Falling For The Single Dad. Jessica Hart

again. ‘Shh,’ he murmured, rubbing her back again and going into the bathroom. ‘How about a nice warm bath?’

      Except she pooed in it, and he had to change the water in the basin one-handed without dropping her, and then it was too hot and he had to put more cold in, and then it was too full, and by the time he got her back in it she was screaming in earnest again and he gave up.

      He could feel his eyes prickling with despair and inadequacy. Damn. He wasn’t used to feeling inadequate. ‘Oh, Gran, where are you?’ he sighed a little unsteadily. ‘You’d know what to do—you always knew what to do about everything.’

      He dried the baby, dressed her in fresh clothes and tried to put her in the baby-carrier, but she wasn’t having any. The only way she’d settle at all was if he held her against his heart and walked with her, so he did exactly that.

      He pulled his soft fleecy car rug round his shoulders, wrapped it across her and went out into the mild summer night. He walked to the cliff top and then down through the quiet residential roads to the prom, strolling along next to the beach and listening to the sound of the sea while the baby slept peacefully against his heart, and then when he could walk no more and his eyes were burning with exhaustion and he just wanted to lie down and cry, he took her home and sat down in the awful chair that the tenants had left and fell asleep.

      Not for long.

      Not nearly long enough. The baby woke, slowly at first, tiny whimpers turning gradually to a proper cry and then ultimately a full-blown blood-curdling yell by the time he’d found her bottle in the fridge and warmed it and tested it and cooled it down again by running it under the tap because of course he’d overheated it, and by the time he could give it to her she’d worked herself up to such a frenzy she wouldn’t take it.

      He stared down at her in desperation, his eyes filling. ‘Oh, Kizzy, please, just take it,’ he begged, and finally she did, hiccupping and sobbing so she took in air and then started to scream and pull her legs up, and he thought, What made me think I could do this? I must have been mad. No wonder women get postnatal depression.

      He wondered if it was possible for men to get it. Clumsy, inadequately prepared fathers who’d never been meant to be mothers to their children—men whose wives had died in a bomb blast or an earthquake and left them unexpectedly holding the baby. Or men widowed when their wives died in childbirth. Or even men who’d taken the decision to be the house-husband and main carer of the children. How did they cope?

      How did anyone cope?

      He changed her, then changed her again when she was sick down her front, then gave her another little try with the bottle and finally put her down in the carrier, shut the door and went upstairs to the bedroom he’d used as a child, leaving her screaming.

      He had to get some sleep if he was going to be any good to her.

      But the only furniture in the room was a bare, stained mattress, and he couldn’t bring himself to lie on it even if he could ignore the baby’s cries for long enough to get to sleep.

      He looked around him critically, taking in the state of the place properly for the first time, and realised that if he was going to live in it, it was going to need a team of decorators to come in and blitz it, new carpets and furniture throughout and probably a new kitchen.

      And in the meantime he’d be living there with the baby?

      He must have been insane.

      He should have let the doctors throw the switch all those weeks ago instead of interfering.

      Acid burned his stomach and he shook his head.

      No.

      Whatever came next, what he’d done so far had been exactly the right thing. The only thing. And it would get easier. It had to. He’d learn to cope. And right now he was going back downstairs, and he’d lift her out of the carrier and lie down on the grubby chair and cuddle her on his chest until they both went to sleep. The rest he could deal with tomorrow…

      ‘I’m going to get you!’

      Emily ran after her giggling son, chasing him down the garden and scooping him up, and straightened to find Harry standing on the other side of the fence staring at her and Freddie in astonishment.

      ‘Um—hi,’ he said. She smiled back and said, ‘Hi, yourself. How’s the baby?’

      Freddie looked at him with the baby on his shoulder, gave his lovely beaming smile and said, ‘Baby!’ in his singsong little voice and clapped his chubby hands in delight.

      Now she’d had time to register it, Emily was too busy searching Harry’s exhausted face to worry about the baby. There were deep black smudges under his eyes, and his jaw was shadowed with stubble. She ached to hold him, to stroke that stubbled chin and soothe the tired eyes with gentle fingers—’ Are you OK?’ she asked, trying to stick to the plot, and his eyes creased with weary humour.

      ‘I’m not sure. I’m so tired I can’t see straight at the moment. We had a bit of a problem in the night.’

      ‘I heard,’ she said, feeling guiltier still for her less-than-enthusiastic welcome the evening before. ‘Um—look, why don’t you come round and have a coffee? We’re not doing anything, are we, Freddie? And we’ve got an hour before we have to pick up Beth.’

      ‘Beth?’ he said.

      ‘My daughter.’

      She wondered if he’d notice the use of ‘my’ and not ‘our’. Maybe. Not that it mattered. If he was going to be living next to her for longer than ten minutes, he’d work out that she was alone. Anyway, she didn’t think he was worrying about that at the moment. He was busy looking slightly stunned, and she wondered if she’d looked like that last night when she’d seen his baby for the first time.

      Probably. She’d been shocked, because the last time they’d met, they’d both been single and free, and now, clearly, he wasn’t. And as for her—well, she was single again, but far from free, and maybe it was just as much of a shock to him to know she was a parent as it had been to her to realise he was.

      Because, of course, if she knew nothing about his private life for the last umpteen years, it was even more likely that he knew nothing about hers.

      Or the lack of it.

      He gave her a cautious smile. ‘Coffee would be good. Thanks.’

      Coffee? She collected herself and tried for an answering smile. ‘Great. Come through the fence—the gate’s still here.’

      She opened it, struggling a little because the path was a bit mossy there and the gate stuck, and he grabbed it and lifted it slightly and shifted it, creaking, out of the way.

      ‘The creaking gate,’ he said, and added, with that cheeky grin that unravelled her insides, ‘It always did that. I used to know just how far to open it before it would rat on me.’

      And she felt the colour run up her cheeks, because she remembered, too—remembered how he’d sneak through the gate and meet her at the end of the garden in the summerhouse, late at night after everyone was asleep, and they’d cuddle and kiss until he’d drag himself away, sending her back to bed aching for something she hadn’t really understood but had longed for anyway.

      ‘We were kids,’ she said, unable to meet his eyes, and he laughed softly.

      ‘Were we? Didn’t always feel like it. And the last time—’

      He broke off, and she took advantage of his silence to walk away from the incriminating gate and back up the garden to the house, Freddie on her hip swivelling wildly round and giggling and shrieking, ‘Baby!’ all excitedly.

      She really didn’t want to think about the last time! It should never have happened, and there was no way it was happening again.

      She scooped up the runner beans from the step, shoved open the back door with her hip and went in, smiling at him over Freddie’s