A Child In Need

‘Wendy sticks her nose where it has no business being.’ His voice sounded as strained as he felt.

‘Maybe,’ Shanni agreed. ‘But, then, Wendy’s like a judge. Knowledgeable. Wise. And kind. Like you intend to be.’

‘I don’t know about that.’ He stirred and shifted his hands-and clenched them again on the wheel.

‘Why don’t you know your parents?’

He shrugged. ‘I have vague memories of my mother. She had a different hair colour every time she visited me, though. Who can say if she looked like me?’

‘You didn’t live with her?’

‘Not often. Mostly I lived in foster homes. She wouldn’t let me be adopted.’

‘Oh, Nick…’

‘Heck, we’re not feeling sorry for me, here,’ he said savagely. It was a long time since he’d railed against the unfairness of his past. ‘I’ve had a very good life, thank you very much. Some great foster homes.’

‘Many?’

‘A dozen or so. My mother kept arriving and deciding she’d take me back. For a week or so. Or she’d just make so much fuss the foster parents thought I was too much trouble.’ He smiled without humour, staring out at the dark. ‘My mother and I have a very low tolerance rate. Domesticity’s not my scene.’

‘Not your mother’s scene?’

‘As you say.’

‘And now you’re set to be a judge.’

‘Great, isn’t it? His voice was self-mocking. ‘Back-street kid makes good.’

‘You’ve fought for this?’

‘Every way I know how,’ he told her, and there was no way he could stop the icy determination from his voice. ‘Every waking minute. I remember…’

‘You remember what?’ She was almost whispering.

And he told her. It must have been the night, he told himself later. The warmth of the evening, and the scent of the garden and the eucalypts towering over them with the stars glimmering through. Or…the warmth drifting between.

Or… It must have been that she was a listener-not like any other woman he’d gone out with. He only knew he had to talk-and talk of something he’d never talked about in his life before.

‘I remember sitting in court,’ he said, and he was speaking almost to himself, his voice half-mocking. ‘I was about seven. I’d spent a month with my mother and the welfare authorities got an injunction to take me away. I was…neglected, to say the least. So they were all in court-my mother-her boyfriend-my mother’s neighbours-social workers I’d never met before. And they all were saying what should happen to me.’

‘So?’ Her voice was gentle.

‘So I remember looking up at the judge and he just said…he just said what would happen. No argument and it was the right thing. It was what I wanted, and it meant I got fed again and got to go to school. So I figured…right then and there I figured…that that was what I was going to be. Someone who could say what would happen.’

‘Oh, Nick…’

‘Pretty silly reason for wanting to be a judge, huh?’ he said, still in that self-mocking voice. Good grief, he was pathetic.

But she didn’t think so. Shanni was saying nothing, just sitting watching him with eyes that were almost luminescent in the dark. There was a glimmer on her lashes that could almost have been tears.

‘Hey…’

‘I think that’s the best reason I’ve ever heard for wanting to be a judge, Nick Daniels,’ she said in a choked voice. ‘And now you’ve made it.’

‘I want high-court judge,’ he said, and his voice firmed.

‘Won’t magistrate at Bay Beach do? Or county-court judge? Our last judge stayed thirty years.’

‘Thirty years!’ His tone told her what he thought of that. ‘No chance. Two years and I’m out of here.’

‘Country gets under your skin.’ She couldn’t stop a note of bitterness creeping into her own voice then. ‘Though I’d have to agree that sometimes the place can even get to me.’

‘Sometimes even you want to get away?’

‘Sometimes,’ she admitted. ‘This week will be hard.’

‘Because?’

‘In case you haven’t noticed,’ she retorted, ‘I threw away a perfectly good marriage proposition this afternoon. The news will be all over the town by now. John’s a very nice person.’

‘He’s a stuffed shirt.’

She grinned at that. ‘Yes. You see it. I see it now, too, but the town sees a very nice boy who I’ve thrown over for nothing. John will be getting sympathy and I’ll get the Wicked Witch Of The West treatment. Apart from my family-who’ll be so pleased that I’ll want to slug them.’

‘Why?’

‘Do you enjoy people telling you, “I told you so”?’ she demanded bitterly. ‘No? Neither do I. My family saw the stuffed shirt bit before I did.’ Then she paused as, up on the verandah, a light fluttered, shifted and died against the shadows. The bitterness increased. ‘Oh, no. I might have known.’

‘You might have known what?’

‘I have three teenage brothers and sisters,’ she said, sighing and lifting her purse from the seat in readiness to leave. ‘They’re all in the front room right now, and they’re spying on us. I’ll go in and they’ll be all over me-they’ll be so sympathetic about John and they’ll be so avid for information about you…’

It’d drive him nuts. ‘You don’t ever think of moving out?’

‘Oh, yeah.’ She jeered gently into the night. ‘Apartments are hardly thick on the ground in Bay Beach, and everyone would think we’d fought, and my mother would be hurt, and…’ She glowered at the moving curtains, and then sighed. ‘And I’d miss them.’

‘I’m glad I don’t have a family.’

That got to her. Her eyes widened in the dusk. No! ‘Nick, you don’t know what you’re saying,’ she whispered. She turned to him, shaken out of her self-pity, and she took both of his hands in hers in urgent entreaty. ‘To not want a family… Nick, you just don’t know…’

Then she took a deep breath, seemed to collect herself and she pulled away. She’d taken this too far. Exposed wounds she had no hope of healing. ‘Th-Thank you for the ride home. Will I see you on Sunday?’

‘I guess.’ He smiled then, and softened. ‘I’ll be here. Shall I call for you at eleven and we’ll collect Harry together?’

‘He’ll like that.’

And so will I, Nick thought suddenly. To leave her now with no future date in store would be hard. Shanni wasn’t his sort, of course. Not as beautiful as the sophisticated women he normally dated. But…she was soft, warm, compassionate…

She was getting under his skin!

‘You’d best go in,’ he said uneasily, flicking a glance up at the shifting curtains. ‘You’ll be getting a reputation.’

‘They’ve been watching me for ever,’ she snapped. ‘They drive me nuts. As if I’d ever do anything interesting…’

It was the way she said it. She didn’t say it flatly-she said it with longing. As if I’d ever do anything interesting…’

What did she want?

And suddenly he knew-or maybe it was what he wanted.

He laughed, a soft, carefree laugh that had her staring. ‘Okay, then, Miss Uninteresting Miss McDonald…let’s do something to give our audience a show. If you’re willing…’ His dark eyes dared her in the moonlight and then, before she knew or could guess what he intended, he took her into his arms and he kissed her.

CHAPTER SIX