Convenient Brides (35 page)

‘That remains to be seen.’

Ellie stared out over the lawn and couldn’t for the life of her understand what prompted her to say it, but she did. ‘You didn’t think I was good enough for Tom, did you, Brett?’

‘What gave you that idea?’

She twisted her hands. ‘I just got this feeling you thought I was a passing romance, a case of Tom sowing his wild oats. And when you found out about Simon,’ she said baldly, ‘it was almost as if you’d been expecting me to get myself into that situation.’

‘Ellie…’ He paused and sighed. ‘It wasn’t that you weren’t good enough for Tom. But it did cross my mind that you were rather naive and unsure of yourself in those days—and that you might have been looking for more than Tom had in mind.’

Ellie flinched. ‘We’ll never know, will we?’

‘I didn’t—I shouldn’t have said that—’

‘Don’t worry, I sometimes wondered it myself. It still doesn’t get us any further forward.’ She sighed suddenly.

‘Why don’t we have a trial period?’

She looked at him helplessly.

He laughed softly. ‘I’m not proposing a bed of nails. Only a trial period of going on as we have been.’

‘Is this what you came home in mind with, Brett?’

He sobered rather abruptly. ‘I didn’t have any preconceived plans—how could I? I didn’t know what the sit-uation was. But now I’ve got to know Simon…’ he paused ‘…and I’ve seen how things are, it seems like a good idea. It is,’ he said slowly, ‘the only thing I can do for Tom, now.’

She stared at him for a long, long moment.

‘Ellie, no disrespect intended towards your handling of Simon thus far—I think you’ve done a marvellous job with him. But it’s going to get harder.’

She put her feet down onto the cooling tiles. A breeze had risen and it was lifting Brett’s dark hair. She shiv-ered suddenly and stood up.

‘I’ll think about it.’

He got up and came to stand in front of her so they were only inches apart. And he watched her intently, her slim outline in the long indigo dress she was wearing again, her shuttered expression when normally she was like an open book, her new hairstyle—did she spend a lot of time fiddling with it? he wondered. It looked refreshingly natural to him…

‘Have I offended you?’ he asked quietly.

Yes! Of course she didn’t say it, but something in her heart said it for her as that frisson tiptoed up and down her spine again and she came alive, not only to him, but alive in a way no man had made her feel since Tom; achingly, dangerously starved of love…

‘No, Brett,’ she said with an effort. ‘I can never repay you for all you’ve done for us so perhaps I’m…to be honest, I feel as if I’ve already imposed on you far more
than I ever should have. That’s why I really need to think about this. Goodnight.’

She checked Simon on her way to bed.

As usual, he’d fallen asleep with his lamp on and the latest
Guinness World Records
open beside him. As usual, his clothes were scattered everywhere. She tidied up quietly, put a bookmark in the book and put it on his bedside table. Then she simply stared down at her son for a while with new eyes. Was it because she lived with him all the time that the resemblance to Tom didn’t strike her so much these days? Was it so long ago now, anyway, that Tom had faded in her consciousness in more ways than one? Or was Simon simply his own person to her now?

But it was true that it was getting harder as a single mother with a growing son. Take the ‘skateboard, roller blade’ dilemma, she thought ruefully. Most of Simon’s friends had one or the other, if not both, but she hadn’t agreed to either because of the visions she’d had of broken limbs or broken heads, although her excuse to date had been the expense. But were her injury concerns le-gitimate?

Would a man have a better idea of a boy’s limitations? Would a man be better at enforcing the skullcap rule against peer pressure? Was she heading towards being a clinging, fearful mother, in other words?

Perhaps most of all, though, how
was
she going to provide Simon with a suitable role model?

She stared down at her sleeping child, then switched the lamp off and left the room quietly.

Her bedroom was a lovely room, serene, spacious and furnished in buttery creams and jade green. On this night she prowled around restlessly, however, once she’d
changed into her pyjamas, until she finally forced herself to sit down at the dressing table, and, in the process of applying cleansing cream to her face, come face to face with her other dilemma—Brett Spencer as a man.

And the shocking revelation that he
had
offended her this evening because his proposition—even though she’d made him feel at home—was mostly based on helping with Simon. Which meant…?

When did it happen? she asked herself helplessly as she tissued off the cleansing cream and reached for her toner. Of course, he’d always been attractive, but it was one thing to acknowledge that in a man and another to feel desolated, as she did now, about him having no interest in her as a woman.

It was quite another matter to ponder whether, of all the batterings life had handed out to her, this might be the worst. And just when she’d thought she was doing so well, apart from the problem of a role model for Simon.

Then she stared at herself in the mirror and was forced to acknowledge it couldn’t have happened in the space of one week. So, for how long had she been burying in her subconscious the fact that she’d fallen in love with Brett Spencer? Way back to when he’d rescued her from public humiliation beside a parking meter?

She took an appalled breath. Was that why she’d always refused to admit it? Was that why she could never admit it to anyone but herself without being unfaithful to the memory of Tom?

If only he hadn’t come home, she thought despairingly. If only she’d got herself out of this position years ago. And how to deal with living under the same roof indefinitely? It might have been eleven years ago, but she could still vividly recall that fighting Brett when he’d
made up his mind was not something she had excelled at previously.

You were also battling nausea, panic, grief and lone-liness at the time and then the threat of preeclampsia, she pointed out to herself.

She patted toner onto her face and finally took herself to bed. But her dilemma didn’t leave her, in fact it got worse as she contemplated one scenario after another. Brett having mistresses, for example, while he pursued the jolly cause of providing Simon with a role model. Had he kept up his apartment? she wondered. Because he wouldn’t be able to bring them to 3 Summerhill Crescent, Balmoral.

And what would he expect of her in that line, not being privy to the fact that no other man would do for her now—not ever being privy to that fact if she could help it? Perhaps—that they could roster his apartment, she thought rather grimly.

Oh, no, was her final thought before she fell asleep; it simply couldn’t work!

She was slow and dithery the next morning, and only just got Simon off in time for school. Fortunately it wasn’t a work day for her, and Brett wasn’t up yet.

So she brewed a pot of coffee and had a leisurely cup to get herself into a better gear and was about to start the housework when the front door bell rang.

She froze for a moment, thinking of Dan Dawson—yet another complication in her messy life!—but relaxed as she remembered that Dan always used the kitchen door. She was quite unprepared, however, for the girl who stood on the other side of the front door with an overnight bag in her hand. A stunning, extremely
shapely blonde with true violet eyes, poured into a cyclamen stretch top and black leather trousers.

‘Hello?’ Ellie said. ‘Can I help you?’

‘I hope so,’ the blonde replied, and put the bag down. ‘Does Brett Spencer live here?’

Enlightenment hit Ellie—the bag was identical to the one in Brett’s bedroom. ‘You must be from the airline! Look, he’ll be so glad to get his bag back.’ She put the bundle of washing she had in her arms down on the hall bench and opened the screen door.

‘I’m not from the airline,’ the other girl said wryly. ‘I’m his fellow passenger—we had a great flight together!—and I must have picked up the wrong bag by mistake and I carted it all the way to Melbourne. Lucky there was an address inside his bag because there isn’t one in mine. But I’d really like to hand it over person-ally, not only because I feel such a clot, but because I want to explain that I got the flu, that’s why it’s taken me so long to bring it back.’

‘You—so you must be Kylie Jones?’

‘He told you about me? Great! Because I’ve got a thing or two to prove to Brett Spencer.’

‘Such as?’ Ellie enquired dazedly.

‘Between you, me and the gatepost—’ the girl low-ered her voice conspiratorially ‘—he may not think I’m the right girl for him, but I’ve decided to prove him wrong. By the way, my name is Chantal, I don’t use Kylie any more.’ She smiled at Ellie in a friendly way. ‘I guess you must be the cleaning lady?’

Ellie’s mouth dropped open as her brain synapses fizzed and spun beneath the weight of all this information. Then she looked down at herself. Her jeans were old and frayed. Her T-shirt, once bright pink, was now faded and had tangled with a non-colourfast navy-blue
item in a long-ago wash. Her sandals were very comfortable but of a vintage that prohibited her from wearing them in public…

‘You could say that,’ she conceded at last. ‘I certainly do a lot of cleaning. But he’s not up yet so—’

‘Yes, I am. Chantal, you didn’t have to do this.’

Ellie swung round. Brett was standing behind her, obviously not long out of bed. His hair was hanging in his eyes, his shirt was hanging out of his cargo pants and his feet were bare. He looked moody and singularly un-impressed with this turn of events, but sensationally sexy at the same time.

And as if she, Ellie, did not exist, Chantal said with a secret, sexy little smile of her own, ‘Oh, yes, I did, Brett. Why don’t you ask me in for a cup of coffee? I’ve come a long way to restore your bag to you and I would have done it a lot sooner but I got the flu and went to stay with my mum for some TLC.’

Afterwards, Ellie was never sure why she acted as she did. At the time, she acted on impulse and—instinct? Whatever, she immediately invited Chantal in, adding, ‘There’s a pot of coffee on the stove, as it happens!’ And she resolutely ignored Brett’s steely gaze as she ushered Chantal in all her glory towards the lounge.

Brett followed, having retrieved his bag, which he put on a table and opened. And she thought she detected a genuine sigh of relief as he took out an envelope folder and a floppy disk container.

But just as Ellie was about to say she would have the coffee ready in two shakes of a duck’s tail, he sent her another steely glance, then transferred his attention to Chantal. ‘This is Ellie, Chantal. She’s not the cleaning lady, we’re living together.’

Oh, no, you don’t, Brett Spencer! It shot through
Ellie’s mind. Whatever is going on between you and this girl, you’re not going to use me to get yourself out of it! No way!

‘Not really living together, just sharing the same house at the moment, Chantal,’ she said soothingly to the bitter look growing in those violet eyes. ‘Why don’t you explain it properly, Brett, while I get the coffee?’

‘No, Ellie, sit down,’ he ordered. ‘You too, Chantal.’ There was something so determined in his eyes, they both sank into chairs.

‘Chantal,’ he continued less severely, ‘would I be right in assuming you deliberately switched overnight bags?’

Chantal looked momentarily discomforted.

‘Since it was the only way you could come up with of staying in touch?’ he continued rather gently.

This time Chantal shrugged with her lips twisting. ‘Pretty clever, don’t you think? Of course I had no way of knowing there would be an address in the bag but at least I had something to go to the airline with.’

By this time Ellie’s synapses were short-circuiting. ‘Did you really switch bags?’ she asked Chantal, her eyes almost standing out on stalks.

‘Honey,’ Chantal said, then grinned charmingly, ‘if all you can get out of this guy is the sharing of a house, you might need to be a little inventive yourself!’

She stood up and smoothed her leather trousers. Then her gaze locked with Brett’s. ‘I decided to take your advice about not making certain assumptions at face value,’ she said simply. ‘I’m taking the Gold Coast job, I’ve got a flat in Brisbane and I’d really like to get to know you better. That’s all. Bye for now—I’ll let myself out!’ And she left. Reminding Ellie, although their fig-ures couldn’t be more different, of the way Dan Dawson
had sauntered down the drive last night although there was another, more subtle difference. There had been a slightly self-conscious aura to Dan last night whereas Chantal was not in the least self-conscious, she was just—superb. And Brett’s gaze, although hard, stayed on the doorway for a long moment.

‘All right,’ Ellie said a few minutes later over a belated cup of coffee, ‘I accept that you didn’t intend to continue whatever it was you started with Chantal Jones on that long, boring flight. Mind you, I also take issue with that—you obviously got her hopes up in
some
way.’

Brett was silent but a faint grin tugged at his lips.

‘And I take issue with the fact that you show not one ounce of remorse!’

‘Ellie, all I did was talk to her. Then, when she made a rather obvious suggestion, I gave her some very good advice.’

‘So I noticed—she’s obviously taken it to heart, in fact!’

He shrugged.

And Ellie started to laugh softly. ‘A topless dancer!’

He raised an eyebrow at her. ‘She’s actually quite a nice girl.’

Ellie sat up and sipped her coffee, still chuckling. ‘She may be but I certainly don’t feel such a dumb klutz about the errors of judgement I may have made in the past!’

‘Well, I’m glad about that but I should point out that I have yet to make an error of judgement.’

‘I’d like to bet my bottom dollar it was touch and go, Brett!’ She looked across at him with her eyes sparkling with amusement.

He studied his cup and grimaced.

‘Actually, I quite liked her.’ Ellie looked wry. ‘I
thought she handled herself with aplomb in the circumstances.’