‘Wasn’t what?’
‘I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that.’ He was pushing it now and if he didn’t stop, he might piss her off and that wasn’t what he wanted at all.
‘No, please. Go on…’
He hesitated. ‘Do you ever wish it wasn’t just you?’
After a beat, she admitted, ‘It is what it is.’
‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean?—’
‘No, don’t apologise; it was a simple question.’ She reached down for her bag.
He’d ruined the mood. He wanted to kick himself, hard.
‘Are we escaping?’ He watched her hook her bag onto her shoulder.
‘I think it’s okay to do it now.’
He downed the rest of his soft drink and followed her discreetly out of the pub. ‘I feel bad leaving without saying goodbye but this is probably easier.’
‘Dorothy is having a grand old time; she won’t even notice we’ve left.’
Hands in the pockets of his jeans, Hudson hovered next to her on the pavement outside. A sweet, floral smell from the nearby magnolia flowers carried on the air around them and he wished they could spend more of the evening together.
She smiled at him. ‘I’d better get going and have that early night.’
‘I’d better get back to the kids.’
She looked up at the sky, the clouds shifting across it. ‘It’s such a beautiful evening. I love that it stays light so late.’
She was hovering. Did that mean she wanted company?
Was she waiting for him to ask?
Of course she wasn’t. Because as far as she knew, he was married.
And even if he wanted to spend more time with her, he couldn’t. His kids came first. This was a time to focus on them, to put his needs last at least for a while, until things settled down.
If they ever would.
6
Hudson was doing dinner for the kids and, although it was a long way off, dreaming of the day when it wasn’t such an ordeal.
He’d made Bolognese, a favourite and pretty much a staple in their house, but even that wasn’t simple. Carys might only be three but she’d noticed the pieces of carrot he’d painstakingly chopped into tiny chunks to hide in the sauce and was refusing to eat it, and Beau, a fifteen-year-old who seemed to have weekly growth spurts, had already heaped another scoop of the meaty mixture onto the remains of his pasta, meaning there wouldn’t be a big enough portion leftover to freeze for a family meal another day. It didn’t matter too much but sometimes, a night off from full chef duty would be good.
‘Slow down, it’s not a race,’ Hudson told Beau, who was shovelling the food in like there was no tomorrow.
‘Ready, set, go!’ Carys said, not once, not twice but several times, much to her brother’s amusement. Maybe he was already thinking he might hoover up her leftovers himself, although that was brave; Hudson was pretty sure Carys had stuck her fingers into the food more than once.
Hudson picked up Carys’s spoon for her. ‘Come on, try to eat some more. Yummy, you love the tomato sauce.’
Her little face said otherwise.
‘Come on, Carys.’ He decided it was pointless pretending the carrots weren’t there now she’d discovered them. ‘You like carrots, bright orange, like the t-shirt you had on yesterday.’ She loved to have sticks of carrot, cooked or raw, and dip them into red-pepper hummus. But, it seemed, that was vastly different to having them pop up unexpectedly in a meat and tomato sauce.
He picked up her bowl with an idea in mind. Anything was worth a shot. He went back to the pot he’d cooked the sauce in and ladled out another big spoonful into a different bowl. He patted it down so there was no orange to be seen and took it back over to her. She’d eaten some of the spaghetti from her other portion at least.
