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That smile of his didn’t have a place. Neither did Edward.
‘You’re reading my mind now, are you?’ Just as long as he couldn’t access the part of her imagination that was engaged in stripping his shirt from his shoulders. Running its hungry fingers over his skin and allowing him to back her against the desk...
He narrowed his eyes and she shivered. There was something tender about the curve of his lips, something raw about the look in his eyes. ‘I should warn you that I have a Joker up my sleeve.’
She nodded. ‘Isaac. You’ll say he’s happy where he is and it would be wrong to put him through any more upset. That I might be able to see the debt collectors off, but I can’t protect him from the stress.’
John North had said as much, advising her that if she had somewhere else to stay she should do so.
Edward nodded. His gaze flipped quickly to the sofa, which was relegated to the one corner of his office that wasn’t lined with bookshelves, and then back again to her face. Maybe he really was reading her mind. The sofa would be admittedly more comfortable than the desk.
‘And I’d be right?’
‘Yes. You’d be right.’
The smile that made his eyes seem impossibly blue, the one that he had no trouble in sharing with Isaac, was all for her this time. ‘Are we done, then?’
Not by any stretch of the imagination. ‘I suppose so.’
‘And your answer...?’
‘Thank you. Isaac and I would like to stay.’
At least he had the grace to nod, as if the outcome of this particular skirmish hadn’t been a foregone conclusion.
> He stepped away from the door, hooking up his jacket and slinging his sports bag over his shoulder. ‘Let’s get out of here. What’s for dinner?’
* * *
She’d tried to palm him off with peppered steak, but Edward had rather liked the idea of eating early and sharing pizza with Charlotte and Isaac. He liked the execution even better.
Isaac stood on a chair, a folded-down apron tied around him, dipping into bowls of sliced tomatoes and mushrooms to decorate his pizza. This was the kind of fun he hadn’t had in a long time, and the feeling that the woman and child he so wanted to protect were here, safe with him...
Edward paused for a moment to consider whether safe and with him weren’t in fact a contradiction of terms and then gave up the unequal struggle. For tonight it was more than enough to know that they were having fun, and that he was there to turn back anyone who came knocking on the door.
‘So who’s this meant to be, then?’
A grave face stared out at him from Isaac’s pizza.
‘It’s...’ Isaac had a showman’s mastery of the expectant pause ‘...you!’
‘Me?’ Edward ignored the stifled giggle behind him. ‘I don’t look very happy.’
‘That’s your thinking face.’
‘Ah. Well, I suppose that’s all right, then.’
‘What’s yours?’ Isaac peered across at Edward’s pizza, and would have toppled off the chair if Edward hadn’t shot a hand out to steady him.
‘It’s...just a pattern.’ He was beginning to learn that details could get him into trouble.
Isaac twisted his head from one side to the other. Edward wondered whether the complex symmetry was really so beyond him, and came to the conclusion that somewhere, on a chiefly instinctive level, he understood.
‘It’s different from Mum’s.’
Charlotte had decorated her pizza with swirls and curlicues of tomato, mushrooms and olives.
‘Well, your mum and I are different. We like different things.’
