Their Baby Bargain

‘I…can’t.’

‘And yet you do.’ He didn’t touch her. He didn’t move. They were standing four feet apart and he knew if he took one step nearer then she’d turn and leave.

‘I told you,’ she said steadily. ‘I can’t.’

‘Hell!’

‘It is,’ she said bleakly. ‘A very special sort of hell.’

‘Because you can’t trust again.’

‘I’m all Gabbie has,’ she said simply.

‘You don’t think by loving me that Gabbie could have both of us? Grace could have both of us? That the responsibility and the love could be shared? You wouldn’t be all Gabbie has. She’d be a part of a family.’

‘Luke-don’t.’

He closed his eyes. How to make her trust? How?

He couldn’t. Selling his car, changing his clothes-they were just the superficial things. This was a deeper fear, and hoping that she’d change was like hoping for the moon. So face it, he told himself harshly. To drag this out was killing both of them.

‘Okay, Wendy,’ he said, and his voice was flat with defeat. ‘You’ve got your way. I’ll leave in the morning.’

‘Oh, Luke…’

‘It’s what you want, isn’t it?’

There was only one answer to that. There had to be. She tilted her chin and forced herself to meet his eyes. ‘Yes.’

‘Then, that’s that, then,’ he told her. ‘That’s that. Until you can find the courage to trust your heart…’

‘My heart leads me to nothing but trouble.’

‘That’s funny…’ he said, but there was nothing funny in the way he said it ‘…because my heart’s leading me to nothing but joy. Until it comes face to face with your damned barriers, with your mistrust, and it’s learning for the first time just how hurtful that can be. I’ll leave, Wendy. And I hope you can be happy with that decision, because I sure as hell can’t.’

‘We must be,’ Wendy managed.

‘Give me one good reason.’ He sighed and shrugged his shoulders, anger building. ‘You can’t and neither can I. This is just plain stupid, but it’s up to you to get over it.’

CHAPTER TEN

‘YOU’VE sent him away!’

‘He left. I didn’t send him. If he’d wanted to stay then he could have. It’s his house after all.’

‘But it was you who wanted him to go.’ Shanni blazed indignation. ‘You are out of your cotton-picking mind! Of all the stupid, crazy… Wendy Maher, that man is seriously in love with you.’

‘Yes.’

The flat reply was enough to make Shanni blink. ‘You mean you know?’ Shanni was almost speechless. ‘Wendy, what is wrong with you? He’s gorgeous, he’s rich, he’s kind. He has the most beautiful baby sister. Gabbie’s half in love with him already, he owns this place, and he loves you…’

‘I don’t trust him.’

That set Shanni back. She’d driven out the day after Luke had left to find her friend staring sightlessly at Gabbie playing on the beach while Grace napped on a rug beside her. She’d never seen this look on her friend’s face, Shanni thought, and she couldn’t understand it. She looked desolate.

‘So what’s he done to make you mistrust him?’

‘I don’t know.’ Wendy closed her eyes and dug her fingers into her palms. ‘Nothing. Just been Luke.’

‘And that’s something to mistrust?’

‘He still drives that car.’

‘Oh, great. The man has an expensive car.’

‘It’s not entirely that.’ Wendy sighed helplessly. ‘How to make you see? It’s not just the car. Or the fact that he’s wealthy. It’s…it’s how he makes me feel. Like I’m out of control.’

‘Because you’re in love with him.’

‘Yes. No! I don’t know.’

‘You are,’ Shanni said, satisfied. ‘And you don’t like being not in control. You don’t like placing your trust-your heart-in someone else’s hands.’

‘I have no right to risk the children…’

‘Now, by saying that then you’re just being silly,’ Shanni said flatly. ‘You are my very dearest friend and I hate to say this but in sending Luke away you are acting like you’re a sandwich short of a picnic.’

Wendy looked at her, her eyes troubled. ‘That’s what Luke thinks.’

‘So he knows you’re in love with him?’

Wendy thought back to their night of lovemaking at the beach and despite herself her mouth twitched into the beginnings of a smile. ‘He might have guessed.’

‘I knew our baby-sitting wasn’t all in vain.’ Shanni sat back and hugged her knees. ‘How very satisfactory. So we’ve established that Luke loves Wendy and Wendy loves Luke. Now all we have to do is bang two thick heads together and make them see sense.’

‘Shanni, I am not remarrying.’ Grace stirred on her rug, and Wendy stooped to lift her into her arms and hug her. It was almost a defensive action. See me, her gesture said, I have my children. What else could I want? ‘I’ve been down that road before,’ she said drearily into Grace’s soft curls. ‘I am not travelling it again.’

‘He’s asked you to marry him?’ Shanni’s voice was an excited squeak. ‘He’s that in love?’

‘I told you-’

‘You’ve told me nothing that makes sense.’ Shanni stood up and glared. ‘You’ve been down some dangerous and eventually disastrous road with Adam, but this is Luke, Wendy. He’s a darling. Give the man some credit for being different.’

‘Shanni, leave it.’

‘You’ll be making him desperately unhappy. Does he deserve that?’

‘He’ll get over it.’

‘Will he?’ Shanni’s eyes narrowed. ‘If he’s as much in love as I think he is, he may never get over it.’

He hadn’t got over it. Not then, and not two months later.

Sure, he tried to fit back into his old life but it wasn’t what it was. Mostly because every waking minute his thoughts would flit to what would be happening at the farm. What would be happening with Wendy.

He rang once a week, from wherever he was in the world which was as far away as he could make it. He figured it was easier being in New York than Sydney-then he knew he couldn’t just get in the car and drive and be with them in hours. The temptation would be irresistible. So New York-and London and Paris-became desirable places to be and he threw himself into his work harder than he’d ever done in his life before.

Half a world away, Wendy and the kids seemed as if they were doing the same.

His weekly phone calls told him the facts, told in a formal employee to employer tone from Wendy. The house was being totally repainted inside and out. Gabbie had started school and was loving it. Grace had cut her first tooth…

The facts were recounted in a much more bouncy, excited way by Gabbie when Wendy handed the phone over-with a sigh of relief that made Luke feel ill. He had to haul himself together to respond to Gabbie.

She took some responding to, and more and more his heart went out to her. The cow in the next paddock had had a calf and Gabbie had watched. Bruce could sit for a whole count to ten, and Grace had sucked Bruce’s tail and Bruce had liked it so much he’d kept sitting beside her and wagging his tail in her face so she’d do it some more…