Six Naughty Nights: Love in Reverse, Book 2 (7 page)

To her complete shock, he burst out laughing.

Flooded with relief, nevertheless she gave him an admonishing look. “It’s not a laughing matter.”

“No, it’s not,” he said, laughing anyway. He picked his son up, carried him back into the bedroom and dumped him on the bed, where he proceeded to tickle him relentlessly. “Repeat after me,” he instructed Charlie, who was contorted with giggles. “I will not write graffiti all over Daddy’s kitchen units.”

“I’ll not write feet on Daddy’s units,” Charlie yelled, delighted. “Stop it, Daddy!”

Esther put her hand over her mouth and watched them. She’d honestly never expected to see Toby again. The thought that he was here, now, and her son was calling him Daddy, filled her with a warmth she had never expected to feel. But it was a dangerous warmth, and fire could consume you. He hadn’t changed—he was still the same man who’d left her without a second thought.
 

And it wasn’t only herself she had to worry about. Charlie’s heart would be as vulnerable as hers. He was excited to find out he had a daddy—but what if that daddy then turned his back on him and walked away? How could either of them recover from that?

And what on earth had she been doing, kissing Toby? Her body—so long flooded with oxytocin and other breastfeeding and caring hormones, had been overtaken by pheromones. She’d been unable to resist his sheer masculinity, the size and weight of him, the heavenly smell of aftershave and healthy sweat and musky male she’d forgotten existed. But that had to stop, right now.
 

It had taken her a long time to recover from Fiji. In fact, she probably was still recovering from it. She didn’t need or want to start all over again.

She walked to the bed. Giving Toby a brisk, businesslike smile, she picked Charlie up. He struggled, but she held him firmly. “Come on,” she told him, “let’s find you something to do.” He pulled her hair, but she welcomed the pain. Anything to distract her from the deep ache inside at the memory of what she’d lost.

Later, when the rest of the world awoke, Esther rang the university campus to find it was closed indefinitely. “Great. Now I’m homeless and jobless,” she said as they ate up at the breakfast bar, Charlie smearing peanut butter across the table.

“I guess I’ll be busy.” Toby made them coffee. “There’ll be a lot of areas that need to be made safe today, I’m thinking.” He sat beside her. “What are you going to do?”

“I’ll go back to my apartment and see if I can salvage anything. My guess is there won’t be much, but I might be lucky and get a few bits. Unfortunately I lost my purse in the supermarket, so I guess I’ll have to see if the bank’s open and if they’ll let me have any money without my cards.” She cursed her bad luck—she needed clothes and food and the hundred other items a child couldn’t seem to live without, and her bank balance wasn’t exactly overflowing.

Toby pulled his wallet from his back pocket. He took out a credit card and pushed it across to her.

She stared at it as she sipped her coffee. “What’s that?”

“A credit card.”

“I know it’s a credit card. Why are you giving it to me?”

“You need stuff, right? I don’t know what shops will be open, but if you find what you need, put it on there.”

Shock and resentment flooded her. “I can’t take your credit card. I don’t need it.”

“You just told me you lost your purse.”

“Yes, but—”
 

“Esther.” He spoke patiently, as if he was speaking to Charlie. “You’ve managed two and a bit years without any handouts from me. I’ve never given Charlie anything before. I’ve got plenty of money—I’ve been saving up for university, and I haven’t had a lot else to spend it on. Take it and use it to get what you need.”

“You don’t even know me,” she said, heart pounding. “You don’t really know the first thing about me. How can you just invite me into your house and give me your credit card—hell, you don’t even know for sure Charlie’s yours—how can you?”

“I’ve got eyes,” Toby said.

“Brown eyes and curly hair? Come on, you can’t be a hundred percent sure. Why are you so trusting? I could be out to take you for a ride.”

He crunched his toast and eyed her thoughtfully. “True. But you didn’t expect to see me in that supermarket—I could tell by the look on your face. Charlie would have been conceived just over three years ago, which would make him the perfect age to be my son. When we slept together in Fiji, it became very clear to me that you hadn’t had a lot of sexual experience. Considering the fact that you are obviously pissed I walked away that day, it tells me you took a while to get over what we’d had. That also tells me you probably didn’t fall into bed with someone else immediately after you got back. Which leads me to conclude the likelihood is that Charlie’s mine.” He took another bite of toast.

She stared at him, stunned by his insightfulness. “Who do you think you are, Sherlock Holmes?”

He gave a short laugh. “Look, even if Charlie wasn’t mine, you’re a single mum who’s been through a traumatic experience, and even though you’re stubborn and defensive and you won’t admit it, you need help. I’d do the same even if I’d never met you before.”

Her eyes filled with tears at his kind, generous nature, but she bit her lip to stop them falling. She looked at the credit card. It was an extremely generous thing to do, and it would be rude to say no. She reached out and took it. “I’ll do it for Charlie.”

“Sure.” He sipped his coffee, although she was sure he did it to hide a smile.

He told her his PIN and gave her one of his keys, telling her she was welcome to stay there for the next few days. Then he went to work, giving Charlie a final ruffle on his curly hair before he left.
 

She didn’t kiss him goodbye, though.

Chapter Eight

Toby spent the day with the building firm helping to make the city safe for its inhabitants. When he finally got back to his apartment, tired and aching from a day’s heavy labour, it was to find Esther and Charlie curled up on the sofa reading a book, dressed in pyjamas, smelling of baby shampoo and talcum powder.

The apartment also smelled of warm food. She’d placed some kind of baked pasta dish in the oven.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said as Charlie ran up to him. “I thought you might be hungry.” She glared at his raised eyebrows. “Don’t go getting used to it. It’s a one-off.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it.” He bent and lifted his son up as the boy hugged his knees. “Hey, buster.”

“Hey, Daddy.” Charlie threw his arms around Toby’s neck and planted a wet kiss on his cheek.

Toby’s throat tightened with unexpected emotion. Over Charlie’s shoulder, his eyes met Esther’s, which reflected the same surprise, pleasure and concern he himself felt. She dropped her gaze and he turned away, covering his unease with the pretence of getting a drink from the fridge.
 

All day, as his body had settled into the regular rhythm of work, his mind had mulled over the implications of getting involved in Esther and Charlie’s life. Not that there was anything he could do about it now. He couldn’t turn back time and change their meeting, and neither did he want to—after all, he was pretty certain he’d saved their lives in the supermarket, and he didn’t want that fact to alter any time soon. But the closer he and the boy got, the more Charlie would miss him when they had to part.

Because of course, part they would have to. He was returning to the Northland, and Esther had made it pretty clear that although she was willing to accept him as the father and allow him to play a role in Charlie’s life, there was no way she’d allow him back in her life romantically.
 

True, just like in Fiji, her resistance had faded rapidly once he got his lips on hers, and he was pretty certain the kiss had fired her up as much as it had fired him. He’d been unable to resist touching her when she lay beside him, all soft and sweet smelling from the shower. And when she’d melted against him, desire had thundered through his veins.

But he’d felt the moment when she’d decided she wanted him to stop. And as much as she’d loved to play the “I say no but I mean yes” game, he’d been able to detect the subtle difference. She couldn’t forgive him for walking away, and that was fair enough. But he couldn’t escape the fact that he had some obligation toward them now. And he wasn’t sure how to fulfil it.

“Hey, buster, I nearly forgot—I got you a present.” He went back to his workbag and extracted the item he’d hunted for during his lunch break.

Charlie’s eyes lit up at the sight of the Thomas the Tank Engine plastic train, and he positively exploded when Toby pressed the button on the top and it made a noise.

Toby set him on the floor with the toy, smiling. Esther walked into the kitchen and started dishing up the pasta. “What do you say, Charlie?”

“Thank you, Daddy,” Charlie said, beaming.

“You’re welcome,” Toby replied awkwardly, aware of Esther’s flushed cheeks.

“Thank you,” she said while Charlie steered the train around the sofa, talking away to himself. “You’ll be his best friend forever now.”

“I hope so,” he said sincerely. She didn’t look at him, so he added, “I didn’t buy it to win his favour.”

“I know.” She brought the pasta over to the breakfast bar, and they hopped onto the stools.
 

Toby tucked in—he’d only had a sandwich at lunchtime and he was ravenous. “I had a great time in the toy shop. I was like Tom Hanks in
Big
.”

She laughed. “Yeah, I can see that. I think you’ll be eternally eight years old.” He said nothing, and she frowned. “I’m sorry. I’ve upset you.”

He was taken aback that she’d picked up on his feelings. Most people didn’t realise how sensitive he was. He smiled though. “You’ve not said anything my friends and family haven’t said to me many times before.”

“And you don’t agree with that observation.”

He shrugged. “A year ago, I would have said absolutely. It was very true for the guy you met in Fiji, and I don’t mind admitting that. I just wanted to have a fun time, and I didn’t care that everyone thought I’d never amount to anything.”

“So what changed?”

As he ate, he watched Charlie crash the train and make up a story about the passengers escaping from the wreckage. “I think part of it was when Rusty and Faith announced they were getting married. Six months before that, Rusty, Dan and I had all been single, and it seemed like it would remain like that forever. Then Dan and Eve hooked up, even though for a while it wasn’t serious. But I never thought Rusty would settle down. I thought he’d be an eternal bachelor—we always used to laugh about growing old together like the old guys in the Muppets.”

She smiled. “You were surprised he fell for Faith?”

“Oh God no, he’s been crazy about her for years, and vice versa. But he had issues to do with his father and I didn’t think he’d ever let his heart get involved, you know?”

“So why did what happened to them change how you felt about yourself?”

He hesitated, the fork halfway to his mouth. How could he explain how he’d felt? “Well, suddenly it was just me. Peter Pan, refusing to grow old. And while I’d ignored all the comments people had made about me before, about being a drifter, not being serious, never amounting to anything, suddenly I didn’t want to be that person. But the talents I have aren’t valued by society, by my friends and family, as much as if I were a doctor or lawyer.”

“And what talents do you have, Toby?” Her eyes gleamed as she placed a forkful of pasta delicately into her mouth.

Trying to tear his eyes away from her soft lips, he said, “I don’t want to say. You’ll laugh.” She was ten times cleverer than him, with a mountain of knowledge compared to the anthill-high pile of information in his head. He couldn’t bear it if she poured scorn on him too.

She put her fork down with a frown. “I’m many things, but one thing I’m not is a snob. God gives us all gifts, and I believe it’s our role in life to discover what they are and to use those to help our fellow man. Let’s face it, what does being able to quote most of
King Lear
line by line really add to humanity?”

“I suppose,” he said doubtfully.

“So what’s your gift, Toby?”

“Buildings talk to me,” he said, sitting back.

Her eyebrows rose. “Okay.”

“Not literally, I hasten to add. I mean the materials, especially wood. When I hold a piece of wood, I can almost feel the tree talking to me. I love wood, I love holding it, working with it.” He smiled as she giggled. “Yes, all carpenters are used to erection jokes. But the thing is, different woods have different patterns and textures and smells. I can tell by touch which part of the tree it comes from, and I have to take that into account when I carve it or the shape won’t look right.”
 

He stopped talking, embarrassed. He’d never tried to explain himself before. When he put it into words, it sounded stupid.

But she just said, “Go on.”

He cleared his throat. “Look, I know this is probably a terrible thing to admit, but Christchurch has held a strange fascination for me since the earthquake last year. Collapsed walls reveal old, sealed doorways and intricate timber ceilings. The marks of craftsmen, long forgotten. I like to think about them while I seal that history in with plywood. I don’t know much about history, but I feel connected with the past, when I work on buildings like that. I’d love to help rebuild the cathedral.”