Delivered: One Family

She reached out and took the baby from him, and without thinking pulled up the T-shirt he’d lent her and settled Kit’s mouth over her nipple.

There was instant, blissful silence, and she looked up with a smile on her face to see Ben staring down at her breast, an unreadable expression in his sapphire eyes. After a stunned second he cleared his throat and turned away, and she closed her eyes and sighed. Damn. She hadn’t meant to offend him. She just hadn’t thought.

‘Sorry—’ she began, but he cut her off.

‘Don’t apologise, you haven’t done anything,’ he said abruptly. ‘I’ll leave you in peace. Do you want a drink? My sisters always demand tea when they’re breastfeeding—they say they get thirsty.’

‘Please—if it’s not a nuisance.’

He hovered in the doorway, his eyes fixed firmly on her face. ‘What about a bottle? Want me to make one up, or do you want to give it a chance?’

She looked down at her breasts, soft and pale, not blue-veined and taut as they had been when they were full of milk, and sighed. ‘I don’t know. I want to feed him if I can, but I don’t want him hungry.’

‘Why don’t I make up a small bottle just in case, and I’ll ring the doctor and ask if the midwife can come and talk to you?’

‘It’s the health visitor,’ she corrected. ‘The midwife only looks after you for the first ten days—and anyway, we’ll be all right.’

‘Nevertheless, perhaps she can give you some advice. I’ll ring.’

And he left her alone with the baby. He suckled well, but he wasn’t satisfied, she could tell. He fussed and whinged, and she had to use the bottle Ben had made up to settle him in the end.

And then the health visitor came, as if by magic, and was wonderful, giving her all sorts of sane advice which she desperately needed, because she’d bottle-fed Missy at Oscar’s insistence and wasn’t really confident in her ability to feed Kit.

‘You’ll be fine,’ the woman assured her cheerfully. ‘Drink lots, plug him in whenever he seems hungry, top him up with the bottle only if it’s absolutely necessary so you can get some sleep, and you’ll soon find you’ve got more milk than you know what to do with. And now I need a quick cuddle with him before I have to go.’

She took Kit from Liv, and made all sorts of admiring noises that Kit found fascinating while Liv sat there and wondered how long they could go on imposing on Ben and relying on his good nature. Missy was curled up next to her on the big wide chair, watching the health visitor and sucking her thumb, and every now and then her eyelids drooped.

Good. If she needed a nap, and the baby would go down for a while, she could have a serious talk with Ben about this housekeeping job. Not that she knew the first thing about housekeeping! She’d left home at nineteen, lived in a dreadful shared house on yoghurt and tomatoes until she’d met Oscar, and then moved in with him into a serviced flat where the most she’d had to do was rustle up the odd meal at the weekend, if they weren’t out and felt too pinched to order in.

Apart from that all she could manage were salads—models didn’t tend to concentrate very much on food. It was a bit like a eunuch planning a seductive evening with a beautiful woman, she supposed—too frustrating to consider.

So, not the best training ground, but she’d manage. She’d learn.

She’d have to.

Ben leant back in the chair in his study and listened to Liv singing softly to the children overhead. It was a curiously comforting sound, something sweet and gentle that touched some fundamental part of him and made him feel the world was a better place.

Then the singing stopped, drifting away, and was replaced by soft footfalls coming down the stairs. They hesitated outside his study, and he stood up and went to the door, pulling it open.

Liv was standing there, hand raised to knock, and he smiled at her, still warmed by her lullaby.

‘Hi. Fancy a cup of tea?’ he asked.

‘I wanted to talk to you.’

He nodded. ‘Can we do it over tea? I was just going to make a cup.’

‘I’ll make it.’

She turned on her heel and strode briskly down to the kitchen, filled the kettle and put it on, her actions busy and purposeful. Ben waited, settling himself in the comfy chair by the French window, looking out over the back garden. She’d get round to it when she was ready. You couldn’t hurry Liv. She did things her way, he’d learned that over the years.

While he waited he looked at the garden, tidied up for the winter, a few odd leaves blowing defiantly across the lawn. He loved the kitchen, facing both ways as it did and spanning the house. It was the only room apart from his bedroom that did that, and it was his favourite room in the house. In the summer he could sit here with the doors open, or take his coffee outside to enjoy the sound of birds and the distant bustle of traffic. In the winter, it was warm and snug and cosy.

In truth he hardly used the other rooms unless he was entertaining, and recently he’d done less and less of that. He was sick of the soulless merry-go-round of social chit-chat and gossip-mongering, and now he entertained for business reasons alone, and then usually in a hotel or restaurant, in the absence of a decent cook.

Anything rather than have his private space invaded by strangers.

‘About the job.’

He looked up with a start, and frowned at Liv. ‘Job?’

‘The housekeeper’s job—you rang me a couple of weeks ago to congratulate me on having Kit, and mentioned that you were looking for someone.’

He thought of Mrs Greer who had been with him for years. For all her sterling qualities she couldn’t cook, and he’d wanted to find someone to fill that slot without losing her as his cleaning lady. Still, with Liv and the babies there, she’d be much more stretched on the cleaning front, and if Liv needed the ‘job’ as a sop to her pride, so be it.

She’d have to cook for herself and the children, anyway, so cooking for him as well wouldn’t add a great deal to the burden and would make her feel useful. Besides, it would make sure she stayed for a while, so he could keep an eye on her and look after her and the children so they didn’t all end up in a worse mess.

And he’d have company.

He settled back against the chair and steepled his fingers. ‘Tell me about your qualifications,’ he said deadpan, and to his amazement she took him seriously. She coloured and straightened up, her mouth a determined line, and her eyes locked with his, the resolve in them terrifying.

‘I don’t have any,’ she told him bluntly. ‘But I’ll learn. I’ll read books and practise and try new things, and I won’t kill you with salmonella or anything like that. I won’t let you down, Ben.’

He sat up and leant towards her, a smile teasing at his lips. ‘I’m convinced. You can start now. Where’s that tea?’

She looked down into the pot that she’d been mashing vigorously for the past few minutes, and coloured again. ‘Um—I’ll make fresh. I seem to have mangled the tea bags.’

Ben stifled the laugh, closed his eyes and prayed that it wasn’t an omen for his gastronomic future.

CHAPTER TWO

‘WHAT about your things?’ Ben asked, sipping his tea warily.

‘Things?’

‘You know—all the stuff you left at the flat. Your clothes, the children’s clothes and equipment, your personal bits and pieces. When do you want to go and pick them up?’

‘I can’t,’ she told him flatly. ‘Oscar won’t let me have them; he said so.’

Ben’s mouth tightened and he dragged an impatient hand through his close-cropped hair, ruffling it yet again. ‘You need your nursery equipment. The children need continuity—not Kit, particularly, but Missy. She needs her familiar toys and clothes around her. You need your clothes—you can’t wear that pair of trousers for ever. And what about all the personal stuff? You must want that.’

Liv shrugged and buttered another piece of toast. Want them or not, it was beyond her to go back to the flat and demand that Oscar give her the things. ‘Could you give me an advance on my salary? I can go and buy something second hand—’

‘While Oscar sits on all your things? What’s the point? What does he need them for?’

‘Spite? A weapon? A lever, in case he decides he wants me back?’ She bit into the toast, a late lunch because she hadn’t got round to dealing with it after her rather strange morning, and glanced up at Ben.

He was looking thoughtful and rather serious. ‘Would you go?’ he asked. ‘Back to Oscar—would you go? Do you want to?’