From Waif To His Wife

CHAPTER THREE

THEY didn’t make it to Manly-they didn’t manage to leave Horseshoe Bay.

Maisie started to clear up her late lunch, waiting expectantly to hear the yacht’s motor fire, which it did, only to be cut off after a few minutes and without them moving.

She glanced expectantly at Rafe as he came downstairs, to see him looking annoyed.

‘Trouble?’ she hazarded.

‘Yep, the motor’s overheating.’ He started to roll up a section of carpet in the saloon and she realised he was going into the engine room through the floorboards. ‘I haven’t been out on her for ages, and that’s always a bad thing to do to boats.’

‘I know. A problem with the cooling system?’ she hazarded.

‘Most likely. You’re a mine of unexpected information, Maisie. How come you know so much about boats?’

She told him.

‘So that’s how you got onto the berth, I wondered.’ He heaved up a section of floorboard. ‘Could you put the engine-room light on from that switchboard?’ He pointed. ‘Could you also bring me the torch that’s in the locker under those stairs?’ He pointed again.

‘Aye, aye, skipper!’ She did it all, then sat down on the carpet to watch as he worked in the confined space.

After a time, she said as she heard a muffled oath, ‘You’ve found it?’

‘Yes. A broken fan belt. Listen, Maisie,’ he half rose out of the depths of the engine room, rubbing his hands on a piece of waste cotton, ‘this is going to take a bit of time to fix but I’ve got a spare. And we do have to fix it before we can move because what little wind there was has died right down, so there’s no chance of sailing.’

‘And fan belts can be the devil to fit,’ she said ruefully. ‘Just getting to them in that confined space can be a nightmare.’

‘You’re not wrong. So, we’ll either be late or we might not make it at all.’

‘Oh.’

He glanced at her. ‘On the other hand, you would be quite safe with me here overnight if that’s the way it pans out. If by any chance I can’t fit it, I can get help out of Manly tomorrow morning.’ He consulted his watch. ‘It’s probably too late to call anyone out now.’

Maisie looked at her own watch. It was close to five o’clock. ‘All right,’ she said cautiously, although it crossed her mind that no one in their right minds, no one who knew anything about boats anyway, would put themselves through a broken fan-belt situation for an ulterior motive.

‘OK,’ he heaved himself out of the engine room. ‘I need tools and I need some old clothes.’

‘I may be able to help. I often helped my father-handing him tools and so on, and sometimes, because my hands were a lot smaller than his, I could get into really tricky spots he couldn’t.’

‘Good on you, Ms Wallis,’ he murmured and went down to the forward cabin. He came back shortly wearing an old khaki shirt and clean but stained jeans and carrying a tool bag. And he lowered himself once again into the bowels of the boat.

The job took them several hours.

Maisie handed him tools, directed the torch light and once did manage to get her hand into a tricky spot to attach a socket spanner where he couldn’t reach.

Finally he asked her to start the motor and watch the temperature gauge like a hawk.

‘It’s normal,’ she called down the companionway after running the motor for about ten minutes.

‘Good. Switch off,’ he called back and stiffly and wearily climbed out. He stretched. ‘What I need is a drink. But thank you, Maisie,’ he added as she came down. ‘You make a pretty good mechanic’s mate!’

‘I’d say you make a pretty good mechanic,’ she returned. ‘Are you one?’

‘No, not by trade, but I’ve always enjoyed tinkering around with motors. Look, I don’t know about you, but I’d like a shower, a beer, something to eat then a good sleep.’ He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘You’re welcome to lock yourself into the forward cabin if you wish,’ he added. ‘I would offer you the aft berth but it doesn’t lock.’

Maisie considered that she’d only had about three hours’ sleep in the last twenty-four hours, and suddenly had to stifle a huge yawn. ‘All right,’ she conceded. ‘I’m just about out on my feet anyway but you go and have your shower-I’ll put together a snack.’

His lips twisted. ‘Yes, ma’am.’

But as Maisie heard the fresh-water pump click on, she stopped in her tracks as a mental picture of Rafe Sanderson in the shower hit her.

She could understand how stiff and cramped he must feel after a couple of hours of working in such a confined space. She could see him stretching luxuriously beneath the shower jet, she could picture the muscles of his broad shoulders flexing and the water streaming down his long body-and she could feel her own pulses starting to race.

Then, to her horror, in her mind’s eye she took her place beside him in the shower, pale and slight beside his bulk but with her breasts ripening as he lifted his hands and cupped them. As he smoothed his hands down her waist and cradled her hips and as she raised her hands and turned off the water, and offered him her mouth, flattening her body against his as she did so.

She closed her eyes and gritted her teeth to make the images go away, but nothing, for a few moments, could still the tremors of desire that ran through her…

This is getting out of hand, she thought as she made herself get to work in the galley then had to stop and take several deep breaths.

She broke off her thoughts and bit her lip, and as the water pump clicked off she forced herself to concentrate on the task at hand, not to mention banishing any more wild and wanton fantasies.

The snack she produced was along the same lines as the lunch he’d produced for her. And she poured a beer into a long glass for him, while she had an orange juice.

They ate companionably in the saloon. It was peaceful with the soft lap of water against the hull as they ate by lamplight and at one stage she asked him exactly what he did.

‘I’m a geologist and a mining engineer by profession and I know a bit about sheep.’

She looked at him consideringly. He’d changed again into jeans and a warm tartan shirt. His hair was still damp and bore comb marks. ‘I don’t suppose you do much of either these days.’

He rubbed his jaw. ‘You suppose right. Since my father died, I seem to spend most of my time travelling.’

‘Do you enjoy that?’

He laid his head back against the settee and shrugged. ‘It comes with the territory. It would not,’ he paused, and wondered why it had occurred to him, ‘go well with a settled family life at this stage.’

‘How so?’ she enquired. ‘I mean, you’re not getting any younger-’ She broke off and bit her lip.

He laughed outright. ‘Out of the mouths of babes? I may look ancient to you, Maisie, but I’m only thirty-four.’

‘I didn’t mean that,’ she assured him with a curious little spark of irony in her eyes as she thought-ancient? No, quite perfect, actually…‘I-um,’ she said hastily, ‘meant, well, it wouldn’t be a bad time to settle down, though, would it? And perhaps you need to-uh-learn to delegate a bit?’

He gazed at her, his grey eyes wry. Then, ‘No, in the normal course of events it wouldn’t be a bad idea to settle down and start a family. But my father embarked on a serious expansion programme for Sanderson Minerals a few months before he died, and it’s going to take me a couple of years at least to see it through. How about you?’

‘Me?’

‘What plans did you have before this cataclysmic event overtook you?’

She shrugged. ‘The usual, I suppose. To be honest, although I probably was a bit old still to be living with my parents, I enjoyed it, I enjoy my job and,’ she sighed, ‘things were sailing along for me. I really love travelling, I spent a month backpacking in Mexico last year and…’ She gestured.

‘Tell me.’

‘Well, I started a travel fund for later this year, but I’ll obviously have to have a rethink there.’

‘No particular grand plan?’

‘Yes, one. I would like to get my master’s degree in music. There’s no age limit on that, luckily, so I might still achieve it.’

‘Are you planning to cope on a single-mother’s allowance?’ he queried.

Maisie grimaced. ‘I have a few assets. I inherited my parents’ house and the boat, but their nest egg and my father’s superannuation will have to go to pay off the mortgage they took out to renovate the house. But,’ she paused then uttered the words she hadn’t been able to make herself say, ‘I will have something when I sell them both.’

‘Tell me something else,’ he said. ‘Did you believe you were madly in love with this guy?’

Maisie folded her napkin then unfolded it and finally nodded. ‘It all came at me…’ She moved her shoulders. ‘One moment I had my feet on the ground, the next I seemed to be flying and living and laughing again. It was extraordinary.’ She pushed the napkin away.

‘And how do you really feel about him now? I mean, obviously in the circumstances you’ve described, you’d be entitled to be angry and betrayed, but what say, hypothetically, I got him back for you?’ he queried.

Maisie took an unexpected breath. ‘I-I don’t know. It’s a bit like a dream now, and it’s hard to disassociate it now from…seeing how gullible I was. But I think it would be too late to recapture the-the magic. It could only be unwillingly, if he did somehow come back now.’

‘Maybe not.’ He paused. ‘What say he came back of his own accord because he found he couldn’t forget you or live without you?’

‘Do you know, I don’t think I’d believe him?’ she said barely audibly. ‘I don’t think I’d believe a word he said.’ She swallowed.

‘So you wouldn’t take him back because of the baby?’

She hesitated. ‘That wouldn’t be any good, would it? If I didn’t believe in him.’

He ran his fingers along the blue cut-velvet settee back and watched her narrowly. ‘You don’t sound especially gullible now.’

She made a steeple of her fingers then propped her chin on her fists. ‘If there’s one good thing that comes out of the school of hard knocks, it’s that you grow up rather fast. And you suddenly begin to believe all the warnings you dismissed so lightly about falling in love and men.’

His grey eyes rested on her thoughtfully for a long moment. He’d lent her another old khaki shirt for their endeavours with the fan belt. She’d since removed it and his sister’s cable-knit sweater was clean, but a little smear of grease she hadn’t noticed remained under her chin.

Otherwise, completely au naturel, with no make-up and with her cloud of curls, she was ethereally attractive in an understated way. Her skin was pink and white and perfect. Her rosy mouth was delicate and her green eyes were stunning.

As well, as he now knew, there was a perfect little figure beneath Sonia’s clothes with high, pointed breasts, a tiny waist and peachy hips.

He frowned suddenly. Why the hell he’d been moved to kiss her had been a mystery to him at the time. He had put it down to a salute for a mad act of bravery. He’d actually felt a surge of affection for her-so half drowned but still capable of yelling at him. He had regretted insulting her, but…

Had he also experienced a protective instinct?

If so, could he be falling into a trap she was building with gossamer strands around him?

Well, he decided and took the last sip of his beer, it mightn’t be a bad idea to keep that in mind against any further protective urges. Because he still wasn’t sure she wasn’t a great little actress.

‘I’m off to bed,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

‘Yes, please.’ She covered her mouth with both hands as she yawned again.

Horseshoe Bay was beautiful in the starlight.

The casuarinas along the wide curve of white beach were smudgy shadows and all the boats riding at anchor had their anchor lights reflecting in the glassy water.

Maisie was asleep in the forward berth, a comfortable cabin with two V bunks. She wore a pair of Sonia’s pyjamas, a bit too big for her-and she was dreaming. Weird dreams that prompted her to do something she thought she’d grown out of-sleepwalk.

It could have been, she was to think later, a day and night full of unusual events that produced the episode, but at the time she had no idea what she was doing.

She got out of the bunk and let herself out of the cabin and up the stairs to the saloon. She walked forward and then started to climb the companionway in a slow, dreamy way. When she got to the top of the stairs she unerringly unlocked the door that led to the cockpit and was about to step outside when Rafe intervened.

He couldn’t say what woke him but he got to the saloon in time to see Maisie’s ghostly figure climbing the stairs. He said her name but she didn’t respond so he climbed up behind her and said her name again. She didn’t even turn to him.

‘For crying out loud,’ he murmured, ‘what’s this? Maisie?’

Still no response, and he realised that she was sleepwalking.

He swore softly and turned her around gently then led her down the stairs. She came unresistingly and she rested against him at the bottom.

He examined his options. There was no way he could lock her in-some stratum of her mind was capable of dealing with locks. So how was he going to stop her from getting up on deck and perhaps falling overboard?

‘There’s only one thing for it, Miss Wallis, I just hope to heaven you don’t misinterpret it.’

He picked her up and carried her down to the double bunk in the aft berth.

She curled up with a dreamy little sigh and her eyes closed.

He watched her for a long moment then climbed in beside her and pulled the covers over them. She slept on serenely.

‘Rafe! Rafe! It’s Melissa and Dan. Permission to come aboard? We’re coming anyway. We saw you through the binoculars from Blakesley’s and wondered if you’d had trouble. Dan reckons he can help you. He must be still asleep, Dan, I’ll look in the aft berth-oh!’

Rafe Sanderson shot up in bed and Maisie stirred as the cabin door opened and his friend Melissa peered in.

‘Melissa!’ he growled.

‘I’m so sorry, Rafe,’ Melissa bleated, with her eyes widening as she took in the other figure in the bed. ‘I’m so-but-anyway, we’ll be on deck.’ She backed out hastily and closed the door.

Maisie sat up, her expression horrified and confused. She stared around and then at Rafe. ‘What-why-what’s happened?’ And she started to scramble up.

He grabbed her shoulders. ‘Nothing’s happened, Maisie. No, listen to me,’ he ordered as she tried to wriggle free. ‘Absolutely nothing happened but-do you walk in your sleep?’

She froze then blinked frenetically. ‘Yes. Well, I used to but it hasn’t happened for a while. I thought I’d grown out of it. Do you mean…?’

He told her what she’d done and why he’d decided the only way he could keep her safe was in his bed.

She subsided. ‘I did walk next door on one occasion,’ she said slowly. ‘And I did once find myself sitting at the bottom of the stairs in our house at Manly with no memory of how I got there or why. And, so I’m told, when I was a little kid I used to suffer night terrors.’

‘Anything seem to trigger it?’ he queried.

She shook her head. ‘Not really, but my mother used to think I was more vulnerable to it when I was overtired.’

‘You would have been overtired last night,’ he said.

‘Yes, probably. Oh.’ Her eyes widened as she took in his ruffled hair, the green T-shirt he wore with sleep shorts, the stubble on his jaw, then she looked down at herself. ‘Oh, dear, all the same, this must look…’

He released her shoulders and smoothed the collar of Sonia’s pyjamas. Then he tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘Extremely suspicious?’ He sighed suddenly. ‘I’m afraid so. Melissa is a,’ he stopped and swore beneath his breath, ‘a natural-born snooper and gossip. She can’t help herself.’

‘What will we do?’ Maisie asked. ‘We can only tell her the truth.’

A flash of cynicism lit Rafe Sanderson’s grey eyes. ‘Unfortunately, the truth is going to sound stranger than fiction.’

A stubborn little gleam entered Maisie’s eyes. ‘I don’t care. It needs to be done.’

He shrugged after a moment. ‘All right, but don’t be surprised if it gets taken with a pinch of salt.’

An hour later they pulled up anchor and headed for Manly.

It was Rafe who’d made the explanations, coolly and casually, to his friends Dan and Melissa.

They’d accepted them jovially and Maisie had maintained her composure, but from the avid little gleam in Melissa’s eye, quite at variance with her words, Maisie knew that Rafe had been right. There was still definitely a question mark over her and Rafe’s relationship.

She flinched inwardly at the thought of it then assured herself that she was unlikely to be in either Rafael Sanderson’s orbit, or his friends’, for much longer, so what did it matter?

It didn’t take her long to discover that it mattered greatly…

Jack Huston, Rafe Sanderson’s long-suffering principal private secretary, was summoned to his boss’s apartment on the Brisbane River that Sunday afternoon.

He then had the matter of Mairead Wallis briefly and succinctly explained to him.

‘But-who is the guy?’ he queried rather dazedly.

Rafe paced around for a moment. Then he shrugged. ‘I’ve had some thoughts, but in the first instance I don’t know if any of it is true. That’s why I need to check her out.’

‘Karoo and your dogs seem to suggest, well, I don’t know what!’

‘That may only mean she has some inside information she’s got from family or staff, it could even mean she’s working with someone else, some-’he gestured ‘-disgruntled ex-staffer.’

‘What’s she like?’ Jack asked.

Rafe stopped pacing and directed a mocking grey glance at his secretary. ‘A typical waif until she loses her temper. A-quite a character. However, if it is true someone out there is using my name to attract girls, I want to know who it is.’

‘Naturally!’

‘But first I want a complete background check of Mairead Wallis, commonly known as Maisie, of this address,’ he handed Jack a piece of paper, ‘and I would also like to know if she is pregnant.’

‘You mean it might just be a ploy to get herself noticed by you?’

‘I mean exactly that, Jack,’ Rafe said with a cynical twisting of his lips.

‘But how can I find that out?’ Jack asked reasonably. ‘I mean, officially find out if she’s pregnant?’

‘I’ll leave it up to you, mate. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another appointment but, Jack, this matter needs to be handled with utter discretion.’

‘Of course,’ Jack Huston assured his boss, but he blinked a couple of times before he gathered himself and left.

Rafe Sanderson’s next appointment was with his mistress.

It was to have a curious outcome.

He found himself regarding the rear, naked view of his current lover.

It was a beautiful view; pale, pearly skin, gorgeous curves, a river of shiny fair hair that flowed to well below her shoulders. She was also a tall girl and, since he was six feet four, he appreciated tall girls.

The front view was just as beautiful. Deep blue eyes, a perfect oval face, more glorious curves but, he thought and stirred restlessly, not exactly an original thinker beneath all that beauty.

He was lying back, propped against some pillows on a vast bed with plum satin sheets, in a sumptuously appointed bedroom. The shades were discreetly drawn against the late-afternoon sun and his lover had just participated with him in some very sensuous, no-holds-barred sex.

But had it been so sensuous he wondered suddenly. And if not, why not?

He watched with a frown as the girl, with an elegant gesture, swept her hair up with one hand as she donned a silk robe.

Her movements were not the only elegant things about her. She dressed elegantly, she maintained this elegant apartment, she entertained elegantly and with flair. As well as that, her family owned several vast cattle stations, so there was no question of her being a fortune-huntress.

In other words, he thought drily, she would make a perfect wife, so did it matter if at times he found her-what he wondered.

A bit too perfect, a bit too suitable? A bit too compliant?

She never really surprised him. He suddenly realised that she never occupied his thoughts when he was away from her. She never annoyed him, not that he was looking for someone to annoy the life out of him, but-the admission caused him to grimace because it didn’t show him in the best light even to himself-in every area other than bed, she bored him, and maybe even there now.

‘Alicia,’ he said suddenly, ‘what would you say if I suggested we took a year off and went to sub-Saharan Africa to work amongst refugees?’

Alicia Hindmarsh turned slowly with her brush in her hand and disconcerted Rafael Sanderson for the first time.

‘If you married me, Rafe, I’d say yes.’ She drew her brush slowly through her fair hair.

You can’t mean that, Alicia, he thought incredulously. You can’t honestly believe I’m serious, anyway! Or are you saying you’re prepared to pay any price to get me to marry you when you know, and I know, you’d be lucky to last a week in that kind of scenario?

‘You mean you’d actually like to do that?’

‘No, I’d probably hate it. There are some people who are good at that kind of thing, I don’t think I’m one of them. But I would like to marry you, Rafe.’

He looked away and could have kicked himself. He might have belatedly discovered she bored him, he might find her mindset incredible, but he wasn’t going to enjoy hurting her.

‘I was only kidding,’ he said.

‘About marrying me, as well?’ she asked, her big blue eyes shadowed.

‘You were the one…’He stopped. ‘Alicia, you’d hate being married to me; I’d make a terrible husband. For one thing I’d never be there.’

‘I wouldn’t mind that. I’d be perfectly happy to take you as you come.’

He took a breath and suddenly found himself on her side, although she might not realise it for what it was.

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Listen to me, Alicia, don’t take that kind of rubbish from any man.’ He paused and realised he meant every word of it. ‘Don’t marry anyone, in other words, who can’t live without you, whose world doesn’t fall down if he can’t have you because you belong to him and he belongs to you.’

He got out of bed and shrugged into his clothes. ‘That’s what you deserve, nothing less. Don’t sell yourself short.’

He walked over to her and took her hand. ‘Believe me.’

‘Do you think you’ll ever tie the knot, Rafe?’ she asked.

‘I…’ He waved away the question. ‘One day.’

‘Do you know what I hope for you?’

‘What?’

‘You fall for someone you can’t have,’ she said bitterly.

He smiled lopsidedly, and kissed her hand. ‘I know I deserve that. But remember what I said the next time you think you’re in love, please. In fact, ask yourself this-is he good enough for me? If he’s not, give him the flick.’

He walked home with an unpleasant taste in his mouth as a chill dusk settled.

He had no doubt he’d be the worst kind of husband for Alicia Hindmarsh. He’d walk all over her and make her life a misery. So why did he feel…regretful, yes, that was perfectly natural-but was there something else?

He frowned as he strode along the deserted inner-city pavements on a Sunday evening.

Why the hell should he find himself wondering how Maisie Wallis was spending her evening?

Why should he recall the meal they’d shared on the Mary-Lue last night with unexpected pleasure?