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when did you marry their mother?’

      ‘Seven months ago. Just after Bessy was born. Three weeks before Maureen died.’

      ‘Oh,’ she said in a small voice. ‘I see.’

      ‘Do you?’ He sounded angry. He had his back to her but she could hear tension and anger—and resentment.

      ‘Hey, I cleaned your fridge,’ she said. ‘I’m the patsy in this set-up.’

      Anger faded. His shoulders shook—just a little. ‘The patsy?’

      ‘The pig in the middle. The girl with the soggy cucumber. Shoot around me, but not at me.’

      ‘I’m sorry.’

      ‘That’s better,’ she said approvingly as he carried mugs of coffee across to the table. He really was good looking, she thought absently. And that hair was so ruffled. She could just reach over and touch it…

      Cut it out, she told herself fiercely. What is it with you and long-haired men?

      ‘Tell me about Maureen,’ she said instead and took a mouthful of coffee, swallowing regrets about a magnificent coffee maker she’d left behind in London. Okay, it was Michael’s, but it had been bought with her credit card and it made the best coffee. And that rat…

      She wasn’t thinking clearly.

      ‘Maureen,’ she said again, and Pierce looked confused.

      ‘Look, I’m jet lagged,’ she said. ‘I’m not making sense to me.’

      ‘You suddenly looked a long way away.’

      ‘I was mourning coffee. Tell me about Maureen.’

      ‘She was my foster sister sort of.’

      There was a pause. Sort of foster sister. Hmm.

      ‘Ruby only fosters boys.’

      ‘You think I’m telling lies?’

      ‘I’m not thinking anything,’ she said. ‘Thinking hurts.’

      ‘She’s great, your aunt Ruby.’

      ‘She’s lovely to everyone.’

      ‘I guess.’

      Whoops. ‘I’m sorry,’ Shanni said repentantly. ‘I dare say you and Ruby have a lovely, personalized, meaningful relationship and I wouldn’t dream of disparaging it.’

      He choked on his coffee.

      ‘She’s a bit…batty,’ he said, and Shanni grinned.

      ‘We’re together on that one. But you’d better tell me the rest.’

      ‘It’s not much use.’

      ‘You want me to finish the refrigerator?’

      ‘I…’

      ‘Okay, I’ll finish the refrigerator anyway,’ she said, and gave him a rueful smile. ‘I’m a sucker for a job well done. But tell me or I’ll bust.’ She pulled up a spare kitchen chair, put her feet up, had a couple of sips of coffee—ugh—and forced herself to relax. ‘You’re one of Ruby’s strays. That must have been hard.’

      ‘I guess.’ He shook his head. ‘No. I had a mother who didn’t want me but wouldn’t put me up for adoption. The times with Ruby were not the hard times. You come from a nice normal family.’

      ‘Are you kidding?’

      ‘Well, a family with a mum and a dad, and I’d imagine you were wanted.’

      She thought of her eccentric parents and she grinned. ‘Yep. They wanted me. They weren’t quite sure what to do with me when they got me—they still aren’t—but they wanted me.’

      ‘I was a mistake.’

      She looked at his stern face. There was a curl dripping over his left eye. She could just…

      Cut it out!

      ‘You were a mistake?

      ‘My mother got pregnant during an affair with a very wealthy man. She thought getting pregnant would force him to marry her. She was wrong.’

      ‘Oh.’

      ‘And he denied everything. I can imagine my mother might have been a bit…’ He sighed. ‘Anyway, there wasn’t DNA testing back then. She was screwed. So she put me into foster care, but every time she started a relationship she pulled me out again. To play happy families. And one of those relationships included Maureen.’

      ‘I don’t understand.’

      ‘No, well…’ He shrugged. ‘You have no idea what drop kicks my mother used to fall for. Jack was maybe the worst. But he had a kid, too. Maureen. He ended up abandoning her, but when he met my mother Maureen was nine and I was seven.’

      ‘So?’ Shanni prodded. He looked like he was a long way away—remembering. He was staring straight through her. Now he gave himself a slight shake, as if tugging himself back to now.

      ‘Okay. Dreary story. Jack was a sadist, but my mother thought everything he did was wonderful. So we were at his mercy. But Maureen was older and a bit harder than me. And for some reason she decided she liked me.’ He shrugged. ‘Okay, let’s be honest. I loved the idea of having a big sister, and she thought having a brother was cool. It wasn’t like we had anything else.’

      The words chilled her and she winced, but Pierce didn’t notice. He was seeing back, a long time ago.

      ‘She was there for me,’ he said softly. ‘It was the longest of any of my mother’s relationships. We were together two years. And every time he…’ Once more a shrug. ‘Well, she was always there for me. She’d fly at Jack like a tigress, biting, scratching, yelling. She’d end up as badly beaten as me but it got so…Well, he knew when he raised a hand to me he had us both to contend with, and it helped.’

      ‘Oh, hooray for Maureen,’ Shanni said shakily, and Pierce nodded, faintly smiling.

      ‘She was great.’

      ‘And then?’

      ‘Then my mother and Jack split, and we were put in different foster homes. We tried to stay in touch,’ he said sadly. ‘Maureen used to write. Every six months or so I’d get a scrawly letter telling me what she was doing in her life. Then when we reached adulthood the letters ceased. The last letter said she’d met the man of her dreams and was moving to Perth.’

      ‘But he wasn’t? The man of her dreams?’

      ‘Who’d know?’ Pierce said bitterly. ‘All I do know is that Maureen was wild as be damned. From what I’ve learned since, she seemed bent on self-destruction.’

      ‘Drugs?’ Shanni thought of the five children. ‘No…’

      ‘She didn’t do drugs. That would have been suicide. She was diabetic.’

      ‘Oh.’

      ‘She just wanted kids,’ Pierce said wearily. ‘All her life she wanted a family—maybe that was why she was so defensive of me—and she was going to get a family no matter how much it took.’

      ‘But the diabetes…’

      ‘That’s what I meant about self-destruction. Every time she got pregnant her body seemed to disintegrate. Only she just couldn’t seem to stop herself.’ He hesitated. ‘She’d meet some lowlife and think he was the answer to her prayers and end up pregnant.’

      ‘But not with you?’

      ‘She’d been in Western Australia,’ he said. ‘We’d lost touch completely. Only then, just under a year ago, she came to find me. I was doing very nicely as an architect in Sydney. I’d bought this place as a weekender. I’m a confirmed bachelor, and

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