Their Baby Bargain. Marion Lennox

Fast.’

      Because any other way would lead to…what? Emotional attachment? Pain he’d sworn never to experience again.

      No. He couldn’t face that.

      And then he heard a horn sound at the gate, and a cow lowing in the distance as it was forced to move aside for the taxi. Here, then, was dinner. And nappies. And domesticity.

      ‘It’s just for a week,’ he told himself harshly. ‘And then you leave!’

      CHAPTER THREE

      DINNER was a very, very different affair to the way Luke usually enjoyed it. Dinner, for him, was usually a social event. Sure, he was accustomed to eating out, but his eating out included expensive restaurants and cordon bleu food and beautiful women…

      Here there was no expensive decor, the food was certainly not cordon bleu and the women… There were three. Grace and Gabbie and Wendy. Three women, and each was so far from his usual company it almost made Luke smile.

      ‘What?’ said Wendy, as she saw him take his mouthful of pizza and stare down at it as if it was food landed from Mars. ‘Don’t you like it?’

      He looked at it with doubt. Did he? Bay Beach Pizza was hardly gourmet fare. ‘It’s not even wood-fired,’ he offered.

      ‘Oh, sadness! Welcome to the real world.’ Wendy grinned. ‘Wood-fired pizza… Good grief! Wave it over the fire, and give it some smoke if you must. Me, I’m just going to eat mine!’

      She did, and she enjoyed every mouthful. Well, why not? They were eating their pizza sitting on the edge of the veranda, with the camp fire they’d lit blazing brightly between them and the sea. It was a glorious night. The sun was setting behind the house, the breeze was warm and the sound of the surf was a series of hushed murmurs as it flowed in and out to the shore. The smell—of fragrant eucalyptus, of old wood burning slowly to embers, and of sea and salt and pizza—was good enough to bottle.

      It was just great, Wendy thought. She sat back and watched as Gabbie seriously engaged in pizza-eating—everything was a serious business for Gabbie—and Luke fed his baby sister the bottle Wendy had prepared for him, and down in the paddocks the cows looked up in wonder.

      ‘The cows think we’re crazy,’ she told Gabbie. ‘Fancy eating pizza when we have all this great grass!’

      Gabbie looked at her gravely—and then her small face crinkled into a smile. She gave a tentative chuckle. ‘That’s silly.’

      ‘It is, isn’t it?’ She swept the little girl up into her arms and hugged, pizza and all. If she was any happier she’d burst. This could work! If Gabbie’s mother kept away…

      She looked over to Luke and found him watching her strangely. He was like the cows, she thought—he couldn’t understand where she was coming from.

      ‘Tell me about you,’ he asked her softly. ‘What made you become a Home mother? Why are you here?’

      That was easy. ‘I’m here because this is the best place in the world. Isn’t it, Gabbie?’

      ‘No, but—’

      ‘But what?’ She raised her eyebrows and it made him pause.

      What indeed? She was an employee, he told himself. Just an employee. He shouldn’t delve any deeper than he needed. But he hadn’t had an employee like this before, and she had him fascinated.

      ‘Tell me what your qualifications are, for a start.’

      ‘You’ll sack me if I don’t make the grade?’

      He sighed and shifted Grace to the other knee—and then looked down in dismay at the knee she’d been shifted from. It was wet! Heck, how many nappy changes did babies need?

      ‘I’m not sacking you,’ he told her, but he was now thoroughly distracted. ‘Holy cow! Look at this. How can she be wet already? You realise I only have one pair of trousers? You might have luggage for a lifetime, but for me this was only meant to be a day trip.’

      ‘More fool you,’ she said serenely. ‘Never take a baby anywhere without changes of clothes for everyone. It’s the first rule of parenting, Mr Grey.’

      ‘Then, it’s lucky I don’t need to learn any more,’ he said tartly, and then caught himself as Grace looked up at him. His half-sister’s tiny eyes widened—and it was as if she’d understood what he’d said and was gazing at him with reproach.

      Hell! This wasn’t just a baby, he thought suddenly. This was a person! She was a little girl who’d grow up and want to know her family. Who’d need to be told…

      His chain of thought was suddenly overwhelming and, Wendy, looking across at him, saw panic flare in his eyes. And understood.

      ‘Luke, let’s take one day at a time,’ she said softly. ‘You were worrying about wet trousers. I doubt we need to go any deeper than that at the moment.’

      ‘Until tomorrow…’

      ‘Until tomorrow,’ she agreed and smiled. ‘By tomorrow those wet trousers might start being on the nose and you’ll definitely have to move on. But for now—as social workers, we tell our clients when they’re having some overwhelming crisis to just focus on the next few minutes. Then the next few hours. The days will take care of themselves. Survival first, Luke, and everything else will follow.’

      ‘So…’ panic faded in the face of her calmness ‘…you’re advising me to have another piece of pizza?’

      ‘I guess I am.’ She smiled her enchanting smile that, for some reason, made his insides do strange things. Sitting on this veranda where he’d spent such great times as a kid, looking out over the sea, holding a baby in his arms and having this woman sitting beside him…

      This was about as far from his international jet-setting life as it was possible to be. He’d taken his shoes off—they were Gucci, after all, and a man didn’t scrub floors in Gucci footwear—and his bare feet were brushing the grass as he sat on the edge of the veranda. His laptop computer was locked in the car boot and his phone was silent.

      There were only the emerging stars and the silence of this place he’d loved. How long since he’d experienced a night like this?

      How long until he would again?

      He’d leave as soon as he had this mess sorted out, he decided, but then… The thought came out of nowhere, like a gift. When he came back he could visit! Whenever he was in Australia he could drive down to the country and see his half-sister—and this woman and her Gabbie. They’d be waiting for him, like a family.

      The prospect gave him a warm glow right in the middle of his solar plexus and he couldn’t help a tiny, smug smile creeping across his face.

      Brilliant. This was brilliant!

      ‘How often do you think you’ll come?’ Wendy asked, and he snapped back into the present with a start. She was eyeing him curiously, and by the look on her face she knew exactly what he was thinking.

      ‘I…’

      ‘Grace will need someone to attach to,’ Wendy said softly. ‘If her mother really doesn’t want her…then, like it or not, you’ll be it.’

      ‘I guess I don’t mind.’ He thought it through, still feeling self-satisfied with his arrangements. What problem would one baby be? Money was no hassle and he’d have his secretary buy her gifts. He’d send them to her often…

      But then the thought came back to him of his father, and how much his father’s treatment of him had hurt. His father, paying expensive school fees, sending him over-the-top gifts, with cards not written in his handwriting.

      Never wanting to see him…

      ‘It doesn’t work,’ Wendy said softly. ‘You know it doesn’t.’

      ‘What?’