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

‘Yeah, right. Four feet by four feet, filled with a hundred or so bottles of wine.’

‘After the first twenty you wouldn’t have noticed you were squashed.’ He lifted out the first bottle and stared. ‘Wow. Your friends have good taste.’

‘It’ll take me a month’s salary to pay them back but this might be worth it.’

‘I told you, I’m paying.’ He lifted the next bottle out and eyed it with reverence. ‘I’ve been trying to think of the perfect wine to go with crackers, cheese and chocolate. I think I’ve found it.’

‘You think we dare?’

‘I know we dare,’ Ben said. ‘My leg hurts. This is for medicinal purposes, if nothing else. And, Mary, I suspect you’re hurting, too,’ he said, and suddenly his voice gentled again. ‘Carting me up that beach was no mean feat. You must be aching, and inside there’s probably almost as much hurt as I’m carrying. I think we need this wine, Nurse Hammond. I think we both need all the help we can get.’

* * *

They sat on a sun-drenched log, looked out over the battered island, ate their crackers and cheese, and drank amazing wine.

The cheese was a bit dry and the glassware left a bit to be desired. Every glass in the cottage had been broken but a couple of ancient coffee mugs had survived the carnage.

It didn’t matter. The food tasted wonderful. The wine—stunning even in different circumstances—couldn’t have tasted better if it was drunk from exquisite crystal.

They didn’t talk. There seemed no need.

They were perched on a ledge overlooking the entire west of the island. Every tree seemed to have been shattered or flattened. The beach was a massive mound of litter. The sea still looked fierce, an aftermath of the storm, but the sun was on their faces. The world around them had been destroyed but for now, for this moment, all was peace.

Heinz had been lying at Mary’s feet. He suddenly stood, staggered a few feet away—and brought up half a fish.

‘Nice,’ Ben said.

‘I reckon he ate about six,’ Mary told him, grimacing. ‘There may be more to come.’

‘He might have chewed them before he swallowed.’

‘He was a stray when I found him. He eats first and asks questions later. Even essential questions, like “Can I fit it in?” or “Is it edible?”’

‘Really nice,’ Ben said, and then, when Heinz looked wistfully down at his half-fish, he stirred, grabbed a stick, gouged a hole in the sodden earth and buried it.

Then, at the look on Heinz’s face, he shoved the stick deep in the ground and tied a piece of ripped curtain at the top.

‘X marks the spot,’ he told Heinz. ‘Come the revolution, you know where it’s buried.’

‘Nice,’ Mary intoned back at him, and their eyes met and suddenly they were laughing.

It felt...amazing.

It felt free.

And Mary thought, for all the drama and tension of the last couple of days, she was feeling better than she’d felt for months.

Or years?

Because she’d made abandoned love to a guy she hardly knew?

But she did know him, she thought. She watched the laughter in his eyes, she watched the way he fondled Heinz’s floppy ears, she saw the tension in his face that could never be resolved until he knew his brother was safe, and she thought...she did know this man.

Somehow in the last twenty-four hours he seemed to have become part of her.

And that was crazy, she told herself. Any minute now the world would break in, and part of her would disappear back to Manhattan.

Besides, she didn’t do relationships. She’d trusted her father with her whole heart and he’d turned his back on her. His back was still turned. How did you walk away from something like that?

‘I read your book,’ he said, and she froze.

‘You read...’

‘Werewolves and dragons—and me.’ He grinned. ‘Entirely satisfactory.’

She was on her feet but feeling like the earth was opening under her. Her writing... It had always been her escape. This man had read it? ‘You had no right...’

‘I know,’ he confessed. ‘But I was bored. Do you mind?’

‘I don’t show my writing to anyone.’ It was part of her, the part she disappeared into when life got too hard. That he’d seen it...

‘You should. It’s great.’

‘It’s fantasy.’

‘I suspected that,’ he said gravely. ‘I haven’t exactly learned how to handle a six-pronged sword in real life.’

She closed her eyes.

‘Mary, I really am sorry,’ he said. ‘You look like... It seems important. I shouldn’t have intruded. I shouldn’t have looked.’

He shouldn’t have looked into her? What was it about this man? He was seeing...all of her.

She opened her eyes again met his gaze. Straight and true. Where had that phrase come from?

He was a man to be trusted?

Maybe she had no choice. She’d already exposed so much.

Deep breath. What would a normal...writer...say if someone had read their work? ‘You think it’s over the top?’ she tried, cautiously, and he seemed to relax.

‘It is over the top and it’s great.’ He grinned. ‘A few more thousand words and the publication world awaits.’

‘Don’t mock.’

‘I’m not mocking,’ he said, and there was that look again. Straight and true. ‘Mary, it’s awesome.’ Then his face changed, to an expression she could hardly understand. ‘I think you’re awesome,’ he added. ‘I wish there were some dragons I could slay on your behalf in real life.’

This was doing her head in. Any minute now she’d step forward and take this man and hold him.