by Cara Colter
Worst of all, he liked her—and this time Tim knew the danger was real. With his radar tuned in to his father day and night, needing him as much as he punished him, he’d sensed the danger even before Noah had.
There was nothing he could say to reassure his son, and the nightmares, the fear, would just go on and on.
Some instinct alerted him. He turned his head.
Jennifer stood in the doorway, her face white, eyes glistening with the tears spilling over in silence. A shaking hand, fisted tight, covered her mouth as she looked at Tim.
Slowly she lifted her gaze to Noah. He couldn’t move, couldn’t breathe. He could feel her driving need to reach out, to help them both—but if she did, Tim would know they’d been together, and he’d never feel safe again.
There was nothing she could do to help this, nothing she could say. It was over before it began. For half an hour they’d reached out to the fire—now it was burning an innocent child.
Without a sound she vanished, leaving only sadness and regret in her wake.
Jennifer was sitting on the picnic blanket, downing her second glass of wine when he came back. He stopped a few feet from her. Waiting for an explanation as to why she was still there.
Feeling like a complete idiot—why hadn’t she gone home, instead of sitting here drinking his wine?—she said, sounding lame even to her ears, “Is—is he all right now?”
“No.” A terse word. “He’s in my bed. I just came out to pack up the picnic before wild mice get to it.”
“I’ll do it.” She scrambled off the blanket.
“No, Jennifer. Please, just go,” he said quietly. “If he wakes up and comes out—”
She nodded, feeling even worse, if it were possible. “I just needed to know he was—”
So awkward, all these silences. Saying everything but the things they needed to say.
“He won’t be all right until Belinda comes back … or her body’s found.” He went on, the words bursting from him. “It’s not like a death. That’s bad enough. But this is like permanent purgatory. The pieces of my life are jagged, and they keep cutting me—and cutting Tim, Cilla and Rowdy—over and over.” He swiped a hand across his face, as if pushing the intensity and despair from his features. “There’s nowhere to go, no way to move on. In Tim’s mind, healing is disloyalty—even moving here feels to him like I’ve accepted her death. How do I tell him he’s wrong to keep hoping, to keep looking for her in every car, bus or train? How do I say ‘it’s not Mummy’ every time the phone rings and he runs for it? What if Belinda is alive and comes back? I know he’s told Cilla that, too, so she feels the same even though she can’t remember Belinda. Rowdy just doesn’t understand. So we just exist, waiting for her, waiting for news—for anything that gives us permission to live without this damned hope and fear and guilt eating us all alive.”
There was nothing more useless than unwanted tears. She gulped them back, but oh, how she wanted to wrap her arms around him right now, to let him know he didn’t have to be so alone with all this pain … that she understood more than he knew.
But touching him was taboo, and her fascinated stare must be embarrassing him.
Jennifer closed her eyes against the force of this beautiful, tortured man. “I should have gone home. I’m sorry … I was worried.”
“By now you must be worrying you’re living next door to a basket case. I’m sorry, Jennifer.” Another weary swipe of his hand over his face. “It might be a relief for me to talk, but you don’t need to hear it.”
“Maybe you needed to say it,” she said quietly, giving him what she could. Unable to reach out because of a simple truth: she was utterly fascinated by this man, and touching him, even in comfort, was too dangerous. “And maybe saying it to a stranger felt cleansing.”
“Maybe, but you’re not a stranger,” he muttered, his eyes intense on her.
Slowly she nodded. Accepting the rebuke, and the danger, without his speaking of either. They weren’t strangers—but they couldn’t be anything more than that.
“Jennifer.”
Slowly she looked up, compelled by the starkness in his voice. Those jagged pieces of his life were ripping at him again. She knew—oh, how she knew …
He didn’t look at her. His whole attention seemed focussed on packing up the little basket. “Even if Belinda’s dead—and I believe she is—I have nothing left to give. You probably can’t understand …”
Hearing the words hurt, even if she’d known it before she’d even seen him. Even if she knew all the reasons why she, too, had so little to give. Why she might take a lover, but never a husband—and as her life with Cody had been, Noah’s life didn’t allow for brief flings.
“To have a child you can’t kiss better, you can’t heal no matter how hard you try, kills you piece by piece,” she said softly, “but you can’t stop hoping, can’t stop trying. You have no choice but to put them first—even when you worry you’re spoiling them or making a rod for your back later.” She smiled and shrugged, and before he could ask her how she knew so much, she handed him the picnic blanket she hadn’t even known she was folding, and turned away. “Bring Cilla and Rowdy over whenever you need to work. Doesn’t matter what days, okay? No notice needed.”
“Jennifer …” In the darkness, a hand—that sturdy, dependable brown hand—reached out to her, and she ached to touch him one final time.
A wave crashed below them. The tide was right in, attacking the sandstone walls below them. It was a lonely sound.
She shook her head, trying to smile. “Best not to.”
His gaze was deep and intense. “I can’t do all the taking. It’s not in me.”
“You aren’t,” she assured him quietly. “You’re paying me. I’m saving money to have my verandah rebuilt bigger, and get a new cubby house for the kids, a portable one.” She flushed as she said it, though why, she had no idea. “I’ve been thinking of selling up and moving into town—it’ll be closer for the kids … well, most of them …”
“We both know you’re still the one giving the most in this arrangement.” His voice was grim. “So I’ll design and build your verandah and cubby house for you. Just pay for the materials. No charge for labour, not while you’re minding the kids. I need to start up my business again, heaven knows—” he didn’t even crack a smile as he said it “—and it can serve as local advertising at the same time.”
She heard the prickly note in his voice. She couldn’t find it in her to blame him; his day would reach any sane man’s limits. “If it serves us both, all I can say is thank you, Noah.”
“Good.” Only then did he smile—and it was as if he’d cracked apart the wall of isolation she’d been trying to build. “If I get some really big work in the interim—”
Knowing what he couldn’t say, she nodded. “Of course, you have a family to support. To finish up before and after work will be fine. The kids are still with you then. We can alternate dinners, maybe. One night I cook, another you can bring it home.”
“Thank you, Jennifer. I don’t know how to say …” His voice trailed off. Husky, but not with desire: rough with the gratitude of a man who’d carried his burdens alone too long.
And though she knew that, still she thought of what she couldn’t have, and blushed. “I have to go. Good night, Noah.”
Pollyanna strikes again, her inner voice taunted as she walked away without looking back.
She was setting herself up for a fall; it was as inevitable as the tide coming in below her feet. After two years of wandering through a half-dreaming existence, she was alive again—and it hurt. The worst part of it was until she could change the person she was, she had no choice in it. Within a day she knew Noah Brannigan had the power to destroy her, yet she couldn’t do a thing about it without hurting his beautiful children, or making his suffering worse.
Heart against conscience, and the pull of needing children. No, she had no choice—and she knew whatever price she’d pay for her decision, she went i
nto it with her eyes open.
She hoped.
CHAPTER FOUR
Six weeks later
“JENNY! Jenny, we’re here!”
As she sipped her morning coffee, she found herself smiling at Rowdy’s enthusiastic interruption to her routine. Usually this was her quiet time before the other kids arrived, but Tim, Cilla and Rowdy weren’t “other” kids. What it was about them that called her so strongly, she only wished she knew. She loved all the children she cared for but the Brannigans had broken through the eggshell-thin wall of self-protection around her heart. Perhaps it was because the family needed her so much.
No, the Brannigan children needed her. Noah only needed her child-minding skills.
Apart from the days she had the kids, he’d been over only twice in the past six weeks—to draw up the plans, and show them to her. He’d called to let her know the local council had approved the plans, and again to let her know he’d be starting work today.
He was cutting and assembling her new cubby house in his yard, and would bring it over when it was done. “I thought it’d be a joint project I could do with Tim,” he’d told her in a gruff voice. She didn’t know if the odd note was because he was using an excuse to avoid her—or because Tim was refusing to hammer in a single nail when his father was around.
He might not be running off quite so much—only twice since the night they’d met—but that didn’t mean he wasn’t going to keep punishing Noah for his invisible crimes.
She didn’t flatter herself that it was her influence that stopped Tim running off. She only wished she knew what it was—
Rowdy erupted into the kitchen with a big, glowing smile, sure of his welcome. He ran straight into Jennifer’s arms with all the confidence he’d shown from the first day. Knowing he was loved. “Jenny, I’m here! Are you happy?”
“Of course, very happy,” Jennifer chuckled as she hugged him. He always stated the obvious, and asked the same thing every day. “Are you hungry?”
He nodded with vigour, though Jennifer was sure Noah would have fed all of them before coming over. “Toast and Vegemite!”
She hugged him again, and swung Cilla up onto her other hip, giving her a big kiss before she answered. “Sorry, sweetie, no can do. I have three other kids coming soon.” Whenever she gave him the spread, it seemed to give him a massive burst of energetic chatter and climbing she couldn’t cope with when she had other children to watch.
It was the only time he fulfilled the nickname Tim told her Noah had given him soon after his birth—the baby who constantly made noise. She often wondered if he’d quietened down by nature or necessity. Tim and Cilla needed so much more than he did … he seemed such a happy child, but she watched him, just in case.
As Tim walked through the door with far more caution than the other kids showed, she suggested, “How about baked beans and cheese on toast?”
That was Tim’s favourite, but Rowdy tended to emulate Tim—at least when Tim wasn’t angry or screaming. Rowdy was perpetually good-natured.
Tim grinned and nodded. “Thanks,” he said: a reluctant concession to manners, and as gruff as his father always was when he felt overwhelmed.
Cilla made a tiny sound.
Jennifer smiled down at Cilla, hiding the ball of emotion the non-request engendered. After six weeks of constant invitation, the little girl still didn’t have the courage to ask for anything she wanted. “Chocolate spread and mashed banana for Cilla, of course.”
The glowing smile was reward enough.
Noah knocked on the door, polite and withdrawn—the constant reminder of the wall between them. “Good morning, Jennifer.”
“Good morning, Noah,” she returned, grave and just as polite. Trying to smile as normal, but if she did, he’d smile back, and she’d forget what she was doing—and Tim would see it.
“I just made coffee. Would you like some?” she offered as he walked through to the little-used front door, and put barrier tape across it, in preparation for tearing out the front verandah.
He turned back from his task. “Yes, thank you.”
It took all she had not to gulp—Tim was watching—but Noah’s simple good manners made her feel as if she’d just endured three rounds with a kickboxing champion. She clung to the memory of their night together as dearly as if they’d made love: it was all she was likely to have. Remembering his rare smile, the way his hand turned beneath hers in a promise unspoken …
She put Cilla down after another gentle kiss, and got Rowdy into the high chair, strapping him in. “I’ll just get the kids set first.”
She turned away from the sight of him as if he was just another father dropping off his kids, or a tradesman working on her house. A crazy infatuation, an unrequited attraction.
So why did she always feel as if he’d touched her, when he never did? He hadn’t touched her once, nor even come close to her, from that first night. Why was it he could break years of self-sufficiency and good sense with a look, or a smile—or even by the lack of them?
“Jen? Here’s the baked beans.” Noah’s personal watchdog stood in front of her, waiting. Watching. On guard.
She blinked and smiled at Tim. “You’re such a good help.” She smiled down at the boy, feeling his hunger for the closeness of touch, and his fear and loathing of it. Poor little man needed a mother so much, even more than Cilla and Rowdy did; but he barricaded himself from the simple joy of a hug because she was a woman, and therefore a threat to his security. His mother was no more than a distant memory; his vow was all he had left of Belinda.
With a sense of fatality she made the breakfast. Child-carer, just the child-carer …
That coffee was a long time coming.
Noah muttered words he’d never use in front of the kids as he tore up one plank after the other, glad for something heavy and physical to do. He’d work himself to exhaustion, if that’s what it would take to quieten the screaming demands of his body, the whispers of his heart.
Every time he saw her now, her pretty face, her tenderness and unassuming grace filled him like the thrumming of a guitar chord, reverberating through every pore. Even just living within five hundred metres of her house, knowing she was there, made the masculine hunger roar to life. When he had to pick up the kids, to see her kissing his kids, caring for them, and yet to know, to feel the barriers neither could breach, he ached and burned.
At night he relived their one night out beneath the stars … the night where nothing, yet so much, seemed to have happened between them. Floating toward him in that white dress, soft half-curls escaping her plait. Just the joy of talking with her … seeing her hand over his; watching her smile at him, her eyes touched with desire …
Most nights he woke up in a sweat that had little to do with the current heatwave—on the nights Tim didn’t wake him up with nightmares, at least. No wonder they were both short-tempered these days; neither of them were getting much sleep.
Tim rarely spoke to him now, but he kept watching.
He had no idea how Jennifer felt about him. She seemed so serene, treating him as if he was just another day-care daddy, offering coffee the same way she did to the mothers who dropped their kids here—or worse, like he was her uncle.
He swore as a massive splinter ripped through his thick glove and pierced his thumb.
“Noah?”
Hearing the concern in her voice, he reacted with brusque rejection. “I’m fine.”
“Here’s your coffee.”
The gentle care had vanished; her words were neutral, almost too neutral. He looked up. Her smile was calm, determined. She would keep her manners; and it made him feel like a schoolboy being rebuked by his teacher, and just as foolish.
He put out a hand to take the cup, but she put it down beside him.
“Jennifer—” he started to apologise, disgusted by the husky note in his voice at using the name. The neediness just using her name provoked in him.
Wanting to touch her, if only for a moment. His
temper igniting because there was no way he could take the risk.
He turned away. “I have some quotes to do today. I’ll be out until Tim’s back from school. Is it okay to work on the verandah from four until dark?”
“Of course.” Her gaze moved to his gloved right hand, and the splinter sticking out from his thumb at an angle. “I’ll get tweezers and antiseptic. I’ll send them out with Tim.”
“It has to be this way, Jennifer,” he growled, hating the distance. Hating it.
She turned to look at him for a moment, her eyes not quite meeting his. “I’m not arguing.” Then she sighed. “I have to go in. I asked Tim to mind the kids while I brought out the coffee, and it’s interrupting his routine. He hasn’t got much time before the school bus.”
“He’s ready for school.”
She frowned and tilted her head.
“He’s watching us through the glass of the front door,” he said quietly.
She didn’t make the mistake of looking. “Then he’ll be reassured, won’t he?”
His left glove flicked away as he tossed it. Wishing he knew what she felt beneath the controlled words, he pulled the splinter from his glove. Wishing she’d go back inside before he did something really stupid.
“It’s not just about you and Tim, you know.”
The sudden intensity of it took him aback. He looked up again. She stood over him, her fists curled, and a strand of half-curl dancing across her face in the hot morning wind—and so pretty with her cheeks flushed and her eyes flashing with anger. He ached to brush that strand away: it was that bad with him now, just touching her hair would be enough—and he was a whisper away from really, really stupid now. “What is it, then?” He winced at the harsh question: such a pitiful mask for the craving.
As if she’d felt the almost violent need in him, she brushed the lock of hair away, but it came dancing back within moments. She tugged it back hard behind one ear. “You don’t need to know. You’re just the father of three kids I happen to have fallen madly in love with.”
