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withheld a sigh. There were no boardrooms to conquer out here, just a gentle, parentless child who needed his unconditional love.
    He nodded toward Tilly as he would any other adult and then looked at Mia.
    ‘Morning.’ She waved toward the chair next to Tilly. ‘Feel free to join us.’
    ‘I’m not staying. I’ve got a work call to make.’ His tone was flint-hard. ‘I just wanted to…see how things were going.’
    Mia ignored the bristle of her aversion. She shouldn’t have expected a different response. No-one knew better than she did that when it came to choosing between work or family, work always triumphed. It had been a given in her childhood that a business phone-call was more important than her.
    ‘Things are going well.’ She kept her tone even. ‘We’ve unpacked the crates in the music room and are now starting our first activity.’
    ‘If the music room is functional, why are you out here?’
    She could almost hear the creak as her nerves stretched bow-tight.
Stay calm
. ‘You went to so much trouble to prepare the room the last thing we could do is to mess it up like we did the kitchen.’
    ‘That’s very considerate of you.’ His words said one thing but his disapproving expression another. ‘So what’s this work you can’t possibly do indoors?’
    ‘Why don’t you stay and see?’
    It was as though she’d asked him to stick his hand in a tank full of underfed sharks. He took a step backward. ‘No. Thank you. As I said before I’ve a work call to make.’
    Tilly half rose from her seat as though she were going to latch onto her uncle’s arm and pull him back into the summer-house. Mia’s heart ached. For Tilly’s broken world to heal she would need more than just assistance with her speech. She needed Kade. She needed to be part of his world. Long repressed pain stirred. She knew the price Tilly would pay if Kade continued to ensure that their two lives never converged.
    Her official duty may be to help Tilly with her words but her unofficial duty was to dismantle the wall that kept Kade from Tilly. She only had two weeks to lever open Kade’s life and make room in it for his niece, even if it meant working alongside a man who was cut from the same work-focussed fabric as her father. Tension knotted within her stomach. Even if it meant going out of her way to interact with a man who made a mockery of her self-control.
    She stood. ‘I know you’ve a call to make but this activity won’t take long. After all, you’ve walked all this way to check…sorry…see…how we’re going, it would be a shame for you to leave so soon.’
    She may as well have been addressing one of the marble garden statues for all the response his face exhibited.
    She turned and slid the box and a small plastic bowl toward Tilly. ‘Maybe you could get started and pour some cereal out, sweetheart?’
    Tilly’s eager fingers grasped the box and tipped. Small, round loops, every colour of the rainbow, showered over the bowl, table and floor forming an edible carpet.
    Kade’s eyes briefly closed.
    ‘Great job, Tilly,’ Mia said. ‘The bowl’s nice and full. Now Kade, take a seat.’
    ‘I’m
not
staying.’
    ‘Tum on, Untle Tade,’ Tilly chimed in.
    Resolve filled Mia. She had to do whatever it took to keep him there with Tilly and to have them connect. It was of no consequence that every instinct told her to let him walk away, there was more at stake than her composure. A child’s happiness rested upon keeping Kade with them, a child whose bravery touched something deep inside her.
    She lowered her voice. ‘Stay and we’ll spend the afternoon in the music room.’
    His blue eyes gleamed. ‘This afternoon…and all day tomorrow.’
    ‘The only offer on the table is for this afternoon.’ She gritted her teeth. ‘And I might add that should you not accept my very generous terms then Tilly and I will be forced to boycott the music room, indefinitely.’
    For a nanosecond she thought amusement