Ellie’s eyebrows rose and she smiled encouragingly but her brain had caught on his words and hit a pause button. It wanted to store that idea away, of being Luke’s wife... Of being whisked away for a romantic weekend...
She had to make an effort to tune in properly again.
‘...like a car crash or a plane going down. There’s my kid still at home. No grandparents or other family to step in. Just a hired nanny who needs to get back to her own life. What can she do, except to hand over my kid to social services?’
Ellie opened her mouth to say something. To point out that his wife would have a family? But no words emerged. It wasn’t a given. She didn’t have any family. And she didn’t want to think about some other woman being Luke’s wife.
She wanted to be that woman.
To be with him, every day, for the rest of their lives.
To have moments like this, where he held her hand and talked to her about things that really mattered to him.
To have the support of someone who had already proven how well he could do that. When he’d delivered Jamie. When he’d rescued her after the fire.
When he’d called her sweetheart...
So, in the end, she didn’t say anything. How could she hope to change his mind when that would mean, to some level, dismissing how terrible his early life had been?
She couldn’t do that. Her heart was still breaking for that small, abandoned boy.
And Luke clearly took her silence as an affirmation of her understanding. She did understand. She might not agree with the rules that had been laid down but, yeah...it was easy to understand.
The elephant in the room had been caged and the reason for its imprisonment was valid. The breath Luke expelled sounded like a sigh of relief.
‘Did you ask me if I was hungry a while back?’
She nodded. Found another smile, even, that told Luke she was still his friend. Still grateful for everything he had done for her. Still ready to fight in his corner for anything that he needed. And right now, he needed reassurance that she understood. That she could forgive him?
‘Yeah... Silly question, huh?’
‘You bet. I’m starving...’
CHAPTER NINE
MAYBE LUKE HADN’T been aware of how grey and dismal the world had become until the sun had finally edged out from behind a dense layer of clouds.
Ellie knew the truth.
And she understood. She was the only person, apart from Dorothy Gilmore, who had seen the scars that came from being taught that you were unwanted. Unlovable. And, as he’d seen in the eyes of the woman who had chosen to take him on as her son, he’d seen the same acceptance in Ellie’s eyes.
The kind of love that came with the bond that only a real family could bestow.
Despite his determination to keep enough of a distance to keep Ellie safe, that was what they’d become over the last few weeks, wasn’t it?
A family.
Oh, not the sort that he would have created if he’d chosen to commit to one of those women who’d wanted him to. He hadn’t set out to intentionally combine this small group of humanity into a single unit. Fate had stepped in, the way it had when the Gilmores had caught him helping himself to their food, but he could cope with this. He could be an unofficially adopted brother or cousin and offer the kind of support a loving—but separate—family member would provide. An insurance policy for Jamie’s future, like the one he fully intended to get his solicitor to put down on paper.
It meant he could channel any feelings he had for Ellie into something very manageable, too. He could admire her and be proud of her.
Love her, in fact. And any sexual attraction could be instantly dismissed as being totally inappropriate. So inappropriate that it seemed as if it had been simply burnt off by the heat of that sun making its appearance from behind dense clouds he hadn’t even noticed accumulating.
If he’d needed any proof of that, it had come in the aftermath of that soul-baring conversation about his childhood.
When Ellie had asked him if checking whether or not he was hungry was a silly question. He’d already been feeling as if a weight had been lifted and the mischievous smile she had offered had been...irresistible.
‘You bet,’ he’d said with a grin that acknowledged the welcome familiarity of what had become a joke between them. ‘I’m starving...’
Not just for food. For this...this...closeness.
The feeling that someone knew more about him than anyone else on earth and could accept his limitations. Could still like him enough to joke with him.
He’d been caught up in that smile. In the first rush of the world seeming so much less complicated. So right...?
And yes, maybe it had something to do with the flickering candle light beside them and those gorgeous blue eyes in front of him but it had seemed like the most natural thing in the world to lean closer and kiss Ellie.
Just a soft touch of his lips on hers. An acknowledgement of a new level of friendship. A ‘thank you’ for being there. For listening and understanding.
And even feeling the astonishing softness of her lips beneath his for that blink of time hadn’t unleashed any fierce desire for more than that.
On either side, it seemed. Ellie hadn’t even tried to kiss him back. She’d seemed surprised by the gesture but then she’d dropped her gaze and got to her feet with an easy grace that didn’t suggest the kiss had been anything more than it had been intended to be—a mark of friendship.
‘Let’s hope that beef bourguignon hasn’t evaporated completely, then,’ she’d said lightly.
* * *
Being so open with Ellie also meant that Luke could relax.
He could enjoy coming home again—as he had when this had become his family home and he’d had a refuge for the first time in his life.
Everything felt brighter.
Was Jamie aware of the change in atmosphere around him? Was that why Luke had been privileged enough to witness his first smile?
A real smile that made his eyes crinkle and stretched his mouth into a grin that Luke couldn’t help returning, just as he hadn’t been able to help kissing Ellie the other night.
‘What’s funny?’ Ellie asked, looking up from the pile of laundry she was folding at the kitchen table.
‘He’s smiling.’
‘It’s probably wind.’
‘No. He’s really smiling. Come and see.’
But the new skill wasn’t in evidence by the time Ellie came to peer into the pushchair. Jamie just waved chubby fists and kicked his feet to demonstrate his pleasure in seeing his mother.
‘Hey...’ Luke reached in to tickle his tummy. ‘Where’s that smile gone, buddy?’
Jamie kicked harder, his gaze now locked on Luke’s face. And then, miraculously, he did it again—his lips curling up to make him look like the happiest baby on earth.
‘Oh...’ Ellie sounded as if she might cry. ‘He is...he’s really smiling at you.’
At him?
Babies just smiled, didn’t they? Surely Jamie didn’t recognise Luke as anybody particularly important in his life? He’d never picked him up and cuddled him, or anything.
But it appeared that Jamie did recognise him and that Luke could elicit a smile far more easily than Ellie could in the next few days. He only had to make funny noises or tickle him with just one finger. Weirdly, it made this tiny human seem much more like a real person. Someone he could feel close to. Proud of—as he did of Ellie.
Those smiles were something he could take genuine pleasure in now that he felt more relaxed. Just like the pleasure he was getting in how the house had come to life again, thanks to all the work that Ellie and a small army of tradesmen had done. Damaged boards and windows had been repaired and the new paintwork looked stunning. The gard
ens at both the front and back of the house were a blaze of colour with the second blooming of so many roses and with the gaps that had been created by her relentless efforts of weeding and pruning now filled with new plants. The photo shoot for the house had been done and Mike the real estate agent’s smile had been contagious.
‘Stroke of brilliance, putting that bottle of wine and the glasses on that outside table.’
‘That was Ellie’s idea. She did all the jugs full of roses inside, too.’
‘I just wish I’d had time to do the veggie garden,’ Ellie said. ‘I wanted it to be all cleared with some new rows of baby plants.’
‘It didn’t show up in the photos.’ Mike’s smile was encouraging now. ‘I’m sure you can have it looking perfect by the time the first viewings happen. Speaking of which...nothing official is out there yet but word of mouth happens in the industry, you know? I’ve heard about someone who’s very, very keen to have a sneak preview and I know they’ve got the right sort of money to play with. Would you mind if I set up an appointment for next week?’
For a moment, Luke hesitated. Walking away from this house—and Ellie and Jamie—suddenly seemed very, very real. Was that why Ellie seemed to have gone so still? She wasn’t looking at him, though. She was looking down at the baby in her arms. Her son. Her future.
One that Luke couldn’t continue to be this much a part of.
He glanced back at Mike. ‘Sure. Why not?’
Some of the best things in life happened because fate just happened to line up a meeting of the right people at the right time. Luke Gilmore knew that better than anyone.
Ellie’s quick glance had a note of something less than happy but Luke chose to interpret it in relation to the last thing she’d said. ‘I’ve got a day off, tomorrow. How ’bout I dig out that veggie garden?’
‘It’s a big job.’
‘Be a good workout, then.’
‘Excellent.’ Mike left the advance copies of the brochures he had brought to show them and took his leave. ‘I’ll be in touch...’
* * *
It was really going to happen.
Someone was coming to look at the property in a matter of days and, of course, they were going to fall in love with it and offer Luke a ridiculous amount of money that he would be an idiot not to accept.
He would make a final choice from all the amazing job offers he now had to consider and sort out all the loose ends of his past life in New Zealand while he worked the final few weeks of his locum position at North Shore General.
There would be no reason for Ellie to devote all her spare time and energy to this gorgeous old house and garden so she would be able to do what she probably should have already done by now and find herself and Jamie a new place to call home.
As she tucked Jamie into his bassinet for his afternoon nap, she tried very hard to feel positive about it.
‘We’ll be okay,’ she murmured to the sleeping baby. ‘We’ll find a nice place to live. Make new friends. Mummy will go back to work and you’ll love being in day care with all the other babies...’
Oh, dear... The way her words got caught on the lump forming in her throat wasn’t a good sign.
She hated the very idea of it, didn’t she?
Every bit of it.
Finding a new place to live that had nothing to do with Luke Gilmore. Going back to work quite this soon and leaving her baby in the care of strangers.
Missing Luke with every minute of every day and worse—every night...
Unconsciously, Ellie had put her fingertips to her lips. The way she often found herself doing when she thought back to that kiss.
Just a friendly kiss. The sort you might give to a very good friend to thank them for something important. Like them being okay with knowing that they were never going to be anything more than a friend because they understood exactly why you felt like that.
Trouble was, Ellie was only pretending to understand.
She was in love with Luke.
She still wanted to be with him. So much that it ached right down to her bones when she remembered that kiss because, even though the touch had been so light and so fleeting, every cell in her body had recognised that it was the first note of a song that would be a sound they had been waiting their entire existence to hear and feel.
And, yes, it was stupid to want to go there because it would only make it harder when Luke left but that didn’t seem to matter right now. Would it really make a difference when things were already going to be so hard? Ellie was already having trouble imagining her life with Luke no longer in it. It was almost as hard to get her head around as the idea of Jamie not being in her life now.
With a sigh, Ellie turned away from the bassinet, checking that the old-fashioned roller blind was pulled down far enough on the window to prevent any sun shining directly onto Jamie in the next hour or so. It wasn’t, so she moved to draw it further down. She would change those blinds if she owned this house, she thought, as she walked towards the window. She’d hang curtains in a romantic fabric, maybe with a flower print, to frame the tall sash windows in soft folds. No flowers if it was Jamie’s room, of course, but bright colours. Gold, perhaps, so that it looked like sunshine even in the middle of winter...
Her room was on a corner of the house and this window gave her a view past the edge of the gardens around the kitchen terrace. She could see Luke working in the veggie garden, hauling out the last of the tallest weeds by hand with the garden fork and a spade jammed into the earth nearby, ready for when they were needed for stubborn roots. He’d been out there working for hours already today, with only a short break for lunch, and he had cleared and turned over the earth of more than half of the large patch of land.
It was clearly harder going now, in the burst of autumn afternoon warmth. She saw him pause to wipe sweat off his face with the hem of his tee shirt and she could see the way he pushed damp strands of hair back from his face. It made her smile because she knew how tousled and disreputable it would make him look—as he did sometimes first thing in the morning before he’d brushed his hair.
Ellie loved that look best of all.
She’d take him a cold drink, she decided, picking up the handset of the baby monitor that would let her know the instant Jamie woke up. She might even get an hour or so to help dig before that happened, which was when she was planning to take Jamie for a ride in the car to the garden centre to buy trays of vegetable plants to fill in the newly bare stretch of soil.
The cold glass of water was apparently exactly what Luke had been hanging out for but it seemed to make him feel even hotter. A few minutes later, he stripped off his tee shirt, rolling it up into a ball to mop his face before he continued digging, now wearing only his shorts and a pair of rubber boots.
Ellie was in shorts, too. And a white singlet top beneath a soft, denim shirt. She took the shirt off and hung it over the handle of the wheelbarrow to keep at least one item of clothing clean and then she took the fork and headed for a new clump of weeds, leaving Luke to pull things up by hand and use the spade to turn and chop the soil.
‘I’m going to get plants rather than seeds,’ Ellie told him, when she carried an armload of rubbish past Luke as she headed for the wheelbarrow. ‘That way it’ll give people the idea they’ll be growing all their own food in no time.’
‘Like we did, back in the day.’
‘Yeah...I’m thinking broccoli and cauliflowers and cabbage. And beans and peas. Except we’d need frames for them to climb on, wouldn’t we?’
‘There’s a fence buried under the weeds here. I seem to remember that was for beans. With a bit of luck, the posts won’t be too rotten.’
‘What else did you grow? Potatoes?’
‘Of course. Not that you can get them as plants but I remember how to mound up the rows and people will know what the
y’re for.’ It was nice that Luke could feel enthusiastic about a garden when he wouldn’t be here to taste its produce. ‘Carrots,’ he added, with a satisfied nod. ‘And silverbeet. That was always here. Huge bunches of it.’
‘Maybe there’s still some hiding.’
‘I doubt anything’s lasted under this carpet of weeds.’
But Luke struck gold in the very last corner of the overgrown patch when their efforts had brought them close enough to be working together.
‘Don’t pull that one out,’ Ellie exclaimed. ‘That’s rhubarb...’
Dropping her fork in her excitement, she stumbled over the rough earth to pull the veil of sticky biddi bid weeds from the huge, dark green leaves beneath. Luke reached in to help her but it didn’t stop her singlet from getting covered with the tiny green seed balls. Luke even got some in his hair, which already looked the most dishevelled Ellie had ever seen it look. With those tawny streaks to the shagginess, it reminded her of a lion’s mane.
And she loved it...
Just as well there was something else to focus on.
‘Oh, wow...’ She stood back to admire the plants they had uncovered. ‘This is fabulous. It’s going to make it look like something is really growing and hasn’t just been planted for show.’
Luke bent down to snap off one of the long, red stalks. He bit into it but then screwed up his face as if he’d just sucked on a lemon.
‘I don’t remember this being so sour.’
‘Don’t try the leaves,’ Ellie warned him. ‘They’re poisonous. And the stalks really need cooking,’ she added. ‘In a crumble, maybe. Ava and I used to eat it in the garden, though. We’d sneak out a little bowl of sugar and dip the stalks into it with each bite.’
There were so many memories of that old friendship that snuck up on her but seeing Luke’s expression had given this one a peculiar poignancy. Raw rhubarb was sour and she and Ava had made faces just like that if they hadn’t got enough sugar to stick to the stalks. Then they’d giggled and tasted it again just because it was fun.
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