She felt herself flush at the mere thought of it. Gah, she had a habit of blushing at the most inopportune moments – she really hoped her body wasn’t about to start this nonsense again. Please don’t look over here again, she mentally begged, forcing on her jolliest tone in an attempt at self-distraction.
‘Let’s build these then, shall we?’ She smiled across at Sam, willing him to collude so she could get her head back into motherhood rather than unexpected lustful thoughts over strange, and presumably married, men.
Sam, apparently unaware that his mother was undergoing some kind of freaky sexual transformation, dragged his eyes from the girl and back to her as he silently nodded.
The minute Sylvie leant forward and watched Sam carefully stack the second slate upon the first one, the girl started shuffling forward on her bottom towards the stream, bringing the towel with her.
‘Whoa, now you need to get up, you’ll soak that. Come on, up you get, and give me the towel back.’ Sylvie didn’t look around when the man spoke, but there was something familiar, again only just, about his voice as well. His tone might have been gentle but it had an underlying steel to it which made Sylvie want to obey immediately. She was intrigued to know if it hadas much power on the little girl as it seemed to on her. But there was no way she was going to turn and look.
She didn’t need to – she heard a high-pitched giggle and the sound of a thwack as the towel, she guessed, was hurled into the air and landed.
Sam broke out into a delighted guffaw and despite her best intentions Sylvie felt her head spin around, and there, slightly less imposing now, sat the most tempting man Sylvie had seen in years with a luxury towel draped across his head and shoulders and a shocked expression on his face, whilst two small children stood nearby with tears streaming down their cheeks.
He shrugged and smiled as he removed the towel, catching Sylvie’s eye and sharing a what-can-you-do moment with her as she found herself smiling back.
‘I’m Ellie.’ The girl had taken advantage of the shared mirth to get through the stream and move closer to Sam. ‘What you doing?’ She had a musical lilt to her voice that spoke of another country, perhaps more than one, that Sylvie couldn’t quite identify. Possibly a French accent, maybe a hint of an African dialect, she couldn’t pinpoint it.
‘You can help if you like. I’m just building a tower here. See how many you can build up before it topples.’
‘But you don’t have many.’
‘I do.’
‘No, you don’t.’
‘I do. I’ve got one, two… um, lots, haven’t I, Mum?’
‘You’ve got one, two, three, four.’ Sylvie counted them out. ‘Four is lots, you’re four. But you could get more if you wanted. Maybe Ellie—’ she smiled at the girl, including her in their circle ‘—could help you get some.’
‘I could. I’m nearly five. I can count a lot more.’ She nodded violently, about twenty nods, all in quick succession.
‘Hmm.’ Sam didn’t sound particularly impressed. Sylvie wished she could shake off the spell cast quite as easily.
‘Come on. We can do it over there, and then we can build lots, lots and lots, like maybe even…’ She cast around for her biggest number. ‘…maybe even twelveteen.’ She held her hand out, with the openness of the truly confident. ‘Come on.’
Sam looked at her with big eyes as she gave him an even bigger smile, and then checked what his mum thought. Sylvie gave him an encouraging nod and he crossed the stream and allowed himself to be led to the cave mouth where the two of them started to round up slates and build them into towers.
The man smiled across at Sylvie as the children played.
‘Hi, I’m Alex. It’s good for her to have someone her own age to play with.’
‘Hi, Alex. Sylvie. It is. Sam is usually quite shy, so it’s nice to see.’
‘Ha! Ellie is about the absolute opposite of shy. She’s a whirling dervish of a child. I think this is the most I’ve seen her concentrate in ages.’ He couldn’t help but smile as he glanced across at his daughter, her little pink tongue poked just out of her mouth as she piled another slate on top of an already teetering pile.
His indulgent parental smile was contagious, spreading to Sylvie’s lips as well.
‘She’s certainly got a cracking aim.’
‘She has. That towel hit its mark perfectly.’
‘It suited you.’
‘You think I suit the draped-towel look?’ His eyebrows were raised pretty high.
‘I think you could probably get away with it.’ Mind you, she thought, he could probably get away with anything and still look pretty damn hot. Oh God, she realized how sexual that all sounded. He was going to think she was trying to pick him upon the beach in front of their children. Worse still was the fact that if he had made her feel a bit of a twinkle before, now super-close up and talking to him, that was making her feel downright combustible. If she thought a mild blush was embarrassing, imagine what it would be like just to suddenly burst into flames – that would be so much worse. He’d have to fill the children’s plastic buckets up with seawater, maybe make a line down to the shore, and come and douse her.
She quickly checked out his hands, just to see how many primary-coloured buckets he could manage at a time – quite a lot, she decided, they were large hands, with something very masculine about them, hands of experience – and felt herself flush even more. Great. She might have escaped bursting into fire but there was a definite flame creeping across her face, down her neck and probably – she didn’t dare look – all across her chest as well. A bright red blush always looked so attractive juxtaposed against her very ginger hair. And now she was worrying about looking attractive. This was mortifying! What had happened to her in the last twenty minutes? Come back, vaguely asexual Sylvie, I was much more comfortable with you, she pleaded silently, whilst reminding herself to tear her glance away from his hands before he had her arrested for overtly predatory behaviour.
