His Miracle Bride Read online

  It couldn’t extend to Shanni.

  But…She needed a rest. She was broke. She wanted to stay.

  He’d asked Blake to help. At the thought of what he’d ask his foster brother to do, he settled a little. It was three in the morning. That meant it was six in the evening in London, and Blake was in London. The international law firm Blake worked with meant he had a base in every major financial district in the world.

  Six…Yeah, he’d be still working, Pierce thought. Like the rest of Ruby’s boys, Blake was a workaholic. Ruby had launched them with professional qualifications, and past hunger had fed their ambition.

  Blake answered on the first ring. ‘Hey, Pierce.’ From the other side of the world, Pierce’s foster brother reacted with pleasure. It was the same for all of them, Pierce thought. Like men who’d gone to battle together, their past meant that they were unfailingly there for each other in a world where they’d learned to trust no one else. ‘How goes the menagerie?’

  He’d told Blake what he was doing. He’d needed his legal expertise. Blake had reacted with shock, and he had been right behind Pierce’s decision not to tell Ruby any more than she’d overheard.

  ‘Great,’ Pierce told him now, without conviction.

  ‘Are you at the farm?’

  ‘We’re at Loganaich Castle.’

  ‘What, all of you?’

  ‘Yeah.’

  There was a moment’s pause. Then, ‘Hell, Pierce, Ruby will find out about the kids.’

  ‘The staff here have sworn confidentiality. Besides, these people don’t see Ruby. She was only here at the opening in her past foster parent role.’

  ‘If you’re sure…’

  ‘I’m sure.’

  ‘Cos, bro, much as I love you, if you’re in trouble with those kids you’re not landing them on Ruby.’

  ‘I won’t do that.’

  Blake heard the finality of Pierce’s tone and backed off. ‘I’m sorry. I know you won’t. So to what do I owe the pleasure of this call?’

  ‘Shanni.’

  ‘Shanni, as in Ruby’s niece? Your temporary housekeeper?’

  ‘That’s the one. You got the consent forms I sent you?’

  ‘I did.’

  ‘So I was wondering where it’s at.’

  ‘Are we in a rush?’ Blake asked cautiously.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s broke,’ Pierce said. ‘And I’m stuck with her until she’s not broke any more. I want her gone.’

  There was a moment’s pause. ‘Um…I thought you needed her for the kids.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because the staff here are competent to do any caring that’s required, and I don’t want her getting any closer to the kids.’

  ‘Because?’

  ‘Hell, Blake…’

  ‘I’m supposed to guess?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘She’s pretty, right?’

  ‘No!’ Was she? He thought back to Shanni and her pig pyjamas and her blanket. ‘A bit.’

  ‘She’s gorgeous, maybe?’

  ‘What’s that got to do with it?’

  ‘Nothing. I just wondered…So, she’s at the castle with you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you want to get rid of her?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘And you can’t get rid of her unless she has money.’

  ‘She’s been running this art show in London.’

  ‘I know that.’

  ‘So you’ve been working on it?’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Too soon to tell, boyo,’ Blake said lazily. ‘You might be stuck with her for a few days yet.’

  ‘But a promise might be enough to get her off my back.’

  ‘She’s really riding you.’

  ‘No. I…’

  ‘You’re in trouble,’ Blake said slowly, on a note of discovery. ‘You’ve fallen for Ruby’s niece.’

  ‘I can’t stand her.’

  ‘Why can’t you stand her?’

  ‘She’s sticking her nose into things that aren’t her business.’

  ‘Meaning she’s invading your personal space.’

  ‘That too. I tell you, Blake, I want her gone. I need to find a competent middle-aged woman who can give these kids the care they deserve.’

  ‘And Shanni can’t.’

  ‘She’s a flibbertigibbet. She’ll have them fall for her, and she’ll be off with the next man.’

  ‘She’s a flirt?’

  ‘And the rest. God help us, Blake, she landed in Australia worse than broke. She turned up to work for me without checking the situation. And now she’s taking Wendy shopping…’

  ‘I’m missing a few bits here.’

  ‘There’s nothing to miss. She’s an irresponsible nuisance, and I need your help to get rid of her.’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do. And meanwhile…’ He paused.

  ‘Meanwhile what?’

  ‘Meanwhile you just take care, little brother. Something tells me you’re in way out of your depth.’

  ‘I’m not.’

  ‘Yeah, and pigs might fly. I need to get back to work. See ya.’

  The problem with fireplaces was they had chimneys. The problem with rooms back to back in a turret meant that they shared a wall. With a fireplace. With one chimney.

  In such a situation sound travelled up chimneys, but on the way it managed a detour into the room behind.

  Shanni’s room.

  ‘She’s an irresponsible nuisance, and I need your help to get rid of her.’

  The words made her feel physically ill.

  An irresponsible nuisance…

  I am not, she told the dark. I cleaned your house and I fed your kids, and I managed to get Donald away from the bull. Where does ‘irresponsible nuisance’ come into that?

  It had been a bit irresponsible to land on his doorstep without checking.

  So he’d lied by inferring there was only one child. That’s me being irresponsible?

  Anger helped override hurt. A bit. She indulged herself in anger a bit more, and found she was so wild she wanted to storm next door and hit him.

  Which would indeed be irresponsible.

  She should just go. She wasn’t wanted. He hated her being here. He’d kissed her against his better judgement, and now he was talking to some stranger, telling him she was interfering in his life.

  Right. She’d go. She’d put aside her pride and ring her parents for help. Jules would put her up until her parents could transfer some money.

  She was almost twenty-nine years old, planning on sleeping on her best friend’s floor until her parents could rescue her. She felt about six.

  Anger faded and desolation took over.

  She sniffed.

  She was an irresponsible nuisance.

  So much for imagining she was in love.

  So much for being in love.

  Her anger had helped but it had faded now. She was left feeling…dumb. And lost. Bereft.

  An irresponsible nuisance.

  Pierce thought that of her. And she’d been stupid enough to fall…

  You don’t fall in love in three days, she told herself, but what else was causing this awful, empty sensation in the pit of her stomach?

  She wanted to cry. She wanted to sob into her pillow, but maybe Pierce would hear her just as she’d heard him. Knowing his sense of…what? Noblesse oblige? She’d read that somewhere, and it just seemed to fit Pierce. Honourable-except when he was talking to his friend and he didn’t think she’d hear.

  He’d probably come rushing in to comfort her, and he’d…

  Don’t go there. Like barging in and confronting him in fury, it might lead…It might lead…

  She sniffed again, but very quietly. A girl had some pride even if she was madly in love with a guy who thought she was an irresponsible twerp.

  She’d go.

  She’d promised t
o take Wendy shopping.

  Okay, I’ll do that, she told herself. And then I’ll go.

  Meanwhile she had to sleep.

  She shut her eyes.

  The fireplace was just next to her.

  Bessy stirred and whimpered, and Pierce whispered into the dark. There were a few more whimpers, a sigh and then the sounds of movement next door.

  ‘Don’t cry, baby.’ He might just as well have been speaking to Shanni, so immediate was his voice. ‘Hush.’

  ‘Hush,’ she whispered, echoing into the dark.

  ‘You’ll be okay,’ Pierce murmured. ‘You have two great sisters and two great brothers. That’s enough family.’

  No, it’s not, she felt like yelling, but she didn’t. He didn’t want her input.

  He’d kissed her.

  Actually, she’d kissed him.

  No matter. He’d kissed her back, and he had no business kissing her like that when he didn’t feel like she did. Irresponsibly attracted. Irresistibly attracted.

  She groaned, rolled over and buried her head under her pillow.

  ‘Shanni?’

  His voice had her sitting bolt-upright.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Are you okay?’

  ‘Why wouldn’t I be okay?’

  ‘You groaned.’

  ‘I groaned in my sleep. If you’re going to listen in on every groan…’

  ‘You groan in your sleep?’

  ‘I must do. I don’t know. I was asleep.’

  ‘You sound wide awake now.’

  ‘I was asleep.’

  ‘The sound travels really well through these fireplaces.’

  ‘It must do,’ she said acidly. ‘If you heard me groaning.’

  There was a moment’s pause, then a cautious, ‘You really were asleep?’

  ‘You want a statutory declaration in front of witnesses?’

  ‘When I phoned…Did you hear…?’

  ‘I’m going back to sleep.’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Goodnight.’

  ‘Shanni…’

  ‘Now.’

  She lay flat on her back and tugged her pillow back over her face.

  Sleep. Right.

  What had he said on the phone? He couldn’t remember. Had she heard?

  She’d said she was asleep.

  He didn’t believe her.

  ‘Da…’ Bessy said, and Pierce stared down at the infant in confusion.

  ‘The name’s Pierce,’ he said.

  ‘Da,’ said Bessy.

  ‘Pierce,’ said Pierce.

  ‘Some of us are trying to sleep,’ Shanni said.

  ‘Da…’

  ‘Fine,’ Pierce said bitterly, giving up. ‘Call me what you want. Bessy, you talk to Shanni. Shanni, you talk to Bessy.’

  ‘She’s your daughter,’ Shanni called.

  ‘Da,’ said Bessy, and grinned.

  Help.

  Things were closing around him, things he didn’t have a name for. He felt trapped.

  Sleep.

  Bessy was holding her arms out, pleading to be picked up. The empty fireplace loomed, almost ominously. Shanni was just through there, listening to every sound he made.

  ‘Okay, Bess,’ he said wearily. ‘Have it your own way. I’ll change your nappy and we’ll both get some sleep, even if it’s in the same bed.’

  ‘Do paediatricians advise babies should sleep in the same beds as their parents?’ Shanni asked.

  ‘If you’re the expert, Bessy can sleep with you.’

  ‘Oh, I’m not an expert,’ she said blithely. ‘I’m an independent spirit. I walk alone. Just like you did before you adopted five kids.’

  ‘Shanni…’

  ‘And I’m out of here, just as soon as I’ve taken Wendy shopping,’ she continued. ‘You won’t see me for dust. So you never have to worry about me kissing you again. Irresponsible nuisance…Huh!’

  CHAPTER TEN

  PLANS for the kids within the castle walls seemed flexible to say the least.

  ‘We have no fixed schedule,’ Susie said as they sat around the vast kitchen table the next morning. She was making pancakes. The earl was making toast. Taffy, the dachshund-cum-cocker spaniel, was cruising back and forth under the table waiting for crumbs. ‘Every kid who comes here is different and carers have different needs as well.’ She glanced at Pierce and then at Shanni. ‘You guys both look like you need a good sleep.’

  ‘We don’t,’ they said in unison, and Susie grinned.

  ‘There’s really no need to man the battlements at night,’ she said. ‘The barbarians were seen off long since.’

  ‘The only thing we need to guard against is pumpkin snatchers,’ Hamish said smiling at his wife. ‘How big is ours now?’

  ‘Three feet seven inches in diameter on the old scale,’ Susie said, with pride. ‘We grow competition pumpkins,’ she added for the benefit of the confused assemblage. ‘You want to see my pumpkin patch after breakfast?’

  ‘I want to go back to the beach,’ said Abby. They’d already had a pre-breakfast paddle.

  ‘And so you will,’ Susie declared. ‘Straight after pancakes.’

  ‘Shanni and I are going shopping,’ Wendy said, almost whispering, and Shanni hauled herself out of her own misery to pay attention to the kid over the table. Wendy had ceased to believe in promises, Shanni thought. This kid who’d guarded her family for so long.

  She turned and caught Pierce watching Wendy. He was feeling exactly the way she was feeling.

  Don’t look. Do not think you know what this man is feeling. He doesn’t want anything to do with you.

  She gulped, turned her attention to the just-arrived pancakes and didn’t look up again. But he was watching her now. She knew he was watching her. She could feel it.

  She was going nuts.

  ‘Yep, we’re going shopping,’ she muttered, mouth full. ‘Anyone else want to come?’

  ‘I have the plastic,’ Pierce said.

  She swallowed her pancake. There was a lump that wasn’t pancake that refused to be swallowed.

  She didn’t want to be dependent on Pierce’s money. Not this morning. Not ever.

  ‘Hey, shopping’s a girl thing,’ Susie said, breaking a silence that was suddenly uncomfortable. ‘Pierce, accept that you’ll be in the way. Shanni, we have accounts with every business in Dolphin Bay. Put it on our tab and Pierce can fix us up later.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ Pierce said.

  He doesn’t want to come with us, Shanni thought. Great.

  ‘What’s the limit?’ she asked him, biting her lip. If she’d been financially independent again she’d say hang the expense.

  ‘Hang the expense,’ Pierce said. ‘Spend what you need to make my daughter happy.’

  It was such a huge statement that they all blinked. Wendy most of all.

  ‘Your daughter…’ she whispered.

  ‘That means you, honey,’ he said, and rose and ruffled her ragged curls. ‘Okay, you and Shanni go and do your girl thing. The rest of us will go to the beach. Okay?’

  ‘Yay!’ the boys yelled.

  ‘I’m a girl,’ Abby said anxiously.

  ‘So you are,’ Pierce said. ‘My second daughter. So the choice is yours. Do you want to go to the hairdresser and shop for clothes with Wendy and Shanni, or do you want to help us build sand castles and learn how to ride a boogie board?’

  ‘A boogie board?’

  ‘It’s what surfers learn on,’ Bryce breathed. ‘Cool.’

  ‘Can Taffy come to the beach?’ Abby asked.

  ‘Of course,’ said Susie.

  ‘Then I’m going to the beach,’ said Abby.

  ‘Me, too,’ said Bryce.

  ‘Me, too,’ said Donald.

  ‘Then that’s settled,’ Susie said in satisfaction. ‘We’ll all go to the beach except Wendy and Shanni. Pierce, you drive them into town and then collect them when they’re finished. We’ll take care of Bessy.’

  ‘Great,’ said Pierce, an
d looked warily at Shanni.

  ‘I can drive my own car,’ Shanni said.

  ‘If yours is the Toyota then, no, you can’t,’ Hamish said.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘You left the window open last night,’ he said apologetically. ‘Did you and Donald stop for fish and chips on the way here?’

  ‘We might have,’ she said cautiously.

  ‘And left the remains on the back seat?’ He grinned. ‘Every gull from here to Sydney has been exploring your car. There’s enough bird dung on the backseat to fertilize a whole pumpkin patch.’

  ‘Just lucky we have the pumpkin patch to accommodate it,’ Susie said cheerfully. ‘Don’t fret,’ she told Shanni. ‘We’ll have it clean in no time. But meanwhile you need Pierce to drive you.’

  ‘Can’t we walk?’

  ‘Not if you want to be back by dinner time.’

  ‘I can drive Pierce’s car.’

  ‘I’ll drive you,’ Pierce growled, and Susie grinned and looked from Shanni to Pierce and back again-and grinned some more.

  ‘I thought you two were friends.’

  ‘He’s my employer,’ she said tightly.

  ‘Is he, now?’ Susie said cordially. ‘And here I was thinking…’ She broke off. ‘But, hey, it’s not my job to think. My job’s pancakes. But Pierce will be driving you and coming straight back, cos otherwise I’ll have to wait at least three hours for my dill pickles and some needs can’t be ignored. I’m sure my baby is growing stunted as we speak, owing to a severe deficiency in the dill pickle department.’

  They drove into town in silence. Wendy seemed overawed. Pierce seemed almost grim. Shanni was just plain confused.

  ‘You’re happy we’re doing this?’ she demanded as he pulled up in the Dolphin Bay main street. A dozen little shops fronted the harbour. The shops seemed quiet at this hour of the morning-all the action looked as if it was down at the boats.

  ‘I want you to do this,’ he said.

  ‘But…You don’t want to shop for her yourself?’As if in reply, Wendy’s hand came out and gripped Shanni’s. Pierce glanced down. He didn’t say anything but Shanni knew he’d seen the gesture and it had hurt.

  ‘Girl’s stuff,’ Wendy whispered.

  ‘But Pierce is paying,’ Shanni said to Wendy. ‘If he really wants to, maybe he could watch.’