you’re fawning all over him like some kind of groupie!’
Guy frowned. ‘He told you not to marry me? Why ever would he say a thing like that?
Janey, you’re making it up.’
‘Look, I’m sorry.’ Alexander shook his head. ‘I didn’t know it was you.’
‘Too late,’ declared Janey, prising Guy’s hand from her arm. ‘I wouldn’t marry him now if he was Mel Gibson.’
Chapter 36
‘And I thought Maxine was the actress.’ He caught up with her by the win-a-goldfish stall, where Ella and Josh were engrossed in the task of flipping rubber frogs on to lily pads. ‘Carry on like that and you’ll end up starring in toilet-roll commercials.’
Janey grinned.The expression on Alexander’s face had been superb. It was a shame Guy couldn’t have captured it on film.
‘You started it.’
‘Couldn’t resist it. My God, when I heard what he was saying to you; no wonder you’re wary of men.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘I must say, you certainly know some extraordinary people.’
At least he didn’t know how she’d met Alexander, Janey thought with some relief. He’d already caught her out once, and that was enough.
‘My bloody frogs keep falling in the water!’ complained Ella, unaware of Guy behind her.
He tapped her on the shoulder.
‘Oh, sorry Daddy.’ She gave him an angelic, gap-toothed smile.
‘Good.’ Guy winked at Janey. ‘Because we don’t want any bloody goldfish anyway.’
‘My feet ache,’ said Janey as they made their way back to the car two hours later.
Josh and Ella, clutching helium balloons, armfuls of Day-Glo furry toys and an inflatable giant squid, were running on ahead, the squid’s pink plastic tentacles wrapping themselves around Ella’s legs as she struggled to keep up with Josh.
‘My wallet aches.’ Guy gave her a rueful look. ‘I’m financially destitute. And all because my daughter fell in love with a squid.’
‘And you didn’t enjoy trying to win it?’ Janey mocked. ‘Come on, you loved every minute on that rifle range.’
‘I would have loved it even more if the sights hadn’t been ninety degrees out. Fifteen quid for a squid,’ he groaned. ‘And what’s the betting that by tomorrow morning it’ll have a puncture.’
‘Stop complaining. You’ve had a wonderful time.’
‘OK, so maybe I have.’ He grinned.The next moment, he grabbed her arm and pulled her towards him, so abruptly that Janey almost lost her footing.
‘Wha—’
‘Sorry, dog shit on the pavement,’ said Guy romantically. ‘You almost stepped in it.’
‘My hero,’ Janey murmured, because although she had regained her balance he hadn’t released his hold on her. If she moved away she would feel silly – it was hardly the romantic gesture of the decade, after all – but at the same time she couldn’t help wondering what Josh and Ella would make of it if they should choose this moment to turn round. Why, she thought with some embarrassment,was he doing this? Why wasn’t he saying anything? And why didn’t he just let go?
Guy was deep in thought. He wasn’t normally slow off the mark but something had just occurred to him, something quite unexpected, and it needed some serious thinking about.
The big stumbling block, he now realized, had been the fact that Janey’s unfortunate past had rendered her so totally off-limits from the start. With a history like hers, the last thing she needed was the kind of involvement which could only bring more pain. And when you were a man with a history like his, thought Guy grimly, it was easier simply to steer clear. As he’d told her himself only days earlier, his relationships had a habit of coming to grief. He didn’t do it deliberately but it happened anyway. He always seemed to be the one at fault. And it was always the other person who got hurt.
But although he hadn’t even allowed the possibility to cross his mind before, Guy now acknowledged the fact that he had been deluding himself. Throughout the past week he’d been telling himself what a great nanny Janey was. In truth, he realized, it was the simple fact of her being there that had been great.
One of the major points in her favour, however, was also one of the major drawbacks, and it was something else with which he was woefully unfamiliar. Janey didn’t flirt, and he didn’t know if that was because she simply wasn’t a flirtatious person, or if it meant she didn’t find him worth flirting with. Consequently, he had no idea whether or not she was even faintly attracted to him.Their relationship up until now had been entirely platonic. Over the months - and not without the occasional hiccup along the way - a friendship had been forged. Aside from that, he just didn’t know how Janey felt about him.
And all of a sudden it mattered terribly. The idea that she might not return his feelings was galling to say the least. It wasn’t the kind of problem he’d ever had to deal with before; he wanted Janey to like him, but how on earth was he going to find out if she did?
Belatedly, Guy realised he was still holding on to her arm. Now he felt plain stupid. Should he carry on and see if she objected, or oh-so-casually let go? It was the kind of dilemma more normally faced by teenagers.
It was his own daughter who came to the rescue. Ella, struggling to disentangle her legs from the tentacles of the squid, slipped off the kerb and landed, with a piercing shriek, flat on her face in the gutter.
She was shaken but not hurt. As he lifted her to her feet and brushed a couple of dry leaves from her white- blond hair, Guy was reminded of his first meeting with Veronique, in another gutter all those years ago. She hadn’t flirted with him either, he recalled; she had simply been herself, take it or leave it, and allowed him to make all the running. Falling in love with her had happened so fast, and had been so easy, he would never have believed at the time that waiting for it to happen again could take so long. But finding someone else to fall in love with, he reflected ruefully, hadn’t been easy at all.
‘You’re all right,’ said Janey, wiping a lone tear from Ella’s cheek with her knuckle. ‘No damage, sweetheart.
