Baby on Loan

His eyes closed again. Jessie ventured a step nearer. He looked horribly pale and the gash on his forehead looked nasty. Oh, good grief, he was going to die. He was going to die and she’d get the blame and go to jail. That was the way it was. You read about it in the papers all the time. Burglar breaks in, burglar dies, innocent householder goes to jail.

Kevin and Faye would be sorry then…

She gasped. What on earth was she thinking of? He might have broken in, but the man clearly needed her help. She dropped the bat and paddled barefoot through the lake of cold milk to his side.

Stretched out on the kitchen floor he seemed very large, very threatening. Even unconscious he looked very dangerous. But she couldn’t just leave him there. Grabbing a clean bib from the work surface, she knelt beside him and dabbed, tentatively, at the blood oozing from the wound on his forehead, forgetting her fear in her concern.

His eyes opened with an immediacy that suggested he hadn’t been as far out of it as she’d thought, and he grabbed at her wrist. ‘Who the devil are you?’ he demanded.

‘Jessie,’ she replied instantly, not wanting to irritate him in any way. ‘My name’s Jessie. How do you feel?’ She put real warmth into her voice. She really wanted him to know that she wasn’t going to do anything bad…

‘How do I look?’ he countered.

He certainly didn’t look good. Apart from the pallor, made worse by the dark shadow of a day-old beard, there was the blood which still hadn’t stopped oozing. She put her fingers against his throat to check his pulse. It seemed the right thing to do, although she wasn’t sure why because she could see for herself that he wasn’t dead.

His skin was warm and smooth beneath her fingers, his pulse reassuringly strong. ‘Well?’ he asked after a moment. ‘Will I live?’

‘I th-th-think so.’

‘I’d be happier if you could sound a little more convincing.’

He didn’t sound like a burglar. But then, what did she know? ‘Well…’ she began. Then something about the sardonic twist of his mouth alerted her to the fact that he wasn’t being entirely serious.

‘I won’t struggle if you think I need the kiss of life,’ he said, confirming her worst suspicions.

For a moment she was tempted. He might have broken in, but if he’d been the man in black leaving a box of chocolates she had the feeling any woman would be left wearing a smile. Maybe she should offer to kiss him better…

No! For heaven’s sake, would she never learn?

And if he was well enough to joke, he was probably capable of getting up and…and maybe it would be better not to think about what he was capable of doing. Actually, she realised, as her brain stopped freewheeling and finally clicked into gear, she should stop wasting time and call the police and an ambulance. Right now.

‘What you need is a trip to the nearest A and E department,’ she said, primly, making a tentative attempt to free herself. He might be in a jokey mood, but she wasn’t prepared to risk annoying him. His fingers remained clamped about her wrist as he tried to sit up. The effort was clearly too much for him and he subsided, with a groan, releasing her as he put his hand to his head.

Her mobile. She needed her mobile. Her bag was on the work surface next to the fridge and she stood up to reach for it. That was when her burglar grabbed her ankle.

And that was when she finally stopped being controlled and sensible and did what she’d been wanting to ever since she’d realised she had an intruder. She opened her mouth and screamed blue murder.

Patrick, who had simply wanted to know what this Jessie woman was doing in his house and where Carenza had disappeared to, decided that, after all, it didn’t matter that much. Stopping her from screaming was far more important, so he tugged on her foot. Hard. The noise stopped abruptly.

Then she fell on top of him.

He muttered one brief word as the breath was knocked from him. One word was all it took to sum up his feelings. Her eyes, inches from his own, widened in shock, but before she could do or say another thing he grabbed her. ‘Don’t. Please don’t say another word. I don’t know who you are, or what you’re doing here, but I give up. You win.’

‘Win? Win?’ Even to her own ears she was beginning to sound hysterical. Well, that was fine. She had every right to be hysterical. She was lying crushed against the chest of a ruthless criminal. A man who’d broken into her home. Who, even with a nasty head wound, was more than capable of taking advantage of the situation. And the situation was that while she was wearing a mercifully long and baggy T-shirt, there was little else to cover her embarrassment. Well, actually nothing else. All he had to do was move his hand a few inches and he’d discover that for himself.

She firmly resisted her brain’s urgent prompting to tug her T-shirt down as far as it would go. That would only draw attention to her plight. Instead she forced herself to look him squarely in the face and tell him to let her go. Right now.

It was an interesting face. The kind of face that, under different circumstances, she’d like to see more of. On the thin side, but with strong bones, a lot of character, and she had the strong impression that pain was not a stranger to him. Yet his mouth promised passion. Oh, good grief. And she’d thought he was rambling!

‘In what way, exactly, do I win?’ she demanded, trying to get a grip of herself, gather her wits.

‘I surrender,’ he said. Surrender? What was he talking about? She stared at him. He had the most extraordinary eyes, she thought. Grey, but with tiny flecks of gold that seemed to be heating them up. Or was that just her imagination? ‘Just don’t scream any more. Please.’

‘Do you mean that?’ she demanded as fiercely as she could, not entirely trusting him. The wobble in her voice wouldn’t scare a mouse.

‘Oh, forget it. Give me a knife and I’ll cut my own throat. It’ll be quicker than the punishment you’re dishing out.’

‘Me!’ she squeaked. ‘I didn’t ask you to break in and fall over.’

‘Fall over?’ he shouted, then winced. ‘Is that going to be your story?’ And he flung the arm that was holding her towards the cricket bat and grasped the handle. ‘Haven’t you forgotten exhibit A?’ he said as he brandished it at her.

She scrambled to her feet and put some distance between them before he decided to beat her senseless with it. ‘Just stay there,’ she said. ‘Don’t you move. I’m going to call an ambulance.’ She backed hurriedly away, ignoring the milk dripping from her T-shirt and running down her legs.

He dropped the bat. ‘You’ll have to drag me out into the street if you want it to run me over,’ he warned her blackly.

Rambling. Definitely rambling. He needed to be in hospital, and quickly, but she moved well out of reach before she extracted her cellphone from her bag, dialled the emergency services and asked for an ambulance. They wanted details. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know who he is. He broke into my house and he’s fallen in the kitchen…’

‘It’s not your house!’ he yelled. ‘It’s mine!’

‘Head injury?’ she repeated distractedly as the ambulance dispatcher probed for details. Had he been watching the house? Had he seen Carenza leave and thought it was empty? He was regarding her angrily, but he hadn’t moved an inch. Unconvinced by this evidence of co-operation, she stepped further back into the hall, leaving a milky footprint on the carpet. More mess. More bother. ‘Oh, yes, he gashed his forehead on the corner of the kitchen unit… Yes, he’s conscious, but he seems to be a bit odd…not quite making sense… I thought maybe he was, you know, on something…’ He groaned. She ignored him. ‘Would you? And you’ll inform the police. Thank you so much.’ She hung up and returned to the kitchen, standing in the doorway, unwilling to get any nearer. One close encounter had been quite enough. ‘They’ll be here soon.’

‘Tell me,’ he asked, finally managing to heave himself into a sitting position and propping himself up against a cupboard, ‘are you mad, or is it me?’ He sounded quite serious, as if he really wanted to know.

Unwilling to say anything that might agitate him further, Jessie kept her distance, although her knees were shaking so much that if she didn’t sit down soon, she’d probably collapse in a heap right where she was. ‘Just keep still. I’m sure they’ll be here soon,’ she said, with a lot more calm conviction than she felt.

‘Are you? I hope you’re right. Tell me, where did that cat come from?’

Mao, having enjoyed the free spillage of milk and toyed with the yolk of one of the eggs, was now carefully washing his face. Jessie watched him for a moment. There was something almost hypnotic about the delicate, repetitive movements… ‘I don’t know. He belongs to the owner of the house.’ She turned to him. ‘It’s one of the reasons she was desperate for someone to move in. She needed someone to look after him. It must have been a bit of shock to discover the house wasn’t empty after all.’

‘You could say that. Especially since this is my house.’

He was worse than she thought. Much worse. Jessie glanced at her watch, wondering how long it would take the ambulance to arrive. ‘This is your house, is it?’ she asked in what sounded, even to her own ears, a patronising attempt to humour him.

‘Yes, madam, it is,’ he said, sharply. ‘And you can believe me when I tell you that I hate cats. And so does my dog. So maybe you’d like to explain what you’re doing here?’ Dog? He had a dog? She glanced around nervously. That was all she needed, a burglar who modelled himself on that Dickensian prototype Bill Sykes. But there was no slavering bull-terrier waiting to tear her limb from limb and Jessie, praying fervently for the early arrival of someone to remove this madman from her home, decided that humouring him would be the safest course.

‘I’d love to—’

‘Why don’t you start by telling me—?’

Upstairs, Bertie began to cry. She could have kissed him. Would kiss him. Right now. ‘I’d love to stop and chat but I have to see to the baby.’

‘Baby?’ He looked, she thought, as if he’d been struck a second blow. ‘You’ve got a baby? Here?’

‘He’s teething, poor soul,’ she said, beating a hasty retreat, stumbling over the bag her unwelcome caller had left in the hall. It was black and expensive and clearly very heavy. He’d probably stolen it and stuffed it full of the loot at a house he’d broken into earlier. ‘Just stay put and the ambulancemen will be with you any minute.’ She turned, put the front door on the latch so that whichever of the emergency services got there first could let themselves in, and bolted upstairs.

Bertie was intermittently bawling and stuffing his fist into his mouth. Jessie threw on the first things that came to hand and then she picked him up. He needed changing. The nappies were downstairs. In the kitchen. It figured.

Baby? Patrick grabbed hold of the edge of the sink and hauled himself to his feet, doing his best to ignore the thumping pain in his head, the rush of nausea. That was the smell. Warm milk, baby cream, talc, that stuff Bella had used to sterilise bottles. That was the scent that had eluded him. How could he have forgotten it?