Their Baby Bargain

‘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 state. But, as of now, we’re all of us cleaners. Needs must, Mr Grey. Gabbie, let’s choose you a bedroom first, and we’ll clean that out from stem to stern. Because Gabbie’s bedroom is the most important room in this house.’

‘Hey!’

‘Yes?’ Wendy raised her eyebrows politely at Luke. ‘You don’t agree?’

‘We can hire cleaners.’

‘Not tonight we can’t. We’re the cleaners. If you want us to make this a home, then you need to put some effort into it. Like now!’

‘I’m not dressed for it.’ He stared down at his leather jacket and immaculate trousers and Wendy grinned.

‘And you have lesser clothes at home? Go on, Luke Grey. Surprise me. Tell me you have old, paint-stained overalls in your garage—from all that odd jobbing you do at weekends.’

He had the grace to give a half-hearted smile. ‘Well, maybe not.’

‘So these clothes maybe aren’t your best clothes?’

He thought of his designer suits. ‘Hell, no.’

‘See, it could have been worse,’ she said cheerfully, arranging Grace’s carry-cot carefully in a dust-sheeted armchair and covering it with a shawl. ‘There you go. Your baby’s safe and sleeping, and it’s time for the rest of us to work. Gabbie’s room first.’

‘I thought…’ he was so stunned he could hardly get his voice to work ‘…the kitchen, maybe.’

‘We have children, Luke Grey,’ she said softly. ‘Get your priorities right. We need a fire—outside I think, because it’s my bet the chimney’s blocked and we need hot water. It’ll take a brave person to tackle that fire stove, and maybe I’m not the person to do it. At least not tonight. And if I’m not brave enough, I’m darned sure that you’re not. Bailing out to a hotel! Goodness, what a wimp! Right, Luke. Right, Gabbie. Let’s get this house habitable.’

If anyone had told Luke when he’d woken that morning that instead of flying to New York he’d spend the afternoon and evening on his knees with a scrubbing brush and a nose full of dust and cobwebs, he’d have told them they were dreaming.

But that’s just what was happening. Wendy didn’t let him off the hook for a minute. While Grace snoozed, she set them to work like there was no tomorrow and, with the wimp label ringing in his ears, he gritted his teeth and did it.

The room Gabbie chose was miniscule—a tiny boxroom added on to the end of the house. Its windows looked out over the ocean almost all the way to Hawaii, but that wasn’t why she’d chosen it.

‘You tell me where you’re sleeping,’ she’d demanded of Wendy, and Wendy had nodded and had carefully chosen the room with an adjoining door. To the boxroom…

‘We’ll be able to sleep with our doors open and talk,’ Gabbie had whispered and Luke had wondered not for the first time what was behind this little girl’s terror.

Not that he’d had time for much wondering. ‘We’re not going to bed until we have Gabbie’s room perfect,’ Wendy decreed, and while he scrubbed she was marching outside with linen and blankets and rugs and curtains to hang over the ancient clothes line. She armed Gabbie with a broom, she used a bigger one herself, and together they thumped them free of generations of dust.

They aired them in the sea breeze, they inspected Luke’s handiwork and then Wendy graciously approved the return of her cleaned soft furnishings. She had Gabbie marching in and out with pillows on her head—and giggling. She had Luke scrubbing as if his life depended on it. Even Grace slept as if she’d been ordered to.

This wasn’t a boss-employee kind of relationship, Luke thought grimly as he scrubbed. Or if it was, he knew who was the boss. And it wasn’t him!

Finally, however, Wendy called a halt.

‘Okay. We have one bedroom and one living room sorted. Kind of. Now, it’s dinnertime.’

‘Dinner…’ Luke sat back on his heels—he’d been scrubbing skirting-boards and wiping out a spider’s nest—and regarded his handiwork with a kind of detached pride. Gabbie’s bedroom did look good. They’d unboarded the two unbroken windows—it’d look a whole heap better when they’d had a glazier in—but you could see the sea, and in every other way it looked just as it had twenty years back.

He’d slept in here sometimes, he remembered. His official bedroom had been one of the bigger front ones, but the room adjoining this had been his mother’s and sometimes he’d crept in here to sleep when he’d been ill, or when his mother had been ill and he’d worried, or in the days before he’d had to leave again for boarding school…

He’d chosen this room because he loved it, and he’d lain here at night while he and his mother had talked until he’d slept. This was the best…

Oh, for heaven’s sake! He shook his train of thought away with anger. How long since he’d been sentimental like this?

But the bed was made up again with a patchwork quilt he remembered his mother and grandmother making, and there was a painting on the faded yellow wall that he remembered his grandfather buying…

Grandpa would like Gabbie sleeping under that painting, Luke decided, and then caught Wendy looking at him with a strange expression on her face. It was as if she could see what he was thinking.

She didn’t let on. Instead she teased him with a smile. ‘Resting on your laurels, Mr Grey?’

‘I don’t see why I shouldn’t,’ he retorted, stung. ‘I certainly deserve to.’ He held up his hands. ‘Look. Blisters! I have housemaid’s hands, lady. And—’

‘And?’

‘I’m hungry.’

He was, too, he realised. Starving. But there was no food in the house.

‘That’s all fixed.’ Her smile intensified, and he gazed up at her in astonishment. She really was the most extraordinary woman! ‘I’ve taken the liberty—’

‘Another liberty!’ He groaned, struggled to his feet and held up his hands in mock horror. Hell, he had housemaid’s knees, too. ‘Woman, if you take one more liberty—’

‘The taxi cab who brought our luggage is coming back at seven-thirty,’ she told him, unperturbed. She glanced at her watch. ‘That’s in ten minutes. He’s bringing a heap of groceries—I gave him a list—including baby food, nappies—and pizza!’

‘Pizza!’ Not for nothing was Luke a giant on Wall Street. He focused on the important thing here straight away. ‘Pizza’s arriving here in ten minutes?’

‘Wash first, then we eat,’ she told him. ‘I even found soap. It looks handmade and it’s gorgeous. There’s a pile in the bathroom cupboard. And I’ve dusted off some towels. Dinner’s outside by the fire in ten minutes, Mr Grey. Get yourself washed and you’re welcome to join us.’

How could he resist an invitation like that?

Luke headed for the bathroom, which, even though the years had made their ravages here as well, still smelt strangely of his mother and his grandmother. He washed under the cold water—tomorrow he’d have to see what was happening with the hot water service—and then he stood for a long time staring in the dusty mirror at his face.

The last time he’d looked in this mirror he’d been so young. He’d come home from boarding school for the weekend and his grandmother had had a heart attack.

‘Go wash up, boy,’ a neighbour had told him, taking rough sympathy on his tear-streaked self. The ambulance had left, and the boy couldn’t have stayed here alone. ‘Get yourself ready and we’ll take you back to school.’

And that was that. He’d stared for a long time into this mirror, knowing he’d been irretrievably changed: he was now alone. Then he’d walked out of the house, and he’d known in his gut that he wouldn’t be back. That had been the end of his family. First his grandfather, then his mother, and finally Gran…

Loving people hurt. Getting attached hurt.

Coming back here hurt like hell!

‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, get out there and eat your pizza,’ he told his older, wiser face. ‘I don’t know why on earth you’re bothering with this kid—with a baby!—but if you must, you must. Just organise her a life and then get out. Take your car and ride off into the sunset. 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?’

‘Being a parent by proxy.’

‘You’d know?’

‘I know.’ She sighed and hugged Gabbie closer. Of course she knew. Some of the warmth went out of the evening and she hauled herself back to practicalities. And responsibility. Of course. That was her role in life. Picking up responsibility where other people left off… ‘Ready for bed, love?’ she asked the little girl.

‘In my new bed with the pretty quilt?’ Gabbie asked.

‘That’s the one.’

‘And you’ll stay out here?’

‘Yes. Luke and Grace and I will be just under your window. We’ll stay out here for a while because it’s so dusty in the house. But I’ll sit on your bed with you until you go to sleep. Okay?’

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