‘We need to take Sadie to the vet to make sure the leg’s not broken. I’ll call first, but before that we need to get her back to the house. That means we all have to squeeze on the tractor because I’m not leaving Erin behind. You two climb up behind the driver’s seat, sit down and make your knees as flat as you can. Then I’ll hand her up to you. You’ll carry her on your knees. You’ll be uncomfortable but I can’t help that. Erin, can you ride on the step?’
‘Sure.’
Of course. Anything.
‘Right. Let’s move.’
CHAPTER FIVE
IT DIDN’T stop there.
Back at the house, Matt carried his dog inside to her basket, he telephoned the vet and then he turned to the boys. ‘Okay, you have two minutes to get changed because you’re coming with me.’
‘But…’ It was Erin and he turned to face her. His face was still implacable, but then she saw the tiniest glint of laughter behind his eyes and her own widened with astonishment.
‘I’m pretty sure the leg’s just bruised,’ he told her as the boys disappeared toward their bedroom and dry clothes. ‘But I’ve pre-warned Ted, our local vet. He’ll play it up-as I suspect Sadie’s playing it for all she’s worth. She was hit by a car when she was a pup. I pandered to her dreadfully while she recuperated, and now every time she’d like a little snack-say when I’m eating a nice juicy steak-she’ll look pathetic and limp.’
‘Oh, Sadie…’ Erin stooped down and hugged the big dog lying pathetically in her basket, her leg just slightly raised as if to say,
‘She would.’ Matt knelt, too. Which was sort of nice, he decided. Erin was still gorgeously transparent-literally- and kneeling beside her was quite an experience. ‘That’s not to say the whack by the stick didn’t hurt, though. I bet it did. And now…’ He patted his old dog’s head. ‘She likes the vet, we’ll buy her some rump steak on the way home and the boys just might have a lesson in consequences.’
Erin took a deep breath. ‘Thank you for not yelling at them,’ she said softly, and he smiled at her.
Mistake.
She smiled back, and something strange happened. Something indefinable.
But real. Incredibly real.
‘It’s… It’s my pleasure,’ he told her in a voice that was suddenly none too steady. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll go put some dry clothes on as well.’
That’d be good, Erin thought inconsequentially. He’d been swimming bare-chested, he was still bare-chested and crouched beside her he was suddenly far too large and far too…far too male!
And far too something she couldn’t define in the least.
‘Do you want me to come, too?’ she asked. She should. They were her charges.
‘No,’ he told her, breaking the moment finally by rising and backing a step or two. ‘This business is between me and the boys. You stay here and wait for Tom. There’s enough on your plate without worrying about my dog.’
He was right, only…
‘I should stay with the twins.’
‘Delegate responsibility,’ he told her, and just for a fleeting moment he touched her damp curls. That was a mistake, as it happened, because the ‘something’ that was between them intensified a hundredfold.
He caught his breath, and tried for a dignified exit. ‘Just for an hour or so,’ he told her. ‘Just for a while, I want you to think of yourself and let me worry about the twins.’
He left her, but he didn’t leave her thinking about the twins-or herself for that matter.
All she could think of was Matt.
‘There was no harm at all in letting them go with him.’
It was Tom. The head of the Home Service had arrived at Matt’s farm before Matt, Sadie and the twins returned from the vet, and Erin was feeling dreadful.
When she’d finally got her muddled thoughts back into order she’d gone straight back to concentrating on the twins, and now she was imagining the worst. What sort of chaos could they cause in a veterinary surgery? However, when she told Tom what was happening, his eyes grew thoughtful and he nodded his approval.
‘Don’t worry. Matt’s a sound man, Erin,’ he told her. ‘I spent some time with him this afternoon, and by the end of it I decided he’s the sort of person who, if he applied as a foster parent, I’d be approving in a flash.’
‘There’s not much chance of that.’ Erin gave her boss a half hearted smile. ‘You take one look at this house and you can see that. And when you meet the lady he intends to marry…’
‘Was that the woman he was with this afternoon?’ Tom’s craggy eyebrows raised in surprise. ‘Charlotte? I didn’t know he was engaged.’
‘I don’t think he is yet,’ Erin told him. ‘But I gather marriage to Matt has been Charlotte’s intention for years. She’s knocked back perfectly good offers while Matt went out with other women. Faithfulness personified, is our Charlotte, and I can’t see him letting her down now. In fact…’
She took a deep breath and wondered why there was a strange constricting feeling around her heart. ‘I have a feeling there’s an engagement ring in the truck right now. I saw something that definitely looked like a ring box. Maybe he was planning on popping the question last night.’
‘I can’t see it happening.’ Tom shook his head. ‘I took to Matt right away, but I didn’t take to her. She’s a cold piece of work.’ Then he smiled, relegating Charlotte to his list of the least of his worries. ‘Nevertheless, she’s useful for some things.’ He motioned to the back of his car. ‘She’s great at shopping. She did all this.’
‘All what?’ Erin followed his gaze.
‘Clothes shopping. None of the rest of us could do it. Lori’s flat out taking care of the baby, all the other house parents have their hands full with problem kids and Wendy’s taken in Michael and Tess. We knew you’d be desperate for a change of clothes, and you can’t go shopping in welfare handouts. Matt remembered you were Wendy’s bridesmaid, so he rang her to find your size, and we had the boys’ on file. We bullied an emergency contingency cheque from the insurers, then Matt sent Charlotte shopping-and there you go.’
Erin stared. ‘There I go?’
‘More clothes than you can poke a stick at,’ he told her. He lifted the pizzas from the passenger seat. ‘Clothes courtesy of your Matt’s organisation and his Charlotte’s happiness to shop, and dinner courtesy of me. I hope this place runs to a microwave so we can reheat these when the twins return.’
‘It runs to everything,’ she said, staring at the parcels and itching to undo them. Matt had organised this? Was this why he’d had to take Charlotte into town? The thought warmed her to her toes, and made it difficult to concentrate on anything else.
Somehow she had to manage it. What were they talking about? Oh, yeah. Matt’s house. ‘Honestly, Tom, it’s a display home,’ she said at last. ‘I don’t see how we can stay here.’
‘I don’t see how you can do anything else,’ he told her. ‘It’s an answer to a prayer. There’s nowhere else I can put you. The only alternative is me laying you off for six months, leaving you unemployed and me sending the boys to Sydney.’
That was some choice! It sure took her mind off parcels.
But even so…
‘You’re prepared to keep paying me as a House Mother if I stay on here?’ Erin was incredulous.
‘I am. I had an emergency briefing with the board before leaving Sydney this morning,’ he told her. ‘The problem’s the twins and I told them that. They’re getting too old to place. No one wants to take on two seven- year-olds with a history of trouble, and I won’t separate them.’
‘No.’ The very idea was dreadful.
‘Everyone wants babies,’ Tom said sadly. ‘I could place a hundred Marigolds. Littlies are easy but, once they’re over six, people believe that the damage has already been done.’
‘The twins are still…salvageable.’ Erin said softly. ‘They’re still capable of attachment.’
