LITMIR.BIZ

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want her quails.

      ‘Eggs on toast is all I’m capable of tonight,’ he said wearily. ‘I’m sorry, Charlotte. Freeze my dinner. It’ll have to wait for some other time.’

      This wasn’t going to work.

      Erin had never been inside Matt’s house, but she walked through the front door and she darn near walked out again. This and the twins? No and no and no.

      ‘You’d best take off your shoes,’ Matt said, through force of habit. ‘The carpet shows every mark.’

      ‘I’d guess it would.’ Erin stared at the floor in doubt, but obligingly removed her shoes and then turned to the boys and slipped theirs off too.

      The twins let her do what she wanted and they hardly moved as she did. The Welfare lady had dressed them—sort of—but they were so subdued they hadn’t said a word. Now Erin badly wanted to get them alone. She wanted them bathed and tucked up somewhere warm and safe and alone, where she could cuddle the shock and fear out of them.

      Matt was stooping to help with their shoes, and she was grateful for that at least.

      ‘Did…did you choose this carpet—or did Charlotte?’ she managed. It was a stupid conversation starter, but it was something.

      ‘My mother chose it,’ he said stiffly and that made her blink in surprise, memories flooding back.

      She’d known Matt’s mother—not that they’d ever spoken, of course. Matt’s family owned one of the wealthiest farms in the district. Not so Erin’s. As one of eight kids in a big, loving and decidedly impoverished family, Erin was considered by Mrs McKay to be a nobody.

      Which suited her nicely, she acknowledged. Erin had no wish to move in Matt and Charlotte’s exclusive world. She and her friends—and their respective parents—used to check out Louise McKay’s perfectly tailored white suits and think how impractical they were. Only Louise thought they were perfect.

      ‘Didn’t your mother die five years ago?’ Erin managed, thrusting away memories of the perfect Louise. ‘This carpet looks unused.’

      ‘I usually use the back door,’ he told her. Then he managed a grin. ‘I guess Mum trained me well—or I got sick of taking off my boots.’

      ‘I can see that.’ She stared at the white carpet, and then through to the white leather lounge suite in the sitting room beyond. ‘The boys and I had better get used to the back door as well.’

      ‘I guess it’d be best.’

      Hmm.

      The situation here was decidedly strained. Erin was standing in the front hall of the great McKay family home. Alone—apart from the twins—with Matt McKay. The feeling was…weird?

      But she didn’t have the time to examine her personal feelings. The boys’ needs were too great. ‘Show me the bathroom and where the boys can sleep,’ she said wearily. ‘They need to be in bed.’

      So did Matt. He gave himself a mental shake, trying to sort priorities. There were two bathrooms. He could clean up in one while she coped with the twins in the other. Maybe he could help her, but first he had to clear his head. It still felt fogged with smoke and the aftermath of terror.

      ‘This way.’ He led them, minus their shoes, to the back of the house. Here were two bedrooms side by side, with a bathroom between. To Erin’s delight, the beds were freshly made, as if he’d been expecting guests any day.

      ‘It’s another legacy from my mother,’ he told her, seeing her look of surprise. ‘The bedrooms stay immaculate at all times in case of unexpected visitors. That’s you. Unexpected visitors.’ He managed another of his smiles, and even though it was crooked and weary it was a smile that made a girl want to take a backward step.

      Or a forward step?

      But he was talking in a dragging voice that had Erin suddenly looking sharply up at him. She needed to focus here. The burn on his forehead was blistering badly and his eyes were red-rimmed from the smoke. He might be hero material but he was badly shocked and he’d inhaled a lot more smoke than she had.

      ‘I’m afraid they won’t stay immaculate if my twins are sleeping in them,’ she said apologetically, and then, propelling her charges into the bathroom, she turned back to him with decision written all over her. House mother personified. ‘You go and take a shower yourself,’ she said. ‘And then go straight to bed.’

      ‘We’ll see. I do need to eat. I’ll meet you in the kitchen when the twins are settled.’ He managed a rueful smile. ‘That is, if you dare leave them alone.’

      ‘They’ll be good tonight,’ Erin told him, and she smiled as she ruffled the twins’ soot-blackened hair. The children were so tired they were sagging on their feet. ‘Won’t you, boys? I think any mischief has been blasted right out of you.’

      ‘We’re sorry, Erin.’

      It was the first whisper she’d had out of either of them. She’d run a bath, washed them to within a whisker of their lives, rubbed them dry on Matt’s mother’s sumptuous white towels—and still managed to leave a streak or two of grey on the gorgeous linen—and then cradled them into bed. They shared the one bed, despite there being twin beds in the room.

      In times of trouble these two stuck together and they were sticking together now.

      And all the time they’d stayed silent.

      Now, dressed in some very strange and ill-fitting pyjamas, they looked up at her from their shared pillow, and their eyes were still glazed with shock and fear and remorse.

      ‘We only made the bomb to scare Pansy,’ William said, trembling, and if he hadn’t sounded so pathetic Erin might have been tempted to laugh. Oh, heck… Pansy Poodle?

      ‘Why on earth would you want to scare Pansy?’

      ‘So Mr and Mrs Cole would move away and stop being nasty to you.’

      That was all she needed! She was overtired and overemotional and now she had to blink back tears. They were such terrors but there was always a motive. They had such good little hearts.

      Somehow she schooled her features into sternness, and hugged them both.

      ‘Well, we were very, very lucky that Mr McKay came to save us. You’ll promise me you’ll never, ever play with fireworks or matches again? Not even to scare Pansy?’

      ‘We promise,’ Henry told her and she looked down and knew that she had their word.

      It wouldn’t be a bomb next time. Something else for sure, but not a bomb.

      She tucked them in, hugged them again for good measure and wondered where Tigger was now. They loved Tigger, and when they realised he’d been burned… It didn’t bear thinking of.

      Then she looked up at the sound of footsteps in the hall. Matt was standing in the doorway. He was clean now, big and bronzed and capable, dressed in clean jeans and an open necked shirt and with only the burn on his forehead to show any damage had been done.

      He was back to the farmer she knew.

      Charlotte was one lucky lady, Erin thought suddenly. A class above the likes of her or not, Matthew McKay was not bad as husband material.

      Not only was he extremely good looking, with his thatch of sun-bleached brown curls, his weathered skin and his strongly muscled frame, but his deep brown eyes were twinkling with kindness. In his hands he held two mugs, and he carried them carefully over to the bedside table for the boys.

      ‘My Grandma always used to say a glass of warm milk is the best cure in a crisis,’ he told the twins. ‘So I brought you boys one each. There’s another for Erin when she’s had her shower.’ And then he smiled at Erin—a smile that somehow had the capacity to knock her senses reeling. ‘Off you go, and I’ll meet you in the kitchen when you’re clean.’

      Darn,

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