Their Baby Bargain

Luke groaned. ‘No.’

‘There should be nothing to it.’ She chuckled. ‘We can do it like the bad old days if you like-I’ll pretend I’m the worst kind of chimneysweep, we poke you up and then we light a fire beneath you. That way we get a really clean chimney fast.’

‘Or me roasted for lunch. Thanks very much.’ He groaned again. ‘Am I to spend the week scrubbing?’ He looked down at his already filthy clothes. ‘I need to get myself some gear.’

‘You do at that,’ she agreed. Her eyes grew thoughtful, and he could see she was tossing over options. ‘I think, after you organise me some electricity, some chopped wood and a clean chimney, I might give you leave of absence for a bit.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

She wasn’t finished yet. ‘You need to do something urgently about Grace,’ she added, and he frowned.

‘Like what?’

‘Like getting yourself some legal protection,’ she told him. ‘I’ve been thinking. The way things are, if Grace’s mother turned up she could accuse you of all sorts of things-kidnapping included-and it’s your word against hers.’

He was startled. ‘She wouldn’t do that. She dumped her on me.’

‘People do all sorts of strange things,’ Wendy said softly, hugging Gabbie close. She had Grace in her other arm, and with her two littlies cradled against her she looked like a protective mother hen.

She was used to fighting for kids, Luke thought suddenly-and he also thought there was no one he’d rather have on his side. She was some woman!

Somehow he dragged his thoughts back to practicalities. To Grace’s mother…

‘Why on earth would she accuse me of kidnapping Grace?’

‘If Lindy is angry at how your father treated her, there’s nothing to say she won’t take that anger out on you.’

‘She wouldn’t-’

‘Maybe she wouldn’t,’ Wendy said soothingly. ‘But you need to cover yourself. Find her, get yourself a lawyer and have him witness her agreement that you’re taking care of her child. The sooner you do it, the better.’

He thought that over, the memory of Wendy’s description of Sonia ringing in his ears. Hell…

‘Maybe I’d best go straight away.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘Not quite. You have a chimney to clean,’ she told him. ‘And there’s something else.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve told you,’ she went on calmly, as though it was a tiny detail she was just adding, ‘I have no protection either. If you leave, then I have no legal right to care for Grace.’

‘I’ll cover you,’ he said quickly. ‘If there’s any problem then I’ll protect you. And I should be back in a couple of days.’

‘That’s the trouble,’ she told him, her eyes cool and un-challenging. ‘People don’t come back. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this job, it’s that.’

His brows snapped together in anger. ‘You don’t trust me?’

She was unperturbed by his anger. ‘I trust no one when a child’s future is at stake,’ she told him. ‘On their behalf, I can’t afford to.’

‘But-’

‘But don’t worry.’ She smiled again and there was now a hint of mischief lurking deep in her eyes. ‘I’ve been figuring out surety and I know what you can leave behind so I know you’ll come back.’

‘What?’ But somehow he suspected what was coming before she said it. His heart sank as her smile deepened. Oh, no!

And here it was, right on cue. ‘Your car,’ she said sweetly.

Okay, he’d suspected it, but it didn’t mean he was ready and waiting. He blenched as Gabbie looked at him with eyes that didn’t trust him an inch and Wendy watched him with eyes that asked just how serious he was about taking care of his baby sister.

‘My car,’ he said finally, knowing he was beaten before he even started.

‘That’s right.’ She smiled again. ‘As I said, I’ve been thinking things over. I can’t stay here without transport. What if one of the children was to become ill, or there was an accident? Plus there’s the shopping and I can’t use taxis all the time. You must see I need to be able to go back and forth to Bay Beach. I know that as a concerned employer you’ll be providing me with a car before you leave for good.’

‘But-’

‘But meanwhile we can kill two birds with one stone,’ she interrupted blithely. ‘You can phone a hire firm from Bay Beach and have them rent you wheels of some kind. Then you can leave your Noddy car here for us.’

‘My Noddy car!’

‘Your Noddy car.’ She chuckled at the look on his face. ‘We like it, don’t we, Gabbie? We’d prefer it in canary yellow, but we’re prepared to overlook that one small blemish. This way we’ll have something to do the grocery shopping in.’

‘You’ll use my car to do the supermarket shopping?’ He was practically gibbering.

‘And then we know you’ll come back,’ she ended serenely. ‘That is-if you still want Gabbie and me to look after your baby?’

She raised her eyebrows and waited. He glared at her and she smiled straight back.

‘What sort of a bargain is this?’ His voice was practically rising through the roof. ‘My car…’

‘It’s a baby bargain,’ she told him, and her smile slipped a little. ‘And you don’t need to panic. We’ll take the very best care of your precious car, and you know we’ll take the very best care of your precious baby, too. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?’ She tilted her head and watched his face. ‘A baby. Not a car?’

‘I don’t have a choice,’ he said bitterly.

‘I’m afraid you don’t.’ Surprisingly her voice held a trace of sympathy, and her hand came out to touch his. It was as if she really did understand what his car meant to him. Her touch was strong and warm and somehow… somehow it made a difference. ‘You don’t have a choice,’ she agreed. ‘But that’s life. It’s full of really, really tough breaks-like having to use a hire car for a couple of days. Now, Mr Grey…’ laughter returned ‘…about that chimney…’

What on earth was he getting into? Luke reluctantly tackled the fire stove but his mind was only about ten per cent on the job. The rest was figuring out how much his life had changed in twenty-four hours, and why he’d let himself be talked into leaving his precious Aston Martin with a woman and two children…

When he went overseas he left his car in a special garage, carefully enfolded in a climate-controlled autobag. Here, the garage behind the house was tumbling down and unfit for use. There was no safe place here to leave it. His pride and joy would have to stay parked outside in the sea air-and there were crows and parrots and even seagulls…

‘There must be a bird’s nest blocking the chimney.’ Wendy’s voice came from behind him and he jumped a foot. He hit his head on the mantelpiece and swore.

‘Hey, hush.’ Wendy clapped her hands over Gabbie’s ears-the little girl was never more than two inches away from her-and she fixed Luke with a school-marm look. She appeared not to even notice that he was rubbing his head in pain! ‘Gabbie doesn’t know words like that-do you, Gabbie?’

Gabbie chuckled and sank back against Wendy’s skirt. When she smiled, her elfin face lit up like a sunbeam and Luke found his heart twisting. Just a little, mind, not too much-not so much as you’d write home about-at the treatment that had been meted out to this child.

Good grief! he thought, as he stared at the pair of them. He wasn’t a soft touch. He didn’t like children! So what was happening here? The emotion he was feeling was building all the time, and he had to stay impartial. He was simply setting up a home for his little sister because it was expected of him, he told himself-and then he was getting out of here.