He pulled back and Thadie lifted her eyes to meet his, the same blue-green colour as the ocean below them. She clocked his surprise, the burst of pleasure. ‘You’re ready to tell the twins about us?’ he asked, sounding delighted.
Thadie nodded, smiling. ‘And my family. Though, to be honest, I’m pretty sure they’ve worked it out already.’
He kissed the tip of her nose, her cheek, the side of her mouth. ‘Thank you,’ he said, squeezing her tight. ‘I’d hoped but...when?’
Angus released his tight grip on her and Thadie took a deep breath, feeling her lungs expand again. ‘We can do it when you come back to Johannesburg,’ she suggested. ‘Whenareyou coming back?’
‘I plan on being here the weekend before you pitch your designs.’
How was she going to cope with not seeing him? Missing him was going to become her favourite thing to do. ‘It’s going to be a nightmare,’ she whispered.
‘It’s going to be tough with you trying to look after the boys and get your designs done.’
Ah, that wasn’t what she’d been thinking about but that too.
‘I’d like you to consider hiring an au pair,’ Angus suggested.
Where didthatcome from? She looked at him, horrified. ‘You know how I feel about nannies and au pairs, Angus. That’s not going to happen.’
‘Just hear me out, sweetheart. I get your antipathy towards the idea, but you are looking at it through the eyes of a little girl who never saw her parents. You associate au pairs with being neglected and being left alone. Am I right?’
Yes, okay. She shrugged.
‘I’m not asking you to hand over the boys to an au pair, but what if an au pair came to the house and watched over the twins? You would be in your study working and you could be in shouting distance if anything happened. Obviously, the point of having her there would be to allow you to work, but if Gus and Finn wanted you, you’re on the other side of a doorway. You’re stillthere.’
It was tempting but it still felt like a cop-out. As if she was handing over her kids to a stranger.
‘Thads, I am worried that you have too much to do and not enough time to do it,’ Angus told her, and her head flew up at the concern she heard in his voice. ‘I want you to start designingagain because I know you love it and it’s something that’s yours, and something you do well. But you can’t do everything alone. Within a week, after running after the twins and working at night, you’ll be cross-eyed with exhaustion. You can’t be creative, do your best work, when you can’t function because you’re burning the candle at both ends.’
‘You work hard,’ Thadie countered. She’d listened in on some of his work conversations these past two days, with his permission, and knew that he juggled a dozen balls at any one time.
‘But I have people I delegate to. You don’t and your job is a hundred times harder than mine. I’m not juggling two kids and trying to get a new career off the ground,’ Angus explained.
She put her hand on her heart, blown away by his words. The fact that he was trying to make her life easier, his interest and support, told her that he didn’t just see her as a mum, but as a woman, and that he believed in her talent and wanted to support her.
So this was what having someone in her corner felt like. She felt a little of his confidence seep into her, and her breath evened out. She wasn’t alone, not any more.
If she looked at his suggestion unemotionally, hiring an au pair made sense. An au pair looking after the twins at home, where she could keep an eye on them, seemed the perfect solution. She was not her parents and making her life harder for herself was not going to change her childhood.
She bit her lip and nodded. ‘Okay, yeah, I can look into hiring an au pair,’ she told Angus.
His broad smile made him look years younger. ‘Excellent! That’s a really good answer, Thadie.’
She caught a strange note in his voice. ‘What do you mean by that, Docherty?’ she asked, frowning.
‘Well, because you are interviewing three au pairs next week, the day after you get back. They are from the best agency in the city and have brilliant references.’
She’d walked right into that. ‘We’ve got to talk about your tendency to take charge, Angus,’ she muttered. ‘What if I said no?’
‘I was banking on you being sensible,’ Angus told her on a slight grimace. He looked down, then back up to her, concern flickering in his eyes. ‘You’ve got the right to do something for yourself, Thads, to chase your dreams. I just want to make it as easy as possible for you to do that.’
Thadie kept telling herself that she couldn’t fall in love with him, or not fall any deeper in love with him than she already was, but how could she stop herself when he said things like that? It was impossible. He was a great-looking guy with a body he used to make her weep and scream with pleasure, but when he dropped his guard and got real, she wanted to shove her hand into her chest, snap off her heart and hand it to him.
She was pretty sure it was already in his possession.
Angus cocked his head and a couple of seconds later Thadie heard the whomp-whomp of an approaching helicopter.
‘I’ll see you the weekend before your big presentation. I’ll fly in on Friday evening, and I’ll keep the boys occupied Saturday and Sunday if you need to work.’