Inherited: Twins

Puzzled by her silence, Nat looked across to check that she was all right and their eyes met for a brief instant. There was nothing in his expression to suggest that he was aware of how closely she had been studying him, but Prue felt a blush steal up her cheeks and she jerked her gaze away.

‘You’re lucky,’ she muttered, averting her face and conscious of a quite inexplicable feeling of shyness. ‘You belong here. You don’t have to go to London and wonder if you’ll ever see the outback again.’

Nat didn’t answer immediately. A road train was bearing down on them, and he lifted a hand to acknowledge the driver’s wave as it thundered past with four long trailers.

‘You’ll just have to come back after the wedding,’ he said when it had gone, able to put his foot down on the accelerator at last. ‘The Grangers will still be here, and I’m sure they’d give you another job.’

‘I’m not sure I’ll be able to do that.’ Prue had recovered from her momentary confusion. ‘It took me ages to save the money for this trip, and I’ve spent it all now. If I wanted to buy another ticket, I’d have to start all over again.’

‘Couldn’t you do that?’

‘I could, but by the time I’d got enough money together I’d probably be too old to get a work permit—and even if I wasn’t, they would have had to have found a new cook for Cowen Creek.’

What was the betting that the next cook would be young, and pretty, and completely at home in the outback? Just the type to convince Ross that it was time to settle down, in fact. Desperation clutched at Prue’s heart as she imagined coming back to find that Ross had given up waiting for her to get used to the bush and married someone much more suitable instead.

‘So what you need,’ said Nat, following his own train of thought, ‘is a short-term job that will pay you enough to cover your fare back to Australia?’

Prue nodded. ‘Except I’ll probably need at least two jobs in order to save anything. I could get some office work during the day and waitress in the evenings, and if I stay with my parents I won’t have to pay London rents, which would make a difference. It’ll be all right if it’s not for too long,’ she tried to convince herself.

It would still take months before she could get back to Australia, she calculated in despair, and she sighed. ‘Perhaps I could rob a bank or something!’

‘What about a job that paid your flight back to Australia instead?’

‘I can’t see there being many of those advertised in the jobs pages,’ said Prue glumly. ‘Robbing a bank would be easier than finding a job like that. I might as well think about sprouting wings and flying back myself!’

‘You shouldn’t be so negative,’ said Nat. ‘Do you know anything about babies?’

Prue was momentarily thrown by the sudden change of subject. ‘Babies?’ she echoed uncertainly. ‘As in very small people, dirty nappies and sleepless nights?’

Nat grimaced. ‘It sounds as if you do know about them,’ he said in a dry voice.

‘I spent a lot of time with my elder sister’s children when they were tiny. I’ve always loved babies,’ she told him. ‘They’re a lot of work, but they’re so gorgeous and…’

She broke off, belatedly realising why he might be asking and sat bolt upright to turn to him, her face suddenly alight with excitement. ‘You don’t know anyone who wants a nanny, do you?’

‘Yes,’ said Nat, nodding and the corner of his mouth lifted in a slight smile. ‘I do.’

CHAPTER TWO

PRUE’S grey eyes widened. ‘You’ve got children?’

There was no reason why he shouldn’t, of course, but she couldn’t help feeling surprised. He seemed so self-contained that it was hard to imagine him with a wife amid the cheerful chaos of family life.

What would Nat’s wife be like? Prue wondered. Probably as cool and sensible as he was himself. Certainly not the kind of woman who would forget to put fuel in the car, or cry, or pour out her heart to a virtual stranger, she decided, and felt unaccountably depressed.

‘I’m going to have two.’ Nat’s smile was a little twisted as he thought about how much his life was going to change.

‘Going to…?’

Glancing sideways, Nat caught her puzzled expression. ‘They’re not mine,’ he explained. ‘I’m talking about my brother’s children, William and Daisy. They’re twins, just eight months old and I’m their guardian now.’ He paused. ‘Ed and his wife were killed in a car accident in England a couple of months ago.’

Shocked, Prue pressed her hand to her mouth. ‘How terrible,’ she said, conscious of how inadequate her words sounded.

‘I thought you might have heard about the accident,’ said Nat after a moment. ‘The Grangers knew Ed and Laura pretty well. They bought a property just to the east of Cowen Creek last year, and they’d help each other out on big musters sometimes.’

Prue shook her head. ‘I didn’t know,’ she said. She had been too wrapped up in Ross to take any interest in the Grangers’ neighbours she realised, ashamed. ‘I’m so sorry,’ she went on, biting her lip. ‘What were they doing in England?’

‘Laura was English, like you. Ed met her when he was over in London, but they married out here. Laura loved the outback, too, and she was quite happy to live here but she felt guilty about her parents. They’re quite elderly, and couldn’t manage the trip out to Australia, so they hadn’t been at the wedding. When the twins were born, she knew they would be longing to see their grandchildren and Ed promised that he would take her and the babies to London for a visit instead.

‘That was in April,’ Nat went on. ‘It’s a busy time of year, but Ed knew how much it would mean to Laura, so he asked me to keep an eye on things while he was gone. He said they would only be a month.’

The careful lack of expression in his voice made Prue’s heart twist with pity, and she cringed as she remembered how she had whinged on about her own problems which were so pathetic in comparison to his.

‘What happened?’ she asked awkwardly.

‘They’d been in London three weeks when Laura’s parents offered to look after the twins for a day so that she and Ed could have some time to themselves. It was the first time they’d left William and Daisy. Apparently it was a nice day, and they decided to drive out to the country…’

He trailed off, and Prue found herself imagining Ed and Laura kissing the babies goodbye, waving cheerfully as they got into the car and drove off, looking forward to a day together alone away from the city’s noise and grime. Not knowing that they would never be coming back.

‘They were in a head-on collision with a van,’ Nat finished. ‘The police told us that they would have both been killed instantly.’

‘But the babies weren’t with them?’

‘No, they were with Laura’s parents so they’re fine.’ As fine as they could be when their world had been torn apart, Nat amended grimly to himself.

He was very grateful to Prue for not offering false comfort or asking him how he had felt, what he was still feeling. He didn’t want to talk about that.

‘Where are they now?’ asked Prue, almost as if she understood intuitively that he was happier sticking to the practicalities of the situation he had to deal with now.

‘They’re still with Laura’s parents in London,’ he said. ‘I went over as soon as I heard. Ed and Laura wanted William and Daisy to grow up as Australians, and they knew that her parents would be in no position to look after them, so they’d made a will appointing me as guardian. I don’t think they thought for a minute that anything would ever happen to them, that I would ever need to take responsibility for their children.’

‘But now that’s what you’ve got to do?’

‘Yes.’ His glance flickered over to Prue. She had turned slightly in her seat to face him as far as she could in the confines of her seatbelt, her expression warm and sympathetic. ‘There was no way I could bring William and Daisy back with me after the funeral,’ he told her, and he found himself hoping that she would understand and approve of what he had done. ‘I arranged for a nanny to look after them with the Ashcrofts—Laura’s parents—until I could sort things out here and make sure that I would be able to care for them properly, but I think it’s important for me to go and get them as soon as possible.’

Prue nodded understandingly. ‘The longer you leave them, the more attached they will become to the nanny and the harder it will be to take them away.’

‘Exactly.’ Nat looked at her gratefully. ‘The trouble is, I’m going to need help. I don’t know anything about babies. I’m not sure I would be able to cope with one baby on a plane, let alone two. That’s where you come in,’ he said. ‘I think we may be able to help each other. You want to come back to Australia; I want someone to help me look after William and Daisy. I’ll buy you a return ticket if you’ll fly back with me and the twins,’ he finished.

For a moment, Prue could only stare at him, unable to believe that he could sound so casual. ‘That’s…incredibly generous,’ she stammered, not entirely convinced that he knew what a generous offer it was.

‘Not if you think about how much I need you,’ said Nat with a wry glance. ‘I can put a mob of cattle through the yards, and do all those things that you said you wanted to be able to do earlier, but I don’t know where to begin with a baby! If you come, you’re going to have to teach me how to feed them and change them and bath them and do all the other things they need. Could you do that?’

‘Well, yes, I suppose so, but—’

‘It’s not just a question of the flight either. Eve, the nanny who’s looking after William and Daisy at the moment, thinks that it would be upsetting for them to be suddenly taken away from everything that’s familiar. They won’t remember Australia now. She suggested that I spend a few weeks getting to know them before bringing them back, and it would make sense for you to come along too.’

‘I can see that,’ said Prue, nodding. ‘They would need to get used to being with us.’