Tell Me You Do

by Fiona Harper

  There was Jason, in faded jeans and a T-shirt, looking more gorgeous than a man had a right to as he laughed and chatted with some of the other guys. Out of his suit he looked … he looked …

  Edible.

  Sadly, that was the only word that fitted.

  Kelly looked down at her own denim-clad thighs and suddenly wished for her normal temp uniform of skirt and blouse. She hadn’t realised they were part of her anti-Jason armour until that moment, but they were. And without her usual uniform the edges of their relationship … well, they seemed too blurry.

  She discovered she didn’t know what to do with herself. The position she was sitting in now seemed posed and fake, but whatever she did with her arms and legs just felt awkward and unnatural. It was as if she was expecting him to look up and notice her sitting there, expecting him to jog over and smile at her before he dropped down on the blanket beside her. And she wasn’t. Yes, they worked together, but that didn’t mean anything. There were plenty of other people he would want to spend time with today.

  However, it was just as well she wasn’t secretly hoping Jason would come over and say hi, because for the next half hour he was fully occupied showing young, pretty things—who’d developed a sudden burning passion for rounders—how to hold a bat properly. All of them needed one-to-one tuition, preferably involving Jason wrapping his arms around them from behind and swinging the bat with his large hands covering theirs.

  Not that Kelly was paying much attention, although it didn’t take more than a quick glance to work out that Jason was loving every second of it.

  Still, it irritated her that while she was aware of him maybe fifty feet away, while she could hear the artificially loud giggles of some of his protégées, she just couldn’t seem to get back that restful groove she’d had going. Eventually, she stamped to her feet, headed back to her own blanket and started unpacking her and the boys’ picnic. They were sure to be hungry soon, what with all that running around Sarah’s husband had them doing. And the fending off of yucky girls.

  When it was all laid out she called her sons over. They ran back long enough to grab a packet of crisps each then raced back to their football game. On a normal day, Kelly would have sat them down and made sure they ate a sandwich, but today they were having so much fun she didn’t have the heart.

  She sighed and picked up a packet herself. The first mouthful confirmed what she’d expected of them. She’d bought them at the pound shop and, while they weren’t quite out of date, they had a slight chewiness that suggested they were only just on the right side of staleness.

  ‘Can I have one?’

  Kelly stopped chewing for a second and looked up to find Jason towering over her, silhouetted as he blocked out the sun. Unable to talk, she just nodded and watched with big eyes as he dropped gracefully on the blanket beside her and helped himself to a packet of cheese and onion.

  ‘Rounders over for now?’ she asked breezily, once she’d swallowed her mouthful of crisp crumbs. ‘Only you seemed to have quite a fan club a minute ago.’

  Why had she said that? Why? Now he’d know she’d noticed, and she didn’t want him knowing that.

  Jason just grinned back at her. ‘Saving myself for later.’

  Stop it, she told her stomach, which did a little flip as his eyes glinted with mischief. That sort of thing does not appeal to you.

  She sat up and craned her neck. ‘Haven’t you got an ermine-lined blanket of your own around somewhere?’

  Jason just laughed. ‘No. I forgot it. But it’s nicer to share.’

  Kelly looked at the tiny, not-quite-wool tartan rug beneath them. If she’d known that she’d be forced to sit quite this close to him, she might have invested in one that was … oh … twenty times larger?

  ‘Well, the crisps are all you’re having off me. I didn’t bring a lot.’ She looked down at the little cling-film-wrapped packets of sandwiches and assortment of fruit in the centre of the rug. There were three chocolate biscuits also lurking in the bottom of the cool bag, but Kelly wasn’t giving hers up for anybody.

  He reached behind him and pulled a proper wicker picnic basket with leather buckles forward. ‘I said I’d forgotten the blanket, not the food.’ His gaze flitted to her meagre provisions. ‘You’re sharing your blanket. Care to share my lunch?’

  Something inside Kelly nosedived. Ah. That was it. He was taking pity on her. That was why he was here, clogging up her blanket when he could have been lolling around somewhere else with a leggy blonde wrapped around him.

  She was about to open her mouth and tell him exactly where he could shove his fancy picnic, sandwich by sandwich, when he added, ‘My mother has this monstrosity sent to me from Fortnum’s every year, just for the company picnic. I think she thinks that because I’m in London the Queen might just wander past and I’d better be properly provisioned, just in case.’

  Now he’d made her laugh, which had so not been part of the plan. And when he opened the hamper up, she could see all sorts of delicious things in there … proper ham, not the watery packet stuff, pâté, scones, clotted cream. Her stomach growled and she decided that maybe she could take pity on her boss and help him out. Just this once.

  He offered her a savoury minimuffin and she took it without hesitation. It was soft and slightly cheesy, with a hint of basil and sun-dried tomatoes. Heaven.

  At that moment the boys rushed up. It seemed Sarah’s husband was in the mood for food too and had broken up the game to investigate his own picnic hamper. Both Cal and Ben skidded to a halt at the edge of the picnic blanket and stared at Jason.

  ‘Who are you?’ Ben said, with no hint of wariness in his tone, just curiosity.

  Jason held up a hand for a high five, which Ben jumped for and slapped. ‘I’m Jason. I work with your mom,’ he said and held his hand out for his older brother. Cal shook his head and sidled towards Kelly a bit.

  ‘Your voice sounds funny,’ Ben said. ‘Are you from the telly? I’ve heard people talk like you on the telly.’

  Jason grinned at the little boy. ‘Nope. Not from the TV. Just America. And, to me, you’re the ones with the funny voices.’

  Ben just giggled. ‘My voice isn’t funny, but Mummy’s sometimes is. Especially when she’s cross and she’s—’

  ‘Ben, why don’t you stop pestering Jason and sit down and eat your sandwiches?’

  Her youngest gave Jason a look that said, See?

  Jason leaned in and spoke in a stage whisper behind his hand. ‘She uses that voice on me too.’

  Cal couldn’t help joining in after that. ‘Are you naughty too sometimes?’ he asked as he sat down right next to Kelly, half on one of her feet.

  Jason winked. ‘Sometimes.’

  ‘Always,’ Kelly said, and all three males shared a conspiratorial chuckle.

  Great. Three seconds in his company and her kids had turned traitor and teamed up with Jason. This afternoon was going to be just peachy. She should have known, though. Of course Jason would get on with her kids … being such a big kid himself.

  She unwrapped Ben’s sandwich and handed it to him. He handed it back to her.

  ‘What?’ she said. ‘It’s ham. You like ham.’

  ‘It’s pink,’ Ben replied, crossing his arms. ‘Only girls eat pink stuff.’

  Kelly raised an eyebrow. ‘Really? You didn’t seem to mind much last week when you were scoffing your way through Auntie Chloe’s cupcakes.’

  ‘I want to eat meat.’

  Kelly shook her head slightly. ‘Ham is meat.’

  Ben gave her a superior kind of look. ‘I want red meat.’

  ‘Red meat …?’ What on earth was he talking about? Most meat was brown, maybe off-white. What the heck was Tim feeding them when they went to stay with him?

  Ben nodded. ‘Like dinosaurs. I want to be a dinosaur. T-rex eats his meat all red and drippy.’

  Her child wanted to eat raw meat. O-kay.

  ‘Look, Ben, you’re just going to have to take my word for it. H
am is meat and it’s not girly.’

  Ben’s brows bunched together. ‘Won’t.’

  ‘Hey, buddy …’ Ben swung his head round to look at Jason. ‘Do I look girly to you?’ And he made a fist and displayed his rather fine biceps to make his point. Kelly’s mouth went dry.

  Ben shook his head.

  ‘Then pass me one of those sandwiches, will you?’

  Ben, keen to join in the game, leapt up and handed Jason one of his sandwich triangles. Jason made a big show of eating it all up and rubbing his stomach afterwards. ‘Yummy.’

  Ben’s eyes were wide, but he didn’t make a move towards his lunch. Kelly knew just how stubborn her youngest could be. If Ben had decided the sky was luminous purple, then luminous purple it would stay—until he woke up one morning and decided it was zebra striped instead.

  Jason’s eyes narrowed slightly as he studied the little boy sitting across the picnic blanket from him. He leaned forward and lowered his voice. ‘As well as being your mom’s boss, the other thing you don’t know about me is that I’m half dinosaur.’ He said it so seriously that Cal, who’d begun to giggle, went quiet. Jason looked between the two boys and then he let out a low, rasping noise, similar to the ones the dinosaurs made in Ben’s favourite animated film. Before Kelly could react, he jumped to his feet, elbows clamped to his side, and started doing a pretty passable impression of a T-rex.

  Kelly pressed her fingers over her lips and tried to suppress a laugh as her boys squealed and ran away across the grass. Jason lumbered after them, still in character, and chased them round for a couple of minutes before picking them up, tucking one under each arm and stomping back to the picnic blanket with them. Most of the Aspire team had stopped eating their picnics to watch the goings-on, and when Jason deposited first one boy then the other—head first—onto Kelly’s blanket, they cheered and gave him a round of applause.

  Jason took a bow then dropped back down on the ground, looking one hundred per cent human again. He turned to Ben. ‘So … if I can eat a ham sandwich, I’m sure you can.’

  ‘I can’t believe you just did that,’ Kelly whispered, not completely able to keep the smile from her lips. ‘Everyone was watching.’

  Jason just shrugged. So? his shoulders said. He didn’t care.

  Of course he didn’t care. Jason didn’t care about anything. Except his Mercury running shoes.

  ‘Worked, didn’t it?’ he said as Ben tucked into his sandwich, making baby dinosaur noises between mouthfuls.

  Kelly sighed. ‘There’s no hope, is there? Raw meat? He’s a proper man already. Next thing we know, he’ll be firing up a barbecue and asking for a beer.’ Then she smiled at Jason, a soft, thankful smile, for once completely unlaced with sarcasm.

  He grinned back at her. ‘You’re welcome.’ And, instead of the devilish glint she’d come to expect, the look in his eyes was warm and honest and … Jason.

  For the longest moment they stayed like that, and then Kelly looked away, fussed with the cool bag and then resorted to unwrapping the sandwich she no longer had an appetite for. He had no business being all Jason with her. She’d rather he was that guy who’d been helping the bimbos to bat. That guy was much easier to resist.

  ‘You are going to help me eat this, aren’t you?’ he asked her. ‘I can’t believe that tiny little sandwich is going to fill you up.’ And he waved a real plate under her nose, on which sat a piece of perfectly pink salmon fillet and a dollop of creamy-looking coleslaw. Kelly was a sucker for coleslaw.

  She let out a theatrical sigh. ‘If I have to … but just remember, if I do this for you, you’ll owe me.’

  ‘Of course,’ he replied, and she could hear the mirth in his tone, but she dared not look him in the eye. It would be too easy, too easy to feel as if this was normal, as if he should always fill the empty spot on her picnic blanket, but they both knew he wasn’t auditioning for that job.

  But it didn’t help when, after lunch, he urged the boys to join in the kids’ rounders game, then volunteered to teach them how to swing a bat when they said they didn’t know how.

  They should know, Kelly thought. That was something Tim should have taught them, not a stranger barely an hour after their first meeting.

  She should have known something was inherently wrong with Tim right from the start. He’d never seemed quite as into spending time with his sons as her friends’ husbands had been. Oh, he’d done it. Sometimes. But there’d always been a look hidden behind his smile that suggested he couldn’t quite get the minutes to tick away fast enough so he could do something he wanted instead.

  She’d thought Tim and Jason had been like peas in a pod when she’d first met her boss but, watching him disappoint the pouting girls who were hoping for a refresher course before the big game so he could patiently show a four-year-old how to hold a rounders bat, she realised she couldn’t have been more wrong. On the surface, maybe, but deep underneath, where it mattered, there was something more to Jason, something that had been missing in her ex-husband. Which led to a scary kind of logic: If having that piece missing meant there had been something inherently wrong with Tim, did that mean there was something inherently right with Jason?

  When he finally tired the boys out and they begged to come and have more food, all three rejoined her on the blanket. She reached over and ruffled Ben’s hair as he dived head first into the cool bag in search of his chocolate biscuit.

  ‘You’re good with them,’ she told Jason, looking longingly at her smallest son, feeling her heart warm at the sight of his mouth smeared with chocolate after just one bite. ‘I suppose that comes from being a big brother.’ She raised her eyes to meet Jason’s. ‘Is there much of an age difference?’

  His smile froze, just for a split second. ‘Four years.’

  ‘You must have felt very protective towards him.’

  Jason shrugged. ‘Guess so.’ He nodded towards the boys. ‘But you know what brothers are like. We fought more than we bonded.’ And then he stared out across the park to the glinting skyscrapers on the other side of the river.

  ‘You don’t talk about your family much.’

  Jason continued to stare at the skyline. ‘Not much to say. I’m the black sheep, so nobody minds if communication is patchy. Frankly, I think my father prefers it that way.’

  ‘What about your mother? You keep in contact with her, right?’

  He shrugged. ‘I don’t know what my mother was like when she was younger, but now she’s more like my father’s shadow than his wife. And if he thinks I need to be left out in the cold for a while so I can see the error of my ways … well, my mother wouldn’t dare disagree.’

  Kelly leaned in closer and spoke softly. ‘But she sends you the hamper every year—the best money can buy. I bet she sends you other things too, little things she knows you’d like.’

  Jason turned and looked at her, surprise and dawning realisation on his features.

  ‘Perhaps you should give her a call once in a while,’ Kelly said, looking away and staring at the view Jason had found so riveting. ‘Mothers know they have to let their sons go one day. Doesn’t mean it doesn’t hurt to do it … or even think about it.’

  She could feel Jason looking at her and ignored it for as long as she could, but eventually she caved and turned her head.

  ‘I’m seeing a whole new side to you today, Kelly.’

  Ditto. But she wasn’t going to tell him that.

  Instead she gave him one of her patented haughty looks. ‘Don’t get used to it,’ she told him. ‘Come Monday morning, it’ll be business as usual.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  THERE WAS NOTHING Jason liked better than a competitive game, even if it was only with a stumpy version of a baseball bat and a tennis ball, and the company rounders tournament was no exception. Each year he joined a different team rather than just creating a senior management team that everyone was afraid to win against. Where would be the fun in that? For a competition to be exciting it had to have a real thre
at of defeat, otherwise the adrenalin zing that victory always brought would be missing.

  This year he’d joined the Secretaries and Stuff team. Self-named and totally intent on putting their bosses in their places, even if their battle readiness outstripped their ability. And it hadn’t been because Kelly was on the team. Because she hadn’t been. Not until they’d realised they were one short because of a no-show and he’d convinced her to join them.

  ‘I’ll show you how to hold the bat, if you like,’ he’d told her.

  She’d just scrunched up her face and shook her head. ‘First, I’ve seen what your version of showing entails, thank you very much. Besides, I have two burly older brothers. Do you really think I don’t know how to play rounders?’

  ‘And second?’

  She smiled sweetly at him. ‘You, in particular, don’t want to be within hitting distance when I have one of these in my hands.’ And then she’d marched off to take her place in the line, ready to take her turn. Jason had just laughed as he’d watched her go.

  Pity.

  He’d have liked a seemingly innocent excuse to get closer to Kelly, more than just a handshake. While he’d totally enjoyed his tuition session with some of the female staff earlier on—even if he’d been able to sense Julie’s disapproving glare from under the large chestnut tree on the fringes of the picnic area—he hadn’t been able to help wishing it wasn’t a fresh, young twenty-something pressing herself against his front as he put his arms around her and guided her hands into the right grip on the bat. He realised he’d wished it was a certain single mom instead.

  The need to smell that perfume of hers again had blindsided him. He didn’t just want to get a waft as she walked by him in the office, but up close and on her skin, the way perfume was meant to be smelt.

  And he couldn’t quite get that idea out of his head as the game progressed.

  It was weird, because he hadn’t thought seeing her with her boys would have been so appealing. He didn’t mind the single-mom thing, had dated plenty of them, but this was the first time it had made him want a woman more.