Page 16 of Single Dad Christmas

So, what was she doing here with Noah?

He’d wanted help with his daughter, but it hadn’t really been about that, for either of them. Or notsolelyabout that.

Was she really prepared to get back on the horse and start dating again? Already?

The thought turned her blood to ice. It terrified her.

“Louisa?”

She answered quickly, because she didn’t want him to know how dark her thoughts had turned. “The Thai restaurant is good,” she said, unconsciously slipping back into her Queen in Waiting persona, her voice polished, her posture straight. “Shall we go there?”

A quirk of his brows showed that he noticed a change, but Noah simply put a hand on the small of her back, checked for traffic, then guided her across the street when it was safe to walk.

Noah insistedon ordering and paying, and as Louisa waited, a seat on the footpath became available, so she moved towards it and sat down, staring out at the busy street, losing herself in the spectre of this life. How other people lived. It seemed so foreign to her, after two years in her lovely gilded cage.

Noah returned, carrying two glasses of white wine. “It’s going to be a little wait, so I ordered spring rolls and wine,” he said, taking the seat opposite. The table was one of those small round ones, with a modest circumference, meaning there was no way for them to sit opposite without their legs brushing, and Louisa wondered if she’d chosen this table for that reason? There had been others, inside, after all.

“Thank you,” she said, crisply.

He lifted his wine glass towards hers. “Thank you for agreeing to tonight.”

“Well, don’t thank me yet. I’m supposed to be singing for my supper and so far, I’ve given you precisely zero advice on your daughter.”

“We’ll get to it. It’s just nice to not think about her for a change.”

She sipped her wine, rather than placing it on the table. It was crisp with a hint of apple. “Delicious,” she said, honestly.

“It’s a Clare Valley Riesling. Have you done much travelling around Australia, or did you come straight to Sydney?”

“I came straight here, though I’d love to see more of the country. I needed to get settled first, though.”

He nodded, as if that made sense. Usually, it would be the other way around, she suspected, but Louisa had been running away from her old life, and in order to do that, she’d wanted to have a new life ready to step right into. Or maybe she’d known she needed the distraction of a job, to feel useful, so she didn’t sink into a place of constant overthinking. Regretting. Worrying that she’d deserted Ares after he’d already lost so many people.Guilt had plagued her for a long time, and in all honesty, had probably contributed to her staying with him for as long as she had. How could she leave a man who’d been orphaned at fifteen? She was incredibly close to her own family; she couldn’t imagine how she’d pick up the pieces without her parents.

“Where would you like to go?”

“Everywhere,” she said on a laugh. “I’ve travelled through Europe, extensively, but nowhere else.”

He sipped his own wine, then ran a finger around the base of the glass, contemplatively. “Why Australia?”

Her lips pulled to the side. “It’s far away.”

He laughed unexpectedly. “Sure. Is that it?”

She nodded. “It was my main criteria.”

He reached across the table then, his hand that had been tracing the wine glass now lightly traced circles on her palm. It was such a small, but somehow intimate gesture, that her breath stuck in her throat and her eyes filled with stars.

“Are you running away from something, Louisa?”

He asked the question so directly, so sympathetically, that her insides seemed to jolt, and her heart raced. She bit into her lip, staring across at him, and tried to find words. Was she running away? Yes. But it was more than that. “It’s complicated,” she said, after several beats. “I’m starting fresh.”

“An optimistic spin on running away?” he noticed.

“I guess so.”

He reached for her fingers properly then, lacing them together, and suddenly Louisa was fourteen and holding hands with her first boyfriend, her body all tingly and flush with warmth and a kind of awareness she had no idea how to process.

“Are you okay?” The question caught her by surprise. He wasn’t asking about right now, he was asking, in general.

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