‘They’re good kids.’
‘If they were good kids they’d have been adopted long before this.’
‘Hush!’ Charlotte’s voice was carrying. Matt cast a glance behind him. He didn’t think the twins had heard, but… ‘Be a bit careful of what you’re saying.’
‘I’m only telling the truth,’ Charlotte said stubbornly. ‘For heaven’s sake, they actually burned down a whole house. They should be a bit grateful for what you’re doing instead of grumping along like two spoiled brats.’
Yeah. Right. But they didn’t look like spoiled brats, Matt thought as he tried to cheer them up. They just looked like kids who knew they were hopeless and expected to be told that at every available opportunity.
‘Come and help me brush Cecil,’ he told them as they finally fed out the last of the hay. ‘He’ll be dry by now, and he needs to be brushed like he’s never been brushed before if he’s to win.’
‘Oh, Matt, really…’ Charlotte again, unable to resist putting in her oar. ‘As if they know the right way to brush a bull. I’ll help.’
‘Boys…’
‘I want to watch TV,’ Henry said, and William chewed his bottom lip and said nothing.
‘I’d really appreciate it if you could help me.’
Silence.
Erin arrived back at the farm feeling very much better. There was nothing like venting a little spleen with a friend, she thought cheerfully as she turned into the gate. That, a couple of bolts of material, a really gorgeous ready-made dress, new shoes and a bottle of her favourite perfume supplied by Shanni had made her feel she was ready to face the world again.
Or ready to face Charlotte.
They were in the kitchen. Erin pushed wide the door and knew they’d been talking about her. The conversation stopped dead as she entered, and Matt bit his lip.
It wasn’t anything good, Erin thought, but then, when had Charlotte ever said anything nice about her? Or anyone who had less money and influence than Charlotte?
‘Hi,’ she said brightly, determined to be cheerful. ‘I had to come home. Bay Beach ran out of things I could buy.’
‘Did the insurance money run to all this?’ Charlotte asked incredulously, looking at Erin’s parcels. She sniffed. ‘That’s the same perfume as Sally wears. It costs a mint. And you’ve never bought a dress from Della’s!’
‘I do get paid,’ Erin said gently. ‘I’m not exactly a welfare case, Charlotte.’ She dumped her parcels and somehow kept right on smiling. Then, because she knew it’d cut right to the bone, she couldn’t resist. ‘I even had money left over for lacy knickers. Because a girl just never knows…’ And that was enough of that! ‘Where are the boys?’
‘They’re watching television,’ Charlotte snapped, watching Matt’s face and not being reassured at all. He’d definitely heard what Erin said, and there was definitely a level of interest there. ‘They’ve been distinctly unhelpful.’
‘I expect they’re tired,’ Matt threw in, trying to appease-and trying not to think of Erin in lacy knickers-but Erin was no longer listening. She left them to each other.
If Matt was stupid enough to believe he loved Charlotte, then they deserved each other.
The twins weren’t watching television.
Erin went from there to the bedrooms. Then she searched the house, but there were no twins. Finally she returned to the kitchen.
‘They’re not in the house,’ she told Matt, and watched as his eyes widened. ‘Where else could they be?’
‘They’re watching television.’ He walked forward as if he thought she just wasn’t looking hard enough, and flung open the sitting room door. The television was blaring, but there were no twins.
They looked at each other-and they started to run.
She checked the river first.
It was Erin’s golden rule. Check out worst-case scenarios and work backward. The most dangerous places for the twins to be were the machinery shed and the river, so while Matt checked the sheds, she ran down along the track they’d used to go swimming.
They weren’t there, but something else was there that made her suck in her breath in dismay.
Oh no!
She looked back up at the house, and her fears were confirmed. There was Matt, emerging from the shed where Cecil had been groomed. He was holding a twin by each hand. Erin couldn’t see his face, but she could guess it’d look like thunder.
Because as soon as he saw the empty stall, he’d have guessed.
She turned around again and she sighed.
The river flowed on golden sand, and then curved away inland. As it did, the sand turned to mud.
That was where Cecil was. He was no longer confined, brushed and beautiful in the shed, ready for tomorrow’s show. He was rolling full length in the mud, doing what every self-respecting bull would do, given all the peculiar odours they’d put on his body.
He was getting it all off.
And he was now disgusting!
CHAPTER SEVEN
‘THEY deserve to be spanked. I’ll do it if you won’t.’ Charlotte was at her vitriolic best and Erin silently counted to ten before she put herself between Charlotte and the boys. Somehow she forced herself to think fast. She needed a defensive weapon here, and luckily she had one, just granted to her by an indignant Shanni.
‘You touch them and I’ll… I’ll publish the poetry you and Bradley Moore wrote to each other when you were teenagers!’
What a threat! Erin’s voice was whisper-quiet and desperate, but everyone knew she meant it. Matt’s eyebrows flew up in astonishment. Charlotte gasped and took a step back, allowing Erin to crouch protectively before her two white-faced little boys.
Now what? Erin thought desperately. The boys knew exactly what they’d done, and how naughty they’d been. Now they flinched, but they met her look, defiant and expecting the worst.
Why did she always want to hug them?
She couldn’t. Matt was still holding them a hand apiece. He was angry, she knew. He’d been distracted momentarily by her stupid threat to Charlotte, and she could see her threat would surface to haunt her, but meanwhile he had every right to be angry.
‘What the…?’ Charlotte was shocked to the core. ‘You never…’
‘You used Rob McDonald as a go between,’ Erin said, and managed a smile. This was kids’ poetry they were talking about. It was only teasing, after all. Wasn’t it? ‘Silly move, Charlotte. Rob might be a police sergeant, but at fifteen he wasn’t so law-abiding. The dratted boy copied them and Shanni found them a couple of weeks ago when she was cleaning up out at her parents’ farm.’
It might be crazy, and wholly unethical, but as a desperate ruse it worked brilliantly. As a distraction, this was a beauty!
‘That’s ridiculous,’ Charlotte managed, right off track.
‘Yep!’ It was, but Shanni had laughingly suggested it as a weapon, and it had been in Erin’s head at the wrong time. Bay Beach was a very small town with a very long memory!
‘Poetry,’ Matt said blankly.
‘Do you know where Cecil is now?’ she asked the boys gently. She was more dismayed than angry. Heaven, it was as if they tried to drive off anyone who was good to them. They’d all put in so much work to make Cecil splendid, and to undo it all now didn’t make any sense. ‘He’s down in the mud by the river, and he’s filthy,’ she
