wipe clean…
‘So who’s baby is she?’ Wendy watched where his glance lay, and then dragged his attention back indoors. She handed over a mug of coffee and settled herself. Gabbie made a beeline for her lap and stayed close. Instinctively Wendy’s arms came around her and held tight. On Luke’s lap, his baby gurgled and chuckled and reached for the mug. There were two adults and two responsibilities. And a whole lot more outside…
‘You wouldn’t like to get those kids away from my car?’ he said uneasily.
‘Watch your coffee,’ she reminded him. ‘Babies burn and she can reach it. You can move your car onto the kerb if you’re uncomfortable.’ She refused to be ruffled. ‘While it’s in my yard I can’t drag the children away from it.’
‘Then will you hold the baby while I shift it?’ he begged, and she shook her head.
‘No, Mr Grey.’ She wasn’t taking his baby while he went to move his car. Instinct told her she’d never see him again.
And he saw exactly what she was thinking. He stared over the table at her, anger flaring. ‘Look, I could have just dumped her and run,’ he snapped.
‘And you didn’t.’ She nodded, not warming to the man in the slightest. He might have a smile to knock a girl sideways, but he wasn’t coming across well at all. He was a darn sight more worried about his car than his baby. ‘That’s very noble of you.’
The censure in her tone was obvious, and his brows snapped together in anger.
‘You think I’m a rat.’
‘It’s not my job to think anything of the kind,’ she told him. ‘I’m paid to worry about children—not to make judgements about the people who are caring for them. Or not caring for them.’
‘Hey, she was dumped on me!’
‘Really?’ Her grey eyes widened in polite disbelief and she looked from man to baby and back again. ‘You know,’ she said softly, ‘she looks very like you.’
‘I’d imagine she does,’ Luke said bitterly. ‘Of all the stupid…’ His eyes flew to Wendy’s again, the anger still there. ‘But she’s not my daughter. I swear.’
‘You’re related though?’
‘I guess we are,’ Luke said slowly, and for the first time his attention faded from his precious car. ‘I’ve been thinking.’ He cast a dubious look at the little girl he was holding, as if he was still trying to figure out where she’d come from. She’d grabbed a teaspoon; she was banging it on the table, and enjoying the occupation immensely. ‘She…she’s my half-sister.’
‘Your half-sister.’ Wendy sat back, had a couple of sips of coffee and hugged Gabbie some more. He’d explain, she guessed. Given time. Meanwhile, Gabbie was still trembling. She’d been trembling all day with the impending move. She needed hugging and Wendy was content to hug her. The rest of the kids had a great new toy to play with—a couple of hundred thousand dollars worth of new toy!—and, despite the fact that she had a train to catch, Wendy wasn’t into rushing.
For the baby’s sake, she could wait.
‘I didn’t even know she existed until today,’ Luke said bitterly. ‘Hell. You’re sitting there judging me for dumping her and until this morning I didn’t even know I had a half-sister.’ His eyes caught hers and held them, willing her to believe him.
And suddenly, unaccountably, Wendy did believe him. His eyes were also demanding she understand. She didn’t understand, but she found herself suspending judgement just a little. Her initial vision of playboy father landed with illegitimate baby was put to one side. For the moment.
‘Tell me about it,’ she said softly. She glanced out the window—just to check. Sam was sitting behind Luke’s steering wheel, Craig was in the passenger seat and Cherie was pretending to be the bonnet ornament. They had bare feet, she thought, and no one was wearing belt buckles. They wouldn’t scratch his precious car.
But Luke was now not watching his car. He had eyes only for Wendy, trying to make her see.
‘It’s my father,’ he said slowly. ‘This is my father’s baby.’
Wendy’s quick mind mulled this over. Family messes were what she was accustomed to—what she was trained to deal with. ‘You mean your father is also this little one’s father?’
‘I guess.’ Luke stared dazedly down at the bundle—who stared back with lively interest. ‘She does look like me, doesn’t she?’
‘She certainly does.’ Her voice softened. ‘She’s the spitting image of you, Mr Grey. Apart from the fact that you’re opposite sexes, you’re almost identical twins—thirty years apart.’
He stared at the baby for a long moment, trying to take it on board. Finally he shrugged. ‘Maybe I need to go back. Explain the whole damned thing.’
‘I have time.’
He nodded. This woman really was the most restful person, he thought suddenly. He’d been wallowing in panic ever since he’d opened his door at six this morning. There’d been a knock but when he’d opened the door all he’d found was the bundle. The baby.
Panic? Maybe it wasn’t panic, he thought. Maybe panic was far too mild a word for it.
‘My father wasn’t very reliable,’ he said slowly. He took a deep breath, watching her reaction. There wasn’t one. Her face was carefully noncommittal and he had the feeling it’d take a lot to shock her. ‘Well, maybe that’s an understatement. I…I need to be able to make you see. My father had charisma. Anything he wanted, he got. He only had to smile…’
Wendy nodded. She could see that. She just had to look at Luke’s smile and she could see that.
‘He married my mother,’ Luke went on, his smile disappearing completely now and his voice bitter. ‘I suppose that’s one thing. The marriage lasted for a whole twelve months but at least I was born legitimate. I was the son he always said he wanted, but he wasn’t into fatherhood. It cramped his style. When he walked out, my mother went back home—her parents lived on a farm just out of Bay Beach—and I was brought up here. Sort of.’
‘Sort of?’ She’d never heard of this man, she thought, and she’d been in the district for years.
‘Of course, sort of. His son being brought up as a country hick didn’t suit my father one bit. To my father, ego was everything,’ Luke said bitterly. ‘I had to have the best. Despite my mother’s protestations, I was sent away to the best boarding schools, and the most prestigious university in Australia. I have no idea how he managed the school fees, and the fact that my mother lived on the breadline didn’t worry him a bit. He went from debt to debt. He lied, schemed, swindled—conned his way through life. I didn’t know it all. My mother kept it from me and she died when I was twelve, so it’s only in the last few years I found out just what his lifestyle was really like.’
‘And this baby?’
‘This little one was the result of an affair with a woman forty years his junior,’ he told her. ‘She left a letter this morning, explaining all. Apparently he set her up as he always set up his women—in the height of luxury.
