Their Baby Bargain

CHAPTER FOUR

‘THE priorities, as I see it, are these.’

Luke blinked. That was the sort of line he was accustomed to tossing around at board meetings and the like. He wasn’t accustomed to having it tossed at him, especially by a woman who looked as if she’d come off a communal hippie farm, and who had her arms full of children.

They’d had their breakfast-sort of. On inspection, the crockery cupboard in the kitchen had been taken over by mice and Wendy declared she wasn’t touching anything without disinfecting first. Therefore they’d given cereal a miss and eaten bread toasted by holding it on a stick over the fire and buttered in their hands, and they’d drunk milk straight from the cartons the taxi driver had brought the night before. Curiously, it was delicious.

‘It’s like a breakfast picnic,’ Gabbie had declared gamely, from her safe position right behind Wendy’s skirts, and Luke had been inclined to agree with her.

‘First priority, hot water?’ he suggested, trying to regain the initiative, but Wendy nodded and the initiative was still with her.

‘I checked it last night. The hot water runs through the fire stove so that’s your first job. The chimney needs cleaning.’ She glanced at her watch. ‘As soon as it’s decent you can ring an electrician and a glazier and the telephone company. That will get our urgent services seen to. If you pay enough we’ll get immediate help but a chimneysweep will take weeks. There’s no one local. Therefore…’ she gave him a sympathetic smile ‘…it’s you.’

Luke groaned. ‘No.’

‘There should be nothing to it.’ She chuckled. ‘We can do it like the bad old days if you like-I’ll pretend I’m the worst kind of chimneysweep, we poke you up and then we light a fire beneath you. That way we get a really clean chimney fast.’

‘Or me roasted for lunch. Thanks very much.’ He groaned again. ‘Am I to spend the week scrubbing?’ He looked down at his already filthy clothes. ‘I need to get myself some gear.’

‘You do at that,’ she agreed. Her eyes grew thoughtful, and he could see she was tossing over options. ‘I think, after you organise me some electricity, some chopped wood and a clean chimney, I might give you leave of absence for a bit.’

‘Gee, thanks.’

She wasn’t finished yet. ‘You need to do something urgently about Grace,’ she added, and he frowned.

‘Like what?’

‘Like getting yourself some legal protection,’ she told him. ‘I’ve been thinking. The way things are, if Grace’s mother turned up she could accuse you of all sorts of things-kidnapping included-and it’s your word against hers.’

He was startled. ‘She wouldn’t do that. She dumped her on me.’

‘People do all sorts of strange things,’ Wendy said softly, hugging Gabbie close. She had Grace in her other arm, and with her two littlies cradled against her she looked like a protective mother hen.

She was used to fighting for kids, Luke thought suddenly-and he also thought there was no one he’d rather have on his side. She was some woman!

Somehow he dragged his thoughts back to practicalities. To Grace’s mother…

‘Why on earth would she accuse me of kidnapping Grace?’

‘If Lindy is angry at how your father treated her, there’s nothing to say she won’t take that anger out on you.’

‘She wouldn’t-’

‘Maybe she wouldn’t,’ Wendy said soothingly. ‘But you need to cover yourself. Find her, get yourself a lawyer and have him witness her agreement that you’re taking care of her child. The sooner you do it, the better.’

He thought that over, the memory of Wendy’s description of Sonia ringing in his ears. Hell…

‘Maybe I’d best go straight away.’

‘No.’

‘No?’

‘Not quite. You have a chimney to clean,’ she told him. ‘And there’s something else.’

‘Yes?’

‘I’ve told you,’ she went on calmly, as though it was a tiny detail she was just adding, ‘I have no protection either. If you leave, then I have no legal right to care for Grace.’

‘I’ll cover you,’ he said quickly. ‘If there’s any problem then I’ll protect you. And I should be back in a couple of days.’

‘That’s the trouble,’ she told him, her eyes cool and un-challenging. ‘People don’t come back. If there’s one thing I’ve learned in this job, it’s that.’

His brows snapped together in anger. ‘You don’t trust me?’

She was unperturbed by his anger. ‘I trust no one when a child’s future is at stake,’ she told him. ‘On their behalf, I can’t afford to.’

‘But-’

‘But don’t worry.’ She smiled again and there was now a hint of mischief lurking deep in her eyes. ‘I’ve been figuring out surety and I know what you can leave behind so I know you’ll come back.’

‘What?’ But somehow he suspected what was coming before she said it. His heart sank as her smile deepened. Oh, no!

And here it was, right on cue. ‘Your car,’ she said sweetly.

Okay, he’d suspected it, but it didn’t mean he was ready and waiting. He blenched as Gabbie looked at him with eyes that didn’t trust him an inch and Wendy watched him with eyes that asked just how serious he was about taking care of his baby sister.

‘My car,’ he said finally, knowing he was beaten before he even started.

‘That’s right.’ She smiled again. ‘As I said, I’ve been thinking things over. I can’t stay here without transport. What if one of the children was to become ill, or there was an accident? Plus there’s the shopping and I can’t use taxis all the time. You must see I need to be able to go back and forth to Bay Beach. I know that as a concerned employer you’ll be providing me with a car before you leave for good.’

‘But-’

‘But meanwhile we can kill two birds with one stone,’ she interrupted blithely. ‘You can phone a hire firm from Bay Beach and have them rent you wheels of some kind. Then you can leave your Noddy car here for us.’

‘My Noddy car!’

‘Your Noddy car.’ She chuckled at the look on his face. ‘We like it, don’t we, Gabbie? We’d prefer it in canary yellow, but we’re prepared to overlook that one small blemish. This way we’ll have something to do the grocery shopping in.’

‘You’ll use my car to do the supermarket shopping?’ He was practically gibbering.

‘And then we know you’ll come back,’ she ended serenely. ‘That is-if you still want Gabbie and me to look after your baby?’

She raised her eyebrows and waited. He glared at her and she smiled straight back.

‘What sort of a bargain is this?’ His voice was practically rising through the roof. ‘My car…’

‘It’s a baby bargain,’ she told him, and her smile slipped a little. ‘And you don’t need to panic. We’ll take the very best care of your precious car, and you know we’ll take the very best care of your precious baby, too. That’s what this is all about, isn’t it?’ She tilted her head and watched his face. ‘A baby. Not a car?’

‘I don’t have a choice,’ he said bitterly.

‘I’m afraid you don’t.’ Surprisingly her voice held a trace of sympathy, and her hand came out to touch his. It was as if she really did understand what his car meant to him. Her touch was strong and warm and somehow…somehow it made a difference. ‘You don’t have a choice,’ she agreed. ‘But that’s life. It’s full of really, really tough breaks-like having to use a hire car for a couple of days. Now, Mr Grey…’ laughter returned ‘…about that chimney…’

What on earth was he getting into? Luke reluctantly tackled the fire stove but his mind was only about ten per cent on the job. The rest was figuring out how much his life had changed in twenty-four hours, and why he’d let himself be talked into leaving his precious Aston Martin with a woman and two children…

When he went overseas he left his car in a special garage, carefully enfolded in a climate-controlled autobag. Here, the garage behind the house was tumbling down and unfit for use. There was no safe place here to leave it. His pride and joy would have to stay parked outside in the sea air-and there were crows and parrots and even seagulls…

‘There must be a bird’s nest blocking the chimney.’ Wendy’s voice came from behind him and he jumped a foot. He hit his head on the mantelpiece and swore.

‘Hey, hush.’ Wendy clapped her hands over Gabbie’s ears-the little girl was never more than two inches away from her-and she fixed Luke with a school-marm look. She appeared not to even notice that he was rubbing his head in pain! ‘Gabbie doesn’t know words like that-do you, Gabbie?’

Gabbie chuckled and sank back against Wendy’s skirt. When she smiled, her elfin face lit up like a sunbeam and Luke found his heart twisting. Just a little, mind, not too much-not so much as you’d write home about-at the treatment that had been meted out to this child.

Good grief! he thought, as he stared at the pair of them. He wasn’t a soft touch. He didn’t like children! So what was happening here? The emotion he was feeling was building all the time, and he had to stay impartial. He was simply setting up a home for his little sister because it was expected of him, he told himself-and then he was getting out of here.

But Wendy was still concentrating on chimneys. ‘If you stick your nose up the chimney you can’t see daylight,’ Wendy said wisely. ‘I tried it last night. It took me ages to open the damper but when I did it was still black. There must be a bird’s nest blocking the top.’

‘I don’t wish to stick my nose up the chimney,’ Luke snapped, thrown totally off balance. ‘You have your belongings here, lady. I don’t even have a change of clothes.’

‘You’ll be able to buy something in Bay Beach on the way back to Sydney,’ she said kindly. ‘After all, what’s another suit of clothes to a wealthy young futures broker like you?’

‘Oh, right.’ He glared. ‘So I just meander into Bay Beach Menswear, wearing soot up to my armpits!’

‘It was just a suggestion,’ she said hastily. ‘If you’re going to be crabby-’

‘I am not crabby.’

‘Let’s go, Gabbie.’ Wendy pulled Gabbie backwards out the door, her eyes still brimming with laughter. ‘We’ll leave Uncle Luke to his chimney sweeping-without nose-poking. Though how he’s going to do it and stay clean…’

‘So what are you doing?’ he yelled after her, exasperated.

‘Women’s work,’ she yelled back cheerfully. ‘Gabbie and I are going to address the issue of a bag of soiled nappies.’ He heard the laughter in her voice. ‘Want to swap jobs, Mr Grey?’

‘No, thank you,’ he said hastily-and stuck his nose up the chimney, soot and all.

Handyman was hardly a description that fitted Luke well. By the time he’d been old enough to learn any useful skills in that direction, he’d been sent to boarding school. Since then there’d always been a janitor or a maintenance man or a gardener to take care of any crisis.

There wasn’t one on call now, and he needed one badly.

Wendy was right. The view, through the two-inch-wide crack available after wedging open the damper, was of unmitigated blackness.

Sighing deeply, he headed for the garage to see if he could find a ladder.

‘Giving up already?’ Wendy called. Grace was rolling happily on a rug on the cattle-cropped grass below the veranda, and Wendy and Gabbie were plunging things that Luke didn’t want to know about into buckets of water. It was an incredibly domestic scene, and, imperceptibly, his mood changed. His chest expanded a mite and he rolled up his sleeves. These might well be his kids and his woman-and he was doing man’s work.

‘There’s a ladder under the house,’ she told him, and his bubble pricked a bit at her look of concern. ‘If that’s what you’re looking for. But you be careful on the roof.’

‘I have it under control,’ he told her, setting his chin, caveman-like-off to hunt his dinosaur for lunch. ‘You just stick to your business and I’ll stick to mine.’

His chauvinism didn’t last. She was concerned. How about him?

Luke balanced on the ladder-he’d used it to climb onto the roof and had hauled it up after him to balance it against the chimney. Now, with his feet feeling decidedly insecure beneath him, he stared down into the abyss.

There was a bird’s nest in the chimney. How they’d managed to build it there he didn’t know, but it was a vast, untidy conglomeration of sticks, wedged about two feet down.

At least there weren’t any eggs or baby birds in sight, he thought, thanking heaven for small mercies. He didn’t have to make any life or death decisions here. It must be an old nest.

‘What’s the problem?’

Luke looked down-and then wished he hadn’t. Wendy was a long, long way down, standing on the grass by Grace and staring up at him anxiously.

‘There isn’t one.’ Heck, a man had some pride. He took a deep breath and then managed to raise the rake he’d hauled up here over his head. ‘It’s a bird’s nest. I’ll dislodge it.’

He looked upward-much better than downward-at the circle of irate crows fussing over his head. The birds had been squawking from the moment he’d put his foot on the first step of the ladder-defending their territory.

‘I’d guess it’s either us or the crows, so there’s no choice,’ he called to Wendy. ‘A man has to do what a man has to do.’ He positioned his rake.

‘Luke…’

‘If I hook it I’ll be able to pull it up.’

‘I don’t think so-’

No. Suddenly neither did he. The rake caught the edge of the nest and, once one side was dislodged, the entire thing caved in and plummeted down to rest on the damper below.

‘Yuck.’ Wendy was as covered in soot as he was. They were back in the kitchen, hauling bits of nest out from the slit between damper and chimney. It was foul work, and it took for ever. ‘This is disgusting, and any minute now I’m expecting to grab something that moves,’ she said. ‘Are you sure there were no baby birds up there?’

‘Do I look like I’m the sort of man to empty babies from their nests?’ he demanded, affronted. ‘After all the work I’ve done in the interest of babies…’

‘The crows up there looked worried.’

‘I am not worried about worried crows.’ He hauled a stick sideways through the crack, it resisted and then came with a rush of soot. Gabbie squealed as a shower of blackness coated all of them. ‘Good grief.’

‘They’re making such a fuss!’

‘There were not any birds in that chimney,’ Luke confirmed. ‘Just ancient nesting material.’

‘It was the birdies’ home,’ Gabbie said solemnly.

‘They can relocate.’ Luke glowered. ‘Just as long as it isn’t into the front seat of my car. Don’t you dare leave the top down while…’

He didn’t finish the sentence.

There was a terrified squawk from the inside of the chimney, a rush of scrambling wings and claws, and a cloud of soot bigger than all the rest showered over them.

What the…?

The squawking didn’t stop. It grew louder and louder as, inside the chimney, a bird descended as if it was heading into the room.

The bird didn’t come into the kitchen but it wasn’t for want of trying. It couldn’t. The damper stopped it in its tracks, just above the stove.

‘It must be a young one that’s just left the nest.’ Wendy was sitting back on her heels, staring in horror at the feathers and soot fluttering through to the hearth. The noise was deafening and she had to practically shout to make herself heard. The trapped bird squawked as if there was no tomorrow and, above the roof, every crow from a ten-mile radius had come to lend a hand. Or wing. Or whatever.

‘How do you know?’ Luke’s heart was sinking. Of all the stupid things. Now what? Gabbie’s normally pale face was turning ashen. The child was expecting the worst, and Luke was starting to feel the same.

‘If it’s just left the nest then it would have flown back in without realising there was a problem,’ Wendy told him. ‘But instead of a platform of twigs, it’s found thin air. It’s fallen right down.’ She stared at the fireplace as if it could give her some clue. ‘Do you think…? Will it be able to claw its way back up?’

‘No.’ They’d been listening to the creature struggle for five minutes now, and the more it struggled the more hopeless its position became.

‘Can we get the damper out?’ Wendy whispered, and Luke had to bend forward to hear. ‘It seems firmly wedged.’

It was. Luke remembered the arrival of the damper. Twenty-five years ago, fed up with a kitchen full of blow-flies, his grandmother had arranged a man to fix it. It had taken the fix-it man two days to set the damper into place and secure it firmly with concrete.

Luke braved another look now, got a face full of soot for his pains and had his opinion confirmed. ‘It’ll take me hours-if not days-to get rid of the damper and I’d need special tools to do it,’ he said slowly. Heaven knew what tools, but he had to say something. ‘The bird would be dead by the time I got it out.’

‘The birdy’s going to die,’ Gabbie sobbed, and Luke grimaced.

‘It’ll never come though the damper,’ Wendy said. ‘It won’t fit.’ Every now and then a leg or a wing appeared in their line of gaze, but the two-inch-wide slit would never allow a crow to squeeze through into the room. ‘Do you think…? Could we somehow lasso it from the top and pull it up? There’s rope under the house.’

‘Yeah, right. My lassoing skills aren’t what they should be. How about yours?’

‘Luke…’ Wendy closed her eyes, despair rising. ‘I guess-’

‘You guess what?’

She guessed nothing while Gabbie was listening. ‘Honey, can you pop out to the veranda and make sure Grace is still okay?’ Wendy said, and gave the child a gentle push door-wards. Gabbie went, but at the doorway she stopped and looked back.

‘You’ll save the birdy?’ she asked, and her troubled eyes were directed straight at Luke.

What was a man to do with a look like that?

‘I’ll do my best,’ he said, but something in the way he said it must have worked, because her look settled and became one of trust.

‘Uncle Luke will get you out,’ she called to the bird, and then walked out, the door swinging closed behind her.

She left them to silence. Apart from crow noises-which meant there wasn’t any silence at all. It just felt like silence because neither of them could think of a thing they could say.

‘We’ll have to put it out of its misery.’

‘Sorry?’ Luke was staring uselessly at the fireplace, his mind heading off on one tangent after another, all of no use whatsoever. Then he realised what she’d just said. He blenched. Kill it? No! ‘For heaven’s sake…’

‘Well, think of another idea, then,’ she snapped. ‘I’m not leaving the creature to suffer for days while it slowly starves to death-and we can’t dismantle the chimney. Can we?’

That was a bit much.

‘Well, think of something. You pushed the stupid nest down.’

‘Wendy-’

‘Do something!’ It was too much for Wendy. Birds trapped in chimneys were apparently not enclosed in her folio of crises-to-stay-calm-in.

Do something. But what? What?

Maybe… Luke found himself watching the crow’s feet appearing and disappearing. As the creature struggled, its claws sank below the damper. They disappeared as it hauled itself up again, but after a while they appeared again. The crow couldn’t always hold its claws above the level of the damper, so…

So maybe…

‘Did you say we have a rope?’ he demanded.

Something in his voice got through, and Wendy’s face changed. She took a deep breath and fought for calm. ‘Yes. I saw one under the house with the ladder.’

‘If I could attach it to the claws…’

‘And pull it out?’ Once again she veered into panic. ‘It won’t fit through the damper no matter how hard you pull. You must see that. Luke, don’t be stupid. It’d be squashed as you pulled it out, and I so much don’t want it dead.’

‘Neither do I,’ he said, still frowning. Wendy’s face was white, and suddenly it wasn’t just the crow’s fate at stake here. ‘I don’t know whether I can do this, Wendy, but let me try.’

‘What?’

‘Just go and get me the rope. Please. And let me think.’

He needed gloves.

Crows’ claws were ripping instruments of destruction. To catch them he needed to protect his hands.

While Wendy searched for rope, he went on a fast tour of the house. The blankets he found were thin and would shred. The quilts were thicker, but they were handmade and gorgeous. They’d rip and he wouldn’t sacrifice them.

What then? The carpets? No. They were far too thick and unwieldy.

Surely his grandmother had had gardening gloves. Somewhere…

She hadn’t. Sigh. Wendy’s face stayed with him, white and fearful. Hell! He didn’t feel like hero material, but if he was all that was available…

There was only one thing to be done, and he didn’t like it one bit. If he’d known, then the Italian designer would have had kittens, but it seemed he had no choice. To sacrifice all for one bird…

So when Wendy returned to the kitchen he was kneeling before the stove, ready and waiting. She stopped and stared at the sight that met her in stunned amazement. Luke had tied knots in the cuffs of his jacket, and he had his hands in the leather sleeves, testing how much flexibility he had in his fingers.

His gorgeous leather jacket… She handed him the rope in stunned silence.

‘Luke, your jacket…’

‘It’s nothing.’ It wasn’t nothing at all-he loved it-but the thought of Gabbie’s face was haunting. And Wendy’s. Maybe especially Wendy’s. If he could get the damned bird out of the chimney without killing it, then maybe it’d be worth the sacrifice.

‘Luke…’

‘Let’s just see if it works.’ He gave her a reassuring grin and then tried his first plan of attack. With his hands safely encased in leather, he reached forward and caught a claw as it plunged forward. The crow gave a terrified squawk, but the leather protected his hands and he held the claw for long enough to know that he could do so again.

Great! There was no point in holding it for longer-yet-and he didn’t. Released, the crow clattered its way a few inches up the chimney and then fell to the damper again, defeated.

But Luke wasn’t. Far from it. Silently he lifted Wendy’s rope and tested it by twisting it around his fingers. It was old and soft, and not too thick. Great! With luck, this could just work. Then, without saying a word, he headed outside. Wendy was left to follow.

Which she did, her face a picture of confusion.

‘Just watch,’ he told her. ‘This might not work, but it’s our best shot.’

So Gabbie and Wendy stood hand in hand, uncomprehending, while Luke climbed again onto the roof. Once more he hauled his ladder up after him. He tied one end of the rope to the ancient television aerial, and then he climbed to the chimney top with the other rope end in his hand.

And now there were maybe thirty crows whirling over his head, all squawking their distress at the top of their lungs. This was all he needed. It was so hard to keep his balance…

‘If one more of you goes down this chimney then I’ll find me a gun,’ Luke said direfully, shaking a futile fist in the crows’ direction. ‘I’m giving you guys the benefit of the doubt and assuming the chap below is the family idiot. So learn a lesson from him.’ He glared at them all-they were barely eighteen inches above him!-and then he lowered the end of the rope carefully down the chimney.

Below, Wendy still watched while Gabbie clung to her side and stared as well. The knowledge that they were there drove him on.

The rope descended. That was the first part of the task achieved. With the top of the rope still tied to the aerial, he climbed back down again to where Wendy and Gabbie were waiting.

‘Do you mind telling me what you’re doing?’ Wendy’s face was a bewildered picture and he almost grinned. It wasn’t bad to have her on the unsettled side for once. For him to have the initiative. He squared his shoulders and headed for the veranda.

‘Just hush and see if it works.’ He gave Gabbie another reassuring grin, and ruffled her hair. ‘So far so good. Our baby crow might rejoin its mother yet.’

‘Luke…’

‘Hush.’

Without any more explanation, he led them back to the kitchen. What a relief. Lying on the stove was the frayed end of the rope he’d just lowered. So far, so good-and his women’s admiration didn’t feel too bad either.

Then, with his hands in his leather sleeves to protect himself from the wildly slashing claws, and after one deep breath and a silent prayer-please let this work-he seized a claw.

The other claw slashed wildly downward-without the leather he’d be cut to bits-but now Luke was in resolution mode. This was a case of now or never, and it had to be now. Working like lightning, he tied the first claw with the rope and held on to it. He waited until the other claw came sweeping down again to slash-not more than two seconds-and somehow caught it and tied it together with the other leg.

Now he had two claws tied together with rope. Crossing his fingers, he released the trussed crow to thrash about in its chimney prison.

‘I need to go back on the roof again,’ he told his open-mouthed audience. ‘And cross your fingers for me.’

‘I’m even crossing my eyeballs,’ Wendy said, stunned to her socks. ‘You too, Gabbie. Cross everything.’

The little girl was too boggled to say a word.

Finally, up on the roof again, the whole process started to come together. Standing on his ladder against the chimney, carefully, inch by inch Luke manoeuvred the rope upward.

For the first few seconds he thought the crow would never come-it went wild as its feet were hauled slowly upward. But then, unbelievably, it seemed to relax a little. Its wings flapped but not with its previous power. Maybe it was starting to exhaust itself. Or maybe…maybe it sensed this was its only chance.

It rose and rose, and the whole world seemed to hold its breath. Luke pulled and pulled. He was standing alone, but strangely he didn’t feel alone. Wendy was with him every inch of the way, and so was Gabbie. Even Grace…

Two feet from the top came the tricky part. Sensing freedom, the crow surged upward, lunging joyously into daylight. But still it was tied, and it was all Luke could do to regain his hold on the ladder. Somehow, and he could never afterwards figure out how, he managed to climb down to the roof with the crow flapping like a crazy, living kite in his hands.

There, with his arms still in his leather coat, and propped against the chimney to balance himself, he reeled the bird in toward him. With a faster action than he believed possible, and maybe a bit of luck as well, he got the claws untied. The crow flapped backwards and fell awkwardly onto the roof.

Was it hurt?

Not too badly, Luke thought incredulously as he watched it. Not so you’d notice. With a final squawk of indignant freedom, the bird rose skyward. It soared, was welcomed into the circle of waiting birds-and together they surged away, croaking harsh cries of jubilation as they went.

Luke was left sitting on the roof, an empty rope and a ruined leather jacket in his hands. He had the biggest grin on his face!

And his audience had seen everything.

‘You’ve done it! Oh, come down, come down…’ Down below, Wendy was laughing and crying all at the same time. She’d picked up Gabbie and the two of them were doing a crazy dance of triumph on the grass. ‘Come on down, Luke Grey. You wonderful, wonderful man!’

He got down as fast as he could. Wendy and Gabbie were holding the ladder and, as he hit ground, he was enfolded in triumphant arms.

‘Oh, Luke, that was so good.’ Wendy was crying openly now, but laughing through her tears, and Gabbie couldn’t stop smiling. Wendy was holding the little girl in her arms but suddenly he was in there too, the little girl sandwiched between them.

He’d hardly grown accustomed to the fact that he was being hugged-hugged, for heaven’s sake!-when Wendy let him go, thrusting the little girl forward so he was holding Gabbie in his arms. But she’d only left to retrieve Grace from her blanket-and to envelop the baby in their sandwich squeeze as well. She was practically war-whooping.

‘Luke, that was the most marvellous…the most marvellous…’

It was too much. Through kids and laughter and tears she somehow reached forward and kissed him.

And in that kiss, something changed for ever.

To stand on the front lawn of a place he’d once loved, with his arms full of kids, with the squawking birds above them, and holding a woman who was weeping with joy…

Kissing a beautiful woman…

She started it, he would tell himself later, trying to figure out how it had happened. She kissed him, leaning forward so her lips touched his. But it suddenly wasn’t Wendy doing the kissing. His arms were full of a tangle of children, but he had long arms and he could enfold them all.

Gabbie and Baby Grace were somehow in the middle but his mouth was on Wendy’s, her lips were full and warm and loving-and she felt like no other woman he’d kissed in his life before. He felt his insides stir and shift, and his life somehow refocused, right at that point. Things became clear that had been clouded, and things that had been important suddenly took a step back.

Something huge was changing here. Why?

He didn’t know. All he understood was that-well, she tasted of soot, she smelt of baby powder and milk formula, and she felt like…

She felt like heaven!

His hold grew tighter. He didn’t understand what was happening to him-to them both!-but he wasn’t letting go for a minute. Wendy…

His need was growing more urgent by the minute, but it couldn’t last. Not like this.

‘Hey, I’m squashed.’ From somewhere below kiss level, Gabbie didn’t sound in the least distressed-she sounded as if she was giggling-but it was enough to haul him somehow to his senses. It allowed him space to back away and look down into Wendy’s emotion-filled face-and see the confusion he was feeling mirrored there threefold.

‘The birdy’s safe,’ Gabbie squeaked, in a squashed but awed and delighted voice. ‘We saved the birdy.’

‘Yes, Gabbie, we did just that.’ He was still watching Wendy, but with a wrench, it seemed, she’d hauled her attention to the children. She gave him one, single, startled glance and took Gabbie from him, handing him Grace. She then backed and stooped to set Gabbie on her feet. She turned her attention deliberately to the little girl, leaving him still holding Grace-but he was watching Wendy’s colour turn blush-pink under her tan.

And he still didn’t understand what was happening. All he knew was that something was-and it was something big. Huge!

‘It flew away with its mummy and daddy,’ Gabbie said proudly.

‘It did.’ Luke was finding it hard to make his voice work. What was going on here? He’d kissed other women-lots-and it had never felt like this.

‘And its brothers and sisters were waiting for it.’ Gabbie was practically glowing with pride. ‘We saved its life.’

‘And you held the ladder,’ Luke told her, somehow recovering. Or recovering a little. ‘I never could have managed if you hadn’t held the ladder.’

‘Really?’ The little girl was close to bursting with pleasure.

‘Really.’

‘Well…’ Gabbie sighed, then tucked her chin down into her chest with a look that Luke was starting to recognise. This was a child who internalised her pleasure-she wasn’t brave enough to share in case it was snatched from her. Then she seemed to gain courage. She looked up at Luke, and she giggled.

‘You look…silly,’ she said.

‘Gabbie!’ Wendy’s word was the start of a reproof but then Wendy dared herself to look at Luke, and somehow the tension dissipated and she couldn’t help from grinning. ‘Though, actually…’

What were they on about? ‘Actually, what?’ Luke asked direfully, expecting the worst. And he got it.

‘You look like a derelict chimneysweep after four weeks’ work with no baths in between,’ she said bluntly. ‘Plus… Oh, Luke, there’s a scratch on your cheek that’s been bleeding, and your poor leather jacket… It’s ripped to pieces.’

‘It’s nothing,’ he managed. He was so far off balance now he was practically falling over.

‘It’s something, Luke Grey,’ she said softly, tilting her chin and meeting his look head on. ‘It was absolutely something. It was the best something I’ve seen in a long, long while. Don’t you think so, our Gabbie?’

And Gabbie’s small, shy smile told them she agreed entirely.

‘You do need a wash, though,’ Wendy told him. ‘Maybe we all do-before the electricians and glaziers and the likes arrive. Gabbie, what do you think about a swim?’

‘A swim?’ The child’s face filled with doubt.

‘A swim. Let’s take a bar of soap-or maybe six bars of soap-down to the sea. We can put Grace in her carry-cot while we take Uncle Luke into the surf and we’ll wash his soot off him until he looks respectable. Would you like to do that, Gabbie, love?’

‘Yes,’ said Gabbie definitely-and then, somehow, there was nothing left for Luke to do but follow.

Wherever they led…