His Miracle Bride

‘Why?’

‘Because you need a damned good rest. Any fool can see that.’

‘I’m your employee,’ she said gently. ‘Not someone you have to fuss over.’

‘No, but you don’t have any place else to go.’

‘You could sign one of Ruby’s dumb visitor agreements and I could stay there. I could put up with the macrame.’

‘You’d tell her all about me.’

‘I might,’ she admitted. ‘Not that I’d want to, but no one can tell lies to Ruby. She sees right through you.’

‘So come to the castle. Maybe you can paint.’

‘Maybe I can,’ she said, cheering up. ‘I need to conquer cows’ legs.’

‘You studied art at university?’

‘I did and all,’ she said mournfully. ‘But it hasn’t fitted me very well for an alternative career. I can discuss with gravitas the powerful influences affecting post-modern gothic pastoralism on twentieth-century neoconservatist abstracts-but I can’t paint a cows’ leg. Wendy does a neater one. Maybe I should become the world’s best housekeeper and be done with it.’ She swivelled round and grinned at Wendy. ‘But I’m trying painting first. So it’s a contest. If I get to go to the beach, we’ll see who paints legs best at the end.’

‘We’ll paint fish at the beach,’ Abby said.

‘Fish legs, then.’

‘Mermaids,’ Wendy said, and giggled.

Wendy giggling?

It was such an astonishing sound that it almost had Pierce driving off the road. He hadn’t heard Wendy giggle since her mother had died.

This woman was…

A godsend. Nothing more, he told himself, suddenly finding he needed to give himself a stern reminder of barriers. She was great for the kids.

She was cuddly.

He didn’t do cuddly. He didn’t do relationships.

Except, maybe, with Ruby.

Ruby’s husband had been a foster kid himself, physically scarred from years of childhood neglect. When he’d died young Ruby had declared her life mission was to rescue boys. There were too many children in the world to take them all, she declared, so she restricted herself to gawky adolescent males, and she loved them to bits.

He’d spent three years of his life with Ruby. His mother never abandoned him completely, so his childhood was made up of intermittent placements. After he met Ruby she took him every time.

Shanni had Ruby’s grin. She had Ruby’s way of greeting life head on. That was the only reason he was reacting to her like he was, he told himself. Because she was like Ruby.

Yeah, right. She wasn’t the least bit like Ruby. She was Shanni.

They lapsed into silence. Pierce turned onto the gravel track leading to the farm, and realized that he didn’t want this journey to end. Which was weird. He who held his independence as his most important asset had found a short journey with five kids, a pile of supplies and a woman with a wounded wing great.

‘So we’re setting out tomorrow,’ Shanni said, and he thought, okay, they could keep this businesslike.

‘Yep.’

‘We didn’t go today because-’

‘Because you need time to recover.’

‘I’m supposed to help you, not the other way round.’

‘You saved Donald.’

She thought about that. ‘So I did,’ she said at last. ‘There’s a silver lining to every cloud. I might be stuck here…’

‘You think you’re stuck?’

‘Of course I do.’ She seemed astonished. ‘I mean-’ She caught herself. ‘I mean, you all seem very nice, but I’m an art curator. This is a career blip. I’m here to regroup and then I’m out of here. So if you find someone else, feel free to employ them.’

‘Thank you,’ he said gravely.

‘Only not tomorrow, cos even though I shouldn’t come it was my idea to go to the beach and I really, really want to stay in a castle.’

‘So do I,’ said Donald.

‘Me, too,’ said Wendy.

And, to a chorus of ‘me, toos’, he turned into the farm. With his temporary housekeeper. Temporary childminder. Temporary…relationship?

He didn’t do relationships. Even temporary ones.

CHAPTER SIX

SHANNI woke at three in the morning. Her shoulder hurt.

Actually, it throbbed.

‘Wuss,’ she told herself, but her shoulder wasn’t in the mood to be told it was making too much fuss.

She needed painkillers. The doctor had given her lethal-looking night-time pills with instructions that she’d need them to go to sleep. But he’d said they’d make her dozy, and she was a bit wary of being dozy in this house. What if there was another bull? She’d taken a couple of milder analgesics and had managed to go to sleep, but now those bright blue suckers she’d put in the kitchen medicine cabinet looked pretty inviting.

The house was in darkness. She was still in the girls’ bedroom. Wendy and Abby were fast asleep. Carefully she threw back the covers, winced as the movement hurt her arm, then padded her way downstairs to the kitchen.

Pierce was sitting at the table, a sheath of plans spread out before him. He looked like a man who’d been working for hours.

He was wearing bright blue pyjamas. He had serious-looking glasses perched low on his nose. He’d been raking his hair with his fingers. His curls had separated into rake marks. He needed a shave again.

He was seriously cute.

He looked up, and she jumped.

‘Hey,’ he said, sounding as startled as she was. ‘It’s me who’s supposed to jump.’

‘Did I scare you?’

‘If you’re asking whether the sight of five feet three inches of woman with pyjamas covered in pink pigs and with one arm in a sling is enough to terrify me-you could be right.’ He stretched, like a big cat, and rose lazily to his feet. ‘Your arm’s hurting?’

‘I…Yes.’ Maybe the pink pigs weren’t such a good idea, she thought. They’d been a Kris Kringle Christmas gift from the gallery staff. She’d shoved them right to the back of her bureau, but when she’d been packing to come home she’d thought, why not, no one’s going to see me in bed ever again.

But she wouldn’t have minded a bit of feminine lace right now. Or even plain flannelette. Just not pigs.

‘They’re great,’ Pierce said, and grinned. There it was again-that grin. He could make her heart do somersaults.

She was his temporary housekeeper. And, after Mike, your selection criteria is seriously flawed, she told herself. Do not think cute.

‘They’re all the fashion in London,’ she said defensively.

‘I believe you.’ His smile widened.

Whoa. Stop it, stop it, stop it.

‘Sit by the fire,’ he told her. He walked round and pulled the fireside rocker forward.

‘I’m all right.’

‘Sit.’ Before she knew what he intended, he caught her round the waist, picked her up and deposited her in the chair. Just as if she was one of his kids.