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living in London for a while now,’ said Ed with a sigh. ‘I wanted to downsize and move somewhere new, somewhere less frenetic, so when the opportunity at Bell Browning came up, I took it. A small, specialist company targeting niche markets will be an interesting change, and I’m looking forward to it, but it’s not really about me. The whole family needs a fresh start.’

      So he had a family. Damn.

      Come on, Perdita caught herself up, alarmed by the depth of her disappointment. What were you thinking? How many attractive men in their forties do you know who don’t have a wife and kids? Of course he was always going to have a family!

      ‘Oh?’ was the best she could manage as a response.

      ‘My wife died five years ago,’ Ed told her as they scrambled down a steep path, and Perdita was immediately overwhelmed by guilt for having been disappointed, even briefly, at the thought that he was ‘taken’.

      ‘Since then, I’ve been trying to keep the kids on an even keel,’ he went on. ‘At first it seemed better to keep them in a familiar environment, but…well, the fact is that my son has been in trouble recently,’ he admitted. ‘He’s not a bad boy, but he got in with the wrong crowd.’

      He caught himself up with a twisted smile. ‘I’m sure every parent says that,’ he acknowledged, ‘but Tom really is OK.’

      ‘I’m sure he is,’ said Perdita quickly. ‘I’m so sorry to hear about your wife, Ed,’ she added, picking her words with care. ‘I didn’t realise that you were a widower. It must be very difficult bringing up children on your own.’

      ‘Especially when they start going off the rails,’ he said ruefully. ‘Tom’s always been quite withdrawn—he’s much less resilient than the girls—which is why I didn’t really know how to cope when things went wrong. I’m hoping the move will give him a fresh start, though. He’s due to start at sixth-form college in September, so the idea is that we’ll move to Ellsborough at the end of the summer and they can all begin a new term at their new schools.’

      ‘All?’ Perdita wasn’t sure how she felt now. She had gone from an uneasy attraction to disappointment at hearing that he had a family and then guilt at discovering his personal tragedy. The sensible thing would be to feel absolutely nothing for him at all, but that didn’t seem to be an option at the moment. Best to stick to polite interest, she decided, and put her feelings away to be examined later when she was on her own. ‘How many children have you got?’

      ‘Three,’ said Ed. ‘Tom’s the eldest, and then there’s Cassie, who’s fifteen going on twenty-five, and Lauren is just fourteen.’

      Perdita wondered how two teenage girls who were used to the big city would get on in provincial Ellsborough. It had been hard enough for her, and she had been coming back to a place she already knew. ‘How do they feel about leaving London?’ she asked carefully.

      ‘They’re complaining like mad, of course,’ said Ed, ‘but they’re much more sociable and confident than their brother. I think they’ll cope OK—I hope so, anyway, as it’s too late now. I’ve bought a house and we exchanged contracts yesterday, so if all goes well we’ll be able to move at the beginning of September.’

      ‘Where is it?’

      ‘Not far from the centre. It’s an area called Flaxton—do you know it?’

      Perdita nodded. ‘It’s the other side of town from me,’ she said. ‘My mother lives there, in fact.’ Flaxton was a part of the town known for its big, comfortable Edwardian houses, but she would have expected Ed to have chosen somewhere a little more exclusive. He must have earned a packet in London. ‘I’m surprised you didn’t go for one of the villages around Ellsborough, though. Some of them are lovely.’

      ‘It’s too easy to spend all evening as a taxi service when you’ve got three teenagers in the house,’ said Ed wryly. ‘They want to be out with their friends, not stuck in the country with me. And since I’m making them move away from London, buying a house near the centre is a compromise I can make.’

      He was putting his kids first, the way Nick had always done, thought Perdita, and that was how it should be. Still, she couldn’t help feeling depressed as they trudged the rest of the way to the river.

      Not that she had any business feeling depressed. It wasn’t as if there had ever been any prospect of a relationship, anyway. Ed hadn’t given the slightest indication that he was ever likely to see her as more than a colleague. But if he had Perdita tried to reason with herself, it would have been depressing to realise that it would never have worked.

      She had already had a relationship with a single father, and it had been too hard. She wasn’t going to put herself in the position of always being second-best again, so it would never have been a runner with Ed, anyway, she told herself firmly.

      Oh, and a relationship with your boss was never a good idea either, she remembered a little belatedly. No, Edward Merrick was definitely out of bounds for all sorts of good reasons.

      The fact that he had a mouth that made her weak at the knees was neither here nor there.

      

      ‘It wasn’t as if he was that attractive,’ she told Millie when she got home the following day and had endured an interrogation about Edward Merrick and his entire emotional history.

      Millie wasn’t convinced. ‘It sounds a sinful waste to me,’ she said. ‘The poor man’s been a widower for five years. This move will be a fresh start for him too, remember. I bet you anything he gets snapped up as soon as he arrives—and if you hold his children against him, you’ll miss your chance and you’ll only have yourself to blame!’

      ‘I don’t want a chance,’ said Perdita loftily. ‘All I’m looking for with Ed Merrick is a good professional relationship.’

      And, given that she had started off by insulting him, followed up by grumbling about the course he’d sent her on and showing off in the bar every night, she might have to work quite hard just to have that.

      Not that she had the chance to build any kind of relationship with him for some time. The dreary June turned into a changeable July and a belated burst of summer in August, but Edward Merrick made only fleeting visits to Bell Browning in that time. Perdita saw him once, getting into a lift with fellow directors, and another time walking across the car park, deep in conversation with the head of human resources, but she wasn’t invited to meet him.

      It wasn’t that she wanted to see him again particularly, but she couldn’t help feeling a little miffed. Didn’t he think the Operations department important? And, come to think of it, weren’t they supposed to have bonded on that stupid course?

      Luckily, she was too busy to spend too much time thinking about him. There was plenty to keep her occupied at work, and her mother caught a chill at the end of July which left her frailer and more irascible than normal. Perdita thought she was vaguer, too, although her will was as strong as ever. She was still stubbornly resistant to the idea that she might have any kind of outside help, and Perdita took to going over every evening to make sure her mother had something to eat and to tidy up as much as she could.

      So it was only very occasionally that she remembered Edward Merrick. When she did, it was always with a sense of shock that she could picture him so vividly: the grey eyes, the stern mouth, that elusive glinting smile. It was odd when she hardly thought about him at all.

      Well, not much anyway.

      One cool evening in early September, Perdita pulled into the drive of the rambling Edwardian house where she had grown up, and where her mother still lived. A huge removal van was backed into the next door drive, she noticed with relief. It looked as if someone was moving in at last. The house had been on the market for ages and she hadn’t liked her mother living with an empty house on one side. She needed all the understanding neighbours she could get.

      It looked as if the removal men were almost finished. Perdita switched off the engine and sat in the car for a minute.

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