‘How very sweet of you to remember how old I am.’
Damn! She chided herself. She hadn’t seen that coming and had fallen straight into it.
‘If you don’t mind I’d like to get on with what I’m supposed to be doing,’ she said, hitching up her chin.
He stepped down a step and her breath whooshed out in relief. He didn’t speak, but simply turned away to stride down to the back of the garden to the spade he’d dug into the earth under the elm, lifting it out of the ground and resuming his digging as if the last few minutes hadn’t occurred.
Ashleigh tore her eyes away from the sculptured contours of his muscles and, wrenching open the back door, hurried inside where, for once, the dark lurking shadows of the house didn’t seem quite so threatening.
Her father was the first person she saw when she got home that afternoon after picking up Lachlan from the crèche.
‘I need to talk to you, Dad,’ she said, hanging up Lachlan’s backpack on the hook behind the kitchen door.
‘Where’s Lachlan?’ Heath Forrester asked.
‘He wanted to play outside for a while,’ she informed him with undisguised relief. Her young son had been full of energy and endless chatter all the way home from the crèche and it had nearly driven her crazy.
Heath gave her a look of fatherly concern. ‘What’s on your mind, or should I say who?’
Her breath came out on the back of a deep sigh. ‘Jake wants to have a family get-together of all things.’
Heath’s bushy brow rose expressively. ‘That could be a problem.’
She sent him a speaking glance as she reached for the kettle. ‘He wanted to come here tonight but I managed to put him off. I said I’d organise a restaurant for some other evening in a week or two.’ She leant her hips back against the bench as the kettle started heating. ‘I just wish I didn’t have to deal with this. I can’t think straight when he’s…when he’s around.’
‘You share a past with him,’ her father said. ‘It won’t go away, especially with Lachlan lying between you.’
‘You think I should tell him, don’t you?’
Heath compressed his lips in thought for a moment. ‘Jake’s a difficult man, but not an unreasonable one, Ashleigh. For all you know he might turn out to be a great father if given the chance.’
‘But he’s always made it more than clear he never wanted to have children,’ she said. ‘He told me the very same thing again yesterday.’
‘He might think differently if he met Lachlan,’ Heath said.
Ashleigh smiled sadly in spite of her disquiet. ‘You and Mum are the most devoted grandparents I know. Of course you would think that, but I know Jake. He would end up hating Lachlan for having the audacity to be born without his express permission.’
‘I understand your concerns but you can’t hide Lachlan from him for ever,’ Heath pointed out. ‘Attitudes have changed these days. He has a legal right to know he has fathered a child.’
‘I know…’ Ashleigh sighed. ‘But I can’t do it now. Not like this. I need more time. I need to prepare myself, not to mention Lachlan.’
‘Who is going to prepare Jake?’ Heath asked.
‘That’s not my responsibility,’ she said.
Her father didn’t answer but reached for two cups in silence. Ashleigh dropped two tea bags into the cups he put on the bench in front of her and poured the boiling water over them, watching as the clear liquid turned brown as the tea seeped from the bags into the water.
‘I will tell him, Dad,’ she addressed the cup nearest her, ‘eventually.’
‘I know you will,’ her father answered, taking his cup. ‘But I just hope it’s not going to be too late.’
Ashleigh stared into the cup in her hands, the darkness of her tea reminding her of Jake’s fathomless eyes—eyes that could cut one to the quick or melt the very soul.
‘Better late than never…’ she murmured.
‘That’s certainly a well-used adage,’ Heath said. ‘But I wonder what Jake will think?’
Ashleigh just gave her father a twisted grimace as she lifted her cup to her lips. She spent most of her sleepless nights tortured by imagining what Jake would think.
It wasn’t a pretty picture.
‘So how is your assessment going?’ Howard asked her the next morning.
Ashleigh handed him the notes she’d made so far. ‘I’ve done one room, mostly the furniture as I think I’ll need your help with the figurines. I’ve looked them up in the journals but I’d prefer your opinion. The painting, however, is certainly an Augustus Earle original. I think there are more but the one I’ve seen so far is worth a mint.’