Unsuitable

“Where is this going? Is it a fling? You only just broke up with Sky.”

“It’s more than that.”

She turned away to put toast in the toaster and warm the teapot. “Oh that’s right, you love her.”

Shit. The kettle wasn’t the only thing boiling. “Look, I get love didn’t work out for you.”

“You noticed that did you?”

She had her back to him and he was glad of it. That was a crappy thing he’d said. “But this is different.”

She made the tea. “You know you sound like Etta. Everything is always different with her. Like she’s the first person to ever have discovered a boy will pressure her into a blow job.”

“Charlie.” He swallowed an embarrassed laugh.

“I was an absent mother, not an ignorant one.”

She buttered the toast with aggressive flicks of the knife. “And I worry about you now because I didn’t have the capacity to worry about you then. I was too busy relying on you. You are like you are today because I needed you to be an adult far too quickly and you didn’t get a choice. But that’s done, nothing I can do about it, and I couldn’t be prouder of you, but you have to know this with your boss is a bad idea.”

“Her name is Audrey and I love her.”

“Oh Reece. You’re not sixteen and she’s certainly not.”

She put a plate of slightly burnt toast in front of him. It still smelled good. His second breakfast for the day. He’d learned to cook by watching her get it wrong, before he found cooking

videos. He loved her, but she didn’t understand, she’d never had this. She’d had men who disappeared on her, left her holding all the hard stuff.

“Audrey is the first thing I think about when I wake. She’s the last thing I think about before I sleep. I thought those goons last night were going to hurt her. I’d have let them kill me first.”

“Oh honey.” Charlie frowned at him. Her what a disaster face. He’d never make her understand.

“I’m not some poet with the right words to tell you how Audrey and Mia make me feel. The girls were all practice for Mia. I get it right most of the time with her, because of Ett, Neev, Gin and Flip. Audrey makes each breath I take when I’m with her feel fuller, each thought I have smarter. When she was sick and we all thought she might die I understood despair for the first time. I feel like crap this morning, not because I had a beat down with six guys but because I frightened the fuck out of Audrey and she’s gone cold on me.”

Charlie’s expression didn’t change, but she’d listened. He felt like a little kid spilling his guts like that. She put her hand on his arm and pulled his head down. She kissed his cheek. He wanted to wipe it away, then she said, “I’d better meet Audrey and Mia, because if they’re that important to you, they’re important to me too.”

He sighed and some of the anxiety he felt got stuck in his throat like blackened toast crumbs. “But that’s it. I think last night I wrecked it all. It was intense Mum, not sixty, but six, and they didn’t have weapons, but they thought they were invincible.”

“And you did nothing to start it?”

He’d had to act the big man. He’d fucked it up. “I could’ve handled it differently. They targeted me, but I could’ve avoided that.”

“Are you hurt?”

“Only my heart.” He shrugged. It was a pathetically soppy thing to say, but he meant it.

“Oh Reece, honey. Audrey might need time to adjust to the idea of you as a man who can take down a small army. You never hinted at any of that have you? But you probably should’ve.”

“If I’d told her as my employer she’d never have hired me.”

“But as her lover, did she not have a right to know? This is different from not telling your sisters and friends.”

“I don’t know all her past sins either. Why should I have spilled mine?”

“Because you say you love her. By not telling her you’ve surprised her with it. That’s a tough thing. And if she can’t accept this about you, then you never truly had her, which is what I’m worried about. She was so sick, Reece. You virtually nursed her back to health. She’s bound to be attached to you, but you’ve been playing happy families and, well, this might have woken her up.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s a truth universally unacknowledged, that a single woman in possession of a good job must be in want of a wife.”