LITMIR.BIZ

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half-sister.’ Wendy sat back, had a couple of sips of coffee and hugged Gabbie some more. He’d explain, she guessed. Given time. Meanwhile, Gabbie was still trembling. She’d been trembling all day with the impending move. She needed hugging and Wendy was content to hug her. The rest of the kids had a great new toy to play with—a couple of hundred thousand dollars worth of new toy!—and, despite the fact that she had a train to catch, Wendy wasn’t into rushing.

      For the baby’s sake, she could wait.

      ‘I didn’t even know she existed until today,’ Luke said bitterly. ‘Hell. You’re sitting there judging me for dumping her and until this morning I didn’t even know I had a half-sister.’ His eyes caught hers and held them, willing her to believe him.

      And suddenly, unaccountably, Wendy did believe him. His eyes were also demanding she understand. She didn’t understand, but she found herself suspending judgement just a little. Her initial vision of playboy father landed with illegitimate baby was put to one side. For the moment.

      ‘Tell me about it,’ she said softly. She glanced out the window—just to check. Sam was sitting behind Luke’s steering wheel, Craig was in the passenger seat and Cherie was pretending to be the bonnet ornament. They had bare feet, she thought, and no one was wearing belt buckles. They wouldn’t scratch his precious car.

      But Luke was now not watching his car. He had eyes only for Wendy, trying to make her see.

      ‘It’s my father,’ he said slowly. ‘This is my father’s baby.’

      Wendy’s quick mind mulled this over. Family messes were what she was accustomed to—what she was trained to deal with. ‘You mean your father is also this little one’s father?’

      ‘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

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