‘Oh, Matt, thank you,’ she whispered, and the tears in her eyes were real now, threatening to slide down her cheeks. She blinked them back, fast and furious, and then made a grab for her pile of clothes. Carefully sorted heaps were ignored. They were crumpled into one vast mound of clothes, gathered against her breast almost as a defence.
‘Goodnight, Matt.’
And then she fled, taking her clothes and her necklace twin-wards, before her tears finally were allowed to run free. She left Matt staring after her, wondering what the hell he’d just done.
He’d just restored a necklace to its owner.
And now something else needed restoring but it was nothing tangible. In fact, he didn’t have a clue what it was.
But it was a long time before he slept that night. And when he slept, he didn’t dream of the lady he was about to marry.
He dreamed of seed pearl necklaces, and he dreamed of Erin.
CHAPTER SIX
DESPITE the emotions of the day, Erin slept soundly. In fact, she slept more soundly than she remembered sleeping for years.
It was because Matt was here, she thought as she drifted toward unconsciousness. As House Mother she always slept on the brink of waking. There was always a child in need. And before that…
Her mother had died when Erin was just fourteen. Erin had been the oldest of the kids. Her father had crumpled with her mother’s death so she’d reared her siblings with love and also, she had to admit, with pleasure. When the last child left home she moved on to being an orphanage House Mother, but her choice of career meant that from the time she was fourteen there’d always been a child dependent on her.
There was no one else to share her load.
But here, at the other end of the house, slept Matt. She wasn’t totally in charge. The feeling was novel, and she shouldn’t indulge it, but in truth it was also wonderful.
She indulged it. The twins slept soundly and Erin totally relaxed. She slept on dreamlessly, and she couldn’t guess that at the other end of the house Matt stirred and tossed and fretted because he couldn’t get her out of his head.
Erin woke at dawn when Matt crept silently into the room next door.
She might have been sleeping soundly, but she was still a House Mother. Some things were instinctive, and protection was one of them. The moment the twins’ bedroom door opened, her eyes were wide and she was pushing herself up in bed wondering what was wrong.
She’d propped the bathroom doors open between the two rooms so she could see, and she could see clearly straight through. Matt was in his working clothes and he was tip-toeing towards the twins.
‘What’s wrong?’ It came out as a whispered croak of surprise.
He cast her a look of annoyance-annoyance with himself for waking her. ‘Hell, Erin, I’m sorry. You go back to sleep. I’m after the twins.’
She found her right voice. ‘What on earth for?’
‘The twins hurt my dog,’ he explained. ‘So I told them last night that they need to accept responsibility for what they’d done. Sadie needs to rest for a week, and therefore the twins need to take over Sadie’s workload.’ He reached the bed the boys were still sharing and touched two small shoulders. ‘Okay, guys. Wake up. It’s six a.m. You know what we need to do.’
And, amazingly, they did. They opened their eyes, they smiled shyly up at Matt as if this had been expected, and to Erin’s astonishment, they moved straight into dress mode.
‘What on earth are you doing?’
‘Tell her, boys.’ Matt smiled at her-and then he carefully diverted his attention elsewhere.
Hell! What was happening here?
Following orders, Erin was wearing one of the welfare shirts as sleepwear. It was buttoned to the neck and it was a man’s shirt to boot, but the sight of Erin fresh from sleep, tousled and rumpled, with her curls flying free and her gorgeous blue eyes wide with enquiry somehow had the power to make something inside him kick.
Hard.
Luckily a twin spoke, giving him time to gather his wits.
‘We’re rounding up the cows,’ Henry told Erin solemnly, hauling on the ill-fitting trousers he’d worn the day before. ‘You have new clothes to wear now,’ Erin told him, and then took on board what Henry had said. ‘Rounding up cows?’
‘The boys don’t need new clothes to do what they need to do,’ Matt told her, still carefully concentrating on the twins. ‘In fact, new clothes would be completely wasted. We’re cutting Cecil out from where he’s been serving the cows. He’s due at the Lassendale Cattle Show tomorrow.’
‘The Lassendale Show…’
‘You’re still half asleep,’ Matt told her kindly. ‘William, that windcheater’s inside out. Surely you know the Lassendale show, Erin? And you a farmer’s daughter and all.’
Right. Of course she did. The whole farming world knew the show he was talking about, but she’d never been there. Well, why would she? Lassendale was a show-case of the cream of the country’s pedigree cattle, and a prize from the Lassendale judges meant the making or breaking of a stud farmer. Of course Matt would be showing.
‘You’re putting Cecil in the show?’
‘I surely am.’
And then Erin started feeling strange, too. Matt was adjusting William’s windcheater and the sight of him dressing the little boy-a job she should be doing herself-did strange things to her insides. Things she didn’t understand in the least. She hauled her bedclothes up to her neck in an instinctive act of defence, but for the life of her she couldn’t think what she was defending.
‘And the boys?’ she managed.
‘I can’t cut a bull out of that herd without a good dog,’ he told her, his eyes twinkling. He’d overcome his unease in the face of her discomfort-or maybe it was because she’d hauled the sheet up so far. ‘Or, failing a dog, then two obedient twins. Which I have here, don’t I, boys?’
‘Yes.’ William said the word solemnly and Henry nodded his agreement.
‘Now there’s no need for you to get up,’ Matt told her. ‘I’ll give the boys some milk and a piece of toast each and we’ll have a proper breakfast when we’re finished. You go back to sleep.’
Back to sleep? Such a thing was unheard of. Go back to sleep when the twins were awake…
‘No!’
‘You’re not wanted,’ Matt told her, making his voice severe. ‘Is she, boys? Cutting out bulls is man’s work.’
‘But Matt,’ She was bewildered by the plan. ‘A bull-’
‘Cecil is a pussy cat,’ he told her, seeing what her major worry was. ‘Don’t fret yourself. You know I wouldn’t let the boys near anything I considered dangerous. With these two to help me, we’ll have him back to the yard in no time. Then we’ll scrub him down, make him beautiful and then we can introduce him to you personally.’
‘But-’
‘Stop arguing and go back to sleep.’
‘Matt-’
‘Sleep!’
Sleep? Ha!
Go back to sleep, he’d said, but it was just plain impossible. Erin lay in bed and listened to the sounds of the boys in the kitchen. She heard Matt talking, and she heard the boys giggling in response.
Giggling?
They sounded just like they did when they were plotting trouble, Erin thought, but the difference here was that Matt was plotting trouble for them. Excellent trouble. Cutting a bull from the herd was just the sort of adventure they craved, and to do it with such a wondrous person as Matt…
He was wondrous, Erin thought sleepily. He knew instinctively how to act with the boys.
Take responsibility for your actions…
She’d tried and tried to drum that into them, and here was Matt doing exactly that. Yesterday they’d hurt Sadie, so today they were doing Sadie’s job.
She desperately wanted to join them, but she knew that to do so would spoil it for them. This was men’s work, Matt had decreed, and for Erin to interfere… To have their House Mother hovering over them, fussing and bossing while th
ey did it, would spoil it in a way she instinctively understood. So somehow she forced herself to lie still.
Then the bedroom door opened again and it was William, carefully balancing a cup of tea.
‘Matt said you’d like this.’
Behind him was Henry, carrying a plate of toast with marmalade. Erin blinked and blinked again. Breakfast in bed! Good grief!
And Matt was in the doorway behind them, watching his charges with pride as they wobbled their responsibilities to her bedside table-without a single spill.
‘Well done, boys,’ he told them. He looked at Erin and he winked. ‘Okay, lady. Wrap yourself around your breakfast, then put your head on the pillow and sleep-while we men go off and organise the world. Okay, men. Let’s go round us up some beef cattle.’
She couldn’t do it.
She physically couldn’t lie in bed and do nothing. It nearly killed her. She drank her tea and ate her toast, then lay and stared at the ceiling for all of half an hour. Then Sadie sidled in and put her nose on the bedcover, and Erin fondled the old dog’s ears and smiled in sympathy. She knew exactly what the dog was thinking.
‘We’ve been made redundant, girl,’ she said softly and Sadie waved her silky tail in agreement. ‘How does that make you feel?’
Sadie flopped down on the mat beside the bed, put her head on her forelegs and sighed.
‘It makes you feel funny, too?’
Another sigh.
‘I suppose I could just go see what they’re doing,’ she told the dog. ‘From a distance.’
Sadie looked up at her with hope, and Erin shook her head.
‘Not you, girl. You have a sore leg to look after.’ Then, at the look on Sadie’s face, she burst into laughter. ‘Oh, you fraud. You pulled a con and now you’re feeling like you’d like to change your mind.’ She leaned down and lightly touched Sadie’s bandaged leg. ‘I’m sorry, girl, but you’re going to have to put up with it. I have a feeling your leg might be more important than you know.’
There was another sigh at that, and Erin was starting to feel like the dog understood every word she said. Which was good, because Erin surely needed someone to talk to.
‘I know how you feel,’ she told her. ‘But for more reasons than one, you need to keep your nose out of it.’
But Erin wasn’t keeping her nose out.
If she stayed in that bed any longer she’d bust something.
If there was one thing being brought up on a farm with seven siblings had taught her, it was how to hide. Years of hide and seek had made her a master of the art. Erin washed and dressed with speed, and then made her way down the paddocks, moving from the concealment of one clump of river gums to another with the ease of a master.
The mustering team-Matt and his dog-cum-twins-were easy enough to find. The boys were whooping and yipping loud enough to wake the fishermen back in Bay Beach. Their targeted herd of cows was moving uneasily away from this unknown quantity, and by the time she reached the edge of the paddock where they were, Erin had a clear idea of what Matt was doing.
He was using the boys just like he’d use a working dog. Maybe they didn’t have as much finesse as Sadie possessed, but his team strategy was effective all the same.
It was simple, really. Matt would send the twins into the herd, whooping at the top of their lungs and effectively splitting it down the centre. Half the herd would move one way, and Matt would concentrate on keeping the half containing Cecil the bull packed tight into the fenced corner. Ignoring the rest, they then had a smaller herd to work with.
Once the herd was where Matt wanted, the twins moved in again to split a smaller herd. With each foray of yipping and yelling, they made the controlled group smaller.
And finally there was just Cecil, a confused-looking beast but a magnificent specimen of Hereford Bull all the same. He stood in his corner, a twin at each side and Matt before him. While Erin watched from her safe distance, Matt slipped a rope through the ring in the bull’s nose. The huge animal looked up at Matt in a resigned sort of way, and then he started plodding steadily toward the house before Matt so much as tugged on the rope.
He’d done this a thousand times before, his body language said, and while he might have tried his darndest to escape, now that he was cornered, like Matt had said, he was a real pussy cat.
So much so that Erin wasn’t surprised when Matt slipped the rope into Henry’s hand so he could lead him, and then scooped William up to ride on the bull’s broad back. The twins were so light the bull would hardly notice his burden.
He didn’t. Cecil plodded on without changing stride.
‘You ride halfway, and then swap with Henry,’ Matt told them, and from where she stood in the cluster of gums by the paddock’s boundary, Erin could see the twins’ collective shoulders expand a notch or six.
They’d be so proud of what they were doing!
All their attention was on the bull. Henry was leading the bull with the solemnity of an undertaker leading a funeral procession, and William was clinging on as if he expected Cecil to buck.
And, as she watched, Matt fell behind, then turned his head toward the trees where Erin was hiding, and he waved. And grinned.
Caught!
For a split second Erin hesitated, then she grinned and waved back. Drat the man, he had eyes in the back of his head.
She wasn’t wanted, though. She could see that. She left them to it, and went quietly back to the house.
She was a House Mother without charges, and it felt very peculiar indeed!
By the time they finished doing what they were doing, she was fed up with being a House Mother without charges. She desperately wanted to be part of it.
The urge to go out to the sheds was almost overwhelming. Instead somehow she made herself organise the boys’ clothing, make the beds, prepare another breakfast, talk to Sadie, talk to herself…
‘I’m going nuts,’ she told the dog. ‘I don’t think I’d be very good at living alone.’
She’d been alone for three hours and it felt weird.
‘What are they doing out there?’
She didn’t know, and Sadie couldn’t help her. So they sat in the kitchen and waited, and it was hard to know which of them was more frustrated.
Finally they reappeared.
They were filthy! The twins were mud splattered, soaking wet and they were beaming from ear to ear. They stood at the back door and fought for the rights to tell her everything. All at once.
‘We’ve cleaned him and soaped him all over and now he shines and shines.’
‘He’s beautiful.’
‘I rode on his back.’
‘William squirted Matt with the hose but he didn’t mean to, and Matt didn’t mind…’
Then Matt appeared behind them, and he was just as filthy as the twins were-and his grin said he was just as happy with his morning’s work. He smiled at Erin and then looked doubtfully down at himself.
‘We’re a bit dirty to come in,’ he told her.
She nodded, trying not to laugh. They were all so pleased with themselves, but that mud…
‘I think you should stay outside,’ she told them.
‘Aw, Erin…’ Both twins howled a protest and then saw she was laughing. Their small faces relaxed and they took a tentative step over the threshold.
‘Stop this minute!’ She stopped them in their tracks, in a voice that Charlotte or Matt’s dead mother would be proud of. ‘Go not one inch further.’ Matt blinked. He hadn’t thought it of her.
And he was right. She wasn’t worried about her kitchen floor. She was concerned about something else.
‘Do you have a camera?’ she asked, and when he nodded she made him tell her where to find it.
‘Because you’re not getting rid of one spot of that gorgeous mud until I’ve documented this moment,’ she told them. ‘I want a photograph of you guys standing next to a beautiful Cecil so I can remember this moment for the rest of my life.’
It wasn’t just a
memory for Erin.
She took the photograph from three different angles, with Matt standing proudly, one hand on each twins’ shoulder, and all beside Matt’s magnificent, gleaming bull, and she knew this photograph would be precious for many reasons.
The boys had so few memories. So few possessions.
If she took copies of this and framed it, it’d become as valued as Tigger the Tiger, she thought, and she finished taking the shot and raised her eyes to Matt in gratitude.
‘Thank you,’ she said and her words held a whole wealth of meaning.
He got it in one.
‘My pleasure,’ he told her and if his voice wasn’t quite steady it wasn’t for the want of trying.
Then they trooped through the kitchen, showered, the boys inspected and accepted and donned their new clothes and they breakfasted properly. They sat at Matt’s big kitchen table and wrapped themselves around bacon and eggs, and toast and cereal, while Erin watched with amazement at what they were demolishing. The boys were normally picky eaters. Now they ate and talked and ate and talked like there was no tomorrow.
And all the time Matt watched, like a benevolent genie who’d wrought this change with a wave of a magic wand.
They were great kids! he was thinking. The best!
‘Do you like your new clothes?’ Erin asked, and they nodded over slices of watermelon. Matt had done a vast grocery shop the day before, and he’d done them proud. He’d had to do a few things since he’d granted Mrs Gregory her holiday, but he was finding that he didn’t mind in the least. The house was the cosier for it.
It was also messier. Matt looked ruefully down at the tracks he and the twins had made across the kitchen floor which Mrs Gregory wouldn’t have tolerated to stay while she cooked breakfast. But it was definitely cosier.
Nice.
‘But we don’t like your clothes,’ Henry was telling Erin, and Matt agreed entirely.
‘What’s wrong with mine?’ Erin looked down at her beautifully fitting jeans and long-sleeved shirt. ‘They’re great.’
Adopted: Twins! Page 9
