Sophie's Encore (The Rock Star Romance Series) Read online

  “Why don’t I take Josh to playschool and Emily to her playgroup while you catch up on some sleep?” Dan suggested once the three of them were back downstairs, brushed, dressed, and ready for action.

  I suppressed a mighty yawn and put up some token resistance. “Are you sure? Shouldn’t you be somewhere else, back in the studio, say?”

  A belly laugh greeted this inane question. “Sophie, I very much doubt that any other members of Tuscq will surface before midday. I’m due back in the studio at two this afternoon, so I can easily spend some time with my loan family this morning.”

  I hugged him tight, leaning against his broad shoulder for a second. “Why you guys don’t get up early and work normal hours like normal people is beyond me,” I mumbled. “If you got in there before nine, you could easily put in a twelve-hour day and get some sleep.”

  “True,” Dan concurred. “But we’re not normal people, and we like working through the night.” He squeezed me gently before letting me go. “Off to bed with you. I’ll bring the kids back at twelve.”

  The front door slammed behind the three of them before I could raise any further objection, and the house turned eerily quiet. It wasn’t often that I had three hours to myself, and I was tempted to get dusting and cleaning, or dig out a good book from somewhere. But I was absolutely dead on my feet, so I had a quick bath instead and snuggled gratefully under my duvet.

  When Dan returned with the kids at lunchtime, he looked distinctly worse for wear. His very short night was beginning to take its toll, and I suggested it was his turn to have a nap before going back to the studio.

  “You are a rock,” he told me gratefully and gave me a hug that lifted me clean off my feet.

  “How was playgroup?” I asked by way of response to his affection. “Did Ella’s mum make moon eyes at you again?”

  Most of my mum-friends had taken it in stride when Dan had started helping out in my life nearly three years ago, putting in appearances at play groups and acting as devoted babysitter. Many of them knew vaguely of our history, and it was no secret in Barnes that Dan used to hang out with the Jones family when we were still complete. Yet the occasional acquaintance here or there couldn’t quite reconcile the image of Dan-the-rock-star with Dan-the-almost-family-man.

  “She did,” Dan chuckled. “It was quite entertaining. I made meaningful eyes back at her over the teapot song.” He cleared his throat and erupted into song. “I’m a little teapot, short and stout…”

  I burst out laughing. “You never. Poor Ella’s mum.” Ella’s mum was a little on the short and stout side herself. “She’ll be upset.”

  “I don’t think she got it,” Dan mumbled and yawned. “I think I’ll repair to your guest room for forty winks, if the offer still stands.”

  “‘Course it does,” I declared, “and thank you for giving me a morning off.”

  While Dan took himself upstairs, I had lunch with the children. Afterwards, I took them to the hospital to meet Rachel and her new baby.

  My best friend was still in the first twenty-four hours of full-on hormonal glow and overdrive. Baby Henry was installed in a crib by her bed, looking very tiny and very peaceful, until my own kids blundered in, full of excitement at seeing this brand new life. I shushed them, but Rachel was serene and forgiving.

  “Come here, my little darlings,” she cooed, and invited Emily and Josh for a big hug each. My children mollified, she carefully lifted a now screaming Henry out of his crib and settled him on her lap for my children to admire.

  “He’s quite red and ugly,” Josh observed with the deadpan nonchalance of his four years.

  “Why baby sad?” Emily wanted to know.

  “Because you startled him awake,” I explained. I looked at Henry’s beetroot face, screwed up in indignation and bordering on incandescence. So tiny, and yet so powerful.

  Rachel’s cheerful serenity crumbled as she failed to calm her unsettled infant, and I deftly took Henry off her, settling him on my shoulder and patting his bottom. He snuffled and continued protesting, but as I had comforted both my kids through endless colicky nights, a tiny newborn wail was water off a duck’s back for me.

  “He doesn’t need feeding,” Rachel supplied before I could ask. “And he’s had a new nappy. I don’t know what else to do.” Tears shimmered in her eyes, and I remembered the bewilderment and uncertainty that came with being a first-time mum.

  “He’s fine,” I soothed. “Only a bit disgruntled. He’ll settle in a minute.” Right on cue, Henry gave a contented snuffle and drifted off to sleep. “There, there,” I muttered and transferred him carefully onto Rachel’s shoulder. Henry snuffled again and snuggled down for the duration. Rachel smiled at me and breathed deeply.

  “Thank you,” she mouthed and I blew her a silent kiss in return.

  Caught up in the moment of pure mummy-bliss, I noticed with only seconds to spare that my own offspring, by now thoroughly bored, had set up camp under the hospital bed and were working up to an enormous fight over Rachel’s fluffy slippers. I performed a swift toddler-extraction maneuver, grabbing a child with each hand and sliding them out from under the bed, before saying a quiet farewell to Rachel and Henry.

  “That was fun,” Emily announced when we were back in the car. “I like baby. I want baby.”

  I threw her a look in the rearview mirror. She had plugged her thumb in and was sucking ferociously. She would probably be asleep within minutes.

  “Where was our daddy when we were born?” Josh piped up from the backseat. “And will he come back from the airport soon, too?”

  “Want Dada, want Dada,” Emily chimed in obligingly. As was normal on these occasions, I felt like someone had punched me in the stomach. I tried to concentrate on the road while summoning up a coherent response. And here I was thinking they had accepted Dan as the substitute father figure in their little lives. Ignoring the real question, I offered an explanation I had given many times before.

  “Daddy was there when you were born, Josh,” I said calmly. “He was very proud. And Dan…” I paused. Not for the first time, I questioned whether it was appropriate to bring Dan into the conversation in the same breath as Steve. Yet he connected our past with our present, and that felt right. “Dan was outside the room. He was the first one to hold you after Daddy and me.” I checked his reaction in the mirror. Thumb in, eyes wide open, he was listening.

  Taking my grief into the customary stranglehold, I addressed Emily. “Daddy couldn’t be there when you were born.” I swallowed hard and continued with my rehearsed answer. “He sent you a big kiss, and he loves you very, very much.”

  “Dan,” Emily uttered around her thumb.

  “Yes, sweetie, Dan was there with me when you were born. He was the first person to hold you, even before me. He loves you very much, too.”

  “He’s our godfather,” Josh supplied eagerly.

  I exhaled. “He is your godfather,” I confirmed. “Both of yours. And look—” I launched into a diversionary tactic as I was reeling with pain and reluctant to go any further with this talk. “There’s our favorite pizza place, and it’s open and it’s got a parking space right out front. Shall we go there for lunch?” Not waiting for an answer, I had already pulled in and parked.

  “But mummy, we’ve had lunch,” Josh offered.

  Oh yes. So we had.

  “Never mind, let’s have two lunches today. What do you say?” I turned around to face the kids, and their faces lit up.

  Josh initiated negotiations straightaway. “Can I have ice cream for pudding?”

  “Cake, me want cake,” Emily piped up predictably.

  “Yes,” I laughed, “yes, you can have ice cream, and cake. Let’s go.”

  Chapter Four

  The rest of the week passed in a blur. Rachel was allowed home on the very day Henry was born, and from that moment on, I was on emergency standby for all the little disasters that befall brand new parents. Alex was back from Dubai, of course, but he was just as bewilde
red as Rachel. Rach, in turn, developed a bout of baby blues, and by Thursday morning, she was a tearful wreck.

  “What is it with these damned nappies?” she demanded as she held a sodden Henry up to me when Emily and I walked through the door, forgetting that a pair of little ears would later seize on the swearword.

  “What’s wrong with the nappies?” I took Henry off her and began undressing him while I waited for a clarification.

  “They don’t work. The pee seems to run out over the top.”

  I suppressed a giggle. Her assessment was spot on, and a quick examination of Henry’s nappy confirmed my suspicion.

  “Rach,” I said gently. “You have to tuck his little willy right down, otherwise he will pee right over the top.”

  Rachel stared at me, aghast. Her bottom lip wobbled and tears seemed imminent, but she snapped out of it and burst out laughing instead. “That’s so obvious, now that you’ve told me. Why didn’t anyone tell me before?”

  I finished equipping Henry with a fresh nappy and baby suit and joined Rachel on the sofa.

  “Rite of passage, I suppose,” I mused. “Nobody told me, either. And you forget about it really quickly. So you leave your best friend out to dry when it’s her turn.”

  “Or to get wet, as the case may be,” Rachel offered, a hint of mischief gleaming in her eyes.

  “Or to get wet,” I laughed. “Indeed.”

  In this way, the week went by, and by Saturday, I woke up feeling utterly exhausted and wishing desperately for someone to step in and help me out for a while.

  My wish was granted when Dan turned up, unannounced as was his wont, to see if the Jones family would like to join him for an early dinner at our favorite restaurant. His suggestion was greeted with much enthusiasm by my kids, who preferred pizza ‘out’ a second time that week to the infinitely more healthy and less appealing meal I had threatened to prepare. We piled into Dan’s car and were soon ensconced at our favorite table in the far back corner, where we could see but not be seen. The kids fell gleefully on their dough balls while Dan and I shared a prawn starter and cheesy garlic bread.

  “So,” Dan began, fiddling with his glass of wine, “how’s the week been? You look done in.”

  “Thank you kindly,” I teased him back. “It’s been manic. How about you?”

  Dan needed no further prompt. As always when asked about his work, his face became animated, and he seemed to grow taller, larger, more exultant. The band had been in the studio for only a few weeks, but the album was coming along great. His excitement was infectious, but our pizzas arrived and cut his update short. For a few minutes, we were both occupied slicing and cutting the kids’ food into the right size—my little gourmets required their pizza served just so—and suddenly, Josh took over the role of chief entertainer.

  “Mummy,” he started, “I learned something today.”

  “Did you,” I responded on autopilot, shooting Dan a meaningful look. As he knew only too well, this kind of announcement was often the opening gambit in a roundabout negotiation for a new toy. Not so today, however.

  “You know snails?”

  Did I ever? I suppressed a snort as I recalled my erstwhile fiancé, Tim, exterminating slugs on a rainy summer’s night by the light of a miner’s lamp. The neighbors had called out the police, and recounting the interlude to Rachel had cemented her intense dislike for my then boyfriend. Evidently, I had shared the story with Dan, too, because he muttered “exterminator” under his breath. I kicked his shin under the table.

  “Yes, Josh, I know snails.” I encouraged my son to continue.

  “Well, Mummy, did you know their eyes aren’t in their heads like yours and mine?”

  I had never given this much thought before, but I nodded my agreement.

  “How did you find that out?” Dan was genuinely interested.

  “On the telly,” Josh explained, keen to get back to the key piece of information he was itching to impart. “But do you know where they keep their eyes?”

  “Where do they keep their eyes?” Dan and I asked as one.

  “Snails,” Josh started, jiggling excitedly on his seat. “Snails keep their eyes at the end of their testicles.”

  Dan spat his mouthful of wine across the table, but hastily disguised his amusement in a severe coughing fit. I could feel my mouth twitch with urgent laughter, but I couldn’t allow myself to explode. Josh would be crushed. Slapping Dan’s back to maintain the coughing charade, I addressed my adorable offspring.

  “Do they really keep their eyes at the end of their tentacles?” I voiced.

  “Yes, mummy, they do, they keep them at the end of their—”

  “Tentacles,” I prompted, and “tentacles” Josh repeated carefully.

  “Ten-ta-cles” Emily chimed in, never keen to be left out, and Dan stroked her hair.

  “That’s right, my sweet,” he praised her. He raised his glass to me. “To your very excellent parenting,” he proposed, and I giggled.

  Sadly, the mood was broken and our evening cut short when Dan’s mobile rang with an urgent summons to return to the studio. Dan dropped us back home and rushed off.

  “Sorry about this,” he offered before he drove off. I could see genuine regret on his face, but there was also impatient anxiety. He was keen and raring to attend to his emergency.

  “It’s fine,” I assured him. “A rock star’s gotta do what a rock star’s gotta do.”

  Later that night, I was in the middle of a strange dream involving Dan, the kids, and a gigantic, multi-tentacled snail when I was woken up by the sound of glass shattering. The scary snail had been going berserk in Dan’s garden, lashing out with its tentacles every which way, and for a moment I couldn’t determine whether the breaking glass had, perhaps, been part of my dream. I held my breath and strained to hear, but there was silence. Counting to ten and waiting for my heart to slow, I debated whether to investigate. I was always nervous about the downstairs windows which were all too vulnerable, especially in our secluded garden.

  With a big sigh, I opted for the responsible action and dragged myself out of bed. As quietly as possible, I ventured downstairs, carefully peeking into each room and breathing a sigh of relief when all windows were intact. However, when I padded back upstairs, I heard it again, very distinctly. Glass breaking, and the grating noise of shards being removed from a window frame. I fled upstairs, checked on the kids, and hid in my bedroom.

  Not for the first time in my life, I found myself dialing 999. Whispering furtively, I explained about the breaking glass and being alone in the house with two kids. The lady at the other end reassured me that a patrol would be with me in a few minutes, and I suddenly realized that I ought to get dressed. With trembling fingers, I pulled on jeans and a jumper before venturing back downstairs, holding the phone like a talisman for protection. Within a few minutes, there was a gentle knock on the door. A burly, cheerful-looking and quite young police officer greeted me warmly. Behind him, parked in the street, I saw not a patrol car, but an incident van from which no less than seven other police officers emerged. I swallowed hard. What if I had dreamed all of the breakage after all?

  Two of the policemen asked if they could come inside to take a look and ensure I hadn’t been burgled. The others fanned out along the street, and two disappeared into my garden. Three minutes later, my house had been given the all clear. Miraculously, the kids hadn’t even woken up. I felt like an idiot and was about to make my apologies when the burly policeman’s walkie talkie crackled.

  “Ah, you see? You weren’t dreaming,” he informed me. “We found the break-in. We must go. Bye for now.” He turned and hurried down the road, and I noticed that the police van had already disappeared, presumably going around the corner to the actual scene of the crime.

  I crept up the stairs and stood by my bedroom window overlooking the garden. Sure enough, there was action in the building backing onto my property. Cloaked in darkness when I had first woken up, now all the windows were abl
aze with lights, and I could see policemen going up and down the stairs. At least I hadn’t inconvenienced the law for no reason. Suddenly, I felt shaky. I had always assumed our neighborhood was reasonably safe by London standards, but now I seemed exposed and vulnerable. And lonely. In the throes of the aftershock, I fired off a text to Dan, knowing that he might not receive it until the morning or whenever studio time had finished.

  Twenty minutes later, there was another knock on the door. Hoping it might be Dan, I zoomed downstairs, back in my nightie, of course, and flung the front door open.

  “Hold it, hold it, young lady,” the police officer chided me in an amused kind of voice. “You don’t wanna be going ‘round opening your door like that in the middle of the night. I could have been anybody.”

  I bit back a response but wrapped my arms around myself protectively. He cleared his throat.

  “Well, right, so, um, I just wanted to tell you that you did right. You should always call us when you’re frightened, especially a young mum with two kids alone in her house.” He took his hat off and scratched his head.

  “Right, so you did hear glass breaking. I thought you might like to know. You didn’t dream it. It was a break-in. Only it wasn’t a break-in, as such. It was someone who’d locked himself out and tried to get back in.”

  Ah. I got that stupid feeling again. My neighbor would be very thankful indeed that I had set the police on him. Not!

  “However,” the policeman continued with a wide grin. “However, not to worry you unduly or anything. This is quite unusual around here, but there it is.” He cleared his throat before delivering the punch line. “He was dealin’ drugs so we nicked him anyway.”