Marion Lennox - Their Baby Bargain

‘As you’ll give Grace a chance?’

‘That’s different.’ Wendy smiled and Luke heard the smile in her voice. It was strange the way he was starting to know what her face would be doing, even though he couldn’t see her. ‘That’s a paying proposition.’

‘So you think you won’t love my little half-sister like you love Gabbie?’

‘In your dreams.’ Wendy sounded startled. ‘Payment or not, I’ll love her to bits.’

‘Now, how did I know you’d say that?’ Luke grinned to himself. ‘Loving people to bits. That’s your speciality, isn’t it, Wendy Maher?’

‘Only children,’ she said hastily.

‘You’d never think of marrying again?’ He got that in before he could help himself, and afterwards he could never figure out why he’d suddenly needed to know. Why her answer seemed so important…

To his surprise, she didn’t back off, but answered him with another question. ‘Why on earth would I want to do that?’

‘It must get pretty lonely,’ he said softly. ‘Just with the kids.’

‘Lonely like you are?’ He heard her smile again. ‘You don’t have kids, Luke Grey, and you’re not all that lonely-as far as I can see. Mind, you have a wonderful car, don’t you? Money on wheels. That’s what love’s all about, now, isn’t it, Luke? A heap of metal on four bits of rubber and a man’s smitten.’

And that was it. It was all he was going to get from her. She’d had enough questions for one night. She tried to take the faint note of bitterness from her voice as she turned away from him and pulled her quilt firmly around her, in a gesture that might almost have been defence.

‘Goodnight, Luke,’ she said gently, and she was nearly back on an even keel again. ‘I have my kids and you have your car. Who could ask for more?’

Who indeed? His gorgeous car…

Luke tried to think of his car as he hauled his quilt up to his nose and tried to sleep himself. Wendy was right-or she had been until now. Thinking of his sleek little Aston Martin was usually the way he made his mind turn off tricky problems-financial dealings or love-life complexities. His car was an extravagance, he conceded, but she was worth every cent of what he’d paid for her. A man could lie in bed at night and know he’d made it when he owned that car.

But not tonight. Not now. Not with Wendy sleeping four feet from him, a tiny baby sleeping between them and one needful little girl just through the wall. His priorities seemed to have shifted.

He lay in bed and he couldn’t keep his mind on his car for more than two seconds flat.

A man might have made it-but in Wendy’s eyes he hadn’t made it anywhere, Luke thought bitterly.

Nowhere at all.

When he woke she was feeding his baby.

The veranda was facing east. The sun rising over the sea was basking them in the glow of dawn, and his first sight was Wendy sitting on the edge of the veranda with Grace in her arms.

He could only stare.

She was wearing the same nightgown she’d been wearing the night before. By moonlight it had looked soft and clingy and incredibly expensive-the sort of nightgown a man just had to touch. By daylight he saw it was not the least bit expensive-it was simple cotton and worn to softness rather than made that way-but it looked no less desirable. Wendy’s hair had been untied from its knot-it was tumbling about her shoulders in a mass of dark, unruly curls-and the way she looked it wasn’t her nightgown that looked soft and desirable. It was Wendy!

She was incredibly, gut-wrenchingly beautiful!

Why hadn’t he seen that yesterday? Or…maybe he had, but every time he saw her she was growing more so.

‘Good morning, Luke.’ She turned and smiled at him, and her smile was enough to blast him back into oblivion. Her smile was dawn all on its own. ‘I’m glad you’ve decided to rejoin the land of the living. I thought Grace would have woken everyone from here to Bay Beach, but you and Gabbie are obviously made of sterner stuff.’

‘She…’ His voice came out a sort of squeak and he coughed and tried again. For heaven’s sake-there was something about this woman that made him feel as if he was a fifteen-year-old adolescent with his first crush. Now he was sounding like it! He deliberately lowered his voice. ‘She was crying?’ It came out as a ridiculous growl, and her eyes creased into laughter.

‘Yes, Luke, she was crying. Yelling, more like. She’s a lady who knows what she wants. I imagine it must be a family trait.’

That set him back. Family traits…

He had family! he thought again suddenly, with a jolt of awareness that made him blink. Right here, in this gorgeous woman’s arms, was his family.

This was feeling better and better by the minute.

‘Can I suggest you get up and stoke our fire?’ she said, bursting his euphoric bubble. ‘I had trouble heaping enough embers to heat Grace’s bottle, and we’ll need more for breakfast.’

‘Breakfast?’ He glanced at his wristwatch. ‘It’s only six,’ he said weakly. He’d lain awake and thought for a large part of the night, and a man could do with more sleep now. ‘Maybe after she’s had her bottle we might go back to bed for a bit.’

‘In your dreams.’ Her smile widened. ‘Try explaining to a five-month-old baby that it’s not morning. Grace has practically slept around the clock, and you can’t ask more than that.’

He guessed he couldn’t. Grimacing he pushed his quilt back, and then wished he hadn’t done that as well.

He’d brought no clothes with him-certainly no pyjamas. He’d hauled off his trousers and shirt the night before and what was left was what she now saw. All he had on was a pair of silk boxer shorts, deep black and emblazoned with tiny red hearts. They were a Valentine’s gift from one of the ladies in his New York office. He’d forgotten he was wearing them-until now.

Wendy’s eyes widened at the sight. They sparkled mischievously and he hauled up his quilt as if he was about to be shot and his quilt was his only defence.

‘Hey, don’t mind me.’ She chuckled. ‘You’re seeing me in my nightie. I don’t mind seeing you in your PJs.’

‘I do not usually wear heart-emblazoned boxer shorts to bed,’ he said sourly, and her grin widened.

‘No. Of course not. They’re day wear. I can see that.’

‘Wendy!’

‘Mmm?’

‘Will you remember I’m your employer,’ he told her, trying for severity. ‘I’d like a bit of respect.’

‘And you have it.’ She schooled her grin into manageable proportions. ‘Who could not respect a man who wears boxers like that to work every day?’

Right. He glared.

‘Firewood, then,’ she said demurely, and turned her back on him, taking pity on him enough to allow him to dress himself with a semblance of dignity.

But he knew that she was still laughing inside.

‘THE priorities, as I see it, are these.’

Luke blinked. That was the sort of line he was accustomed to tossing around at board meetings and the like. He wasn’t accustomed to having it tossed at him, especially by a woman who looked as if she’d come off a communal hippie farm, and who had her arms full of children.

They’d had their breakfast-sort of. On inspection, the crockery cupboard in the kitchen had been taken over by mice and Wendy declared she wasn’t touching anything without disinfecting first. Therefore they’d given cereal a miss and eaten bread toasted by holding it on a stick over the fire and buttered in their hands, and they’d drunk milk straight from the cartons the taxi driver had brought the night before. Curiously, it was delicious.

‘It’s like a breakfast picnic,’ Gabbie had declared gamely, from her safe position right behind Wendy’s skirts, and Luke had been inclined to agree with her.

‘First priority, hot water?’ he suggested, trying to regain the initiative, but Wendy nodded and the initiative was still with her.

‘I checked it last night. The hot water runs through the fire stove so that’s your first job. The chimney needs cleaning.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘As soon as it’s decent you can ring an electrician and a glazier and the telephone company. That will get our urgent services seen to. If you pay enough we’ll get immediate help but a chimneysweep will take weeks. There’s no one local. Therefore…’ she gave him a sympathetic smile ‘…it’s you.’

Luke groaned. ‘No.’

‘There should be nothing to it.’ She chuckled. ‘We can do it like the bad old days if you like-I’ll pretend I’m the worst kind of chimneysweep, we poke you up and then we light a fire beneath you. That way we get a really clean chimney fast.’

‘Or me roasted for lunch. Thanks very much.’ He groaned again. ‘Am I to spend the week scrubbing?’ He looked down at his already filthy clothes. ‘I need to get myself some gear.’

‘You do at that,’ she agreed. Her eyes grew thoughtful, and he could see she was tossing over options. ‘I think, after you organise me some electricity, some chopped wood and a clean chimney, I might give you leave of absence for a bit.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

She wasn’t finished yet. ‘You need to do something urgently about Grace,’ she added, and he frowned.

‘Like what?’

‘Like getting yourself some legal protection,’ she told him. ‘I’ve been thinking. The way things are, if Grace’s mother turned up she could accuse you of all sorts of things-kidnapping included-and it’s your word against hers.’

He was startled. ‘She wouldn’t do that. She dumped her on me.’

‘People do all sorts of strange things,’ Wendy said softly, hugging Gabbie close. She had Grace in her other arm, and with her two littlies cradled against her she looked like a protective mother hen.

She was used to fighting for kids, Luke thought suddenly-and he also thought there was no one he’d rather have on his side. She was some woman!

Somehow he dragged his thoughts back to practicalities. To Grace’s mother…