face was full of animation, very watchable. She also had a voice worth listening to. It lilted beautifully as she recited the rhyming verses of a fairy tale—a charming story about a princess with a magic rainbow smile and a heart of gold who’d come from the land of Evermore to bring joy to all the children.
Of course, there was the villain of the piece—a sneaky kid who always wore black and was really a rat—who set out to spoil every bit of happiness and spread lies about the princess, making her disappear from the children’s lives. But one small boy didn’t believe the rat’s trickery and he cried out in a mighty lion’s roar, bringing the princess back from the land of Evermore and exposing the rat for the stinking, rotten liar he was.
Standard stuff—good triumphing over evil—yet Peter was completely captivated by the rhyming verses and the perfectly pitched emotional delivery of them. The preschoolers listening so avidly to every word, actually came in on some lines as though they knew much of the story by heart, especially the lion’s roar bit. It had tremendous appeal and no doubt came from a popular children’s book. Peter decided to look for it, buy it as a gift for his nephew some time in the near future.
Once the last line had been recited, the children clapped and jumped up to form a dancing ring. There was a bit of a scuffle over who got to hold the storyteller’s hands. One of the other adults dryly advised, “You’d better be the princess in the middle, Erin.”
Erin…
Nice name.
And she was great with the children, all of whom clearly adored her.
He was feeling very attracted to this woman, and not just on a physical level, though her sexual appeal was certainly getting stronger by the moment. He imagined her telling him fairy tales in bed…erotic ones…like Sheherazade, keeping her sultan entranced with her stories, making every night too good to miss.
He’d like that.
Very much.
So how was he going to meet Princess Erin in an acceptable fashion?
She could be married for all he knew, or attached to some guy she was in love with. Peter didn’t care for that thought one bit, quickly brushing it aside to concentrate on what tactic would give him the result he wanted.
There was no easy in here, not like for his friend and now brother-in-law, Damien Wynter, who’d taken one look at Peter’s sister and charged straight into getting Charlotte to marry him instead of the fortune-hunter who’d almost had a wedding ring on her finger.
He remembered asking Damien how he knew Charlotte was the one for him. The answer was still imprinted on Peter’s mind.
“There’s a buzz in your brain that tells you not to miss out on what you could have with this woman. She fits what you’ve been waiting for.”
Were his instincts telling him that Erin might be the one? The mocking voice of past experience said that was jumping too far too fast. Right now he was hooked enough to know he didn’t want to walk away from her, shutting a door that might lead to something good, something better than he’d had in the past. No matter how unlikely it was…
“Hey!”
The startled cry of alarm came from one of the teachers as a man charged the circle of dancing children and grabbed one of the little boys, snatching him up in his arms and hugging him tightly against his shoulder.
“He’s my son!” he threw at the three women who started toward him, protesting his action. It was like an animal growl, fiercely possessive, and the man backed away, eyeing them wildly, still clutching the boy to his chest.
The women argued with him.
The children started wailing, agitated by the sense of volatile conflict that had so suddenly erupted.
Peter sprang into action, catching snatches of the argument as he circled the Moreton Bay Fig to come around behind the threatening kidnapper.
“I’m his father. I’ve got every right to take Thomas with me.”
“We’re responsible for him, Mr Harper. His mother left him with us for the day and…”
“His mother took him from me. He’s my son!”
“You need to sort this out with your wife.”
“She won’t let me have him but she dumps him with you people who are nothing to him. Nothing! I’m his father!”
“We’ll have to call the police if you take Thomas.”
“Mr Harper, this is not a good move. If you end up in jail, you’ll never see your son.” That was Erin’s voice, gently pleading reason.
A high crazed laugh derided any reasonableness. “There’s justice for you. I do nothing wrong but I lose my son and my cheating bitch of a wife just gets him given to her.”
“You have to take this to the family court,” Erin pressed. “You’ll get a fair hearing.”
“Nothing’s fair!” The exploding anger cracked into spurts of tears as grief and despair poured from him. “She’s told a stack of lies about me to her big-shot lawyer. I’ve got no chance except this. No chance! You tell my wife she’s welcome to her money-bags lover, but taking my son…no…no…no…”
The tortured sobs of the man were gut-wrenching. He was shaking his head, backing away from Erin in a blind stumble.
“I’m calling the police,” one of the other teachers said, a cell phone already in her hand.
“Don’t!” Peter commanded as he moved in and clamped an arm around the bereft father’s heaving shoulders, stopping and supporting him.
Erin lifted a startled gaze to his. “Who are you?” she asked.
She had green eyes.
Beautiful green eyes.
And Peter felt a compelling urge to answer every question in them. Except…he didn’t want to throw the weight of his name around with her.
“I’m just a guy who hates to see another man reduced to tears,” he said, then shot a look of incisive authority at the teacher with the phone. “Stop that right now. I’ll take care of this. Calling in the police will only make everything worse.”
“I’m in charge of these children,” the woman argued. She was a good deal older than Erin, maybe in her fifties, iron-grey hair cut short, plump figure, and puffing herself up officiously. “I have to answer to Mrs Harper about what happens to Thomas.”
“Nothing is going to happen to Thomas,” Peter assured her. “Mr Harper just needed to hold his son for a few minutes. Fair enough in the circumstances, wouldn’t you say?”
“He has to give him back,” the woman insisted.
“Yes. And you can trust me to see that he does. I’m big enough to do it. Okay?”
The man he was holding was too shattered to put up a fight and would have no hope of winning against Peter even if he did pull
