Everly’s house was nothing like I expected.

I didn’t know what I’d thought it would be like, but this wasn’t it, I decided, staring at the small wooden dwelling painted in lively yellow. The front yard was littered with overgrown ferns, a large liquidambar in the corner sporting a tyre swing that near touched the ground. It was nice, but small. Far smaller than I could imagine Everly, with all her life and energy, being contained.

“When we separated, this was all I could afford,” Everly apologised, as if I found it offensive.

“It’s perfect. Great location,” I said, cupping a hand to my ear. “You can hear the ocean.”

“I’m pretty sure that’s the garbage truck changing gears as it goes down the main road,” she deadpanned, and I laughed.

“Well, the garden is perfect.”

“You’re right,” she replied, staring at the swing. For a moment, it seemed as though she was lost in thought. As if she were picturing a future that involved a child on that swing.

Her face when I’d asked her about children rushed my mind once again. What had the world done to this woman?

“Did you want to come in for a coffee?” She bit her lip, turning to face me. “God, not that I’m hitting on you. That came out all wrong. Just that I’m, well, I could use the—”

“Yes.” I nodded. “Sure. I’d like that.”

I followed her onto the verandah, Piper letting loose a soft snore from the safety of the pram. Everly unlocked the front door, her keys jangling as she held it open for me to push Piper through and into Everly’s living room.

The first thing I noticed were the lack of personal touches. It was as if this was a show home: no sweater slung over the couch, no photos framed on the wall.

“You can leave her in here, if you like.” She gestured to the living room. “I thought we could have a drink in the kitchen.”

“Okay.” I nodded, parking the pram next to a sofa decorated in a floral pattern, the kind my folks had when I was a kid, and followed the sound of doors opening and closing into a kitchen.

The room stretched wide before me. Natural light created a dappled pattern over the floor. The kitchen was rustic, a wooden benchtop with corrugated iron features. But what drew my eyes was the entire back wall made of glass, leading to a wooden deck and a short stretch of bright green grass. It was small, but an oasis. A little patch of land with so much potential.

“Coffee?” Everly asked from the kitchen bench, kettle in hand. I turned to meet her gaze. “I also have water. Juice. Tea. Wine. Vodka. You know. The usuals.”

“Vodka is your morning usual?” I raised my eyebrows.

“Only on those days when I save helpless knights in distress,” she teased, and I found myself smiling along with her.

“I’ll take a juice, if you don’t mind?”

She nodded, opening the fridge and pulling a cardboard bottle from it. “No worries.” She poured me a tall glass. “So, tell me. What do you with yourself? Or are you a full-time dad?”

“No. Hell no.” I shook my head, then caught myself. “Sorry. That was rude. There’s nothing wrong with being a full-time parent—”

“Darn right there isn’t.”

“But I’m not one of them,” I finished, then took a deep breath. “This whole parenting thing is kind of new to me. I, er …” Could I tell her the truth? “I only found out Piper existed a short while ago. And now, I’m just …” I shrugged. “I guess now, I’m just winging it.”

She tilted her head to the side, as if thinking. “You honestly only found out about her recently?”

“I know that makes me sound like a bad person.” I scrubbed a hand over my jaw. Why did I say that? Why did I feel the need to be so honest with this woman I barely even knew?

You’re punishing yourself again.

Perhaps.

I raised my chin, stared her straight in the eyes. “I … I made a mistake. I fucked up.”

For a moment, the sound of the ocean stretched between us. Her face was impassive, but I knew there was judgment lurking there, just beneath the surface. There had to be.

I should go. “This was a mistake. I shouldn’t have come. I—”

“A child should never be a mistake.” Her voice was quiet, and I stepped closer.

“She’s not a mistake. I …” How could I put it into words? “I’m the mistake. I’m the screw-up.”

“You really think so?”

“Yes.” My reply came quick. It was the one thing I knew for sure.

“Because I have to say, seeing you today at the park with that little girl?” she asked, and I nodded. “It looked like you had a handle on it. It looked as if you had being a daddy all figured out.”

“Thanks.” For some reason, my chest warmed.

“So what is it you do, Mr Not A Full-Timer?” She put the juice back in the fridge and took her own glass of water, pulling out a stool beside me at the bench as if I hadn’t just told her the secrets of my soul.

“I’m an electrician, up in the mines,” I replied. “Just taking a break. A, uh, three-month break to look after Piper.”

Instantly, Everly’s face softened, as if someone had brushed over it with a feather. She blinked, slow, and reached out to touch my hand, her skin cool against my own. “That’s quite the responsibility. Did you ever think you’d have something like this on your plate?”

I bit down on my lip. Yes, my body screamed. Yes, I damn well did. But the woman I was having a baby with was soft and sweet, quiet and wise, not loud and outspoken like Giselle. She’d brought me so much peace—peace I never found anywhere else.

“I guess I didn’t think I …” I swallowed the lump in my throat. “She’s …” I tried again, trying to paint a picture of the perfect life I could have had with the woman I’d thought was mine forever, but nothing came.

I skimmed my fingers over my knuckles, the scabs darkening my hand. Hell, but I went to town on that bag last night. And now, it seemed as if all those emotions were fresh under my skin, just waiting for the surface to break so they could bleed me dry again.

“It sounds like you’re going through something big.”

Everly. I’d all but forgotten she was there. That she expected me to finish that sentence and not just sit in dumb silence in front of her.

I met her kind gaze and scrubbed a hand over my jaw. “To be honest, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“That’s okay.” She paused a moment, her lips pursed.

I steeled myself for what was coming next—what loaded question would leave her lips. What question I’d have to evade when it came to Piper, my relationship with her mother, my relationship with Bella.

And yet when she opened her mouth, she surprised me once again.

“Do you like gardening?”

* * *

I didn’t know if I liked gardening. There wasn’t much call for a pitchfork in an apartment with a tiled balcony overlooking the marina. I sometimes used to joke that that was my garden, the green waves that stretched on for days.

Bella had sometimes laughed.

“So what I want to do is build a vegie patch. Try and live more off the land.” Everly gestured to the wooden fence at the back of her yard. “I’m thinking I’ll make it from there”—she pointed to the other end of the yard—“to there.”

“So you’re starting small then.” I widened my eyes as I followed her hand. The yard must have been five or six metres wide. She was crazy. Certifiably insane.

“Very funny. I’m going to get some wood sleepers delivered to frame it with, but first, I need to dig up the grass.” She walked down the steps of the porch and around to the right of the house, pulling out a long-handled shovel and something that looked suspiciously like an ice pick. “Want to help?”

I laughed. “I see now why you invited me back here. It was all part of your plan to get free garden labour.”

She shrugged, a cheeky smile lighting her eyes. “What can I say? I’m a smart woman.”

“Give it here.” I held out one hand for the tool. After what she did for me, after how nice it felt to be talking to a person without her knowing all the secrets of my past—I could do this. For her, I could do this. “Let’s give it a go.”

“Great.” She bounded across the yard, all this life, all this energy about her as she took the shovel blade and trailed a line through the grass, marking up her frame. “It’ll be great. I’m going to grow carrots, and tomatoes, and peas, and zucchini. Plus all the usual herbs. I got some tips about companion planting from some gardening show I saw the other day.”

“You like to watch gardening shows?” I asked, making conversation.

“They’re pretty much the only thing I do watch. The news is too depressing.”

Huh. She didn’t watch the news.

Maybe that was why she didn’t recognise me.

A gust of wind blew her long brown hair around her face, and she rested her shovel against her side while twisting it up in her hands and fixing it in a messy bun on top of her head. I couldn’t work her out. She was wild and free. She didn’t seem to care about her appearance. She was so unlike—

No.

Long, red hair. The smell of honeysuckle. A long white dress, billowing about her ankles.

I took in a deep breath. “You want me to start pulling up the grass?”

“Thanks. That would be amazing. I’ll pay you, of course.”

“I don’t need your money.” I’d seen the size of her house. And when I thought of the friend request I sent last night … guilt rushed me. Not that I planned to use her, of course. But this made me feel a little less like a liar somehow. As if I was repaying her for her kindness in advance. “You can pay me in parenting advice. Tips on what to do.”

She paused in her shovel line, her eyes serious. “I think you’re doing a pretty fine job by yourself.”

If only she knew just how false her statement really was.

* * *

We spent two hours in the garden while Piper napped, shovelling away the grass and turning soil. It was hard, physical work, and my muscles ached, protesting their recent fight with the punching bag as I swung the pick over my head and into the ground. Sweat beaded on my forehead, stuck the heavy cotton of my T-shirt to my back as I slaughtered the grass, the physical release somehow the perfect antidote to my mood. When performing an activity such as this, one that required your full body, there was no room for thoughts of the past, the present, or the future. No room at all.

We worked in silence, with Everly throwing in the occasional comment about where she planned to plant certain things. After a while, I took off my shirt, slinging it over the corner of the deck. The sun beat down on my skin, just its warmth and me. That was all I focused on—the physical sensations my body experienced.

When Piper squawked from her post in the living room, I rested the shovel against the fence, wiping a hand across my damp brow. “That’s my cue.”

“Of course.” Everly joined me, copying my actions and leaving a smear of dirt right across her forehead.

I grinned. “You got a bit of dirt there.”

“Where?” She frowned, stepping closer.

I fought the urge to step back, get her out of my personal space. What is she doing?

That sense that she might be flirting tightened around me like a vice. Feelings fought in my chest. Her lips … They were so … so full. Her eyes … so goddamn perfect.

And I didn’t deserve any of it.

Didn’t want any of it.

“Is the dirt … here?” She reached out and swiped her filthy hand across my forehead.

She put dirt on my goddamn face.

“What?” I laughed. “You better not start somethin’ with me, Everly.”

“Oh yeah?” She challenged. “What you gonna do?”

I looked at her.

She looked at me.

We both looked at each other for one long beat.

Then we ran. She reached the garden first, squatting in the dirt and scooping up a huge handful.

I bolted after her, arming myself with a chunk of freshly turned soil. “Don’t do it! This is not a game.”

“Are you sure?” She straightened, then headed straight for me. “Charge!”

She was like a little spitfire. She reached my side in seconds, dirt smearing across my cheek as she flailed her hands. I grappled with her, trying to protect myself, but all I succeeded in doing was getting a little mud on her arms while she went all octopus on me, dirt on my cheek, dirt on my shoulder, dirt here, dirt there, dirt goddamn everywhere.

She ducked one of my wide attempts to make contact and stepped in, right up against my bare chest. Her tits brushed against my body, and lust stirred in my groin.

Quick as it entered my mind, the thought went.

The guilt remained.

But only for a second.

One small, delicate hand reached out and gently bopped me on the nose. “Gotcha again.”

Quick as she arrived, she darted away toward the porch, and I bent down, grabbing more ammunition. “I have something for you, Everly.” I clapped my hands together, dirt clouding around them as I advanced.

“Oh no.” She backed up, her palms facing me in defence. They were nearly clean. Her arsenal was empty. “You can keep that.”

“I’m sure you want it.” Slowly, I moved closer.

“I don’t want it, I don’t want it,” she protested, until her ankle caught the edge of the decking. She stopped.

We stood there, inches from each other. Tension tightened between us, a taut rope drawing me in. Her tongue darted out to wet lips, shiny pink lips that looked so goddamn sweet, so goddamn decadent.

My chest heaved, my breath coming short, and it wasn’t because of the physical exertion, wasn’t because of the fight we’d just had. I wanted her.

I wanted her more than I’d wanted anyone since—

Since Bella.

No.

I couldn’t.

I—

“I have to go.” I wiped my hands against my shorts, snagging my shirt from its spot on the deck.

“Of course. Piper.”

Yeah. Piper. Not only was I a bad person for thinking of Everly as I did, I was a terrible father for leaving my child in a pram at some stranger’s house while I fooled around in the garden.

Everly trailed behind me as I moved toward a fence at the side of the yard leading to the street. “Do you want to talk about what happened just then? Because that—”

“No,” I growled.

She darted in front of me, blocking the path. “You can walk through the house, you know. I don’t care about the mess.”

“I’ll just ruin things,” I snapped.

She stopped. It was as if I’d slapped her. The look on her face left me with no doubt. She heard the double meaning behind the words.

“I’ll get Piper,” she snapped, and strode to the front door.

I wiped the sweat from my brow. Granules of dirt stuck to my skin. What was I thinking? Playing around in the garden like I was some kind of kid. Like I could afford to get lost in moments like that.

I couldn’t.

Not when the last time I truly let my guard down, everyone I loved had suffered.

“Thank you very much for the visit, beautiful Piper,” Everly said as she manoeuvred the pram through the door and across the grass to my side. There was so much softness in her voice when she addressed the little girl—so much love. She met my eyes, her expression cooler. “And thank you for your help.”

“It’s fine.” I squared my shoulders. “It should come out nice.”

“It will.” She spun on her heel and walked toward the deck before pausing, turning back to face me. She didn’t smile. Didn’t raise a hand to wave.

She didn’t do any of those things, and somehow, I wanted her to. Wanted to make her happy. Wanted to please her, to have this woman wish I was there when I was gone.

What was wrong with me? One minute I was pushing her away—the next I was wishing she was near.

“You can come back tomorrow. The soil’s being delivered at ten.” She gave a prim nod before charging to her front door, no goodbye, no please, and no thank you.

I shook my head as I pushed the pram off the lawn and down the street. Nuts. She was absolutely crazy if she thought there was any chance that that was the polite way to ask someone to give you a hand.

I’d look into gardeners in the area. See if there was someone I could hire to help her out.

Because I lived life by the rules.

Honour Bella.

Do the right thing.

And Everly was anything but that.