was stoic, as Molly had known he would be. He’d been stoic for six months now. He’d taken every bit of dreadful news on the chin. Now his face was pinched, but blank, and when Molly tried to hug him he held back. As always.
‘I shouldn’t have kept him in the first place,’ he said miserably.
No. But then there was a no pets rule in their highrise apartment, so Sam had had nothing. They’d found the frog while they’d been crossing a busy Sydney street. It had been raining, there had been traffic everywhere, and Lionel had been sitting right in the middle of the road. He was a suicidal frog if ever there was one, and when Sam had pocketed him Molly hadn’t protested. Where he’d been, the frog would have been doomed.
May he not be doomed now, she thought, looking at the intricate arrangement of ponds Sam had rigged up on the bathroom floor.
‘I’ll have to clean all this up when he dies.’ The little boy put his hands in his pockets and tucked his chin into his chest. Molly knew there were tears waiting to get out. They’d wait a while. Molly cried. Sam didn’t.
‘He won’t die. Mr Baird said so.’
‘I guess frogs don’t live very long anyway.’
Darn, it was so unfair. If Molly had her way, frogs would live for ever. But she had to be truthful. ‘I guess they don’t,’ she agreed, and laid a hand tentatively on his arm. But, as always, he pulled away. He was such an isolated child. It was as if losing his parents had made him afraid to trust.
And why should he trust? Molly thought bitterly. She couldn’t even keep a frog safe.
‘We’ve been asked to go to a farm for the weekend,’ she said, trying to divert him. ‘We’ll take Lionel. It can be a convalescent farm.’
‘A farm?’
‘Yes.’
‘I don’t like farms.’
‘Have you ever been to one?’
‘No.’
‘Then—’
‘I don’t like them. I want to stay here.’
Sure. And lie on his bed and stare at the ceiling as he did in every spare minute. ‘Sam, Mr Baird has invited both of us.’
‘He doesn’t want me.’
‘I’m very sure he does.’
‘I don’t want to go.’
‘You’re going,’ Molly said with more determination than she felt. ‘We’re both going and we’ll enjoy it very much.’
A weekend with Jackson Baird. Could she enjoy it?
There was a dangerous part of her mind that was telling her she could enjoy it very much indeed.
‘Cara?’
‘Jackson. How nice.’ Cara might be on the other side of the Atlantic but her pleasure was tangible. ‘To what do I owe the pleasure?’
‘I think I might have found a property that could suit both our needs.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. It’s been used as a horse stud in the past. It’s in a magnificent location and it sounds wonderful. Do you want to get on a plane and come and see it?’
Silence. Then, ‘Darling, I’m so busy.’
When was she not? Jackson grinned. ‘You mean you’ll leave it to me?’
‘That’s the one.’
‘And if I buy it and you don’t like it?’
‘Then you’ll just have to buy me another one.’
‘Oh, right. Cara—?’
‘Darling, I really can’t come. There’s something… Well, there’s something happening that’s taking all my attention, and I daren’t say anything about it yet in case it evaporates in the mist. But I trust you.’
He grinned again. Another scheme. His half-sister always had schemes, but he trusted her implicitly, as he knew she trusted him. ‘Millions wouldn’t,’ he told her.
‘But you’re one in a million. And don’t you know it?’
‘Yeah, and I love you, too.’
A chuckle and the line went dead, leaving Jackson staring down at the receiver.
Was this really a good idea?
‘Okay, I give up. You’re not going to ask me, are you?’
‘Sorry?’ Her friend stood on the doorstep late that night and Molly blinked. Angela was wearing a slinky, shimmery dress, her beads reached her waist and her hair was done up in some kind of fantastic arrangement of peacock feathers. Now she spun around for inspection.
‘I’m off to a Roaring Twenties party. Guy is turning thirty, poor lamb, so we’re having a last gasp at celebrating the twenties for him. Do you like my outfit?’
‘I love it.’
‘You know you could come.’
‘And you know I can’t.’
It was impossible, Molly thought. Social life was impossible.
Until Sarah died Molly had been running her estate agency on the coast. She’d been one of the most successful realtors in the business, going from strength to strength. Her love life, too, had been exceedingly satisfactory. Michael was the local solicitor and everyone had said they made the perfect couple.
Their combined life plans hadn’t included Sam, though. ‘Put him in a boarding school,’ Michael had decreed when Sarah died, but Molly hadn’t. Nor had she torn Sam away from his home in inner Sydney, though she was now starting to question the wisdom of moving here.
The city property market was hard to break into. Her cousin was a toad. Sam’s school was less than satisfactory, and she couldn’t afford to change him to a better one. Sam was miserable, and she was so darned lonely herself!
But leaving Sam with babysitters wouldn’t solve anything. He woke with nightmares and she had to be there. After all, she was all he had.
‘Hey, cheer up,’ Angela told her, watching her face. ‘You’re about to spend the weekend with Australia’s most eligible bachelor.’
She was, but the crazy thing was that she didn’t want to go.
Like Sam, Molly still felt like closing all doors. Since Sarah’s death the world had become a dangerous place. The newspapers hurled bad news at her, television shows seemed dark and threatening—and if it was like this for her, how much more so for a small boy who’d lost everything?
‘Is
