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up with tears as friends’ and family’s did when he spoke about her, or flinch in tiny reproach at his sometimes bungling efforts to try and move on with his life. ‘I don’t want to try to re-create it—I don’t want to do it again with someone else. I’ve already been there and done it.’
    ‘Lucky you, then.’ Ben blinked at her response. Really, he felt anything but lucky, but he supposed that, yes, she was right, he had been lucky to have Jen in his life for a while.
    ‘I’d give anything to be able to say to this little one that its dad and I were in love.’
    ‘Were you?’ Ben asked.
    ‘I thought so.’ She shrugged. ‘But looking back it was just infatuation, I guess—it sounds like you had the real thing.’
    He didn’t answer, because at that moment her television started blaring through the window, a cheer coming from the unit opposite as the power kicked back in.
    ‘I’m going to do some work…’ Ben stood up.
    ‘Well, thank you for dinner…’ Celeste smiled ‘…and a thank-you from the baby too.’
    ‘You’re very welcome.’
    ‘I’d offer to return the favour, only I’m having enough trouble rustling up dinner for one at the moment,’ she said wryly.
    ‘I don’t expect you to.’
    He didn’t expect her to. Celeste knew that and so too did Ben.
    But next night when he came home from work he could see pots of sunflowers on his doorstep, her way of saying thank you, he guessed.
    ‘I have some good news for you,’ Ben said as he knocked on her door.
    ‘I could do with some. Come in,’ she invited.
    ‘Matthew was extubated this evening,’ Ben explained as he followed her into her tiny kitchen. ‘He’s doing really well—they’re hoping to move him from ICU in the morning.’
    That was good news!
    ‘It could have been a very different story. I’ve had Belinda patting me on the back and the neuro consultant even came down to Emergency to say well done. I have told them that the credit goes to you.’ He watched her face pink up with his praise. ‘I know it’s tough deciding whether to wait and see or call for help.’
    ‘It can be,’ Celeste admitted, as she pulled a vast jug of iced tea from the fridge and poured them both a long glass. ‘I mean, you don’t want to look like an idiot or that you’re overreacting to everything…’
    ‘Overreact!’ Ben said simply. ‘For now at least—until you’ve got more experience and your hunch button’s working properly.’
    ‘Hunch button?’ Celeste frowned at the unfamiliar term. ‘What’s that?’
    ‘When you have a hunch about something, when you’re almost sure but not quite.’
    She’d already worked out what he meant even before he explained it, but as he did explain it, she felt that glow in her cheeks darken just a touch, aware that he wasn’t quite meeting her eyes. Her hunch button was tapping away, but for different reasons now, and she flicked it off quickly.
    She was so not going to develop a crush on another man from work!
    Look where that had got her!
    And it was nice to have a friend.
    They sat in her little living room, watching the ‘weigh-in’ on her favourite show, Celeste grumbling that she should be a contestant. Ben was more than a touch uncomfortable and trying not to show it—he could see the little pile of baby clothes all neatly folded on the ironing board and even though it was weeks away, there was a slight baby smell to the house—which probably had something to do with the baby lotion Celeste was rubbing into her hands, but still…So he went to get the jug of iced tea and when he came back, he poured her one into the glass she was holding, and he wouldn’t have been human if he hadn’t noticed her cleavage—would have to be blind to miss it actually, only Ben wasn’t usually a breast man. Except that they were so jiggly and voluptuous that he was suddenly kneed in the groin with an unfamiliar longing.
    So he sat down. He realised he couldn’t smell that baby smell any