A Mother by Nature

There would be time for that later, once they were settled. In the meantime, he’d relax and try and get himself into the right frame of mind for tomorrow, and try not to think about Helle and the fact that she would probably disturb him coming back in the wee small hours of the night, doubtless utterly wasted after her evening in the pub, and would be hell to get up in the morning in time to get the children ready for school. Which meant he’d have to do it, yet again.

He put it out of his mind. He’d deal with tomorrow when it came. One day at a time, he reminded himself. It had got him through the last two years since Lyn had left. It would get him through the next twenty.

Please, God …

Damn. He was going to be late. His first day in his new job and he was going to be late.

‘Daddy, I can’t find my shoes …’

‘Try under your coat on the floor in the dining room where you threw it last night. Jasper, eat your breakfast, please.’

‘Don’t like cornflakes.’

‘You did yesterday. Danny, have you found your shoes yet?’

A mumble came from the dining room. It could just conceivably have been a yes. Then again …

Adam rammed his hands through his short, dark hair and stared at the ceiling. Where was Helle? He’d called her three times.

‘Do we have to go to school? I hate it there. I want to go back to my old school.’

Adam met Skye’s sad blue eyes, old beyond her almost six years, and wished he could hug her and make her better. He’d given up trying. She simply stood and let him hold her, then walked away as soon as he let go. The social worker had said give her time, but it had been nearly three years now, and although she was better, she was still light years from emotional security.

And Lyn walking out on them hadn’t helped one damn bit.

‘Yes, darling, you do have to go,’ he told her gently. ‘You know that. I know it’s hard at first, but you’ll soon settle in and it’ll be much better for us here near Grannie and Grandpa. You’ll like seeing more of them, won’t you?’

She shrugged noncommittally, and he stifled a sigh and went to the bottom of the stairs. ‘Helle?’ he yelled, and then remembered the neighbours through the party wall. Damn. At least the last house had been detached. Still, the people next door hadn’t complained about their new neighbours yet, and the teenage girls had been round already to introduce themselves and offer their services for babysitting.

If Helle didn’t get out of bed soon, he might have to take them up on it!

For what seemed like the millionth time, he wondered if he’d been quite mad to continue with the adoption when Lyn had left him. Maybe he should have let the kids go back instead of fighting to keep them. Maybe they would have been better off without him, with someone else instead. Two someones, preferably.

Then Danny wandered out into the hall, tie crooked, shoes untied, hair spiking on top of his head and a grin to gladden the loneliest heart, and he reached out and hugged the boy to his side as they went together back into the kitchen.

‘Look—I made you a card at school.’

He handed Adam a crumpled bit of sugar paper with spider writing on it, pencil on dark grey, almost impossible to decipher and yet the message quite clear. ‘I love you, Daddy. From Danny.’ There was a picture stuck on the front, of a house with a wonky chimney and a red front door just like theirs. Swallowing hard to shift the lump in his throat, he thanked Danny and stuck the card on the front of the fridge with a magnet.

Skye, ever the mother, was coaxing Jasper to eat his now soggy cereal, and she looked up and gave Adam that steady, serious look that made him want to weep for her. ‘Is Helle coming?’ she asked, and he shook his head.

‘I’m going to have to get her up,’ he told them. ‘I have to leave you guys and go to work, and I can’t be late. Not today.’

‘Are you scared?’ Jasper asked, eyeing him curiously.

‘Don’t be stupid—course he’s not!’ Danny said patronisingly.

He sat down. ‘Well, maybe a bit,’ he confessed. ‘Not scared exactly, but it’s never easy to meet new people and settle into a new place. It doesn’t matter if you’re old or young, it’s still a bit difficult at first.’

‘Even for you?’ Danny asked in amazement, gazing up at his hero with eyes like saucers.

He grinned and ruffled the spiky brown hair. ‘Even for me, sport.’

‘It’ll be all right, you’ll see,’ Skye said seriously, neatly reversing their roles, and he felt a lump in his throat again.

No. Whatever chaos and drama they’d brought to his life, he couldn’t imagine that life without them now. They belonged to each other, for better, for worse, and so on. They were a family and, like all families, they had good times and bad times.

Mostly they were good, but if Helle didn’t get up soon, he had a feeling that today was going to be a bad one …

Anna was feeling blue. She’d woken that morning wondering what it was all about, and two hours later she was still no nearer the answer. Wake up, get up, eat, go to work, go home, eat, go to bed, wake up—relentless routine, day after day, with nothing to brighten it.

Was she just desperately ungrateful? She had a roof over her head—more than a roof, really, a lovely little house that she enjoyed and was proud of—great friends, and a wonderful job that she wouldn’t change for the world—except that this morning, for the first time she could remember, she really, really didn’t want to be here.

So what was the matter with her?

Stupid question. Anna knew perfectly well what was wrong with her. She was alone. She was twenty-eight years old, and she was alone, and she didn’t want to be. She wanted to be married, and have children—lots of them—one after the other. Children of her own, not other people’s little darlings but her own babies, conceived in love, nurtured by her body, raised by her and a man with dark hair and gentle eyes and a slow, sexy smile—a man she’d yet to meet.

Would never meet, she thought in frustration, if her life carried on as it was. Her biological clock was going to grind to a halt before then at this rate.

Oh, damn.

She pushed her chair back and stood up, her eyes automatically scanning the ward, and stopped dead as a jolt of recognition shot through her.

It was him. Dark hair, cut short but still long enough to have that sexy, unruly look that did funny things to her insides. Tallish, but not too tall, his shoulders broad enough to lean on but not wide enough to intimidate, he looked like a man you could rely on.

Her eyes scanned him, taking inventory. Lean hips. Firm chin and beautifully sculptured mouth. Eyebrows a dark slash across his forehead, mobile and expressive. A smile like quicksilver. He’d paused to chat to a child, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his white coat, and the child was grinning and pointing towards her.

He was good-looking, certainly, but it wasn’t really his looks that made him stand out so much as his presence. There was something about him, she thought as he straightened and turned towards her, something immensely strong and powerful and yet kind—endlessly, deeply kind, the sort of enduring kindness that made sacrifices and didn’t count the cost.

She’d never seen him before, but her body recognised him, every cell on full alert.

He started towards her with a smile, and their eyes locked, and out of the blue, she thought, At last …!

‘Sister Long?’ he said, although he knew quite well who she was, if the badge on her tabard was to be believed.

‘Anna,’ she corrected, looking up at him with startling green eyes, and he felt a shiver of sexual awareness which had lain dormant for so long it was almost shocking. A wisp of dark red hair had escaped from her neat bob and was falling forward over her face, and he had to restrain himself from lifting it with his fingers and tucking it back behind her ear. She smiled and held out her hand, slim and firm and purposeful. ‘You must be our new paediatric orthopaedic consultant—Mr Bradbury, isn’t it?’

He nodded. ‘Adam,’ he said, and his voice cracked and he cleared his throat. ‘Adam Bradbury. Good to meet you. Have you got time for a chat? My department seem to have organised things so that I’m at a total loose end today, so I thought I’d spend it orienteering.’

She chuckled, a low, sexy chuckle that made his hair stand on end and everything else jump to attention. ‘Sure. Come into the kitchen, I’ll make coffee.’

He followed her, his eyes involuntarily tracking over the neat waist, the gentle swell of her hips, the womanly sway as she pushed the door out of the way and turned to hold it for him, flashing him a smile with those incredibly expressive eyes.

She spoke, but his body was clamouring so loud he didn’t hear her.

‘I’m sorry?’

She gave him a quizzical smile. ‘I said, tea or coffee?’