Their Baby Bargain. Marion Lennox

Mud. Finger paints…’

      ‘I don’t want to know!’

      Silence. He could feel her disapproval from the other side of the car—as if she thought this was some huge piece of ostentation.

      ‘You like your car, then?’ she said cautiously, and he managed a smile. Okay, maybe it would wash off.

      ‘Wouldn’t you? She’s gorgeous. If you knew what she cost me, first and last—’

      ‘I could make a very good guess what she cost you,’ Wendy said tartly. ‘Aston Martin Vantage Volante. Whew! She’s worth a fortune.’

      ‘You don’t know—’

      ‘I’ll bet I do know. To within ten thousand dollars or so, anyway, and, with a car like this, what’s ten thousand dollars?’ She grimaced. ‘What else could I guess about this car?’ She thought it through, and Adam’s tones of reverence were still with her. ‘I’d guess it has an all-alloy, quad cam, forty-eight valve, twelve cylinder engine? Zero to sixty miles per hour in approximately five seconds. Top speed of about a hundred and sixty miles an hour. Yes, she’s some plaything, Mr Grey.’

      ‘How the heck…?’

      ‘And if you knew what I could do with a quarter of the money this car cost you—’

      ‘Hey, I’m your employer,’ he interrupted. ‘You’re not here to give me moral lectures!’

      ‘Let me out, then,’ she said serenely. ‘Moralistic lectures come with the package.’

      For a moment she almost thought he would. His foot eased from the accelerator, and then Grace gurgled from her carry-cot in the back seat and the impossibility of dumping this woman anywhere hit home.

      ‘Where did you learn about cars?’ he asked grudgingly, and she wrinkled her nose. In truth it was sort of nice to have the warm sea air blowing through her hair and a gorgeous leather seat enfolding her, but she wouldn’t admit it for the world.

      ‘My ex-husband was a car fanatic.’

      ‘Oh.’ He looked sideways at her. ‘You’re divorced?’

      ‘He’s dead.’

      There was something about the way she said it that precluded any more questions. Back off, her tone said, and he had the sense to do just that.

      ‘Right.’

      ‘You’re not married?’

      ‘No.’ He grinned and looked sideways at her. ‘I decided early to love cars instead. They’re cheaper.’

      ‘Oh, sure.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Mr Grey, do you have any idea what you’re letting yourself in for? In one day, you’ve assumed responsibility for one baby, you’ve hired a nanny, you’ve agreed to accommodate another child…’

      ‘It’s no great shakes,’ he said. ‘I can afford it. Just as long as none of you cause me any bother.’

      ‘And if we do?’

      ‘Then I’m out of here.’ His grin deepened. ‘I will be anyway. Emotional attachment is not my style. I’ll get the legalities all drawn up and then I’ll leave.’

      ‘Just as long as the house is liveable.’

      ‘It will be.’

      It wasn’t.

      The house hadn’t been entered for twenty years. It was like turning back a time machine, Wendy thought wonderingly. With Gabbie still pressed by her side she walked from room to room. Luke walked beside her carrying Grace, and he didn’t speak either.

      The house was ghostlike. Windows had been broken and boarded up. Furniture was covered with dustsheets, and cobwebs hung in vast nets draped from the ceiling. Underneath it all, the house was big and gracious and old, and the furniture was of quality, but the curtains had disappeared into moth-eaten shreds, the carpets were threadbare and the dust lay in blankets over everything. Wendy’s nose wanted to sneeze the minute Luke opened the door.

      They walked from room to room in stunned silence. It was a piece of history that time had forgotten, and its ambience almost overwhelmed her. How much more must it stun Luke, Wendy thought, when the house was full of memories—of how it had been when he’d been a boy?

      There were photographs everywhere, and most of them were of Luke. There were frames of Luke as a baby, looking just like Grace. A cobwebbed portrait hung on the wall—it surely must be Luke as a chubby toddler, grinning from his mother’s knee. The woman who held him, even then, showed weariness, defeat and traces of illness on her face, and Wendy found herself wondering how she’d died.

      There were more. She lifted a frame from a carved side table and blew away the dust, and there was Luke at about five years old. He was standing between an elderly couple and they were holding his hands with pride. Even covered with dust, the love shone through.

      No wonder Luke had kept this place, Wendy thought. No wonder he’d instinctively brought Grace here. He might have been packed off to boarding school, but here, even dust-coated and tattered, this place had been his home.

      And maybe it still was. She glanced sideways and caught the look that flashed across his face—and it was a look of raw pain.

      ‘Apart from the dustsheets and window boarding, it’s hardly been touched since they took my grandmother to hospital,’ Luke said at last. He was speaking in a hushed whisper—it was that sort of place.

      ‘It must have been a beautiful home.’

      ‘As you said, though,’ he said sadly, ‘it’s uninhabitable now.’

      ‘Not quite.’ Wendy braced her shoulders and looked down at Gabbie. ‘We like a challenge, don’t we, Gabbie?’

      ‘Is this where we’re going to live?’ Gabbie asked in a quavering voice and Wendy picked her up and hugged her close.

      ‘Yes. Absolutely. And it’s going to be the best home that girls like us could ever ask for. Underneath all this dust it’s beeyootiful!’

      ‘We need to stay at a hotel tonight,’ Luke said doubtfully. ‘Maybe if we put in a team of cleaners and carpenters…’ He could see his trip to America being postponed indefinitely. Damn, this had seemed such a good idea. But now…

      Wendy was shaking her head. ‘No. This is fine—better than I thought it might be. We don’t need to move any more. Gabbie spends her life moving, don’t you, Gabbie? If this is home, then it’s home from now on.’

      She walked over to the window—they were standing in what must be the formal living room—grabbed a board from the window and pulled. The board broke free, a rush of warm salt air flowed into the musty room and outside she could see…

      ‘The sea!’ Wendy said exultantly. ‘Look, Gabbie, the sea!’ Beyond the wide, gracious veranda, across a paddock where Hereford cattle gazed in placid contentment under the shady gums, lay the sea. From here it looked as if there was a sandy beach, maybe even safe for swimming. It looked—wonderful!

      ‘The sea, the sea, the sea!’ Wendy lifted Gabbie and swung her round and round, delight shining from her eyes. She wasn’t sure how this had happened, but this was a dream! ‘We’re going to love living by the sea, Gabbie, love. Any time your mum doesn’t want you, then you’ll live here with me. By the sea. In this house which is going to be the most wonderful place on God’s earth.’

      Then she set Gabbie firmly down, fixed her with a grin, hauled up her sleeves and turned to eye Luke with a speculative gleam.

      ‘All it needs is work.’

      ‘Hey, I’m a futures broker,’ Luke said in an alarmed voice, seeing the thoughts running riot behind the gleam. ‘I’m not a cleaner.’

      ‘And I’m a social worker, and Gabbie is a five-year-old ward of the