He did have things to do. This was a working farm, but…
‘Tell you what,’ he said expansively. ‘Let’s take this baby down to the river and have a swim. Henry, it’s your turn to steer. Erin-give up steering. It’s Henry’s turn!’
She was like a big kid, he thought, and grinned. She gave a comical grimace and pouted as she relinquished her seat to Henry. ‘Aw, rats!’ But… ‘A swim?’ she said, and looked a question at him.
‘Now, I know we haven’t brought our costumes and we’re all wearing our very best clothes.’ That brought a chuckle from all of them. ‘But the river here is the safest swimming hole for miles. You want to do it?’
Once again he thought of his mother and Charlotte-and then didn’t think of them at all as Erin’s face lit up with laughter and delight.
‘I can’t think of anything we’d like more,’ she said definitely. ‘Thank you, Mr McKay. That would be very nice indeed.’
It was.
‘You mean we really can swim in our clothes?’ the twins asked, as the tractor slowed at the river bank. Here the paddock dropped to a sandy curve-a gorgeous, golden beach leading down to the water’s edge. The river flowed gently here, having almost reached the sea. It’d be tidal this close to the coast, Erin thought. The water was turquoise and glittering, sandy-bottomed and clear as crystal.
And the need to swim was now irresistible to all of them.
‘I really mean you can swim in your clothes,’ Matt said. ‘Though you might be more comfortable in your knickers.’
‘Are you swimming in your knickers?’ the boys demanded of Matt, and Matt remembered enough about being a small boy to know they intended to do exactly what he did.
Matt eyed the lady. She eyed him back and, hell, he could see what she was thinking. She knew exactly what he normally wore when he swam here, and the thought was enough to bring a blush to a grown man’s cheeks.
Hell!
‘Um… I think I’ll leave my jeans on,’ he told them, and that decided it as far as the boys were concerned.
‘Then we’ll leave our pants on, too.’
‘Fine by me.’
Which left Erin.
Erin was looking doubtfully down at her crimplene. There’d been no bra to fit her in the donations pile. The bra she’d been wearing the night before was still hanging on the washing line, so she had no cover underneath her dress at all. Heaven knew what crimplene would do when it was wet.
But there was no way in the wide world she was not going to swim in this magic place.
‘What are we waiting for?’ she said, laughing and shrugging her shoulders. Okay, she was taking a risk with her modesty, but what the heck? ‘Come on, twins. Last one in gets to wash up after pizza.’
To Matt’s surprise, the twins could swim like little fish, and Erin was like a dolphin circling around them.
‘It’s my one life skill,’ she told him, surfacing but only up to her neck. Very carefully up to her neck. Her fears about the crimplene were justified the moment she hit the water. ‘You can’t be brought up in Bay Beach and not swim, and I take a personal pride in teaching every one of my charges to survive in water.’
They could do more than survive. The twins were doing handstands under water, their toes just breaking the surface as they competed to see who could stay under longest. It was a game that looked like it could go on for hours.
Matt stayed until he saw that they were safe and then he swum away from them, stroking his usual two hundred yards up river and then down again. In a way it was a relief-to get away from the lady with the responsibilities.
And the transparent swimwear!
As for Erin, she would have liked to join him, he knew, guessing instinctively that she’d long to stretch out for a good, long swim, but she didn’t. She stayed and supervised her boys, taking her duties very seriously. He watched from a distance, liking more and more of what he saw.
There was a boat, an old wooden rowboat, moored on a roughly made jetty a hundred yards from where they were swimming. It fascinated the twins, and Matt watched as Erin laid down the rules. She could see their fascination, and she knew trouble when she saw it.
‘The boat is out of bounds when Matt or I aren’t with you,’ she told them as their gaze swung instinctively and longingly toward it.
‘I’ll take you out prawning in it one night,’ Matt called. ‘That’s what it’s for.’
‘When?’ The twins were nothing if not direct and Matt had to smile. He’d been like this at seven himself.
‘When the moon’s right. You can’t prawn with a full moon.’
‘So meanwhile it’s out of bounds.’ Erin fixed the two children with a look. ‘Promise me you’ll leave it be.’
‘Why?’ They glared back at her, and Matt’s grin broadened. Yep, these two were trouble, but you had to admire their spirit. And Erin was their match.
‘Because it’s dangerous to be in without adult supervision. The tide could take you out to sea.’
‘But we wouldn’t-’
‘You might. And while you’re living with me you obey my rules,’ she finished, and she glared at them right back. They tried meeting her look head on, but finally they conceded. How had he known that they would?
‘Okay, we promise,’ William whispered reluctantly.
One down, one to go. Erin’s gaze shifted. ‘Henry?’
‘I promise, too.’ And Matt knew that the promise would be kept. Trouble, he thought. Yep, they were trouble but they weren’t bad kids at heart. It was just a matter of guessing what the risks were before they took them. And Erin was some guesser.
She was some lady!
Finally he swam back to her as the twins whooped and dived away, the boat forgotten-or at least put on the back-burner. As he reached her, she’d just surfaced from a dive herself. They were nose to nose, a yard apart, and suddenly the whole set-up was intensely…
What?
He didn’t know what. He had no experience to describe the way she made him feel. She looked amazing, he thought, completely free of make-up, her blonde curls hanging in wet tendrils over her face and to her shoulders, and her eyes bright with sunshine and with happiness.
And this was a lady who’d lost everything only the night before?
Maybe her belongings had been in another place, he thought. He asked her, and her face momentarily clouded, the pleasure of swimming dissipating.
‘Nope. The Home has been my home for years. I guess everything I had in the world was burned.’ But then her face was deliberately cleared, blocking pain. ‘But they were just things. I told you before, they can be replaced. We have the kids and we have Tigger. Who can ask for anything more than that?’
The thought crept in subtly at the edges and held. His house was full of beautiful things. How would he feel if they were destroyed?
Probably gut-wrenchingly dreadful, he decided, thinking of the paintings his mother had so carefully collected over her lifetime. To not care about things was an entirely new concept-as was the way he was looking at Erin now.
‘Hey.’ She was laughing, her lovely blue eyes twinkling at him over the water. ‘You’re looking at me like I just landed from Mars. I’m not that bad.’
She surely wasn’t. Different, yes. A world apart from the world he lived in.
That, too. But not bad.
The boys had dived through the water to shore, and were up on the bank. Instinctively Erin turned toward them. She’d learned early never to take her eyes from them. Not for a moment.
True to form, they’d headed straight to the only threat as far as the eyes could see. There were two long pieces of wood on the shore, driftwood brought in by the tide. The sticks were worn by the sea to smooth, white poles.
‘Hey, these’d make great swords,’ Henry yelled, and lifted one up. William was almost as fast, and Erin dived
