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It had been one day, he kept telling himself.
No big deal.
Yet it had been the nicest day he had known.
And her company still was.
So much so that despite his intention to head straight up to bed, instead he sat down and looked over at little Ava. ‘How is she?’
‘Being difficult in the way two-week-old babies generally are. Don’t catch her eyes. She’s looking for attention when she should be sleeping. We’re trying to get her into a routine.’
‘Maybe she’s like her uncle and loathes routine.’
‘Well, she’s certainly been burning the candle at both ends.’
Instantly Naomi regretted her words for they seeped the indignation she felt and they told him, if he listened closely, that she’d been reading up on his rather wild ways.
But there was no retrieving them so she just screwed her eyes closed for a second and then prised them open and stared into the fire and offered an apology.
‘That sounded...’ She didn’t know what to say. ‘No wonder you’ve been avoiding home. All I need is a rolling pin and to be standing at the door.’
He gave a low laugh, taken aback by her honesty, so he returned it.
‘Ihavebeen avoiding coming here,’ he admitted. ‘Not because I didn’t want to see you, more because I did.’
Her eyes filled with tears, and she felt her face redden—or was it the glow of the fire?—but in that midnight hour it felt as if there was space to be honest, and admit to the hurt she’d felt. ‘I know it was just a kiss to you, Abe, but it was my first.’
She didn’t look at his reaction, didn’t want to see the surprise on his face. Yet there wasn’t any. At some level, he’d known that the mouth that had met his had been an inexperienced one, that the woman he had held in his arm had not flown into them easily, and the hurt he had caused gnawed at his gut.
‘You shouldn’t have wasted it on me,’ Abe said in a deep, low voice that both scalded and soothed her soul.
‘It wasn’t wasted.’
There wasn’t silence between them, just little noises from Ava as she tried to catch an adult’s eye in the hope of staying awake awhile. And it was Abe who gave in to her, taking one of her little hands and watching as the tiny fingers coiled around his.
Naomi didn’t halt him, or warn him that he was messing up a routine. Some things were important and to see him care for his niece, to reach out and get to know her, felt as if a small battle had been won.
And he wanted to warn Naomi, to tell her to stay the hell away, yet he moved closer, not physically but sitting beside her felt so right it reminded him of just how wrong the world could be.
‘When Ethan was born, we had a family photo taken,’ Abe said, ‘sitting on this sofa. And then Jobe and I headed up to the terrace garden for some father-son shots. It was for a magazine.’
‘How old were you?’
‘Four,’ Abe said, ‘nearly five.’
And she smiled because on that glorious day they’d shared, he’d told her things about his father. About pizzas and pretzels, and precious times spent.
‘I came back down. I think I’d forgotten something and I found Ethan lying face down on the sofa...’
The smile drained from her face.
‘Like one of the cushions. Elaine, the nanny, came in and I remember her turning him over and he was purple. She was shouting at me for not picking him up, for not doing something...’
‘Where was your mother?’
‘She’d gone for a lie down. Just dropped him like a doll once the photo was over. I never let him out of my sight after that. I used to dread coming home from school, wondering if he’d be safe. It’s hard to believe that he’s now a father himself.’
‘And a very good one.’
