Adopted: Twins!

CHAPTER EIGHT

AS RESTAURANTS went, Charlotte would have rated this one as entirely satisfactory.

Show time was Lassendale’s biggest two weeks of the year. The hotel Charlotte was staying in was five star, and the restaurant chefs had pulled out all the stops to impress a clientele which, for these two weeks, was international and wealthy. Therefore Matt-who’d packed a suit as he always did, for business meetings with those who were interested in what Cecil could provide-escorted Charlotte into the dim recesses of the dining room and he knew he was in for a gastronomical treat.

He wasn’t disappointed. The waiter took one look at the sleek and svelte Charlotte and her handsome companion, and he ushered them to the best table, gave them the best service and they were treated to the best food Lassendale could offer.

Matt had an appetiser of some sort of tiny goat’s cheese souffle. Entrée was ginger chilli prawns cooked to perfection, and then steak…

Steak!

Cecil.

Matt found his thoughts wandering right back to his bull-and to the people who’d be guarding him. All through appetiser and entrée he’d fought to keep his attention on Charlotte’s small talk, but he could ignore the pull of his conscience no longer.

‘Maybe we should give sweets a miss,’ he told Charlotte tensely. ‘I’m a bit unhappy about Cecil.’

He wasn’t. He just…

He just didn’t know, but it didn’t seem right that Erin was back there and he was here.

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Charlotte gave a soft laugh and put her hand over his. Curiously the motion made him flinch. It was all he could do not to pull away, and the sensation was starting to worry him. This was the woman he intended marrying, he told himself. To flinch was ridiculous.

He forced himself to return the pressure of her hand as she continued.

‘Darling, Erin does come from solid farming stock. I remember she used to take her father’s herd droving through the drought years when she was little more than a child herself. My parents were horrified, but I gather she coped very well.’

She had, too, Matt thought. Droving… He’d forgotten that.

Matt let Charlotte chatter on, but his thoughts flew elsewhere. In his late teens there’d been a drought which had left every farm in the district low on feed. Farms like Matt’s and Charlotte’s, where there’d been money to spare, had brought in food from interstate. But the Douglas family hadn’t been in that position and Jack Douglas, bereft from the loss of his children’s mother, simply didn’t care.

That had been the end of Erin’s formal schooling, he remembered. With seven siblings to feed and clothe, she couldn’t afford to let the farm go under. Aged all of fifteen years old, she’d taken herself out of school and driven her cattle around the dusty district roads, letting them graze on any roadside where there’d been any growth at all.

It was a desperate measure to keep her breeding stock alive. Somehow she’d managed it, and managed it alone, though he still didn’t know how.

And he remembered his mother’s fury when she discovered his father had taken Erin a pile of hay to let her stay in the same place for a while.

‘If the drought keeps up much longer we’ll need it ourselves,’ she’d hissed. ‘You don’t have to feel sorry for every destitute little tramp in the district…’

Destitute little tramp…

He looked into Charlotte’s flushed face and he knew she’d felt exactly the same. Erin had been very much alone then, and she was very much alone now.

‘I’ll go back,’ he said flatly, and the hand in his suddenly stilled.

‘Matt, don’t be stupid. I’d like sweets, and there’s dancing afterwards.’

‘But I have responsibilities.’ And then he looked up as a man he recognised appeared in the entrance. Bradley Moore. Of course. Bradley always stayed in the finest establishment, and he was always looking for someone to talk with about his horses. Charlotte was just the woman. She even liked horses! He lifted an arm. ‘Hi, Bradley. Over here!’

‘Matt!’

‘You like Bradley, don’t you?’

To his amazement, Charlotte blushed from the tip of her manicured toenails to the roots of her sleekly chignoned hair. ‘Yes, but…’

‘There you go, then,’ he said amiably. Why had he never seen how suited these two were? ‘Bradley, I need to go back to my bull. Could you keep Charlotte entertained on my behalf?’

‘Why…’ Bradley, the sort of half-wit who couldn’t decide whether to look like a Really Important Person or a half-baked kipper, looked stunned but incredulously delighted. ‘Of course.’

‘Of course.’ Matt beamed. ‘I’ll leave you be, then. Will you come out and watch Cecil in the grand parade tomorrow, Charlotte?’

‘I might,’ she said peevishly. She was seriously annoyed. ‘It depends on what Bradley’s doing.’

‘Right ho,’ said Matt, with all the amiability in the world, and made his escape.

They hadn’t missed him a bit. That much was clear the moment he walked into the cattle pavilion.

While he’d been wining and dining Charlotte, the cattlemen had set up a barbecue. The aroma of seared sausages and steak hit him the moment he entered the doors, and he thought fleeting of the grossly overpriced steak back at the hotel and wondered how much better it had been.

A hundred bucks better? he wondered, and he knew darned well it wasn’t.

He’d missed out on sweets back at the hotel, but he needn’t have worried. The moment he was sighted, he was handed a plate of pavlova.

‘Get that into you, Matt McKay,’ a cheerful young matron told him. ‘You almost missed out. And then get into a set. Your family have been at it an hour or more, and if you don’t join in soon they’ll have danced their legs off without you.’

His family…

It was the strangest feeling, but that was exactly how it felt. He stood on the sidelines absently spooning in pavlova-which was a shame because the crisp meringue and the gorgeous sun-ripened strawberries deserved all his attention-and he watched his ‘family’ dance.

‘Swing your partners, round we go.’

The square dancing was at a frantic pace. One of the cattlemen had produced a fiddle, another a mouth organ, and the centre of the pavilion had been cleared for the dancers. Now it was a mass of whirling, laughing, cattlemen and women, teenagers, kids and even the odd dog.

And Erin and her twins were in the middle of everything. They were part of a set, the twins were obeying the caller’s instructions as if their lives depended on it, and Erin…

Erin was being swung from one appreciative cattleman to another. And what she was wearing…

It was the new dress she’d bought in town with Shanni and it was gorgeous! All the colours of the rainbow, with a full circle skirt that flew out like a whirling, flaming hoop around her, it was a dress that had to be seen to be believed. Her hair was flying free, her gorgeous blue eyes were sparkling with laughter and her face was flushed with exertion.

She looked so desirable that it almost killed Matt to stay on the sidelines and eat his pavlova. But to join the set you needed a partner, and there were no spare women. Except…

Except the pavlova lady who’d just handed over her last piece of pavlova. With a whoop of triumph, Matt cast off his coat and tie, seized the unsuspecting lady and whirled her onto the dance floor before she had time to object.

Now it was just a matter of working his way up the line to Erin…

‘Hey, William, Matt’s here!’ Henry was doing his darnedest to whirl around a very fat lady of advancing years-and not doing such a bad job of it either. The lady was whirling as required, though Henry, trying valiantly to clutch her around the waist, merely had an armful of thigh, and her breast was threatening to crush him at any moment.

William was doing better. He was paired at the moment with a young lady not much older-or bigger-than he was, but the responsibility of the occasion didn’t give him time to respond. There was a twirly bit coming up and he had to get it right…

But Erin had heard.

‘Matt!’ She was flying past him as she threaded in and out of the dancers. Darn! Matt hadn’t realised this wasn’t a ‘change your partners’ set. She was threading and so was a stud of a cattleman who he didn’t recognise but disliked on sight. ‘What have you done with Charlotte?’ she called, and he dredged up a smile.

‘Left her with Bradley.’

Her eyebrows hit the roof. She gave that delicious chuckle and then someone else swung her away, she flew back to the arms of her cattleman and she was lost to him.

There was no more contact then for about five minutes, until it was time for Matt and his partner to take their turn threading to the lead. Then, as he whirled Erin around to change to the other side of the set, she laughed up into his face.

‘You must have the utmost faith in her,’ she teased, and he glowered.

‘Why wouldn’t I?’

‘With your bank balance?’ Still she was laughing. ‘No, indeed.’

And then Erin was gone, leaving him to glower some more and then regain his composure as he joined his partner again and found she was looking up at him in mute enquiry.

She really was bouncy and pretty herself, he told himself. The twins were having the time of their lives and the whole pavilion was having fun. Even the cattle were watching with bovine approval.

There was no earthly reason-or even a logical one-for a man to sulk just because Erin was dancing with someone else. He gave himself a huge mental shrug and decided to have fun.

Which he did.

They danced on. The music went on into the night. The twins decided it was more fun whooping around the cattle stalls with other kids than being squeezed from bosom to bosom. The cattlemen ended up with their wives or lovers. And Matt…

Matt finally ended up with Erin. They danced on. The music slowed, and maybe he should have stopped, but Erin felt sort of nice, with her hands in his, then sort of closer, her breasts against his chest, his mouth nuzzling her soft curls, the scent of some faint perfume drifting upward and making him feel…

That was enough of that! Enough! This was tantalising, unwise, unplanned, thoughtless, and hopeless.

The music stopped as the musicians finally ran out of puff, and Erin and Matt were left looking at each other in the middle of the dance floor-cum-cattle shed. They were still holding each other. Still sort of feeling…

They had twins!

As the music stopped, the kids in the pavilion returned reluctantly to their respective parents. Most were heading off with one or both parents to a hotel, but a few were camping with the cattle tenders, as Matt and Erin were.

‘It’s time to go to bed,’ William announced importantly for what must surely be the first time in his life he had ever asked voluntarily to go to bed. He was head-butting Erin’s thigh to get her attention. Totally unaware of the currents of sexual awareness between the two adults, he was onto the next thing on the twins’ agenda. Which was sleeping in the straw.

‘We need to set up our beds,’ Henry told them, and reluctantly, Erin’s hands were released and the twins were included in between them. There was a sandwich of adults with kid filling, and the frisson of warmth and linkage remained the same. It felt so right!

‘So we do,’ Matt said, but his eyes were still on Erin. There were matters here that were unresolved.

And that had to remain unresolved, he thought fiercely, forcing himself to remember Charlotte back at the hotel and all the logical reasons why he’d decided to marry her. Charlotte was a sensible choice, he told himself harshly. Good grief! If he married because of a spur-of-the-moment attraction, he could have married fifteen years ago, and where would he be now? Burdened with school fees, chaos, change to his mother’s lovely, ordered house…

Marry with your head, not your heart, his mother had said over and over, until it had become almost a mantra.

There was more of his mother in him than he thought, he decided ruefully. Fifty-fifty gene split? Yeah, there he had it. He was half his father who loved the farm and didn’t mind a little chaos occasionally, and half his mother who liked order and beauty and…

‘Hey, Matt, we’re just organising somewhere to sleep.’ Erin’s voice was chiding him gently, and her blue eyes were full of laughter. She could see exactly what he was thinking! Damn her!

‘Do you think we’ll all fit in with Cecil?’ William was asking anxiously, and somehow Matt tore his mind from where it definitely wanted to go and forced himself to think of sleeping arrangements.

And there were dangers there, too.

‘Of course we’ll fit,’ Erin said soundly. ‘We just have to persuade Cecil to move to the back of his stall.’

Hmm. Easier said than done.

The stalls weren’t huge, but they were all the space allocated to them which was why at most, one or two people were bedding down beside each animal. If Cecil lay width-ways at the back of the stall the thing was possible, but if he’d done that his rear would be against one wooden division and his nose would be pressed against the other. Cecil was nothing if not large!

So Cecil, being the sensible animal he was, was lying full length on the hay, his nose poking out onto the walkway so he could gaze his fill at the dancers. He was one sleepy bovine, and he looked as if his intentions to shift were at about nil.

‘I suppose if we all shoved,’ Erin said doubtfully and Matt grimaced.

‘Yep. You and a two-ton crane might do it.’

Which left two strips of hay three feet wide on either side of Cecil, stretching back the eight feet or so to the rear of the stall.

‘We can take a twin each and sleep on either side,’ Matt said slowly. But it wasn’t the arrangement his gut wanted-and he might have known it didn’t suit the twins either.

‘We want to sleep together.’ Of course.

‘You will be sleeping together,’ Matt told them without much hope of being heard. ‘Except instead of a pillow between you there’ll be Cecil.’

‘We can’t share Tigger. And Cecil’s as big as a mountain.’ Henry put a finger on his nose. ‘See? He’s up to here.’

Erin choked, and Matt frowned her down. Didn’t the woman realise there was no alternative?

Apparently she didn’t.

‘Of course you must sleep together,’ she told them. ‘You can’t cut Tigger in half. So, into the bathroom, into your pyjamas and then into these wonderful sleeping bags. Now!’ It was her command voice and the boys responded accordingly.

‘Okay.’ They hesitated just long enough for William to ask; ‘But where will you sleep?’

‘Matt and I will top and tail on the other side, of course,’ she said-as if the matter had never been in doubt.

‘Top and tail?’ Matt was frowning and she grinned.

‘Easy to see you haven’t slept in a family with eight children,’ she told him. ‘You fit two in a bed this way, and it minimises fights. It doesn’t stop them entirely-’ another grin ‘-but I’m sure we can fight quietly. You sleep with your head near Cecil’s head and I sleep with my head near Cecil’s butt. We’ll be cosy as two bugs in a rug. The only thing is…’ She looked down at her toes and grimaced.

‘Yes?’ he said resignedly. This woman was nuts. Nice, but definitely nuts!

‘After all that dancing and carting cattle around all day, maybe you’d better not take your boots off, Mr McKay. If there’s one thing I can’t bear sleeping with, it’s a man with stinking socks!’

Matt’s socks weren’t the problem.

There wasn’t room for Matt’s camp bed or Erin’s blowup mattress-not both-but the hay was thick and fresh. Matt hauled his sleeping bag up to his chin, tossed his pillow beside Cecil’s head and lay down. Erin did the same, lying in reverse, but nobly Matt had left her the side against the wood partition.

On the other side of Cecil, the twins snuggled in with plenty of room. Their noses barely reached Cecil’s neck, and their toes didn’t reach his rear end. Once assured Erin and Matt were settled for the night right on the other side of Cecil, they closed their eyes on their shared pillow, snuggled Tigger and were out for the count. Two exhausted but perfectly content children.

As Erin was content. Matt’s legs were distracting, and she was absurdly aware of the presence of his body so close to her, but this was a way of sleeping she’d been brought up with. She could cope.

‘Erin?’ It was a hoarse whisper and Matt’s toes nudged her shoulder to gain her attention. He had it!

‘Yep?’ She had to whisper back. The entire pavilion was settled to sleep now, and the lights had been turned low. Cattle and cattle carers alike were purposefully sleeping.

Not Matt. ‘Erin, Cecil’s chewing.’

She choked on a bubble of laughter. ‘He’s what?’

‘He’s chewing.’

She thought about that, and nodded into the dimness. ‘I wouldn’t worry. Cattle do.’

‘Not right in my ear, they don’t.’

‘Take away his feed, then.’ Honestly!

‘He’s not chewing his feed,’ Matt told her, and there was a trace of desperation in his whisper. ‘At a guess, he’s chewing yesterday’s feed, or even…’ His toes nudged her shoulder again as if to emphasise the awfulness of it. ‘By the smell of it, even the day before’s!’

‘Are you saying,’ Erin asked, trying not to laugh out loud, ‘that your champion bull has halitosis?’

‘If halitosis means breath that stinks like rancid garlic, then yes,’ Matt told her, forgetting to whisper and being shushed from about six different stalls for his pains. ‘That’s exactly what I’m saying. And he keeps trying to lick my face.’

‘He loves you.’

‘Oh, right.’

‘You want to swap sides so I’m against Cecil?’

‘All that means is that he’ll lean over your feet to lick my face.’

‘So…’

‘So I’m shifting!’ Matt was nothing if not a man of decision, and some decisions were easy. Cecil or Erin? Erin won every time. He rose, sleeping bag and all, hopped until his feet were with Erin’s and then flopped down again onto the straw.

Which meant that now his face was level with Cecil’s tail. And Erin’s nose.

There was no room for two pillows. They had to share.

Uh, oh… Maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea after all.

The intimacy which had been building during the night had dispersed a little while putting the twins to bed and settling themselves. Now however it slammed back like a lightning bolt. Unconsciously Erin found herself hauling her sleeping bag zipper higher, right to her chin. As if that could protect her from what she was feeling…

‘Hey, I’m not into seduction mode here,’ Matt told her, seeing her movement and trying to make light of it. ‘It’s just if I have a choice of being kissed by you or by Cecil…’

Being kissed?

He’d meant to say licked!

No. That wasn’t right either. Hell, his whole body was going rigid with the strain of having her so close.

‘You prefer me to Cecil?’ Like Matt, Erin was trying desperately to keep things light. She chuckled and rolled over to face him-which was another mistake as she hadn’t realised how close he was. His nose was inches from hers. Major mistake!

‘You…’ Her voice cracked and it was only after a couple of desperate swallows that she made it work again. ‘You mean it? Matt, it’s the very sweetest thing to say, but I’m very sure you don’t mean it. One of the guys I was dancing with tonight told me what Cecil is worth. That’d make ten of me and then some.’

Maybe.

‘But only one of Charlotte,’ she teased gently. ‘She’s a lady who knows her worth.’

‘She is…special,’ Matt said grudgingly and tried like crazy to conjure up Charlotte’s image. The image refused to be conjured. All he could see was a smattering of freckles, one pert nose and gorgeous, laughing eyes. And lips that were so soft…

Hell!

‘She’s a lucky lady, too,’ Erin whispered warmly into the dark, seemingly unaware of the sensations he was feeling. ‘To be marrying you. You’re one fantastic guy, Matt McKay. To have given the twins today… It was just great.’

‘And it’ll stay great as long as Cecil doesn’t roll over and squash the pair of them.’

He must stop looking at her lips. He must!

‘As if he would,’ Erin said indignantly. ‘As well as expensive, he’s also intelligent.’

‘He is at that.’

And it was the truth. Matt’s pride in his bull was almost overwhelming. Cecil was the result of years and years of careful planning and selective breeding. Up until now, he’d been Matt’s pride and joy. He still was! But up until now, Cecil was the first thing he thought of when he woke in the morning, and his last thought as he slept at night.

And if he’d had to choose between Cecil and Charlotte, the choice would be obvious and absolute.

Cecil or Erin, though…

No! This was ridiculous. He liked a simple and ordered existence, he thought desperately. He wanted an existence where he farmed and Charlotte kept the house and his social life nicely ordered.

That was how he’d been raised, with his mother and father living together but in separate worlds, and that was the way he believed the world worked. As it would continue to work.

Except…there was this woman right before his nose!

But this woman came with complications, and they weren’t just minor hiccups. They were major. She came with a pair of troubled twins, and he just knew wherever Erin went it wouldn’t be just the twins that’d follow.

Get involved with Erin Douglas and he knew there’d be more kids, his and others, every lame duck in the district, every hard luck story…

And the boundaries between house and farm would cease to exist. He knew it. There’d be a riot of kids and dogs inside and out, and Erin herself wouldn’t know her place. She’d be out heaving hay or grooming cows or…or somewhere he couldn’t get away from her.

Like now. He was trapped two inches from her cute nose, and hell, all he wanted to do was kiss her.

‘Would you stop looking at me like a rabbit caught in a floodlight?’ she said suddenly, and there was no way he could escape the gentle mockery in her tone. Could she really know what he was thinking?

Apparently, yes. ‘Matt McKay, you are very, very cute, but you are an engaged person and I am not the least bit interested. I take the lust I’m looking at in your eyes right now as a compliment, I am exceedingly grateful for all you’ve done for me and the twins but I want nothing more from you than enough space to go to sleep. So you can stop looking at me like I’m going to lunge at your body any minute and you can go to sleep. Now!’

‘Hey, I’m not expecting anything!’

‘And neither am I,’ she said firmly. ‘So there’s nothing to stop either of us from sleeping.’ And without another word she rolled over and put her face to the wall.

He rolled over, too, which left his nose pressed against Cecil’s butt. The comparison to what he’d just been looking at was ridiculous.

And her butt was against his. There was simply no room for it not to be.

Sleep? Ha! All he could feel was her. All he could think of was her. She was so…

So right out of his league! In every single way he could think of.

As for Erin? She’d said she was going to sleep, but it wasn’t quite that easy. He was too darned close. Too darned male.

Too…too everything!

‘I am not interested in Matt McKay,’ she told herself fiercely. Not. Not. Not!

But he was the most gorgeous male she’d ever slept with in her life! That wasn’t saying much, she thought ruefully. Erin had always been so involved with her kids that men usually ran a mile, sensing that commitment with Erin meant commitment to a whole lot more.

But Matt was certainly gorgeous.

And he was so darned nice! He was so nice that she wanted to turn right over and…

‘That’s enough of that,’ she whispered into the dark. ‘Go to sleep!’