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“Well I’d have known that if you’d have picked up your phone,” said Ava, carefully extracting her arm from behind Alice’s head.

“She’s got school tomorrow,” said Hope, thinking of the tantrums that were likely to erupt from a tired Alice in the morning.

“She’s not the only one,” sniffed Ava, standing up and picking up her book off the coffee table.

“Looks like you won’t be lacking for sleep though,” Hope said pointedly.

Ava huffed. “Is your mother alright?”

“Fine,” Hope said as Ava approached, book under her arm. “Just fine.”

“I’ll be going then.”

Ava got to the door and Hope didn’t move, too taken aback by just how fast she’d gone from ‘Ava’s a misunderstood and actually nice person’ to ‘I might just have to poison her milk-bottles on the doorstep in the morning.’

Ava frowned and then turned to squeeze past Hope in the doorway and Hope held her breath. For the shortest of instants Ava was brushing past her and Hope felt that warmth again and then the front door was opening and Ava was leaving and Hope was sighing and wondering just why Ava had to be so incredibly annoying.

Chapter Fourteen

There was, Ava thought, no point trying to avoid a relationship with Hope altogether. She was walking to school, the fall air still warm but with a hint of the burning smell of falling leaves. After all, she had to work with the woman.

However, she could certainly do a better job of not getting involved.

Truthfully, when Hope had asked her out for a drink her heart had skipped a beat and she’d suddenly remembered what it was like to be nineteen and falling in love for the very first time.

Some sort of biological short-circuit, no doubt.

And it had scared her. Scared her enough that she’d, very sensibly in retrospect, turned Hope down flat.

It was sensible. Sensible because Ava wasn’t interested in dating again. And even if she were interested then she wouldn’t be interested in someone as obviously irritating as Hope Perkins.

But then she went and invited herself into Hope’s life by offering to babysit her daughter. As though she didn’t get enough of small children at work.

Alright, so Alice had actually been rather entertaining to be around. But that really wasn’t the point, was it?

So what was the point, Ava wondered as she walked through the school gate. She was early enough that there was only a scattering of children in the playground.

Maybe the point was that she was changing, just as she’d promised herself. Change was always uncomfortable. But it was happening. She was drinking less. She’d been running twice this week already and it was only Wednesday. And, apparently, she was looking at women.

Looking, not touching.

Hope Perkins was, indisputably, attractive. Not that that meant a thing. It really didn’t. Okay, maybe it meant that Ava’s heart could still function, as battered and broken as it was. But it definitely didn’t mean that she was willing to risk said heart on anyone else.

And if she were willing to take that risk, it absolutely, completely and definitely wouldn’t be on Hope Perkins.

She pushed open the door to her classroom and screeched. “What on earth are you doing?”

“Fixing the planets display,” Hope said, tongue sticking out of one corner of her mouth and tottering on the very top of a ladder that was blatantly not tall enough.

“You’re going to kill yourself,” said Ava, dropping her bags.

Without thinking, she rushed to the ladder and reached up, clutching Hope’s calves, one in each hand, to steady her.

“I’ve got it,” said Hope, wobbling as she straightened out Mercury on its string.

“No, I’ve got you,” Ava said.

Only then did she realize what she was doing. Only then did she realize that she was holding on for dear life to Hope’s very warm, very shapely legs. Only then did she realize that perhaps she shouldn’t be quite so close. She cleared her throat, unsure of what to do, wanting to let go and not wanting to let go at the same time and all the while her heart was throbbing to let her know that it was very much alive, very much not down and out no matter how broken down it might have seemed.