Lines of plastic. Erin recognised it. She’d seen it last at the home of a super-fussy aunt. Purchased by the yard, the stuff was transparent and it had tiny pointy teeth on the back to hold it to the carpet. People used it to keep homes immaculate against any who might sully their precious flooring, and it felt just horrid.
Urk! What was the point of having carpet if one had to look at it under plastic and walk on the coldness of the stuff?
She took a deep breath and counted to ten under her breath. She had to take this in her stride. Okay, it was insulting, but if Matt wanted to protect his home, then who could blame him?
But it wasn’t Matt who’d laid the plastic. ‘Where the hell did that come from?’ he demanded, staring. He stalked out into the passage and stared some more. The plastic tracked off in both directions, a path for anything unclean.
‘I had heaps stored at home,’ Charlotte said, not hearing the low growl of displeasure in his voice. ‘I bought it when I went overseas last year and my grandparents borrowed my house. Grandpa is such a grub-he just refuses to take his boots off and Grandma doesn’t insist. It was just the thing, I thought, and it worked beautifully but now Grandpa’s gone and I don’t need it. So I brought it over.’
She sounded immensely pleased with herself-but Matt had had enough.
‘Well, you can just roll it all up and take it back where it came from,’ he managed, embarrassed to his back teeth. Hell, of all the insensitive, unwelcoming acts. What would Erin think of this? Charlotte might be gorgeous and a great hostess and cook, but sometimes she was impossible. She really was just like his mother!
But…
‘Um…no.’ It was Erin.
‘No?’ They both turned to stare at her.
‘Leave it. The kids and I will hardly notice.’ The kids certainly wouldn’t. A floor was a floor as far as the twins were concerned and Charlotte was right. This way Erin wouldn’t sully Matt’s precious carpet, and she wouldn’t have to worry about the twins doing it either. Which was one less worry-and she had enough worries as it was.
But Matt was implacable. ‘The plastic goes,’ Matt told her. ‘Now.’
‘Matt, it’s fine.’
‘Erin, it’s not!’ His temper was rising now, and there were memories flooding back that were making everything worse. His mother standing at the kitchen door yelling at his father in the voice of a fishwife.
It was her ultimate threat made over and over again, it had scared the young version of Matt stupid, and only later had he wondered whether maybe he and his father would have been a whole lot happier without her.
Which might be why he was still a bachelor.
So no, the plastic went. And the image of marriage that he’d had last night faded a little as well. Maybe he was meant to be a bachelor. He’d bought the ring, but he hadn’t done the asking.
But this was hardly the time for dredging up old memories and future plans. Now was the time to take the well-meaning but misguided Charlotte by the shoulders and steer her out of the room.
‘We’ll leave you in peace,’ he told Erin. ‘Charlotte, Erin’s right. We need to continue this discussion outside.’ He gave Erin and her crazy, wonderful dressing gown one last glance and then he propelled Charlotte outside.
‘I’m going into town,’ he told Erin over his shoulder as he left. Then he turned back to the lady he was propelling. ‘Charlotte, I could use some help. Do you have time to come with me?’
Charlotte was surprised but instantly gratified. ‘Of course I do, sweetheart. When do you want to go?’
‘Now,’ he told her. ‘Erin, just make yourself and the twins at home. Mrs Gregory will be here until lunch time, so anything you need, just ask. Charlotte and I will probably eat in town so I’ll see you mid-afternoon.’
Charlotte visibly sighed with relief. This was much better. A lunch date with Matt, with Erin nicely excluded. She turned and gave Erin her sweetest smile, because she could afford to be charitable to one who was so clearly a charity case-and then she allowed herself to be propelled from the room by the man she intended to marry.
There was no threat here, she decided.
There was no threat at all.
CHAPTER FOUR
MATT arrived home at about three and he couldn’t find them. There were no kids in sight, and there was no Erin.
He walked from living rooms to bedrooms. No one. He went outside and checked the out-buildings. He checked that Erin’s car was where it had been parked the night before and still he couldn’t find them.
Finally he checked the house once more, and this time his old collie, Sadie, decided to join him. As they passed the laundry, Sadie whined and put up a paw. He pushed the door open-and there were the three of them, sitting on the floor with three noses pressed hard against the glass of the tumble dryer.
‘Isn’t the television working?’ he asked dryly, and they swivelled to face him.
They really were the most ill-assorted trio! The charity bin hadn’t been good to them, he thought. Nothing fitted anywhere.
Yet Erin looked amazing!
He hauled his eyes from her with an almost Herculean effort. Concentrate on the twins! he told himself.
The twins were wearing jogging suit pants that were way too big, and T-shirts that were far too small. Their sea-green eyes were over big and over bright in their anxious faces and, as they looked up at him, he felt his heart give a thump of sympathy. They looked such waifs!
But Erin…
He failed. Try as he might, he couldn’t turn his eyes from her. She didn’t look much less waif-like herself.
She was wearing someone’s cast-off crimplene dress-pale blue with pink spots, buttoned to the waist and belted with a cheap and nasty plastic belt. The dress looked as if it was meant for a woman of sixty. The bust size was about five sizes too big for her and it looked ridiculous. How she managed to still look beautiful was beyond him.
‘If you so much as smile, you’re dead meat,’ she said, reading at least some of his thoughts, and he wiped the tentative smile from his face, hoped she hadn’t read the rest and tried for a look of innocence.
‘Now why would I smile?’
‘Because this is-or was-Beverly Borridge’s second-best Country Women’s Association dress, and it’s the only thing I can fit into. Her breasts must be…’
She faltered as his eyes fell immediately to the points in question. She blushed bright pink, she folded her arms defiantly across her chest and she turned back to the dryer.
‘Huge,’ she finished, but she was no longer looking at him.
He couldn’t help it. He grinned-which was exactly the wrong thing to do, because she sensed it. She turned back and caught the grin full on and retaliated just like Erin had retaliated as a kid at school. No one teased Erin Douglas without copping it right back.
A sodden towel was lying by her side. How convenient. Her lips twitched into a smile, she lifted it and she threw with deadly accuracy. It whacked him with a soggy thwump; slap across his face.
She was some shot.
She was some lady!
But, soggy or not, he still didn’t know what they were doing. Matt removed the towel from around his shoulders, laid it aside, wiped the grin from his face and crossed to the dryer. Once more, they all had their backs to him and they were staring at the dryer.
There was nothing for it but to see for himself. He crouched down beside them and stared at the glass.
‘What’s the program here?’ he asked. ‘Something good?
The twins simply ignored him. After that one brief glance they’d gone straight back to watching the glass window. Their anxiety was palpable and they were watching the glass as if their lives depended on it.
So Matt watched, too, and he saw a pair of eyes flash past the glass. And also a tail.
