LITMIR.BIZ

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conversation. She kept looking at her plate, focusing on the food she no longer felt like eating.

      ‘I meant comfort,’ Larenzo said quietly. ‘Human connection. Pleasure, not just physical pleasure, although there certainly was that. But pleasure in talking to you, and being in your company. Playing chess, seeing your photographs...that night made a memory that sustained me through many dark days in prison.’

      ‘Oh.’ And now she didn’t feel so hurt. She felt...honoured that she’d been that important to him, and deeply thankful that their one night together had meant something to him, as it had to her. ‘Well, I’m glad about that, I suppose.’

      ‘And look at the result.’ He glanced at Ava, who now had tomato sauce in her hair, before turning back to Emma with a smile. ‘I don’t have any regrets, since she came out of it. But I think she needs a bath.’

      ‘Do you want me to—?’ Emma half rose from her chair as Larenzo unbuckled Ava from her high chair.

      ‘I can do it,’ he said.

      ‘She can be pretty tricky in the tub—’

      As if to prove her point, Ava started wriggling out of Larenzo’s grasp, and soon his shirt was splattered with tomato sauce.

      Larenzo looked rather endearingly amazed by his daughter’s gymnastics and Emma rescued him. ‘I’ve found this is the best way sometimes,’ she said, and, tucking Ava under her arm as if she were a parcel, she took her to the bathroom.

      Larenzo followed, standing in the doorway while Emma put Ava down and turned the taps on. ‘Fortunately she likes her bath,’ she said, and turned to look over her shoulder. Her breath dried in her throat as she saw he was unbuttoning his shirt. What, she wondered distantly, was so mesmerising about his long brown fingers sliding buttons out of their holes? Something was, because she couldn’t tear her gaze away from the sight.

      ‘I’d rather not get my shirt wet,’ Larenzo explained. ‘I have a feeling Ava is a splasher.’ He shrugged out of his dress shirt, revealing a plain white T-shirt underneath that clung to the defined muscles of his chest and abdomen.

      ‘She is,’ Emma answered, and finally managed to drag her gaze to Larenzo’s face. She couldn’t read the emotion in his eyes, and she hoped that he hadn’t noticed how she’d been staring. Wanting.

      She knew she should go back to the kitchen and clean up their dishes, but she felt as if her feet were rooted to the floor, and all she could do was watch as Larenzo battled Ava out of her clothes and then plopped her in the tub, one strong hand resting on her back to keep her steady.

      ‘Is this right?’ he asked, and the uncertainty in his voice made Emma’s heart ache.

      ‘Yes...yes, that’s perfect.’ She felt as if her feelings were a kaleidoscope that Larenzo twirled every time he spoke. In these unguarded moments of honesty everything in her swelled with feeling, ached with loss.

      What if things could have been different? What if that night had still happened, without the arrest, and she and Larenzo had built a relationship? What if they’d become a proper family, rather than this awkwardly constructed temporary one?

      Emma knew she shouldn’t torment herself with such thoughts. She’d never been looking for that kind of relationship, and, in any case, there was no going back. And yet as she gazed helplessly at Larenzo bathing their daughter, she almost wished there were.

      Half an hour later Emma had cleaned up the kitchen when Larenzo emerged from the nursery with Ava in her pyjamas.

      ‘You’ve buttoned up her pyjamas wrong,’ she remarked in amusement as Larenzo raked a hand through his hair.

      ‘Those things are worse than a straitjacket. There are a million buttons.’

      ‘It’s a learned skill.’

      ‘Clearly.’ He pulled his damp T-shirt away from his chest, and Emma tried not to stare at his perfect musculature, or remember how warm and satiny his skin had felt, how she’d once put her lips to his taut abdomen...

      ‘She’s ready for bed, I think,’ Emma said. ‘I’ll get her bottle ready.’ She’d brought a can of infant formula from Meghan’s, and now she poured cooled boiled water into a bottle and added a few scoops of the white powder. ‘You were a little low on groceries, by the way,’ she said. ‘I don’t think there’s anything for breakfast.’

      ‘I can arrange for food to be delivered, unless you’d prefer to do it yourself.’

      ‘Actually, I was thinking about that,’ Emma said. She’d finished making the bottle and Ava was reaching for it with both hands. ‘I’m not comfortable just living off your generosity, and one thing I know how to do is be a housekeeper.’

      Larenzo stilled. ‘What are you suggesting?’

      ‘I could be your housekeeper. You don’t have to pay me, but at least it will make up for mine and Ava’s room and board.’

      Larenzo’s face had darkened as she spoke. ‘Ava is my daughter, Emma, and you are her mother. This isn’t a question of room and board.’

      Emma took a deep breath, knowing she needed to say this even if part of her didn’t want to. ‘It is for me, Larenzo.’ He didn’t answer and she continued, keeping her voice steady with effort, ‘Look, you said yourself you aren’t interested in a relationship. You want to get to know Ava, and I respect that. But the only reason I’m here is because Ava is. So it makes sense for me to have a role. A job.’

      Still Larenzo didn’t speak, and Emma could see the emotions battling on his face. She just didn’t know what they were. Did he want there to be more between them? Or was that just her foolish, wishful thinking? Sighing, she hoisted Ava more firmly on her hip. ‘I’m going to put her to bed. Think about it, at least.’

      She was at the door when Larenzo finally bit out, ‘Fine, you can act as housekeeper. But I don’t want any responsibilities you needlessly put on yourself to take away from Ava’s care.’

      ‘Many women manage a home and a baby,’ Emma answered, doing her best to keep her voice mild. ‘I think I can too.’ Larenzo said nothing and as she headed to the nursery with Ava, Emma wondered why this didn’t feel more like a victory.

       CHAPTER NINE

      ANOTHER SLEEPLESS NIGHT. By now Larenzo was well used to insomnia. He’d slept badly in prison, on a thin mattress in a tiny cell with a thousand other prisoners shifting, coughing, and groaning around him. Ironic that he slept just as badly now that he was free, lying on a king-sized bed with the apartment quiet and still.

      And Emma sleeping across the hall.

      Although he knew he shouldn’t, he imagined rising from his bed, opening his door, and going into Emma’s room. Watching her sleep, her golden-brown hair spread across the pillow, her lithe body clad in those scanty pyjamas he remembered from their night in Sicily.

      Then he imagined sliding into that bed with her, taking her in his arms, burying his face in her sweet-smelling hair, burying himself inside her body...

      With a groan Larenzo rose from the bed and went to the en-suite bathroom to splash some cold water on his face. He had no business thinking of Emma that way. His libido might have leapt to life since he’d seen her again, but he had nothing left in his heart to give her. No ability to have a relationship, to trust or to love someone.

      He loved Ava, because she was sweet and innocent, and she was his. His love for his daughter was rock solid, utterly unshakeable. But loving a woman? Trusting someone with the heart that had shattered into tiny fragments of nothingness?

      Impossible.

      And the alternative, some kind of fling or affair, would only further complicate what was already a tenuous arrangement. His face settled

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