The Last Woman He'd Ever Date (Mills & Boon Modern Tempted) Read online

  His stepfather’s job? The cottage had been tied to the job and while he might not have cared about the drunk everyone assumed was his father, Hal’s mother would have suffered if he’d been sacked.

  She was used to asking questions, it was her job, but she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer to that one. She wanted, needed, to remember her dad as the one person in the world who’d understood her. Who’d loved her enough to stand by her when she’d most needed support.

  ‘It must have been hard for you,’ Hal said.

  She tore her anxious gaze from Ally to glance at him. ‘Harder on my dad. And my mother, too. I was able to escape, have fun, if only for a while.’

  ‘With Ally’s father?’

  She swallowed hard. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Don’t blame yourself for that.’

  ‘Easier said than done.’ It wasn’t the fact that she was out having fun while they were suffering. It was the lifetime that came after. ‘I have to live with them knowing that I’d lied about where I was, who I was meeting. Letting down parents who only wanted the best for you.’

  ‘I never had that problem.’ He finished his ice. ‘The house went with the job, of course.’

  ‘Yes…’ She wanted to ask him about his childhood. How he’d suffered at the hands of a drunk who wasn’t his father. Had he known? His expression suggested not and she said, ‘Sir Robert offered my mother the chance to buy the house, my father was well insured, but she didn’t want to stay.’

  ‘While you, I imagine, wanted to be close to Ally’s father.’

  ‘It wasn’t that.’ She pulled a face. ‘Jared was long gone, but I chose my baby over the future my mother had worked so hard to give me.’ She watched Ally, hopping about, happy to be outside, playing. ‘Morning sickness instead of a gap year with all those influential friends I’d made at Dower House. She couldn’t forgive me for throwing all that away. Or for the fact that my dad had sided with me.’

  ‘He was dying,’ Hal said. ‘That tends to focus the mind on what’s important.’

  ‘Yes.’

  So few people had understood. Her mother, her teachers, her friends had all urged her to cut free, take her starred As and fly away from Cranbrook, out into the big wide world.

  Her dad had been the only one who’d understood why she’d clung so desperately to a life she had made with love, with passion. A life she was responsible for. A life she had been given in return for the one she was about to lose.

  Unexpectedly, Hal did, too.

  Working with Hal North Rule Number Seven: Expect the unexpected.

  ‘It couldn’t have helped that Alice’s father came from a different ethnic background,’ he said.

  ‘I met Jared at a party thrown by one of the girls at school. He was at university with her brother and quite the most beautiful man I’d ever seen. Golden, gentle.’

  ‘And gone.’

  ‘He really was desperately sorry when I told him that I was pregnant. And generous.’

  ‘He supports Alice?’

  ‘No…’ She broke off, unable to say the words.

  ‘He gave you money to make the problem go away?’

  Something in his voice made her look up. ‘He was going home to an arranged marriage. He thought I’d understood that our romance was no more than… Well, you get the picture.’ She shrugged. ‘I told him I understood, took the money he offered and he flew home assuming that I had used it for the purpose intended.’

  ‘Is that what you used to improve the cottage?’

  She shook her head. ‘I put it into a fund for Ally. She’ll need it when she’s older.’

  ‘Mothers…’ He shook his head. ‘Does she know? Who her father is?’

  ‘Of course. I’ve kept photographs for her and we put together an impressive family tree when they did an ancestry project at school last term. Jared al Sayyid came from a rich and powerful Ras al Kawi family. Her great-great-great grandfather was a tribal leader who fought with Lawrence. I found loads of photographs on the Net…’

  She stopped, frowned.

  ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘What? Oh, nothing. I was just wondering if that could have been the trigger for whatever happened at school.’

  ‘The Arab connection?’

  ‘No,’ she said, shocked. ‘It’s just, well, Ally can be a bit of a drama queen and she did get rather carried away with the whole Arabian Nights thing. A bit princessy. It doesn’t take much for the pack to turn on you…’

  ‘It doesn’t take much for it to blow over, either.’

  ‘No. Just something to break the ice.’ But what? The longer it went on the harder it became…

  ‘Came?’ Hal prompted, as if he’d said it more than once. She looked at him, confused. ‘You said her father came from a powerful family. Past tense.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Jared was killed in a car accident a year after she was born. I wouldn’t have known, but it happened on the Melchester bypass. He was visiting the brother of my school friend… It was one of the first news items that crossed my desk when I started at the Observer.’

  ‘You weren’t tempted to contact his family?’

  She shook his head. ‘He didn’t want that, Hal. I was something separate, never part of his real life. Just a few wild oats sown, rather carelessly, before he married the bride chosen for him by his family.’ She looked across the grass at her long-limbed daughter. ‘Keeping Ally was my decision. One that I never for a moment regretted.’

  For some reason, that made him smile.

  ‘So, your mother left Cranbrook and you moved into my mother’s cottage. Extraordinary.’

  ‘There was nothing extraordinary about it. It was empty, I needed somewhere to live.’

  ‘No…’ He shook his head. ‘You don’t see your mother?’

  ‘Not much. She remarried quite soon after she moved and she’s busy with her new family.’ She dug out a tissue, wiped her fingers. Glanced at her. ‘Now you know all my secrets.’

  ‘I doubt that.’

  ‘More than most.’ She looked across at him, still stretched out, totally relaxed while she was as taut as a bow spring. ‘Now it’s your turn to tell me one of yours.’

  ‘Payback time?’ he asked, unconcerned.

  ‘Absolutely,’ Claire said. ‘I tell you mine, you tell me yours. It’s only fair.’

  ‘I think the word you’re looking for is “show,”’ he said. ‘As in I show you mine… Or didn’t you play that game?’ Then, having extracted a blush from her, he said, ‘I’ve already told you my biggest secret.’

  She wasn’t falling for that.

  ‘That was no more than a distraction. Ancient history. What about now? I know you were married to Suzanne Parsons. Do you have any children?’ She had been thinking particularly about Bea Webb’s little girl, but afraid she had betrayed too much personal interest she quickly added, ‘Where did you go when you left here? How did you turn a motorcycle courier service into an global business? What are you going to do with Cranbrook Park?’

  Burying the big question in a heap of little ones. Except that none of them were little.

  ‘Is that it?’

  ‘No, but it will do to be going on with.’

  ‘I don’t doubt it. I’d be interested to find out how you found out about Suzanne. It hardly made a blip on the emotional radar.’

  ‘Sorry, that’s a professional secret.’ She still felt uncomfortable about the way she’d drawn the information from staff who clearly adored him. ‘How did you meet her?’

  ‘She worked in the office. Ran the office for me when things started to take off. We were both working crazy hours and had no time for a social life. It just happened but all we had was work and sex. Mostly work. Looking back, I don’t even know why we got married,’ he said, taking her by surprise. She’d expected him to stonewall her, as he usually did, but maybe he took her demand for a secret seriously.

  ‘It’s what they call a starter marriage.’

  He glanced
at her. ‘A what?’

  ‘You know, like a starter home. Small, temporary, a practice run. Somewhere to find out what you really want,’ she said.

  ‘Right. Well, Suz has got that sorted. Good bloke who’s never been on a motorbike, a couple of kids. Just as well we didn’t make that mistake. You can’t have starter children,’ he said, standing up. ‘Shall we walk off those ices?’

  ‘Good plan. Ally!’

  There was a smear of mud on one cheek, a dribble of something green on her cardigan and her foot was wet, a total mess. Her mother would be appalled.

  ‘We’re going for a walk. There are swings over there.’

  ‘I’m a bit old for swings.’ Then with a casual shrug, she said, ‘although they’re quite big.’

  Claire couldn’t stop herself from grinning as she walked nonchalantly over to the nearest one and began to gently sway backwards and forwards as if she was just sitting there.

  ‘Will you need a push?’ Hal asked.

  Ally gave him a pitying look. ‘I don’t think so,’ she said, before letting rip to show him that she was capable of swinging herself, thank you very much.

  ‘You haven’t been tempted to try again? Marriage?’ she asked, anything to distract herself as Ally swung higher and higher. She would not call out, tell her to be careful…

  ‘Marriage takes commitment, time, if you’re going to do it properly,’ he said. ‘Sex is simpler. What about you?’

  ‘Do I find sex simple?

  He didn’t answer and she turned to see what he was looking at.

  Her.

  He was looking at her and for a moment she was back on that roller coaster again, teetering on the edge under the intensity of a gaze that stirred the yearning empty ache low in her belly.

  ‘Well? Do you?’

  ‘Who has the time?’ she said, abruptly, turning to look at the restaurant, anywhere but at him.

  Built in the early years of the twentieth century as a summerhouse for boating parties from a grand estate on the far side of the river, it resembled an ornate, bamboo birdcage and was a popular spot on a sunny day, even mid-week.

  Hal grabbed the chance to take a mental step back.

  What the hell was he doing? His reaction to that headline had been to yank her out of the newsroom, turn her into that cartoon. Put her on display for once and see how she liked it.

  Instead they were sharing confidences. And he was thinking the unthinkable about the last woman on earth he’d ever date.

  ‘The terrace is beginning to fill up, I’d better grab a table,’ he said, leaving her to gather up Ally. Give himself a moment to cool off, although short of a plunge in the river there wasn’t much chance of that.

  Hal handed each of them a menu when they joined him.

  ‘Could I have a burger?’ Ally asked him. ‘One with cheese and all that other stuff?’

  He looked at Claire.

  ‘If that’s what you want,’ she said, avoiding his gaze.

  ‘All that other stuff apart from the pickle.’

  ‘Got it,’ he said.

  ‘And fries.’

  ‘A burger with cheese and all that other stuff apart from the pickle and fries,’ Claire said. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Cola? I don’t want a straw.’

  ‘Make that two burgers,’ she said, without even looking at her menu. ‘One with everything, one without the pickle, both with fries and a cola.’

  ‘Can I go and look at the aviary?’ Ally said, already fidgeting to be off.

  ‘Stay where I can see you.’

  ‘Righto!’ She beamed a smile at him and then ran over to the aviary that was attached to the restaurant.

  ‘Relaxed enough for you?’ Claire asked.

  He shook his head. ‘I’m shocked. No attempt to steer Ally towards a healthier option? A jacket potato, water instead of cola? Whatever happened to responsible parenting?’

  ‘She gets that twenty-four seven. Everyone needs a break.’

  ‘Your mother would not approve.’

  ‘I know,’ she said, and without warning grinned, nearly blowing his socks off. ‘I’m overwriting my memory’s hard drive.’

  ‘Was your birthday party that bad?’

  ‘I was allowed to invite five carefully selected school friends. We all wore our best frocks and sat at a table with a white damask cloth and silver cutlery. Tea consisted of tiny cucumber-and-egg sandwiches, scones with clotted cream and pretty little cupcakes. We were allowed cordial, tea or milk to drink.’

  ‘Sweet.’

  She pulled a face.

  ‘I was eight not six. I wanted a party at a burger bar. Fast food, fizzy drinks and giggling over absolutely nothing. And jeans. I wanted to wear blue jeans but my mother thought they were common.’

  ‘No red-leather skirt, no blue jeans. Your life was blighted.’

  ‘I was teased rotten about it for weeks afterwards. Little girls can be cruel.’

  ‘Big girls can be cruel, too.’

  That had been heartfelt and Claire, who’d been keeping an eye on Ally, gave Hal her full attention.

  He’d brushed off his failed marriage, but clearly it hadn’t been as simple as he’d made it sound. A man like Hal didn’t commit without giving something of himself.

  As if conscious of having revealed more than he intended, Hal pulled out the chair next to him.

  ‘You’ll be more comfortable if you sit here. You won’t have to keep turning around to check on Ally.’

  He was right, but sitting opposite him was bad enough. Looking at him was bad enough. Sitting close enough for their knees to touch, to smell his skin, was more than flesh could stand.

  ‘No. It’s fine,’ she said. ‘You’re her new best friend. You watch her while I relax.’

  ‘Three large burgers, hold the pickle on one, all with fries and colas,’ he said to the waitress. ‘We’ll be over by the

  aviary.’ Then when she’d gone he said, ‘It’s a shame you’re not wearing jeans. We’ll have to come again and do a thorough job.’

  Working with Hal North Rule Number Eight: He can read your mind.

  ‘Coming?’ he asked, pushing back his chair. ‘Just in case your little animal-rights warrior takes it into her head to set the birds free.’

  ‘No danger. The aviary is glass fronted.’

  Ally looked up as they joined her. ‘What’s that bird?’

  ‘It’s a lovebird,’ Hal said.

  ‘It looks lonely.’

  ‘You’re right. There should be a pair.’

  ‘Like in the Ark… We’ve got two cats but they’re both boys. Tom and Jerry. They’re brothers so it would have been cruel to separate them. Do you have any pets, Mr North?’

  ‘Why don’t you call me Hal?’ he suggested.

  ‘Do you have any pets, Hal?’

  ‘I’ve got a donkey. His name is Archie.’

  ‘Oh, I know Archie. Mum takes him apples so that he doesn’t chase her,’ she said, dismissively. ‘Have you got

  a dog?’

  Hal, gallantly, responded to the cue. ‘Do you like dogs?’

  ‘I love them, but mummy is at work all day so we can’t have one.’

  ‘Well, that’s a shame, but she’s right, they’re not like cats. Dogs need people.’

  ‘Sometimes people need dogs. Seeing-eye dogs,’ she said, ‘hearing dogs, guard dogs. Just-for-company dogs.’

  ‘Do you know, Alice, I was thinking only this morning, when I went for a walk, that I really needed a just-for-company dog. Would you help me to choose one?’

  ‘A puppy?’

  ‘I was thinking that I might go to the animal-rescue centre and see if there was a dog who didn’t have a home. I’m sure that’s what your mother would suggest.’ He looked across Ally’s head at her. ‘Shall we go after lunch? See what they’ve got.’

  Ally, unaware of the subtext, looked up. ‘Can we, Mum? Pleeease.’

  ‘I should be working.’

  ‘Consider it a researc
h trip,’ he suggested. ‘I’m sure the animal-rescue centre is in need of a wish.’

  ‘What they need,’ she said, ‘is a wood. So that the teddies can have their picnic.’

  ‘Sorry, I can’t help you there. The tree surgeons will be surveying the woods next week, and then they’ll be making if safe.’ She stared at him. ‘You wouldn’t want a rotten branch falling on someone’s precious Steiff, would you?’

  CHAPTER TEN

  ‘HI, Claire, hi Ally. How are Tom and Jerry? I hope this visit doesn’t mean—’

  ‘No, they’re fine, Jane. I’ve brought along my neighbour. He’s just moved to the country and he’s looking for a dog. Ally is going to help him choose.’

  ‘Well, excellent.’ Jane kinked a ‘nice one’ eyebrow in her direction and she shook her head quickly, smiling when Hal glanced round, clearly picking up the fact that signals were passing between them. ‘What sort of dog did you have in mind, Mr—?’ Jane said quickly.

  ‘Just call me Hal,’ he said.

  ‘Hal.’

  She smiled at him. Everyone smiled at him, Claire thought. The waitress at the Birdcage, women having lunch there, Willow and Ally. Especially Ally. Hell, she had smiled at him herself as he’d entertained them effortlessly over lunch. And not just smiled, she’d laughed and for the life of her couldn’t have said why, or what they’d talked about. She’d just felt relaxed, happy, hadn’t thought once about grilling him…

  ‘Something man-size?’ Jane guessed.

  ‘It’s not the size, it’s the character,’ he said. ‘But it has to be well behaved. I don’t have time to rehabilitate a neurotic dog.’

  Jane looked doubtful. ‘Dogs are full-time companions. We’re very careful where we re-home them,’ she warned. ‘You do have a garden? Good fences?’

  ‘Hal has plenty of room,’ Claire assured her. ‘And there’s always someone around.’

  ‘Well, good,’ she said, reassured. ‘Why don’t you give him the tour? I’ve got something special to show Ally.’

  Ally hesitated, clearly torn.

  ‘Don’t worry, Alice, I won’t choose anything until you’ve given your approval,’ Hal said.

  ‘You will regret that,’ Claire said, as he stood back to allow her to lead the way.