A Child In Need

to be struck. Or…he was waiting for Nick to say no.

Same thing.

‘I don’t think I can…’ Nick tried to prevaricate but it sounded weak, even to him. For heaven’s sake, he did not want to get involved here. But he didn’t want to hurt the child…

‘We aren’t looking for anything formal, are we, Harry?’ Shanni told him, choosing to ignore his hesitation. ‘But Thursday is my half-day off, Harry wanted to see you and Mary tells us that you’re free.’

‘I’m busy.’

‘Don’t be silly. There’s nothing I can’t handle here,’ Mary said blithely, beaming at her sister in friendly conspiracy. ‘Off you go and enjoy yourself. It’ll do you good to get out into the fresh air.’

‘I don’t need fresh air.’

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake.’ Mary assumed her severest look, facing him with an expression that said, No nonsense or you’ll stay in after school and do two hundred lines. She used Shanni’s school-marm tone. ‘You sound like this town will bite, Nick Daniels. There’s nothing out there to be afraid of, and Shanni will take good care of you.’

Then Mary and Shanni both beamed.

What was a man to do? ‘I’m being railroaded,’ he said weakly.

‘Of course,’ Mary agreed. ‘It’s what the McDonald girls are good at. We’ve been trained from birth by a very railroading mama. And grandma. And great-grandma come to that. Shanni, make him take his tie off.’

‘Take your tie off,’ Shanni said. ‘You can’t eat fish and chips on the beach when you’re wearing a designer shoelace.’

‘I’m not…’ He rose and backed off.

‘Yes, you are,’ Mary said, and she put her hands behind him and shoved him toward the door. ‘Know when you’re beaten, Your Worship. Out you go and don’t come back before three. That’s an order.’

He stood on the pavement and couldn’t think of a single thing to say. Shanni was grinning like a Cheshire cat and, beside her, Harry was simply looking. And looking and looking, as if he couldn’t get enough of him.

‘Shanni…’ He was starting to sound inane. He was starting to feel inane!

‘I’ve ordered fish and chips,’ she said, ignoring him. ‘We’re collecting them down at the wharf in five minutes.’

‘What if I don’t want to come?’ He sounded pathetic!

‘Of course you want to come,’ she said kindly. ‘You just don’t think you do. Harry and I are here to change your mind. Shall we take your car-or walk?’

‘I don’t…’

‘Don’t want to drive? Okay.’ She beamed. ‘It’s not far. Harry doesn’t like cars and he’s been practising with the new heel on his cast like anything. And please, take your tie off.’

‘No.’

‘You look silly with it on.’ She twinkled up at him in the sunlight. ‘But it’s the same one you were wearing when we first saw you. Don’t you have a change of clothes?’

‘I just brought the one suit. I’m heading back to Melbourne at the weekend.’ He’d go nuts if he couldn’t.

‘Now that’s a waste of a weekend if ever I heard one,’ she said. ‘Spending it in the city changing designer ties!’

And she smiled straight at him-and, despite himself, he was forced to smile right back. Unbelievable! And then he found himself walking at her side down toward the harbour. Harry clumped on bravely on her other side, clutching her hand and occasionally venturing a peep at him around the soft folds of her dress.

‘Do you never go to Melbourne?’ Nick asked, trying to think of something to say to stop him sounding even more pathetic. As a lawyer and magistrate he was used to facing the world on his terms. It wasn’t often the world had him as off balance as this.

‘I did my training there,’ she told him. ‘But I hated it. I came back here every weekend to get my fix of sea air and laid-back country lifestyle.’

‘So you admit you need your fix of sea air. Well, I need my fix of city. We’re equally addicted, Miss McDonald.’

‘We are indeed,’ she agreed equably. ‘Equally nuts, but if we’re comparing the sea to the city I know which I’d rather. What do you think, Harry?’ She tugged the little boy forward, scooped him up and placed him so he was between the two of them. ‘Do you think we’re nuts?’

Harry considered. ‘No,’ he said at last, seriously, and Shanni chuckled her delight. She really did have the loveliest chuckle.

‘You’re wonderful, Harry,’ she told him. Then she looked down at him. He was walking bravely but the cast must be a pain. ‘Do you want Nick to carry you?’

‘No.’

That was definite enough, Shanni considered. ‘Okay. What about playing One, Two, Three, Jump?’

Harry didn’t know what she meant. His small face stared up at his kindergarten teacher in mute enquiry.

‘We need to teach him,’ she told Nick, but Nick shook his head, as in the dark as Harry.

‘Sorry.’

‘Sorry, what?’ She stared at him.

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

That stopped her dead. She whirled to face them, staring from Nick down to Harry and back to Nick again. ‘You mean…you both don’t know One, Two, Three, Jump?’

‘Enlighten our ignorance,’ Nick said dryly, knowing she was about to do just that.

But she gave him a strange look-reassessing. It was an odd sideways look, and it left Nick feeling disturbed. As if she was probing where he didn’t want to be probed.

‘It’s very simple,’ she said at last, falling in again beside them, but still with that disturbed look on her face. They’d left the single line of shops in the main street behind and were walking down the hill to where the boats were tied up in the harbour below. ‘One, Two, Three, Jump requires two adults and one child. We have all the prerequisites right here. Nick, take Harry’s hand.’

‘But…’

‘You quibble, we can’t play,’ she said direfully. ‘No quibbling. Take Harry’s hand.’

There was nothing for it. Nick put his hand down and took Harry’s fingers in his. Harry looked high up into his face, and then stared intently at their linking-his tiny hand in Nick’s large one. Then, very slowly, Harry smiled. He turned and headed on down the hill between his two anchors, stumping gamely on his cast, heading into the wind. As if he’d just had a win of gargantuan proportions.

‘Now we’re ready,’ Shanni announced, and if Nick thought he saw a glimmer of a tear on her eyelashes then surely he was imagining it. She swung Harry’s arm. ‘One…two…three…!’ And before he realised what he was doing, Nick was swinging Harry’s little body out before him.

‘Jump!’

The tiny boy flew high, held safely between them and, when Harry landed, the look on his face of absolute incredulity that anything like this could be happening to him made Nick falter.

Damn, he might be sure there were tears on Shanni’s eyelashes, but what the heck was the lump doing in his throat?

There was nothing for it now but to do it all over again. They One, Two, Three, Jumped all the way to the fish shop, and then Nick held the fish-and-chip parcel in one hand and Shanni carried the drinks in another so they could keep on One, Two, Three, Jumping all the way to the beach.

And finally Nick found himself sitting on the sand by the sea, fish and chips spread out before him, and he had absolutely no idea in the world how he’d come to be there.

CHAPTER FOUR

TO HIS surprise, they ate in silence.

Nick was no longer sure what he expected of this girl, but silence surely wasn’t it. She’d chatted and laughed all the way to the beach, but now, sitting on the sand with Harry on her knee and a spread of fish and chips beside her,