Rescued By A Millionaire

of repair, and his uninvited guests who were somehow his responsibility having to make do with living conditions that were dreadful. There’d been nothing he could do about it, but he’d felt appalling about them being here.

He’d returned home tonight with little anticipation other than a growing guilt that he was here just to refuel, shower and sleep before the endless work started again. That he’d find them despairing in the dust.

But what he’d walked into…

The place was transformed beyond belief. The lamp was lit on the kitchen table, sending out a soft, golden glow. A smell of baking-baking!-was wafting through the kitchen. The kitchen itself was gleaming. It looked clean and loved and even…pretty!

How had they done this?

Where were they?

There was a muted giggle from the back of the house. He heard a child’s voice, happy and chirpy, and then Jenna’s voice raised in response.

They were singing a sea shanty he vaguely recognised.

‘Pull, ye land lubbers, pull.’

Fascinated, he made his way through to the wash-house door. They were both in there. He could hear their splashing and their laughter and their crazy song.

It was like coming home.

The thought was such a jolt that he felt almost as if he’d been hit in the gut. The sensation of homeliness. A child’s laughter. Jenna…

She was in the shower. They were pumping together and using sea shanties to get the rhythm of the pump. They were singing and giggling and pumping and splashing-and Riley had to stand against the wall as a wave of aching need jolted through his gut so hard he thought he’d fall.

Hell!

‘Enough.’ It was Jenna’s voice, still laughing, with a hint of spluttering. ‘Out of here, you little water baby. I don’t know how much bore water there is-’

‘There’s plenty,’ he called. ‘Bore water’s not a problem. Splash all you want.’

There was a shocked silence from inside the wash house as they obviously heard and figured they had company. And then came Karli’s voice. Joyous.

‘Mr Jackson’s home. Jenna, Mr Jackson’s home. Mr Jackson, we’re having a pump shower. Do you want a pump shower? We’re really good at pumping.’

‘Um… Mr Jackson needs to wait for us to finish,’ Jenna said in a voice that was none too steady.

‘You still don’t need help with the pump?’ He smiled, but his smile was crooked. Something inside him was being touched that hadn’t been touched for a very long time and he wasn’t sure that he appreciated the sensation.

‘Karli has pumping down to a fine art,’ Jenna told him.

‘There’s rules about child labour.’

‘Don’t you dare tell Karli.’ She was laughing again, he decided, and he liked it. He liked it a lot. The guilt that had been with him for the last two days slipped away and he found himself grinning like a fool. ‘We’ll be out in a minute,’ she called. ‘Don’t dirty our tidy house.’

‘As if I would.’ He was gazing the length of the veranda and they’d been busy here, too. ‘What on earth have you two been doing?’

‘We’ve been dusting,’ Karli called out, proudly. The water had stopped and her voice was slightly muffled as if she was being towelled. ‘Me and Jenna don’t like dust.’

‘You come to Barinya Downs when you don’t like dust? A bit of dust does no one any harm.’

‘You bring one speck into this house, Riley Jackson, and we’ll hang you out like we hung out the rugs,’ Jenna said darkly. ‘How are your cows?’

‘Better for having some water,’ he told her and the feeling of domesticity deepened. What was the line wives used to their husbands? How was your day, dear?

Something was missing. The wind was rising, whistling round the house with the same eerie moan as it had since he’d arrived. But…

‘The roof’s not banging,’ he said on a note of discovery.

‘Jenna fixed the flapping tin,’ Karli told him. It was a strange conversation, on either side of the wash-house door, crazily intimate. ‘I held the ladder while she banged the nails.’

Jenna fixed the roof? ‘What with?’ he demanded, stunned.

‘With nails,’ Jenna said as if he were stupid-which was exactly how he was feeling. ‘We found them in one of the sheds with a bunch of old tools. I banged forty-seven nails and one thumb. One thumb twice.’

‘Ouch.’

‘Ouch is right.’

‘Jenna said a bad word,’ Karli told him-and she giggled.

He still wasn’t sure he was hearing right. He wasn’t sure that he was dreaming. ‘I don’t believe you,’ he said and the door to the wash house swung open, to reveal two girls dressed in towels. They looked amazing. Karli was hugely respectable, wrapped in a towel that reached to the floor, but Jenna’s towel covered her from her breasts to her hips and only just at that. They’d plaited their hair and pinned it up so it was a coif on each of their heads. They looked a real pair, flushed and clean and mischievous, he thought. They looked really, really pleased with themselves.

So they ought if they’d achieved this.

‘What don’t you believe?’ Jenna demanded and Riley took an instinctive step backwards.

‘Um…the roof?’

‘Believe it, mister,’ she said darkly.

‘But you’re Charles Svenson’s daughter.’

‘Yeah, he should have been here to help, but he doesn’t make a habit of doing that,’ she told him. ‘And I would have called a roofer, but I couldn’t find a phone book. So I just had to do it myself. By the way, I wouldn’t trust your ladder too much. A rung broke as I came down.’ She held up a leg and motioned to a long, jagged scratch. ‘It messed up my designer clothes no end. That’ll cost you an extra can of beans.’

‘I don’t believe it,’ he said again, stupidly, and Jenna sighed.

‘Okay. I lied. Climb up on your rickety ladder and see for yourself that the roof is mended, but, I admit, I called in a team of roof repairers from Adelaide.’

‘No, you didn’t,’ Karli said, puzzled, and Jenna grinned.

‘No, we didn’t, but we’re giving Mr Jackson some pride back. He doesn’t like the thought of mere women fixing his roof. You’ll understand male pride-and male ego-when you’re a bit older. In the meantime…’ She faced Riley square on, a diminutive redhead with a towel. ‘I know this sounds unreasonable, Mr Jackson, but we need to kick you out of your bedroom so we can get dressed.’

‘Um…right,’ he said and retreated.

What else was a man to do?

CHAPTER FIVE

RILEY needed a beer, but he didn’t fetch one. Instead he prowled the house.

Every chink had been closed to the all-pervading dust. The broken windows had been boarded up, but the remaining windows had been cleaned so the light from the rising moon was filtering through.

The lanterns had been cleaned. He lit one in the sitting room and gazed around at the transformed space. The big club sofa and matching chairs were clean and big and inviting.

He didn’t sit. He wasn’t stupid. He was covered in dust and when a cry came from the veranda-‘Shower’s free’-he made it into the wash house fast.

He was starting to feel as if he didn’t belong. The feeling that this was home was weird and domestic and… threatening?

He washed and hauled on a pair of jeans, then started to go out to the kitchen-and then he hesitated.