Marion Lennox - Their Baby Bargain

‘I guess.’ Luke stared dazedly down at the bundle-who stared back with lively interest. ‘She does look like me, doesn’t she?’

‘She certainly does.’ Her voice softened. ‘She’s the spitting image of you, Mr Grey. Apart from the fact that you’re opposite sexes, you’re almost identical twins-thirty years apart.’

He stared at the baby for a long moment, trying to take it on board. Finally he shrugged. ‘Maybe I need to go back. Explain the whole damned thing.’

‘I have time.’

He nodded. This woman really was the most restful person, he thought suddenly. He’d been wallowing in panic ever since he’d opened his door at six this morning. There’d been a knock but when he’d opened the door all he’d found was the bundle. The baby.

Panic? Maybe it wasn’t panic, he thought. Maybe panic was far too mild a word for it.

‘My father wasn’t very reliable,’ he said slowly. He took a deep breath, watching her reaction. There wasn’t one. Her face was carefully noncommittal and he had the feeling it’d take a lot to shock her. ‘Well, maybe that’s an understatement. I…I need to be able to make you see. My father had charisma. Anything he wanted, he got. He only had to smile…’

Wendy nodded. She could see that. She just had to look at Luke’s smile and she could see that.

‘He married my mother,’ Luke went on, his smile disappearing completely now and his voice bitter. ‘I suppose that’s one thing. The marriage lasted for a whole twelve months but at least I was born legitimate. I was the son he always said he wanted, but he wasn’t into fatherhood. It cramped his style. When he walked out, my mother went back home-her parents lived on a farm just out of Bay Beach-and I was brought up here. Sort of.’

‘Sort of?’ She’d never heard of this man, she thought, and she’d been in the district for years.

‘Of course, sort of. His son being brought up as a country hick didn’t suit my father one bit. To my father, ego was everything,’ Luke said bitterly. ‘I had to have the best. Despite my mother’s protestations, I was sent away to the best boarding schools, and the most prestigious university in Australia. I have no idea how he managed the school fees, and the fact that my mother lived on the breadline didn’t worry him a bit. He went from debt to debt. He lied, schemed, swindled-conned his way through life. I didn’t know it all. My mother kept it from me and she died when I was twelve, so it’s only in the last few years I found out just what his lifestyle was really like.’

‘And this baby?’

‘This little one was the result of an affair with a woman forty years his junior,’ he told her. ‘She left a letter this morning, explaining all. Apparently he set her up as he always set up his women-in the height of luxury. He lavished the best on her, and she had no reason to believe there wasn’t heaps more cash to come. She became pregnant and had their baby, she must still have been attracting him because he somehow kept supporting her-and then, a month ago, he died.’

Wendy grimaced. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘Don’t be,’ he said grimly. ‘There was no love lost between my father and me. Once I was old enough to realise how he got his money I never accepted another cent. Lindy, however, depended on him, and I gather she depended on him totally. He’s lied to her, he’s dead and now she’s been evicted from her gorgeous apartment and been left to her own devices.’

‘I see.’ Wendy couldn’t help herself. Her eyes swung to the window again. To the car. And her eyes asked a question.

He got it in one. Understanding flashed into his eyes, and with it, anger. ‘I’m a futures broker,’ he snapped, following her line of thought exactly. ‘So sure, I’m wealthy, but the money I earn is earned honestly. It’s nothing to do with my father.’

‘But you’re not sharing? With, who did you say, Lindy?’

‘I’ve hardly had a chance,’ he snapped. ‘Even if the idea of supporting my father’s mistress appealed to me-which it doesn’t-I wasn’t asked. I was overseas when my father died and I had no idea Lindy even existed. There’s been no contact between me and my father for years. I paid for the funeral and I thought that was it. Then today…’

‘Today?’

‘Lindy must have known about me,’ he said bitterly. ‘Maybe my father told her I existed and she came looking. Anyway, this morning the baby was dumped in her carry-cot in my lobby. The note Lindy left also said that she only had the baby because my father was so persuasive-he must have been having a late-life crisis or something. But now there’s no money she has no intention of staying saddled with a daughter. So she’s leaving. The baby’s all mine, the note said.’

All yours…

Wendy gazed across the table at Luke and he gazed back. Take this problem away from me, his eyes pleaded.

And those eyes… His father’s eyes… They could persuade a woman to do anything, she thought. They’d persuaded a young woman to have a baby she didn’t want. They could persuade her…

No! She needed to harden her heart.

Blood ties were the most important link a baby could have, Wendy knew. That truth had been drilled into her over and over, all through her career as a social worker. Maintain family links at all costs. Sever those links only if the child is in dire peril.

This baby was sitting on her half-brother’s lap, banging her spoon and chirruping as if the world was her oyster. She had a great big brother. Healthy, wealthy and secure, he could easily support her. If Wendy could swing it, this baby was set for life.

‘I assume you don’t live in Bay Beach now,’ she said softly, thinking hard as she spoke.

‘No. I have an apartment in Sydney and another in New York. I move around.’

‘You’ve driven this little one here-all the way from Sydney?’

He seemed a bit disconcerted at that. ‘Yes.’

‘Can I ask why?’ She hesitated, watching his face. ‘There are child care services in Sydney. You just had to look up the phone book to find one.’

‘I sort of wanted-’

‘You sort of wanted-what?’

He looked up and stared at her, his eyes blank. ‘Hell,’ he said at last. ‘It’s hard.’

‘I can see that.’

‘What’s your name?’ he asked suddenly, and she smiled.

‘Sorry, I should have said. It’s Wendy. Wendy Maher.’

‘Well, Wendy…’ He shook his head, his look still confused. On his lap his tiny sister had let her spoon fall sideways. She was squirming into his chest, and her dark little lashes were fluttering downward. He must have stopped along the road and fed her, Wendy thought. She was fed and warm and sleepy. Unconsciously Luke’s arms held her close as she nestled into him, and Wendy’s eyes warmed at the sight. Maybe…

‘I knew there was an orphanage here,’ he told her. ‘I remembered it and rang-to make sure it still existed. As a child I spent some time in the original Home under I guess what you’d call respite care, when my mother was ill and my grandparents couldn’t cope.’

‘I see.’

‘And…’ he was desperately trying to make her understand ‘…Bay Beach is a great place to grow up.’

‘It is at that.’ Damn. That hurt. Wendy’s grip tightened on Gabbie. She couldn’t give a Bay Beach upbringing to Gabbie, she thought bitterly, much as she’d love to. Still, a stable home had to be better than a specific location.

‘The best time in my life was when I lived here as a child,’ Luke continued, watching her face as if he was trying to guess her thoughts. ‘When my mother and my grandparents were alive it was great. The beach! The freedom!’ He gestured to the children outside. ‘These kids…they’re lucky.’

Yeah, right. He needed to pull the wool from his eyes on that one. Dumping his sister and running, and then telling himself it was all for the best because Bay Beach was a great place to grow up…

‘No, Mr Grey, these children aren’t lucky,’ she said firmly. ‘These children have problems. They don’t have parents who care for them. For now, these children are alone in the world. I’m a paid child care worker, and they only have me or those like me.’

There was a long, drawn out silence. In Luke’s arms, his tiny sister finally closed her eyes, nestling back into his chest with absolute trust.

Trust…

He stared across the table at Wendy. This woman was still young, he thought, but she was a far cry from the women he spent his free time with. She was a world away from them. There was warmth in her eyes, and compassion and caring. She could be beautiful, he thought. With a little make-up-a modern hairstyle-some decent clothes…

No!

She was beautiful now, he decided. She needed none of those things.

Why?

It was indefinable. He looked into the calm, grey depths of those luminescent eyes and he knew, despite what Wendy said, that these kids were lucky. Sure, they had dreadful problems, but in the midst of their crises, they’d found Wendy. ‘It’ll do for my sister,’ he said softly. ‘If that’s all there is. Her mother’s abandoned her, but there’s no one I’d rather leave her with than you.’

IT WASN’T going to happen.

He had his solution all mapped out, Wendy thought, looking across the table at him. Ha! She stared at him with trouble in her eyes and, as she tried to find words to reply, there was a thump on the door and a woman burst into the kitchen. It was Erin. Running late, as usual.

Like Wendy, Erin was in her late twenties, but unlike Wendy she was blonde, she was bouncy and she appeared supremely unfrazzled by life. She beamed at Wendy, and held up her hands in apology.

‘Sorry I’m late. You must have been panicking. I had to take Ben Carigan to placement. But what on earth is happening? That is the best car in your driveway! Fabulous. I’ve never seen such a car. Don’t tell me you’ve found someone to drive you to Sydney? But if you have, where are you going to put the luggage? There’s never room…’