Adopted: Twins!

by Marion Lennox

  ‘Hey.’ She was laughing, her lovely blue eyes twinkling at him over the water. ‘You’re looking at me like I just landed from Mars. I’m not that bad.’

  She surely wasn’t. Different, yes. A world apart from the world he lived in.

  That, too. But not bad.

  The boys had dived through the water to shore, and were up on the bank. Instinctively Erin turned toward them. She’d learned early never to take her eyes from them. Not for a moment.

  True to form, they’d headed straight to the only threat as far as the eyes could see. There were two long pieces of wood on the shore, driftwood brought in by the tide. The sticks were worn by the sea to smooth, white poles.

  ‘Hey, these’d make great swords,’ Henry yelled, and lifted one up. William was almost as fast, and Erin dived away from Matt and was at the river’s edge almost before the poles had touched.

  ‘No,’ she said sternly, but they tuned out as if they hadn’t heard her. The poles clashed in salute and clashed again.

  And then the fight was on in earnest. Robin Hood and Sheriff of Nottingham-without the finesse.

  And without the Hollywood blunted swords. These sticks were big enough to hurt!

  ‘I said no!’ Erin was out of the water now, stalking toward them. She couldn’t get close-the sticks were flailing wildly enough for her to be injured if she got in the way. ‘William. Henry. You put those sticks down this minute or you will walk home. The long way or through the Joe Blake paddock. Take your pick.’

  There was one more clash, but they’d heard her. The sticks slowed and their eyes grew thoughtful.

  ‘You know I mean it,’ Erin said, as if she didn’t particularly care what they decided. ‘You choose.’

  They turned and stared at her, and Matt, who’d swum to the shore, watched the battle of wills with some surprise. This was a side of the twins he hadn’t seen. They were being crossed, and they didn’t like it.

  He could have intervened, but he didn’t. This was Erin’s territory after all, he thought. She was the child expert, and she was facing them down with a sternness that told him she had every intention of following through with her threat.

  ‘We want to fight,’ Henry said, his voice mulishly stubborn.

  ‘And one of you will win and one of you will be hurt. Those sticks are heavy enough to hurt badly,’ Erin said. ‘You heard me, Henry. Put them down.’

  Henry turned to William. Their eyes locked and Matt knew they were asking a question of themselves.

  And finally Erin won.

  But not happily. As if of one accord, the boys glowered, then turned and threw the sticks as hard as they could across the beach toward the paddock beyond.

  It was just unfortunate that Sadie chose that moment to appear from behind the tractor.

  The old dog hadn’t been with them during their tour-there’d simply been no room for her in the tractor cab-but she must have watched the tractor’s progress from the house. When it stopped she’d plodded on down to the river to find them. Just at the wrong time.

  William’s stick caught her right across the foreleg. She gave one stunned yelp and collapsed. She tried to rise, yelped again and lay still.

  No!

  Matt launched himself up the beach like he’d been shot. His dog! His Sadie…

  With one incredulous look at the twins, Erin followed him, her heart sinking to her toes. Dear heaven, just when everything was going beautifully…

  It was always like this with the twins, she thought, her heart sick with dread. It was why no foster family would have them. Disaster followed them like sunshine followed rain.

  ‘Is she hurt?’ Erin couldn’t see. Matt was crouched over his dog, his whole body tense, and all Erin could see was one black and white tail. It lay ominously still. She took those last few steps around him, and then sagged in relief as she saw the collie lift her head and look pathetically up at her owner.

  It had been her foreleg, then. For one awful moment Erin thought maybe she’d been mistaken in what she’d seen, and the stick had caught her head.

  Her leg was bad enough, though. It was bleeding sluggishly at the point of impact, and Matt’s face was grim as death.

  They’d be out of here tonight, Erin thought bleakly, as she looked down at the lovely old dog. And they deserved it. Oh, no!

  ‘Matt, I’m so sorry.’

  ‘So am I, but it’s not you who should be apologising.’ Matt’s voice matched the grimness of his face. One hand was cradling the old dog’s head, the other was carefully examining the injured leg. ‘Maybe it’s not so bad. I can’t feel a break, and she’s holding it up.’

  She was, too. When Matt released the leg-just half an inch from the ground so it couldn’t be further hurt if it fell-Sadie kept it up, as much as to say, ‘Look at this, it hurts.’

  ‘She really is a bit of a hypochondriac,’ Matt told Erin in an undervoice, so the twins couldn’t hear. ‘But it was a fair whack. She’ll have to be checked.’

  ‘I’ll pay the vet’s bill.’ Heaven knew her wages weren’t sufficient to cover all she’d have to buy in the next few weeks but this…

  It was her fault, she thought bleakly. She should have seen the sticks. She should have moved faster.

  She’d let herself be distracted by Matt…

  ‘Erin, don’t! I told you before, it’s not you who should be apologising.’ Matt cradled his dog and looked up at her. She looked so distressed that he couldn’t bear it. Damn, she’d been through enough because of these kids.

  She was so lovely. Standing there in her crazy crimplene that had turned totally translucent with the water, she looked…

  Actually she looked naked.

  Maybe he’d better concentrate on his dog-and on the twins, he told himself firmly. As Erin was so distressed, then it was time for him to take a hand in the twin-control stakes.

  What these kids needed to learn was consequences.

  But what?

  The twins were standing side by side, ashen-faced and flinching. He looked up at them, and he knew instinctively that these kids had been beaten in the past. Beaten beyond reason. They weren’t in an orphanage for nothing. Nobody loved this pair, and they knew it.

  So now their faces were stoic, expecting pain. They were expecting the world to come crashing down around their ears, as it had so obviously done in the past.

  What had Erin said of them?

  They expect to be rejected.

  They expected it now. They were waiting for a good thrashing and to be sent away, and a glance at Erin’s face said she thought the same. Oh, not the thrashing-because she was here-but she was surely expecting him to toss them out.

  ‘Come here,’ he told them and then, when they didn’t move, he lowered his voice a notch. ‘Henry. William. I said come here. Now!’

  With an uncertain look at each other they came. Slowly, their shoulders touching, they came, waiting for what was to come, but waiting together.

  Erin’s whole body tensed.

  She was like a mother hen, Matt thought. If he laid a finger on these boys, no matter how justified he was, he’d have her to contend with, and he just knew that taking her on would be some task.

  He was doing no such thing, but the boys had to face up to what they’d done.

  ‘You’ve hurt Sadie,’ he said, and waited for what most kids would say. William did it-or We didn’t mean to, or It wasn’t our fault.

  They said none of those. Instead their faces fell to Sadie and the knowledge that had hit home when he’d watched them with Tigger in the dryer was reinforced yet again. These kids weren’t bad. They cared. Their loyalty, once won, was won forever.

  So no, he wouldn’t thrash them, and he wouldn’t throw them out.

  ‘We…we’re sorry,’ Henry whispered and one glistening tear slid down his cheek. Only one. These kids had schooled themselves not to show emotion and it didn’t show now.

  ‘Being sorry won’t help Sadie,’ Matt growled, immeasurably moved despite
his anger. ‘You need to do something that will.’

  ‘Like…’ It was Henry again. William was trembling, and the urge to lift the child and give him a hug was almost overwhelming. Erin, though, was managing to hold her hug instincts in check. She was leaving this to him. ‘Like what?’ Henry whispered.

  And Matt made a snap decision.

  ‘We need to take Sadie to the vet to make sure the leg’s not broken. I’ll call first, but before that we need to get her back to the house. That means we all have to squeeze on the tractor because I’m not leaving Erin behind. You two climb up behind the driver’s seat, sit down and make your knees as flat as you can. Then I’ll hand her up to you. You’ll carry her on your knees. You’ll be uncomfortable but I can’t help that. Erin, can you ride on the step?’

  ‘Sure.’

  Of course. Anything.

  ‘Right. Let’s move.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  IT DIDN’T stop there.

  Back at the house, Matt carried his dog inside to her basket, he telephoned the vet and then he turned to the boys. ‘Okay, you have two minutes to get changed because you’re coming with me.’

  ‘But…’ It was Erin and he turned to face her. His face was still implacable, but then she saw the tiniest glint of laughter behind his eyes and her own widened with astonishment.

  ‘I’m pretty sure the leg’s just bruised,’ he told her as the boys disappeared toward their bedroom and dry clothes. ‘But I’ve pre-warned Ted, our local vet. He’ll play it up-as I suspect Sadie’s playing it for all she’s worth. She was hit by a car when she was a pup. I pandered to her dreadfully while she recuperated, and now every time she’d like a little snack-say when I’m eating a nice juicy steak-she’ll look pathetic and limp.’

  ‘Oh, Sadie…’ Erin stooped down and hugged the big dog lying pathetically in her basket, her leg just slightly raised as if to say, ‘What a thing to suggest!-I’m fatally wounded here.’ ‘You wouldn’t do that, would you?’

  ‘She would.’ Matt knelt, too. Which was sort of nice, he decided. Erin was still gorgeously transparent-literally-and kneeling beside her was quite an experience. ‘That’s not to say the whack by the stick didn’t hurt, though. I bet it did. And now…’ He patted his old dog’s head. ‘She likes the vet, we’ll buy her some rump steak on the way home and the boys just might have a lesson in consequences.’

  Erin took a deep breath. ‘Thank you for not yelling at them,’ she said softly, and he smiled at her.

  Mistake.

  She smiled back, and something strange happened. Something indefinable.

  But real. Incredibly real.

  ‘It’s… It’s my pleasure,’ he told her in a voice that was suddenly none too steady. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go put some dry clothes on as well.’

  That’d be good, Erin thought inconsequentially. He’d been swimming bare-chested, he was still bare-chested and crouched beside her he was suddenly far too large and far too…far too male!

  And far too something she couldn’t define in the least.

  ‘Do you want me to come, too?’ she asked. She should. They were her charges.

  ‘No,’ he told her, breaking the moment finally by rising and backing a step or two. ‘This business is between me and the boys. You stay here and wait for Tom. There’s enough on your plate without worrying about my dog.’

  He was right, only…

  ‘I should stay with the twins.’

  ‘Delegate responsibility,’ he told her, and just for a fleeting moment he touched her damp curls. That was a mistake, as it happened, because the ‘something’ that was between them intensified a hundredfold.

  He caught his breath, and tried for a dignified exit. ‘Just for an hour or so,’ he told her. ‘Just for a while, I want you to think of yourself and let me worry about the twins.’

  He left her, but he didn’t leave her thinking about the twins-or herself for that matter.

  All she could think of was Matt.

  ‘There was no harm at all in letting them go with him.’

  It was Tom. The head of the Home Service had arrived at Matt’s farm before Matt, Sadie and the twins returned from the vet, and Erin was feeling dreadful.

  When she’d finally got her muddled thoughts back into order she’d gone straight back to concentrating on the twins, and now she was imagining the worst. What sort of chaos could they cause in a veterinary surgery? However, when she told Tom what was happening, his eyes grew thoughtful and he nodded his approval.

  ‘Don’t worry. Matt’s a sound man, Erin,’ he told her. ‘I spent some time with him this afternoon, and by the end of it I decided he’s the sort of person who, if he applied as a foster parent, I’d be approving in a flash.’

  ‘There’s not much chance of that.’ Erin gave her boss a half hearted smile. ‘You take one look at this house and you can see that. And when you meet the lady he intends to marry…’

  ‘Was that the woman he was with this afternoon?’ Tom’s craggy eyebrows raised in surprise. ‘Charlotte? I didn’t know he was engaged.’

  ‘I don’t think he is yet,’ Erin told him. ‘But I gather marriage to Matt has been Charlotte’s intention for years. She’s knocked back perfectly good offers while Matt went out with other women. Faithfulness personified, is our Charlotte, and I can’t see him letting her down now. In fact…’

  She took a deep breath and wondered why there was a strange constricting feeling around her heart. ‘I have a feeling there’s an engagement ring in the truck right now. I saw something that definitely looked like a ring box. Maybe he was planning on popping the question last night.’

  ‘I can’t see it happening.’ Tom shook his head. ‘I took to Matt right away, but I didn’t take to her. She’s a cold piece of work.’ Then he smiled, relegating Charlotte to his list of the least of his worries. ‘Nevertheless, she’s useful for some things.’ He motioned to the back of his car. ‘She’s great at shopping. She did all this.’

  ‘All what?’ Erin followed his gaze.

  ‘Clothes shopping. None of the rest of us could do it. Lori’s flat out taking care of the baby, all the other house parents have their hands full with problem kids and Wendy’s taken in Michael and Tess. We knew you’d be desperate for a change of clothes, and you can’t go shopping in welfare handouts. Matt remembered you were Wendy’s bridesmaid, so he rang her to find your size, and we had the boys’ on file. We bullied an emergency contingency cheque from the insurers, then Matt sent Charlotte shopping-and there you go.’

  Erin stared. ‘There I go?’

  ‘More clothes than you can poke a stick at,’ he told her. He lifted the pizzas from the passenger seat. ‘Clothes courtesy of your Matt’s organisation and his Charlotte’s happiness to shop, and dinner courtesy of me. I hope this place runs to a microwave so we can reheat these when the twins return.’

  ‘It runs to everything,’ she said, staring at the parcels and itching to undo them. Matt had organised this? Was this why he’d had to take Charlotte into town? The thought warmed her to her toes, and made it difficult to concentrate on anything else.

  Somehow she had to manage it. What were they talking about? Oh, yeah. Matt’s house. ‘Honestly, Tom, it’s a display home,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t see how we can stay here.’

  ‘I don’t see how you can do anything else,’ he told her. ‘It’s an answer to a prayer. There’s nowhere else I can put you. The only alternative is me laying you off for six months, leaving you unemployed and me sending the boys to Sydney.’

  That was some choice! It sure took her mind off parcels.

  But even so…

  ‘You’re prepared to keep paying me as a House Mother if I stay on here?’ Erin was incredulous.

  ‘I am. I had an emergency briefing with the board before leaving Sydney this morning,’ he told her. ‘The problem’s the twins and I told them that. They’re getting too old to place. No one wants to take on two seven-year-olds with a history of trouble, a
nd I won’t separate them.’

  ‘No.’ The very idea was dreadful.

  ‘Everyone wants babies,’ Tom said sadly. ‘I could place a hundred Marigolds. Littlies are easy but, once they’re over six, people believe that the damage has already been done.’

  ‘The twins are still…salvageable.’ Erin said softly. ‘They’re still capable of attachment.’

  ‘That’s why I put your case so strongly to the board,’ Tom told her. ‘If we take them to Sydney they’ll have to go into one of the bigger homes-even if it’s only for a short while-and I hate the idea. It could do so much damage. We may have these kids on our hands for the long term, Erin. House Mothers are supposed to be short-term parents while we find foster homes or adoptive parents but it’s not happening here.’

  He shook his head, but he was watching her face and seeing acceptance of what he was asking. Even more commitment to the twins! ‘It’s asking a lot, and separation at the end will be more difficult, but the alternative’s worse,’ he told her gently. ‘If you can care for them here for a while longer I’d appreciate it. I’ll do my damnedest to find them some other couple as soon as I can, but it’s looking bleak.’

  ‘I don’t have a choice then, do I?’ Erin asked, and Tom shook his head again.

  ‘No. Matt’s offer is far too good to knock back. He’s said he’ll take you for the full six months.’ He fixed her then with his all seeing look. Tom had been around, and he knew his staff. As he watched the trouble washing over her face, a sudden thought occurred to him.

  ‘It’s not putting you into an awkward position, is it?’ he demanded. Then he brightened. ‘I guess it can’t be if the man’s engaged to be married. There’ll be no hassles.’

  ‘No.’ But she sounded doubtful.

  He picked up on her doubt straight away, and he pounced. ‘You don’t trust him?’

  ‘I trust him, all right,’ Erin said, as she turned away with the pizza boxes. And then she added a rider that was meant for her ears only. ‘I’m just not sure I can trust myself.’