A Convenient Husband (5 page)

‘You always did have an overdeveloped opinion of your own abilities.' She aimed for amused but tolerant and almost made it.

Rafe heard the
almost
and grinned as he defended himself. ‘I've had some very positive feedback,' he reflected innocently.

Tess could imagine but she tried not to. ‘I don't require references, glowing or otherwise. What time is it?'

He told her and with a yelp she leapt out of bed. ‘Chloe and her boyfriend are coming this morning.'

‘What are you going to do—roll out the red carpet?' he drawled.

His critical tone really got under Tess's skin. He made it sound as though she had a choice. ‘I know what I'm not going to
do
and that is resort to covert dirty tricks and manipulation.'

‘Have it your own way.'

She shot him a sweetly malicious smile. ‘I will,' she assured him calmly.

‘I don't understand it,' she continued fretfully as she pulled a motley assortment of garments from deep drawers in the heavy old mahogany chest. ‘Ben
always
wakes up before seven.' She'd found that having a baby made her alarm clock redundant.

Rafe's hand shot out and he caught the latest garment she'd carelessly flung over her shoulder in the general direction of the bed. It turned out to be a flimsy bra. A passing glance told him his educated guess had been bang on size-wise.

There had been a plus side to his sleepless speculation: he hadn't thought too much about Claudine. An arrested expression crossed his face when he realised how
little
he'd been thinking about her.

‘Ben did look in earlier.'

‘
He what
…?' she snapped, stomping towards the bed, hands on her hips.

‘I suppose he decided there wasn't much room this morning,' Rafe speculated, gazing at the narrow stretch of tumbled bed she'd just vacated. On impulse he reached out and felt the warmth that still lingered from her body on the cotton bed linen. ‘He tootled off. I did go check on him—he seemed happy playing with his toys so I left him to it.'

She gazed at him incredulously. ‘Didn't it occur to you he must have climbed over the bars of his cot?' She'd known for some weeks that the cot's days were numbered. Ben had been eyeing up the bars lately with a very determined eye, and she'd already foiled a couple of abortive escape attempts.

‘And that is…?'

His laid-back approach was intensely irritating. ‘Dangerous!' she snapped.

‘Well, he looked fine to me.'

‘I can't believe you just let him wander around unsupervised! He could have fallen down the stairs!' she cried out, her voice rising sharply in alarm.

‘Calm down, there's a gate thing over the top of the stairs. I should know—I nearly killed myself trying to step over it while I was carrying you last night.'

Tess gave a sigh of relief. That was Ben's physical well-being sorted. There were other traumas. ‘He must have seen me in bed with you!' she wailed.

‘What has got your knickers in a twist—the fact Ben saw you in bed with someone, or the fact that he saw you in bed with
me
?'

Tess recognised immediately that there was some merit in what he said, only she'd have died before she admitted it to him or herself.

‘Like I said,' Rafe continued, a shade of impatience creeping into his languid tone, ‘I hardly think the sight will have seriously corrupted his morals.'

‘That's not the point, you should have woken me. Routine is very important for children.'

‘Remember to tell Chloe that, won't you?' Tess flinched and looked so stricken that he instantly regretted his cheap wisecrack. ‘I would have woken you if he'd seemed distressed. What are you going to do about Chloe?' he asked her gently.

He swung his long legs over the side of the bed and stretched. The light material of his shirt stretched taut across his broad chest and Tess looked hastily away.

‘What can I do?' She did her best to resist the tide of helplessness that washed over her. ‘I'm going to remind Chloe that this thing has to be done slowly, sensitively, with as little disruption as possible. In fact, at Ben's pace. It's not like I won't still be seeing him…' There was a tell-tale little tremor in her voice as she lifted her chin defiantly. ‘He'll visit, I'll visit…I'll be his favourite aunt…' It wouldn't get her very far if she let herself wallow in self-pity; being an aunt would have to be enough.

‘And you think she'll agree to the cautious approach…?'

Rafe watched as Tess's delicate heart-shaped little face screwed up into a mask of iron determination.

‘She'll agree, all right,' she intoned grimly. Stern-faced, she picked up the bundle of clothes she'd selected
en masse
from the bed. ‘I take it you can find your own way out.' Distractions she didn't need and Rafe could now be safely categorised under that heading.

‘Shower…?'

Tess gave a snort of exasperation. It was a mistake to try the pathetic Spaniel look when you resembled more closely a sleekly muscled Doberman.

‘I suppose so,' she conceded ungraciously. Halfway to the door she paused and turned back. ‘I don't need to say that I'd prefer it if you didn't mention to everyone just yet about…about what I said…Ben not being mine. I got a bit silly…' Not to mention deeply embarrassing. She winced inwardly as she recalled sobbing pathetically on his chest.

Another memory attached itself to the coat-tails of this recollection: the masculine scent of warm skin was so real it unnerved her totally. ‘T-To be honest, Chloe's phone call out of the blue…it was all a bit of a sh-shock,' she stammered.

A nerve in Rafe's lean jaw clenched and his nostrils flared. So much for supposed friendship! This little display of trust was just charming!

‘You mean I can't run around the village with my loudspeaker…?' Rafe knew a lot of people, but he was pretty selective about the people he called friends, he always had been, and he trusted that select band implicitly. It didn't seem too much to expect them to return that trust.

Tess sighed. Perhaps he did have a right to act a bit miffed—she probably could have made her request a bit more tactfully. But the fact was she had more to worry about just now than Rafe's feelings.

‘All right, all right…there's no need to get all huffy, I was just checking.'

‘It may have escaped your notice, but you're not the only one that feels a little emotionally exposed after last night. Perhaps I should be asking you to sign the Official Secret Act, too.'

‘Oh, I forgot about that,' she lied fluently. She wasn't quite sure why the idea of being the recipient of further confidences concerning Rafe's love life should make her want to run and hide. It had been easy to mock and be mildly contemptuous, even laugh in her more tolerant moments, about Rafe's numerous, shallow affairs. She couldn't see the funny side for some reason of Rafe in love, Rafe talking marriage…

‘You make it sound so easy.' The flicker of torment in his dark eyes made her look quickly away. ‘Forgetting…'

Tess decided at that moment she
definitely
didn't want to know anything more about the woman who had discovered Rafe's heart only to comprehensively break it.

‘I didn't mean to be insensitive, but…' An intriguing thought occurred to her and she made a tentative effort to explore the idea further. ‘Didn't you want to be alone last night? Is that why you didn't leave?'

‘Regressing to behaviour patterns laid down in childhood?' He rubbed a hand thoughtfully over the short dark growth over his jaw. Tess had never been kissed by a man who was other than smoothly shaven; she found herself idly wondering…‘Sanctuary? I wondered about that myself…'

Tess, her cheeks a little flushed, brought her own line of
wondering
to an abrupt halt.

‘Wouldn't it be something if I headed for your bed every time I needed a bit of TLC?' he mused, lifting his dark eyes to her face thoughtfully.

The thud of her heart sounded odd and echoey in her ears. ‘Very funny!' she responded hoarsely.

‘Yeah, hilarious,' he confirmed without a trace of humour.

 

When Rafe emerged from his shower Tess was in the kitchen having produced breakfast for Ben, who as usual was in no hurry to finish it. There was as much porridge on the floor as was in his stomach. She had stopped trying to tempt the baby to another mouthful and had returned to her frenzied task of refilling the cupboards when Rafe strolled in.

‘Morning, mate.' Rafe, who could deal with the wiliest of politicians, felt distinctly unsure of how you were meant to speak to a one-year-old. He winked at the solemn-faced youngster.

Ben responded with a grin that suggested he wasn't quite as angelic as he looked. ‘Seed man!' he cried, poking his chubby finger in Rafe's direction.

‘Saw, Ben,' Tess responded automatically. At least Ben's limited vocabulary meant she was spared any embarrassing elaboration on this theme.

‘Seed,' the toddler responded immediately. Eyes bright, he waited expectantly for Tess to praise him.

‘Well done, darling.' When she looked away she saw Rafe was watching her with a curiously intense expression on his lean hungry features, which faded as he turned to the baby.

‘I don't expect you remember me, but my name's Rafe. Or should that be
Uncle
Rafe?' he enquired, turning his attention once more to Tess. ‘Can he talk?'

‘After a fashion, but you might need the aid of an interpreter,' she admitted. ‘You and Ben can decide between you what he calls you. My money's on complete nuisance…' she added softly.

‘I heard that.'

‘You were meant to.' She reached up on tiptoe to replace a casserole dish in a high cupboard.

Rafe found himself unexpectedly noticing the way stretching pulled her already neat, high behind extremely taut. Despite the fact that her clothes could have been designed specifically to conceal the fact, it was hard to miss the fact she had a good—no, better than good body. Dark brows almost meeting above the bridge of his masterful nose, Rafe reached over her head and took the item from her extended hand.

‘Do you know that most accidents occur in the home?'

‘Don't take that hectoring, lecturing tone with me!' Angrily Tess spun around to find he was almost close enough to fall over. Not content with wondering whether he'd catch her if she did fall, her wayward brain began to theorise about how it might feel.

A tiny sound of denial slipped past her frozen vocal chords. She was close to tipping over into outright panic as, arms extended protectively in front of her, she backed hastily up until the small of her back made contact with the wooden worktop.

The atmosphere was suddenly so charged with sexual tension that she could hardly breathe. He feels it too, she thought, staring in a bemused fashion into his dark, dilated eyes.

‘Brekkie!' a small voice piped up severely.

The adults, both recalling with a guilty start that they weren't alone, looked in the direction of the small speaker. Simultaneously they both decided to ignore what had just happened.

‘Good idea, Ben. Is this seat taken?' Rafe asked, noisily dragging out a kitchen chair with a stagey flourish and, straddling it, he rested his hands lightly on the back.

‘Is Tess always so grumpy in the morning?' Now wouldn't you like to know? a sly voice in his head drawled knowingly.

With a confused frown, Tess watched his smile fade.

‘Powige,' the child announced mournfully, dipping his hand into the goo left in his dish.

‘He likes to feed himself.'

‘He looks as if he likes to bathe in the stuff. Nasty porridge. Mush…
ugh
!' Rafe's theatrical shudder drew a giggle from the child.

Tess could see the beginnings of male conspiracy here. ‘Last week it was his favourite.'

‘Mush, mush, mush,
mush
!' Ben, his grubby face animated, shrieked loudly.

‘All right, I get the message.' Tess sighed. She knew from experience that was going to be the favourite word for the foreseeable future. It could be worse, she reflected philosophically, and it had been when Ben had overheard the colourful expletives employed by the electrician who had fixed their security light. The entire mother and baby group now thought she swore like a trooper at home.

Mind you, that notoriety would be nothing compared with what was heading her way once the true identity of Ben's mother was public knowledge! Some people already knew, of course: their GP, the kindergarten head at the school she'd already put Ben's name down for.

‘I like bacon and eggs.'

‘No…no!' Ben bounced in his seat as he enthusiastically concurred.