Marion Lennox - Their Baby Bargain

Above, on his grandparents’ lumpy bed, Luke lay awake and stared into the darkness, searching for answers that weren’t there. He didn’t know why he was feeling like he was. He didn’t even know for sure how he was feeling! All he knew was that every time he saw Wendy she had the power to shift his world on its axis.

He wanted her so much it was a physical ache.

Why?

She wasn’t his sort of woman, he told himself over and over. How would she fit into his life?

She wouldn’t. He couldn’t see her entertaining his sophisticated friends back in the city, but then… Suddenly the thought of entertaining his sophisticated friends didn’t seem so desirable any more. Not when the alternative was being here.

Being with Wendy.

It was a passing phase, he told himself desperately, rolling over and thumping his pillow as if it was personally responsible. It was just that he’d never met anyone like Wendy before, and she was a novelty. It’d wear off. If he spent a bit more time here…

Hmm. A bit more time here… He turned the idea over in his mind and he liked it.

Well, why not? What was so urgent back in the city, after all? He had his laptop computer here-he never travelled without it. He had his mobile phone. He could set up one of the spare bedrooms as an office, hook up an internet connection and really get to know this place again. Get to know Grace and Gabbie. Play with Bruce.

Get Wendy out of his system.

Yeah, right.

Well, a man could only try. Underneath his bed, Bruce snuffled again in sleep, nosing round anxiously for another of his litter. He really was being incredibly brave for a puppy having his first night away from his mum, and Luke’s heart went out to him. His hand dropped down from the bed to fondle the little dog’s ears, and next minute Bruce ended up right in there beside him, snuggled into his grandmother’s bump.

‘I’m no soft option here,’ Luke warned him. ‘I don’t do attachment.’

Bruce wuffled his agreement and a warm pink tongue came out and licked his face from jaw to nose. Then the little dog snuggled closer.

I don’t do attachment…

‘What the hell am I letting myself in for?’ Luke demanded of him. ‘Do you have a clue?’

But there was only silence, and then, finally, Bruce’s soft puppy snoring as the little dog slept.

Luke was left to figure things out alone.

Damn, he was tired. He should sleep. He must sleep!

How could a man sleep when in the other end of the house there was Wendy?

Not that Wendy was getting any sleep, either. While Luke tossed and turned and had useless conversations with one small canine, Wendy was doing pretty much the same with the sleeping Grace.

‘He’s dangerous, your brother,’ she told the snoozing infant. ‘Of all the stupid things to do, to let him kiss me…’

Unconsciously her fingers came up to her lips, tracing the pressure Luke had placed on her mouth. It had felt just wonderful-right! As if it was meant to happen.

‘Which is stupid!’ she told herself fiercely. ‘I don’t get attached. I’m not interested in men in general, nor one man in particular. I am especially not in the market for some short-term fling that will mess up my future, and I sure as hell don’t want anything more than a short-term fling.’

She sighed and thought it through, and when she spoke again some of the bitterness was gone, leaving only bleakness.

‘Not that he’s offering anything more,’ she told the dark. ‘Luke’s a man who takes what he wants when he wants it. Anyone can see that. He’s rich and he travels and he’s here for a night or so and then gone. Gone! So, Wendy Maher, you can take what your crazy emotions are telling you, and you can go wash those feelings down the sink with some ice water. Get a grip on yourself, woman. Right now!’

Which was all very well, she told herself an hour later, and an hour after that. It was all very well, but it was totally impractical advice when all she could think of was how that kiss had felt.

Impossible!

Finally she rose and crossed to look out the window to the sea beyond. Luke’s precious car was parked just below the veranda and the sight of that extravagance helped her resolve.

‘He’s like Adam,’ she whispered. ‘They all are. Men! And if you let him get close-if you let emotions muck up your employee-employer relationship-then you’ll need to leave this wonderful place that’s so right for Gabbie, and you won’t be able to take care of Grace any longer.’

‘That’s right.’

‘So be sensible.’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ she told her wayward heart. She sighed again and went back to bed.

But not to sleep.

THE howling could be heard in the next continent. It went on and on, an awful, dismal, baying loneliness, filling the house, ringing out toward the sea, dreadful and searing in its intensity.

Luke, who was sleeping right beside it, woke as if he’d been shot.

Wendy, who was dozing fitfully, stirred and winced and reached automatically into the cradle beside her bed, in a swift gesture of comfort for the baby. But it wasn’t her baby who was doing the howling.

And in the next-door boxroom, Gabbie sat bolt upright at the sound, gave a whimper of fright and made a frantic dive straight underneath Wendy’s bedcovers. From there she poked up a quivering nose and ventured to ask, ‘What is it? What is it?’ The child was trembling like a leaf. ‘Wendy…’

‘It’s nothing to be afraid of.’ Boy, Bruce could wake the dead, here. Wendy suppressed a sigh. ‘Uncle Luke came home-came back last night-and he has a surprise for you. I’d imagine that’s what the noise is.’

Gabbie’s nose emerged another inch or two from under the quilt. Tucked up in bed with Wendy, she was brave enough-sort of. ‘A surprise?’

‘That’s what I said.’

‘For me?’

‘Go take a look. You know where Luke will be sleeping. Or trying to sleep.’

Nobody could be sleeping now. Even Grace was stirring. The howl sounded on and on into the dawn, and Gabbie’s fingers clutched Wendy’s.

‘That’s the surprise?’ Her eyes were like saucers. ‘It sounds awful.’

‘It’s not awful. Go see.’

Gabbie gulped. ‘Not without you.’

Now how had she known she’d say that? With a sigh, Wendy hauled back the bedcovers and poked her feet into her slippers. She pulled on a robe-at least she could be respectable here-and then took Gabbie’s hand. A gurgle from the crib reminded them both that they weren’t a pair. They were a team.

‘Grace wants to see, too,’ Gabbie announced and Wendy nodded.

‘Of course. Why not.’ She lifted the baby, and Grace’s bright button eyes twinkled up at her. ‘Your big brother is home,’ she told her. ‘And he’s brought our Gabbie a present. A present that’s intent on breaking the sound barrier. Okay, team. Let’s go meet this present before it splits our eardrums.’

The puppy was not happy.

Last night things had been different and interesting and exhausting for a pup. First there had been the initial meeting with Luke-an hour while he’d played and rolled and generally talked his way into a new owner’s heart. Then he’d been put into a cardboard box which had taken all of one small dog’s ingenuity and energy to escape from. There’d been some very interesting tummy collywobbles-courtesy of cardboard consumption-and by the time he’d arrived at Bay Beach, met Wendy, been given warm milk and been put to bed, the small Bruce had been so exhausted that he’d slept all night.

But now he’d woken in a strange bed, with a strange person and there wasn’t another basset-hound in sight. No mum. No brothers and sisters. It was enough to freak a small pup right out, and freak Bruce did, at the top of his lungs. His howl went on for ever, no matter how much Luke picked him up and told him he was okay and offered him puppy food and anything else a small dog could desire.

He wanted none of it. He howled and he howled and he howled.

And that was how Wendy and Gabbie and Grace found him. Still howling. They opened Luke’s bedroom door with caution, and Luke was sitting up looking resplendent in pale blue pyjamas with bright red sailing boats all over-he’d made a special effort to make up for the red-hearted boxer shorts-and Bruce was sitting on his knee, his small basset nose was raised to the moon, and he was howling with all the gusto of generation after generation of basset-hound ancestors-and maybe a bit of wolf ancestry thrown in for good measure.

Wendy stopped dead at the sight before her. There was Luke in his sailing-boat pyjamas, helplessly holding a howling basset puppy. They looked truly, truly ridiculous! Oh, dear…

She’d never seen a man look so helpless. One man in charge of his world-but not in charge of one small puppy.

‘Oh…’

By her side, Gabbie breathed deeply, awestruck at the sight. She took in the scene, and her mouth dropped wide open. ‘It’s a puppy,’ she whispered. ‘A puppy!’

‘It’s a very noisy puppy,’ Wendy said, but she wasn’t sure she could be heard over the racket. She knelt so she could hear what Gabbie was saying.

‘Why is it crying?’ Gabbie whispered, still clutching Wendy’s hand as if Bruce might leap on her, fangs bared. Ha!

‘I guess he’s missing his mummy.’

‘Then where’s his mummy?’ Gabbie’s big eyes flew to Luke, and suddenly there was accusation behind them.

‘Hey, I didn’t steal his mother,’ Luke said, wounded. He could see straight away what she was thinking. ‘He was being sold anyway.’

‘He was being sold?’

‘Puppies need owners,’ Wendy told her gently, giving her a small and gentle push forward. ‘Your Uncle Luke decided that this puppy’s owner would be you. I guess that means, from now on, you’re the puppy’s mummy. If that’s what you want.’