The Honeymoon Arrangement

Seb poured them all some coffee and placed a cup on the table in front of Callie. ‘Aren’t you late for work?’ he asked, glancing at his watch.

Callie shrugged. ‘I let them know. Besides, I have so much holiday time due to me that I can take a morning here and there.’

She unwrapped the cheese and placed it on the cutting board Yasmeen had placed in front of her. Yasmeen passed her a grater and Callie got to work.

‘Hey, Ro?’

‘Mmm?’ Rowan looked up from her job of cutting red bell peppers. In Yas’s kitchen everyone helped. Including Seb, who was dicing mushrooms.

‘I had a call from the sexy Finn last night.’

‘What sexy Finn?’ Seb demanded. ‘Is this another European man you’re dating?’

Callie laughed. ‘No, this is Ro’s client Finn. The one we went to meet last night.’

Callie pinched some cheese and popped it into her mouth. After chewing, she told them about Finn’s crazy be-my-fake-wife offer.

Rowan looked at her, bemused. ‘Are you mad? Take him up on it!’

‘I’m flying to Paris, Ro, I have a job.’

‘You’ve just said that you have so much holiday time owed to you,’ Ro argued.

‘Stop encouraging her to act crazy, darling,’ Seb told Rowan. ‘And running off with a man she doesn’t know would be crazy. Talking about crazy—Cal, we need to talk.’

The mood in the room instantly turned serious as Seb cleared his throat. Rowan frowned and bit her bottom lip. Yasmeen stopped beating the eggs and Seb stared down at his pile of fungi.

Something was up, and whatever it was she knew from their response that she wouldn’t like it. ‘What’s going on?’ she asked.

Seb sent Rowan a pleading look, but Rowan just shook her head. Seb looked at her, fear and worry and, strangely, a touch of excitement in his deep blue eyes. ‘Cal, I have to tell you something.’

Callie shook her head, knowing instinctively that she didn’t want to hear whatever he was going to say. She held up her hand. ‘I don’t want to know.’

‘Laura is coming home.’

Crap. Dammit. Hell.

Laura. Her mother. Their mother. The woman, as Seb had told her a few months back, he had reconnected with. Oh, she’d always suspected that he’d kept track of her; he was a brilliant ethical hacker and there wasn’t any information he couldn’t find.

‘I want to see her again and she’s returning to Cape Town for a visit.’

Seb had a stubborn look on his face and she knew that his mind was made up.

‘Are you paying for her to come home?’ Callie demanded.

Seb’s lack of an answer was confirmation that he was.

‘If you bring her back to Awelfor I’ll never forgive you,’ Callie whispered, her stomach now in a knot, twisted with tension and long-ago suppressed hurt.

Her mother had walked out when she was seven. As far as Callie was concerned she’d had twenty years to come back home. It was way too late now.

‘I wasn’t planning to—not yet,’ Seb said in a quiet voice. ‘She’s coming home for a three-week visit and we’ve agreed to meet. She wants to see you too.’

Callie shook her head wildly. ‘Hell, no! No to the max. No!’

Seb held up his hands. ‘I know that this is a shock, But …’

Callie pulled in a deep breath and pushed back the hurt, the feeling of abandonment, the constant ache for her mother. Her eyes turned cold and her face tightened.

‘When is she due to land?’ she asked quietly, thinking that this was what Rowan had started to tell her the other night. She had been trying to warn her about Laura’s arrival—trying to get her head wrapped around the idea of Laura returning.

Sorry, Ro, not even marginally interested.

Seb checked his watch. ‘Today is the eleventh; she’s flying in on the nineteenth. Will you be back in town by then?’

Callie grabbed her mobile from her bag and quickly pulled up her diary app. She cursed when she saw that after Paris she didn’t have any trips scheduled for a couple of weeks. Three, to be exact. It was the end of a three-month rotation—but why, oh, why did it have to be now?

She’d be home at exactly the same time as her mother would be in the city. That wouldn’t do. That wouldn’t do at all. She wouldn’t risk running into her, having her arrive on her doorstep, popping into Awelfor and seeing her here. She wouldn’t take the chance.

She’d endured twenty years of silence and Laura didn’t just get to rock up now and make demands. She’d made her choice when she left—she had to live with it now.

‘Will you try to be here?’ Seb asked quietly, rephrasing his question.

Callie shook her head before yanking her bag off the chair and heading for the door. ‘Hell, no. I don’t have a mother—I haven’t had one for twenty years. So Laura can just go back to wherever she came from and I don’t want to talk about her again. Ever!’

‘Cal—’ Seb pleaded.

‘Don’t mention her name again, Seb,’ Callie muttered, before stepping out of the door, blinking back tears. It had to be the bright sunlight making her cry because her mother—Laura!—wasn’t worth a single one of her tears.

Looking down at her mobile in her hand, she thought that she couldn’t be in the country, breathing the same air as Laura. She’d rather do anything else, be anywhere else. Even—

‘Finn? It’s Callie. You called me last night? If you haven’t married, proposed to or found anybody else to be your wife since we spoke last night I might be your girl.’

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_fa66b19b-35e9-52e0-afe1-768cf33f4932)

CALLIE LEFT AWELFOR and headed directly to Simon’s Town, the pretty town to the east of the city of Cape Town. Her father had set up a branch of his sea kayaking tours there after handing over the family property business to Seb. Patch loved his life as a kayak guide and tour operator. Like her, he was vivacious and open; if she had any charm at all she’d inherited it all from him.

Callie sat on the low wall that separated the promenade from the beach and watched Patch converse with his customers while his assistants unloaded the kayaks from the trailer that he’d driven onto the beach. He was still tall and broad and handsome—quite a silver fox, Callie thought. Thank God he’d finally given up dating vapid and beautiful women—mostly younger than her—and was about to marry a woman his own age.

He and Annie seemed to be blissfully happy, and after what Laura and the crazy gold-diggers had put him through she was happy for him. He deserved to be loved and loved well. And, judging by the perpetual grin he was sporting lately, Annie loved him very well indeed.

Callie let out a whistle that Patch had taught her as a kid and Patch instantly turned, his fantastic smile lighting up his face. She might have had a screwed-up childhood, and maybe Patch hadn’t been the perfect father, but it had been a very long time since she’d doubted that he loved her. He was one of her best friends and the strongest rope keeping the balloon that was her life tethered to the ground.

Patch bounded across the sand and immediately pulled her into his arms, warm and strong. She buried her head in his neck, sucked in the smell of him and felt her tilting world settle down. Patch ran a hand over her hair before kissing her temple and stepping away from her to sit on the wall next to her.

‘Seb told you, huh?’

‘Yeah.’ She suddenly remembered that her mother had been his wife and wondered how he was handling the news. ‘How do you feel about her returning?’