Kids Included. Caroline Anderson

and wiry, the girl blonde and baby-plump, reaching out chubby arms to her father. The oldest and the youngest of his brood, she remembered.

      He took the baby in his arms and kissed her, then grinned at the boy.

      ‘Thanks, Seb. Going on the flume?’

      ‘The rapids. Amy and Tom are after an ice-cream.’

      His voice cracked and he coloured, flicking Molly an embarrassed glance.

      Puberty, she thought, was such a painful thing. Jack looked at her. ‘Why don’t you round up your children and join us at the pool bar?’

      She shook her head and stood up, conscious of her figure in the snug black one-piece that left none of her curves or dimples to the imagination. ‘Sorry, no time. We have to check where we’re going tomorrow, and then apparently I’m treating them to pizza. Thanks, anyway.’

      He nodded, his eyes sweeping her body, and she forced herself to stand straight and tall under his scrutiny. Well, straight, at least. It was difficult to stand tall when you were barely five foot.

      ‘We’ll see you round.’

      She nodded, and watched as they went off together. Seb was quite a different shape from his father, she thought, watching them. Wiry and not so tall, but probably going to head on up and overtake him in time.

      Like Philip. He was all arms and legs at the moment. Perhaps he’d grow into his height before he went up any more. She hoped so, because just now he looked like a stick insect.

      Cassie, though, was tiny and dainty and just like her mother.

      She wondered again what he’d meant by not exactly when she’d asked if his wife had gone off and left him with the kids. What a strange response. And they called him Jack.

      Her curiosity piqued, she picked up her towel, hugged it round her shoulders and picked her way carefully round to the queues for the flume and rapids.

      A boy cannoned into her and grinned, and she recognised him as Tom, Jack’s youngest boy, with a girl—Amy, was it?—in tow. Her own weren’t far behind, and she had to go on the rapids with them twice before she was allowed to drag them off to the activity checking point.

      Philip was doing water sports all the next day, and Cassie was riding in the morning and canoeing in the afternoon.

      So she’d see Jack and his brood again tomorrow anyway.

      Odd, that little flicker of hope the thought generated.

      Jack wondered what Molly was doing. Not the ‘gentle’ mountain-bike trek he was on, anyway.

      Sensible woman.

      His legs killed, his chest heaved, his body was streaming with sweat—and he’d thought he was fit!

      Hah!

      Nicky’s hot, sticky little hands on his back didn’t help, but it was curiously comforting to have her close like this. He wondered how the others were getting on—and what Molly was doing.

      Watercolours? A pampering massage?

      He groaned silently at the thought of her body stretched out naked, smeared with green gloop, with some unknown masseur kneading and squeezing the muscles.

      Lucky b—

      ‘Jack?’

      ‘Hi, Nicky. You OK, sweetheart?’ He turned his head and smiled at her, and her little sunny face beamed back at him.

      ‘Need a wee,’ she announced cheerfully.

      Oh, hell. It was the second time, and each time he’d had to struggle to catch up.

      The joys of parenthood. Oh, well, perhaps sweating up the hill after the others would settle his libido down and quieten his raging hormones…

      Molly stood on the edge of the building, her feet braced against the side, her body hanging out into free space, and wondered what on earth she was doing.

      Abseiling?

      For fun?

      ‘Just pass the rope through that hand and pay it out bit by bit—that’s it. That’s fine. You’re doing really well.’

      She was? Sweat was breaking out all over her face, and the soles of her feet were crawling with nerves. The ground seemed a zillion miles away.

      Still, it could have been worse. If she’d been on the afternoon course, she would have had Jack watching her. It would have put her off so badly she probably would have dropped like a stone.

      She might anyway, just thinking about him! She forced herself to concentrate before she killed herself and left her children without a mother…

      ‘Hi, Tom. Good day?’

      ‘Brilliant! I learned to roll over in the canoe and come up again, and—ugh, what’s happened to Nicky?’

      Jack grimaced. ‘Finger painting.’

      ‘Looks more like face painting.’

      ‘Mmm. Where’s Amy?’

      ‘Oh, she’s got a friend. There she is—her name’s Cassie.’

      Jack looked, and his heart slammed against his ribs. Molly was coming down the beach towards the girls, smiling that lovely bubbly smile that used every muscle in her face, crinkling her eyes and tilting her nose and widening that kissable, soft mouth—

      Hell.

      ‘That’s Molly the Magician,’ Tom said, looking longingly at her. ‘She was really cool. She must be Cassie’s mum.’

      ‘Must be,’ Jack murmured, looking at Molly every bit as longingly. She reached Cassie and hugged her briefly, and he wondered what it would feel like to be the recipient of that hug. The child was the spitting image of her mother, but without the sex appeal. No doubt she’d get it in spades once she was older, and her mother would have her hands full fending off would-be suitors.

      His gaze switched to Amy, a darker blonde, more mousy, with pale skin and clear blue eyes, just like her mother. Jack felt a pang of sorrow and hugged little Nicky closer. ‘Shall we go and get Amy?’

      And, coincidentally, bump into Molly again. She didn’t notice them approaching, so his greedy eyes absorbed every detail of her. She looked good enough to eat in shorts and a skimpy top that did terminal things to his blood pressure. Those legs—

      ‘Hello, Molly,’ he said softly.

      She looked up, her eyes wide, and those delectable lips tilted. ‘Hi, there,’ she said with that open, ingenuous smile that did him in. ‘Picking up the kids?’

      ‘Yes.’ His voice was gruff and sounded as if he hadn’t used it for a month. He cleared his throat. ‘Had a good day?’ How was the massage? Blast. Quell that thought.

      ‘Fine—bit scary. I was abseiling this morning. I must have been mad. How about you?’

      Jack found himself grinning like a Cheshire cat—a tom cat, to be exact. ‘The mountain-bike trek was all up-hill, all the way round.’

      ‘That’s not possible,’ she said with a laugh.

      ‘Oh, it is. Believe me. They hire someone to tilt the earth—they must.’

      She chuckled again. ‘And your abseiling?’

      ‘A piece of cake by comparison. I was so busy worrying about Seb I hardly noticed my own descents.’

      She looked around. ‘Where is he?’

      ‘Gone back to the cabin. I said we’d meet him there.’

      She nodded and looked around. ‘Philip! Come on, darling.’

      Philip came, apparently very reluctantly, and somehow they ended up on their bikes all heading back in the same direction.

      It