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

With his injured knee he couldn’t move fast, and the thought of his Mary—his Mary?—being caught up in it was unbearable.

Then the darkness and the wind closed in on them once more and the quilt was their refuge again.

Their bodies were their refuge.

Heinz was there, too. Every now and then the little dog squirmed upwards as if to make sure his mistress was still there, head as well as toes. Then he’d retreat to the warmth of the nest their feet made—as if he knew they needed privacy.

Privacy? Ben had never felt so private.

He was a loner. His parents’ appalling marriage, the family wealth that set him and Jake apart, had turned him into himself. He’d moved into his father’s financial world almost by default. There’d been no one else to take on his father’s role as head of such a vast financial empire, but in the end he’d found it suited him.

He discovered he had a talent for finance, and the financial world was superficial enough to suit him. Emotion had no place. He moved in sophisticated circles, with women who were content to partner him for appearances. They knew not to intrude on his solitude.

And yet this slip of a girl had broken through. How? He didn’t know, and for now he didn’t care.

They talked and made love, talked again, then fell into a half-sleep where their bodies seemed to merge closer than he’d felt to anyone in his life. Closer than he’d imagined he could feel.

She asked questions and he answered, and vice versa. There seemed no boundaries. The storm had blasted them away.

He found himself talking of his childhood, of the isolation he and Jake had found themselves in, how one dare had led to another. He told her of an understanding nanny who’d said, ‘Guys, you don’t need to kill yourselves to get your parents to notice you.’ And then she’d added, sadly, ‘Your parents are so caught up in their own worlds, you mightn’t manage it no matter what you do.’

Those words had been spoken when he was about twelve. They hadn’t made one whit of difference to the risks he and Jake had taken, but thinking back...

His mother’s demands that her children cheer her up, make her happy, pander to her emotions. Her eventual suicide when they’d failed. The appalling distant cruelty of his father. Their childhood behaviour made sense now, and here in this cocoon of passion and warmth and safety he could say it.

But he didn’t need to say it. It was just one of the passing thoughts that went between them, and it was as if he was lying in the dark, totally isolated, talking to himself.

Or not.

Because she listened and she held him, and the words were absorbed and held. Somehow, within that cocoon, he felt the armour around his heart soften and crack.

Just for now. Just for this storm. They both knew there was no tomorrow. Was that part of the deal?

‘Tell me about roller derby,’ he said at one point, and he felt her body lighten. A frisson of laughter seemed to pass between them.

What was it with this woman? If she smiled, he seemed to smile with her. His body seemed to react to hers, no matter what she did.

They seemed...one.

It was the storm, he told himself. Shared danger. The emotion and peril of the last two days. It was nothing more.

But somehow, right now, it seemed much more.

‘Roller derby’s my home,’ she said, and he blinked.

‘Pardon?’

‘You went into the army,’ she said. ‘I’m guessing roller derby’s the same thing for me. Nice, little Mary, goody two shoes, knocked down whenever I do anything that might be noticed because I have a powerful stepmother and three overwhelming stepsisters. But when I put on my skates, I can be someone else. I can be the me I suspect I could have been if my mum had lived.’

‘So when you put your skates on, you’re Bad Ass Mary.’

‘Smash ’em Mary,’ she corrected him. ‘I can do anything when I have my team around me. The power is unbelievable, but there are no roadside bombs for the unwary.’

‘Only the odd broken leg.’

‘I’ve never broken anything. I’m little and quick and smart.’

He could see that about her. It made him smile again.

‘And rough?’

‘You’d better believe it.’

‘I’d love to watch you play.’

‘That’s not going to happen.’ He heard her smile die.

‘You’ll find another team.’

‘Another team, another town, another life?’

‘Mary...’ He rolled over and tugged her close.

‘Mmm?’

‘That’s for tomorrow. Not now. Now is just...now.’

‘I should stop thinking about it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I need distraction.’

‘I’m good at distraction,’ he said, and kissed her. He kissed her as she should be kissed, this wiry, tough, soft, vulnerable, yet ready-to-face-the-world warrior queen. ‘I can provide distraction now. All you need to do is say yes.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered—and so he did.

* * *

She woke and there was silence.

Silence, silence and silence. It was so quiet it was almost loud.

She was cocooned against Ben’s body, enfolded and protected, and for a couple of dreamy moments she found herself wishing she could stay. But the silence told her this time out was almost over.

Any minute now the world would break in. They’d be rescued, she could pick up the pieces and start again.

A consummation devoutly to be wished?