Their Baby Bargain

CHAPTER THREE

DINNER was a very, very different affair to the way Luke usually enjoyed it. Dinner, for him, was usually a social event. Sure, he was accustomed to eating out, but his eating out included expensive restaurants and cordon bleu food and beautiful women…

Here there was no expensive decor, the food was certainly not cordon bleu and the women… There were three. Grace and Gabbie and Wendy. Three women, and each was so far from his usual company it almost made Luke smile.

‘What?’ said Wendy, as she saw him take his mouthful of pizza and stare down at it as if it was food landed from Mars. ‘Don’t you like it?’

He looked at it with doubt. Did he? Bay Beach Pizza was hardly gourmet fare. ‘It’s not even wood-fired,’ he offered.

‘Oh, sadness! Welcome to the real world.’ Wendy grinned. ‘Wood-fired pizza… Good grief! Wave it over the fire, and give it some smoke if you must. Me, I’m just going to eat mine!’

She did, and she enjoyed every mouthful. Well, why not? They were eating their pizza sitting on the edge of the veranda, with the camp fire they’d lit blazing brightly between them and the sea. It was a glorious night. The sun was setting behind the house, the breeze was warm and the sound of the surf was a series of hushed murmurs as it flowed in and out to the shore. The smell-of fragrant eucalyptus, of old wood burning slowly to embers, and of sea and salt and pizza-was good enough to bottle.

It was just great, Wendy thought. She sat back and watched as Gabbie seriously engaged in pizza-eating-everything was a serious business for Gabbie-and Luke fed his baby sister the bottle Wendy had prepared for him, and down in the paddocks the cows looked up in wonder.

‘The cows think we’re crazy,’ she told Gabbie. ‘Fancy eating pizza when we have all this great grass!’

Gabbie looked at her gravely-and then her small face crinkled into a smile. She gave a tentative chuckle. ‘That’s silly.’

‘It is, isn’t it?’ She swept the little girl up into her arms and hugged, pizza and all. If she was any happier she’d burst. This could work! If Gabbie’s mother kept away…

She looked over to Luke and found him watching her strangely. He was like the cows, she thought-he couldn’t understand where she was coming from.

‘Tell me about you,’ he asked her softly. ‘What made you become a Home mother? Why are you here?’

That was easy. ‘I’m here because this is the best place in the world. Isn’t it, Gabbie?’

‘No, but-’

‘But what?’ She raised her eyebrows and it made him pause.

What indeed? She was an employee, he told himself. Just an employee. He shouldn’t delve any deeper than he needed. But he hadn’t had an employee like this before, and she had him fascinated.

‘Tell me what your qualifications are, for a start.’

‘You’ll sack me if I don’t make the grade?’

He sighed and shifted Grace to the other knee-and then looked down in dismay at the knee she’d been shifted from. It was wet! Heck, how many nappy changes did babies need?

‘I’m not sacking you,’ he told her, but he was now thoroughly distracted. ‘Holy cow! Look at this. How can she be wet already? You realise I only have one pair of trousers? You might have luggage for a lifetime, but for me this was only meant to be a day trip.’

‘More fool you,’ she said serenely. ‘Never take a baby anywhere without changes of clothes for everyone. It’s the first rule of parenting, Mr Grey.’

‘Then, it’s lucky I don’t need to learn any more,’ he said tartly, and then caught himself as Grace looked up at him. His half-sister’s tiny eyes widened-and it was as if she’d understood what he’d said and was gazing at him with reproach.

Hell! This wasn’t just a baby, he thought suddenly. This was a person! She was a little girl who’d grow up and want to know her family. Who’d need to be told…

His chain of thought was suddenly overwhelming and, Wendy, looking across at him, saw panic flare in his eyes. And understood.

‘Luke, let’s take one day at a time,’ she said softly. ‘You were worrying about wet trousers. I doubt we need to go any deeper than that at the moment.’

‘Until tomorrow…’

‘Until tomorrow,’ she agreed and smiled. ‘By tomorrow those wet trousers might start being on the nose and you’ll definitely have to move on. But for now-as social workers, we tell our clients when they’re having some overwhelming crisis to just focus on the next few minutes. Then the next few hours. The days will take care of themselves. Survival first, Luke, and everything else will follow.’

‘So…’ panic faded in the face of her calmness ‘…you’re advising me to have another piece of pizza?’

‘I guess I am.’ She smiled her enchanting smile that, for some reason, made his insides do strange things. Sitting on this veranda where he’d spent such great times as a kid, looking out over the sea, holding a baby in his arms and having this woman sitting beside him…

This was about as far from his international jet-setting life as it was possible to be. He’d taken his shoes off-they were Gucci, after all, and a man didn’t scrub floors in Gucci footwear-and his bare feet were brushing the grass as he sat on the edge of the veranda. His laptop computer was locked in the car boot and his phone was silent.

There were only the emerging stars and the silence of this place he’d loved. How long since he’d experienced a night like this?

How long until he would again?

He’d leave as soon as he had this mess sorted out, he decided, but then… The thought came out of nowhere, like a gift. When he came back he could visit! Whenever he was in Australia he could drive down to the country and see his half-sister-and this woman and her Gabbie. They’d be waiting for him, like a family.

The prospect gave him a warm glow right in the middle of his solar plexus and he couldn’t help a tiny, smug smile creeping across his face.

Brilliant. This was brilliant!

‘How often do you think you’ll come?’ Wendy asked, and he snapped back into the present with a start. She was eyeing him curiously, and by the look on her face she knew exactly what he was thinking.

‘I…’

‘Grace will need someone to attach to,’ Wendy said softly. ‘If her mother really doesn’t want her…then, like it or not, you’ll be it.’

‘I guess I don’t mind.’ He thought it through, still feeling self-satisfied with his arrangements. What problem would one baby be? Money was no hassle and he’d have his secretary buy her gifts. He’d send them to her often…

But then the thought came back to him of his father, and how much his father’s treatment of him had hurt. His father, paying expensive school fees, sending him over-the-top gifts, with cards not written in his handwriting.

Never wanting to see him…

‘It doesn’t work,’ Wendy said softly. ‘You know it doesn’t.’

‘What?’

‘Being a parent by proxy.’

‘You’d know?’

‘I know.’ She sighed and hugged Gabbie closer. Of course she knew. Some of the warmth went out of the evening and she hauled herself back to practicalities. And responsibility. Of course. That was her role in life. Picking up responsibility where other people left off… ‘Ready for bed, love?’ she asked the little girl.

‘In my new bed with the pretty quilt?’ Gabbie asked.

‘That’s the one.’

‘And you’ll stay out here?’

‘Yes. Luke and Grace and I will be just under your window. We’ll stay out here for a while because it’s so dusty in the house. But I’ll sit on your bed with you until you go to sleep. Okay?’

‘Yes,’ Gabbie said definitely. ‘You’ll stay with me until I go to sleep and then you and Luke and Grace will stay outside my window with the fire and the cows.’

‘That’s right.’

‘That’s good,’ Gabbie said definitely. ‘That will be very good.’

Woman and child left. Luke was left with the remaining pizza and one soggy baby lazily drinking her bottle and gazing up at him with eyes that wondered.

And wondered and wondered.

Just like him.

That’s good. That will be very, very good…

Good grief!

Grace was fast asleep by the time Wendy returned, and Luke wasn’t far behind. He started as she touched him on the shoulder, and then, as he turned to find her smiling down at him, the sight gave him an unexpected jolt. She did have this mystical quality, he thought. It was as if she was the sudden embodiment of a vision he’d thought was only a dream.

But in truth, she was real. In one hand she had Grace’s carry-cot and in the other she had a pile of baby clothes.

‘We need warm water,’ she told him. ‘And a bucket.’

‘Why?’ He raised his brows. ‘We hardly have dishes to wash.’

‘No, but we have a baby to wash,’ she told him. ‘That baby has spent half the day in wet clothes. We bathe her now or you spend the next few days walking a bundle of misery because she has a rash on her bottom. Okay?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’

There was nothing else to say.

Grace hardly woke.

Baths, obviously, were one of her favourite things. She opened her eyes in sleepy wonder as Wendy lowered her naked person into the bucket of warm water. Then she smiled her gracious approval, fluttered her tiny hands in the suds, and lay back in sleepy delight.

For some reason Luke couldn’t take his eyes from her. This was his half-sister, he kept thinking. His sister. His…family?

He hadn’t had family for so long, and now, suddenly, she was partly his-and she was just beautiful. By the time Wendy had finished soaping Grace’s small pink body, Luke was near as not in love with her. What a sweetie!

His sister…

Afterwards, she lay on warm towels and Wendy expertly slipped her into dry clothes, and her eyes closed again before she was dressed. She snuggled into her carry-cot with a contented sigh, and fell instantly asleep.

God was in his heaven. All was right with Grace’s small world, and Luke’s world was still realigning itself on its axis-an axis that had somehow tilted…

‘I can’t believe her mother could just give her up,’ Wendy said slowly, looking down at the sleeping baby, and there was such a look of pain on her face that Luke thought for a moment that he must have imagined it.

He hadn’t. She turned away, but as she did he saw the glimmer of tears on her lashes. So, social worker or not, Wendy wasn’t quite impervious to human drama.

‘Tell me what your background is?’ he asked her again as she bundled towels and baby clothes together.

She shook her head. ‘I have things to do.’

‘Yeah, right. Like running the washing machine-without electricity, without hot water and without a washing machine.’ He patted the bare boards beside him, inviting her to sit. ‘We have two sleeping children. It’s grown-ups’ time now.’

That made her smile. ‘I guess, for you, it’s always grown-ups’ time.’

‘I don’t have a lot to do with children,’ he agreed. ‘Until now.’

‘And now it’s only for a week.’

‘As you say…’ He looked at her, his eyes asking a question. ‘Go on, then.’ He held out a hand, took hers and tugged, so she had to sink down to sit beside him. For some reason she was reluctant-but there was no good reason not to.

It was just, he made her feel…

Peculiar. She wasn’t taking it any further than that, she decided, as she pulled her hand away. She couldn’t afford to. If there was one thing Wendy Maher had decided all those years ago it was that men were trouble. And this one looked more trouble than most.

‘I’ll give you my résumé if you like,’ she said, lowering herself to perch on the edge of the veranda and then staring out to the distant sea. Distancing herself… ‘It’s very good.’

‘All this and modest to boot?’

‘If I don’t sing my praises no one will.’ She smiled. ‘I have a first-class honours degree in social work. I have nursing training-only one year but it’s enough for what I need it for. I have five years’ experience as a Home mother at Bay Beach Orphanage.’

He frowned at that. It didn’t quite fit. ‘I would have imagined a social worker with a first-class honours degree would have been working in an organisational capacity rather than hands-on child care,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘Surely you don’t need those qualifications to be a Home mother.’

‘I like children,’ she said, and her voice was suddenly clipped.

‘You always wanted to be a Home mother?’

‘No. Only when…’

‘Only when your husband died?’

‘I…yes.’

‘I see.’ He nodded. ‘So when you say if you don’t sing your praises no one else will-it’s because you’re totally alone in the world?’

‘I have friends.’

‘Friends aren’t the same,’ he said softly. ‘I figured out that one early.’

‘When your mother died.’

‘As you say.’ He shrugged. ‘My grandparents and my mother died within two years of each other. It was pretty hard.’

‘I’d imagine it must have been.’ There was soft sympathy in her tone and he looked curiously across at her. She was sitting staring out into the moonlight, her face serene and calm. What she had said was an open invitation-to tell her all his troubles. Lay it all on her.

How many people had done that to her, he thought suddenly. Wendy was that sort of woman. It was an almost irresistible compulsion-to burden her with his needs…

Somehow he managed not to. ‘You haven’t finished telling me about you,’ he told her, and he received a surprised look for his pains. He was right, then. She was a woman who took on other people’s troubles and kept her own close to her heart.

‘What else do you need to know?’

He surveyed her thoughtfully. What else…?

‘How did your husband die?’

‘Car crash,’ she said briefly. ‘How else?’

How else indeed? There was a story behind this. ‘You sound bitter.’

‘Do I?’ She caught herself and managed a smile. ‘I shouldn’t be. It was a long time ago.’

‘It was a good marriage?’

Her breath sucked in at that. He’d overstepped the mark and he knew it straight off. ‘That, Mr Grey, is none of your business,’ she told him. ‘And there are better ways to be exercising your mind right now than by going over past history.’

He was still watching her-this lady with shadows. ‘Like what?’

‘Like, where are we going to sleep?’ Ever practical, Wendy’s mind closed completely to the nerve ends he’d just exposed. She’d learned long ago what to do when life slapped her in the face, or when something made her think of the past. She looked about her for what came next-and then she did it. Right now!

‘Mattresses,’ she said firmly, and he blinked.

‘Pardon?’

‘You can sleep in the house if you want,’ she told him frankly. ‘But I’m not. I’ll sneeze all night. We have Gabbie’s room habitable-just-but the rest of the house is an environmental nightmare. Air pollution two hundred and twenty per cent and rising, I’d guess. We’ve stirred up dust that hasn’t been touched for twenty years. I’ll sleep on a mattress out here, under Gabbie’s window so I’ll hear if she wakes.’

‘Are you sure you don’t want us to pick ourselves up and go to a hotel?’ he said almost desperately, and she grinned.

‘Where’s your sense of adventure, Luke Grey? Sleeping outdoors is good for the soul. Two mattresses and a couple of the quilts I thumped the living daylight out of, and we’re set for the night.’

‘But-’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake,’ she said, exasperated. ‘You’ve brought me here, Luke. You’ve shown us our new home, and we’re here to stay.’

It was the strangest night.

They dragged mattresses outside and set them up with quilts. Wendy used the bathroom-cold water only-and then, when it was Luke’s turn, he came out to find she was already under her quilt and ready for sleep. There was nothing for him to do but follow-under his own quilt on his own mattress four feet away.

It was so different!

Since ending university, Luke had been accustomed to money. He’d studied commerce and law, and his brilliant mind meant he’d been employed before the ink was dry on his degrees. He’d moved straight into a world where money was counted in thousands-or millions-and he’d lived in five-star luxury ever since.

He’d almost forgotten his roots. He’d almost forgotten why his mother had fought for custody and fought to bring him back here. He’d forgotten there were things money couldn’t buy. Like this place. The sea air. The silence.

Now he lay on his back on the mattress, with his hands linked behind him, and he stared upward at the veranda roof and saw the frayed ends of rope where a swing had once hung. A swing his mother had pushed him on, over and over.

Gabbie could have a swing like that, he thought-and after Gabbie, Grace.

‘Tell me about Gabbie,’ he said softly, into the hushed silence where the murmur of the sea was the only sound for ever. There was no traffic noise which felt truly strange. Luke hadn’t slept without traffic noise for twenty years. There was only silence…and his companions. But he knew Wendy wasn’t asleep and he badly wanted to talk.

‘Gabbie doesn’t look five years old,’ he tried again softly. ‘And…she looks scared.’

‘Her story’s not very pretty,’ Wendy murmured into the dark, and he knew once more that she was considering him. Letting him off the hook if he didn’t really want to hear.

Hell, did she never think of herself? Where were Wendy’s needs in all this?

But she wouldn’t talk of herself. He knew that now.

Focus on Gabbie…

‘So what is her story?’ he probed, and she sighed.

‘If you really want to know.’

‘If my plan works, she’ll be growing up with my half-sister,’ he growled. ‘I need to know her background.’

In the dark he felt rather than saw her smile. ‘I guess you do. Of course, you’ve been so desperate to obtain impeccable references for anyone coming near your sister…’

‘Don’t give me a hard time, woman,’ he told her, and she chuckled. Nice, he thought. She had the best chuckle. Rich and low, and so warm it made you want to reach out and…

Stop it! he ordered himself as a jab of reality sank home. This woman was his employee! If he messed this up, he’d have to find someone else to act as Grace’s nanny. First rule of thumb-you don’t mix business with pleasure!

Or business with…sex?

‘Just tell me about Gabbie,’ he managed hastily, hauling his thoughts back to logic with a savage jolt, and then he listened to the silence and wondered whether she’d reply.

She didn’t for a long, long moment. Finally she tossed back her quilt and rose. What was she wearing? he thought numbly as he watched her in the moonlight-some sort of soft nightgown that looked incredibly pretty? There were suddenly all sorts of undesirable thoughts racing in his brain, and none of them had anything to do with the subject he’d just brought up.

But Wendy was focused on Gabbie now. She crossed to the open window into the house and stood for a minute listening to the steady breathing of the child sleeping just under the sill.

Finally, satisfied that Gabbie was deeply asleep, she settled herself on her mattress under her quilt again, and still his unwanted sensual thoughts raced-and finally she answered his question.

‘Gabbie’s mother is a truly dreadful person,’ she said gently, and she said the harsh words so softly that for a minute Luke thought he hadn’t heard right. It wasn’t the sort of description he’d expect from such a woman as Wendy. He blinked into the night, but it came again. The harshness… ‘I’ve met a lot of sad people since I’ve started this job, and I’ve met kids who’ve been abused in all sorts of ways. Usually I can see reasons. I try and understand. But Gabbie’s mother, Sonia…’

Her voice grew hard-implacable. ‘If I could wave a magic wand and have Sonia disappear from the face of the earth, I’d wave it. I’ve never felt like that about any other person, and I hope I never feel like that again.’

‘Yes?’ Luke was staring again at the frayed ends of rope where his swing had swung, but he’d been jolted out of his thoughts of the past-and his thoughts of Wendy as a very desirable woman. Almost… ‘You’re going to tell me why?’

She sighed then, a long deep sigh that told Luke more than anything how much she’d struggled over this.

‘Sonia’s a money-grubbing, egocentric control freak,’ she said. ‘One of the other social workers knows her background-she knew her husband.’ Her voice fell away.

Damn, she had to go on now. ‘Can you tell me?’ he prodded.

‘I shouldn’t.’

‘If I’m spending any time here with the girls, then maybe I need to know,’ he said softly and thought, hell, maybe this was emotional blackmail. Did he intend to spend any time here?

But Wendy considered this and seemed to find it acceptable.

‘Gabbie’s dad was an accountant,’ she said. ‘According to my sources, Howard Rolands was a nice enough man but he made a serious mistake when he married Sonia.’

‘In what way?’

Wendy shrugged. ‘Rumour is that she married him for money and bled him dry. I only know for sure that the marriage lasted hardly any time at all. Then Howard left her. He took Gabbie with him and Sonia fought him every inch of the way.’

‘Maybe that’s understandable,’ Luke said, frowning. ‘It’s unusual for a mother not to get custody.’

‘Which is why she won it in the end,’ Wendy said bitterly. ‘Not because she wanted Gabbie. She took Gabbie back to hurt Howard and then, for the next two years she kept her as a tool to hurt him more. She refused access, she mistreated the child-never quite enough to lose access, you understand, but there are ways of hurting a child without actual physical abuse. We have a folder an inch thick of this poor man’s submissions to see more of his daughter. Finally he had a breakdown-and then he suicided.’

‘Hell,’ Luke said faintly into the night and Wendy nodded into the dark.

‘That’s right. It was hell. Only then, you see, Sonia didn’t have anything to gain by keeping Gabbie. She had no one to hurt. So she dumped her on us, and signed the release papers for pre-adoption. I had her first when she was three years old-a tiny, damaged, waif-like child who was afraid to open her mouth.’

‘And you fell for her?’

‘I fall for a lot of my kids,’ Wendy said ruefully. ‘It’s an occupational hazard. But Gabbie was special. I loved her and she blossomed, and then, when we figured she was ready for permanent bonding, we asked Sonia to sign the final adoption papers.’

‘And…’

‘Sonia’s answer was to take her away from us. She did a really good line in devoted-mother-making-good and took her back.’

‘But why?’

‘Who’d know?’ Wendy’s voice was harsh in the moonlight. ‘Certainly not because she loves her. She kept her for two months, undid all the good we’d done and then dumped her again. That time I was lucky enough to have a place free in the Home I was working in, so I took Gabbie back in with me. And it started all over again. Teaching her to trust. Preparing her for long-term bonding. And then Sonia moving in again to destroy all the good we’d achieved.’

‘But-’

But Wendy wasn’t listening to interruptions. It was as if she was talking to herself in the dark. ‘Gabbie’s been taken back six or seven times now, and after each time I’ve moved heaven and earth to get her back with me. The time before this I didn’t manage it. The Home I was running was full, and she had to go somewhere else. She’s starting to be permanently damaged, and I couldn’t bear it so-’

‘So you’ve quit your job over it?’

‘Sonia doesn’t really want her,’ Wendy said wearily. ‘I know that now. I’ve met the woman-done everything I can think of to make things right between them-but Sonia’s only interest seems to be preventing anyone else making life good for Gabbie. She signs her over and over again for pre-adoption, but each time she backs out. It’s as if she can’t punish her husband any more so she’ll punish Gabbie. Once Gabbie’s with social welfare, Sonia doesn’t even enquire where she is-until the next application comes up to have her permanently placed.’ She sighed. ‘But this way…’

‘This way?’

‘We’ve agreed that social services will leave her with me,’ she said. ‘I won’t apply for adoption-we’ll just quietly go on with our lives and hope Sonia leaves us alone. If she does interfere and takes Gabbie back, then, with social services’ permission, I’ll be waiting whenever she returns. Gabbie will know that. I’ll always be here for her.’

Silence. Luke thought this over, mulling it into the night. And he didn’t like what he thought.

‘I think,’ he said slowly, ‘that that’s the way of madness. To love a child and to let her go to someone like that, over and over… You’ll tear your heart in two.’

‘If I don’t do this, then no one else will,’ Wendy told him. ‘I’m the only chance Gabbie has. Gabbie’s mother might do her worst, but I need to be here, as a permanent refuge. I have to give her that chance.’

‘As you’ll give Grace a chance?’

‘That’s different.’ Wendy smiled and Luke heard the smile in her voice. It was strange the way he was starting to know what her face would be doing, even though he couldn’t see her. ‘That’s a paying proposition.’

‘So you think you won’t love my little half-sister like you love Gabbie?’

‘In your dreams.’ Wendy sounded startled. ‘Payment or not, I’ll love her to bits.’

‘Now, how did I know you’d say that?’ Luke grinned to himself. ‘Loving people to bits. That’s your speciality, isn’t it, Wendy Maher?’

‘Only children,’ she said hastily.

‘You’d never think of marrying again?’ He got that in before he could help himself, and afterwards he could never figure out why he’d suddenly needed to know. Why her answer seemed so important…

To his surprise, she didn’t back off, but answered him with another question. ‘Why on earth would I want to do that?’

‘It must get pretty lonely,’ he said softly. ‘Just with the kids.’

‘Lonely like you are?’ He heard her smile again. ‘You don’t have kids, Luke Grey, and you’re not all that lonely-as far as I can see. Mind, you have a wonderful car, don’t you? Money on wheels. That’s what love’s all about, now, isn’t it, Luke? A heap of metal on four bits of rubber and a man’s smitten.’

And that was it. It was all he was going to get from her. She’d had enough questions for one night. She tried to take the faint note of bitterness from her voice as she turned away from him and pulled her quilt firmly around her, in a gesture that might almost have been defence.

‘Goodnight, Luke,’ she said gently, and she was nearly back on an even keel again. ‘I have my kids and you have your car. Who could ask for more?’

Who indeed? His gorgeous car…

Luke tried to think of his car as he hauled his quilt up to his nose and tried to sleep himself. Wendy was right-or she had been until now. Thinking of his sleek little Aston Martin was usually the way he made his mind turn off tricky problems-financial dealings or love-life complexities. His car was an extravagance, he conceded, but she was worth every cent of what he’d paid for her. A man could lie in bed at night and know he’d made it when he owned that car.

But not tonight. Not now. Not with Wendy sleeping four feet from him, a tiny baby sleeping between them and one needful little girl just through the wall. His priorities seemed to have shifted.

He lay in bed and he couldn’t keep his mind on his car for more than two seconds flat.

A man might have made it-but in Wendy’s eyes he hadn’t made it anywhere, Luke thought bitterly.

Nowhere at all.

When he woke she was feeding his baby.

The veranda was facing east. The sun rising over the sea was basking them in the glow of dawn, and his first sight was Wendy sitting on the edge of the veranda with Grace in her arms.

He could only stare.

She was wearing the same nightgown she’d been wearing the night before. By moonlight it had looked soft and clingy and incredibly expensive-the sort of nightgown a man just had to touch. By daylight he saw it was not the least bit expensive-it was simple cotton and worn to softness rather than made that way-but it looked no less desirable. Wendy’s hair had been untied from its knot-it was tumbling about her shoulders in a mass of dark, unruly curls-and the way she looked it wasn’t her nightgown that looked soft and desirable. It was Wendy!

She was incredibly, gut-wrenchingly beautiful!

Why hadn’t he seen that yesterday? Or…maybe he had, but every time he saw her she was growing more so.

‘Good morning, Luke.’ She turned and smiled at him, and her smile was enough to blast him back into oblivion. Her smile was dawn all on its own. ‘I’m glad you’ve decided to rejoin the land of the living. I thought Grace would have woken everyone from here to Bay Beach, but you and Gabbie are obviously made of sterner stuff.’

‘She…’ His voice came out a sort of squeak and he coughed and tried again. For heaven’s sake-there was something about this woman that made him feel as if he was a fifteen-year-old adolescent with his first crush. Now he was sounding like it! He deliberately lowered his voice. ‘She was crying?’ It came out as a ridiculous growl, and her eyes creased into laughter.

‘Yes, Luke, she was crying. Yelling, more like. She’s a lady who knows what she wants. I imagine it must be a family trait.’

That set him back. Family traits…

He had family! he thought again suddenly, with a jolt of awareness that made him blink. Right here, in this gorgeous woman’s arms, was his family.

This was feeling better and better by the minute.

‘Can I suggest you get up and stoke our fire?’ she said, bursting his euphoric bubble. ‘I had trouble heaping enough embers to heat Grace’s bottle, and we’ll need more for breakfast.’

‘Breakfast?’ He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘It’s only six,’ he said weakly. He’d lain awake and thought for a large part of the night, and a man could do with more sleep now. ‘Maybe after she’s had her bottle we might go back to bed for a bit.’

‘In your dreams.’ Her smile widened. ‘Try explaining to a five-month-old baby that it’s not morning. Grace has practically slept around the clock, and you can’t ask more than that.’

He guessed he couldn’t. Grimacing he pushed his quilt back, and then wished he hadn’t done that as well.

He’d brought no clothes with him-certainly no pyjamas. He’d hauled off his trousers and shirt the night before and what was left was what she now saw. All he had on was a pair of silk boxer shorts, deep black and emblazoned with tiny red hearts. They were a Valentine’s gift from one of the ladies in his New York office. He’d forgotten he was wearing them-until now.

Wendy’s eyes widened at the sight. They sparkled mischievously and he hauled up his quilt as if he was about to be shot and his quilt was his only defence.

‘Hey, don’t mind me.’ She chuckled. ‘You’re seeing me in my nightie. I don’t mind seeing you in your PJs.’

‘I do not usually wear heart-emblazoned boxer shorts to bed,’ he said sourly, and her grin widened.

‘No. Of course not. They’re day wear. I can see that.’

‘Wendy!’

‘Mmm?’

‘Will you remember I’m your employer,’ he told her, trying for severity. ‘I’d like a bit of respect.’

‘And you have it.’ She schooled her grin into manageable proportions. ‘Who could not respect a man who wears boxers like that to work every day?’

Right. He glared.

‘Firewood, then,’ she said demurely, and turned her back on him, taking pity on him enough to allow him to dress himself with a semblance of dignity.

But he knew that she was still laughing inside.