Chapter Two
Wednesday, 25 th October
Rico Weber stepped into the Geneva café round the corner from his B the hotel couldn’t, but it had taken Stacy to point that out to him last summer.
And oh, it was so great to have her on board. She wouldn’t be over her broken engagement enough to think about a new relationship, he knew that, but hell, he was hoping, wasn’t he? Even though she’d never given him the slightest indication that she thought of him as anything other than a friend. And now he was her boss, which felt even more distant. Maybe in a month or two? He would have to take things very, very carefully. This was his chance, and he mustn’t mess it up.
He was striding back to the B it gave her time to fit a few more nail clients in. Working with Ben at home was tricky, but with both boys here it was impossible. Oh, to be back at the salon again, but that wouldn’t happen until Ben started kindergarten, two years from now. Tobias earned so much more than she ever would; it would be madness for him to reduce his hours to let her find a job as beautician and manicurist. It had been fine when her parents lived in the next village and were able to take on some – okay, quite a lot – of the childcare, but Mum and Dad had set off on the trip of a lifetime last Easter. ‘Round the world in two years’ was their retirement present to each other, and good for them. Kim smiled sadly. She wasn’t wishing them home, but she missed her job more than she’d ever imagined. Tobias wouldn’t hear of the children going to a childminder, so they were stuck. Or she was, anyway.
Elijah was waiting for an answer, and she bent to kiss the excited little boy. ‘A garage, huh? Why don’t you put it on your Christmas wish list?’
‘Yay! Come on, Ben! Let’s play with the zoo!’
Elijah thundered upstairs with his brother in his wake, and Kim was left standing in the dining room. She whisked the toys on the floor into Ben’s toybox any old way, and dived through to the kitchen. Tobias would be home soon, and the dinner was still in the fridge. She chopped swiftly, and oh, for the day when she didn’t have to multitask quite so much. Stay-at-home mum wasn’t all it was cracked up to be. Kim blinked hard. She had no reason to feel sorry for herself. Get a grip, woman.
Happy laughter floated down from the boys’ room upstairs, and Kim stopped chopping to listen to it. There wasn’t a day went by when she didn’t think of that terrible evening last summer when Elijah had so nearly drowned in the lake. If the English nurse, Stacy, hadn’t been staying at the hotel that week and been right on hand when they’d needed help, it could have ended horribly differently. Kim ran her knife under the tap and slid it back into the knife block. It was a pity Stacy hadn’t been back. She’d said she might be, in autumn, and would get in contact if she was, but the hotel was closing at the weekend, so that wouldn’t happen now.
Kim swept her vegetables into a pan and turned to deal with the chicken marinading in the fridge. She was ready to cook for her own little family. Life was good.
But it would be better if she had a job to go to, wouldn’t it?