It was just as well Peta had sense for the both of them, he told himself. Otherwise he’d have her in his arms right now!
Which was a truly crazy thought. To marry her was fine. But to make love to her as his wife… No!
How on earth had he ever become caught up in this? A wife? Australia? The immediate future seemed ridiculous. He’d been caught by a pair of twinkling green eyes, hauled in as surely as his mother had, sucked in by promises.
But it had been Marcus who’d made the promises.
‘And I’m surely not dreaming of any happy ever after,’ he told the ceiling. ‘My life’s here.’
Alone with a ceiling?
Whatever.
He’d upgraded her ticket.
Peta wriggled down into the cocoon of her first-class seat-cum-bed and tried really hard to think indignant thoughts. How had he found out her flight was economy? How had he managed to change it, and what right did he have to do so?
But her knees weren’t under her chin. She was nestled into a full-length bed. There were fluffy blankets tucking her in, soft pillows under her head, soft music playing on her personal entertainment system.
She was on her way back to reality. Back to cows and hard grind. Maybe she could indulge in a little fantasy for now, she thought. And that was exactly what she was doing. Especially as her husband-her husband!-was lying right beside her. If she just reached out…
She didn’t want to reach out. Of course she didn’t. Peta O’Shannassy had a very tight grip on reality.
Sort of.
He could have used his own jet. But: ‘You know how she reacted with the clothes,’ Ruby had told him. ‘She’ll react exactly the same to a private jet.’
‘She agreed to your plans for a wedding dress.’
‘That was fantasy. A private jet, in Peta’s eyes, would be ridiculous.’
‘But hell-sitting round airports…’
‘Join the human race.’
‘I’ve been part of the human race,’ Marcus had said grimly. ‘I’ve moved on.’
‘Well, pretend for two weeks,’ Ruby had said bluntly, so here he was, on a commercial flight with the prospect of a five-hour stopover in Tokyo.
It was comfortable enough.
Who was he kidding? He was really comfortable. And Peta’s round-eyed astonishment had been a delight, even if he did have the feeling she was controlling indignation at his perceived waste of money.
Peta. His bride.
Fantasy… Reality.
The lines were becoming more blurred by the minute.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE moment she landed she transformed.
For the last few hours of the flight Peta had withdrawn into herself. Finally, at the announcement to fasten seatbelts for landing, she turned to Marcus, her face resolute.
‘Thank you very much,’ she told him. ‘You can stop pretending now.’
‘Stop pretending?’
‘I mean…’ She flushed a little but her face became more resolute. ‘The whole wedding thing. Letting me travel with you first class. Buying me clothes. Treating me as your wife. It’s been great but you don’t need to do it any more. No one here cares.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
She smiled at that but it was an uncomfortable little smile.
‘I’m sorry. Maybe I put that really badly. It’s just… Well, hardly anyone here will have heard of you, and they surely won’t be fussed whether we’re married or not.’
‘You mean… Are you telling me to go away?’
‘You really think that Charles will check that we’re together?’
‘Charles will check.’
‘How can he?’
‘Private investigators are relatively cheap when there’s a lot of money at stake.’
‘He wouldn’t.’
‘He would.’
She thought about it and then nodded, her face decisive. ‘Okay. Maybe you’re right. But no one can come further than our farm gate without the dogs barking their heads off. You can have Hattie’s house. My aunt lived separately from us but her house is on the farm, too.’
He thought about it. ‘You don’t want me to stay with you?’
‘I don’t have a guest bedroom.’
‘You have four brothers.’
‘So?’
‘So, if three of them aren’t living at home, why isn’t there a spare bedroom?’
She paused. She opened her mouth to speak but then appeared to think better of it. And then she smiled.
‘You can have Hattie’s house,’ she told him again. ‘Let’s leave everything else for now. I wonder who’s going to meet us?’
Everybody met them. The plane touched down in Melbourne; they walked through the doors from Customs and Peta disappeared in the midst of a melee of large, male redheads. Marcus saw Peta’s brothers as a group, their family likeness unmistakeable as they leaned forward over the barrier in their eagerness to see their sister, and then Peta was through and they merged. Peta was enfolded into a group hug, and the hug went on for so long he thought he’d lost her.
But finally she was released. Tousled and laughing, she gazed at them all with affection. Four boys, three of whom were well over six feet, and the fourth a smaller, freckled one with the promise of at least a foot of growth to come.
‘I’ve missed you all so much,’ she told them. ‘Come and meet Marcus.’
The oldest broke away from the group at that. Lean and gangly, just out of adolescence, the boy’s smile died and his face grew serious. Red-headed, freckled like his brothers and all of about twenty, the kid had the same look on his face as the one Peta had worn when Marcus first met her. Defiance, and a vulnerability he was trying to hide. He stepped forward and took Marcus’s hand in a grip that was surprisingly strong for one so young.
‘I’m Daniel,’ he said simply. ‘Peta rang. She told us what you’d done for us. We’re all so grateful.’
And Marcus, man of the world, world-weary and sophisticated, found himself almost blushing. For heaven’s sake. The gratitude of a stripling…
The gratitude of them all. They were all looking at him as if he was their very own personal genie. Peta was smiling, and…
And heck. Enough was enough.
‘I only married your sister,’ he growled. ‘That’s hardly a huge sacrifice on my part.’
Daniel managed a shy grin. ‘I don’t know about that, sir. She’s very bossy.’
‘Hey!’ Peta said.
‘She’s messy, too,’ the littlest one volunteered. ‘And she can’t cook for nuts.’
‘She’s pretty good at animal obstetrics, though,’ the second one-Christopher?-volunteered. ‘Daniel’s doing vet science but he still reckons there’s no one he’d rather have around during a messy birth than Peta.’
