‘Weatherproof isn’t the same as liveable.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Wendy,’ Erin snapped. ‘You can fix the place.’
‘While I care for a baby and a five-year-old.’ Wendy shook her head. ‘Mr Grey-’
‘Luke.’
‘Luke, then.’ She met his look head on, steel meeting steel. On the surface this offer seemed too good to refuse, but Gabbie was by her side and Gabbie was why she’d thrown in a perfectly good career and was moving on.
‘It’d include Gabbie?’ she asked. ‘I’d have the run of the house and Gabbie could stay with me?’
‘The house has five bedrooms,’ he said, expanding on his theme, and worry fading by the minute. This was looking better and better. Over the years he’d fretted about the farm, knowing he should sell it, but always he’d held back. Sentiment, he guessed, though he told himself it was a reasonable investment. Now, if Wendy was to fix it up a bit… Make it a home…
‘You’d set it up legally?’ she asked.
‘Watertight,’ he told her. ‘I need to go to New York tonight, but I’ll send my lawyer down from Sydney. I’ll instruct him to do whatever necessary to have you stay.’
Wendy blinked. There had to be a catch. Somewhere.
She looked at the baby sleeping in Luke’s arms. Grace. Grace and Gabbie. She’d be caring for two little girls…
This could be perfect. This way, if-when-Gabbie’s mother demanded time with her daughter there wouldn’t be such a hole in her life. She’d remain busy doing what she loved best, and there’d still be a home waiting for Gabbie when she returned.
But the house hadn’t been lived in for how many years? And the unknown factor-this new little baby’s mother-could return at any minute, and reclaim her baby. She’d only dumped her this morning. There was all the reason in the world to suppose she’d change her mind, and where would that leave Wendy and Gabbie?
No! There were dangers everywhere she looked, and if she didn’t catch this train-when did it leave?-oh, good grief, in less than an hour!-she’d be too late to get the keys to her new apartment. She’d lose it and she’d be stuck with nowhere to live in Sydney.
On the other hand, if she agreed and took two small children out to a derelict farm, and Luke headed back to New York…
She’d be stuck, she thought wildly. She could be in the biggest mess, and it wasn’t just her. It would be Gabbie and Grace as well. She had no legal right to take on the responsibility for this baby. She wondered whether Luke did. Probably not. So it had to be said.
‘No,’ she said firmly, and bit her lip as she heard herself say it. It was such a glorious idea. To say no was dreadful-but she had to be sensible.
‘Wendy!’ Erin wailed.
‘May I ask why not?’ Luke was in businessman mode here-moving in organisational capacity. This was what he was good at. ‘It’s a very good offer.’
‘It may be an exceptional offer,’ she told him. ‘But if the farm’s a wreck then it’s not. Or if I’m accused of taking Grace when I have no legal right to care for her. I’ll bet you haven’t even thought of the legal ramifications of guardianship. Have you?’
His eyes went blank. Clearly he hadn’t. ‘No.’
‘Then, I thank you for your very kind offer,’ she said firmly. ‘But I can’t accept. Unless…’
‘Unless?’
‘Unless you postpone your trip to New York. Unless you spend enough time with us at the farm to ensure it’s liveable, and you don’t leave for New York until everything’s legally settled and I’m happy that the children have a secure and reasonable place to live.’
He didn’t like it.
For the next ten minutes Luke produced every argument he could think of to have her change her mind. At the end of the ten minutes she simply took Gabbie’s hand and led her from the room.
‘We have a train to catch,’ she reminded him simply. ‘I’m pushed for time. Goodbye, Luke.’
Goodbye…
Balked, he glared after her but it made no difference. The kitchen door swung closed behind her and he glared at Erin instead.
‘She’s right,’ Erin said helpfully. Sadly but helpfully. ‘Wendy needs the legal rights to care for your baby, and she doesn’t have them. And if no one’s lived in that place for twenty years it’ll be a mess. You know it. Kids need safe places to live.’
‘I need to be in New York.’
‘Then, you have different priorities,’ she told him. ‘When do you plan on leaving?’
‘Now. Tonight. Midnight if I can get back to Sydney on time.’
‘And what do you plan on doing with Grace?’
‘She’s not my responsibility,’ he said helplessly, staring down at the sleeping baby in his arms.
‘In that case leave her with our children’s services and they’ll find placement for her in Sydney.’ Erin tilted her chin. She was taking a big risk and she knew it. She held her breath.
He glared at her some more.
And then he looked down at the child in his arms and his glare sort of died.
‘I…’
‘You don’t want to do that, do you?’ Erin asked gently.
‘No.’
‘What’s so important in New York?’
‘Meetings. I’m a broker.’
‘I’ll bet you have the internet and e-mail and all sorts of other technological gadgetry to overcome this crisis,’ she said brightly. ‘Teleconferencing, maybe? I hear it’s all the go. We even use it here to link up with our Sydney offices.’
He glowered. ‘I’ll bet there’s not even a phone at the farm.’
‘Which is one reason Wendy is right in saying she can’t agree to live there yet. You don’t have a mobile phone?’
‘Of course I have a mobile, but…’
‘There you go, then.’ She smiled again, all objectives achieved. ‘I’d stop her packing, if I were you,’ she said kindly. ‘Once she gets on that train you’ll have lost the greatest nanny a man could ever hire. Wendy’s simply the best.’
And Luke, staring down at her bright smile, knew that it was true. He knew instinctively that in Wendy he had someone he wouldn’t mind entrusting a baby he cared for.
Cared for?
He didn’t care for Grace.
But… He stared down at the sleeping baby, and his tiny half-sister stirred in his arms and snuggled closer.
‘Hell!’
‘It is, isn’t it?’ Erin said sympathetically. ‘Or it will be if you don’t stop Wendy from boarding that train. New York or Wendy, Mr Grey. You choose-but choose now.’
‘Hell!’ he said again.
‘Swearing won’t help,’ she said sweetly. ‘Choosing will.’
An hour later, Wendy was in the front passenger seat of an Aston Martin sports car, being driven south.
Against her better judgement.
She should be on a train to Sydney right now, she told herself. That was the place for sedate foster parents. If she was on a train, the wind wouldn’t be blowing in her hair, she’d have all her suitcases in the luggage racks above her head, and she’d have Gabbie safely on her knee.
Now the wind was very definitely blowing in her hair and her unruly knot was almost completely unwound. Her luggage was back at Bay Beach-there was no chance it’d fit into Luke’s miniscule baggage compartment and he’d organised a taxi to bring it out later. Grace was in her carry-cot, and Gabbie was sitting in the car’s rear seat with her mouth as wide open as her eyes. She looked in a state of shock.
Which just about summed up how Wendy was feeling.
‘I’ve been bamboozled,’ she said faintly. ‘I don’t have a clue what I’m doing here.’
‘That makes two of us,’ Luke said, not without sympathy. ‘I should be heading for the airport right now.’ He shifted his hands on his steering wheel and grimaced. ‘There’s something sticky on this.’ Then he stared down with horror as he saw two grey marks on his leather steering wheel. ‘Someone’s touched this with sticky hands!�
�
Good grief, Wendy thought blankly. After all that was happening, the man was worrying about a sticky steering wheel!
‘It’ll wash off,’ she said shortly.
‘You’re sure?’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, it’s only red jelly. The kids had red jelly for lunch. It dissolves in warm water.’
‘There’s red jelly on my steering wheel,’ he groaned. And then he looked closer. It wasn’t red. It was definitely grey.
‘How can this be red jelly?’
‘It’s red jelly mixed with things.’ She had the temerity to grin. ‘Hey, I said they had red jelly for lunch. That was two hours before you arrived. They did things after that. playdough. Mud. Finger paints…’
‘I don’t want to know!’
Silence. He could feel her disapproval from the other side of the car-as if she thought this was some huge piece of ostentation.
‘You like your car, then?’ she said cautiously, and he managed a smile. Okay, maybe it would wash off.
‘Wouldn’t you? She’s gorgeous. If you knew what she cost me, first and last-’
‘I could make a very good guess what she cost you,’ Wendy said tartly. ‘Aston Martin Vantage Volante. Whew! She’s worth a fortune.’
‘You don’t know-’
‘I’ll bet I do know. To within ten thousand dollars or so, anyway, and, with a car like this, what’s ten thousand dollars?’ She grimaced. ‘What else could I guess about this car?’ She thought it through, and Adam’s tones of reverence were still with her. ‘I’d guess it has an all-alloy, quad cam, forty-eight valve, twelve cylinder engine? Zero to sixty miles per hour in approximately five seconds. Top speed of about a hundred and sixty miles an hour. Yes, she’s some plaything, Mr Grey.’
‘How the heck…?’
‘And if you knew what I could do with a quarter of the money this car cost you-’
‘Hey, I’m your employer,’ he interrupted. ‘You’re not here to give me moral lectures!’
‘Let me out, then,’ she said serenely. ‘Moralistic lectures come with the package.’
For a moment she almost thought he would. His foot eased from the accelerator, and then Grace gurgled from her carry-cot in the back seat and the impossibility of dumping this woman anywhere hit home.
‘Where did you learn about cars?’ he asked grudgingly, and she wrinkled her nose. In truth it was sort of nice to have the warm sea air blowing through her hair and a gorgeous leather seat enfolding her, but she wouldn’t admit it for the world.
‘My ex-husband was a car fanatic.’
‘Oh.’ He looked sideways at her. ‘You’re divorced?’
‘He’s dead.’
There was something about the way she said it that precluded any more questions. Back off, her tone said, and he had the sense to do just that.
‘Right.’
‘You’re not married?’
‘No.’ He grinned and looked sideways at her. ‘I decided early to love cars instead. They’re cheaper.’
‘Oh, sure.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Mr Grey, do you have any idea what you’re letting yourself in for? In one day, you’ve assumed responsibility for one baby, you’ve hired a nanny, you’ve agreed to accommodate another child…’
‘It’s no great shakes,’ he said. ‘I can afford it. Just as long as none of you cause me any bother.’
‘And if we do?’
‘Then I’m out of here.’ His grin deepened. ‘I will be anyway. Emotional attachment is not my style. I’ll get the legalities all drawn up and then I’ll leave.’
‘Just as long as the house is liveable.’
‘It will be.’
It wasn’t.
The house hadn’t been entered for twenty years. It was like turning back a time machine, Wendy thought wonderingly. With Gabbie still pressed by her side she walked from room to room. Luke walked beside her carrying Grace, and he didn’t speak either.
The house was ghostlike. Windows had been broken and boarded up. Furniture was covered with dustsheets, and cobwebs hung in vast nets draped from the ceiling. Underneath it all, the house was big and gracious and old, and the furniture was of quality, but the curtains had disappeared into moth-eaten shreds, the carpets were threadbare and the dust lay in blankets over everything. Wendy’s nose wanted to sneeze the minute Luke opened the door.
They walked from room to room in stunned silence. It was a piece of history that time had forgotten, and its ambience almost overwhelmed her. How much more must it stun Luke, Wendy thought, when the house was full of memories-of how it had been when he’d been a boy?
There were photographs everywhere, and most of them were of Luke. There were frames of Luke as a baby, looking just like Grace. A cobwebbed portrait hung on the wall-it surely must be Luke as a chubby toddler, grinning from his mother’s knee. The woman who held him, even then, showed weariness, defeat and traces of illness on her face, and Wendy found herself wondering how she’d died.
There were more. She lifted a frame from a carved side table and blew away the dust, and there was Luke at about five years old. He was standing between an elderly couple and they were holding his hands with pride. Even covered with dust, the love shone through.
No wonder Luke had kept this place, Wendy thought. No wonder he’d instinctively brought Grace here. He might have been packed off to boarding school, but here, even dust-coated and tattered, this place had been his home.
And maybe it still was. She glanced sideways and caught the look that flashed across his face-and it was a look of raw pain.
‘Apart from the dustsheets and window boarding, it’s hardly been touched since they took my grandmother to hospital,’ Luke said at last. He was speaking in a hushed whisper-it was that sort of place.
‘It must have been a beautiful home.’
‘As you said, though,’ he said sadly, ‘it’s uninhabitable now.’
‘Not quite.’ Wendy braced her shoulders and looked down at Gabbie. ‘We like a challenge, don’t we, Gabbie?’
‘Is this where we’re going to live?’ Gabbie asked in a quavering voice and Wendy picked her up and hugged her close.
‘Yes. Absolutely. And it’s going to be the best home that girls like us could ever ask for. Underneath all this dust it’s beeyootiful!’
‘We need to stay at a hotel tonight,’ Luke said doubtfully. ‘Maybe if we put in a team of cleaners and carpenters…’ He could see his trip to America being postponed indefinitely. Damn, this had seemed such a good idea. But now…
Wendy was shaking her head. ‘No. This is fine-better than I thought it might be. We don’t need to move any more. Gabbie spends her life moving, don’t you, Gabbie? If this is home, then it’s home from now on.’
She walked over to the window-they were standing in what must be the formal living room-grabbed a board from the window and pulled. The board broke free, a rush of warm salt air flowed into the musty room and outside she could see…
‘The sea!’ Wendy said exultantly. ‘Look, Gabbie, the sea!’ Beyond the wide, gracious veranda, across a paddock where Hereford cattle gazed in placid contentment under the shady gums, lay the sea. From here it looked as if there was a sandy beach, maybe even safe for swimming. It looked-wonderful!
‘The sea, the sea, the sea!’ Wendy lifted Gabbie and swung her round and round, delight shining from her eyes. She wasn’t sure how this had happened, but this was a dream! ‘We’re going to love living by the sea, Gabbie, love. Any time your mum doesn’t want you, then you’ll live here with me. By the sea. In this house which is going to be the most wonderful place on God’s earth.’
Then she set Gabbie firmly down, fixed her with a grin, hauled up her sleeves and turned to eye Luke with a speculative gleam.
‘All it needs is work.’
‘Hey, I’m a futures broker,’ Luke said in an alarmed voice, seeing the thoughts running riot behind the gleam. ‘I’m not a cleaner.’
‘And I’m a social worker, and Gabbie is a five-ye
ar-old ward of the state. But, as of now, we’re all of us cleaners. Needs must, Mr Grey. Gabbie, let’s choose you a bedroom first, and we’ll clean that out from stem to stern. Because Gabbie’s bedroom is the most important room in this house.’
‘Hey!’
‘Yes?’ Wendy raised her eyebrows politely at Luke. ‘You don’t agree?’
‘We can hire cleaners.’
‘Not tonight we can’t. We’re the cleaners. If you want us to make this a home, then you need to put some effort into it. Like now!’
‘I’m not dressed for it.’ He stared down at his leather jacket and immaculate trousers and Wendy grinned.
‘And you have lesser clothes at home? Go on, Luke Grey. Surprise me. Tell me you have old, paint-stained overalls in your garage-from all that odd jobbing you do at weekends.’
He had the grace to give a half-hearted smile. ‘Well, maybe not.’
‘So these clothes maybe aren’t your best clothes?’
He thought of his designer suits. ‘Hell, no.’
‘See, it could have been worse,’ she said cheerfully, arranging Grace’s carry-cot carefully in a dust-sheeted armchair and covering it with a shawl. ‘There you go. Your baby’s safe and sleeping, and it’s time for the rest of us to work. Gabbie’s room first.’
‘I thought…’ he was so stunned he could hardly get his voice to work ‘…the kitchen, maybe.’
‘We have children, Luke Grey,’ she said softly. ‘Get your priorities right. We need a fire-outside I think, because it’s my bet the chimney’s blocked and we need hot water. It’ll take a brave person to tackle that fire stove, and maybe I’m not the person to do it. At least not tonight. And if I’m not brave enough, I’m darned sure that you’re not. Bailing out to a hotel! Goodness, what a wimp! Right, Luke. Right, Gabbie. Let’s get this house habitable.’
If anyone had told Luke when he’d woken that morning that instead of flying to New York he’d spend the afternoon and evening on his knees with a scrubbing brush and a nose full of dust and cobwebs, he’d have told them they were dreaming.
But that’s just what was happening. Wendy didn’t let him off the hook for a minute. While Grace snoozed, she set them to work like there was no tomorrow and, with the wimp label ringing in his ears, he gritted his teeth and did it.
Their Baby Bargain Page 3
