whinging. Donald looked so white he appeared to be about to pass out. He needed a mum, she thought. He needed someone to cuddle him until the terror passed. But there was something about the set of his small shoulders that said he wouldn’t be accepting cuddles. Not from her. Not from Pierce. He was holding himself aloof.
‘Pen and paper,’ she said. ‘Donald, fast.’
‘What…Why?’
Abby reappeared with Elastoplast. Pierce started cutting and sticking. Ouch, ouch and ouch, thought Shanni.
‘A list,’ she said stoutly. ‘Top of the list-jelly beans.’
‘Next on the list-broom,’ Pierce said and she blinked.
‘We need a broom?’
‘I broke the top off slamming the gate home.’
‘You had a broom? I thought you had a rifle.’
‘A broom.’
‘My hero,’ she muttered. ‘Hero with broomstick. What a man.’
‘Sorry.’ But he was smiling. She’d made him smile, she thought, and it felt okay.
‘So, broom,’ she told Donald. ‘And the makings of hot dogs.’
‘Why hot dogs?’ Pierce asked.
‘Because I feel like a hot dog and I’m wounded. Wounded people can ask for whatever they want.’
‘I like hot dogs,’ Donald said cautiously.
‘I think they’re made from bulls,’ she told him, and she grinned. ‘Double rations of hot dogs just as soon as we can get to the store.’
‘That might be next week,’ Pierce warned her. ‘I get groceries delivered on Monday.’
‘Monday’s too far. If the stores were open now I’d want my hot dog now.’ She sighed. ‘But I’m willing-at great personal sacrifice-to wait till tomorrow. Wendy and I can take care of the house. You can take Donald and do a shopping expedition. A hot dog hunt.’
‘Does that mean you’re staying for a bit?’ Wendy asked, and it seemed like the whole room held its breath.
Was she? She gazed round the room and saw five needful faces. Six if she counted Pierce, who was looking like he was trying to look uninterested.
Needful, too, she thought, but then that was suddenly a dangerous thought.
Ware sympathy, she told herself sternly, but she was still staying. ‘If it’s okay with you,’ she said diffidently, and not looking at Pierce. ‘I’ve come here nursing shattered pride, and now I have a broken shoulder to recover from as well. Recovering might take some time.’
It took time to settle everyone. Shanni sat in the big rocker by the fire while Pierce put his brood to bed. The children’s bedrooms were upstairs as well. She could hear them talking in muted tones. Kids’ questions. Pierce’s rumbling answers. Bessy’s plaintive whinging. More rumbles. A child’s voice-Wendy’s-sounding bossy.
She should go to bed, Shanni thought, but she was still feeling shaky. The gentle rocking of the old chair and the crackling of the flames inside the stove were infinitely comforting.
Silence fell upstairs. She might go to sleep where she was, and that didn’t seem a bad option. Preferable to going to a strange bed.
But some plans were doomed to failure.
‘Why aren’t you in bed?’ It was Pierce, standing in the doorway, staring across at her in concern.
‘I’m going,’ she said without much conviction. ‘As soon as I’m warm.’
‘It’s a warm night.’
‘I guess it is. I just got cold.’
He looked worried. But he was standing in the doorway, not coming further. ‘You want more of that whisky?’
‘No. I…I shouldn’t.’
‘Me neither. But it’s scary how much I want some.’ He shook his head. ‘Hell, Shanni, I’m sorry.’
‘You said the gate was locked.’
‘That’s what I can’t understand.’ He hesitated, but he still wasn’t coming further into the room. ‘I’ve just double checked. The chain’s been cut with bolt cutters. And someone’s stirred Clyde up. I’m not threatening to turn him into sausages any more. He’s standing against the fence, trembling almost as much as you are. There’s a series of tiny puncture wounds along his flank. I’d suspect something like a peashooter’s been used to hurt him. Normally if you opened Clyde’s gate he wouldn’t even notice it was open. But, if you opened it and started shooting pellets at him, he’d get terrified. He’d lumber into the garden, and if he kept hurting and he didn’t understand why then he’d be likely to attack anything that moved.’
She was staring at him, horrified. ‘But that’s…that’s criminal. That’s awful.’
‘They’ll be aiming at me,’ he said grimly. ‘They’ll assume it’d be me who’d go out and check on cattle loose in the garden. They’d never assume it’d be a seven-year-old.’
‘Do they hate you that much?’
‘It’s not hate,’ he said grimly. ‘It’s just they don’t know me. I’m a weekend millionaire who stopped a factory going ahead that the community needed. The fact that no one warned me is irrelevant. And now, as well as being rich and stupid and forcing the community to lose its factory, I’m a single dad who Social Welfare has in its sights for child neglect. Yeah, they’d like me to pack up and leave.’
‘So why don’t you?’ she asked cautiously.
‘I…’
‘You could go back to your architecture in the city. The kids could go to school and to day care. You could hire a housekeeper easier in the city.’
‘It won’t work.’ He shook his head. ‘Or I’m not sure it’d work. Maybe it’ll come to that, but Maureen badly wanted these kids to have space.’
She hesitated. And then she said, wise for now, ‘Well, at least you have me for a bit.’
There was a baffled pause. At least, it was baffled on Shanni’s part. Why the silence?
‘I think I just offered to be housekeeper,’ she said at last, cautiously. ‘If you want me.’
‘I do want you.’
It was said with such force that she blinked-and then managed a smile. ‘Well, thank you.’
‘I can see Ruby in you.’
That made her blink again. ‘Little and dumpy and wide astern?’
He smiled at that, grimness easing. ‘I’d never have said wide astern.’
‘But I’m little and dumpy.’
‘What you did tonight was the bravest…’
‘You’re saying that makes up for little and dumpy?’
He grinned. ‘If I was in the market for a woman, little and dumpy would be the last way I’d describe you.’
‘You’re not in the market for a woman?’
‘What do you think?’
‘I guess you’ve got five kids. So you’re not in the market for any more family.’
‘I never wanted this much. I sure as hell don’t need a wife as well.’
How had this conversation happened?
‘Just lucky you told me,’ she managed. ‘I was already planning the bridal.’
It brought him up short. ‘Hell. Shanni, I didn’t mean…’
‘It’s okay,’ she told him, relenting ‘I’ve done enough bridal planning for a lifetime.’
‘With ice-water Mike.’
‘That’s the one. I thought I was in love. How stupid can you be? No more relationships for me.’
‘But you’ve told the kids.’
‘That I’ll stay for a bit. Yes, I have.’ She took a deep breath, trying to sort things out in her head. ‘I really am in trouble,’ she confessed, deciding to lay it all out. ‘I used every cent I had getting back to Australia, to find my parents had sublet their house. My best friend has a bedsitter smaller than your broom closet. I’ve been out of the country for eight years and there’s no one else I can crash on. Except Ruby and her macrame ladies.’
‘It’s some penthouse she’s in,’ Pierce said. ‘Forty squares of luxury overlooking Sydney Harbour.’
