His Housekeeper Bride

She gave him a smile that wobbled. ‘The doctor told us to say goodbye. Mum told me to be a brave girl and look after the boys.’

Oh, God help him. God help them both in what they had to face when they left here.

‘Want to hit something with me?’he asked, to see what she’d do. Maybe she needed to lash out, to scream or yell, do something to let her suffering out.

She gave a gulping laugh, then two fat tears welled in her eyes. ‘I have to set a good example for the boys.’ Her slight body began to shake and lurch forward.

‘Come here.’ He held the trembling girl in his arms, feeling safe, at peace. She lived inside a similar cage to his, and she wasn’t asking anything from him but to hold her, to understand.

Weird how a girl barely out of childhood could become his only haven…even weirder how he’d become hers, too. But he sure couldn’t seem to make anyone else happy.

When she lay still against him, the only sound her hiccupping now and then, he wiped her tears with the cloth she’d brought for him. ‘Hey, you want a drink or something?’

A soft, catching double breath told him she hadn’t heard. Probably she’d spent the night caring for her youngest brother, who had croup.

Nobody knew the Brown family’s story, for none of them talked about themselves. They all knew ‘Shirley Temple’ was the oldest of four kids. Local gossip said that Mrs Brown shouldn’t have had the last of her children because she was too sick; she had something wrong with her heart that could threaten her life. She’d had him three years ago by C-section, and had been slowly dying since then, her heart too weak to pump. She’d been on the list for a transplant, but when one had finally come she’d been too sick for the operation.

So while Mr Brown was crying over the imminent loss of his wife, Shirley Temple was caring for the needs of her little brothers. It was the scandal of the hospital, but the girl did it all with a serene, defiant smile, neither complaining nor welcoming any sympathy. Social workers had come and gone, amazed by the strength of this girl who played a mother’s part with seeming ease, refusing to admit she needed any help from the networks.

But she had to sleep some time…someone had to let her sleep. Poor kid.

His back was aching from sitting up unsupported. Holding her awkwardly in his arms, he wriggled back until he found the trunk of a big, thick old pine tree in the centre of the garden. He rested against it and closed his eyes, feeling a deep sense of life and hope emanating from her. Peace enveloped him.

‘Mary! Mary!’

The panicked bellow woke them both with a start. Mark peered around the darkening garden with bleary eyes. The last thing he’d remembered was yawning. Now the sun was behind the western wall. Dusk had come and was almost gone.

‘Mary!’

‘Shirley Temple’ jumped in his arms; Mark let her go, and she scrambled to her feet, rubbing her eyes, still swaying with tiredness. ‘Da-Dad?’

A man was peering out of the slide-up aluminium window on the opposite ward to Chloe’s. He had that poleaxed look of grief that Mark had seen on too many faces in the past few years.

‘She’s gone.’ He didn’t even seem to notice that a strange boy was standing beside his daughter, had been holding her in his arms. ‘She’s gone, Mary.’

A child’s cough and a wail came from inside the room behind him.

Mark watched ‘Shirley Temple’—Mary—sway again, her lip tremble and her eyes blink. He waited for the tears to come. Then she squared her shoulders. ‘I’m coming.’

Mark turned to stare at Mary’s father. In disbelief he saw the man’s face crumple with relief. ‘You’re my good girl…’ He withdrew from the window.

Mark watched Mary walk away with a poise that seemed totally wrong. She was thirteen and she’d just lost her mother. How could she be so—so calm?

‘Mary?’ he said, using her real name for the first time.

Mary turned her head, looking over her shoulder at him. In that moment he saw not the girl but the woman she would become. No: there was a woman already inside her—a person of more courage and strength than he’d ever have. Her eyes were open windows to a beautiful soul—and Mark grieved for the maturing of this girl to a woman he’d want to know. Because this was the last moment he’d have with her. She was leaving—going to that unbearable future without him.

‘Will you be—all right?’ Inadequate words for all he wanted to say.

Her bottom lip was sucked under the top one, and tears were falling down her cheeks, but the delicate body was tight and straight. He saw the contours of her body in the silhouette of shadowy lights against the wall, the last light of the falling sun, and for the first time he saw a girl poised on the brink of womanhood. It was a reaction as physical as it was emotional, and guilt pierced him that he could even think that way when Chloe was in the room behind him, dying….

‘I promised,’ Mary said simply. ‘Goodbye, Mark. I have to go now.’

And then she was gone.

Mark stood in the garden until darkness filled it. Then he walked back into the ward, to Chloe’s room. The entire family was there, and each of them had identical expressions of grief and accusation on their faces as they looked at him—even Katie and Jon.

The tense, exhausted look on Chloe’s thin face broke him. It was obvious she’d spent most of the afternoon fighting her wasting body, summoning up all her reserves of courage and strength to continue her quest for his promise. It meant that much to her to believe that one day he’d find happiness again.

He waved the family out with the cold fierceness that was starting to feel like a second skin over his heart and soul. ‘I’ll do it,’ was all he said when they were alone.

Those cobweb-delicate eyes slowly closed; her face relaxed. She brought his hand to her cheek—the hand that had for four weeks borne his ring. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered, and drifted back into a ghost-like sleep, releasing his hand as her body unwound like a coil with its pressure released.

Mark’s hand moved over her limp hair. Even now Chloe was beautiful, yet all he could see at this moment was the face of the girl who’d just left him behind. Perhaps because he saw a mirror of Mary’s reflection in Chloe’s acceptance of death, the dignity, grace and courage to say goodbye, to make a promise and keep it.

Filled with hatred at the thought of what he’d promised, Mark clenched his free fist and sat on the chair beside his wife’s bed, watching her face. Waiting again…and already missing his only friend.

CHAPTER ONE

Office of the CEO, Howlcat Industries, Sydney Harbour, the present day

‘WHY, Bren? Why the—?’ Mark skidded to a mental halt, remembering his three-year-old niece was sitting on his lap. Shelby was prone to repeat anything he said and then bat her long golden eyelashes at her father when she got in trouble for it, saying, ‘But Unca Mark says it.’ He amended his words. ‘You think she’ll do, so why do I have to interview this woman? She’s a housekeeper. I have better things to do with my time than—’

Brenda Compton, née Hannaford, pulled her thick dark-blonde hair back off her face and fanned her neck, but grinned at Mark’s careful pruning of his language. ‘Well, of course, if you want me to conduct the interviews for you, find another…um…suitable woman…’

He set his jaw at the reminder. He might be CEO of Howlcat Industries, Australia’s most successful engineering firm, in total control of the company he’d built from the ground up—but at home he had too many reminders of his humanity. His family knew him well, as no one else did—his hidden weaknesses, the way he spaced out when caught by an idea…

And they never failed to reminder him of the promise he still hadn’t kept. But why had Bren chosen now, today, to make that reminder, to find him another suitable woman?

Today was his wedding anniversary. In six weeks it would be the anniversary of the day he’d become a widower.

His mother and his sisters had interviewed every housekeeper he’d ever hired. Before he gave them a contract he had them vetted by the best security firms in the country, and he paid them well. He also forced them to sign a confidentiality clause.

None of his precautions had stopped his employees selling their story about him to the tabloids, or bringing along their daughters or nieces, who happened to be pretty and single and, who’d love to be taken out on the town, marry a multi-millionaire and give him the family and kids his parents and sisters so romantically believed was in his future.

Today was a reminder that he’d never risk his heart and soul again. He’d never risk becoming a person so lost in grief that he’d almost—

Grimly he blocked out the memory, and answered Bren. ‘I’ll interview her myself…but she can wait in the outer office until I’m da—good and ready.’

Bren grinned and pretended to bow to him—which earned her a paper bird tossed in her hair. He often made origami when he was thinking up the dimensions of new inventions, needing to keep his hands busy while his mind worked.

His family were the only ones who could get away with any kind of irreverence with him. Everyone else was too afraid of his cool sarcasm. ‘Heart of Ice’ was his nickname in the press, and he was happy to keep it that way. It kept the nice women away from him—and fame-and-fortune-hunters deserved all they got—which was nothing but an occasional good time and their faces in the glossies.

‘What’s da—good, Unca Mark?’ Shelby’s big bright eyes were alight with curiosity.

He grinned down at his niece and pulled her ponytail, until she mock-shrieked and tugged hard at his nose. ‘It means really, really good.’

‘Okay,’ Shelby replied, her face thoughtful. She knew he’d covered the truth and was trying to work out what he’d been about to say. She was a Hannaford, all right.