Convenient Brides (33 page)

But he did it briefly despite her prayers, and you would have had to be a block of wood not to be affected, she knew all too well. Because Brett Spencer might be a dedicated doctor with an impressive history of research into tropical diseases behind him, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t look at you in a certain way that made you go weak at the knees. That didn’t blind you to the awesome possibilities of being found attractive by this tall, sometimes arrogant but rather divinely proportioned man with his worldly grey eyes.

In fact, she picked up a magazine and stood it on the table in front of her just in case her nipples decided to misbehave themselves, and she threatened to shoot herself if she blushed.

‘Thanks, I feel pretty good,’ she said brightly.

‘So, other than on the man front, life is treating you well?’

A fighting little glint lit her eyes for a moment at the ‘man front’ bit but she decided to ignore it. ‘Very well! I finally got my degree in speech therapy and I work
part-time at a local clinic, mainly with children. I love it.’ Genuine enthusiasm replaced the fighting glint in her eyes.

‘Would I be wrong in assuming Simon—he’s so like Tom, isn’t he?—is also above-average bright?’

Ellie let the magazine fall. ‘You wouldn’t. He absorbs knowledge like blotting paper. I…it…that’s why I sometimes feel I need to broaden his scope.’

‘Then it’s a good thing I came home,’ Brett said lightly and stood up. ‘Would you mind if I unpacked and took a shower? I’ve been travelling for days and I need a shave.’

‘Not at all, if you’d just give me a few moments to clear your bedroom.’

He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘You’ve had other men in my bedroom, Ellie?’

‘I have not,’ she denied hotly. ‘My market gear is in there, that’s all.’

‘Market gear?’

‘I make kites and sell them at the local markets—I have a stall one Sunday a month, remember? It was a project I started so that one day I’d be able to repay you. All the proceeds,’ she went on stiffly, ‘are in a bank account that’s become quite substantial over the years. It’s all yours.’

‘My dear Ellie,’ Brett Spencer said with just the right mix of quizzical affection he might have accorded a dog that had brought him a bone, ‘you didn’t have to do that. Keep it as a nest egg.’

An hour later, Ellie closed herself into her bedroom and leant back against the door, not sure whom she was most furious with: herself, Brett Spencer or Simon.

She’d cleared Brett’s bedroom and she’d supplied him
with a pink razor when he’d discovered that he’d picked up the wrong hand luggage from the plane. She’d listened with one ear as he’d called the airline and told them what had happened, including the possibility that the person he’d sat next to on the flight from Johannesburg might have been the one to pick up the wrong bag in Sydney.

She’d tried to contact the man she’d invited to dinner to cancel it but she hadn’t been able to reach him, so she’d got dinner under way although with definite trepidation, and she now had about an hour to herself.

And as she wandered over to her bedroom window she could see Brett bowling flippers to Simon.

Brett’s house had a lovely garden and a swimming pool. In fact it was a lovely house: brick, old, solid and mellow with bay windows and flourishing creepers on the walls, a red tiled roof. The rooms were large and high-ceilinged, some of the furnishings a little faded now, but to Ellie’s mind that only gave it the patina of a much-lived-in home. And as well as a lawn large enough to play cricket on, there was a shady paved terrace guarded by two stone lions that overlooked the pool, and suited the subtropical climate of Brisbane perfectly—she used it a lot; they often ate outside.

Not that she was really furious with Simon, she thought ruefully as she turned away from the window. Imparting the details of her love life, such as it was, to a complete stranger was…well, just Simon, a son she adored.

Brett Spencer was another matter. So was her reaction to him.

Her mind slipped down the years to her earlier reactions to him…

She’d met Tom King at university when she was eighteen and he was twenty-two, a civil engineering student, dashing and to-die-for handsome…He’d had his own apartment, a car, he’d played polo and he’d been wonderful to be with. Especially for a girl who had grown up in a repressive home life with a jealous stepmother after her own mother had died. Tom took life so differently, she’d often thought. There had been none of the undercurrents of her home life, none of the suspicions, none of the rules and regulations. It had been heady and intoxicating.

He’d been gregarious with a large circle of friends, but the friend he’d seemed to treasure most and even look up to had been Brett Spencer, a little older and a doctor. Brett Spencer, a man who’d tended to make you stop in your tracks and think, Wow!—even when you’d been in love with another man. Nor had it been so hard to put your finger on why he’d had that effect.

At twenty-four Brett had already had that air of knowing what he wanted and getting it; he’d been enigmatic, he’d played polo brilliantly but he’d obviously been an academic, he’d been laconic—at times he’d even been curt—but when that brilliant smile had crinkled his face and lit up his grey eyes, women had simply keeled over.

And gradually Ellie had discovered why Tom had thought so much of Brett. Their families had been close when they’d been children, they’d been to the same schools, they’d played on the same polo team and at thirteen, when Tom’s parents had died in a ski-lift tragedy, he’d gone to live with the Spencer family.

But she herself had never felt quite at ease with Brett Spencer. Not that he’d ever said anything, but she’d sometimes got the depressing feeling that he hadn’t taken her seriously, that he’d seen her as a passing
romance for Tom, a sowing of his wild oats. To be honest, she’d sometimes wondered about this herself. She hadn’t fallen naturally into Tom’s crowd. She’d been having to put herself through university via a series of part-time jobs, she’d certainly not been as sophisticated as many of the girls in the crowd and she’d sometimes lacked confidence in herself.

And, in hindsight, she was able to identify that her reluctance to become Tom’s lover, not that she hadn’t wanted to, had led him to pursue her all the more.

By the time she was nineteen and had known him for six months, she’d succumbed to the pressure and surrendered her virginity to Tom King and life had been wonderful. A month later life had done an about turn and hit her hard. Tom had been killed in a freak polo accident and a few short weeks after it she’d discovered the contraception she’d used had failed and she’d been pregnant. So, where to turn? She’d had no intention of living with her stepmother’s disapproval on top of all the other things they hadn’t seen eye to eye about.

Then fate had taken a hand. Morning sickness had kicked in with a vengeance and she’d been standing on a pavement in the middle of Brisbane, clinging onto a parking meter feeling not only sick but dizzy and as if she’d been about to faint, when Brett Spencer had walked past, recognized her and come to her assistance. And after he’d restored her, it hadn’t taken him long to prise out of her what the problem had been. His expression, when she’d told him, had said it all—a kind of weary cynicism but not a great deal of surprise that she should have got herself into this situation.

But almost immediately, he’d got practical. He’d told her that he had settled Tom’s affairs but the hope of any assistance from his estate as the mother of Tom’s child
would not be forthcoming. Tom’s lifestyle had eaten away his inheritance from his parents. In fact, all his assets had either been in hock or had had to be sold to meet his debts.

What Brett had then proposed, however, had surprised the life out of Ellie. He’d offered her a home and financial assistance—he’d offered her and her baby security with no strings attached while she’d found her feet again. It had been something of a mystery to Ellie why, at the time, she’d found the prospect oddly chilling.

Of course, she’d knocked the whole thing back at first for so many reasons, not least how little they’d known each other, but Brett Spencer had had other ideas. And on top of what had been turning out to be a difficult pregnancy, he’d finally worn her down. He’d even held her hand, as a doctor, when her son Simon had been born…

Ellie came back to the present. The amazing thing, of course, was that eleven years down the track she was still here.

For her part those eleven years had passed so fast, she sometimes had to pinch herself. But why had Brett been content to let the situation last for so long?

She ran a bath, poured in some salts and got into it absently. How many times had she wondered this down the years?

She squeezed the flannel over her breasts and watched the bubbles slide down her skin. Truth to tell, the only way to cope with providing Simon and herself with a stable, happy life in the circumstances had been to bury this question at the bottom of her mind.

But she had to ask herself now why
she
hadn’t made a break years ago. Before they’d got too settled in Brett’s
lovely old Balmoral home with its views of the Brisbane River?

Because it had been so easy to float along with the tide, she answered herself. Brett had inherited the house from his parents. He might spend large chunks of his life away from it but he’d never planned to dispose of it so, it was there, he’d told her when he’d so efficiently reorganised her life for her, and it was silly for her not to use it. And it had also been home to Tom.

‘Only until I get on my feet,’ she’d warned, as if, she now marvelled, he’d suggested something faintly distasteful or illegal.

He’d shrugged and replied, ‘Whatever.’

So she’d moved into the house and Brett had maintained his city apartment. When Simon had been nine months old, he’d left on the first of his overseas projects and been away for a year, and from that time on his trips home had been brief and for the past five years he hadn’t come home at all.

Her contact with him had been via his solicitor, Gemma Arden, who in time had become a friend. Brett had arranged for Ellie to have an allowance and had insisted on meeting all costs of the upkeep of the house. He’d even provided her with a small car.

So much of this had gone against the grain with Ellie, she’d had a hard time rationalizing it. But by the time the effects of a complicated pregnancy and a protracted birth had worn off, it had all been well in place. Then, her limited prospects of taking care of herself and Simon had become apparent. She’d been forced to cut short her degree so she’d had no qualifications and, even with what part-time work she would have been able to get and a single mother’s pension, childminding would have cut into any wages drastically.

And although Simon was as fit and healthy as they came now, he’d not had a trouble-free run as an infant. Lactose intolerance, frequent ear infections that had eventually required grommets, and adenoid problems had plagued his early years. She’d often stopped to wonder wearily in those years how single, working mothers could possibly cope.

Some justification for the largesse Brett had showered on her had come, obviously, from the fact that Simon was his best friend’s child—perhaps even more than a best friend, almost a younger brother. The other thing, although Ellie didn’t see it as justification but it was a factor to be considered, she supposed: Brett was wealthy. There was a brewing empire in the family background and he was a shareholder.

But even though she’d gone with the flow, so to speak, she’d tried to be as frugal as possible. She’d never exceeded her allowance, she’d insisted on it being cut when she’d started earning money, and she’d hit on the kite-making as a way of paying something of it back.

The other thing she’d done was take extremely good care of his house. In fact she’d come to love it as if it were her own. She’d also discovered she had green fingers and his garden now looked better than it had ever done. And the house and garden had provided her with occupational therapy down the years.

Some help had come her way from her father until he’d been transferred interstate. What had happened to his only daughter might have perplexed and disturbed him but he’d adored Simon. And he wrote to Simon regularly and every year he paid for Ellie and Simon to spend a holiday with them.

But there was no doubt she’d needed some occupational therapy while she’d grappled with child-bearing
and -rearing on top of losing Tom, and a life that had been turning out quite different from her expectations.

Thirty now, a single mother, essentially dateless—apart from the few men she’d hoped Simon might relate to—and desperate, she thought ruefully.

She sat up, reached for her loofah and started washing herself vigorously but it was no good. The underlying reason she was still in Brett’s home refused to be submerged beneath a lather of soap and the scrape of a loofah. It was still the perfect solution to her life, wasn’t it?

‘I DON’T get this,’ Simon said stubbornly, half an hour later. ‘Now Brett’s come home, why do you need a date with another man?’

‘Simon, just set the table, please,’ Ellie responded. She glanced at her watch and then through the open door to the dining room. ‘We’ve only got about ten minutes.’

Simon stood his ground. ‘Who is this bloke?’

Ellie drew a deep breath. ‘His name is William Brooke. He’s a musician and I met him when he bought one of my kites—you remember the racing car one you helped me to make? Well, he really liked it and bought it for his nephew. We got talking and he asked me to have lunch with him. That’s all.’

‘What kind of a musician?’ Simon asked with palpable foreboding.

‘He…he’s a concert violinist.’

‘Mum! So that’s what it’s all about! You want me to start playing the violin—yuk! Martie Webster has to practise for an hour a day and it sounds like…it sounds as if he’s strangling
cats
.’

Ellie ran her fingers through her hair and smoothed the long indigo cotton-knit dress she’d changed into. She said, ‘Musical appreciation is something that can en-hance your life. I’ve always regretted not learning to play an instrument when I was a kid and I didn’t want you to grow up with the same regret. So—’

‘You’re the one who banned the bongo drums Grandad sent me for Christmas!’

‘That was different, that wasn’t music and I was in imminent danger of going deaf!’ Ellie picked up a ladle and stirred the soup she was tending.

‘Mum, I’m quite happy the way I am! You really don’t have to—’

‘Simon,’ Ellie spoke rapidly, ‘this has turned out to be a difficult day for me. I tried to put William Brooke off but he’s not answering his phone, therefore I can do nothing but expect him for dinner, so you will set the table because I’m telling you to, and because I’m your mum I’m entitled to tell you to do things and because you’re my son you’re entitled to listen to me. OK? And I’ll tell you something else—you’ll behave yourself tonight because if you don’t I’ll have a conniption—you wouldn’t like that, would you?’

Simon grinned. ‘The same kind of conniption you had when that guy reversed into you and tried to tell you it was your fault?’

‘Oh,
much
worse!’ She banged the ladle on the counter, then inspected herself for soup splashes.

‘All right, calm down, Mum. I’ll set the table.’

‘What about behaving yourself?’

‘I’m quite happy to behave myself so long as you understand that you don’t need to bring home all sorts of blokes to enhance my life.’ He walked through to the dining room.

Ellie picked up the ladle and turned to see that Brett Spencer had come into the kitchen via the back door. She couldn’t doubt, from the amusement of his expression, that he’d heard it all.

‘Don’t say a word!’ she warned him darkly.

‘OK.’ He put a box on the table and drew a chilled bottle of wine from it. ‘Your wine cellar appears to be non-existent so I nipped out to the bottle shop.’

He came over to the counter, opened a drawer and pulled out a corkscrew. Two minutes later he handed her a glass of wine and poured a beer for himself.

Ellie inspected the pale gold liquid in the crystal glass, then closed her eyes and sipped it gratefully. ‘You couldn’t—’ she stirred the soup gently ‘—also arrange to have me wafted to…to Africa or the moon for this evening?’

He was standing next to her, leaning against the counter. He was still looking amused. He’d changed, he’d shaved and there was something oddly reassuring about him mixed in with something that sent a frisson tiptoeing down her spine.

‘Sorry, no, but it may not be as bad as you think. I don’t suppose there can be two concert violinists in town called William Brooke?’

Ellie’s lips parted. ‘You know him?’

‘Yep. Known him for years. Not, I would have thought…’ he looked her up and down ‘…essentially your type, Ellie.’

Ellie took a gulp of her wine this time. ‘Before I get into what you perceive “my type” to be and how the hell you can know anyway—’

‘He’s gay.’

‘What?’

Brett shrugged.

‘But that’s impossible!’

‘You’ve turned him around?’

Ellie looked into those wry grey eyes and no amount of threatening to shoot herself stopped the tide of colour that rose to her cheeks. ‘No! I mean I haven’t even tried…I mean…I had no idea! Why would he want to take me to lunch and come to dinner—you must have it wrong!’

‘Because he likes you, because he’s interested in your kites—you could probably end up having a nice friend-ship with Will Brooke. If you were thinking of him in terms of a date, though…’ He shrugged. ‘That’s a different matter.’

This time Ellie choked on her wine.

‘I thought so,’ Brett said.

‘How would you know—anything?’ she asked dangerously.

He gestured in the direction of the fridge. ‘There is the matter of the new hairstyle, which is very attractive, incidentally. And according to Simon you don’t usually paint your nails.’

Ellie drained her glass and handed it to him. ‘I’ll have another one, thank you.’

‘Is that wise? So soon, I mean?’

‘It’s about the wisest thing I’ve done for years, Brett Spencer,’ she told him. ‘I have now added to the list of my dates—the list of a back-to-nature freak; an incred-ibly pretentious artist; an unbelievably pompous father-figure—a gay violinist! I can’t believe it.’

He poured her another glass of wine. ‘What about the one who tipped Simon five bucks to make himself scarce?’

She gazed at him over the rim of her glass. ‘He was married. Of course I didn’t know it until, well, I won’t bore you with the details.’

‘Ellie…’ Brett started to laugh, and the phone rang.

She picked it up and said a few words into it, finishing off with, ‘No, no,
please
don’t worry! I haven’t gone to any trouble at
all
!’ And she put it down with a sigh of relief.

‘Will can’t make it?’ Brett hazarded.

‘Will can’t make it,’ she agreed. ‘You have no idea
how embarrassed I feel—what a fool I could have made of myself!’

He grinned. ‘You probably would have realized before it got to that stage—why did he put it off?’

‘They’ve got a concert coming up in a couple of days and the conductor has called for an extra rehearsal this evening—I could kiss him!’ She whirled around a cou-ple of times and planted a kiss on the top of Simon’s head as he came back into the kitchen.

Simon screwed up his face. ‘What’s with you now, Mum?’

‘You’re off the hook, kid. Mr Brooke can’t make it tonight.’

‘Brilliant!’ Simon responded. ‘So there’s just the three of us!’

‘Uh, well, I didn’t mean that necessarily. He’s still a nice person and I’d like to see him again but I won’t be asking him to teach you the violin—’ She stopped as the doorbell rang. ‘Must be one of your mates, Simon. Ask him if he’d like to stay for dinner. We’ve got more than enough, now.’

But as Simon disappeared she said in a rapid under-tone to Brett, ‘We could have a problem, you know.’

‘With Simon?’

‘Yes! Didn’t you hear what he said earlier?’

‘I heard. Is it out of the question, Ellie?’

Her eyes widened and she suddenly had difficulty breathing. ‘Are you suggesting…what I think you’re suggesting?’

‘I’m suggesting that you need a bit of help—’ He stopped as Simon, close by, could be heard talking to his mate. ‘Later,’ he said.

But ‘later’ turned out to be nearly a week away because by the time Simon was in bed that evening Brett
told her that he had a headache, probably only jet lag, but since he couldn’t seem to think straight would she mind if they postponed their discussion?

Ellie agreed with alacrity and told him to go to bed.

The next morning, when he didn’t appear after she’d got Simon off to school, she decided she’d better check on him.

His bedroom was in darkness and there was no movement. She was just about to close the door and let him sleep on when he groaned. She hesitated, then crossed the room to pull one curtain back. The sight that met her eyes as she turned back to the bed was far from reas-suring.

The bed was a mess as if he’d been twisting and turning all night and he himself, as he sat up groggily, looked distinctly unwell. His eyes were heavy-lidded, he was hot and feverish and completely disorientated.

‘Brett, what’s wrong?’ she asked. ‘Surely this can’t be jet lag?’

He stared at her, blinking dazedly until, she gathered, she fell into place, then he dropped his head into his hands with another heartfelt groan.

‘I think we better get a doctor,’ she said with some concern.

‘I am a doctor.’

‘Well, maybe, but—’

‘Ellie, it’s the flu, that’s all.’ He lay back and closed his eyes.

‘How can you be so sure?’ She crossed to the bed and looked down at him, noting the beading of sweat on his forehead.

‘I’ve seen enough of malaria, yellow fever, sleeping sickness, cholera and the like in the past five years to know the difference. Besides which I spent a few days
in Johannesburg with friends—one of them had it—it’s rampant in Jo’burg at the moment.’

‘Don’t you think we ought to get—’ she thought rapidly ‘—a blood test just to be on the safe side?’

He grimaced. ‘All right, Florence Nightingale.’

‘I’ll be right back,’ she retorted with a grin.

By the time the doctor arrived, she’d made Brett shower, she’d made up his bed freshly and she’d made him a hot lemon drink—he didn’t want to eat anything.

The doctor was of the opinion that Brett was right, it was influenza, with the symptoms possibly accentuated by jet lag, but he also said it never hurt to err on the side of caution. He left after taking a blood sample and cautioning Ellie to allow him plenty of bed rest and plenty of fluids.

For the next couple of days Brett slept mostly, ate very little and put up with her ministrations, as in trying to keep him comfortable and peaceful without a murmur.

Then he sat up one morning when she brought his breakfast and swore comprehensively.

‘I beg your pardon?’ She paused beside the bed with the tray in her hands.

‘Not you,’ he said urgently. ‘My bloody overnight bag! Has it turned up yet?’

Ellie put the tray across his knees, took her own cup of coffee from it and sat down in an armchair. ‘No. Sorry, I forgot about it. Is—’ she frowned ‘—it so important? Most people carry books, duty-free stuff and toiletries in their overnight bags.’

‘Most people…’ he eyed her sardonically in her fresh yellow cotton dress with little green sprigs on it ‘…carry stuff they don’t want to be parted from in their overnight bags,’ he disagreed.

‘Such as?’ She raised an eyebrow at him, then spied the one he’d brought home by mistake. It was standing at the bottom of the bed and she got up and opened it.

‘I’ve been through it a dozen times; there’s no clue to the owner’s address,’ he said impatiently.

She shrugged and began to pull stuff out of the bag item by item.

There was a book, two magazines, a toilet bag, a small stuffed dog—a child’s toy or a mascot perhaps—some duty-free perfume and a camera. The toilet bag revealed cosmetics, very expensive ones.

‘She was a woman—the person sitting next to you who might have picked up the wrong bag?’

‘She was a woman,’ he agreed sardonically.

Ellie pursed her lips, deducing that something about his fellow passenger had not endeared her to him. ‘She doesn’t seem to have anything she can’t live without in this bag,’ she commented.

‘Well, I did! I had a very important research file and I also had the disk it was backed up onto.’ He gazed at her broodingly.

Ellie fought her instincts for a long moment. Brett Spencer might be dynamite when he was fighting fit but over the last days she’d seen another side of him. A side that showed her he hated being sick and that he was restless even as ill as he felt. It had also brought her a lot closer to him physically than she’d ever been. And as she’d watched him try to be a good, grateful patient at the same time as she’d been exposed to him often only wearing short pyjama bottoms, she’d been both awed at how beautifully he was made and she was conscious of a growing affection.

In fact what she would like to do right now was slip
her arms round him and tell him not to worry, she would get his bag back come hell or high water…

She sat down again, picked up her cup and cleared her throat. ‘OK, give me all the details and I’ll ring them for you. Do you know her name?’

‘Kylie Jones. But what I need is an address.’ He looked down at the tray and realized for the first time that she’d cooked him a fragrant herb omelette and there was glass of freshly squeezed orange juice plus a pot of real coffee. And that for the first time in days, he felt hungry. He sighed. ‘Look, I don’t know how to thank you, Ellie, and I’m sorry if it sounded as if I was swearing at you.’

‘Be my guest,’ she murmured, hiding an inward tremor as he smiled—admittedly a low voltage one of the real thing—at her. ‘I’ll get on to them right away, but I also have to go to work this morning—will you be all right? I managed to rearrange my days for the last few days but—’

‘I’ll be fine, Ellie.’ He reached for her hand. ‘Thank you so much, you’ve been a brick.’

Oh, dear, Ellie thought as she got ready for work and remembered the feel of his hand over hers, much more of this and I’ll be…what?

It wasn’t until late that afternoon that she was able to report any progress to Brett.

She made them some tea and took it into him. ‘You need the constitution of an ox to deal with this kind of thing,’ she said ruefully. ‘They keep putting you on hold and promising to call you back but, anyway, the gist of the matter is this. They cannot reveal names or addresses of passengers but they are doing their utmost to track down the person on the passenger list who was sitting
next to you. However, they’re a bit baffled themselves because no one else has come forward with a “wrong bag” claim.’

She poured the tea and put his cup and a slice of cake on the bedside table. ‘How do you feel?’

‘Health-wise or state-of-mind-wise?’

‘I think I can gauge your state of mind.’