Lindsay Armstrong: From Waif To His Wife

His grey eyes rested on her thoughtfully for a long moment. He’d lent her another old khaki shirt for their endeavours with the fan belt. She’d since removed it and his sister’s cable-knit sweater was clean, but a little smear of grease she hadn’t noticed remained under her chin.

Otherwise, completely au naturel , with no make-up and with her cloud of curls, she was ethereally attractive in an understated way. Her skin was pink and white and perfect. Her rosy mouth was delicate and her green eyes were stunning.

As well, as he now knew, there was a perfect little figure beneath Sonia’s clothes with high, pointed breasts, a tiny waist and peachy hips.

He frowned suddenly. Why the hell he’d been moved to kiss her had been a mystery to him at the time. He had put it down to a salute for a mad act of bravery. He’d actually felt a surge of affection for her-so half drowned but still capable of yelling at him. He had regretted insulting her, but…

Had he also experienced a protective instinct?

If so, could he be falling into a trap she was building with gossamer strands around him?

Well, he decided and took the last sip of his beer, it mightn’t be a bad idea to keep that in mind against any further protective urges. Because he still wasn’t sure she wasn’t a great little actress.

‘I’m off to bed,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

‘Yes, please.’ She covered her mouth with both hands as she yawned again.

Horseshoe Bay was beautiful in the starlight.

The casuarinas along the wide curve of white beach were smudgy shadows and all the boats riding at anchor had their anchor lights reflecting in the glassy water.

Maisie was asleep in the forward berth, a comfortable cabin with two V bunks. She wore a pair of Sonia’s pyjamas, a bit too big for her-and she was dreaming. Weird dreams that prompted her to do something she thought she’d grown out of-sleepwalk.

It could have been, she was to think later, a day and night full of unusual events that produced the episode, but at the time she had no idea what she was doing.

She got out of the bunk and let herself out of the cabin and up the stairs to the saloon. She walked forward and then started to climb the companionway in a slow, dreamy way. When she got to the top of the stairs she unerringly unlocked the door that led to the cockpit and was about to step outside when Rafe intervened.

He couldn’t say what woke him but he got to the saloon in time to see Maisie’s ghostly figure climbing the stairs. He said her name but she didn’t respond so he climbed up behind her and said her name again. She didn’t even turn to him.

‘For crying out loud,’ he murmured, ‘what’s this? Maisie?’

Still no response, and he realised that she was sleepwalking.

He swore softly and turned her around gently then led her down the stairs. She came unresistingly and she rested against him at the bottom.

He examined his options. There was no way he could lock her in-some stratum of her mind was capable of dealing with locks. So how was he going to stop her from getting up on deck and perhaps falling overboard?

‘There’s only one thing for it, Miss Wallis, I just hope to heaven you don’t misinterpret it.’

He picked her up and carried her down to the double bunk in the aft berth.

She curled up with a dreamy little sigh and her eyes closed.

He watched her for a long moment then climbed in beside her and pulled the covers over them. She slept on serenely.

‘Rafe! Rafe! It’s Melissa and Dan. Permission to come aboard? We’re coming anyway. We saw you through the binoculars from Blakesley’s and wondered if you’d had trouble. Dan reckons he can help you. He must be still asleep, Dan, I’ll look in the aft berth-oh!’

Rafe Sanderson shot up in bed and Maisie stirred as the cabin door opened and his friend Melissa peered in.

‘Melissa!’ he growled.

‘I’m so sorry, Rafe,’ Melissa bleated, with her eyes widening as she took in the other figure in the bed. ‘I’m so-but-anyway, we’ll be on deck.’ She backed out hastily and closed the door.

Maisie sat up, her expression horrified and confused. She stared around and then at Rafe. ‘What-why-what’s happened ?’ And she started to scramble up.

He grabbed her shoulders. ‘Nothing’s happened, Maisie. No, listen to me,’ he ordered as she tried to wriggle free. ‘Absolutely nothing happened but-do you walk in your sleep?’

She froze then blinked frenetically. ‘Yes. Well, I used to but it hasn’t happened for a while. I thought I’d grown out of it. Do you mean…?’

He told her what she’d done and why he’d decided the only way he could keep her safe was in his bed.

She subsided. ‘I did walk next door on one occasion,’ she said slowly. ‘And I did once find myself sitting at the bottom of the stairs in our house at Manly with no memory of how I got there or why. And, so I’m told, when I was a little kid I used to suffer night terrors.’

‘Anything seem to trigger it?’ he queried.

She shook her head. ‘Not really, but my mother used to think I was more vulnerable to it when I was overtired.’

‘You would have been overtired last night,’ he said.

‘Yes, probably. Oh.’ Her eyes widened as she took in his ruffled hair, the green T-shirt he wore with sleep shorts, the stubble on his jaw, then she looked down at herself. ‘Oh, dear, all the same, this must look…’

He released her shoulders and smoothed the collar of Sonia’s pyjamas. Then he tucked her hair behind her ears. ‘Extremely suspicious?’ He sighed suddenly. ‘I’m afraid so. Melissa is a,’ he stopped and swore beneath his breath, ‘a natural-born snooper and gossip. She can’t help herself.’

‘What will we do?’ Maisie asked. ‘We can only tell her the truth.’

A flash of cynicism lit Rafe Sanderson’s grey eyes. ‘Unfortunately, the truth is going to sound stranger than fiction.’

A stubborn little gleam entered Maisie’s eyes. ‘I don’t care. It needs to be done.’

He shrugged after a moment. ‘All right, but don’t be surprised if it gets taken with a pinch of salt.’

An hour later they pulled up anchor and headed for Manly.

It was Rafe who’d made the explanations, coolly and casually, to his friends Dan and Melissa.

They’d accepted them jovially and Maisie had maintained her composure, but from the avid little gleam in Melissa’s eye, quite at variance with her words, Maisie knew that Rafe had been right. There was still definitely a question mark over her and Rafe’s relationship.

She flinched inwardly at the thought of it then assured herself that she was unlikely to be in either Rafael Sanderson’s orbit, or his friends’, for much longer, so what did it matter?

It didn’t take her long to discover that it mattered greatly…

Jack Huston, Rafe Sanderson’s long-suffering principal private secretary, was summoned to his boss’s apartment on the Brisbane River that Sunday afternoon.

He then had the matter of Mairead Wallis briefly and succinctly explained to him.

‘But-who is the guy?’ he queried rather dazedly.

Rafe paced around for a moment. Then he shrugged. ‘I’ve had some thoughts, but in the first instance I don’t know if any of it is true. That’s why I need to check her out.’

‘Karoo and your dogs seem to suggest, well, I don’t know what!’

‘That may only mean she has some inside information she’s got from family or staff, it could even mean she’s working with someone else, some-’he gestured ‘-disgruntled ex-staffer.’

‘What’s she like?’ Jack asked.

Rafe stopped pacing and directed a mocking grey glance at his secretary. ‘A typical waif until she loses her temper. A-quite a character. However, if it is true someone out there is using my name to attract girls, I want to know who it is.’