Читать книгу Adopted: Twins! - Marion Lennox, Marion Lennox - Страница 6

THE marital order in Bay Beach was thoroughly satisfactory for all concerned. Matt was marrying Charlotte. Erin, with her five unwanted children, was happily single.

Then the twins’ bomb exploded.

Matt McKay was one of Australia’s best known cattle breeders. He was also running late, but he wasn’t so late that Charlotte would be annoyed. He’d been paying a visit to a friend in hospital. Now he was headed to Charlotte’s for dinner.

He was also headed for commitment.

Well, why not? Charlotte was beautiful, immaculately groomed and extremely pleasant company. She understood his farming needs. Acclaimed as the best hostess in the district, she’d been loyal to Matt for almost twenty years.

Back in Bay Beach hospital, Matt’s friend, Nick Daniels, was recovering nicely from his appendix operation. Matt had left him comfortably settled, Nick’s wife and children pandering to his every whim.

The visit had made Matt think. Life should include pandering, he’d decided. He’d avoided it so far, but it was hard not to feel jealous of Nick’s domestic bliss. Despite his lost appendix, Nick couldn’t be more content.

Which was why Matt had detoured via the jewellers.

Something schmaltzy came onto the radio—something about love and snow-white hair and faithfulness forever. Matt glanced down at the velvet box tucked into his map compartment, and he pushed away the last of his qualms. Marriage to Charlotte…

It had always seemed logical, and maybe that’s why he’d taken so long to get around to asking. He’d had a few flings in his youth, but Charlotte was always calmly waiting for him to return from what she teasingly called his nonsense. Ten years ago her possessiveness had driven him nuts. But now… Maybe she was right. Maybe they were suited.

And he wouldn’t mind a kid or two.

Nick was managing fatherhood beautifully, Matt decided, thinking of the family group he’d left at the hospital. With two gorgeous kids and another on the way, Nick and Shanni were blissfully happy.

Could he and Charlotte be the same?

Would Charlotte even want children? Charlotte wasn’t a baby sort of person, but if she could produce little Charlottes… Children who were neat and practical and knew what was right…

That might be a problem. He wouldn’t mind a bit of spirit in any child he had. He grinned to himself, acknowledging that he hadn’t been a childhood angel. In fact he’d driven his mother to distraction.

But kids were a fifty-fifty gene split. He’d spent most of his childhood with his father, and if Charlotte thought she could breed children who’d wipe their feet and read their story books quietly, then maybe he could persuade her to give parenthood a try.

They could be hers indoors and his outdoors—which would be a childhood just like his had been.

So…

So tonight he’d finally ask her to marry him, he decided, as he drove Charlotte-wards. After all, it was an excellent night.

Apart from a bomb waiting in the wings…

And at Home Number Three of Bay Beach Orphanage, things were also excellent.

Erin Douglas, Home Mother, had all her charges in bed by eight, which was no mean feat.

The baby, Marigold, had gone out like a light, bless her. She was showing every sign that she’d make her adoptive parents blissfully happy.

Five year old Tess and eight year old Michael, a brother and sister who’d been placed in the Home while their mother was ill, had gone to sleep on cue. No problems there.

And—amazingly—the twins had gone meekly to bed when told. When she’d checked ten minutes ago, they had their eyes closed and seemed out for the count.

This was truly amazing!

It was worth a glass of wine to celebrate, Erin decided. There weren’t too many nights in a house mother’s life when all her charges went to sleep this early, and it never happened when she had the twins.

Her hand stilled on the refrigerator door, survival instincts surfacing. It was almost too good to be true, she thought, and her well-honed nose smelled a rat. She tiptoed to the twins’ bedroom yet again, and opened the door a crack.

But her instincts seemed wrong. They looked beautifully asleep.

How could she doubt them? she wondered as she gazed down at their intently sleeping countenances. How could anyone doubt them?

At seven years old, Henry and William were gorgeous. They had bright, curly, carrot-red hair, smatterings of freckles on their cute, snub noses, and a look on their faces that said they were the work of angels.

That look, Erin knew to her cost, was entirely misleading. There was a solid reason they were in care. Their mother couldn’t control them, and by the time they were four, with no husband and seven other children to look after, she’d abused them unmercifully and then simply abandoned them to foster care.

That hadn’t worked either. Up until now, no foster parents could cope with their trouble-making, and after each effort to find them a home, back they’d come to the orphanage every time. If it could be organised, they were placed with Erin. Erin could usually control them, but even Erin found it tough.

She sighed. What would she do with them? They were holy terrors, but as she looked down at their sleeping faces her heart twisted with pain for the two little boys she was starting to love.

They shouldn’t be in the orphanage. They were sharp as tacks—maybe clever enough to be categorised as intellectually gifted, Erin thought, remembering a few of the truly amazing spots of trouble they’d landed themselves into. As well as that, they were engaging and lovable, and they desperately needed a mother and a father to love them.

If only they weren’t intent on destroying the world!

Still, for now they were asleep and she was feeling as if a miracle had occurred! She took herself back to the kitchen, kicked off her shoes and put her feet up in bliss.

‘Here’s to a miracle,’ she told herself, raising her wine glass in a toast to the evening. ‘Here’s to an excellent night.’

Back in their bedroom, Henry and William’s plan was working like a dream.

They’d strung thread from the kitchen door to the top of their bedroom door. Then they’d tied their stuffed toy, Tigger Tiger, to the thread, and they’d frayed it so it’d break at the first movement of the kitchen door.

The plan was perfect. If Erin left the kitchen, the thread snapped and Tigger fell to the floor. Unless the thread tangled in Erin’s feet—which would have been really, really unlucky—she’d never notice.

As Tigger landed, there was just enough time for the boys to shove what they were doing under the bed, grab Tigger, scramble under the bedcovers and flick off the light before Erin appeared to check.

So to Erin, all was beautifully, unnaturally normal, and they concentrated fiercely on looking asleep as she tiptoed over to them.

‘Goodnight, you rascals,’ she’d whispered, and they’d both had to concentrate even harder not to giggle.

Then, with Erin gone, they picked up the end of the thread and retied Tigger in his warning position. And then they retrieved what was under the bed.

Brilliant! Absolutely excellent.

But the bomb wasn’t meant to go off when it did.

The plan was for Henry to carry it outside in the toe of his slipper. It was scary to carry it in his bare fingers, and a slipper should hold it safe. Their bomb was a hand-taped ball stuffed with matches and fire-crackers, designed to go off when thumped on the ground. They knew how volatile it was, but they weren’t stupid.

After carrying it carefully outside, the plan was to lob it over the next-door fence.

It was eight at night. At eight every night, just as the news ended on the telly, their next door neighbours, Helmut and Valda Cole, let their pet poodle out for her evening run.

Pansy Poodle never went more than two feet into the garden so there was no fear of hitting her. But she might just about turn inside out with the bang, and Mr and Mrs Cole would go berserk. Which would be very interesting indeed!

Henry and William disliked the Coles, and they knew exactly what the Coles thought about them—and orphans in general. The Coles were raising a petition to have all the orphanage houses put together. ‘To put all the troublemakers in the one spot!’ They were even nasty to Erin, which was unthinkable.

Henry and William mightn’t always do as Erin wanted, but she gave the best cuddles of anyone they knew, and even when they were in serious trouble she just sighed, ruffled their hair and said, ‘What am I going to do with you, you twerps?’

And Pansy Poodle yapped so much she woke the baby, and when Henry poked his finger through the fence—just to say hello—she’d bitten him! It had taken fifteen minutes of Erin’s cuddles before Henry had stopped shaking.

The Coles, therefore, had to be got rid of before they upset Erin further, or before Pansy bit someone else, and the only thing that might make them move was if they thought their poodle was in danger. Hence the bomb, the construction of which had been learned from spying on the bigger kids at school.

Only then…

Well, Henry was pushing the bomb into the slipper and William was holding the slipper up so it’d slide in, and it wouldn’t quite fit—and then Henry got nervous and the slipper sort of fell sideways.

The tape-wound ball, stacked really, really tightly with matches and firecrackers, fell heavily onto the floor and rolled under the curtains by the bed.

Henry and William stared at it for one horrified moment—and then dived for cover under the opposite bed.

The explosion reverberated through the house and into the night beyond. Instantly the lights went off as the electricity safety switch cut in, and there was the sound of crashing glass from along the veranda. The smell of smoke swept into the kitchen, and then the fire alarm in the corridor ceiling started to scream.

Bay Beach Orphanage, Home Number Three, was on fire.

Matt heard the fire alarm before he rounded the corner. That was no big deal, he thought. His smoke detector at home went off every time he burned his toast. Which, he had to admit, was often.

But Matt was driving with his truck window down, and the alarm was loud enough to make him glance sideways. He was now right out front of one of the Bay Beach Homes—and what he saw made him slam his foot on the brake and pull to dead halt.

He left his truck sitting where it was, engine still on, and he started to run.

‘Take the baby.’

Matt knew Erin Douglas. Of course he did. Everyone in Bay Beach knew everyone else, and these two had gone to school together.

Not that they’d got on. Erin was three years younger than Matt, and maybe he still thought of her as the bossy, forthright kid she’d been way back in third grade. Over the years he’d danced with her a few times at local functions, but she definitely wasn’t his type.

It didn’t stop him appreciating her. With a lovely figure; with a clear, almost luminescent complexion and huge blue eyes, she’d always had her share of boyfriends. She was definitely attractive, he’d decided, in a blonde, curvy sort of way, but she was a bit…well, sassy, and inclined to laugh at the world—and at him in particular.

Matt was wealthy and his family were descended from the landed gentry. Normally that stood him in good stead with women, but with Erin it was almost as if she was mocking him because of it.

And she always looked frazzled, he thought. She didn’t fuss if her shoulder-length curls were tangled, and her make-up was always scant and looked like it had been applied in haste. Yeah, he knew all the Home Mothers looked like that—they had such little time to themselves—but it wouldn’t hurt her to take a bit more effort.

She wore brightly coloured dresses, nipped in to a neat waistline and then blousing out in soft folds to mid-calf. They looked home-made, Charlotte had told him, and he could see that they were.

The last time he’d seen her had been at the local school fête. One of her kids had painted her face as a butterfly, and her blue eyes were orbs under enormous, colourful wings, the paint reaching right out to her ears.

Good grief, he’d thought, as he and Charlotte had paused for a second, stunned look. No, she definitely wasn’t his type. She wasn’t groomed and elegant as he liked his women. She wasn’t like his mother or like Charlotte.

And now… Well, she certainly wasn’t concentrating on appearances, but she was looking more frazzled than he’d ever seen her. As he reached the veranda, she burst through the screen door and she was carrying a baby. The little one couldn’t have been more than four or five months old.

Erin didn’t say anything more than, ‘Take the baby,’ before thrusting the child into his arms and disappearing again into the house.

What was he supposed to do with it? He stared down at the baby in indecision. He couldn’t just dump it, but there were things that were more urgent here than baby-holding.

A face appeared over the side fence. Well, it would. The explosion must have been heard for blocks, and Valda Cole was into everyone else’s business before it happened. Usually Matt avoided Valda like the plague, but now, burdened with the baby, he was even grateful to see her.

‘Take the baby and phone the fire brigade,’ he snapped, and thrust the infant over the fence into her startled arms before she had a chance to protest. ‘And contact the police and ambulance. Fast.’

And then he dived into the house after Erin.

She’d found Tess and Michael.

The children had woken and stumbled to their doors in the increasingly smoke-filled dark. Calling and feeling her way, she found them and grabbed their hands. Five years old and badly frightened, Tess stumbled in the gloom. Still holding eight-year-old Michael’s hand, Erin lifted Tess and fumbled her way out toward the door.

The smoke was so thick she couldn’t see anything. Her eyes were streaming as she called to the twins.

‘Henry? William?’

There was no answer. Ventilation slits were built in above the bedroom doors and the smoke seemed to be coming from the twins’ room, but she couldn’t investigate. Her first priority must be to get Tess and Michael out.

And then she barrelled right into Matt in the hall.

This time she acknowledged his presence. She needed help—any help!—and she knew enough of Matthew McKay to know he was capable.

‘Matt, there’s these two, but the twins are still inside.’ She propelled her children forward and choked on a lungful of smoke. ‘Take them out.’

He took them all out. Grasping her arm without a word, he pulled her back out of the door before she could argue. There, standing on the porch, she fought to regain her breath so she could speak again.

Her panic was threatening to overwhelm her. The smoke seemed almost impenetrable, and she could see flames shooting from the side window. It was definitely coming from the twins’ room.

‘Dear God, the twins…’ It was hard to make her voice work. The smoke had seared her lungs, so every breath hurt.

‘How many more are inside?’ Matt’s voice was harsh with authority. ‘How many and tell me where they are. Now!’

Somehow she hauled herself under control and made herself heard. She couldn’t have asked for a better assistant than Matt McKay. Sure, he was wealthy and too good-looking for his own good, and he moved in circles she didn’t belong too, but his competence was never in question.

‘Just the twins,’ she told him. ‘Two seven-year-old boys. They’re in there together.’ She choked on another lungful of smoke, but she had enough sense to thrust the children off the porch as she motioned toward the twins’ window. The curtains were billowing out through the smashed glass, flaming outward in the night air. ‘Please look after the kids. I’ll go—’

‘Stay where you are!’ Matt’s brain was in overdrive as he sorted priorities. Helmut Cole was running across the lawn with a garden hose, while Valda watched horrified from a distance. She was holding the baby like she was holding something unclean.

It couldn’t matter. At least the baby could come to no harm where she was, and Helmut was doing the right thing.

‘Have you called emergency services?’ he yelled and, as Valda nodded, he turned back to her husband.

‘Helmut, point the hose in that window and keep it there.’ Then he turned and headed back inside—back in the direction of those shooting flames.

‘Please be careful.’ Erin was close to collapse. ‘The smoke…’

‘We can’t get in through the window,’ he told her. ‘Let’s just hope the whole bedroom isn’t ablaze.’

The house was in pitch darkness, but even if it had been daylight he couldn’t have seen anything. The smoke was so dense it was threatening to choke him. Matt dropped to his knees and crawled, but the smoke was too thick…

Then his brain kicked in. Finally! Damn, he should have thought of this outside. He paused, hauled off his sweater and tied it round his face. It wasn’t much protection, but it was better than nothing.

The twins’ bedroom was the second window from the front. He needed to turn right through the kitchen and head for the second door along the passage to the closed door…

He had to work fast, whatever was behind that door. If he was met with a wall of flame he didn’t have a chance—but then, neither did the twins.

With a silent prayer, he felt the knob, but it wasn’t hot to touch. That was his first good sign. There was therefore only smoke hard against the door. There was nothing to do now but…

He took a deep, smoke-filled breath, opened the door and forced his eyes to see. The curtains across the window were blazing, and the bed against the far wall was well alight. Outside, Helmut raised his hose and he was hit in the face by a jet of water.

Thank God for Helmut. The water wouldn’t put the fire out, but it helped keep him alive. The soggy sweater across his face made breathing possible—just—and he kept his face in that direction until the sweater was completely soaked.

Then he took another breath and somehow managed to make his voice work.

‘Kids, where are you?’

‘H-here…’ The muffled gasp came from the side of the room away from the window—low down. A piece of burning curtain landed in his hair. He thrust it away, unconscious of the pain, and groped under the second bed.

‘Grab hold,’ he managed, and small hands reached out and gripped his arms. As he counted contact hands—four!—he could have sobbed in relief.

There was no time for sobbing. Now what? Somehow he had to get them back through the house, and the smoke was building every minute.

‘T-Tigger,’ one of the children was saying, and the kid was pulling away.

‘What?’

‘Tigger.’

Matt found his hands full of sodden fur as the thing was thrust at him. A toy? Good grief! He shoved it down his shirt and grabbed a blanket.

‘Wait.’ His voice came out as a hoarse croak. More of Helmut’s water hit the blanket, but not enough. He held it up and let it soak, and then threw the cloth over the boys’ heads.

‘We’re crawling out of the room,’ he croaked. He had them cradled against him, but he pushed them towards the door. ‘You crawl first. If I stop, then you keep going. That’s an order. Now!’

And he shoved them forward out of that burning room, along the passage, into the kitchen and the hall beyond.

‘Henry… William…’

Erin met them in the hall. Like Matt, she’d wrapped her sweater over her head. She’d come in as far as she dared and was waiting, crouched at the kitchen door. As they crawled from the passage, she hauled them into her arms and tugged them outside.

Matt followed. He crawled four feet from the front door and collapsed unconscious onto the porch.

The most beautiful pair of blue eyes was gazing down into his.

‘Do you think he’ll live?’

There was something over his mouth and nose—something plastic and hard, and he tried to push it away.

‘Keep it there, Matt.’ He recognised the voice—Rob McDonald, the local police sergeant. ‘You’ve got a lungful of smoke and we’re giving you oxygen. Yes, Erin, if he’s capable of fighting off a mask, then I reckon he’ll live.’

Matt thought that through, and it seemed to make sense. The gorgeous eyes were still looking at him. It was funny how he’d never noticed them before. Erin was grimy and smoke-stained and still looking frazzled, but suddenly he thought she looked the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. Just like that butterfly at the fête, he thought dazedly. Gorgeous!

Life was gorgeous!

If she hadn’t come in to find them, he never would have got the boys out, he acknowledged. It had taken all his strength just to crawl those last few yards and he couldn’t have propelled the twins any further.

‘The twins?’ It was a muffled whisper under the mask, but Erin knew what he was saying.

‘They’re scared out of their wits but they’re fine. I need to go back to them. If you’re sure you’re okay…’

‘He’s tough,’ Rob growled. ‘The ambulance boys are just bringing the stretcher across.’

That roused him. Hell, no. He didn’t need a stretcher. He pushed the mask away, coughed and coughed again, and finally managed to sit up. Rob stayed by his side, uneasy.

‘They told me to hold the mask over your face. Do you mind not getting me into trouble?’

‘I don’t need it.’ Matt coughed again, grabbed the mask and took two deep breaths to prove it. The improvement was immediate.

Then he took a look around, and was astounded by what he saw.

People were everywhere. The fire engine was parked almost beside him; there were men running, hoses uncoiling; the police car was there with its blue light flashing…

Half of Bay Beach was here, he thought dazedly, and then he turned to the house.

Helmut’s hose hadn’t been enough. The house was well alight and they’d be lucky to save anything. The bedroom where the twins had come from was now a charred shell, and the rest of the house was roofless and smouldering. There was little for the fire-fighters to do but to play their hoses over the ruin to stop sparks causing trouble elsewhere.

Matt looked at the charred remains of the twins’ bedroom, and a shudder ran though his entire body. He’d been in there. The twins had been in there!

The man beside him saw what he was seeing and guessed his thoughts. ‘You got the kids out,’ Rob said in a voice that was none too steady. His big policeman’s hand came down and grasped Matt’s shoulder. ‘I don’t know how you did it, mate, but you did. You’re a bloody hero.’

‘I don’t know how I did it either,’ Matt said. He gulped in two more takes of oxygen and focussed some more.

There was something heavy and soggy in his shirt and he suddenly remembered the kids’ toy. Or whatever it was. He peered down his shirt in the combined firelight and floodlights, and was relieved to see a pair of grimy glass eyes staring up at him.

It was just a toy, then. Great! For a minute there he’d thought maybe it was an unconscious pet, and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a dog or cat didn’t really appeal.

Back to important stuff.

‘The kids…they really are okay?’

‘They really are okay. Thanks to you.’ Rob looked up as the ambulance officers approached and he gave them an apologetic grin. ‘He’s giving me trouble.’

‘He would.’ The ambulance officers were locals and they were mates of both Rob and Matt. Their smiles were wide as houses.

In truth as they’d rounded the bend and seen the fire their stomachs had tightened in horror. Fire casualties were awful, and kids were the worst. Now, they were having trouble containing their delight that their only patient was a stroppy mate—a mate who looked like he had every intention of making it to old age.

‘Let’s get you loaded up and off to hospital,’ they said cheerfully. ‘Hey, we hear Nick Daniels is in there without his appendix. You can keep him company.’

‘I’m not going to hospital.’

‘Too right you are, even if we have to tie you down.’ Then they glanced up as a young woman came hurrying across the lawn toward them, her doctor’s bag at her side. ‘Doc, he’s saying he won’t come to hospital.’

‘Lie down, Matthew McKay,’ she said firmly.

‘But—’

‘Shut up and let me examine you or I’ll put you out for the count.’ Dr Emily Mainwaring knew her stuff, and she knew her patient. ‘Hurry up, Matt. They say you’re the one worst affected but I have five kids and Erin to examine, so let’s get this over fast.’

He was fine. Excellent, almost.

‘You’ll live,’ she told him, tucking away her stethoscope and casting a brief yet horrified glance at the still-smouldering house. ‘Just don’t push your luck any further. You need antiseptic and a dressing on that burn on your head, but it’s superficial.’ Then she peered closer under his shirt and saw what he’d stuffed there. ‘What on earth is that?’

‘It’s a toy of some kind.’ Matt managed a grin. ‘It’s not a patient—thank Heaven.’ He put a hand down to haul it out but she stopped him.

‘No. If it really is a toy, leave it there and see if you can clean it up when you get home. If you leave it here it’ll get lost in this mess, and it just may be important. These kids have lost everything, and I suspect I’m not looking at long-term physical problems here, but psychological ones.’

He thought that through and it made sense. ‘Okay.’ The toy could stay, soggy or not.

‘Can you dress that burn yourself? It’s not too bad.’ She was flustered, worrying about Erin and the kids and wanting to move on. ‘Good. Okay, you don’t need hospital, but I do want you supervised tonight. No going home to that farm alone. What about going to Charlotte’s? Shall I have someone ring her?’

‘No!’ For some reason that was the last thing he wanted. ‘I’m fine.’

‘You hear what I’m saying?’ she said fiercely. ‘Home with someone with you—or hospital. Choose.’

‘I…’

‘I don’t have time to waste,’ she said firmly. ‘Think about it while I check the rest. Though, thanks to you, I gather I hardly have a patient to contend with.’ She turned to the ambulance officers.

‘Hold him down, boys, and don’t let him go until he can give me a plan for this evening that doesn’t involve going home by himself, forgetting the antiseptic, having three stiff whiskies and passing out without anyone there to watch.’

She meant it.

Matt knew Emily well enough to accept that she was quite capable of trussing him to a stretcher, and he had enough wit—and he was feeling bad enough—to acknowledge that she was talking sense.

So what were his alternatives?

She’d suggested Charlotte’s, but the idea was distinctly unappealing. Sure, she’d put him up for the night, but she’d fuss.

All he wanted was his own bed, he thought, and suddenly he wanted it very, very much. Shock was starting to hit home, and he had to clench his hands into fists to stop Rob seeing the sudden tremor that ran through him.

But Rob wasn’t noticing. His mind had moved on.

‘What can we do with the kids?’ The police sergeant was still beside Matt, but he was speaking to Erin. The doctor and the ambulance officers were attending the children.

With immediate health fears eased, it was time to concentrate on the next problem, which seemed, Matt gathered, to be accommodation for Erin and the children.

Erin was tightening her lips, thinking it through. Or, she was trying to think it through. She looked like her mind felt full of smoke.

‘I don’t know,’ she managed, and then she looked up as someone else darted through the jumble of fire-hoses and fire-fighters. Her strained face slackened in relief. ‘Wendy…’

Wendy was an ex-House Mother, now happily married and immersed in domesticity. She was followed by her husband, Luke. Luke strolled languidly through the chaos, lifted a trembling Michael into his arms almost as an aside—marriage to Wendy meant that Luke and the Orphanage kids had met each other heaps of times before—and he hugged the little boy close.

‘Hey, Michael. Been having some excitement, then? Wow! It’s great that you’re all okay. And this is a great fire engine.’

Then he looked down at Matt in admiring amusement. ‘And here’s our Matthew out for the count. Been playing heroes, have we, kids?’

‘Shut up, Luke.’ But Matt grinned. It suddenly did feel good. Heroic even. The feel of those four little hands clutching his arms from under the bed came sweeping back, and he knew where they’d be now without him…

His grin faded and the tremors swept back. He’d been lucky to get them—and himself—out alive.

‘The other homes are all full,’ Wendy was saying. She was right back in House Mother mode, as though she’d never left. She was hugging Michael’s little sister, Tess, to her breast as if she was her own. ‘Erin, Shanni was at the hospital with Nick when the call came through. The nurse in charge told her what was going on, so she rang us first thing. I rang Lori on Luke’s cell phone on the way here. Lori’s on her way, but we need to sort the kids out.’

‘Yes.’ That made it through Erin’s fog. Lori was House Mother at Home Number Five, and the only one without tiny tots to care for. They’d need her, but Erin was in no state to concentrate.

Wendy recognised it. She came forward and gave her friend a hug like her husband was giving Michael, then she kept right on holding her, Tess somehow squashed in the middle. Which Tess didn’t seem to mind at all. ‘Hey, kid, you and Matt got them all out,’ she told her friend. ‘Everyone’s safe. You did good.’

‘The twins…they must have been making something.’ Erin was trembling in her friend’s arms, and, from where he was lying on the ground, Matt had an almost unbearable urge to rise and take over. He wanted to hug her as well.

Which was crazy. He grabbed the oxygen mask and took two more deep breaths. He wasn’t himself here.

‘I’ve been thinking,’ Wendy said into her friend’s hair. ‘Tess and Michael are only with you until their mother gets out of hospital at the week-end. Luke and I talked about it as we drove here and we can take them until then. They know us.’

Tess and Michael’s mother was on her own, and she was a severe asthmatic. She was in and out of hospital often, and Tess and Michael were frequent visitors to the Homes. They’d be happy with Wendy, Erin knew. But…

‘That still leaves Marigold and the twins.’

‘Tess and Michael will be shocked,’ Wendy said gently, gathering Tess closer as she spoke. The doctor was checking the twins, and the little girl was starting to tremble. ‘They’ll need lots of care, so I don’t think Luke and I can do much more than take them. I talked to Lori and she said the same. She’s thinking about the baby and the twins now. And speaking of Lori…’

Lori arrived then. Thirtyish and competent—as all the house mothers were—she might be shocked, but she took right over where Wendy left off.

‘It’s fine for Michael and Tess to go with Wendy,’ she said directly. ‘It makes sense. But the other Homes are packed. Maybe we can use the hotel as an interim measure.’

‘Erin can’t look after Marigold tonight,’ Wendy told her. ‘Look at her. She’s shocked to the core. The last thing she needs is two o’clock feeds. She needs to sleep. And the twins—’

‘No one but Erin can control the twins,’ Lori said bluntly.

‘Yeah, look at how I controlled them,’ Erin retorted. ‘That’s control?’ She gestured to where the flames were dying and leaving a charred and smoking ruin, and she shuddered.

‘And the publican’s heard of the twins,’ Lori added. ‘I guess we might have trouble persuading him to take you.’

‘You bet we’ll have trouble.’

‘But the baby’s up for adoption and her placement’s due on Monday,’ Lori said, brightening. ‘I guess I could squeeze Marigold in with me until then. She’s such a great baby.’ She glanced around to where Valda was holding her at arm’s length, a look of complete disgust on her face. The baby, it seemed, had started to smell.

They all knew it didn’t matter. Lori had decreed Marigold was a great baby, and so had her prospective parents. She’d survive a few more minutes of Valda’s disgust. ‘That just leaves Erin and the twins.’

‘I don’t know about the hotel,’ Erin said doubtfully. ‘Maybe we could stay with Shanni.’

‘Shanni has two kids, is pregnant and has a sick husband.’ Wendy was suddenly in charge again. ‘And I can’t take any more than Michael and Tess.’ Then she looked down at Matt and her brow grew thoughtful. ‘Hmm.’

Hmm?

Matt gazed upward and he didn’t like the way Wendy was looking at him.

Wendy, Erin, Shanni, Lori… Even Doc Emily. They were all the same. They were organising, bossy women, in a sensible, non-Charlotte type of way that you couldn’t just ignore by going outside and heaving a few hay bales until it was time for dinner.

Frankly, they scared him to death.

He took two more breaths of oxygen from his mask and tried to look pathetic. It didn’t come off. In fact, it seemed to make things worse.

‘Doc says you’re not to go home alone, and I know you live in that great rambling place all by yourself.’ Wendy was onto her good idea like a hound on a scent and she wasn’t to be distracted. ‘What could be more appropriate than Erin and the twins coming home with you to keep you company?’

‘The twins?’ He’d seen enough of the twins!

‘You saved their lives,’ Wendy said, her voice softening, as she crouched beside him. Her eyes met his. They were inches apart and he couldn’t argue if he wanted to. ‘And maybe you saved Erin’s, too, as I know she’d have tried to get them out herself if it wasn’t for you. So you can’t just turf them out on the street, now can you?’

‘I…’ It was too much. ‘No,’ he said weakly. ‘I suppose I can’t.’

‘So you can have them?’

He forced himself to think. He wouldn’t make much of a host. ‘I need to be away occasionally, for cattle shows and things…’

‘But they can look after themselves with ease. So that’s that,’ Wendy said triumphantly, and she rose and hugged Erin harder. ‘It’s all sorted, my love, so you can stop shaking this very minute. All of you. Drama over. All we have is one burned house to rebuild and we’ll be back to normal. Now as soon as the doctor’s cleared the lot of you then you can go out to Matt’s. I can see the Welfare Shop lady over by the fire chief. Good old Edna. She’s always armed with a stockpile of emergency clothes. I’ll see how she can help and then we’ll send you all home. Together.’