The Package Deal: Nine Months to Change His Life / From Neighbours...to Newlyweds? / The Bonus Mum

‘He’s okay.’ He flinched at the thought of where he might be now. Put it away, fast. ‘He has to be okay. But tell me about you. Why are you here?’

And the question was neatly turned. She had nowhere to go, he thought as he watched her face. He’d answered her questions. He’d let down his guard. Now he was demanding entry to places he instinctively knew she kept protected.

They were two of a kind, he thought, and how he knew it he couldn’t guess. But they kept their secrets well.

He was asking for hers.

‘I’m escaping from my family,’ she said, and she was silent for a while. ‘I’m escaping from my community as well.’

‘As bad as that?’

‘Worse,’ she said. ‘Baby killer, that’s me.’

It was said lightly. It was said with all the pain in the world.

‘You want to tell me about it?’

‘No.’

‘You expect me to stay in the same bed as a baby killer?’

She turned and stared and he met her gaze. Straight and true. If this woman was a baby killer he was King Kong.

He smiled and she tried to smile back. It didn’t come off.

‘I’ve exonerated you,’ he told her. ‘Found you innocent. Evidence? If you really were a baby killer you’d be on a more secure island. Alcatraz, for instance. Want to tell me about it?’

‘No.’

‘I told you mine.’ He lifted the quilt so it reached her shoulders. ‘If you lie back, there are cushions. Very comfy cushions. You can stare into the dark and pretend I’m your therapist.’

‘I don’t need a therapist.’

‘Neither do I.’

‘You have nightmares.’

‘And you don’t?’ He put gentle pressure on her shoulder. She resisted for a moment. Heinz snuffled beside her. The wind raised its howl a notch.

She slumped back on the pillows and felt the fight go out of her.

‘Tell Dr Ben,’ Ben said.

‘Doctor?’

‘I’m playing psychoanalyst. I’ve failed the army. I’m a long way from the New York Stock Exchange. My yacht’s a hundred fathoms deep. A man has to have some sort of career. Shoot.’

‘Shoot?’

‘What would an analyst say? So, Ms Smash ’em Mary, you’re confessing to baby killing.’

And she smiled. He heard it and he almost whooped.

What was it about this woman that made it so important to make her smile?

Shoot, he’d said, and she did.

CHAPTER FOUR (#ulink_f1435f3f-8c46-517e-84f2-140d6c34c2b6)

SHE GAVE IN.

She told him.

‘Okay,’ she said, and he heard weariness now, the weariness of a long, long battle. ‘I’ve told you that I’m a district nurse?’

‘Hence the drugs,’ he said. ‘Nice nurse.’

She smiled again, but briefly. ‘I’m currently suspended from work and a bit...on the outer with my family,’ she told him. She took a deep breath. ‘Okay, potted history. My mum died when I was eight. She’d been ill for a year and at the end Dad was empty. It was like most of him had died, too.

‘Then he met Barbie. Barbie’s some kind of faith-healer and self-declared clairvoyant. She offered to channel Mum, using Ouija boards, that kind of thing, and Dad was so desperate he fell for it. But Barbie has three daughters of her own and was in a financial mess. She was blatantly after Dad’s money. Dad’s well off. He has financial interests in most of the businesses in Taikohe where we live, and Barbie simply moved in and took control. She got rid of every trace of my mother. She still wants to get rid of me.’

‘Cinderella with the wicked stepmother?’

‘She’s never mistreated me. Not overtly. She just somehow stopped Dad showing interest in me. With Barbie he seemed to die even more, if that makes sense, and she derided the things I had left to cling to.’

‘There are worse ways to mistreat a child than beat them,’ he said softly, and she was quiet for a while, as the wind rose and the sounds of the storm escalated.

He thought she’d stopped then, and was trying to figure how to prod her to go further when she started again, all by herself.

‘School was my escape,’ she told him. I liked school and I was good at it. I liked...rules.’

‘Rules make sense when you’re lost,’ he agreed. ‘Sometimes they’re the only thing to cling to.’ Was that why he and Jake had joined the army? he wondered. To find some limits?

‘Anyway, I studied nursing. I became Taikohe’s district nurse. I now have my own cottage...’

‘With a cat?’ he demanded. ‘Uh-oh. This is starting to sound like cat territory.’

And she got it. He heard her grin. ‘Only Heinz, who’ll eat me when I die a spinster, alone and unloved.’ She poked him—hard, in the ribs.

‘Ow!’

‘Serves you right. Of all the stereotyping males...’

‘Hey, you’re the one with the wicked stepmother.’

‘Do you want to hear this or not?’

‘Yes,’ he said promptly, because he did. ‘Tell Dr Ben.’