Happy Mother's Day!

Kane clambered up on to his new toy and she stood by, hands on hips, as Kane bounced up and down and chatted away about goodness knew what.

James breathed in deep through his nose.

Siena Capuletti was something else, and, no matter which way he looked at it, they had been engaged in some pretty darned enjoyable flirting back in the bathroom. He didn’t even really know whether he had started it or her, but before he’d even known what he was doing he’d found himself in one heck of a natural rhythm.

He rolled the kinks out of his shoulders, quite liking the feeling that he had stretched some muscles that hadn’t been stretched in a good long time.

He didn’t have time to think on it much more as suddenly Siena was jogging back through the kitchen door.

‘I can’t believe how thirsty I am,’ she said as she leaned against the kitchen bench at his side. ‘It’s so hot out there. But, then again, it’s hot out there every day here.’ She glanced pointedly at the tray of drinks which had never gone further than the kitchen. ‘May I?’

James nodded, watching her drink the tall glass of soft drink in one go, as if she stopped she might not get started again.

As she drank she reached up and rubbed a hand across the back of her neck, ruffling the curls spread along her neckline, and it occurred to James for the first time that she herself might have been injured in the accident.

He frowned. Once he’d known Kane was all right that should have been the first thing he’d ascertained. What was with him these days? So what if he could spin a line or two; he obviously didn’t seem to know how to think logically any more. Had he spent so much time watching over Kane that he had forgotten how to speak to an adult? Lemonade and cookies? Come on!

Siena continued running her fingers up through the back of her curls until they tumbled back against her neck in messy disarray. Okay, so she didn’t seem hurt. She just seemed to like to run her hands through her hair. He didn’t blame her. The affect of those bouncing dark curls agreed with him plenty.

‘Pretty nifty set-up you have out there,’ she said, when she came up for breath. She licked a sheen of lemonade from her lips. ‘I kind of peeked a look at the changing table you were working on. It’s gorgeous. Really. You’re very talented.’

He tipped his head in thanks. ‘So they tell me.’

‘What would one have to fork out for one of those?’ she asked.

She leant a hip against his bench and crossed her feet at the ankle, revealing a truly dirty underneath of her right foot.

He glanced at the floor to see a run of dirty footprints. He bit his lip, thinking Matt would have a fit when he found them marking the white kitchen floor.

But to James they kind of felt like the first footsteps on the moon. They were proof of a proper grown-up conversation he was having in his kitchen, which was something unique and a bit of a breakthrough really.

‘You’d have to pay more than you would think,’ he admitted. ‘That one is actually commissioned for the forthcoming son of a ridiculously prominent Aussie actor, which I’m sure would never have happened if my pieces didn’t cost so much.’

‘Is that a polite way of telling me I couldn’t afford one?’

‘Not at all,’ he said, his throat tickled by bubbles of laughter. ‘Though you would have to get in line.’

She lifted one eloquent eyebrow in a very convincing show of antipathy. But, rather than putting him in his place, it only made him realise that he liked that dextrous eyebrow of hers almost as much as he liked those disorderly curls.

‘Since I began working from home I’m embarrassed to admit that the Dillon label has taken off exponentially by way of its sudden scarcity,’ he said, leaning his own hip against the bench, mirroring her stance. ‘My business manager is in heaven as it has meant he can put prices on each piece which, since I am rarely at the showroom, I cannot veto.’

‘Okay,’ she said, holding up a hand like a traffic cop. ‘I get it. I probably couldn’t afford one!’

Again he laughed, and again he revelled in the feeling of using his lungs for more than just taking in oxygen for the first time in all too long.

‘But doesn’t being home all the time drive you nuts?’

‘Nope. I can work my own hours and there’s a permanently open intercom in the wall in case Kane needs me. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.’

He didn’t go so far as to admit that in the last few months his life had so come to revolve around Kane’s moods that he was pretty certain he could have turned the intercom off and known if and when Kane was distressed anyway. Even he knew that would put a damper on the whole chatting to a regular girl like he was a regular guy thing he had going on.

‘Yeah, I don’t know,’ she said, her two front teeth nipping uncertainly at her lower lip. ‘I wonder if I was staring at the same four walls all the time I might not go a little batty.’

‘Don’t the insides of your planes begin to look alike?’ he asked.

She seemed to think about it for a second before she said, ‘Nah. Not when you add two hundred new faces per plane to the mix.’

‘Fair point. So how long have you been flying high?’ he asked, suddenly needing to prolong this thing, this feeling, this whatever it was that was making him feel so loose as long as he could.