He leaned on his shovel to look at her with that penetrative gaze of his. ‘Do you often have trouble sleeping?’
She tried to keep her game face on but she could feel it crumbling around the edges. ‘Just because I get up to get a drink now and again doesn’t mean I’m an insomniac. This house makes a lot of noise at night. It’s creepy.’
He continued to study her, his gaze unwavering. ‘Just as well I’m here with you to keep you safe from all the ghosts and ghouls then, isn’t it?’
Was he mocking her? It was hard to tell from his expression. She let go of the inside of her lip and changed the subject. ‘What about the dog? Who’s going to look after it?’
‘Mrs McBain has a nephew who said he’d take care of her for a couple of days.’
Aiesha tried another tack. ‘I promised your mother I would do it. She was relying on me to house-sit until she gets back because Mrs McBain wanted to visit her daughter in Yorkshire. I don’t want to let her down. Not after all she’s done for me.’
His look was still searching. ‘Have you heard from her since she left?’
Aiesha rolled her lips together. She hadn’t heard a peep from his mother. She couldn’t decide if Louise was annoyed with her or too preoccupied with worry over her friend’s health to be concerned with what was going on—or not going on—at home. ‘No, but I’m sure it’s because she’s busy looking after her friend. She might be in a remote area or something without a proper signal for her phone.’
‘Do you think she cooked this up?’ He pointed to her and then back at himself. ‘You and me, stuck here together like this?’
Aiesha gave an uncomfortable little laugh. ‘Surely you don’t think your mother has the ability to summon up a blizzard to suit her own ends? And why on earth would she want you and me to hook up? She knows how much we dislike each other.’
Those dark blue eyes were still holding hers in a lock that made her spine feel like molten wax. ‘What if she’s playing fairy godmother?’ he said. ‘Waving her magic wand around to make everything turn out the way she wants it.’
‘I hardly think your mother wants a Vegas lounge singer as her future daughter-in-law,’ Aiesha said, trying to ignore the strange little pang below her heart. If her circumstances were different, Louise was exactly the sort of mother-in-law she would’ve liked....
‘She has a soft spot for you. She always has.’
Aiesha kicked a little mound of snow away with the toe of her boot. ‘Doesn’t mean she wants me to be the mother of her grandkids.’
His gaze flicked to her abdomen as if imagining her swollen with his child. When his eyes reconnected with hers Aiesha felt her cheeks grow warm and her heart gave a funny little jolting movement that all but snatched her breath away.
James would be a wonderful father. He would be upright and steady, reliable and sensible. Kind and loving. He would be patient and yet firm. He would take the time to understand his children, to get to know them. He would provide for them and never exploit or abuse them or the trust they had in him.
A vision slipped under a barrier inside her head...a vision of James holding a newborn baby. A tiny pink, dimpled little baby with scrunched-up eyes and a rosebud mouth. Ten tiny fingers, ten wriggling toes, a little button nose and ears like miniature shells.
Something tightly wound up inside her belly began to loosen, unravel. Break free. Could James see the nascent longing she was fighting so hard to hide? The longing she hardly realised she possessed until now. It was a hunger that was buried so deep inside her she hadn’t heard its voice above the babble of activity with which she had filled her life thus far.
The yearning she had for a family she could call her own.
To belong.
To be part of a family unit that was so strong nothing and no one could ever break it apart.
To be loved and to love in return.
Aiesha berated herself for her silly little pipe dreams, for those ridiculously fanciful imaginings that had no foothold in the real world. What sort of mother would she make? She couldn’t even keep a dog safe from harm.
She swung away to go back to the house. ‘I’m going to have breakfast.’
‘How about making me some?’
She threw him a frosty look over her shoulder. ‘Make it yourself.’
* * *
James came into the warm kitchen where Aiesha was sitting huddled over a mug of tea. She gave him a sideways glance that was two parts glower and went back to staring at her tea. He looked at the bowl of porridge she had set aside on the cooker and gave a private smile. He was right. She was not as tough on the inside as she showed on the outside. It was all bluster and posturing. She had a soft heart but it was hidden where no one could reach it.