Meant-To-Be Mother

He shook his head. ‘Tell me again.’

Siena did so and had Kane repeat after her. Halfway through she felt a tingle on the back of her neck and she realised it was because James was watching her still. She glanced at him sideways. His half-smile had graduated into something not bigger but warmer and she felt a ridiculous flash of satisfaction.

A few moments later Siena realised she was still staring, caught up in James’s complex gaze for so long that she now knew he had a ring of midnight-blue around his silvery pupils.

James swallowed, his Adam’s apple bobbing in his strong throat, and Siena had the distinct feeling he would have been able to describe the exact colour of her eyes too.

‘Teach me another language!’ Kane insisted, shattering the extraordinary tension that had cocooned the room.

‘Not now,’ James said, as he took Kane by the hand and drew him off the seat. ‘I, for one, am in need of a drink.’

And, by the gravel echoing in his voice, Siena had the feeling that if it were not for the presence of Kane, a gin and tonic would have suited him better than lemonade too.

‘Can I tempt you?’ he asked.

She stood, shoving her hands into the back pockets of her jeans. She knew he was talking about something as innocent as lemonade, but the implications of what it could have meant in a parallel universe resonated through her.

‘With lemonade?’ she qualified. ‘You bet.’

‘Yippee,’ Kane said. ‘Then I can show you my bedroom.’

And, just like that, Siena’s breath was sapped from her lungs.

CHAPTER THREE

‘UM, I don’t know, Kane…’ Siena said, backing away physically and mentally.

Before she could duck out the door Kane reached out and grabbed her hand, small, hot, sticky fingers closing over hers. ‘But I just got a new computer and it plays games and songs and stuff.’

His pale brown eyes began to glisten. His bottom lip trembled. A screaming kid she could handle. She’d been a pretty competent screaming kid once herself. But a kid with big brown eyes welling with tears? First she’d felt empathy for Freddy the cola-flinger and now this? It seemed that, despite the protestations of some of her cabin crew, she was only human after all.

‘You know what,’ Siena said, backtracking frantically, ‘I would love to see your backyard more. The reason I was driving down this street in the first place was because when I was your age I used to live in this very house.’

‘You did?’ Kane asked, his expression now wary.

‘I did. And the backyard was my favourite place. We had a swing set and a pool, and there was this one fence paling that was never attached properly and when I was not much bigger than you I could slip right through the hole it made.’

‘I know! Dad fixed it though when we first moved in. Wow, how cool. Which room was yours?’

‘The front room, I’d hazard to guess,’ James said.

Siena turned to him and nodded. ‘How’d you guess?’

‘When we repainted it took me a week to plug up all the holes left by poster pins.’

She grinned. ‘I was madly in love with several grunge rock bands for quite some time and I proved my love by covering every spare inch of pink floral wallpaper.’

‘I’ve no doubt,’ he said, the half-smile drawing her in. ‘And now?’

‘My tastes have become more…grown-up.’

‘R and B?’

‘No. Reality,’ she said.

He laughed, the sound rolling over her like an ocean wave on the hottest day of summer, and Siena felt herself warming from the inside out. Okay, now she recognised what this feeling was. It was the zing that came from flirting, and flirting well.

But there was a kid, and a blonde, and crucial dry cleaning to consider. She determinedly switched conversational tack. ‘My brother Rick sold this place about three years ago. Rick Capuletti. Did you buy it from him?’

‘Dad bought this house for Mum as a wedding present,’ Kane all but shouted, delighted to be able to nudge his way back into the conversation.

Her gaze switched straight from Kane to James to find herself drowning in the suddenly unfathomable depths behind his cool grey eyes. Before her eyes his clear-cut edges blurred, the sharpness that had earlier seduced her into easy flirtation dissolving until Siena had to fight the urge to reach out and tug him back to the present.

‘Oh,’ she said, unable to dredge up a trace of eloquence. Oh, indeed. So the sunshiny blonde was not just a ring-in. She was a bona fide Dillon family member. And she was Kane’s mother. And, of all things, she had been given a rather pricey house as a wedding present.

Wait a second…

‘But we only sold this place—’ Too late she shut her trap. Three years ago, she had been about to say. But the implication was there all the same. Kane had not been a honeymoon baby. Suddenly it was obvious that he had come from the same gene pool as the brown-eyed woman in the photograph, but it was entirely possible that Kane was not James’s natural born kid.

James’s cheek twitched and she knew he was following the trail of her thoughts without any trouble. She felt herself burning up. Blushing. She! Forthright, tough as nails, unflappable she.

James stood, drawing Kane in front of him as a wall. Kane took the attention blindly, hugging on to his dad’s arms as he blinked ingenuously up at Siena.

‘Kane, how about you show Siena your new trampoline while I organise the lemonade?’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ she said, torn halfway between mortification for somehow upsetting her host and a more selfish gratitude that a tour of the upstairs bedrooms had gone by the wayside.

Kane tugged her hand again and they jogged together through the kitchen, leaving James setting some glasses and a plate of packet biscuits on to a tray.

‘First I’ll show you Dad’s shed,’ Kane said, taking her to a large rendered concrete outbuilding, which was a new addition to the beautifully manicured backyard. She barely had time to take in the elegant landscaping around their old kidney-shaped in-ground pool as Kane gave the shed’s heavy side door a big heave-ho.

And inside?

Inside was a cave of wonders.

Sunlight streamed in through high windows, collecting waves of flying wood dust as it settled upon sharp, clean, oil-soaked tools residing in neat rows along the far wall. A long oak work table was clear of debris and bric-a-brac but was coated with splotches of paint and notches from slipped tools. A sander and a set of clear plastic goggles lay strewn on the bench as though forgotten in the middle of a job. Chunks of wood and chopped tree trunks with the bark still attached lay in neat piles all along the left wall.

‘What does your dad do out here?’ Siena asked, her voice a little breathless.

‘He makes cabinets.’ Kane swished his hand like a model on a game show displaying white goods.

She ran her hand along the bench, the soft pads of her fingers tingling at the feel of the rough worn wood. When she reached the end of the bench she found something large hiding beneath a dusty old sheet. She barely hesitated before giving the cloth a tug.

A small gasp escaped her lips as it fell away to reveal the most beautiful piece of furniture she had ever seen.

It was a baby’s changing table—waist-high, with five drawers, resting on stubby little legs. The name Lachlan was carved in a heavy neat scrawl along the top drawer and pictures of teddy bears and rattles were carved randomly about the piece.

The detail and craftsmanship was spectacular. In amongst the thousand and one classes she had crammed into her days off, she had taken wood shop. She had lovingly created what she had thought to be a truly beautiful wooden ashtray, though nobody she knew smoked. It had taken days to carve the simple round shape, buff it to a polish and then carve her initials into the bottom.