The Package Deal: Nine Months to Change His Life / From Neighbours...to Newlyweds? / The Bonus Mum

She told him.

‘Okay,’ she said, and he heard weariness now, the weariness of a long, long battle. ‘I’ve told you that I’m a district nurse?’

‘Hence the drugs,’ he said. ‘Nice nurse.’

She smiled again, but briefly. ‘I’m currently suspended from work and a bit...on the outer with my family,’ she told him. She took a deep breath. ‘Okay, potted history. My mum died when I was eight. She’d been ill for a year and at the end Dad was empty. It was like most of him had died, too.

‘Then he met Barbie. Barbie’s some kind of faith-healer and self-declared clairvoyant. She offered to channel Mum, using Ouija boards, that kind of thing, and Dad was so desperate he fell for it. But Barbie has three daughters of her own and was in a financial mess. She was blatantly after Dad’s money. Dad’s well off. He has financial interests in most of the businesses in Taikohe where we live, and Barbie simply moved in and took control. She got rid of every trace of my mother. She still wants to get rid of me.’

‘Cinderella with the wicked stepmother?’

‘She’s never mistreated me. Not overtly. She just somehow stopped Dad showing interest in me. With Barbie he seemed to die even more, if that makes sense, and she derided the things I had left to cling to.’

‘There are worse ways to mistreat a child than beat them,’ he said softly, and she was quiet for a while, as the wind rose and the sounds of the storm escalated.

He thought she’d stopped then, and was trying to figure how to prod her to go further when she started again, all by herself.

‘School was my escape,’ she told him. I liked school and I was good at it. I liked...rules.’

‘Rules make sense when you’re lost,’ he agreed. ‘Sometimes they’re the only thing to cling to.’ Was that why he and Jake had joined the army? he wondered. To find some limits?

‘Anyway, I studied nursing. I became Taikohe’s district nurse. I now have my own cottage...’

‘With a cat?’ he demanded. ‘Uh-oh. This is starting to sound like cat territory.’

And she got it. He heard her grin. ‘Only Heinz, who’ll eat me when I die a spinster, alone and unloved.’ She poked him—hard, in the ribs.

‘Ow!’

‘Serves you right. Of all the stereotyping males...’

‘Hey, you’re the one with the wicked stepmother.’

‘Do you want to hear this or not?’

‘Yes,’ he said promptly, because he did. ‘Tell Dr Ben.’

‘Your bedside manner needs improving.’

‘My bedside manner is perfect,’ he said, and put his arm around her shoulders and tugged her closer. ‘I’d like some springs in this mattress but otherwise I can’t think of a single improvement.’

‘Ben...’

‘Go on,’ he said encouragingly. ‘Tell me what happened next. Tell me about the baby.’

There was a long silence. She lay still. Seemingly unbidden, his fingers traced a pattern in her hair. It felt...right to do so. Half of him expected her to pull away, but she didn’t.

Tell me, he willed her silently, and wondered why it seemed so important that she did.

Finally it came.

‘So now I’m grown up, living in the same community as my stepmother and my stepsisters and my dad. My dad’s still like a dried-up husk. The others ignore me. I’m the dreary local nurse who uses traditional medicine, which they despise. They put up with me when I drop in to visit my dad but that’s as far as the relationship goes.

‘But now they’ve started having babies—not my stepmum but the girls. Sapphire, Rainbow and Sunrise. Home births all. No hospitals or traditional medicine need apply. They’ve had six healthy babies between them, with my stepmother crowing that traditional medicine’s responsible for all the evils of the world. And then...catastrophe.’

‘Catastrophe?’

‘One dead baby,’ she said, drearily now. ‘Sunrise, my youngest stepsister, is massively overweight. The pregnancy went two weeks over term but she still refused to be checked. Then she went into labour, and a day later she was still labouring. She was at home with my stepmother and one of her sisters to support her. And then I dropped in.’

‘To help?’

‘I hadn’t even been told she was due,’ she said. ‘When I arrived I realised Dad was in Auckland on business but they’d taken over the house as a birthing centre. I walked in and Sunrise was out of her mind with pain and exhaustion. There was bleeding and the baby was in dire trouble. I guess I just took over. I rang the ambulance and the hospital and warned them but I knew already... I’d listened... The baby’s heartbeat was so faint...’

‘The baby died?’

‘They called her Sunset. How corny’s that for a dying baby? She was suffering from a hypoxic brain injury and she died when she was three days old. Sunrise was lucky to survive. She won’t be able to have more children.’

‘So that makes you a baby killer?’

‘I didn’t know,’ she said drearily, ‘how much my stepmother really resented me until then. Or make that hate. I have no idea why, but at the coroner’s inquest she stood in the witness stand and swore I’d told Sunrise it was safe. She swore I’d said everything was fine. I’d been the chosen midwife, she said, and my stepsisters concurred. Of course they would have gone to the hospital, they said, but one after another they told the court that I’d said they didn’t need to.

‘And you know what? My dad believed them. The coroner believed them. They came out of the court and Sunrise was crying, but my stepmother actually smirked. She tucked her arm in Dad’s arm and they turned their backs on me. She’s had her way after all this time. I’m finally right out of her family.’

Silence. More silence.

He shouldn’t have asked, he thought. How to respond to a tragedy like this?

‘My roller-derby team has asked me to quit,’ she said into the dark. ‘My dad—or Barbie—employs two of the girls’ partners. Some of my medical colleagues stand by me—they know what I would and wouldn’t do—but the town’s too small for me to stay. I’m on unpaid leave now but I know I’ll have to go.’

‘So you’ve come to the great metropolis of Hideaway.’ His fingers remained on her hair, just touching. Just stroking. ‘I can see the logic.’

‘I needed time out.’

‘What are you writing?’

‘Writing?

‘By the fire. While I was snoozing.’

‘That’s none of your business,’ she said, shocked.

‘Sorry. Diary? No, I won’t ask.’ He hesitated for all of two seconds. ‘Did you put something nice about me in it?’

‘Only how much you weigh. Like a ton.’ The mood had changed again. Lightness had returned. Thankfully.

‘That’s not kind,’ he said, wounded.

‘It’s what matters. My shoulder’s sore.’

‘My leg’s worse.’

‘Do you need more painkillers? We can double the dose.’

‘Yes, please,’ he said, even though a hero would have knocked them back. Actually, a hero would have put her aside, braved a cyclone or two, swum to the mainland and knocked the heads of her appalling family together. A hero might do that in the future but for now his leg did indeed hurt. Knocking heads together needed to take a back seat. But it wouldn’t be forgotten, he promised himself. Just shelved.

‘If I have hurt your shoulder...you can take painkillers too.’

‘I’m on duty.’

‘You’re not on duty,’ he told her, gentling again. ‘You need to sleep.’

‘In a cyclone?’

‘This isn’t a cyclone. This is an edge of a cyclone.’

‘Then I don’t want to see a centre.’

‘Hopefully we won’t,’ he said. ‘Hopefully when we wake it’ll have blown out to sea.’

‘Hope on,’ she said, and sat up and found him a couple of pills.

‘Mary?’

‘Mmm?’

‘Sleep with me.’

‘I don’t seem to have a choice,’ she said, and settled down again, and when he tugged her to him and held her, she didn’t pull away.

* * *

At dawn the cyclone hit square on, and even in the safety of the cave the world seemed like it was exploding.

Afterwards she read that winds had reached two hundred miles an hour or more. They couldn’t measure precisely because the instruments had been blown from their exposed eyrie on a neighbouring island. All Mary knew was that when she woke it sounded like a hundred freight trains were thundering right over, under and into their cave.

The wind was blasting from behind the cave but with such ferocity that the cave entrance was a vortex, sucking things in. Sand, grit, leaves. Their makeshift bed was far back, out of harm’s way, or she’d thought out of harm’s way, but who could tell with such a force?

The noise was unbelievable. The pressure in the cave was unbelievable. Heinz was under the quilt, as far down as he could get, whimpering in terror.

Mary felt like joining him.

‘It’s all noise and bluster.’ Ben’s arm was around her, holding her tight against him, and his voice was a deep rumble overriding terror. ‘I don’t think we’re on the outside any more,’ he said, his voice amazingly calm in her ear. ‘Cyclone Lila’s huffing and puffing and threatening to blow our house down, but she won’t succeed. She won’t because my heroine, the amazing Smash ’em Mary, found us a cave. We’re surrounded by nice thick rock. We’re safe, no matter what she hurls at us.’

She hurled a tree. Mary heard it crash against the cliffs. In the dim light at the cave entrance she saw the trunk slide sideways across the cave mouth, and Ben might have thought he was holding her but now she was holding him. Tight. Hard. She might be safe in her cave but this was something out of this world.

She clung. She clung and clung and clung.

The world was ending. Dawn might be breaking on a new day somewhere in the world but dawn was breaking here on catastrophe. She was expecting her cave to implode. She was expecting her island to pick up its roots and head for England.

So much for being nurse in charge. Ben had a head injury and a leg injury. She should be doing hourly obs, asking solicitous questions about his health.

All she could do was cling.

‘You’re safe,’ he said into her ear, and when he was this close she believed him.

She clung. Skin against skin. His warmth and strength were the only things that mattered.

He was in boxers. She was in bra and panties. His body was rough against hers, and warm, and it was the only thing between her and catastrophe.

The noise was unbelievable. It felt like the entire world had been picked up and was blowing away. Even the ground under them seemed to be trembling, and their bodies were reacting accordingly.

She was no longer in charge of her body.

What were the needs on the Maslow scale? Food first and shelter, but sex was right up there.

If she buried herself in his body the noise would stop, but it seemed more than that. Much more.

If she’d been lying with a stranger, surely it wouldn’t be like this, but Ben seemed no stranger. What was it between them? Danger, isolation, but more. She didn’t know and she didn’t have time to think it through. All she knew was that she was in this man’s arms and she wanted him.

For this moment, this fragment of time, there was nothing but this man. There was no thought of the past or the future. For now, the only escape from the storm was Ben.

* * *

Less than twenty-four hours ago he’d thought he was going to die. He’d almost drowned. He was black with bruises. His leg was still giving him hell, but he was holding a woman in his arms and the pain and terror of the past couple of days was fading to nothing.

All that mattered was her.

Was this casual sex? Was this a fast mating because it was offered—for it was offered. He could feel her need.

The noise of the storm outside was unbelievable. She was holding him for comfort; she needed his strength, his warmth, his presence.

But this was more than that. She was holding him as if she’d merge with him.

This was more than casual sex.

Maybe he’d say that to himself, he thought, or he tried to think as his arms drew her closer, as her skin pressed against his skin. Her breasts were moulding to him, the slivers of her lace bra almost non-existent. She was the most beautiful creature he’d ever held.

The most beautiful woman...

Was that the storm talking? The adrenalin of the cyclone?

He pulled away and it nearly killed him. He put her at arm’s length so he could look into those beautiful, wounded eyes.

This was a wounded creature hiding from the world.

This was a woman whose past resonated with his.

Nonsense. He was the indulged son of serious money. His family connections had always made life easy for him.

But her loneliness resonated with him in such a way...

But this wasn’t loneliness. This was urgent physical need, and even if it killed him he would not take advantage of this woman.

‘Mary, think,’ he managed. ‘I can’t...stop. Mary, are you sure?’

‘That I want your body?’ Her voice was surprisingly calm. ‘I’m as sure as I’ve ever been in my life.’

‘I don’t suppose...’ His voice didn’t match hers. It was ragged with want and there was no way he could disguise it. ‘That you carry condoms in that nurse’s bag?’

‘You didn’t pack some in your lifejacket pocket before you jumped overboard?’ Her words might be light but the jagged need, the need that matched his, was unmistakeable.

‘I can’t think why not, but no.’

‘So...so no diseases I should know about?’

‘No, but—’

‘Then I want you,’ she said, as simply as that, and it took his breath away. ‘Consequences can hang themselves.’

‘Mary...’

‘Mmm? She was holding him, her fingers touching his spine, her body pressing against him. Blocking out everything but the feel of her. ‘How...how old is Heinz?’

She managed a chuckle. ‘Old enough not to be shocked. And in case you hadn’t noticed, it’s pretty dark.’

‘That’s a relief,’ he managed, and tugged her tighter still. ‘Heinz, close your eyes. Your mistress and I are about to block one storm out with another.’

CHAPTER FIVE

THEY PRETTY MUCH clung to one another for twelve hours. That was how long it took for the cyclone to blast their slice of paradise to pieces.

It didn’t matter, though, Ben thought in the moments he could surface to thinking. For now, for this time out of reality, he felt like he’d found his home.

Outside the cyclone shrieked across and around the island, doing its worst, while they made love and talked in whispers right against each other’s ears because that was the only way they could be heard.

There was a couple of hours’ eerie silence as the eye passed over. Mary suggested pulling apart then, checking the beach, thinking if something...someone else had been washed up... But Ben knew no one could have survived in a sea rougher than the pre-cyclonic conditions he’d been washed up in, and how did they know how long the eye would take to pass?

With his injured knee he couldn’t move fast, and the thought of his Mary—his Mary?—being caught up in it was unbearable.

Then the darkness and the wind closed in on them once more and the quilt was their refuge again.

Their bodies were their refuge.

Heinz was there, too. Every now and then the little dog squirmed upwards as if to make sure his mistress was still there, head as well as toes. Then he’d retreat to the warmth of the nest their feet made—as if he knew they needed privacy.

Privacy? Ben had never felt so private.

He was a loner. His parents’ appalling marriage, the family wealth that set him and Jake apart, had turned him into himself. He’d moved into his father’s financial world almost by default. There’d been no one else to take on his father’s role as head of such a vast financial empire, but in the end he’d found it suited him.

He discovered he had a talent for finance, and the financial world was superficial enough to suit him. Emotion had no place. He moved in sophisticated circles, with women who were content to partner him for appearances. They knew not to intrude on his solitude.

And yet this slip of a girl had broken through. How? He didn’t know, and for now he didn’t care.

They talked and made love, talked again, then fell into a half-sleep where their bodies seemed to merge closer than he’d felt to anyone in his life. Closer than he’d imagined he could feel.

She asked questions and he answered, and vice versa. There seemed no boundaries. The storm had blasted them away.

He found himself talking of his childhood, of the isolation he and Jake had found themselves in, how one dare had led to another. He told her of an understanding nanny who’d said, ‘Guys, you don’t need to kill yourselves to get your parents to notice you.’ And then she’d added, sadly, ‘Your parents are so caught up in their own worlds, you mightn’t manage it no matter what you do.’

Those words had been spoken when he was about twelve. They hadn’t made one whit of difference to the risks he and Jake had taken, but thinking back...

His mother’s demands that her children cheer her up, make her happy, pander to her emotions. Her eventual suicide when they’d failed. The appalling distant cruelty of his father. Their childhood behaviour made sense now, and here in this cocoon of passion and warmth and safety he could say it.

But he didn’t need to say it. It was just one of the passing thoughts that went between them, and it was as if he was lying in the dark, totally isolated, talking to himself.

Or not.

Because she listened and she held him, and the words were absorbed and held. Somehow, within that cocoon, he felt the armour around his heart soften and crack.

Just for now. Just for this storm. They both knew there was no tomorrow. Was that part of the deal?

‘Tell me about roller derby,’ he said at one point, and he felt her body lighten. A frisson of laughter seemed to pass between them.

What was it with this woman? If she smiled, he seemed to smile with her. His body seemed to react to hers, no matter what she did.

They seemed...one.

It was the storm, he told himself. Shared danger. The emotion and peril of the last two days. It was nothing more.

But somehow, right now, it seemed much more.

‘Roller derby’s my home,’ she said, and he blinked.

‘Pardon?’

‘You went into the army,’ she said. ‘I’m guessing roller derby’s the same thing for me. Nice, little Mary, goody two shoes, knocked down whenever I do anything that might be noticed because I have a powerful stepmother and three overwhelming stepsisters. But when I put on my skates, I can be someone else. I can be the me I suspect I could have been if my mum had lived.’

‘So when you put your skates on, you’re Bad Ass Mary.’

‘Smash ’em Mary,’ she corrected him. ‘I can do anything when I have my team around me. The power is unbelievable, but there are no roadside bombs for the unwary.’

‘Only the odd broken leg.’

‘I’ve never broken anything. I’m little and quick and smart.’

He could see that about her. It made him smile again.

‘And rough?’

‘You’d better believe it.’

‘I’d love to watch you play.’

‘That’s not going to happen.’ He heard her smile die.

‘You’ll find another team.’

‘Another team, another town, another life?’

‘Mary...’ He rolled over and tugged her close.

‘Mmm?’

‘That’s for tomorrow. Not now. Now is just...now.’

‘I should stop thinking about it?’

‘Yes.’

‘I need distraction.’

‘I’m good at distraction,’ he said, and kissed her. He kissed her as she should be kissed, this wiry, tough, soft, vulnerable, yet ready-to-face-the-world warrior queen. ‘I can provide distraction now. All you need to do is say yes.’

‘Yes,’ she whispered—and so he did.

* * *

She woke and there was silence.

Silence, silence and silence. It was so quiet it was almost loud.

She was cocooned against Ben’s body, enfolded and protected, and for a couple of dreamy moments she found herself wishing she could stay. But the silence told her this time out was almost over.

Any minute now the world would break in. They’d be rescued, she could pick up the pieces and start again.

A consummation devoutly to be wished?

No. She didn’t wish. All she wished was right here, right now. She closed her eyes and let herself savour Ben’s body. Life was all about now, she told herself. She refused to think further.

‘Mary?’

‘Mmm?’ Shut up, she was pleading beneath her breath. Don’t you know that if we wake up it’s over?

‘It’s over,’ he said, and she kept her eyes closed for one last millisecond, gathering her resources, such as they were.

She could do this.

‘We’ve survived,’ she said, and she thought, I will survive. And then she thought, How dramatic is that? Woman who’s just had a magnificent time out with a wounded warrior; celebrating survival? She felt like she should be celebrating much more.

She could put him in her book. Who was she kidding? He already was in her book.

And who was she kidding with her writing? Writing would give her an alternative career? That was fantasy.

Like now. But fantasy was over.

Ben was putting her gently away, kissing her with all the tenderness in the world but then setting her back, holding her shoulders so he could look into her eyes.

‘That was a very nice way to spend the storm,’ he said, and she managed a smile.

‘Diversional therapy? They taught us that at nursing school. It works beautifully.’

‘You never learned what we just did at nursing school.’

‘I... No.’

‘Mary, if there are consequences...’

‘There won’t be consequences.’ She said it with more confidence than she felt. It was the wrong time of the month, she should be okay, but...but...

But there were things she could do. She just had to be practical.

‘I’ll always be here for you,’ he said, and there was that in his voice that said he meant it. ‘No matter where you are in the world, if you ever need me...’

‘If ever I wash up on a beach...’

‘I’m not joking,’ he said, and touched her lips gently with his fingers. ‘I’m yours for life.’

He meant he had a lifelong debt, she thought. Yours for life? No and no and no. Already she could see him moving on.

‘We need a radio,’ he said.

‘There’s been no transmission since before I found you. I suspect the mainland transmission towers have gone.’

‘Phone?’ he said without much hope.

‘Same. But I turned mine off, conserving the battery so when it does come on again I can call.’

She saw his relief. ‘You normally get reception?’

‘From higher on the island, where the hut is.’ She hauled herself together, trying to ignore the feel of his hands on her shoulders, trying to ignore the part of her that was screaming that she didn’t want to leave this place.

She had to leave.

‘I’ll do a recce,’ she said. ‘Heinz and me. It’s time he got some exercise.’

‘We’ll do a recce.’

‘Yeah, Commando Sir,’ she said dryly. ‘Have you seen the size of your knee?’

‘It’s better.’

‘It’s straight. It’s not better. And there’s no proof you don’t have a broken bone. You want to be on the other side of the island and the bone shifts? What good would that do either of us?

‘I need to find out what’s happened to Jake,’ he said, and she knew his focus had gone out of this cave, back to the most important thing in the world.

His twin.

He’d moved on. She must, too.

She sat up and stared out into the bright morning light. The sky was clear, the wind had dropped to almost nothing, and she could see the turquoise blue of the bay. ‘The tide looks like it’s out,’ she said. ‘There’ll be a couple of hours when I can access most parts of the beach. What if you stay here and tend the fire, and Heinz and I will do a circumnavigation of the island. We’ll check and see what’s left of the hut but we’ll check the beach first.’