Lindsay Armstrong - From Waif To His Wife

Rafe paced around for a moment. Then he shrugged. ‘I’ve had some thoughts, but in the first instance I don’t know if any of it is true. That’s why I need to check her out.’

‘Karoo and your dogs seem to suggest, well, I don’t know what!’

‘That may only mean she has some inside information she’s got from family or staff, it could even mean she’s working with someone else, some-’he gestured ‘-disgruntled ex-staffer.’

‘What’s she like?’ Jack asked.

Rafe stopped pacing and directed a mocking grey glance at his secretary. ‘A typical waif until she loses her temper. A-quite a character. However, if it is true someone out there is using my name to attract girls, I want to know who it is.’

‘Naturally!’

‘But first I want a complete background check of Mairead Wallis, commonly known as Maisie, of this address,’ he handed Jack a piece of paper, ‘and I would also like to know if she is pregnant.’

‘You mean it might just be a ploy to get herself noticed by you?’

‘I mean exactly that, Jack,’ Rafe said with a cynical twisting of his lips.

‘But how can I find that out?’ Jack asked reasonably. ‘I mean, officially find out if she’s pregnant?’

‘I’ll leave it up to you, mate. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have another appointment but, Jack, this matter needs to be handled with utter discretion.’

‘Of course,’ Jack Huston assured his boss, but he blinked a couple of times before he gathered himself and left.

Rafe Sanderson’s next appointment was with his mistress.

It was to have a curious outcome.

He found himself regarding the rear, naked view of his current lover.

It was a beautiful view; pale, pearly skin, gorgeous curves, a river of shiny fair hair that flowed to well below her shoulders. She was also a tall girl and, since he was six feet four, he appreciated tall girls.

The front view was just as beautiful. Deep blue eyes, a perfect oval face, more glorious curves but, he thought and stirred restlessly, not exactly an original thinker beneath all that beauty.

He was lying back, propped against some pillows on a vast bed with plum satin sheets, in a sumptuously appointed bedroom. The shades were discreetly drawn against the late-afternoon sun and his lover had just participated with him in some very sensuous, no-holds-barred sex.

But had it been so sensuous he wondered suddenly. And if not, why not?

He watched with a frown as the girl, with an elegant gesture, swept her hair up with one hand as she donned a silk robe.

Her movements were not the only elegant things about her. She dressed elegantly, she maintained this elegant apartment, she entertained elegantly and with flair. As well as that, her family owned several vast cattle stations, so there was no question of her being a fortune-huntress.

In other words, he thought drily, she would make a perfect wife, so did it matter if at times he found her-what he wondered.

A bit too perfect, a bit too suitable? A bit too compliant?

She never really surprised him. He suddenly realised that she never occupied his thoughts when he was away from her. She never annoyed him, not that he was looking for someone to annoy the life out of him, but-the admission caused him to grimace because it didn’t show him in the best light even to himself-in every area other than bed, she bored him, and maybe even there now.

‘Alicia,’ he said suddenly, ‘what would you say if I suggested we took a year off and went to sub-Saharan Africa to work amongst refugees?’

Alicia Hindmarsh turned slowly with her brush in her hand and disconcerted Rafael Sanderson for the first time.

‘If you married me, Rafe, I’d say yes.’ She drew her brush slowly through her fair hair.

You can’t mean that, Alicia, he thought incredulously. You can’t honestly believe I’m serious, anyway! Or are you saying you’re prepared to pay any price to get me to marry you when you know, and I know, you’d be lucky to last a week in that kind of scenario?

‘You mean you’d actually like to do that?’

‘No, I’d probably hate it. There are some people who are good at that kind of thing, I don’t think I’m one of them. But I would like to marry you, Rafe.’

He looked away and could have kicked himself. He might have belatedly discovered she bored him, he might find her mindset incredible, but he wasn’t going to enjoy hurting her.

‘I was only kidding,’ he said.

‘About marrying me, as well?’ she asked, her big blue eyes shadowed.

‘You were the one…’He stopped. ‘Alicia, you’d hate being married to me; I’d make a terrible husband. For one thing I’d never be there.’

‘I wouldn’t mind that. I’d be perfectly happy to take you as you come.’

He took a breath and suddenly found himself on her side, although she might not realise it for what it was.

‘No,’ he said firmly. ‘Listen to me, Alicia, don’t take that kind of rubbish from any man.’ He paused and realised he meant every word of it. ‘Don’t marry anyone, in other words, who can’t live without you, whose world doesn’t fall down if he can’t have you because you belong to him and he belongs to you.’

He got out of bed and shrugged into his clothes. ‘That’s what you deserve, nothing less. Don’t sell yourself short.’

He walked over to her and took her hand. ‘Believe me.’

‘Do you think you’ll ever tie the knot, Rafe?’ she asked.

‘I…’ He waved away the question. ‘One day.’

‘Do you know what I hope for you?’

‘What?’

‘You fall for someone you can’t have,’ she said bitterly.

He smiled lopsidedly, and kissed her hand. ‘I know I deserve that. But remember what I said the next time you think you’re in love, please. In fact, ask yourself this-is he good enough for me? If he’s not, give him the flick.’

He walked home with an unpleasant taste in his mouth as a chill dusk settled.

He had no doubt he’d be the worst kind of husband for Alicia Hindmarsh. He’d walk all over her and make her life a misery. So why did he feel…regretful, yes, that was perfectly natural-but was there something else?

He frowned as he strode along the deserted inner-city pavements on a Sunday evening.

Why the hell should he find himself wondering how Maisie Wallis was spending her evening?

Why should he recall the meal they’d shared on the Mary-Lue last night with unexpected pleasure?

MAISIE, on that Sunday evening, was making lists of everything she had to do.

Put the house on the market; ditto the boat.

That was going to entail a significant amount of sorting and cleaning, enough to keep her busy for weeks.

Find herself somewhere else to live-if only there was some way she could keep the house, she thought wistfully. But no, she was going to need the money because, apart from anything else, she was shortly going to have to give up her job.

Single mothers might be accepted in other walks of life but not at the strict private school she taught at, she knew.

That didn’t mean to say she couldn’t give private piano lessons and that was what she would do. But it was going to take a while to build up pupils and a reputation.

She would also shortly have to give up her part-time job with the band for obvious reasons. That reminded her, though, that she did have a ball to play at during the week.

But she suddenly pushed her lists away with a sigh and went out onto the veranda. As she leant on the railing and watched the lights in the harbour below, she thought back over the last forty-eight hours and the incredible interlude on the Mary-Lue.

Would she ever hear again from Rafe Sanderson she wondered.

They’d parted company in the marina car park after she’d given him her address and phone number, and received a certain Jack Huston’s mobile number, his PA or something, in return.

He’d got into a sleek silver Ferrari and his last words to her, accompanied by a fleeting smile, had been, ‘Take care of both of you, Maisie Wallis.’

She felt herself grow warm as she remembered the fantasies she’d experienced about the man who was not the father of her baby.

It still amazed her, she realised, to find herself capable of feeling like that about another man. She forced herself to think about it.

Of course, she acknowledged, three and a half months of the growing realisation she’d been abandoned had coloured her feelings towards the man responsible for her pregnancy. To the extent that she had got mad, and she’d even got to the stage of hating him as much as she hated the fact that she’d been so foolish.

But should she hate him entirely? Because she might have found herself rather fiercely and protectively viewing the baby she was carrying as hers, but wasn’t it also always going to remind her of its father?

She sighed deeply as she contemplated the maelstrom of emotions she’d been flung into.

But she was left with two inescapable facts. What man was going to want her with another man’s child?

In other words, she told herself plainly, it was no good even thinking about the real Rafe Sanderson even if he did do the strangest things to her.

The other inescapable fact was that in a little less than six months she’d be responsible for another life and-sad as it was to have happened the way it had-she would have someone to love.

She sniffed as some tears escaped the ban she’d placed on them and rolled down her cheeks. And she acknowledged that it was the one thought that had kept her sane, it was the thought to hold on to, a baby in her arms. It was her lifeline.

Five days later, Jack Huston reported to Rafe Sanderson on the Mairead Wallis situation.

They were in Rafe’s office. It was half the size of a football field but, despite being more suitable for a luxury hotel lounge, it was the nerve centre of Sanderson Minerals and the Dixon pastoralist empire.