‘You certainly seem to have settled in. You must know half the village by now.’ Why on earth did that give her an odd thrust of…what…surely not jealousy?
‘This is a friendly place and I like to talk to people. It reminds me of home.’
‘Really?’
‘Especially the wharf.’ Dylan nodded as he put down his fork to take a sip of his wine. ‘I grew up in Oban and my dad was a fisherman. My earliest memories are waiting on the wharf for his boat to come in. Being allowed to help with important things. When I was five and I was big enough to lift the rope to go over the mooring post, I was so proud of myself. Josh said if I puffed out my chest any further, I’d pop.’
Jane laughed. ‘Did you get to go out on the boat?’
‘For a while. We moved to Glasgow a couple of years later and then the only boats we went out on were the ones Dad hired for a week or two on holidays.’
‘He gave up fishing?’
‘Not by preference. He’s got sea water in his veins, rather than blood. He hates the city.’
‘So why did you move?’
‘It was too hard to try and raise two sons on his own after Mum died.’
‘Oh…’ He had said his mother had died too young but Jane had let the information slip past and, in any case, it was taking on a whole new significance now. Dylan’s brother was dead. So was his mother. That left only himself and his father. Not the ideal combination of family to raise a small girl, was it? Instantly, she was ashamed at the selfish reaction. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said sincerely. ‘It was pneumonia, you said?’
‘Aye. She had what she called a “weak chest”. Prone to infections. A bit of asthma. It seemed like nothing out of the ordinary except that she got very sick, very fast. Viral pneumonia. She was dead the very next day.’
‘And your father brought you up by himself? He didn’t remarry?’
‘I don’t think it’s ever occurred to him to replace my mother. She was the love of his life. Josh was older and once we moved and Dad got a job that didn’t mean he was away so much, we managed. We had each other.’
A simple statement but it said so much.
The strength of that family bond was almost palpable and Jane couldn’t ignore it as she continued to eat.
‘Your father must be a remarkable man,’ she said into the companionable silence. Willing to sacrifice whatever it took for his family. Like his son.
Dylan had his mouth full and merely nodded agreement. He took another moment to have a mouthful of wine before he spoke again, and his words were unexpected.
‘He’d love it here,’ Dylan said thoughtfully. ‘He didn’t want to go back to Oban when he retired. Said he’d feel too lonely by himself, but something new— like this—could give him a new lease of life. With the kind of people here, the hills, the sea. It’d be paradise. Do you realise how lucky you are, Jane?’
‘It is a beautiful country, New Zealand,’ Jane agreed. ‘It’s…’ Oh, Lord, had she been about to say it’s a great place to raise children? ‘…home,’ she amended. ‘Sometimes it takes seeing something familiar through someone else’s eyes to really appreciate it.’
‘True enough.’ Dylan’s glance was unreadable.
‘I cooked,’ he said a short time later. ‘You get to wash up.’
‘Oh?’ Jane would have preferred to offer rather than receive an order but she caught the challenge in Dylan’s glance. ‘Fair enough.’
‘And it’s your turn to cook tomorrow.’
So much for the image of a domestic god. The fleeting notion that Dylan would embrace being a house husband might have to be crossed off any mental list of future options.
The way she’d been crossed off from serious consideration as a life partner by the men in her life so far? Because she wasn’t conventional wife and mother material? What was so wrong with choosing a different direction? Devoting her life to many instead of a select few, with a dedication that was undiluted.
Nothing. It was commendable. Jane was proud of what she did and who she was. She had the right to be defensive if necessary.
‘I’ll get take-outs,’ she said briskly in the kind of tone that her registrars knew not to question.
‘Oh? Fair enough.’
The echo of her own response had to be deliberate. So was the tone of faint surprise underlaced with resignation. Dylan stood up, obviously about to leave her alone to her assigned task. It should be annoying that he was challenging her authority. Treating her like an underling. It was ridiculous to feel like she had failed some kind of test. That Dylan was disappointed with her.
Jane could feel her cheeks flush. ‘Hey, I don’t cook,’ she told Dylan’s back. ‘Unless you count scrambled eggs.’
He didn’t turn around but she could hear the smile in his voice. ‘Consider them counted. Throw in some bacon and I’d be a very happy man.’
It shouldn’t matter whether Dylan was a happy man or not. Not this much, anyway. But Jane gathered plates and found herself wondering whether there might be enough fresh parsley growing in the long-abandoned vegetable garden.
Dylan had put some music on and Jane listened as she washed and dried dishes and put them away. It wasn’t a record she had heard before but it was beautiful. Classical guitar and a rich, male voice singing a ballad in what sounded like Gaelic.
She stopped in her tracks, stunned, when she finally went to enter the living area and found the music was live. Dylan sat on the piano stool, a guitar cradled as lovingly in his arms as the way he held Sophie, apparently lost in his song.
Jane couldn’t move. For a long, long moment, she couldn’t even draw in a breath.
That Dylan could make music like this was like…like Sophie smiling. It brought that misty sensation back. A soft, encompassing warmth that was poignant enough to bring the prickle of tears to her eyes.
It made her remember being hugged by Gran. Not that anyone in her family spoke words of love aloud, but that’s what the feeling was.
Love.
Was she falling for the gypsy who had brought this music into her life? Along with a baby who had a dimple on her nose and a smile to light up the world around her?
A single, sharp shake of her head was enough to break the spell and enable Jane to move. She wasn’t falling for anyone. There was no place for considering that kind of love in her life. Not any more. Not since Gran had died, really.
Not that she’d made any conscious decision to avoid it. God knew, she had tried hard enough to find it again. Tried hard enough to know the heartbreak of being crossed off more than one list of potential mates.
There were things that she was very, very good at and there were things she wasn’t. If Dylan got to know her well enough he’d find out, and the truth would be far more disappointing than her inability to cook.
It wasn’t going to happen. Jane crossed the room and sat down on the couch. Near the fire but far enough away from the piano stool. The notes of the guitar faded into silence.
‘Don’t stop,’ Jane said lightly. ‘It’s lovely. Where did you find the guitar?’
‘There’s a second-hand shop in the village near the supermarket. I couldn’t resist it. She’s a beauty, isn’t she?’ Dylan’s finger moved over the strings again. ‘You sure you don’t mind?’
‘I’m sure.’ Jane curled her legs up and stared into the fire.
She was wrong, she decided only minutes later. She did mind. The sound of the music, or possibly more the sound of Dylan’s voice, was robbing her of something important. Self-control?
Jane couldn’t stop herself watching his hands as he changed chord positions and plucked the sweet notes from nowhere. Or prevent herself lifting her gaze to watch his lips form the words of the song. And then it lifted again and she found he was watching her as he sang.
She couldn’t have broken that eye contact if her life had depended on it. And it felt like her life depended on it. Desire was so strong, it was painful. She wanted those hands to be touching her body. Creat
ing what she knew would be harmony like none she had ever experienced.
He wanted it too. She could see it in the way his eyes darkened and hear it in the huskiness that crept into his voice.
She was falling into the song.
Falling in love.
And still she couldn’t look away.
The huskiness in Dylan’s voice became so marked he had to stop to clear his throat. His fingers stilled and Jane could swear she could hear her heart beating in the silence.
Dylan opened his mouth to say something but the words didn’t emerge. Instead, Jane heard a thin wail coming from upstairs.
The disappointment was crushing. Dylan held her gaze long enough to let her know he was feeling something similar. His smile was wry enough to suggest how ironic it was that what had brought them together was about to prevent them getting any closer.
‘You want to go and answer that?’ he asked quietly.
A bucket of cold water couldn’t have quenched the flames of desire any more effectively. A flash of panic took its place. Dylan already knew she was a failure with babies. With Sophie in particular. She knew why he wanted her to try again but it wasn’t going to be any better this time.
It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help.
She couldn’t because she had no idea how to. She would fail. Again. Sophie would be even more miserable and Dylan would be frustrated and disappointed and Jane would feel like an utter failure.
OK. She didn’t want to help.
Success was what mattered and Jane was old enough to have learned to stay away from experiencing failure. Long-term relationships with men were now well up on that list. So was anything not directly clinical that involved babies.
Jane shook her head. ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’d better go.’
‘Morning.’
‘Aye.’ Dylan’s smile was polite. ‘It’s a bonny one, at that.’
Jane put a mug of coffee down and then sat on the top of the steps that led to the veranda. She nodded in response before taking a bite from the piece of toast she held.
Dylan stayed where he was, in the rocking chair, feeding Sophie. He tried not to notice the low scoop neck of the T-shirt Jane was wearing this morning. He looked away from the soft skin as it rounded into shaping her breasts. But the top was short enough to be leaving a gap at the back as Jane leaned forward, and his gaze skimmed her unblemished lower back, the smoothness only interrupted by the knobs of her spine. What would it feel like to run his fingers over them? Or his tongue?
Damn! If he hadn’t got over feeling so attracted to Jane in the time it had taken to soothe Sophie back to sleep last night, he had been certain he’d dismissed the desire when he’d come back downstairs to find that Jane had gone to bed.
Without saying a word.
As though nothing important had happened between them.
And maybe it hadn’t. Maybe he’d imagined what he’d thought he’d seen in her face when he was singing to her.
No. Dylan shifted Sophie to his shoulder to rub her back. He knew desire when he saw it. He’d recognised the way his own interest had been fuelled and then ignited into raw need. If Sophie hadn’t started crying, he would have put that guitar down, taken Jane by the hand and led her upstairs to her bed.
‘The garden’s looking wonderful. You’re doing a great job, Dylan.’
‘Thanks,’ Dylan muttered.
Sophie’s belch sounded like an echo of his terse response.
He was doing a good job. With her daughter as well as her garden, but he wasn’t here to be her employee, dammit!
‘Sophie and I usually go for a walk later,’ he said as he stood up. ‘You’re welcome to come if you want to.’
He had no right to be angry with her.
He couldn’t just march into her life and turn it upside down and expect her to be prepared to cooperate. Jane was doing her best here.
She could have stayed back at the cottage and read some of the recent journal publications she had slipped into her bag but, no, here she was, trotting along beside him as he walked with an easy, long stride that had taken them all the way to the lighthouse and out along the jetty and was now going back towards the shops and the beach.
Well, not exactly trotting, but the walk was fast enough to add to this new tension between them and Jane was falling further and further behind. It added to the feeling that she was losing her grip on this situation. A feeling that had become marked enough for her to not want to wait until Dylan came back downstairs last night. She might have lain awake for a long time, struggling with the new complication of how she felt about Sophie’s uncle, but she had woken up with a new determination to stay in control. She had to!
‘What’s the rush?’ she called. ‘We’ve got plenty of time.’
‘Have we?’
Dylan was slightly ahead of her still but he slowed and turned enough to make sure she was catching up. Now she could see Sophie in the front pack he was wearing.
It was quite a picture. The big man with his dark hair tousled by the sea breeze, in his black T-shirt, faded jeans and those cowboy boots with the baby made to look so much smaller nestled against his chest, tiny limbs encased in a pink stretch suit hanging free of the padded support. If he’d been smiling, it would have been an image of idealistic parenthood. But Dylan wasn’t smiling.
Jane’s concern for his mood must have been apparent in her face. He stopped walking and waited.
‘I thought things might have changed,’ he said when Jane was close enough to hear his quiet voice. ‘That, given a week, you might have got used to the idea and be prepared to at least get to know your wee daughter. You gave the impression that you were interested every time you rang.’
‘I was. I am,’ Jane protested.
People passed the small island they were making on the footpath and glanced at them curiously.
Dylan shook his head. ‘You won’t feed her. Or change her or even go to her when she’s crying.’
‘Because she doesn’t like me,’ Jane said defensively. ‘You’ve seen what happens when I hold her. She only cries harder.’
‘She doesn’t know you. And, at this rate, she’s never going to. We don’t have that much time, Jane. Decisions have to be made. Sophie needs security. She needs to feel settled. I need to feel settled.’
It seemed a strange thing for a man like Dylan to say. Jane raised her eyebrows and waited for him to say more but another couple with a child on a bike were trying to negotiate a way past them and Dylan turned away to start walking again.
The day had started badly and was getting worse. Dylan did have a point. She was avoiding getting too close to Sophie, knowing it would only make things harder. And now she was trying to avoid getting too close to Dylan as well. Shutting herself away in a safe place. Being a coward.
Jane drew in a deep breath and quickened her step as she resolved to make more of an effort.
‘Can I buy you a coffee?’ she offered. ‘My favourite cafÉ is just along here.’
It was absurd to feel this pleased to be sitting in the outdoor space of the cafÉ a short time later on the white wrought-iron chairs, shaded by the luxuriant grape vines that shrouded the pergola, but Jane was grateful that Dylan seemed to be giving her a chance to try and redeem herself.
It was generous of him. He had been no more prepared for instant parenthood than she had been, had he? He deserved more than her obvious reluctance to get involved.
She was going to try harder. Much harder. She watched Dylan unclip the straps of the front pack and she swallowed hard.
‘Can…can I try holding her?’
Sophie blinked up at her, looking as wary as Jane felt. The soft whimper was out of all proportion to the alarm it generated. Jane looked up, ready to give Dylan an ‘I told you so’ glance, but his face was screened by the waitress delivering their coffee and the jug of hot water Dylan had requested to warm Sophie’s bottle.
He seemed unfazed by Sophie’s distress.
&n
bsp; ‘She’s just asking for some food, that’s all. Here, this is warm enough already.’
The delicious, double-shot skim-milk flat white Jane had ordered sat on the table in front of her, cooling unnoticed, as she nervously attempted to bottle feed an infant for the first time in her life.
‘Lay her a bit flatter,’ Dylan advised, as Sophie’s whimpers threatened to become wails. ‘The same position you’d use if she was breastfeeding.’
Jane flushed at the thought. Knowing that Dylan was even imagining the position needed for that tiny mouth to be near her nipple. But he was right. As she shifted the baby’s position, Sophie’s head instinctively turned, her mouth open to search for sustenance.
She could feel the pressure of the small head on her breast as she slipped the bottle’s teat into the gaping mouth. And then Sophie started sucking, staring up at Jane, and that cooling cup of coffee was completely forgotten.
This was…amazing. Holding the warm little body against her heart. Supplying what was needed for comfort and nourishment. Doing something a mother would do. Jane could feel that pulling sensation. Like the one that had been pulling her towards Dylan last night, except that it was fundamentally very different. How could something so unrelated to desire be equally powerful? Physical?
That odd tingle in her breasts was sending echoes rippling right through her body. Right up to her brain, to create that misty sensation again. Jane made a valiant attempt to keep control. To make conversation. It wasn’t hard to find something to ask because Dylan’s strange statement was still on her mind.
‘What’s the longest time you’ve ever stayed in one place?’ she asked. ‘As an adult, I mean.’
Dylan had been watching Sophie intently. His face creased into thoughtful lines before he glanced up.
‘A year or so, I guess. Why?’
‘What keeps you moving?’
He shrugged. ‘There’s always new places to see. New people to meet. Maybe you hit the nail on the head. I might have gypsy blood.’
‘So you’ve never been tempted to settle down anywhere?’
‘No.’ He knew what she was getting at. She could see the comprehension dawn in his eyes. And she could see something more. Respect for the point of view she was formulating? ‘I’ve never found anything that made it seem worthwhile staying in one place.’ He paused for a heartbeat. ‘Until now.’
Her Baby Out of the Blue/A Doctor, A Nurse: A Christmas Baby Page 10