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

Her words caught her sense of the ridiculous and she managed a half-hearted smile. It was only half-hearted, though. She truly was discombobulated. In the last couple of months her world had been blasted apart, and the cyclone seemed the culmination.

Wrong. Ben seemed the culmination.

* * *

He was a fast reader but sometimes he slowed. Sometimes he wanted to soak in each word.

He’d desperately needed an escape from his worry about Jake. Last night Mary had been that escape. Now the manuscript in his hands was giving him a lesser one.

His dark, shadowed eyes, grey and mysterious, seemed to bore into parts of her she hadn’t even known existed. They seemed to see the wolf within.

He got it. He was grinning with delight as he recognised himself. She’d gone back and crossed a few things out in the backstory. His build, his eyes, his physique, were superimposed on...her hero?

This man was supposed to be a twin? Heaven help her if there were two of them. One was enough to make a werewolf run for cover.

He read on, entranced. Escape... That’s what this woman was all about, he thought, and she was very, very good at it. Her writing was part of her. The whole was entrancing.

* * *

She rounded the entire island. She found storm-blasted birds, some dead but most simply stunned and battered, hunkering down while they recovered.

She—or rather Heinz—found dead fish. Heinz let the birds be but not the fish. How much fish could one dog eat? Mary was past caring.

Thank God, no bodies.

Finally she made her way inland to check on the hut. But what hut? The base of the fireplace was all that was left. The tin roof was scattered through the bushland. The timber walls had crumbled. Her friends’ possessions were sodden and ruined. There seemed nothing left for her to save.

‘And we’ve probably ruined the quilt as well,’ she told Heinz.

‘I’ll fix it.’

Ben’s voice in the stillness made her jump. She turned and he was sitting on a fallen tree at the edge of the clearing, watching her.

‘You shouldn’t have come,’ she said, shocked. ‘You should be resting your knee.’

‘You’ve been gone for four hours,’ he said pointedly. ‘A man’s allowed to get worried. Two stout walking-sticks and I managed.’

‘How did you know where to come?’

‘There are two paths from the cave. One leads to the beach. I figured the other led here, and I figured this was where you’d end up. I’m up there with Einstein,’ he said proudly.

She managed a smile. He looked astonishing. His face was battered, the shirt and pants he was wearing had the odd rip, he’d wrapped his one bare foot in a ripped towel to form a makeshift shoe, but he looked...healthy?

Maybe more than healthy, she conceded. He looked more tough, rugged and good-looking than any man had a right to look.

Especially when a woman had to be sensible.

Think about something else, she told herself desperately. Focus. She gazed around the clearing at the mess.

Nothing occurred. She just wanted to look at him.

‘I’ll have the quilt cleaned,’ he told her. ‘Restored if necessary. I’ll have this cottage rebuilt if insurance doesn’t pay for it. I’ll do anything in my power to pay for what you’ve done for me. Starting with the quilt.’

‘How did you know the quilt’s important?’

‘I’ve seen homes destroyed in Afghanistan. I’ve seen women who’ve lost all their possessions, and I’ve seen what a tiny thing can mean.’ He smiled at her, but his smile had changed. All the compassion in the world was in that smile. ‘After you left I had a chance to take a good look at that quilt. It’s amazing.’

‘Barbara’s grandmother sewed it for her trousseau.’

Some time during the last twenty-four hours she’d told him about Barbara and Henry.

Some time in the last twenty-four hours she’d told him almost everything.

‘There’s not a lot here we can salvage,’ he said, and she didn’t reply. There wasn’t any need.

‘The boat?’ he asked, without much hope.

‘Smashed.’

‘You didn’t think to put it somewhere safe?’

She flashed him a look.

He grinned. ‘Yeah, I know. Lack of forethought is everywhere. I should have put my yacht in dry dock in Manhattan.’

‘The world’s full of should-haves.’

‘But on the other hand, I brought crackers, cheese and chocolate with me from the cave,’ he said, and she looked up at his lopsided hopeful expression and she couldn’t help smiling. He was playing the helpful Labrador.

And suddenly she thought... Cellar.

Henry had told her about the cellar, almost as an aside, when he’d been describing the house. ‘There’s a dugout under the washhouse,’ he said. ‘Accessed by a trapdoor. I keep a few bottles there if you’re desperate.’

Did this qualify as desperate?

She left Ben and headed for where the washhouse had been. She hauled a few timbers aside and after a couple of moments Ben hobbled across to help.

‘We’re looking for?’

‘Desperate measures,’ she said.

‘Sorry?’

‘Desperate times call for desperate measures. I’ll make it up to Henry somehow.’ She hauled the last piece of timber aside and exposed a trapdoor with a brass ring.

Ben tugged it up. It was a hole, four feet wide, maybe three feet deep.

‘You could have hidden in here during the storm,’ he said.