Free Capturing the Single Dad’s Heart by Kate Hardy Page B

doors. Got it?’
    â€˜Got it,’ Caitlin said.
    â€˜Good.’
    On the Tube™, Caitlin looked up the Sky Garden and started making a list of other gardens. Then she handed Erin’s phone back to her. ‘Thanks.’ She gave Erin a shy smile.
    â€˜No worries. I’ll text the list to your dad later, and you as well. Put your number in my phone, then I can text you and you’ll have my number.’ Erin handed the phone back.
    â€˜OK.’ Caitlin tapped in her number. ‘You’re not like I thought you’d be.’
    â€˜What, a boring old doctor?’ Erin teased.
    Caitlin shook her head. ‘Not that, but...’ She spread her hands. ‘You’re cool.’
    Erin laughed and gave her a high five. ‘Thank you. So are you.’
    * * *
    Nate paid for their tickets at Kew, refusing to let Erin go halves, and they wandered round until they found the conservatory with the ten different climates.
    In the wet tropic zone, Caitlin went all chatty and told them about a school project she’d done in Geography on rainforests and mangrove swamps. And Nate was stunned to realise that his daughter said more to him in the last quarter of an hour than she had in the whole of the previous week.
    Finally, Caitlin was connecting with him again. Better still, she shared his love of science—even if her preference was for plant biology rather than human biology. He’d had no idea because he’d never really talked to her about his work, and he knew he had Erin to thank for this. He caught her eye; she smiled at him and gave him a wink, as if to tell him to relax and say that everything was going to be just fine.
    It gave him an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach; but he knew she was doing this for his daughter’s sake, not for his. He needed to keep that in mind and not let himself get carried away. The attraction he felt towards her was totally inappropriate.
    Caitlin was fascinated by the carnivorous plants. ‘Are you using anything like that in your sensory garden, Erin?’
    â€˜No, because it’s all outdoors at the moment and these kinds of plants wouldn’t survive the winter outside,’ Erin explained.
    â€˜They’d be interesting to look at, though, if you did an inside garden.’
    â€˜Could Caitlin be involved with the sensory garden?’ Nate asked.
    â€˜Sure,’ Erin said. ‘I can take you to meet the garden designer, if you want, Caitlin. His name is Ed, and he’s a really nice guy. He’s designed a couple of gardens for the Chelsea Flower Show before now.’
    â€˜Is that why you chose him to design your garden?’ Caitlin asked.
    â€˜Not just because he’s a good designer. It’s a charity thing so we have to think about costs as well. Ed offered to do the design for nothing, because his brother had a motorcycle accident and broke his back, and he spent a while in our unit before he got a place in rehab,’ Erin explained.
    Caitlin looked confused. ‘Rehab, because he was on drugs?’
    â€˜Rehab, as in teaching him how to adjust to life in a wheelchair and helping him with his physiotherapy,’ Nate said.
    Caitlin looked at him. ‘Did you fix his back?’
    â€˜That particular accident happened quite a while before I went to work at the London Victoria,’ Nate said, ‘but if it happened now then, yes, I would probably be the surgeon.’
    â€˜So that’s what you do all day, fix broken backs?’
    â€˜And necks—though not all of them are fractures. Some are where I take off a bit of bone in the spine to take the pressure off the nerves and stop my patients being in pain.’ Nate could hardly believe that Caitlin actually seemed interested in his job. If anyone had suggested that to him even a few days ago, he would’ve scoffed. But now... Now, it felt as if Erin really was a fairy godmother and was fixing his life.
    They enjoyed looking