Happy Mother's Day! - By Sharon Kendrick Page 0,146

fridge in case Siena came a-calling. Oh, hell, Dorothy and Carl had been the ones to take her in when Rick had had to tend to the details the day her father died.

Feeling emotionally ragged, Siena decided enough was enough. She had a big day ahead of her and the last thing she needed was to wake with puffy red eyes.

She clicked back to the home page to find James had left a post just that evening and she thought, Okay, just one more.

But the minute her gaze landed upon the first words she wished, and not for the first time in her life, that she wasn’t so damned curious.

Thursday, 8:07pm

Today I met a girl.

Those words, and the unequivocal connotation that goes with them, haven’t even entered my subconscious for nigh on six years.

Sure I have met women in that time—dozens, hundreds, even—colleagues, customers, strangers on the street, women working at banks, in shops. Kane’s teachers and his new GP are all women.

But today, for the first time since I met Dinah, since I dated Dinah, since I loved her, and since she was taken from me, I met a girl.

Siena blinked. Once. Twice. A third time. But the words remained.

James Dillon had met a girl.

And, though no names were mentioned, no details given away, she knew it as well as she knew her own name.

That girl was her.

CHAPTER FIVE

THE next morning Siena sat in the lounge of her brother’s body shop flicking unseeingly through grease-stained three-year-old car magazines.

After a restless night—dreaming repeatedly of a certain handsome carpenter sweating and straining as he bent over a workbench wearing naught but man-sized Osh Kosh denim overalls as he carved the words ‘TODAY I MET A GIRL’ into a baby changing table—she had woken to find a note from Rick saying he had found her dry cleaning ticket, taken it and would pick her outfit up for her on his way to an on-site job that morning.

After much hand-wringing at the fact that her interfering brother had wiped out the plans she had made to keep herself busy before Rufus was due to pick her up around one o’clock, she had wasted some time dolling herself up for her afternoon interview—hair blow-dried from a pert side parting and flicked at the ends, and make-up of the smoky eye, pink-cheeked and natural lip variety—and dressed in her jeans of the day before, beige and green layered tank tops and her red high heels, ready to change into her suit the minute it arrived back into her waiting arms, and caught a cab to the auto-mechanic to wait.

And wait. And wait.

‘Siena?’

She turned, expecting to find another of Rick’s kindly grease monkeys offering her another cup of undrinkable coffee while she waited, only to find the handsome carpenter himself standing by the couch.

She leapt to her feet. ‘James!’

At her enthusiastic reaction, James’s mouth kicked into a brief smile. Still only a half-smile but she swore she caught a glimpse of neat white teeth. Her heart rate doubled in an instant.

Gone were the dusty black T-shirt and worn jeans of the day before, and in their place he wore a white T-shirt, a lightweight grey linen jacket and dark grey trousers, all of which brought out faint streaks of blue in his silvery eyes. With one hand in his trouser pocket and his cheeks freshly shaved, the guy looked as if he had walked straight off the Spanish Steps.

‘What … what are you doing here?’ she asked, her voice rising.

‘Matt told me where your brother worked,’ James said, running a quick nervous hand over his short hair. ‘I came on the off-chance you might be here. Or, if not, that they might tell me where you were. But you are here. So … here you are.’

‘Here I am,’ she agreed. Her heart leapt in her throat and she mentally slapped it down because, though he had no idea that she knew why he was there, she knew. And the reason terrified her to the soles of her Jimmy Choos.

‘Piccolo,’ her brother’s voice boomed out from the office behind reception. ‘Are you here? I’m heading out to pick up your suit now. I’ll be another half hour at least. Do you want some cheese on crackers to get you by before lunch?’

Siena felt disaster looming. If Rick caught her with a guy there would be no living it down. But she was her own worst enemy on that count as her pause brought the bear from his