The tears were too close again now. He’d told her what song he was going to be playing. He’d whispered the words as if they’d been written for him to say and it was his voice she could hear now, rather than Diversion’s lead singer as he sang that he would take her just the way she was. That he wanted her just the way she was. That he loved her just the way she was.

  And each time these lyrics led to a saxophone riff from the black-clad figure in the cowboy hat that had Penelope’s total attention. Every bend and sway of his body ignited an all-consuming desire that she knew would never fade. The words were exactly how she felt. This love would never fade either.

  The jab of Billy’s elbow prevented her from turning into a mushy puddle.

  ‘What’s that thing he’s playing?’

  ‘A saxophone. He started learning it after he stopped playing on those drums he gave you.’

  ‘That’s what I’m gonna do, too.’

  ‘Good idea.’ Penelope took a deep breath as the song finished. ‘I’ll see you later, Billy. I told Rafe I’d meet him after this song to see how it’s going with setting up the fireworks.’

  ‘Can I come, too?’

  ‘You promised to help look after the little ones, remember? You’re in the best place to watch and it’s not that far away.’

  It was just as well there was an acceptable excuse not to take Billy with her. The setting up of the fireworks had been finished by lunchtime today. She was meeting Rafe near the stage simply so that they could be together and she couldn’t have kissed him like this if there’d been anyone around to watch.

  Couldn’t have been held so close and basked in the bliss of all those feelings she’d had during the song that were magnified a thousand times by being pressed against his body. Being able to touch him—and kiss him—just like this.

  But Rafe wanted to do more than kiss her.

  ‘Come and dance with me.’

  ‘No-o-o... I can’t dance.’ Penelope could feel the colour rising in her cheeks. ‘You know that. You saw me trying to dance in your maze...’

  ‘Ah, but you weren’t dancing with me...’

  And there they were. Among a hundred people dancing in front of the stage to the music from an Irish band that had been announced as one of the original festival artists, and it was easy. All she had to do was follow Rafe’s excellent lead. They danced through the entire set the band played and then they stood and clapped as the band members took their turns accepting the applause.

  The lead guitarist leaned in to the microphone and held up his hand to signal a need for silence.

  ‘It’s been thirty years since we played here,’ he said. ‘But my heart has always been in Loxbury.’

  He waited for the renewed applause to fade.

  ‘The love of my life was a Loxbury girl.’

  Rafe’s hand tightened around Penelope’s and she felt an odd stillness pressing in on her. She was still in a crowd but she felt as conspicuous as if a spotlight had been turned onto her. Alone.

  No, not alone. She had Rafe by her side.

  ‘Who is he?’

  ‘His name’s Paddy Murphy.’

  ‘Patrick Murphy?’

  ‘I came to that first Loxbury festival hoping to find her again but I didn’t.’ Paddy shook his head sadly. ‘There’s never been anyone else for me but that’s just the way things worked out, I guess. Maybe you’re out there tonight, Charlie, my darlin’. If you are, I hope you’re happy. Here’s one more song—just for you...’

  People around started dancing again but Penelope was standing as still as a stone. ‘Oh, my God...’ she whispered.

  Rafe led her away from the dancers before anyone could bump into them. Right away from any people. He took them into the area fenced off as the safety margin for the pyrotechnic crew by showing his pass to a security guard. Off to the edge of field that was criss-crossed with wires leading to the scissor lifts.

  ‘Watch your feet. Don’t trip...’

  The music was fainter now and the people far enough away to be forgotten. Except for one of them.

  ‘He’s my father, isn’t he?’

  ‘I think he probably is. He looks a lot like you, close up. And he’s a really nice person. Special...’

  ‘Did you know about him being here?’

  ‘I knew his name and that his band was going to be playing. And then I met him a couple of nights ago and he told me that losing the woman he loved was the biggest regret of his life.’ Rafe drew Penelope close to kiss her. ‘That was the moment I realised that I’d be making the biggest mistake of my life if I lost you. That you were the love of my life.’

  ‘He doesn’t know about what happened to my mother, does he?’

  ‘Apparently not.’

  ‘You know what I think? I think that she brought me here to meet him. That he was the love of her life, too.’

  ‘He told me something else, too. That his other huge regret was never having kids of his own.’

  Penelope had a lump in her throat the size of a boulder. ‘Do you think he’d want to meet me?’

  ‘How could anyone not want to?’ Rafe kissed her again. ‘To be able to claim a connection to you would make him feel like the luckiest man on earth. No...make that the second luckiest man.’

  Oh...the way Rafe was looking at her right now. Penelope wanted to be looked at like that for the rest of her life.

  ‘I think I’d like to meet him,’ she said softly. ‘But it’s pretty scary.’

  ‘I’d be with you,’ Rafe told her. ‘Don’t ever be scared. Hang on...’

  The buzz of the radio clipped to his belt interrupted him and Penelope listened as he talked to his crew. The countdown to the fireworks was on. The orchestra was in position.

  ‘This is a show to live music,’ Rafe told her. ‘It’s a complicated set-up with manual firing.’

  ‘Don’t you need to be there?’

  ‘That’s what I train my crew to do. I’m exactly where I need to be.’

  ‘And the orchestra’s going to play it?’

  ‘Along with the bagpipes. Can you hear them warming up?’

  The drone of sound was getting louder. The lights set up around the field were suddenly shut down, plunging the whole festival into darkness. Glow sticks twinkled like coloured stars in a sea of people that knew something exciting was about to happen. Penelope and Rafe were standing behind the stage, between the main crowd and the firing area. Rafe turned Penelope to face the scissor lifts and stood behind her, holding her in his arms.

  An enormous explosion sent a rocket soaring into the night sky and the rain of colour drew an audible cry from thousands of throats. And then the music started, the bagpipes backed up by the orchestra.

  ‘Oh...’ She knew this music. Everybody did.

  ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’. An anthem of solidarity.

  Penelope had never been this close to fireworks being fired before. The ground reverberated beneath her feet with every rocket. The shapes and colours were mind-blowingly beautiful but flaming shards of cardboard were drifting alarmingly close to where they were standing.

  And yet Penelope had never felt safer.

  Here, in Rafe’s arms.

  They would never walk alone. They had each other.

  ‘Wait till you see the lancework at the very end,’ Rafe told her. ‘It took us a long time to build.’

  The intensity of the show built towards its climax. Blindingly colourful. Incredibly loud. How amazing was it to still hear the crowd at the same time? Surely every single person there had to be singing at the tops of their voices to achieve that.

  Penelope wasn’t singing. Neither was Rafe. She could feel the tension in his body as the final huge display began to fade and something on the highest scissor lift came to life.

  The biggest red love heart ever. And inside that was a round shape with something square inside that. Chains and a crown on the top. It was a coin. An old-fashioned penny. It even had the words ‘One Penny’ curving under the top.

  ‘For you,’ Rafe whispered. ‘For my Penny.’

  It was too much. Something private but it was there for the whole world to see. Penny. The person she really was. The person she’d tried to hide until Rafe had come into her life. Her smile wobbled precariously.

  ‘A penny’s not worth much these days.’

  ‘You couldn’t be more wrong. My Penny’s worth more than my life.’

  Rafe turned her in his arms so that he could kiss her. Slowly. So tenderly she thought her heart might break, but it didn’t matter if it did because she knew that Rafe would simply put the pieces back together again.

  Every time.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from BOUND BY A BABY BUMP by Ellie Darkins.

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  CHAPTER ONE

  LOOK UP.

  He commanded her to feel his gaze on her skin, to glance over and meet his eye. To make a connection with him. He’d been watching her for hours, biding his time until he could have her complete, undivided attention. Since the moment he’d first seen her striding round the room, her tablet computer and Bluetooth headset at odds with her black silk evening dress and staggeringly sexy heels, he’d been transfixed.

  The curve of her calves, the gleam of her skin and the fluid movement of her hair had caught his attention, but it was her fierce concentration that had held it. The way she’d managed the room and everyone in it with a gentle nudge here and a subtle pull there. With a glance at her watch and a whisper in the ear of a member of staff she’d averted disasters, negotiated tricky situations and ensured that every person she spoke to ended their conversation with a beaming grin. No doubt the charity the gala was fundraising for would make a fortune.

  Under normal circumstances, the thought of a to-do list and a watch filled his belly with apprehension, an unwelcome reminder of school days that had tormented him at the time, and still threatened the occasional nightmare more than ten years later. But worn as an accessory by a woman who seemed so effortlessly powerful, it was suddenly incredibly sexy.

  He’d waited for the perfect moment all night—watching groups where she was conversing, catching her eye across the room; at one point, he’d even headed towards her with a determined stride—only for her to abruptly change course and disappear into the kitchen. And now she was putting her head together with one of the other guests, consulting her tablet, tucking a curtain of shining hair behind her ear.

  She laughed, and the sound reached him as clear as if the room had been silent. Her face creased, her head dropped back, and humour radiated from her like a wave. He wanted to make her laugh. He was unreasonably jealous of the person who had inspired the sound, a man with pure silver hair and a walking stick.

  The string band had started playing in a corner of the ballroom, and a few couples were heading towards the dance floor. His eyes flickered towards them, and he wondered whether she’d accept an invitation to dance.

  In the moment that his eyes left her, he felt her look at him.

  He whipped around to try and catch her gaze, but her eyes had already dropped to her tablet, as she scrolled up and down. She glanced at him again, and this time he caught it. He turned, his hands in his pockets, and his body relaxed under her stare, turning his stance into something languid and louche.

  He walked towards her, smiling, still refusing to look away. He would hold this contact until he could get his hands on something more solid.

  Just a couple of steps away from her, he was hit with unaccustomed nerves. It had been an age since he’d felt nervous talking to a woman. Things were pretty easy-come-easy-go in his love-life, much to the satisfaction of everyone involved. Nerves were thin on the ground when the most you were looking to gain or lose was a few nights or weeks of fun. The prospect of commitment, of expectations, of being caught in a situation with no simple way out—only the fix of her eyes on his kept a shiver from his spine.

  ‘Hi, I’m Rachel Archer.’ The words arrived in a rush as soon as he was within arm’s reach and she stuck out her hand for him to shake.

  ‘Leo.’ He just managed the one word, though it felt as if all breath had left his body at the feel of her hand in his. He observed her closely, looking for any clue that she was as affected by this meeting as he. But she had dropped her eyes, pulling her hand back—was that a fraction of a hesitation?—and glancing down at her tablet.

  ‘So, are you enjoying crashing the party?’ She gave a throaty chuckle with the words, and he absorbed the sound, revelling in the delicious heat it inspired in his body. He was so focused on that sound that he almost missed the meaning of her words.

  ‘Crashing?’ he asked with a raised eyebrow and a smile. ‘Says who?’

  ‘Says me.’ No laugh this time, though a perfectly polite smile was still on her lips. He wanted a real one. ‘Tonight is strictly invitation only, though if you are here to contribute generously to the Julia House hospice, I’m sure we can make an exception.’

  He returned his hands to his pockets; it was on the tip of his tongue to tell her that he was there in place of his father, who was unwell and couldn’t attend. Normally, ‘representing the family’ wasn’t something he was interested in, but his father had promised the organisers that the family would be there with a generous donation—for a good cause he had been known to make an exception. He was intrigued, though. How did she know he was crashing—had she been asking questions about him?

  ‘I want to know more about why you think I’m crashing.’

  ‘Well...’ she said, pulling up another page on her tablet. ‘I planned the guest list. I sent the invitations, checked the RSVPs and wrote the table plan. There wasn’t a single Leo to be seen.’ Her eyes left her screen, and she looked him up and down, her eyes travelling from his face to his shoes, faltering slightly at his belt and chest. Encouraging.

  ‘Ah, so I must be crashing. I take it your lists are never wrong?’

  ‘Never,’ she agreed with a good-tempered nod, and just the merest hint of another chuckle.

  ‘Then I suppose I’ve got some making up to do. What will it take?’

  ‘Well, apart from your considerable contribution to Julia House, which I’m sure is already in hand...’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘I want an explanation.’

  It was his turn to laugh. ‘That’s all?’ But she didn’t look equally amused. In fact a worry line had appeared between her brows, and she glanced again at her screen.

  ‘Tonight has been planned and re-planned, checked and double-checked. I want to know how you’re here, and how I didn’t know about it.’

  He wanted that line gone. Wanted any evidence of discomfort wiped from her face. He still wanted to make her laugh.

  ‘I’ll tell you everything. Every dark secret and trick of the conman’s trade.’ He raised his eyebrows, attempting melodramatic villainy, and was rewarded with a lift at the corner of her lips. ‘All you have to do is dance with me.’

  * * *

  Rachel rested her hand stiffly on his shoulder as they started to move to the music, wondering—again—why she had agreed to this. She let her gaze travel up from his collar, over a tanned throat, blond stubbled jaw and endearingly crooked nose. Up to a pair of eyes as blue as a baking summer sky, and then remembered.

  Somewhere along the line, somewhere between guest list and dessert, her system had fallen short. He was probably standing in for someone—she had a shortlist of faces she’d been expecting to see but hadn’t. But how had she made it to eleven o’clock without realising something was wrong?

  ‘So,’ she prompted, trying to keep her mind on the job, rather than on the confident way Leo was leading her around the floor, or the scent coming from his skin. Something salty, natural and that had, she guessed, never been anywhere near a Selfridges counter.

  She faltered for a second as she caught him looking at her, and felt her cheeks warming under the intensity of his interest. She stilled, suddenly hyperaware of the pressure of his hand around hers, of his arm at her waist, the sound of him breathing close to her ear. Only the subtle squeeze of his arm reminded her she was supposed to be dancing. Forcing her feet to move, she glanced over his shoulder and spotted her boss, Will, and for a moment she was worried she was about to be caught slacking. But one look at his face told her she had nothing to worry about. He had eyes only for Maya, his partner, and she smiled. She couldn’t help but take a little credit for the happiness that was radiating from them both. She was the one who’d engineered Will into taking a cookery course he wasn’t interested in, all because it was run by a woman he definitely was.

  She’d watched that relationship blossom, from first meeting to their elation tonight, and felt a little pang of...what? Loneliness? No, that wasn’t it. She had friends—she’d even shared a flat with her best friend, Laura, until she’d bought her own place a year ago—right on track for her five-year plan. Sometimes she even managed to schedule time for a date or two.