Adam’s Boys (20 page)

“Stop it,” she scolded but gave him a flicker of a smile as she rested her head back against the sofa and closed her eyes.

Lifting his leg off her lap Adam shifted over to sit closer to her. As he watched her he felt that incredible feeling of optimistic lightness rising up within him again, just like earlier that day, and that morning in England when he'd been wandering down to the fete and looking forward to seeing her after their time in front of the fire the night before. It was a feeling that at that moment he knew had been a part of his life before Ellen's illness but not since. It was a feeling of … happiness.

Adam swallowed and picked up a loose strand of Abbie's hair lying on the sofa. He rubbed its silky softness between his fingertips, wondering what it was exactly that was making him happy. After all, there was still every chance this incredible woman would keep him at bay forever. But then again, she'd been able to smile at him just then. And she still hadn't said anything about moving out—surely they had to be two reasons to hope. Surely they were reasons to believe that today was good, and tomorrow would be better.

“Do you want me to carry you up to bed?” he offered teasingly. “I'm getting used to carrying you around.”

Abbie's eyes opened slowly. She turned her head a little so that she could look at him, unaware that his heart had begun a wild, unbridled pounding within his chest. And as she looked at him he watched her back, transfixed by the radiant golden-brown eyes drifting across him like a skillfully held paintbrush putting the final touches to a portrait.

“I missed you when you stayed behind in London,” she whispered finally and Adam's heart soared, a rushing noise filling his ears like a wild wind of cataclysmic proportions. Could he have heard right?

“I missed you too,” he whispered huskily. “Please let's talk. We're miserable, the boys are miserable—it's the pits.”

“I've made so many mistakes,” she said quietly, searching his eyes with hers. “I don't know where to start fixing them. Even Henry …” she added but then stopped.

“You're a wonderful mother,” he reassured her.

“Maybe in some ways, but in others I've failed him completely. You should have seen him the morning I told him I was leaving the village. He was devastated, Adam. He felt I was making him choose between us. I'm supposed to be the adult in the relationship and I should never, ever have put him through that ordeal.”

“If he was upset when you left then it's because he's attached to you. All three-year-old boys are attached to their mother.”

But Abbie was shaking her head in strident refusal of his comforting assurances. “No, it's more than that. Henry has an unhealthily protective relationship with me. He feels an obligation—at three—to look after me. I should be locked up for imposing my own childhood traumas on him.”

Adam scoffed. “Do you really believe you're the first parent to do that? What do you think Pete's anxiety disorder is all about? The absurdity is that I've spent years trying to make him feel better, completely unaware that every single day I was dragging him down with my own melancholy.”

“Depression after losing someone you love can be very hard to shake,” Abbie offered gently. “And as for visiting troubles on children, I doubt there's a single important decision I've made about Henry that hasn't been sifted through my hang-ups about what my father did first.”

Abbie twisted around to face him, resting her cheek pensively on the open palm of her hand. Adam lifted his hand to stroke her silky-smooth hair and then wrap its ends around his fingertips. It was a small gesture, but his spirits soared when she didn't pull away.

“Do you know what, Abbie? There is one thing that you and I have in common that we've never deviated from.”

“What's that?”

“We both want what's best for the boys.”

“That's true,” she agreed quietly.

“You said it yourself this afternoon—we should focus on Pete and Henry. Maybe that's where we've gone wrong right from the start. Instead of focusing on the boys we've focused on them through the lenses of our own lives, including all the baggage we've been dragging in tow from the first day we met.”

“So what do we do? Have a breath holding session like the boys do when they begin to feel out of control?”

“I think we should settle for talking and listening to one another and keeping Henry and Pete front and centre of our minds at all times.”

“What do Pete and Henry need then?” Abbie asked more seriously. “Paring their lives back to essentials, what's best for them?”

“That's easy,” he replied without hesitation. “You and me—raising them together.”

Abbie averted her eyes to stare off into the distance. Would she be able to search her heart for the same truth for Henry's future?

“And what do
you
think?” he pressed. “What does Henry need?”

“In an ideal world, the same thing.”

“Then isn't that what we should do?” he declared in quiet triumph.

“If only it were that simple,” Abbie sighed.

“We have to make it that simple,” Adam replied insistently and then repeated compellingly, “You and I have to raise these boys together.”

“In the UK?”

“I don't give a damn about geography anymore. The UK? Australia? Timbuktu? Toss a coin if you want. Abbie, what are you frightened of?”

“Being hurt by you,” she threw at him in a moment of reckless honesty as she sat back in the lounge and covered her face with her hands before muttering into them warningly, “Don't ever underestimate the power of that fear in me.”

“And you think I don't feel the same way about you sometimes?” Adam retorted, prising her hands away and cupping her jaw to turn her face towards his. “I want to spend the rest of my life with a woman who's convinced I'll let her down no matter what I do to prove myself to her. How would you feel if you were me?”

“Probably exactly the same because I have to put up with a man who thinks of everything he does in a global context and puts me last, who makes crucial decisions that affect my life without consulting me first, and who left me once before and hasn't given me any reason to think it won't happen again.”

“And do you think you'll get a guarantee from any man that life will always be dandy? No guy will give you that. He doesn't exist. But even though I bring loads of uncertainties into your life that doesn't mean I don't have a whole swag of redeeming features to make me the perfect guy for you.”

Abbie looked at him askance, then smirked when she noticed the ironic lift to his left eyebrow. She twisted her body around to face him again.

“You and I must raise these boys together,” she said in heavy confirmation, raising her eyebrows doubtfully.

“That's right.”

“And you don't think it would be a good idea to talk about the logistics of how we're going to do that exactly?”

Adam shook his head slowly from side to side. “Not tonight—one step at a time,” he muttered then bit down on his bottom lip. It was the only thing he could do to stop himself from launching into the hundred and one ways he wanted to spend every single day with her from that moment onwards, because he knew she wasn't ready for that—not nearly.

“And you think that focusing on the boys will help us get over this rocky beginning of ours?” she asked, clearly still dubious about the prospects of their success.

“It's a start.”

“So was Hitler invading Poland,” she shot back with a short laugh before adding, “And so is a goodnight kiss.”

And that was when she did it. Shifting over and snuggling closer to him she lay her hand against his chest and brushed his still mouth with her lips in a searching, lingering kiss. His whole body catapulted itself into a hankering readiness for a repeat of their night in front of his fireplace in England.

He couldn't move, and he didn't want to. It was too exhilarating to have her take charge of the physical attraction that was erupting like a bonfire between them, welding them closer together with every passing second.

God, he adored her. Life without her in it had become unimaginable. At that moment he knew that fact to be true with a certainty that made him stop breathing and wonder whether he'd ever start again.

Rolling over amidst delicious layers of cool, crisp linen Abbie opened her eyes. She knew immediately she'd slept well into the morning because her bedroom was filled with the white light of a fully risen sun on a warm summer's day.

She stretched and then reached for her phone on the bedside table so that she could check the time. It was after ten. There was no boy-noise to be heard anywhere in the house. True to his word, Adam had taken Henry and Pete out for breakfast.

Sitting up in bed she opened her phone messages to find one from Justin in reply to hers from the night before. He promised he would become her slave for life if she pulled off the Atlantis coup.

The other message was sent a little earlier from Adam to let her know he'd bought breakfast for them all and was taking the boys to the playground in Centennial Park. He also suggested that she wander up there when she woke up.

Abbie bit her lip apprehensively as she wrapped her arms around her legs. Adam's optimism that everything would be all right if they simply focused on the boys was not buoying her hopes up as it had the night before. In fact, like the settling of night-time dew on grass her heart seemed to have grown heavy with doubt overnight—there were major hurdles still to be faced.

Abbie sighed long and hard as she remembered the way he'd been the night before—that was so Adam. He'd marked out the big picture that they would raise the boys together and as usual, was leaving the blueprints to someone else. Hadn't he been like that from the moment she'd told him about Henry, with his grand plans for sharing houses and even the boys themselves?

For Abbie though, grand plans and leaps of faith were not enough. The devil in her world lay in the details. And she knew from her years of law that the details were often where the colours in the big picture would start to run if they were not shored up to within an inch of their life.

Within half an hour she'd dressed into shorts and a T-shirt and was soon heading through the northern gates of Centennial Park. From there she could see Adam playing football with the two boys in the distance. He would run, ball held high, as Henry and Pete threw themselves at various parts of his body with whoops of delight, attempting to drag him to the ground. Occasionally they succeeded and Abbie guessed that meant a point to them.

Spotting her as she walked across the grass towards them, the boys peeled themselves off their father and tore across to her.

“Can you play, Mum?” Henry begged, pulling at her arm to drag her towards the game.

“No, not today, honey,” Abbie said firmly, still feeling run down after her night in hospital earlier that week.

“Please, Abbie!” Pete chorused in, pulling at her other arm. Abbie sensed that joining in the game was something the boys were going to be very determined about.

“Stop pulling at her, boys,” Adam directed sternly as he approached. “Abbie's not playing football today.”

“Why not?” they heralded in disappointment, but they already knew the battle was lost and Pete was soon calling Henry to go back to the playground instead.

Adam gave her a grin, falling into step beside her as they wandered over to a bench next to the playground.

“Croissant?” he offered from a white bag and she took one.

They said little for a while, watching the boys as they seamlessly began to play a new game on the equipment with two other little boys of the same age who'd arrived at the playground.

“Little boys are so different to little girls, aren't they?” Abbie thought out loud eventually.

“How do you mean?”

“Well, if they'd all been girls the four of them would have gone into a stand-off on the equipment, giving and demanding information about each other until they became friends or rejected one another. Boys don't bother with all that communicating stuff. They just go straight into a game and sort all that friendship stuff out later.”

Adam grinned approvingly. “I hadn't thought of it like that but you're right. The first time I met Justin and JP was in an Oxford pub. We spent ten minutes paying each other out about our accents before we'd even introduced ourselves.”

Abbie smiled. She was picturing the three of them doing just that before she added, “Males are generally straight to the point, that's for sure. Even when I'm parenting I get embroiled in an argument with Pete and Henry but you, all you do is tell them how it's going to be and they accept it.”

“Boys are nearly always more obedient with their fathers.”

“Don't I know it. Sometimes, when I've had a particularly full on day and they're bouncing off the walls my only solace is knowing that you're coming home and will calm them down for me.”

Abbie sensed Adam turn and rest the heavy weight of his gaze upon her. She shifted her attention away from the boys and towards him too, searching his eyes for the meaning behind his loaded, unfathomable silence.

“What?”

“I wasn't sure until just now that you were okay with that,” he murmured in a gravelly voice.

“What?”

“You and I raising the boys together in a real home—under the same roof.”

“A real home?” Abbie blurted in stunned surprise, her heart launching itself into a full gallop down the final straight as Adam flinched next to her as though struck with a whip.

“That's right—a real home,” he replied tensely after a few moments of silence had descended ominously between them.

“When you said last night we'd raise the boys together,” Abbie began, nearly panting in nervous agitation as the veil of misperception dropped away from her eyes. “You meant straight away … as … as a couple in every sense of the word, didn't you? Oh God, Adam, how did we suddenly jump to that step?”