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He climbed back into the van, his knees hurting as he crouched back down to finish sanding the bed frame. Another hour finishing up and he could call it a night himself. He’d pulled a couple of all-nighters in the last week to get back on track since the shop had opened. He certainly did not have the energy or inclination to worry about Ellie and her parenting preferences.
He was listening to the kids busy chatting away about how they were going to spend their earnings if Ellie let them go to Gratesbury a few minutes later, when the door banged open and Ellie’s voice rang out.
‘Josh, what are you doing here? I’ve been searching for you for fifteen minutes. You were supposed to check in with me at the shop. I’ve been worried sick.’ The monologue was delivered in a pitch that got higher as it went on, not giving the boy a chance to respond.
Art climbed out of the van, his back muscles protesting as he regretted his decision not to kick the kids out a lot sooner.
Wearing a short summer tunic with big red roses stamped all over it and her blonde hair escaping from the topknot she wore while tending the shop, Ellie had her hands on her son’s shoulders.
‘You didn’t go home for lunch and you forgot to check in with me or Dee. You know that’s not the deal. You were supposed to—’
‘The two of them were working for me.’ He interrupted Ellie’s tirade.
Ellie’s head swung round and, for a moment, she looked surprised to see him. But then the flush of temper on her face was replaced by the flash of awareness. The blood rushed to his groin on cue – doing not one thing to stem his irritation.
Why oh why, even when she was tired and anxious, did Ellie always have to be so bloody irresistible?
*
‘Art? I… I didn’t know he was in here working with you today.’ Ellie was holding it together. But only just.
She hadn’t planned to come charging in here. Hadn’t planned to make a scene. But she’d heard the children chattering and assumed that Art was elsewhere. Except he wasn’t elsewhere. He was here, with that inscrutable look on his face and wearing that bloody toolbelt again, which had the ability to melt all her brain cells – especially when she’d just spent fifteen minutes racing about the farm trying to find her missing son.
‘We made sixty pounds, Mom.’ Josh broke into her reverie, waving a bunch of twenty pound notes under her nose. ‘Thirty pounds each. Can we go to Gratesbury tomorrow to spend it? Art said it was OK.’
Flustered and feeling Art’s eyes on her, that penetrating gaze making her feel as if she were under a very large, very powerful microscope, she turned to her son. ‘I can’t take you to Gratesbury tomorrow. I’ll be working in the shop.’
‘But you don’t have to take us, we can go on our own on the bus.’
‘You’re not going to Gratesbury on your own.’
‘Why not? Toto does it all the time.’ The piercing whine in Josh’s voice drilled into her temples. She could feel Toto’s eyes on her too.
‘I said no, Josh.’ She knew she could be overprotective. She’d been working on it really hard. Trying to give Josh space and responsibility this summer. But Josh had always been one hundred per cent loyal to her, and having him challenge her in front of Art and Toto felt like a betrayal.
‘But I want to go. That’s not fair. I’ve worked really, really hard today.’
‘You also forgot to tell me where you were. You know that’s important to me, or I’ll worry about you.’
‘You always worry,’ Josh shouted, his face bright with temper. ‘And you never let me do anything I want to—’
‘Don’t talk to your mum like that.’ Art’s deep voice cut through Josh’s outburst.
Josh stilled, his eyes darting down as his whole body went soft, the temper seeping out of him as his face went the colour of Dee’s raspberry jam. ‘I’m sorry, sir,’ he muttered.
Ellie risked a look at Art. Not nearly as shocked by her son’s impromptu temper tantrum as she was by the way Art had cut it dead so effortlessly.
The look was a mistake, because it gave her another unhealthy eyeful of the worn sweaty T-shirt, sprinkled with sawdust, which stuck to his musculature in some interesting places.
‘And don’t call me “sir”,’ Art said, wearily, as if he’d had to say it a thousand times before. Then he lifted the limp T-shirt and wiped it across his brow, giving her a glimpse of spectacular abs, bisected by the happy trail of dark hair that led beneath his belt. She got a little giddy, as her gaze locked on the jagged scar that trailed across his hip bone. And she recalled the sight of him illuminated in moonlight across the millpond.
Forget a hum or a buzz, liquid fire settled in her abdomen. She tensed her stomach muscles, desperate to ignore it as she dragged her far-too-easily-distracted gaze back to his face.
Unfortunately, that face, the patient gaze rich with knowledge and something a great deal more potent, was no less compelling.
‘He did a full day’s work. He earned the thirty quid.’ Art swept his hand towards the caravan, which was now fully formed in the centre of the cavernous room. ‘Toto’s been to Gratesbury before on the bus, they’ll be fine.’
‘What Toto does is your business, what my son does is mine,’ she snapped, and immediately felt like a shrew when he sen
