Marion Lennox - Their Baby Bargain

‘Dinner…’ Luke sat back on his heels-he’d been scrubbing skirting-boards and wiping out a spider’s nest-and regarded his handiwork with a kind of detached pride. Gabbie’s bedroom did look good. They’d unboarded the two unbroken windows-it’d look a whole heap better when they’d had a glazier in-but you could see the sea, and in every other way it looked just as it had twenty years back.

He’d slept in here sometimes, he remembered. His official bedroom had been one of the bigger front ones, but the room adjoining this had been his mother’s and sometimes he’d crept in here to sleep when he’d been ill, or when his mother had been ill and he’d worried, or in the days before he’d had to leave again for boarding school…

He’d chosen this room because he loved it, and he’d lain here at night while he and his mother had talked until he’d slept. This was the best…

Oh, for heaven’s sake! He shook his train of thought away with anger. How long since he’d been sentimental like this?

But the bed was made up again with a patchwork quilt he remembered his mother and grandmother making, and there was a painting on the faded yellow wall that he remembered his grandfather buying…

Grandpa would like Gabbie sleeping under that painting, Luke decided, and then caught Wendy looking at him with a strange expression on her face. It was as if she could see what he was thinking.

She didn’t let on. Instead she teased him with a smile. ‘Resting on your laurels, Mr Grey?’

‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t,’ he retorted, stung. ‘I certainly deserve to.’ He held up his hands. ‘Look. Blisters! I have housemaid’s hands, lady. And-’

‘And?’

‘I’m hungry.’

He was, too, he realised. Starving. But there was no food in the house.

‘That’s all fixed.’ Her smile intensified, and he gazed up at her in astonishment. She really was the most extraordinary woman! ‘I’ve taken the liberty-’

‘Another liberty!’ He groaned, struggled to his feet and held up his hands in mock horror. Hell, he had housemaid’s knees, too. ‘Woman, if you take one more liberty-’

‘The taxi cab who brought our luggage is coming back at seven-thirty,’ she told him, unperturbed. She glanced at her watch. ‘That’s in ten minutes. He’s bringing a heap of groceries-I gave him a list-including baby food, nappies-and pizza!’

‘Pizza!’ Not for nothing was Luke a giant on Wall Street. He focused on the important thing here straight away. ‘Pizza’s arriving here in ten minutes?’

‘Wash first, then we eat,’ she told him. ‘I even found soap. It looks handmade and it’s gorgeous. There’s a pile in the bathroom cupboard. And I’ve dusted off some towels. Dinner’s outside by the fire in ten minutes, Mr Grey. Get yourself washed and you’re welcome to join us.’

How could he resist an invitation like that?

Luke headed for the bathroom, which, even though the years had made their ravages here as well, still smelt strangely of his mother and his grandmother. He washed under the cold water-tomorrow he’d have to see what was happening with the hot water service-and then he stood for a long time staring in the dusty mirror at his face.

The last time he’d looked in this mirror he’d been so young. He’d come home from boarding school for the weekend and his grandmother had had a heart attack.

‘Go wash up, boy,’ a neighbour had told him, taking rough sympathy on his tear-streaked self. The ambulance had left, and the boy couldn’t have stayed here alone. ‘Get yourself ready and we’ll take you back to school.’

And that was that. He’d stared for a long time into this mirror, knowing he’d been irretrievably changed: he was now alone. Then he’d walked out of the house, and he’d known in his gut that he wouldn’t be back. That had been the end of his family. First his grandfather, then his mother, and finally Gran…

Loving people hurt. Getting attached hurt.

Coming back here hurt like hell!

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, get out there and eat your pizza,’ he told his older, wiser face. ‘I don’t know why on earth you’re bothering with this kid-with a baby!-but if you must, you must. Just organise her a life and then get out. Take your car and ride off into the sunset. Fast.’

Because any other way would lead to…what? Emotional attachment? Pain he’d sworn never to experience again.

No. He couldn’t face that.

And then he heard a horn sound at the gate, and a cow lowing in the distance as it was forced to move aside for the taxi. Here, then, was dinner. And nappies. And domesticity.

‘It’s just for a week,’ he told himself harshly. ‘And then you leave!’

DINNER was a very, very different affair to the way Luke usually enjoyed it. Dinner, for him, was usually a social event. Sure, he was accustomed to eating out, but his eating out included expensive restaurants and cordon bleu food and beautiful women…

Here there was no expensive decor, the food was certainly not cordon bleu and the women… There were three. Grace and Gabbie and Wendy. Three women, and each was so far from his usual company it almost made Luke smile.

‘What?’ said Wendy, as she saw him take his mouthful of pizza and stare down at it as if it was food landed from Mars. ‘Don’t you like it?’

He looked at it with doubt. Did he? Bay Beach Pizza was hardly gourmet fare. ‘It’s not even wood-fired,’ he offered.

‘Oh, sadness! Welcome to the real world.’ Wendy grinned. ‘Wood-fired pizza… Good grief! Wave it over the fire, and give it some smoke if you must. Me, I’m just going to eat mine!’

She did, and she enjoyed every mouthful. Well, why not? They were eating their pizza sitting on the edge of the veranda, with the camp fire they’d lit blazing brightly between them and the sea. It was a glorious night. The sun was setting behind the house, the breeze was warm and the sound of the surf was a series of hushed murmurs as it flowed in and out to the shore. The smell-of fragrant eucalyptus, of old wood burning slowly to embers, and of sea and salt and pizza-was good enough to bottle.

It was just great, Wendy thought. She sat back and watched as Gabbie seriously engaged in pizza-eating-everything was a serious business for Gabbie-and Luke fed his baby sister the bottle Wendy had prepared for him, and down in the paddocks the cows looked up in wonder.

‘The cows think we’re crazy,’ she told Gabbie. ‘Fancy eating pizza when we have all this great grass!’

Gabbie looked at her gravely-and then her small face crinkled into a smile. She gave a tentative chuckle. ‘That’s silly.’

‘It is, isn’t it?’ She swept the little girl up into her arms and hugged, pizza and all. If she was any happier she’d burst. This could work! If Gabbie’s mother kept away…

She looked over to Luke and found him watching her strangely. He was like the cows, she thought-he couldn’t understand where she was coming from.

‘Tell me about you,’ he asked her softly. ‘What made you become a Home mother? Why are you here?’

That was easy. ‘I’m here because this is the best place in the world. Isn’t it, Gabbie?’

‘No, but-’

‘But what?’ She raised her eyebrows and it made him pause.

What indeed? She was an employee, he told himself. Just an employee. He shouldn’t delve any deeper than he needed. But he hadn’t had an employee like this before, and she had him fascinated.

‘Tell me what your qualifications are, for a start.’

‘You’ll sack me if I don’t make the grade?’

He sighed and shifted Grace to the other knee-and then looked down in dismay at the knee she’d been shifted from. It was wet! Heck, how many nappy changes did babies need?

‘I’m not sacking you,’ he told her, but he was now thoroughly distracted. ‘Holy cow! Look at this. How can she be wet already? You realise I only have one pair of trousers? You might have luggage for a lifetime, but for me this was only meant to be a day trip.’

‘More fool you,’ she said serenely. ‘Never take a baby anywhere without changes of clothes for everyone. It’s the first rule of parenting, Mr Grey.’

‘Then, it’s lucky I don’t need to learn any more,’ he said tartly, and then caught himself as Grace looked up at him. His half-sister’s tiny eyes widened-and it was as if she’d understood what he’d said and was gazing at him with reproach.

Hell! This wasn’t just a baby, he thought suddenly. This was a person! She was a little girl who’d grow up and want to know her family. Who’d need to be told…

His chain of thought was suddenly overwhelming and, Wendy, looking across at him, saw panic flare in his eyes. And understood.

‘Luke, let’s take one day at a time,’ she said softly. ‘You were worrying about wet trousers. I doubt we need to go any deeper than that at the moment.’

‘Until tomorrow…’

‘Until tomorrow,’ she agreed and smiled. ‘By tomorrow those wet trousers might start being on the nose and you’ll definitely have to move on. But for now-as social workers, we tell our clients when they’re having some overwhelming crisis to just focus on the next few minutes. Then the next few hours. The days will take care of themselves. Survival first, Luke, and everything else will follow.’

‘So…’ panic faded in the face of her calmness ‘…you’re advising me to have another piece of pizza?’

‘I guess I am.’ She smiled her enchanting smile that, for some reason, made his insides do strange things. Sitting on this veranda where he’d spent such great times as a kid, looking out over the sea, holding a baby in his arms and having this woman sitting beside him…

This was about as far from his international jet-setting life as it was possible to be. He’d taken his shoes off-they were Gucci, after all, and a man didn’t scrub floors in Gucci footwear-and his bare feet were brushing the grass as he sat on the edge of the veranda. His laptop computer was locked in the car boot and his phone was silent.