Their Baby Bargain

white bone showed through his knuckles. Had he thrown away his best shot here?

But somewhere in the back of his brain, he knew he was right. He loved this woman beside him with all his heart, but he couldn’t spend the rest of his life marching behind Adam’s ghost. Always making sure he wasn’t reminding her…

‘Luke-’

‘It’s your decision, Wendy,’ he said grimly.

‘I just…’ And then her eyes widened and her voice changed to panic. ‘Luke!’

He’d seen it. The wombat was sitting right in the middle of the road as they rounded a blind curve. Sleek and black and fat, it sat immovable as a rock.

Luke hit the brakes with everything he had. The car veered sideways onto the verge, tyres screaming. The whole vehicle lifted as it hit the gravel, it tottered for one endless moment as though trying to decide whether to go over-and then it settled again blessedly onto four steady wheels.

Luke and Wendy were left staring straight ahead as the car came to a skidding halt, with Luke blessing brilliant braking systems and fabulous stability-and just a little bit of luck thrown in for good measure.

Whew! They hadn’t even hurt the wombat!

‘Are you okay?’ He looked across at Wendy and she was as white as a sheet. She’d closed her eyes, and her whole body was trembling. ‘Hey, it’s okay, love,’ he said gently. ‘We didn’t hit it.’

‘We could have.’ Her voice was hardly a whisper. ‘Luke, it could have been a child.’

‘We didn’t and it wasn’t.’ He gave her a worried glance, but if she was uninjured he had other urgent priorities. Another car might come around the curve at any minute and the stupid great creature hadn’t moved. He sighed and lifted his travel rug from the back seat. Wombats weighed a ton, but another glance at Wendy’s white face told him he was on his own.

Five minutes later, with one wombat safely carried a couple of hundred yards into the bush-over a creek-bed so it couldn’t easily get back again-and given a solid lecture about road safety, he returned to the car to find Wendy still staring straight ahead and her pale face white with strain.

It had brought back the accident from all those years ago, he thought. Hell! This was just what he didn’t need.

‘Wendy, we’re fine,’ he told her. ‘The wombat’s fine too, not that it deserves to be.’

‘It mightn’t have been.’

‘It is.’

‘It’s this car,’ she whispered, and that brought him up short.

He wheeled to face her, putting his hands out to grasp her shoulders and forcing her around so she had to meet his eyes. There was anger blazing in his face-hell, he’d had a shock, too, and to blame this car…

‘No, Wendy, it was not this car,’ he told her. ‘We were going at a sensible speed on a country road. Yes, sure if I’d had a four-wheel drive vehicle with a bullbar in front we might have gone straight over the top of the wombat without any damage, but we would have killed it. And if we’d hit him in a nice, sensible station wagon-a lump like that weighing half a ton-then we may very well have overturned and been hurt.’

‘We were going too fast.’

‘You mean-I was going too fast.’

‘Yes.’

‘I was going at far less than the speed limit,’ he said icily. ‘Will you get it into your head that I’m not Adam?’

But she was past logical thought. ‘If we’d hit him-if we’d gone over and been killed-Grace and Gabbie would be alone.’

‘Wendy-’

‘I should never have come,’ she said, and her hands went up to her face in horror. ‘Of all the crazy, irresponsible things to do… I’m all Gabbie has, Luke.’ She took a deep, searing breath, searching for steadiness, and with it came some measure of calm. But also determination. ‘Take me home, please,’ she said, and by the sound of her voice there was no argument possible. ‘I’ve been really, really stupid. I’ve been a fool for the second time, and it has to be the last.’

And that was that.

Wendy was immovable. Solid as a rock. Luke took her home; she disappeared to her end of the house without saying a word and he didn’t see her again until everyone was seated at the breakfast table. By then she had her face nicely under control again. She was briskly, kindly formal, and Luke had been put onto another planet. One where she didn’t exist.

‘Are you two going to tell us you had a nice time?’ Shanni asked doubtfully, looking from one face to the other. She’d had such hopes of last night, and then when they hadn’t come home…

‘We had a nice time,’ Wendy told her, trying to smile. ‘We went prawning, but we didn’t catch anything.’

And you didn’t even catch each other, Shanni thought sadly, exchanging a meaningful glance with Nick. Oh, dear. They’d given their best, but it wasn’t enough.

‘We’ll be off, then,’ she said doubtfully. ‘But call us again. Any time you want us to baby-sit…’

‘We don’t need you,’ Wendy said, concentrating fiercely on her toast. ‘What you did was lovely-thank you both very much-but Luke will be returning to the city soon, and I won’t be leaving the children.’

‘Will you really be returning to Sydney?’ Shanni asked, and watched Luke’s strained face.

He shook his head. ‘I haven’t decided but…’ he shrugged ‘…maybe it’s just as well if I don’t stay much longer.’

And maybe it was.

For the next two days Luke tried to keep things as they’d been but it was impossible. The strain between the two of them was almost unbearable-so much so that Gabbie asked, ‘Why does Wendy always look like she’s going to cry after you go out of the room?’

Luke couldn’t answer, but he knew. Of course he knew. It was because Wendy had fallen as deeply in love with him as he had with her-but how to say that to a child? And how to expect Gabbie to understand why Wendy wouldn’t let things ride to their inevitable, joyous conclusion when he hardly understood her reasons himself?

‘You want me as much as I want you,’ he said to her on the second evening after their night out, when the children were safely in bed. He’d come out to find her on the veranda and had discovered her staring out to sea with eyes that were bleak and despairing. ‘How can you deny it?’

She looked at him with eyes that defeated him with their misery. ‘I might want you but I know where that wanting has led in the past,’ she whispered. ‘Luke, please…don’t do this to me. It’s tearing me in two.’

‘And it’s not tearing me?’

‘You’ll get over it,’ she said drearily. ‘Don’t tell me there won’t be other women.’ She wheeled to face him. ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, just leave it. Can’t you see I don’t want a relationship? I was utterly mad to let myself imagine I could love you. To let you make love to me. One night’s madness…’

‘No,’ he said softly. ‘One night’s honesty and one night’s joy. One night’s beginning of the rest of our lives. I don’t do casual sex, Wendy. I made love to the woman I want to marry-with the woman I wish to spend the rest of my life with-and I’m damned sure under that bleak exterior that that’s what you want, too.’

‘I don’t want it, Luke,’ she said again. ‘And as for letting down my defences… It’s not going to happen again. No matter how long you stay here. You’re my employer. You have the cutest baby in the world. I’m desperate to stay here and stay looking after her, but I’ve told you before that if you keep this pressure on then I’ll have to go. Gabbie and I will move on.’

She would too. He looked at her despairingly but there was nothing in her face but resolution and misery. He was making her unhappy, he thought suddenly. Hell, he loved her and he was making her unhappy!

‘You really want me to go?’ he asked, and watched the flare of hope behind her eyes.

‘This is your home. You own it. I can’t force you to leave.’

‘But you want me to?’

‘Luke, I can’t take this pressure,’ she said honestly, and she spread her hands in appeal.

‘Because you love me?’