Marion Lennox - Adopted - Twins!

It wasn’t anything good, Erin thought, but then, when had Charlotte ever said anything nice about her? Or anyone who had less money and influence than Charlotte?

‘Hi,’ she said brightly, determined to be cheerful. ‘I had to come home. Bay Beach ran out of things I could buy.’

‘Did the insurance money run to all this?’ Charlotte asked incredulously, looking at Erin’s parcels. She sniffed. ‘That’s the same perfume as Sally wears. It costs a mint. And you’ve never bought a dress from Della’s!’

‘I do get paid,’ Erin said gently. ‘I’m not exactly a welfare case, Charlotte.’ She dumped her parcels and somehow kept right on smiling. Then, because she knew it’d cut right to the bone, she couldn’t resist. ‘I even had money left over for lacy knickers. Because a girl just never knows…’ And that was enough of that! ‘Where are the boys?’

‘They’re watching television,’ Charlotte snapped, watching Matt’s face and not being reassured at all. He’d definitely heard what Erin said, and there was definitely a level of interest there. ‘They’ve been distinctly unhelpful.’

‘I expect they’re tired,’ Matt threw in, trying to appease-and trying not to think of Erin in lacy knickers-but Erin was no longer listening. She left them to each other.

If Matt was stupid enough to believe he loved Charlotte, then they deserved each other.

The twins weren’t watching television.

Erin went from there to the bedrooms. Then she searched the house, but there were no twins. Finally she returned to the kitchen.

‘They’re not in the house,’ she told Matt, and watched as his eyes widened. ‘Where else could they be?’

‘They’re watching television.’ He walked forward as if he thought she just wasn’t looking hard enough, and flung open the sitting room door. The television was blaring, but there were no twins.

They looked at each other-and they started to run.

She checked the river first.

It was Erin’s golden rule. Check out worst-case scenarios and work backward. The most dangerous places for the twins to be were the machinery shed and the river, so while Matt checked the sheds, she ran down along the track they’d used to go swimming.

They weren’t there, but something else was there that made her suck in her breath in dismay.

Oh no!

She looked back up at the house, and her fears were confirmed. There was Matt, emerging from the shed where Cecil had been groomed. He was holding a twin by each hand. Erin couldn’t see his face, but she could guess it’d look like thunder.

Because as soon as he saw the empty stall, he’d have guessed.

She turned around again and she sighed.

The river flowed on golden sand, and then curved away inland. As it did, the sand turned to mud.

That was where Cecil was. He was no longer confined, brushed and beautiful in the shed, ready for tomorrow’s show. He was rolling full length in the mud, doing what every self-respecting bull would do, given all the peculiar odours they’d put on his body.

He was getting it all off.

And he was now disgusting!

‘THEY deserve to be spanked. I’ll do it if you won’t.’ Charlotte was at her vitriolic best and Erin silently counted to ten before she put herself between Charlotte and the boys. Somehow she forced herself to think fast. She needed a defensive weapon here, and luckily she had one, just granted to her by an indignant Shanni.

‘You touch them and I’ll… I’ll publish the poetry you and Bradley Moore wrote to each other when you were teenagers!’

What a threat! Erin’s voice was whisper-quiet and desperate, but everyone knew she meant it. Matt’s eyebrows flew up in astonishment. Charlotte gasped and took a step back, allowing Erin to crouch protectively before her two white-faced little boys.

Now what? Erin thought desperately. The boys knew exactly what they’d done, and how naughty they’d been. Now they flinched, but they met her look, defiant and expecting the worst.

Why did she always want to hug them?

She couldn’t. Matt was still holding them a hand apiece. He was angry, she knew. He’d been distracted momentarily by her stupid threat to Charlotte, and she could see her threat would surface to haunt her, but meanwhile he had every right to be angry.

‘What the…?’ Charlotte was shocked to the core. ‘You never…’

‘You used Rob McDonald as a go between,’ Erin said, and managed a smile. This was kids’ poetry they were talking about. It was only teasing, after all. Wasn’t it? ‘Silly move, Charlotte. Rob might be a police sergeant, but at fifteen he wasn’t so law-abiding. The dratted boy copied them and Shanni found them a couple of weeks ago when she was cleaning up out at her parents’ farm.’

It might be crazy, and wholly unethical, but as a desperate ruse it worked brilliantly. As a distraction, this was a beauty!

‘That’s ridiculous,’ Charlotte managed, right off track.

‘Yep!’ It was, but Shanni had laughingly suggested it as a weapon, and it had been in Erin’s head at the wrong time. Bay Beach was a very small town with a very long memory!

‘Poetry,’ Matt said blankly. ‘Bradley?’ and Erin had to choke back laughter and concentrate on the important issue here.

‘Do you know where Cecil is now?’ she asked the boys gently. She was more dismayed than angry. Heaven, it was as if they tried to drive off anyone who was good to them. They’d all put in so much work to make Cecil splendid, and to undo it all now didn’t make any sense. ‘He’s down in the mud by the river, and he’s filthy,’ she continued. ‘All the work that you and Matt did is wasted.’

‘We don’t care,’ William whispered.

‘Now Matt won’t be able to go to the show,’ Henry added. He was scared stiff, but still there was a whisper of defiance. ‘With her!’

And there was the crux of the matter. They wanted Matt to stay right here, so they’d taken matters into their own hands.

Help! Erin thought bleakly. They needed to be punished-but how? She couldn’t let them off scot-free, and here was Charlotte ready to thrash them. All of them. Erin included.

The woman looked at explosion point. Maybe Erin’s threat hadn’t been such a good idea.

Concentrate on the twins, she told herself. ‘You’d better go to your room,’ she said wearily, trying to block out Charlotte’s fury and think what was best. Her head was spinning. ‘Oh, Matt, I’m so sorry.’

‘There’s no need for you to be sorry.’ Matt’s face was still grim, but there was a trace of understanding behind his eyes. Now they’d given their reason, he could see it and, damn, he’d had fun with the kids himself. He could see why they didn’t want it to end. He hadn’t thought it important-he’d assumed they’d be fine here with Erin while he was away for the night-but looking at it from a kid’s perspective he could see where they were coming from.

And he could see the problem Erin had with them now. They needed consequences, but where were the consequences in this one? He stay home and they’d won? That’d achieve nothing except trouble next time. Or he’d work until midnight getting the bull ready again, and leave them all to be upset in his absence. Erin feeling guilty and the kids feeling bad.

Consequences…

Charlotte was quietly having kittens by his side. What had Erin said? Bradley Moore… Well, well.

Consequences!

‘This is a real shame,’ he said, and made himself look gravely at the twins instead of at Erin. He still had their hands. Now he gave them both a gentle tug so they were facing him. Unlike Erin, he didn’t stoop. He stayed looking down at them from his great height, and he schooled his features into sad instead of angry.