‘Oh,’ she said weakly. ‘It’s you.’ She struggled to get some oxygen into her lungs but her voice still sounded thin and reedy. ‘Hi…hello, Lily.’
‘’Lo,’ Lily muttered in response.
Will cleared his throat. He looked as startled to see Alice as she was to see him, which was a bit odd given that he knew perfectly well that she was living there. ‘Is Beth around?’
‘No, she and Roger have gone to a party.’ Alice had herself under better control now. It had just been the surprise. ‘At the Normans, I think.’
‘Damn, I’d forgotten about that…’
Will raked a hand through his hair and tried to concentrate on the matter in hand and not on how Alice had looked, opening the door, her face alight with a smile. Her hair swept back into its usual messy but stylish clip, and she was wearing loose trousers and a cool, sleeveless top. Her feet were thrust into spangled flip flops, and she looked much more relaxed than she had done at the party.
Much more herself.
‘Is there a problem?’ she asked.
He hesitated only for a moment. ‘Yes,’ he said baldly. Alice might be the last person he wanted to ask for help, especially under these circumstances, but he didn’t have a lot of choice here. Too bad if she gave him a hard time about neglecting Lily. He had survived worse.
‘There’s been an accident on the project,’ he said, his voice swift and decisive now that his mind was made up. ‘I don’t have many details yet, and I don’t know how bad it is, but I need to go and see what’s happened and if anyone’s hurt. I can’t take Lily with me until I know it’s safe.’
‘Where’s Dee?’ asked Alice, going straight to the heart of the problem as was her wont.
‘She left yesterday.’
‘Left?’
‘She met some guy at the diving school last weekend.’ Will wondered if he looked as frazzled as he felt. Probably, judging by Alice’s expression. ‘She’s known him less than a week, but when he told her he was going back to Australia she decided to go with him.’ he tried to keep his voice neutral, because he was afraid that if he let his anger and frustration show he wouldn’t be able to control it.
Alice opened her mouth to ask how on earth that had happened, and then closed it again abruptly. Will was worried about Lily, worried about the accident. He didn’t need her exclaiming and asking questions.
‘Perhaps Lily could stay with me,’ she said instead. ‘You wouldn’t mind keeping me company this afternoon, would you, Lily?’
Lily shook her head and, when Alice held out her hand, she took it after only a momentary hesitation.
‘You go on,’ Alice said to Will. ‘I’ll look after her until you get back.’
Astonished and relieved at her lack of fuss, Will could only thank her. He turned to go, but as he did he saw Alice nod imperceptibly down at his daughter. God, he’d almost forgotten to say goodbye! What kind of father did that make him?
‘Goodbye, Lily,’ he said awkwardly. If only he could be sure that if he crouched down and hugged her she would hug him back. ‘Be good.’ She was always good, though. That was the problem. ‘I’ll be back as soon as I can.’
Alice had to be one of the few people who knew less about parenting than he did, he thought bitterly as he reversed the car out of the drive and headed towards the project headquarters as fast as he could, but she was still able to make him realise how badly he was getting it wrong.
Alice, still able to wrong-foot him after all these years. Will shook his head. He had been waiting for her to take him to task for putting the project before his own child. He couldn’t have blamed her if she’d pointed out that it was his fault for employing a silly girl like Dee who would run off and leave him in the lurch after barely more than a week as a nanny. She could have criticised him for not even thinking to say goodbye to Lily.
But she had done none of those things. She had recognized the problem and done exactly what he needed her to do. He would have to try and tell her later how much he appreciated it.
CHAPTER FIVE
‘LILY’S asleep,’ said Alice, opening the door to him nearly four hours later and motioning Will inside.
‘Asleep?’ He was instantly anxious. ‘Is she OK?’
‘Of course. She’s just tired, and she dropped off a few minutes ago. It seems a shame to wake her just yet. Why don’t you sit down and have a drink?’ Her polite facade vanished as she watched Will drop into a chair. ‘You look tired,’ she added impulsively.
Will rubbed a hand over his face in a gesture so familiar that Alice felt a sharp pang of remembrance. ‘I’m OK,’ he said gruffly, but he was glad to sit down, he had to admit. The room was cool and quiet after the chaos at the hospital. ‘Thanks,’ he said as Alice came back with one of Roger’s beers, and he drank thirstily.
‘Was it a bad accident?’ Alice asked. She sat on the end of the sofa, far enough away to be in no danger of touching him by accident, but not so far that it looked as if she was nervous about being alone with him.
‘Bad enough.’ Will lowered the bottle with a sigh. ‘A couple of our younger members of staff had taken one of the project jeeps to the beach. It’s their day off, and they had a few beers…you know what it’s like. They’re not supposed to take any of the vehicles unless they’re on project business, but they’re just lads.’
He grimaced, remembering the calls he had had to make to the boys’ parents after he’d contacted the insurance company. ‘Perhaps it’s just as well they took one of our jeeps. It had our logo on the side, so when someone saw it had gone off the road they raised the alarm with the office, and the phone there gets switched through to me at weekends.’
‘Are the boys OK?’
‘They’ll survive. They’ve both recovered consciousness, and the doctors say they’re stable. The insurance company is making arrangements to fly them back to the UK, and the sooner that happens the better. The hospital here isn’t equipped to deal with serious accidents.’ He shook his head. Hospitals were grim enough places at the best of times.
‘I’m glad I didn’t have to take Lily there,’ he said abruptly. ‘I don’t know how to thank you for looking after her, Alice.’
Alice avoided his eyes. ‘It was no trouble,’ she said with a careless shrug. ‘Lily’s good company.’
‘Is she?’ Will took another pull of his beer, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘I can’t get her to talk to me.’
‘You need to give her time, Will. Everything’s very new to her at the moment, and she’s just lost her mother. You can’t expect her to bounce back immediately.’
‘I know, it’s just…I don’t know how to help her,’ he admitted, the words wrenched out of him.
‘You can help her best by being yourself. You’re her father, and she knows that. Don’t try too hard,’ Alice told him. ‘Let her get to know you.’
‘Who made you such an expert on child care?’ Will demanded roughly.
There was a tiny pause, and then, hearing the harshness of his voice still echoing, he put down the beer and leant forward, resting his elbows on his knees and raking both hands through his hair. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said after a moment. ‘That was uncalled for. Sorry.’
‘You’ve got a lot on your mind at the moment,’ said Alice after a moment.
‘Still.’ He straightened, and the grey eyes fixed on hers seemed to reach deep inside her and elicit a disturbing thrum. ‘It’s no excuse for rudeness.’
With an effort, Alice pulled her gaze away and reached for her lime juice with a hand that was not nearly as steady as she would have liked it to be.
‘You’re right, I don’t know much about children,’ she said. ‘But Lily reminds me a lot of myself when I was younger. I was shy, the way she is, and I know what it’s like-oh, not to lose my mother-but that feeling of not really knowing where you are or what you’re doing there…’ The golden eyes clouded briefly. ‘Yes, I remember all that.’
‘Is that why you were so angry with me at the party?’
Alice flushed. ‘Partly. I shouldn’t have said what I did, Will. I’m sorry, I was out of order. It wasn’t any of my
