‘Matt gets to sleep in the nice comfy straw with Cecil and all these great people and these wonderful animals,’ she told Henry, making her voice mournful. ‘While poor old us get to sleep between sheets in a really comfortable hotel.’
Silence while the twins took this on board. Then came the inevitable-‘We want to sleep on the straw, too,’ Henry said.
‘Yes,’ said William.
It would be sort of fun, Erin thought. Staying here with these down-to-earth farmers instead of going back to the hotel, putting the boys to sleep and then spending the evening with Charlotte.
No! Spending the evening alone!
‘Matt’s booked us into a really great hotel,’ she told the kids. ‘With a swimming pool.’
‘It’d be better here. We don’t want a swimming pool. Matt’s river’s better.’
‘Yes, but we don’t have sleeping bags-and I’ll bet Matt’s already paid a deposit for the hotel.’ She was all with the kids on this one, but it wouldn’t work. Even if their sleeping bags hadn’t been burned in the fire, which they had, sleeping in the cattle pavilion-with Matt-was probably unwise. In more ways than one.
But bad news had a habit of travelling fast in country communities. Even though they were now a hundred miles from Bay Beach, most of the people in the pavilion knew exactly who Erin and her boys were. They were receiving sympathy from all sides, and they received more now.
‘Bet your sleeping bags and stuff were burned in the fire,’ the cattleman she’d been talking to growled, and when she nodded he chewed his bottom lip.
‘There you go then, boys,’ he said to the cattle shed in general. ‘Kids and the lady want to stay here. We’ve been thinking of a way we could help and here it is.’ He hauled his hat from his head and tossed a twenty dollar bill into it. ‘Here’s a start.’ He passed the disreputable Akubra on to his neighbour.
‘This is a whip round, and when we have enough my Bert’ll go downtown and fetch what you need. Three full swags with our compliments. No arguments, girl. The hotel room Matt’s booked will be snatched up by any of a score of people who need accommodation and who don’t figure, like us, that the place we have here is fit for kings. And as for the swags… It’ll be our pleasure to buy them for you.’
The generosity was immediate and almost overwhelming. It left Erin with nothing to say but thank you. Despite Erin’s protestations, there was no resisting the wave of generosity passing through the shed, and the hat with the money disappeared out the door before she could see it.
Bert returned half an hour later, laden with swags-padded sleeping mats, sleeping bags, mosquito nets and pillows. Following him in was Charlotte, and, to Erin’s surprise, she appeared delighted with the new sleeping arrangements.
‘That’s wonderful,’ she told a bemused Matt, tucking a proprietorial arm through his. ‘It means Erin can stay here and look after your beastly bull and you can stay at the hotel with me.’
There would now be a free room, Erin thought, and then thought, they’re engaged, why would Matt even need a spare room? The thought, for some stupid reason, made her feel ill.
It didn’t suit the twins, either. They’d been checking out the sleeping bags with whoops of delight, but now they paused, mid whoop.
‘Matt’s sleeping with us,’ William said uncertainly and Henry stuck his thumb in his mouth in affirmation. The little boy looked up at Charlotte as if she was some slug-like creature who even his small boy’s interest in slug-like creatures would still find repelling.
For once, Erin was in sympathy with his sentiments entirely.
But she couldn’t admit it.
‘Of course Matt can stay with Charlotte,’ she made herself say. ‘It makes sense.’
‘Of course it makes sense,’ Charlotte snapped, resentful that Erin felt she had any influence at all on Matt’s sleeping arrangements.
But Matt had other ideas. He knew by now exactly what the twins were capable of. Not that they’d worry Cecil, he thought. He knew them well enough by now to accept that if he told them they were guarding Cecil then they’d do it as if their lives depended on it, but what else they might do…
No! Erin’s job was to look after her twins, and his job was to look after Cecil. He couldn’t ask her to do both.
‘I’m sleeping here,’ he told Charlotte and watched her face darken. Damn, now he had to feel guilty!
‘Don’t you trust me with your bull?’ Erin teased, and he cast her an exasperated glance.
‘You have enough on your hands.’
‘I normally look after five kids,’ she told him, and her eyes were still teasing. Damn, they had the ability to mesmerise a man. ‘Two kids and a bull should be a piece of cake.’
‘Erin…’
‘Darling, don’t be stupid.’ Charlotte’s hand was still resting on his arm and he had to fight back the urge to shake it off. ‘You know you can come.’
‘Do you know how much this bull’s worth?’ he demanded, driving her against the ropes. If there was one thing Charlotte understood it was money.
‘But Matt…’
He didn’t trust them completely, Erin thought, watching the affianced couple, and who could blame him? If it was her priceless bull, would she leave him with the twins?
Yes, but then she knew her twins!
‘Look, let’s compromise,’ Erin suggested. Goodness, here she went again. This was what being a House Mother was all about-finding compromises before there was a scene, and the cattlemen listening around them meant that a scene would be quite spectacular.
‘Matt, what if you take Charlotte out for dinner while we care for Cecil? Then you can come back here to sleep. I guess we’ll probably be dead to the world by the time you return, but we’ll set up our bags right by Cecil and we promise we won’t leave him alone for a moment. He’ll be safe-won’t he boys?’
‘Yes,’ said William, and Henry took his thumb from his mouth long enough to say,
‘Yes, if he really has to go out with her…’
‘He really does. Don’t you, Matt?’
And, with the eyes of the entire pavilion on him, what was a man to do but agree?
CHAPTER EIGHT
AS RESTAURANTS went, Charlotte would have rated this one as entirely satisfactory.
Show time was Lassendale’s biggest two weeks of the year. The hotel Charlotte was staying in was five star, and the restaurant chefs had pulled out all the stops to impress a clientele which, for these two weeks, was international and wealthy. Therefore Matt-who’d packed a suit as he always did, for business meetings with those who were interested in what Cecil could provide-escorted Charlotte into the dim recesses of the dining room and he knew he was in for a gastronomical treat.
He wasn’t disappointed. The waiter took one look at the sleek and svelte Charlotte and her handsome companion, and he ushered them to the best table, gave them the best service and they were treated to the best food Lassendale could offer.
Matt had an appetiser of some sort of tiny goat’s cheese souffle. Entrée was ginger chilli prawns cooked to perfection, and then steak…
Steak!
Cecil.
Matt found his thoughts wandering right back to his bull-and to the people who’d be guarding him. All through appetiser and entrée he’d fought to keep his attention on Charlotte’s small talk, but he could ignore the pull of his conscience no longer.
‘Maybe we should give sweets a miss,’ he told Charlotte tensely. ‘I’m a bit unhappy about Cecil.’
He wasn’t. He just…
He just didn’t know, but it didn’t seem right that Erin was back there and he was here.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ Charlotte gave a soft laugh and put her hand over his. Curiously the motion made him flinch. It was all he could do not to pull away, and the sensation was starting to worry him. This was the woman he intended marrying, he told himself. To flinch was ridiculous.
He forced himself to return the pressure of her hand as she continued.
>
‘Darling, Erin does come from solid farming stock. I remember she used to take her father’s herd droving through the drought years when she was little more than a child herself. My parents were horrified, but I gather she coped very well.’
She had, too, Matt thought. Droving… He’d forgotten that.
Matt let Charlotte chatter on, but his thoughts flew elsewhere. In his late teens there’d been a drought which had left every farm in the district low on feed. Farms like Matt’s and Charlotte’s, where there’d been money to spare, had brought in food from interstate. But the Douglas family hadn’t been in that position and Jack Douglas, bereft from the loss of his children’s mother, simply didn’t care.
That had been the end of Erin’s formal schooling, he remembered. With seven siblings to feed and clothe, she couldn’t afford to let the farm go under. Aged all of fifteen years old, she’d taken herself out of school and driven her cattle around the dusty district roads, letting them graze on any roadside where there’d been any growth at all.
It was a desperate measure to keep her breeding stock alive. Somehow she’d managed it, and managed it alone, though he still didn’t know how.
And he remembered his mother’s fury when she discovered his father had taken Erin a pile of hay to let her stay in the same place for a while.
‘If the drought keeps up much longer we’ll need it ourselves,’ she’d hissed. ‘You don’t have to feel sorry for every destitute little tramp in the district…’
Destitute little tramp…
He looked into Charlotte’s flushed face and he knew she’d felt exactly the same. Erin had been very much alone then, and she was very much alone now.
‘I’ll go back,’ he said flatly, and the hand in his suddenly stilled.
‘Matt, don’t be stupid. I’d like sweets, and there’s dancing afterwards.’
‘But I have responsibilities.’ And then he looked up as a man he recognised appeared in the entrance. Bradley Moore. Of course. Bradley always stayed in the finest establishment, and he was always looking for someone to talk with about his horses. Charlotte was just the woman. She even liked horses! He lifted an arm. ‘Hi, Bradley. Over here!’
‘Matt!’
‘You like Bradley, don’t you?’
To his amazement, Charlotte blushed from the tip of her manicured toenails to the roots of her sleekly chignoned hair. ‘Yes, but…’
‘There you go, then,’ he said amiably. Why had he never seen how suited these two were? ‘Bradley, I need to go back to my bull. Could you keep Charlotte entertained on my behalf?’
‘Why…’ Bradley, the sort of half-wit who couldn’t decide whether to look like a Really Important Person or a half-baked kipper, looked stunned but incredulously delighted. ‘Of course.’
‘Of course.’ Matt beamed. ‘I’ll leave you be, then. Will you come out and watch Cecil in the grand parade tomorrow, Charlotte?’
‘I might,’ she said peevishly. She was seriously annoyed. ‘It depends on what Bradley’s doing.’
‘Right ho,’ said Matt, with all the amiability in the world, and made his escape.
They hadn’t missed him a bit. That much was clear the moment he walked into the cattle pavilion.
While he’d been wining and dining Charlotte, the cattlemen had set up a barbecue. The aroma of seared sausages and steak hit him the moment he entered the doors, and he thought fleeting of the grossly overpriced steak back at the hotel and wondered how much better it had been.
A hundred bucks better? he wondered, and he knew darned well it wasn’t.
He’d missed out on sweets back at the hotel, but he needn’t have worried. The moment he was sighted, he was handed a plate of pavlova.
‘Get that into you, Matt McKay,’ a cheerful young matron told him. ‘You almost missed out. And then get into a set. Your family have been at it an hour or more, and if you don’t join in soon they’ll have danced their legs off without you.’
His family…
It was the strangest feeling, but that was exactly how it felt. He stood on the sidelines absently spooning in pavlova-which was a shame because the crisp meringue and the gorgeous sun-ripened strawberries deserved all his attention-and he watched his ‘family’ dance.
‘Swing your partners, round we go.’
The square dancing was at a frantic pace. One of the cattlemen had produced a fiddle, another a mouth organ, and the centre of the pavilion had been cleared for the dancers. Now it was a mass of whirling, laughing, cattlemen and women, teenagers, kids and even the odd dog.
And Erin and her twins were in the middle of everything. They were part of a set, the twins were obeying the caller’s instructions as if their lives depended on it, and Erin…
Erin was being swung from one appreciative cattleman to another. And what she was wearing…
It was the new dress she’d bought in town with Shanni and it was gorgeous! All the colours of the rainbow, with a full circle skirt that flew out like a whirling, flaming hoop around her, it was a dress that had to be seen to be believed. Her hair was flying free, her gorgeous blue eyes were sparkling with laughter and her face was flushed with exertion.
She looked so desirable that it almost killed Matt to stay on the sidelines and eat his pavlova. But to join the set you needed a partner, and there were no spare women. Except…
Except the pavlova lady who’d just handed over her last piece of pavlova. With a whoop of triumph, Matt cast off his coat and tie, seized the unsuspecting lady and whirled her onto the dance floor before she had time to object.
Now it was just a matter of working his way up the line to Erin…
‘Hey, William, Matt’s here!’ Henry was doing his darnedest to whirl around a very fat lady of advancing years-and not doing such a bad job of it either. The lady was whirling as required, though Henry, trying valiantly to clutch her around the waist, merely had an armful of thigh, and her breast was threatening to crush him at any moment.
William was doing better. He was paired at the moment with a young lady not much older-or bigger-than he was, but the responsibility of the occasion didn’t give him time to respond. There was a twirly bit coming up and he had to get it right…
But Erin had heard.
‘Matt!’ She was flying past him as she threaded in and out of the dancers. Darn! Matt hadn’t realised this wasn’t a ‘change your partners’ set. She was threading and so was a stud of a cattleman who he didn’t recognise but disliked on sight. ‘What have you done with Charlotte?’ she called, and he dredged up a smile.
‘Left her with Bradley.’
Her eyebrows hit the roof. She gave that delicious chuckle and then someone else swung her away, she flew back to the arms of her cattleman and she was lost to him.
There was no more contact then for about five minutes, until it was time for Matt and his partner to take their turn threading to the lead. Then, as he whirled Erin around to change to the other side of the set, she laughed up into his face.
‘You must have the utmost faith in her,’ she teased, and he glowered.
‘Why wouldn’t I?’
‘With your bank balance?’ Still she was laughing. ‘No, indeed.’
And then Erin was gone, leaving him to glower some more and then regain his composure as he joined his partner again and found she was looking up at him in mute enquiry.
She really was bouncy and pretty herself, he told himself. The twins were having the time of their lives and the whole pavilion was having fun. Even the cattle were watching with bovine approval.
There was no earthly reason-or even a logical one-for a man to sulk just because Erin was dancing with someone else. He gave himself a huge mental shrug and decided to have fun.
Which he did.
They danced on. The music went on into the night. The twins decided it was more fun whooping around the cattle stalls with other kids than being squeezed from bosom to bosom. The cattlemen ended up with their wives or lovers. And Matt…
&
nbsp; Matt finally ended up with Erin. They danced on. The music slowed, and maybe he should have stopped, but Erin felt sort of nice, with her hands in his, then sort of closer, her breasts against his chest, his mouth nuzzling her soft curls, the scent of some faint perfume drifting upward and making him feel…
That was enough of that! Enough! This was tantalising, unwise, unplanned, thoughtless, and hopeless.
The music stopped as the musicians finally ran out of puff, and Erin and Matt were left looking at each other in the middle of the dance floor-cum-cattle shed. They were still holding each other. Still sort of feeling…
They had twins!
As the music stopped, the kids in the pavilion returned reluctantly to their respective parents. Most were heading off with one or both parents to a hotel, but a few were camping with the cattle tenders, as Matt and Erin were.
‘It’s time to go to bed,’ William announced importantly for what must surely be the first time in his life he had ever asked voluntarily to go to bed. He was head-butting Erin’s thigh to get her attention. Totally unaware of the currents of sexual awareness between the two adults, he was onto the next thing on the twins’ agenda. Which was sleeping in the straw.
‘We need to set up our beds,’ Henry told them, and reluctantly, Erin’s hands were released and the twins were included in between them. There was a sandwich of adults with kid filling, and the frisson of warmth and linkage remained the same. It felt so right!
‘So we do,’ Matt said, but his eyes were still on Erin. There were matters here that were unresolved.
And that had to remain unresolved, he thought fiercely, forcing himself to remember Charlotte back at the hotel and all the logical reasons why he’d decided to marry her. Charlotte was a sensible choice, he told himself harshly. Good grief! If he married because of a spur-of-the-moment attraction, he could have married fifteen years ago, and where would he be now? Burdened with school fees, chaos, change to his mother’s lovely, ordered house…
Adopted: Twins! Page 12
