Marion Lennox - His Miracle Bride

‘You know me enough to trust me with your kids.’

‘I had no choice. I had a doctor’s appointment and there was no other available appointment until tomorrow. I loaded the kids in the car, then realized the tyre was flat and so was the spare. You were coming. Ruby said you were trustworthy. So I trusted.’

‘You left me alone deliberately?’

‘No,’ he roared, so loudly that there was a whimper from above their heads.

‘You’ve woken Bessy,’ Shanni said.

‘Shush.’

They both shushed. Bessy whimpered again, and then settled.

‘Take that outside,’ Shanni said, motioning to the rubbish. ‘It’s disgusting.’

He did. It gave him room to take a few deep breaths. He stared up at the night sky and counted to ten. Then he decided to count to a hundred.

Finally he figured he’d better return. Shanni was still cleaning his fridge. All he could see of Shanni was one very cute, denim-clad butt emerging from his refrigerator.

He took a couple of moments to admire the view. Hell, he missed women. Twelve months now of enforced celibacy. Twelve months down and how many to go?

Not months. Years. What had he let himself in for?

‘You want a whisky?’ he asked the butt, and the butt stilled.

‘A whisky?’

‘Don’t say it like I’m the local lush,’ he said. ‘I allow myself one whisky when all the kids are in bed. Surely a man can have that without being accused of child neglect?’

‘Hey, I didn’t say…’ She was backing out of the refrigerator, butt wiggling.

‘You didn’t have to say. You were implying.’

‘Actually I wasn’t,’ she said, sitting up and wiping a strand of wilting lettuce from her nose. ‘I wasn’t implying anything. I was about to say that a whisky would be very nice indeed. And if it turns into two then I’m not going to report anyone to Social Welfare. Just so long as I can share.’

She smiled.

He stared. It was the cutest smile. Wide and white and cheerful, green eyes dancing behind it.

Hey, cut it out. This was not appropriate.

Hell, he’d lost sense of what was appropriate or not. He ran his fingers through his hair again—yeah, he’d meant to get a haircut but when was there ever time? Then he decided he was staring at her and wondering about haircuts when he should be pouring whisky.

He turned on his heel and headed for the living room. He poured two decent tumblers, decided ice was for sissies and headed back to the kitchen.

She was still on the floor.

‘You want to sit at the table?’

‘If I get up I might never get down again.’

‘The fridge can wait. You’ve done so much cleaning I’m feeling like a—’ He hesitated. He didn’t know what he felt like, he thought. Out of control? Yeah, maybe even more out of control than when his house had been full of dirty dishes.

‘You must really miss your wife.’

He’d reached down to give her a hand up. He stilled and Shanni stared at his hand, shrugged and heaved herself up. He shook himself.

‘Sorry.’

‘Hey, don’t apologize. I only lost my boyfriend and I’m doing dumb things, like not contacting my parents and making sure they hadn’t changed the locks before I come all the way to Australia.’

‘They’ve changed the locks?’

‘And put in tenants,’ she said grimly. ‘You’d think a daughter would know.’

‘You’re not close?’

‘See, there’s the thing,’ she said, sitting at the table and taking her first sip of whisky. She wrinkled her nose in appreciation. ‘I thought we were. I phone once a week. You’d think changing locks would be something they’d mention.’

‘I…I guess.’

‘Sorry.’ She took another sip. ‘We were talking about you. Your wife.’

‘You lost your boyfriend?’

‘He didn’t die,’ she said darkly. ‘More’s the pity.’

‘Right,’ he said, distracted. She looked really cute when she talked darkly. ‘So you just lost him?’

‘He went to bed with a model.’ She glowered some more. ‘In my bed. And then when I threw ice water over the pair of them he went out and spent our shared credit card to the hilt, and he isn’t even sorry.’

She glowered at the absent boyfriend and model. ‘But we’re talking about you. You and the five kids and the dead wife and Social Welfare. I’ve never seen such a mess.’

‘Thank you.’

She blinked. Then she put the whisky very carefully on the table.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘I’ve had a long day. I landed in Sydney at five this morning. I took a cab to my parents’ and found they’d absquatulated. So I took my dad’s car and drove to my girlfriend’s apartment, to find a bedsit smaller than a shoebox. Then I remembered Ruby’s letter and rang you and asked if you still wanted a housekeeper, and you said yes, it’d be fine if I came straight away, so I ended up here. To find you’d absquatulated as well.’

‘Absquatulated?’ he said, distracted.

‘Taken yourself off to points unknown, generally leaving a mess behind. My mother’s a linguistics professor. Get over it.’

‘Right,’ he said, feeling dazed. ‘I didn’t…absquatulate.’

‘You just went to sleep.’

‘I’ve said I’m sorry.’

‘The kids were terrified. They were thinking they’d get carted off to care.’ She wrinkled her nose some more, perplexed. ‘See, that’s the part I don’t get. Why is Welfare so interested in you? Have you done something awful? I mean, today was appalling, but that sort of mess happens in the best families. If I told you how many times my parents forgot me…Anyway, that’s beside the point. I understand your wife dying was awful but Social Welfare isn’t usually a monster.’ She paused, thinking things through.

‘You know, unless things are really dire, the authorities don’t take kids from parents. I can’t see them dragging children off to foster care just cos their dad went to sleep in the sun after a night with a sick baby.’

‘No. I…’

‘So have you done something ghastly? I mean, not that you’d confess. But I’ve been scrubbing the fridge and thinking that I should just leave. Except that I’m broke and I don’t have anywhere to go. Except Aunt Ruby’s.’

‘You don’t want to go to Ruby’s?’ He was having trouble keeping up.

‘Ruby has macramé meetings in her kitchen every weekday morning. She’s offered to teach me. And she says she has to get your permission anyway if she wants to have me for more than just a couple of weeks. Which is weird.’ She hesitated. ‘But you’re sidetracking me. I keep thinking of Wendy. Wendy like she was when I arrived. Terrified. Expecting the worst. There must be something horribly wrong for her to look like that. I don’t know what it is, and maybe I should leave, but I’ve decided I need to figure it out. Because now I’m hooked. If you’re hurting these kids I’ll—’

‘You’ll what?’

‘I don’t know,’ she confessed. ‘I can’t figure out why they’re terrified. Because the way you cuddle Bessy…You even seem nice.’

‘Thank you.’

‘You know what I mean. You look normal.’

‘Yet I was a fifteen-year-old in a pinstripe suit when first you met me.’

‘You’re distracting me.’ She looked at his whisky glass. He looked at it too.

‘You do think I’m a drinker.’

‘Hey, I just wondered. I mean, if I had five kids and a dead wife I might crack as well. And it would explain.’

‘It explains nothing.’

‘Then you need to give me some other explanation,’ she said. ‘Because I want to know why your kids are terrified.’

He stared into his whisky glass.

‘Tell me or I retreat to macramé.’

His eyes flew to hers. He expected to see laughter, but he didn’t. She was deadly serious.

She really cared, he thought. She was worried about these kids.

The sensation was so novel that he blinked.

‘There’s a simple explanation,’ he said, meeting her look head on.

‘Which is?’

‘These aren’t my kids. They’re nothing to do with me. Until twelve months ago I’d never seen any of them before in my life.’

THERE was a long pause. Shanni had pulled open the fire door of the oven, to let the warmth of the flames give comfort to a kitchen that was only just warming up. The fire crackled behind them. He should put music on or something, he thought inconsequentially. The atmosphere was too intimate.

Maybe music would make it worse.

‘They’re not your kids,’ she said at last. She wasn’t taking her eyes off him, seemingly ready to judge by how he looked as well as what he said.

‘No,’ he said. There was nothing else to say.

‘I did wonder,’ she said mildly. ‘They don’t look like you. They keep forgetting to call you “Dad”. And they didn’t know if you had Abba.’

‘Abba?’

‘Never mind. I thought maybe they’d been calling you “Pierce” and you’d made them change for the welfare people.’

‘I made them change for the welfare people.’

‘But…’ She sighed. She downed the dregs of her whisky, looked at the bottle and sighed again. ‘I’ve got jet lag and a muddled head,’ she confessed. ‘Don’t give me any more whisky.’

‘And Bessy’s likely to be up in the night.’ He rose and took the whisky bottle into the next room, returned and closed the door firmly behind him. They both looked at the door with longing. But no. They were mature adults, and there were no answers in a whisky bottle.

‘I’ll make coffee,’ he said and she nodded. Mature adults. Coffee. Right.

‘You’d better tell me,’ she said, while he fiddled with cups and kettle and instant coffee. Instant. She’d come from the coffee centre of the world. Agh.

‘I married their mother,’ he said.

‘Right.’ She thought about it. ‘So Bessy’s yours?’

‘No.’

‘So Bessy’s not yours.’

‘They’re none of them mine.’

‘So when did you marry their mother?’

‘Seven months ago. Just after Bessy was born. Three weeks before Maureen died.’

‘Oh,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I see.’

‘Do you?’ He sounded angry. He had his back to her but she could hear tension and anger—and resentment.

‘Hey, I cleaned your fridge,’ she said. ‘I’m the patsy in this set-up.’

Anger faded. His shoulders shook—just a little. ‘The patsy?’

‘The pig in the middle. The girl with the soggy cucumber. Shoot around me, but not at me.’

‘I’m sorry.’

‘That’s better,’ she said approvingly as he carried mugs of coffee across to the table. He really was good looking, she thought absently. And that hair was so ruffled. She could just reach over and touch it…

Cut it out, she told herself fiercely. What is it with you and long-haired men?

‘Tell me about Maureen,’ she said instead and took a mouthful of coffee, swallowing regrets about a magnificent coffee maker she’d left behind in London. Okay, it was Michael’s, but it had been bought with her credit card and it made the best coffee. And that rat…

She wasn’t thinking clearly.

‘Maureen,’ she said again, and Pierce looked confused.

‘Look, I’m jet lagged,’ she said. ‘I’m not making sense to me.’

‘You suddenly looked a long way away.’

‘I was mourning coffee. Tell me about Maureen.’

‘She was my foster sister sort of.’

There was a pause. Sort of foster sister. Hmm.

‘Ruby only fosters boys.’

‘You think I’m telling lies?’