Elizabeth Duke - The Parent Test

As she showered and changed, Roxy brooded on the unwanted encounter.

There’d been no avoiding Cam in the tiny coastal church. As godmother and godfather to baby Emma, they’d had to stand side by side at the font.

Cam hadn’t changed a bit in the twelve months that had passed since Serena’s wedding. Still as good-looking as ever, as sexy as ever. The same tall, athletic build…the same amazing shoulders…the same shiny dark hair…the same glittering black eyes…but the softness she’d once seen in them had gone.

He’d been the first to break the ice. Every painful word, every charged look, was etched in her memory.

‘Back for long this time, Roxy?’

She bristled at his tone, at the cynically raised eyebrow. A year might have passed, but obviously nothing had changed. She’d thought for a fleeting second, as their eyes briefly met, that a spark had leapt to life in the lethal black depths, but it was gone in a flash.

His normal reaction to a woman—any woman, no doubt—until he’d remembered who she was. A footloose, scruffy-haired history freak who liked fossicking in the heat and dust in remote corners of the world, unearthing ancient civilisations.

‘I’ll be going away again sooner than I expected,’ she hissed back at him, tossing her head to show him she couldn’t wait to go—while wishing at the same time that she’d worn something a little more sophisticated to her niece’s christening than a long-sleeved granny dress, straw hat and flat-heeled shoes.

‘There’s been an exciting new find in the far north of Mexico,’ she crisply informed him, ‘and I’ve been invited to join the team there. I’m leaving next week.’

Despite the coolness between them, her body was reacting to his nearness, her nerve-ends quivering, her skin heating. It was his fault she’d decided to go away again so soon, his fault she’d extended her field trips since her sister’s wedding. If Cam’s passionate kisses had genuinely meant something…if he’d asked her to stay…if he’d wanted her to stay… But he hadn’t. He’d preferred the dark-eyed brunette.

He’d even brought another flashing-eyed bimbo to his niece’s christening!

‘Roxy…I don’t believe you’ve met Belinda.’ Cam’s eyes hadn’t even flickered as he’d introduced her to his latest dark-eyed stunner. ‘Belinda’s a member of my tennis club, back in Sydney.’

I bet you’ve done more than played tennis together, Roxy had thought nastily, noting the woman’s luscious red lips and provocative smile. A real femme fatale. Just Cam’s type.

The type who would never have dirty fingernails or a hair out of place.

She sighed. Tousle-haired, blue-eyed blondes with an odd dress sense and a craze for ancient civilizations were obviously not Cam’s type.

Roxy dismissed the galling memory, sighing heavily as she threw clothes into a bag—enough for a week or longer—then jumped into her car for the two-hour drive south. She wondered if the dark-eyed Belinda was still around. Or was there yet another ravishing brunette? Ravishing enough for Cam to want to marry?

It was a slow trip out of the city, and there was heavy traffic on the freeway south. After a trying hour and a half, she caught a glimpse of the coast, and the sprawling industrial city of Wollongong, where Cam’s flourishing chemical and fibremaking plant was, as well as his head office and a company house where he could stay if he wished. She knew that he also had a marketing office in Sydney—and a city penthouse.

She blew out a sigh. How could she compete with all that?

After another half an hour she saw the long sweep of the coast again, and the popular coastal township of Kiama, where her brother-in-law, Hamish, had co-owned a pharmacy.

Roxy gulped down a lump in her throat, still finding it hard to believe that Hamish and Serena had gone. They’d been so perfect for each other, so happy together. They’d shared everything. Even—tragically—a love of sailing.

Blinking away a blur of tears, she turned her thoughts to their baby daughter, wondering how her niece was getting on with Cam Raeburn—a very different type of man from the baby’s gentle, home-loving father, Hamish. Emma had been with Cam for six weeks now. Had they bonded in that time? Would the baby be upset, all over again, if she took her away from him?

Raeburns’ Nest was a few kilometers further down the coast, perched high on the rich green cliffs overlooking the ocean. Hamish and Cam had jointly inherited the family home on the death of their widowed father. The two brothers had shared the house until Cam married his wife, Kimberley, and built a new home in the lush Kangaroo Valley nearby—a house he’d sold after his divorce, moving back into his Sydney apartment and his company house at Wollongong. Hamish had stayed on at Raeburns’ Nest, bringing his beloved bride, Serena, to live there with him after their whirlwind two-month courtship.

Roxy’s hands began to tremble as the house came into view. Set in a couple of acres of natural bush, the big old sandstone house looked even more comfortably imposing then the last time she’d seen it, now that the new guest wing, which Hamish had been building on at the time, was complete. As she swung her baby Mazda into the gravel drive alongside the house, she caught a glimpse of the tree-lined tennis court and fenced in-ground swimming pool to the rear of the house, framed by trees, lawn and thick bush.

An ideal home for bringing up a family, she mused with a sigh, her spirits nosediving. How could her two-bedroomed city flat compete with a home like this? With luxury like this?

Dragging her bag from the rear seat, and the giant teddy bear she’d bought for the baby at L.A. airport, she followed a brick-paved path to the side door, avoiding the formal front entrance overlooking the cliffs.

She expected to see Cam’s housekeeper appear when she knocked, or even Mary, the nanny, but it was Cam himself who opened the door.

For a stunned second she stood staring at him, unable to speak. He looked so vastly different from her remembered image of him. On the only two occasions she’d met him before he’d been dressed to the nines—in formal black tie at Serena’s wedding, and twelve months later, at Emma’s christening, in a stylish grey suit, neat white shirt and red silk tie.

On both occasions his thick dark hair had been neatly slicked back and shiny clean, his handsome, strong-jawed face clean-shaven, his powerful shoulders enhanced by the superb cut of his jacket.

Today he was wearing frayed denim shorts and a faded T-shirt with food stains down the front. His strong face was shadowed with overnight growth, his thick hair uncombed, looking as if he’d just climbed out of bed, and his long tanned feet were bare, with an orange splotch on one of them.

She felt almost overdressed, for once, in her washed-out blue jeans, long-sleeved white shirt, loosely knotted at the waist, and well-worn sneakers.

Yet—she swallowed hard—his appearance didn’t repel her, as it should have. He looked incredibly, heart-stoppingly sexy.

As if realising he was under scrutiny, Cam’s mouth curved in a face-crinkling smile that was part mocking, part rueful.

‘I haven’t had time to shave yet, though I did manage a quick shower, after the baby threw up all over me. Lunchtime was interesting too…’ He brushed a hand over his stained T-shirt. ‘This was a clean shirt until Emma made it clear she doesn’t like mashed pumpkin. I’m on my own this weekend,’ he explained. ‘I gave Mary the weekend off to visit her family, and Philomena doesn’t come at weekends.’

Philomena, Roxy assumed, was his housekeeper. Since she wasn’t around at weekends, she was unlikely to be one of his bimbos!