Capturing the Single Dad’s Heart (6 page)

‘I know. I'm a total tech junkie,' Erin admitted with a grin. ‘They give me a hard time about it at work because I always get the newest version on the very first day it comes out. I have been known to queue up outside the shop at stupid o'clock to make sure I get one.'

‘But if I drop it...' Caitlin looked worried.

‘Then, yes, the screen would probably crack and I'd have to get it fixed, which would be a pain. But I'm trusting you not to drop it. You're thirteen, not a baby,' Erin said briskly. ‘OK. We're going to Kew instead of trampolining, so we're taking a different route from our original one. You're looking for the District Line, which is the green one. Go and have a look at the map on the wall and tell me which station we need to change at to get there.'

‘OK.' Caitlin carefully put Erin's phone in her pocket to keep it safe, and went over to look at the map of the Tube™ lines on the wall.

‘Oh, my God. She's talking to you like I've never heard her talk to my mum or to me—even in the days when she was little and seemed to like being with me. How did you
do
that?' Nate asked, looking impressed.

‘I was straight with her,' Erin said. ‘I told her I'd been in the same place as her, so we've got something in common. And I just hit lucky with the garden thing.' She wrinkled her nose. ‘Sorry. That's going to be a bit difficult for you. I promise I didn't do it to score points off you—it was just the first thing that came into my head.'

‘I know you're not scoring points, and it's fine. More than fine.' Nate looked relieved. ‘You've just given me something I can do for her. She can have her own patch in my back garden—and my mum loves gardening, so it gives her something in common with my mum as well. You're amazing, Erin.'

She lifted both hands in a ‘stop' signal. ‘I'm not amazing. I'm just me. And it's very early days. It's not all going to be plain sailing and you're still going to have fights. But this is a good start and you can build on that—because now you both know you're on the same team, right?'

‘Yeah.' Nate swallowed. ‘You have no idea how good this feels.'

‘It's good for me, too, knowing that I can stop someone feeling as bad as I did at that age,' she said. ‘So you don't owe me anything, OK? This is a situation where everybody wins.'

Caitlin came back and recited directions about where they had to go and where they had to change lines.

‘Great. You're in charge of getting us there,' Erin said.

‘But—' Caitlin looked shocked.

‘The best way to learn your way about on the Tube™,' Erin said, ‘is to just do it. If you miss your stop, don't worry—all you do is get off at the next station, cross to the other platform and go back the other way. There's only one rule.'

‘Rule?' Caitlin looked wary.

‘I don't have many rules,' Erin said, ‘but they're not negotiable and they're not breakable. If you get on the train and you end up separated from me or your dad, then you get off the train at the very next station and you stay right there on the platform where you get off. Then we can find you easily. Same as if I get on first and I'm separated from you, then you stay where you are on the platform and you get on the next train in exactly that place—then when you get off at the next stop you'll see me as soon as you get out of the doors. Got it?'

‘Got it,' Caitlin said.

‘Good.'

On the Tube™, Caitlin looked up the Sky Garden and started making a list of other gardens. Then she handed Erin's phone back to her. ‘Thanks.' She gave Erin a shy smile.

‘No worries. I'll text the list to your dad later, and you as well. Put your number in my phone, then I can text you and you'll have my number.' Erin handed the phone back.

‘OK.' Caitlin tapped in her number. ‘You're not like I thought you'd be.'

‘What, a boring old doctor?' Erin teased.

Caitlin shook her head. ‘Not that, but...' She spread her hands. ‘You're cool.'

Erin laughed and gave her a high five. ‘Thank you. So are you.'

* * *

Nate paid for their tickets at Kew, refusing to let Erin go halves, and they wandered round until they found the conservatory with the ten different climates.

In the wet tropic zone, Caitlin went all chatty and told them about a school project she'd done in Geography on rainforests and mangrove swamps. And Nate was stunned to realise that his daughter said more to him in the last quarter of an hour than she had in the whole of the previous week.

Finally, Caitlin was connecting with him again. Better still, she shared his love of science—even if her preference was for plant biology rather than human biology. He'd had no idea because he'd never really talked to her about his work, and he knew he had Erin to thank for this. He caught her eye; she smiled at him and gave him a wink, as if to tell him to relax and say that everything was going to be just fine.

It gave him an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach; but he knew she was doing this for his daughter's sake, not for his. He needed to keep that in mind and not let himself get carried away. The attraction he felt towards her was totally inappropriate.

Caitlin was fascinated by the carnivorous plants. ‘Are you using anything like that in your sensory garden, Erin?'

‘No, because it's all outdoors at the moment and these kinds of plants wouldn't survive the winter outside,' Erin explained.

‘They'd be interesting to look at, though, if you did an inside garden.'

‘Could Caitlin be involved with the sensory garden?' Nate asked.

‘Sure,' Erin said. ‘I can take you to meet the garden designer, if you want, Caitlin. His name is Ed, and he's a really nice guy. He's designed a couple of gardens for the Chelsea Flower Show before now.'

‘Is that why you chose him to design your garden?' Caitlin asked.

‘Not just because he's a good designer. It's a charity thing so we have to think about costs as well. Ed offered to do the design for nothing, because his brother had a motorcycle accident and broke his back, and he spent a while in our unit before he got a place in rehab,' Erin explained.

Caitlin looked confused. ‘Rehab, because he was on drugs?'

‘Rehab, as in teaching him how to adjust to life in a wheelchair and helping him with his physiotherapy,' Nate said.

Caitlin looked at him. ‘Did you fix his back?'

‘That particular accident happened quite a while before I went to work at the London Victoria,' Nate said, ‘but if it happened now then, yes, I would probably be the surgeon.'

‘So that's what you do all day, fix broken backs?'

‘And necks—though not all of them are fractures. Some are where I take off a bit of bone in the spine to take the pressure off the nerves and stop my patients being in pain.' Nate could hardly believe that Caitlin actually seemed interested in his job. If anyone had suggested that to him even a few days ago, he would've scoffed. But now... Now, it felt as if Erin really was a fairy godmother and was fixing his life.

They enjoyed looking round the waterlily garden, and Erin looked something up on her phone. ‘Did you know that the leaves of the giant waterlily span two metres across, and they can take the weight of a baby without sinking?'

‘They're amazing,' Caitlin said. ‘I'd like to sk—' Then she stopped abruptly.

‘You'd like to do what?' Erin asked.

Caitlin shook her head. ‘It doesn't matter.'

‘Were you going to say “sketch”?' Erin asked.

Caitlin shrugged. ‘Mum says art's a waste of time.'

‘I don't want to fight with your mum,' Nate said, ‘but I often have to draw things to explain to my patients what I'm going to do. Without the drawing, it'd take a lot longer to explain and they might still be worried.'

‘So you don't think art's a waste of time?'

‘No, and if you're thinking about a career in plant biology you'll probably need to be able to draw for your exams,' he pointed out. Why had he never guessed that she liked art?

‘So are you good at drawing?' Caitlin asked.

‘I can show you some of my student notes later, if you like,' Nate suggested. ‘Then you can tell me whether I'm any good. And if you like looking at art, there are loads of good galleries in London. Maybe we could go some time together.'

‘All right,' she said, and Nate felt as if the sun had just come out after a long, lonely winter.

They stopped for a toasted cheese sandwich and a milkshake in the café for lunch.

Nate teased Erin. ‘I just know you're going to choose cake and claim it's one of your five a day.'

‘Of course it is. Blueberry muffins count as fruit,' Erin retorted. ‘Right, Caitlin?'

Caitlin looked bemused. ‘But you're a doctor. You're supposed to tell people they're not allowed to eat cake and stuff because it'll make them fat and rot their teeth.'

‘Cake,' Erin said, ‘is absolutely fine in moderation. And in my professional opinion it makes a lot of things better.'

‘Trust her. She's a doctor,' Nate said in a conspiratorial stage whisper.

And Caitlin's grin made his heart feel as if it had just cracked. He thoroughly enjoyed watching his daughter blossom. He knew there was still a long way to go, but for the last month he'd failed badly at being a full-time dad, and now finally she was responding to him; they could build on this. For the first time, he really felt as if there was hope for him as a parent.

After lunch, they wandered round the gardens to find some of the oldest and biggest trees.

By the hawthorn, Nate said, ‘Did you know years ago they used to think it was unlucky to take hawthorn indoors because it meant someone in the household would die?'

‘But that's not true, is it?' Caitlin asked.

‘No—but there is some science behind it. Did you know that the same chemicals in the scent of hawthorn are also present in decaying corpses?'

‘Oh, that's so gross!' But she didn't look appalled; she was actually laughing. Laughing
with
him. Just the way she had as a young child when he'd told her terrible jokes and pushed her on the swings.

This was going to be all right, he thought.

He noticed that Erin was really relaxed with Caitlin, too, in a way that Georgina never had been. And Erin seemed to be blossoming as much as his daughter in the garden environment. Her grey eyes were almost luminous. Beautiful.

He caught his thoughts and gave himself a mental kick. Yes, he was really attracted to her, but he couldn't act on that attraction. If it went wrong between them, he'd be letting his daughter down again and it would make things awkward between him and Erin at work. He'd already discovered that he liked working with her; he liked her kindness with their patients, the way she was always good-humoured and always seemed to bring out the best in people. Just as she was bringing out the best in his daughter right now.

How could he possibly risk losing that?

And even though an insidious little voice in his head suggested that maybe dating Erin would make his life even better, he squashed it ruthlessly. He couldn't take the risk. So he kept things light and chatty, coming up with outrageous facts that made both Erin and his daughter laugh.

At the end of the day, Caitlin actually let Erin hug her goodbye.

‘We'll sort out our garden list,' Erin said, ‘and maybe we can do some other stuff together as well.'

‘The trampoline thing?' Caitlin asked.

Erin nodded. ‘And there's a place where they put you in a locked room and you have an hour to escape. You have to work as a team to sort the clues. It's kind of like a console game, but better. I'm dying to try it out. What do you think?'

‘That,' Caitlin said, ‘sounds like a lot of fun.' She looked at Nate, as if checking that he wasn't going to scoff at the idea.

‘I agree,' he said with a smile. ‘We'll have to think up a good team name for us.'

‘That's settled, then. We'll add it to the list,' Erin said. ‘Oh, and we have to go for a proper afternoon tea.'

‘Because cake makes everything better,' Caitlin chorused.

Erin laughed. ‘Indeed it does. You're a fast learner. See you soon, Caitlin. I'll see you at work, Nate.'

‘Yeah, see you—and thanks for today.' So what did he do now? Shaking hands would seem too formal. He wasn't really the kind of person to give her a high five. Should he hug her? Or would that be too forward?

Right at that point, he thought his social skills were quiet a few rungs lower than his teenage daughter's were.

As if Erin guessed at his awkwardness—or, more likely, it stood out like a beacon—she stepped forward and gave him a hug. ‘We can't leave you out of the hugs,' she said. ‘You can be an honorary girl today. Right, Caitlin?'

The feel of Erin in his arms made him tingle all over. But her teasing comment was just enough to keep him on the right side of self-control.

‘Hmm. My dad as a girl. With very short hair,' Caitlin said.

‘And guyliner,' Erin suggested.

‘Guyliner?' he asked, totally lost.

Caitlin collapsed into giggles.

‘Eyeliner. For men,' Erin explained, her eyes full of mischief. ‘Blue would look great with your eyes.'

‘I am not wearing eyeliner,' Nate said. ‘Blue or any other colour.'

And he wasn't sure whether he was more worried or amused by the conspiratorial look they shared. Or distracted by the fact that Caitlin had actually acknowledged him as her dad.

They'd come what felt like a million miles, today. And it made him feel on top of the world.

* * *

Hugging Nate goodbye had seemed like the right thing to do at the time, Erin thought on the way home, but it had left her antsy. She'd been so aware of the warmth of his body and his clean masculine scent.