Be My Baby: Her Parenthood Assignment / Three Weddings and a Baby

‘Mmm-hmm.’ She kept stirring and didn’t turn to face him.

‘Well, I just wanted to apologise…for what I said earlier. I shouldn’t have reacted like that, no matter what had happened.’

The stirring stopped. ‘It’s fine, Luke, really. You shouldn’t be apologising to me.’ The wooden spoon started moving again, slower this time. ‘It was my fault. I got it wrong.’

‘Well, actually…’He couldn’t stand talking to the back of her head any more. Three strides and he was across the kitchen, right next to her. He took the spoon out of her hand and rested it in the pan. ‘What I’m trying to say…’

Where had all his effortless charm gone? Before he’d gone away the right words would have been there, waiting for him to pluck them out of the air. Now it was an effort to string more than one or two together. At times like this he realised just how much polish had been sandblasted off him in prison. Especially when faced with a large pair of brown eyes with ridiculously long lashes.

He took a deep breath and started again. ‘What I’m trying to say is that it wasn’t your fault, it was mine. And I’m truly sorry I spoke to you the way I did.’ He offered her the crushed letter he was holding.

Brown eyes that hadn’t looked away all the time he’d been talking now fluttered to the piece of paper in his hand. She took it from him and smoothed it out.

‘I found it in my coat pocket earlier. As I said, it really was my fault.’

She looked back at him. Something inside her seemed to swell, and then the shutters came down.

‘It’s fine,’ she said, blinking once. But he knew they were empty words. There was no sense of release, no closure. She broke eye-contact, picked up the spoon and toyed with the onions some more.

He didn’t move away, but watched her in silence. Then he realised he’d seen her do this before—shut herself away and gloss over something. He didn’t want this. He wanted her to shout, to cry—anything but smile and tell him everything was fine.

That was what Lucy had used to do. No, nothing’s wrong, everything’s fine. And it clearly had been anything but fine if she had been sleeping with her boss the whole time. He hated that word with a passion now.

It would do Gaby some good to admit what she was feeling, really let rip. He stepped back and rested against the counter. What the hell did he know? Letting rip was the only way he seemed able to communicate these days, and it wasn’t helping matters in the slightest.

Maybe Gaby was better off the way she was. He certainly couldn’t do the warm and fuzzy stuff she did.

He finally admitted defeat and headed upstairs for a shower. Maybe she just needed time to cool off. He shouldn’t expect her to snap out of it just because he was ready for her to.

When he came back downstairs, Gaby hadn’t moved. The onions had been joined by tomatoes and herbs and what looked like the start of a pasta sauce was bubbling away on the stove. She was stabbing rather violently at lumps of tomato to break them up.

‘That smells good. What is it?’ Oh, yeah, really smooth.

‘Just a basic tomato sauce I was going to add some things to. Tonight I was going to—’

Luke reached over and turned the knob on the stove to off. ‘Tonight, Gaby, you are going to sit down at that table, put your feet up, and take a night off cooking.’ He pulled out a chair and motioned for her to sit in it, which she did, a bemused look on her face.

‘But the tomato sauce—’

‘Will keep until tomorrow, won’t it?’

She nodded.

‘Great. I’m in charge of food this evening.’

She started to stand again. ‘No way! I’ve tasted your so-called cooking, remember?’

‘Trust me. You’ll live.’

He opened a bottle of wine and poured a glass for her. ‘First, you are going to sip this. Then you are going to have a long, hot soak in the bath while I make sure madam has finished her homework and gets ready for bed. Then we’ll eat. Deal?’

Gaby took a sip of wine and looked up at him through her lashes, evidently wary of this new, polite Luke. ‘Deal.’

Luke scraped the pasta sauce into a large bowl and left it to cool. He could feel Gaby watching him as he washed up the sauté pan. She must think he was ready to revert to his grumpy old self at any time.

He picked up a dish towel to dry his hands. Her teeth were biting the corner of her lip, as if she were trying to decide whether she should say something or not.

‘From now on I’m not going to call you Dr Armstrong. I’m going to call you Dr Jekyll.’

Luke grinned, and then he laughed. Even Gaby gave a reluctant smile and looked away.

‘I’ll be back soon,’ he said, and walked out of the room.

Gaby tried to turn the hot tap with her toe, but it was wedged fast. She swiped some of the bubbles away and reached forward to top up the bath with hot water.

Luke Armstrong was a surprise. It took a real man to be able to admit when he was wrong. David had raised his voice to her on a predictably regular basis, yet he had never once said sorry. How she’d ever thought he was a man worth sticking around for was a mystery to her. She shook her head and picked up a book to read while she waited for the water to go cold.

Later, as she was dressing in her comfy old tracksuit, she noticed the house was oddly quiet. She walked across to Heather’s bedroom, knocked gently on the door and turned the handle.

Heather looked up from the book she was reading. ‘Hi.’

‘Hi there. You’re being very quiet.’

‘I’m allowed to stay up fifteen minutes longer if I read quietly in bed. Luke…Dad said I could.’

Gaby smiled. It was great to hear Heather call him Dad, even if it didn’t yet fall out of her mouth naturally. She kissed Heather on the forehead. ‘I’ll be up later to turn out the light, okay?’

‘Okay. But don’t rush. This book is really good.’ With that, she turned the page and carried on reading, and Gaby crept out and made her way downstairs. Luke was nowhere to be seen. She padded into the lounge, sank into one of the large comfortable sofas and tucked her legs up under herself. The fire had been lit, and the feel of its glow on her face was soporific. She hadn’t even realised she’d closed her eyes until she heard the front door bang and they snapped open.

It was Luke. He stuck his head through the lounge door and smiled at her. Her stomach did a weird little bellyflop. What was that all about?

‘There you are.’ He walked into the room and deposited a couple of plain carrier bags on the coffee table.

‘What have you got there?’

One side of his mouth drew upwards in a wry smile. ‘Humble Pie.’

She smiled back at him as he unloaded the bags. From the delicious smells wafting her way, she was certain it was Chinese takeaway. He opened all the cartons and disappeared into the kitchen for plates and chopsticks, while Gaby peered in each container to see what was what.

Salt and pepper king prawns! Her absolute favourite.

Luke returned and they set about demolishing his ‘pie’. She almost forgot as she sat there, legs crossed on the sofa, that he was her employer. A very stupid thing to do. But, as they talked and ate and laughed, she couldn’t help seeing him as the man who was slowly becoming her friend.

Luke watched Gaby as she reached over for the last king prawn. She looked totally at home here. In fact, this old house hadn’t felt like a home at all until she’d arrived. And, all he’d done was grump and bark at her. He’d been a Grade A pain in the backside. Well, from tonight, all that was going to change. It was about time he polished up his social skills, and Gaby certainly deserved to be the one who got to see them first.

So he made a real effort to be nice and charming and talkative. And all of a sudden, he wasn’t trying, he was just doing it. And it all felt so natural that he couldn’t believe he’d forgotten how. With Gaby it was easy.

Just look at her now, smiling as she pushed her plate away and took a sip of her wine.