Adopted: Twins!

CHAPTER THREE

‘WHERE are we?’

Erin planned to wake the minute they woke, but she must have been too exhausted for her normal House Mother instincts to work. She’d propped open both bathroom doors so the twins could see her as soon as they opened their eyes, and now they landed on her bed in a tangle of legs and arms and astonishment.

‘Did the house really burn down? Did we really ride in a police car?’

That was easy.

‘It did and you did and you’re now at Mr McKay’s farm,’ she said, hugging them to her and hauling them in to lie under the covers. She was wearing an oversized T-shirt, and in their oddly assorted pyjamas they looked just as disreputable as she did. They were like something out of a charity bazaar, she thought and grinned to herself and hugged harder. She didn’t mind. They were safe.

‘The policeman won’t arrest us?’ It was Henry, ever the anxious one.

‘Now why would he arrest you?’

‘Because we made a bomb.’

‘But you’ve promised faithfully never to make another one,’ she said.

‘Mmm.’

She fixed Henry with a look. ‘You did promise.’

‘Yeah.’ He gave her a feeble smile. ‘Okay. We did.’

‘Then I think we might persuade him not to arrest you-this time.’

Apparently this was satisfactory. They snuggled down beside her and then snuggled some more.

But then William asked what was apparently super important in both their minds.

‘Erin, where’s Tigger?’

Oh dear. Erin thought back to the last she’d seen of the house. There seemed not one snowball’s chance in a bushfire that anything could have been saved. There was nothing to do but tell them the truth.

‘Guys, I’m afraid Tigger was burned.’

That silenced them completely. They lay, taking in the enormity of it, and then Henry sniffed.

One sniff was all he allowed himself, but Erin’s heart wrenched. Tigger had been given to the boys by one of their first foster families-a sort of sop-to-conscience-at-taking-them-back-to-the-orphanage gift-and they’d been so young they’d mixed him up with leaving their mother and their bothers and sisters. Tigger had become their only constant, a toy never fought over, never discussed, but simply there.

Apart from each other he was all they had-and now they’d lost him.

Erin knew enough to acknowledge he was irreplaceable. She thought of the impossibility of saying they’d find another Tigger, and she simply didn’t know what else to say.

She was saved by a knock. There was a light rap on the door and it opened to reveal Matt. Unlike Erin and the boys, Matt was fully dressed in his farmer’s moleskins and khaki shirt. A sticking plaster lay across the burn on his forehead, but otherwise he looked completely unscathed. He was bronzed, strong, capable and ready for the day’s work.

‘Good morning,’ he said gravely enough, but his deep brown eyes twinkled at the sight of the three in the bed. ‘That’s a single bed and you guys look squashed. Didn’t you find the other two? Is something the matter?’

‘We just came into Erin’s bed now-to keep her company,’ William said with dignity, casting a doubtful look at his twin. Henry was looking dangerously close to tears, and the twins’ code of conduct decreed it didn’t do to show emotion in front of strange adults.

They’d learned early to keep themselves to themselves.

But after one knowing look at Henry, Matt mercifully changed the subject, seeming not to notice the one errant tear sliding down Henry’s cheek. He chose the one subject that might make them think of something other than loss.

‘I’ve made pancakes and I thought you might like them in bed. How about it?’

‘Pancakes?’ William said, resolutely putting aside the vision of a burning Tigger. ‘I…I guess…’

They were very upset about something, Matt realised, but he could only go on from here.

‘I’ll bring in a tray, shall I?’

‘Yes, please.’ Erin was so grateful she could have hugged him. How had he guessed that the last thing they needed was a formal breakfast? ‘That’d be lovely.’

‘Coming right up.’ He left them to it, and Erin never knew what an effort it had been for him not to sit down and hug the lot of them.

It had cost to get them breakfast.

Matt had come in from the paddocks to find his weekly housekeeper, Mrs Gregory, hard at work. He had a cow in calf in the home paddock and, after a sleepless night, he’d decided he’d be happier checking on her than staring at the ceiling. His cow now safely delivered, he’d come in to find Mrs Gregory already sniffing lugubriously over the marks on the carpet.

‘Charlotte rang me,’ she said before he could say a word. ‘I knew how it’d be, so I decided it was my Christian duty to get here early. Those dratted children. You saved them, didn’t you? Why you had to offer to take them in…’

‘I guess it was my Christian duty,’ he told her and she didn’t even smile.

‘Hmmph. Those twins. And that mother of theirs. Oh, you don’t need to tell me a thing about that woman. The whole of Bay Beach knew her before she disappeared with the last of her string of men. If ever there was a no-good, two-timing-’

‘Hey, you can’t place the sins of the mother onto the children,’ Matt interceded. ‘She threw the twins out.’

‘Which is saying a lot about the children,’ Mrs Gregory said soundly. ‘That woman’s a slut, and if even she couldn’t put up with them…’

Hmm. ‘Mrs Gregory, how would you like a holiday,’ he said thoughtfully. This wasn’t boding well for the future at all. ‘Erin’s here and, with two adults, she and I can surely do the housework.’

‘She won’t. She won’t even notice if the house is a mess. I know her kind.’

‘She will.’ His lips tightened. Heck, his mother and Charlotte and their set had truly branded Erin. Just because of her father…

He finally wrung pancakes out of Mrs Gregory-by throwing in a few more Christian duties and an agreement to take an extended break for as long as they could manage without her-and now he carried the tray toward the bedroom with the air of one who’d achieved a major triumph. When he saw the grateful smile in Erin’s eyes the feeling grew, so his chest felt a whole six inches broader.

There was still something wrong, though. Something majorly wrong. The twins were polite-sort of-about the pancakes but they sat up in bed with the pancake tray on the table between them and they poked at Matt’s offering as if the end of the world was nigh.

‘You didn’t yell at them because of the fire?’ he asked Erin, frowning as she crossed to the window with her pancake plate. She’d done it as a deliberate ruse to talk to him without the twins hearing and it worked. He’d figured it out and followed her. Now they stood with their backs to the twins, as if the cattle grazing in the paddocks was taking all their attention.

She took umbrage at his suggestion. Yell at the twins? ‘Of course I didn’t,’ she told him. ‘They feel dreadful enough without me yelling at them. What do you think I am?’

‘Far too kind,’ he told her promptly, and she smiled but in an absent sort of way as she munched her pancake-which told him her thoughts were still on the twins.

‘I’m not.’ She glanced back at the twins. ‘Sometimes I feel I’m not kind enough. They need so much…’

‘Why the sad faces? Are they still scared?’

‘No.’ She shrugged, After all this man had done for them it seemed stupid to let him see how upset they were about one small Tigger, but there was something in his eyes that said he really wanted to know. He cared. ‘It’s just that they had a stuffed toy that they loved. They’ve now realised it’s been burned.’

He stared.

Then…

‘Wait right here,’ he told them soundly, and without another word he strode from the room and left them gaping after him.

And then he was back, and in his hands-at arm’s length because it was so disgusting-he carried the blackest, filthiest soggiest Tigger they’d ever seen. But it was…

‘Tigger!’

Erin barely got the word out before the boys were out of their beds, upending milk as they went and heading straight for Matt. They clung to what he held out to them-one to Tigger’s snout, one to Tigger’s tail, and all the grime in the world wouldn’t have made one ounce of difference to the love that shone from their eyes.

Their Tigger…

Erin was looking at him as if he’d produced a miracle, and the feeling was just great. His expanding chest almost popped the buttons on his shirt. ‘How on earth did you rescue Tigger?’

‘I never meant to,’ he told her and managed a shamefaced grin. ‘They thrust it at me in the fire and, to be honest, I thought it was a dead cat. I just shoved it down my shirt and kept going.’

‘A dead cat!’ Her lips twitched. ‘And do you always go around shoving dead cats down your shirt during house fires?’

‘Before anything else. They’re excellent for curing warts,’ he told her. ‘All you need is a graveyard and a full moon. Everyone tries to find them, but this time I got there first.’

He was ridiculous. She chuckled and suddenly things were just fine. The twins were inspecting their disgusting toy with relish. It appeared that the grime and general dishevelment made not the least difference to their affection.

How could it?

Matt grinned, trying to ignore the warm feeling Erin’s pleasure was giving him. ‘Doc Emily deserves some credit, too,’ he admitted. ‘She saw it when she was listening to my breathing and told me to hang on to it. Then I forgot it-until I took a shower, opened my shirt and it fell out. The damned thing nearly gave me a heart attack.’

‘I imagine it might.’ Erin’s smile was a mile wide. ‘We’re so lucky you didn’t toss it away.’

‘I could have.’ Matt’s eyes were resting on the twins. They’d sat on their shared bed again, one end of Tigger on each of their knees. ‘But by last night both Doc Emily and I had an inkling that whatever could be saved might be important.’

‘You have no idea how important,’ she said warmly. ‘Oh, Matt…’ Her eyes were glowing.

Whew! Her eyes were doing something to his insides which was truly spectacular. He needed to be grounded here.

He was.

The admiration session was interrupted before his chest buttons could finally pop from the strain. Just as Matt was starting to feel very peculiar indeed, another knock sounded through the room.

Visitors were coming thick and fast this morning, Erin thought, but what the heck. They had Tigger. With Tigger, they could save the world! They could cope with anything.

But it was Charlotte, and suddenly Erin wasn’t so sure if anything included Charlotte.

She was amazingly early, Erin thought, and then she glanced down at her wrist-watch and stared in disbelief. It was after nine o’clock. Help!

And she looked like this!

‘Charlotte,’ Matt said warily, and the tone of his voice summed up all of their feelings.

Charlotte gave him her most sympathetic smile-heroine racing to save hero!-and then she moved straight to practicalities.

‘Mrs Gregory told me you were feeding the children their breakfast in the bedroom,’ she said briskly. ‘Why on earth don’t you do it in the kitchen? At least you can wash the floor there.’

And then she looked again-and saw Tigger. She physically flinched.

‘What…what on earth is that?’

‘It’s Tigger,’ Erin said, and beamed her joy with the world. Even Charlotte couldn’t burst her bubble this morning. ‘He’s a bit fire-stained. As we all are. Hi, Charlotte. Isn’t it the most wonderful morning?’

Erin’s greeting startled Charlotte out of her composure. ‘I suppose it is.’ She looked Erin up and down-aristocrat to a low life form somewhere under the level of porriwiggle. ‘What on earth are you wearing?’

‘At a guess, I’m modelling old Mr Harbiset’s hand-me-down dressing gown,’ Erin told her, refusing absolutely to be ruffled. ‘He’s the only local I can think of who’s fat enough to own a dressing gown this size, and Mrs Harbiset’s always giving things to charity.’ She gave a fast twirl, ballerina-like, and the flannelette dressing gown swung out almost full circle around her bare legs. ‘Isn’t it great? You think the style will take off?’

Charlotte somehow managed a smile. Then she turned to face Matt, excluding Erin and the twins nicely from her ordered world.

‘Matt, darling, I’ve talked to my parents,’ she told him sweetly, in a tone that said she’d solved all his troubles. ‘And they’ve been terrific. They say the orphanage can have the use of the stables until the Home is rebuilt.’

‘The stables?’ Matt blinked and Erin raised her eyebrows politely. Stables?

‘I don’t mean the stables proper, silly,’ Charlotte said, giving him the benefit of her delicious, tinkling laugh. She threw the twins a look that said she wasn’t so sure that stables wouldn’t be the best place for them, but then went bravely on. ‘No. There’s living quarters directly above the horse boxes. We used them for the men when I housed all my horses there, but now I’ve moved out they’re empty. They’re still quite liveable.’

‘That’s very generous of your parents,’ Matt said, thinking it through. ‘But the living quarters were built for use by the stable lads, weren’t they?’

‘Yes.’

‘Then they’re pretty basic.’

‘Yes, but it’s almost summer.’ Charlotte beamed. ‘There’s a little kitchenette and a dormitory and a bathroom. Everything they need.’

‘One dormitory?’

‘Yes.’

‘So Erin would be sharing the dormitory with the children?’

‘That’s what she does, sweetheart.’ Charlotte gave Erin her very nicest smile. Her beam widened, all her problems solved and she reached out to take Matt’s hand. ‘She won’t mind, darling. Caring for children is her job. Isn’t it, Erin?’

Hmm. Erin might have continued to twirl but she had also been listening. And thinking-fast.

‘It is,’ Erin said thankfully. ‘And I’m very grateful. But I’m afraid I can’t accept any offers before our director comes down here and sorts things out. Meanwhile, if Matt’s offer still stands…’

‘When’s your director coming?’

‘This morning, I imagine,’ Erin said dryly. She glanced at her watch. Tom Burrows had been in Sydney this week, but she’d imagine news of the fire would have him down here by lunch time. ‘I’ll pass on your offer to him and he’ll come out and see your parents-and the stables.’

‘Hey, hang on a minute!’ Matt wasn’t having a bar of this. ‘The kids are staying here.’

‘You must see that’s impossible.’ Charlotte was still at her sweetest.

‘Why?’

She lowered her voice, just enough to make the twins aware that they were being discussed without them hearing.

‘Because they’re juvenile delinquents, that’s why. They burned down the last place they stayed in. Heaven knows what they’d do here.’

But that was enough for Erin. Her hackles had well and truly risen. Juvenile delinquents? At seven years old?

If she didn’t get rid of this woman soon she’d lose her temper-which maybe wasn’t such a good idea, she thought, as she’d really, really like to stay here for a while. This set-up was perfect for the twins. They had a farm where they could be relatively isolated from the rest of the community.

If Tom agreed-and he surely would-then she could stay here, too. The farm was beautiful, nestled right on the river mouth and overlooking the sea. It’d be like a beach holiday. There’d be no other children for her to look after-the Homes couldn’t ask Matt to look after any more-and they’d have her sole attention.

Which was just fine by her. These were badly traumatised children, and most of the trauma had been inflicted well before last night.

‘Matt, would you mind if you continued this conversation with Charlotte outside?’ she managed. Juvenile delinquents indeed! ‘I…I need to get dressed.’

‘I noticed your donated clothes pile is still out in the hall,’ Charlotte said pointedly. ‘You’ll have to go and forage. Unless you’re planning on wearing what you had on last night.’ She smiled.

‘Charlotte!’

Whoops! She’d gone too far. Charlotte’s self-preservation instincts surfaced then, as a look on Matt’s face told her that he wasn’t seeing things as she was. And this crazy woman wasn’t any real competition. Matt was only being charitable, after all, and it behoved Charlotte to appear the same.

‘I’ll fetch you something, shall I?’ she asked. She looked at Erin, assessing. ‘You’re a couple of sizes larger than me or I’d lend you something of mine.’

‘I’m quite happy with our charity pile,’ Erin said through gritted teeth. Anonymous charity, that was. Not Charlotte charity. ‘I’ll fetch something myself.’ She pulled open the door and stopped short.

Last night, when they’d come here their toes had sunk into the lush white carpet. It had still been here and squish-able when she’d come to bed.

It still was now-but there was plastic over the top.

Lines of plastic. Erin recognised it. She’d seen it last at the home of a super-fussy aunt. Purchased by the yard, the stuff was transparent and it had tiny pointy teeth on the back to hold it to the carpet. People used it to keep homes immaculate against any who might sully their precious flooring, and it felt just horrid.

Urk! What was the point of having carpet if one had to look at it under plastic and walk on the coldness of the stuff?

She took a deep breath and counted to ten under her breath. She had to take this in her stride. Okay, it was insulting, but if Matt wanted to protect his home, then who could blame him?

But it wasn’t Matt who’d laid the plastic. ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ he demanded, staring. He stalked out into the passage and stared some more. The plastic tracked off in both directions, a path for anything unclean.

‘I had heaps stored at home,’ Charlotte said, not hearing the low growl of displeasure in his voice. ‘I bought it when I went overseas last year and my grandparents borrowed my house. Grandpa is such a grub-he just refuses to take his boots off and Grandma doesn’t insist. It was just the thing, I thought, and it worked beautifully but now Grandpa’s gone and I don’t need it. So I brought it over.’

She sounded immensely pleased with herself-but Matt had had enough.

‘Well, you can just roll it all up and take it back where it came from,’ he managed, embarrassed to his back teeth. Hell, of all the insensitive, unwelcoming acts. What would Erin think of this? Charlotte might be gorgeous and a great hostess and cook, but sometimes she was impossible. She really was just like his mother!

But…

‘Um…no.’ It was Erin.

‘No?’ They both turned to stare at her.

‘Leave it. The kids and I will hardly notice.’ The kids certainly wouldn’t. A floor was a floor as far as the twins were concerned and Charlotte was right. This way Erin wouldn’t sully Matt’s precious carpet, and she wouldn’t have to worry about the twins doing it either. Which was one less worry-and she had enough worries as it was.

But Matt was implacable. ‘The plastic goes,’ Matt told her. ‘Now.’

‘Matt, it’s fine.’

‘Erin, it’s not!’ His temper was rising now, and there were memories flooding back that were making everything worse. His mother standing at the kitchen door yelling at his father in the voice of a fishwife. ‘Get those boots off right now or I’ll walk out and never come back.’

It was her ultimate threat made over and over again, it had scared the young version of Matt stupid, and only later had he wondered whether maybe he and his father would have been a whole lot happier without her.

Which might be why he was still a bachelor.

So no, the plastic went. And the image of marriage that he’d had last night faded a little as well. Maybe he was meant to be a bachelor. He’d bought the ring, but he hadn’t done the asking.

But this was hardly the time for dredging up old memories and future plans. Now was the time to take the well-meaning but misguided Charlotte by the shoulders and steer her out of the room.

‘We’ll leave you in peace,’ he told Erin. ‘Charlotte, Erin’s right. We need to continue this discussion outside.’ He gave Erin and her crazy, wonderful dressing gown one last glance and then he propelled Charlotte outside.

‘I’m going into town,’ he told Erin over his shoulder as he left. Then he turned back to the lady he was propelling. ‘Charlotte, I could use some help. Do you have time to come with me?’

Charlotte was surprised but instantly gratified. ‘Of course I do, sweetheart. When do you want to go?’

‘Now,’ he told her. ‘Erin, just make yourself and the twins at home. Mrs Gregory will be here until lunch time, so anything you need, just ask. Charlotte and I will probably eat in town so I’ll see you mid-afternoon.’

Charlotte visibly sighed with relief. This was much better. A lunch date with Matt, with Erin nicely excluded. She turned and gave Erin her sweetest smile, because she could afford to be charitable to one who was so clearly a charity case-and then she allowed herself to be propelled from the room by the man she intended to marry.

There was no threat here, she decided.

There was no threat at all.