,’ he murmured. ‘Come on, then, let’s get this over with.’

Anna went up the stairs after him and followed him straight down the landing and into Skye’s bedroom. It was above the kitchen and overlooked the back garden, heavily shadowed now in the dark but fascinating to Anna for all that. She’d glimpsed it from the kitchen and itched to explore it in daylight. Her own garden was tiny, and she’d always thought she’d love a bigger garden. She tried not to envy him.

Skye was sitting on the bed, still fully dressed, colouring in a book. She glanced up and then looked away, dismissing them.

‘I’m showing Anna the house,’ Adam told her. ‘Is it OK to come in?’

She shrugged.

‘I’m sorry, it’s an awful cheek—Skye, do you mind?’ Anna asked, wary of stepping on clearly sensitive little toes.

She shrugged again, noncommitally, and carried on colouring. Anna looked around. It was desperately in need of love and attention, but it was bigger than Anna’s sitting room, and way bigger than her bedrooms had ever been. There was a pretty little fireplace against one wall, cast iron and delicately patterned inset tiles, and Anna would have given her eye teeth for it as a child. As an adult, in fact!

‘What a wonderful room—it’s huge,’ she said with genuine awe. ‘My bedroom at home is much smaller!’

‘Before, I had to share with the boys,’ Skye said, clearly impressed that her room was bigger than Anna’s. ‘Well, after she went. First I had the little room, but then the au pairs had it.’

Au pairs? As in, lots of them? Of course, they didn’t come for long, Anna thought, and wondered if ‘she’ was their mother. Inevitably. And she’d gone somewhere. Where? It was suddenly a minefield, and she picked her way through it with enormous care.

‘Do you know what you want to do with it now you’ve got such a lovely room?’ Anna asked her. ‘It’s all yours—it must be wonderful, I should think, to be able to choose.’

Skye shrugged. ‘Don’t know.’ She seemed to withdraw into herself then, as if too much attention was focused on her, and Anna gave a slight smile and moved further away, giving her room.

‘I’m sure you’ll have lots of fun deciding. I always think that’s the best bit.’ She turned towards Adam and pushed him gently towards the door. ‘Come on, let’s leave her in peace. I want to see the rest. What’s next?’

He showed her the loo and bathroom, both in need of tidying up and probably refitting in a more sympathetic style than the ugly suite that was there. Still, it worked, she supposed, except for the dripping tap, although an Edwardian original would have been more attractive.

‘I’m going to refit it when I get time,’ he told her. ‘I thought I might rearrange it to fit a loo in here as well—it seems silly not to have one in the bathroom, and there’s tons of room.’

‘Can you do plumbing?’ she asked, impressed, and he laughed.

‘Me? I’m an orthopaedic surgeon, don’t forget. I’m a dab hand with a saw and a screwdriver, and I’m good at plugging vascular leaks, too.’

‘Hmm. Let’s just hope your pipes heal,’ she said with a smile, and he chuckled.

‘They won’t need to. You wait, it’ll be perfect. Come and see the rest.’

He took her into the boys’ room, and they were much more welcoming and extrovert than Skye had been. She was shown their toys, and how each of them had their own space in a corner of the even bigger room, and they bounced around and generally didn’t look ready for bed.