by Cara Colter
Little did Tim know; there was no question of his remarriage for a long time. While Belinda was missing she couldn’t sign divorce papers, and until seven years had passed, he was as bound to his marriage as if Belinda was still sharing his life and bed. He could force a divorce—but at what cost? Peter and Jan wouldn’t allow him to divorce their daughter without causing a fuss the size of Uluru, and Noah refused to allow anything to damage the kids further.
So he was stuck in this limbo, needing help but unable to reach out to any woman who could mother the kids for another four years. Even if Noah wanted a woman in his life, Tim would never accept a woman that wasn’t his mother. Poor little man, he’d suffered so much the past three years. The child psychologist said the acting out was a combination of grief and terror of losing him, his only security. He’d counselled patience—that this would be a long-term problem until Tim could stand at Belinda’s grave and begin to find healing through closure.
The counsellor was right. Tim still checked inside every passing car, looked in every store or on the street, for signs of Belinda. Noah had lost that luxury over a year ago. He was too busy trying to keep his family together and pay off debts; but somehow he’d find a way to make things better.
This woman was already making things better. Tim and Cilla were smiling again—and though he ached to be a part of it, he wasn’t about to blunder in and kill it.
Jennifer March didn’t know he existed, and was showing uncomplicated kindness and fun to his kids. She was showing Tim that some women could show kindness to him without being a threat to his security, and he could almost kiss her for that …
Don’t think of kissing. Don’t think of her as a woman at all!
When she returned from the bathroom, she was still leading Rowdy by the hand … and that look was on her face again. The soft eyes held their own internal struggle.
Jennifer March had ghosts she was refusing to show in front of his kids … yet the hidden pain held Noah with unwilling fascination. Everything she did held his attention, from the smile that lit up her whole face to the gentle sway of her hips as she walked.
She put Rowdy in the high chair beside the table, and strapped him safely in. “Right, boys, it’s time for your cookies.”
Cilla sniffled. Noah’s gaze swivelled to his daughter. She’d lowered her eyes to the table top, her thumb shoved in her mouth; and he ached for his daughter’s inability to ask, like a normal child. Following her big brother’s example of silence, and expecting nothing. He hated that Cilla and Tim weren’t normal kids—but he didn’t have the weapons for that particular fight. It was all he could do to keep the family together.
Until those final few months after Rowdy’s birth, when the post-natal depression took her over, Belinda had been a fantastic mother. She’d have known how to fix Tim and Cilla. She wouldn’t have made one fumbling mistake after another.
Jennifer March had already turned to Cilla, with a smile and wink—and Noah caught his breath with the gentle sweetness of those thick-lashed blue eyes and curving pink lips. “I think someone’s still hungry.” The words held conspiratorial fun, not rebuke; and Cilla responded to it. The thumb stayed in, but she nodded, smiling around the hand half-shoved inside.
Jennifer turned back to the bench, her hair swinging around her shoulder as she did. Shiny brown hair half-spilled from a loose plait reaching her shoulder blades. She had a dusting of freckles across a slightly long nose, and across lightly tanned oval cheeks. Her figure, encased in plain jeans and a purple T-shirt, was ordinary—curvy without being slender or voluptuous.
There was nothing spectacular about Jennifer March: just an average woman. Yet as she looked down at Cilla, her smile—so tender and caring—made her something deeper, richer than beautiful. The sight of her with his kids did something, not just to his body, but to his heart. Like a funny tug, warm and soft. Safe, and yet—
He shook his head to clear it. He didn’t like the stray thoughts he’d been getting about her. He hadn’t been with a woman since Belinda’s disappearance three years ago, and he didn’t want his body to wake up from its somnolence. It was a complication he didn’t need.
It seemed he had no choice. He’d moved to Hinchliff for change—and he’d got it. He was living next door to a woman he already found compelling. The worst part was, she hadn’t even said a word to him yet. What would happen once they met? And if Tim picked up on it …
Get over yourself, Brannigan. She might not even like you.
He wasn’t stupid enough to think he was a prize to any woman. He was still putting a new architectural and building business in place after having to sell off his Sydney operation to pay the debts, most of which he’d only discovered after Belinda was gone; he had three kids he was barely coping with. If only he’d seen the depth of Belinda’s depression.
“Hmmm.” Jennifer checked her watch as she put more cookies in the microwave, and stirred chocolate sauce into the milk. “You know what, Priscilla Amelia? It’s almost lunchtime. I think it’s time I made that alphabet spaghetti for everyone.”
“Yeah!” Rowdy cried, who knew what the alphabet was from Sesame Street, and loved spaghetti in any form. “Alpaget p’s’getti!”
“Then more cookies?” Cilla mumbled around her thumb.
“Then more cookies,” Jennifer replied. Her mouth twitched, but she kept a straight face. “We’d better let your mum and dad know where you are, though. Tim, could you—”
“My mummy’s dead,” Cilla said without expression—just stating a fact.
Noah, knowing what was about to happen, closed his eyes, and sent up a desperate, heartfelt prayer for help, knowing it wouldn’t help. Nothing could.
About to say something—probably an apology, but what a terrible introduction to his family!—Jennifer was interrupted by Tim’s snapping, “Mummy’s not dead! She was sad, and she went away for a while. She’ll come back!”
Cilla just looked at Tim, her big eyes holding a world of unspoken sorrow. She didn’t say anything—she knew Tim would.
“Shut up, thumb-sucker. She will find us, she will!” Tim yelled. “Even if we’re like days away from home now! Nana and Pa know where we are. She said she’d come back.”
“I don’t got a mummy,” Rowdy said, his big, trusting eyes on Jennifer, who was hurrying to bring the cookies over.
“Yeah, that’s ‘cause you made her run off, loser,” Tim muttered. He crammed a cookie in his mouth, gulped down the milk and turned to get out of the house.
His mother’s son: when things get too hard, bolt …
Noah rapped on the old, ratty screen door before Tim could make his getaway. “Hello,” he called. “I see my kids have found free food with all their usual skill.” He made the tone joking—or tried to, but it fell as flat as the atmosphere inside the big, homey old country kitchen.
Tim’s look was pure accusation. He knew he was about to be disciplined, and attack was his best form of defence.
Half of Cilla’s hand disappeared into her mouth; the pitiful shaking came back. Within moments she, too, would disappear—and Noah had no way to cure her. It scared the living daylights out of him every time she went missing, and if he tried to make her understand he wasn’t angry, just terrified, it led to tears and heartbreaking apologies. I’m sorry I’m a bad girl, Daddy. Please don’t go away like Mummy!
“Come on in, Mr. Brannigan, and have a cookie. I’m just about to warm a new batch for the kids,” Jennifer said with utter calm—and the evil spell disintegrated as if it had never been. Her gaze on him was more compelling than words. Help me out here. “Would you like a cup of tea or coffee with that? Or maybe you want chocolate milk, too?”
Caught out by the teasing, Tim sniggered at his father. “Dad makes the worst chocolate milk,” he mock-complained. “He makes it so milky you can’t find the chocolate.”
“Then maybe I’d better get another bottle of chocolate sauce out, and show him how it’s done?” she suggested, smiling as if th
e eruption over Belinda’s disappearance had never taken place. “Or does he spill the milk, too? Mr. Dropsy Brannigan?”
Cilla giggled … Cilla giggled.
Noah wanted to take Jennifer March in his arms—no, to go into her arms, lay his head on her shoulder and thank her from his soul for the gift she’d just given Cilla. His serious, hurting baby was laughing, and he wanted to shout with joy.
“Actually, it’s Noah Dropsy Brannigan,” he said, gruff with the emotion filling his throat.
“I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Noah Dropsy Brannigan.” As the kids giggled again, Jennifer smiled and pulled out a chair for him. “I’m Jennifer March.”
The gentle, light-up-the-room smile had finally turned his way, and it socked him in the guts with its power. Was it her, or this place? Like a wave of a fairy godmother’s wand, like they’d been transported to a magical place where no pain existed, his family had become normal from the moment they’d stepped inside Jennifer March’s door.
Looking at her, he also felt normal … just an ordinary guy for once … and it was good.
He smiled, wondering if she’d known his name all along, as he had hers. The bush telegraph of local gossip ran pretty fast in country towns. “Pleased to meet you, too, Ms Jennifer I make great chocolate milk March.”
The kids laughed again—they’d laughed with him as well as at him …
His kids were laughing, just like any other kids.
As he sat at the plain wooden chair, a scent surrounded him: chocolate, vanilla and cookies, furniture polish and fresh air. The walls were scattered with Wiggles posters, times tables and fun alphabet pictures as well as simply framed long-stitch pictures of old houses. The floor in the next room had a big, fluffy old rainbow rug that just begged kids to play on it.
Despite the seeming absence of a child—maybe it was with its father right now?—Jennifer March must be a mother. No day-care place he’d used in Sydney felt like this house. It had the aura and scent of old-fashioned love and motherhood and comfort—of home.
It was an aura the kids were responding to with instinctive enthusiasm. All three of them kept their eyes on Jennifer as if she’d disappear if they didn’t—especially Cilla and Rowdy, neither of whom could remember Belinda.
Tim was another, infinitely sadder matter. Although it was obvious he liked Jennifer’s cookies and her gentle way of dealing with his rebellion, the wariness in his eyes, as they flicked between Jennifer March and his dad, told its tale. The adored mother he’d done his best to protect from her depression had left them with a fourteen-year-old girl, walked out of the house and never returned …
But she would always be his mum. Tim was still on guard, protecting the family as Belinda had asked him to. It was a sacred vow to him. Watch the kids until I get back, honey.
Instead of playing at soldiers with toys, Tim was a soldier in a war without detente. That his little son should know such weary fear and endless vigilance at eight years old made Noah want to weep tears of blood. So many useless nights of little sleep, trying to work out a way to heal him. Trying to work out why Belinda had ever left.
But these days, he understood the need to run away from your life, no matter how much you love your family. But that she’d never returned, never once checked on the kids she adored—
Only one answer made sense, but how could he know? If in three long years—one thousand and forty-five days—he’d had a letter, just one call, he might believe …
On the three-year anniversary of Belinda’s disappearance he couldn’t stand it anymore. He’d sold the house in western Dural and headed seven hundred kilometres north of Sydney to Hinchliff. Selling everything off paid the debts he still hadn’t cleared. He’d bought the house next door for little more than a song, hoping the change of scene and people—and distance from Belinda’s obsessive, eternally grieving parents—would help bring his family some closure.
But now, seven hundred kilometres from Sydney and all its sad memories, he knew it would take nothing less than a miracle to bring the Brannigan nightmare to an end.
But then, hadn’t he just witnessed a miracle, right here in Jennifer March’s kitchen? His kids were playing for the first time in three years … and he was terrified to take them home, and face the reality that was just too damn painful.
CHAPTER TWO
NOAH DROPSY BRANNIGAN had the worst kind of smile.
The kind that made her forget what she was doing, right in the middle of doing it.
That was bad. Really bad—because she hadn’t had that kind of reaction to a man since Mark McBride had walked into her life when she was seventeen. And he’d walked right back out seven years later, three months before Cody had his final attack, and all the medication in the world hadn’t been enough to make him breathe again.
Her right fist clenched hard to stop the shaking. She looked down at it in the usual half-disbelieving revulsion. It had been happening for two years, just like that. Why was it only one of her hands trembled? It was as if she were having a one-sided brain malfunction. She’d done all she could to return to a normal life. She’d accepted the past—and her future. She was a genetic Cystic Fibrosis carrier, and until they found a cure, she couldn’t risk having more kids. Mark, a recessive carrier, was long gone, living a far less complicated life.
Her world was slow, placid and serene. She didn’t want anything more to complete it. She was happy enough.
So why did her right hand continue to betray her this way?
“Where the alpaget p’s’getti?”
The sound of the baby voice worked on the shaking as if it were medicine. Jennifer found she could look up again; she even smiled. “I’m sorry, Rowdy. I promised, didn’t I? Alphabet spaghetti, coming right up.” Trying to prove her control had returned, she pulled her pot drawer open with more force than necessary; and because it was an old dovetailed drawer without protective wheels and pulleys it flew out hard, too fast to stop.
She landed in a heap on the floor with the big old drawer on top of her, the sound of pots clanking against the tiled floor hurting her ears, the wind knocked out of her and pain shooting up from her tailbone to her back and palms.
All three kids burst into giggles. “Look at her! She got pots all over her!” Rowdy chortled.
The drawer was lifted from her within seconds, and her hands taken in a warm, strong clasp. “Are you okay, Jennifer? Do you hurt anywhere? Can you stand up?”
“I—don’t know. I think—” No … she wasn’t thinking, because she couldn’t think. His hands enveloping hers made her feel strange … mushy and warm and safe. And—and—
Strong hands. Builder’s hands, sturdy and capable, like his body … lithe and muscular and—and dependable.
Yes, you fooled yourself just the same way with Mark, didn’t you?
“Jennifer? Should I get a doctor?”
Dazed, she stared up at Noah. His strong brown face was filled with concern, his eyes—oh, they were deep, warm brown, almost like maple syrup: a shade darker than his sun-kissed hair. So gentle, yet so—powerful. Like his smile …
“No, I’m okay,” she said, but heard the breathlessness: an instinctive female-touching-attractive-male reaction she hadn’t felt in years.
She was on her feet again. How did that happen? One moment she was on the floor, her hands in Noah’s, and now she was standing.
“Are you sure you’re okay? You don’t seem very steady.” He put a hand at her back as he turned her to a seat. “Maybe you should sit down?”
It was only then she realised one of her hands still clung to his; she couldn’t stop looking at him. A dim part of her acknowledged what he was saying—yes, unsteady was a good term for her shaky grip on uprightness. But she didn’t know if that was due to the fall, or the effect this man was having on her.
“Apart from my lacerated dignity, I’m fine,” she said ruefully, smiling at him, “and, um, sitting down might hurt more than it would help right now.”
“Gotcha.” He grinned, and her breath caught again.
“Thank you … Noah,” she said softly, wondering why she’d ever preferred chocolate syrup on pancakes to maple; it was the most beautiful colour, um, taste, um—
“Dad, stop it now!”
The words were a reprimand, a command. Jennifer watched as Noah’s eyes clouded over with a pain that seemed older than he was himself, sadder than the world should have to carry.
His wife. His children’s mother. Oh God, help her, what had she been thinking? He’s a married man, no matter where his wife is. If he hasn’t divorced her, he isn’t free.
He released his hold on her and turned to Tim, gentle and sad, yet with a dignity she found compelling to watch. “Tim, you’re being rude and ungrateful. We’re in Jennifer’s house, eating her food, and she hurt herself. She needed help.”
From stark-white, the boy flushed, and looked down at the table. “You didn’t have to—” He didn’t say it, but the words almost shimmered in front of them all: a neon sign of resentment. You didn’t have to touch her.
With those words, Jennifer had gone from friend to enemy in the eyes of a small child who wanted his mummy home again.
“Yes, I did.” Noah was gentle, and unutterably weary; as if it was an argument they’d danced their way through many times before. “And if you don’t know why, I’ve failed to teach you any good manners. Jennifer’s been kind to you all. Did you expect me to leave her on the floor, hurt?”
Tim didn’t look up, didn’t speak; but Noah’s quiet dignity and strength as he dealt with his rebellious son mesmerised her. The love for his ungracious, hurting child all but shimmered from him, giving him an aura as warm and caramelly as his eyes.
Still, she ached for this family Ring Around the Rosie, which could go nowhere but to the eventual falling down. Yet she knew better than to interfere. What she didn’t know would definitely hurt her in this case—or it would hurt others. It wasn’t her place to blunder in.
Strange, but it felt as if Noah’s lost wife was standing in the room with them. Her presence in Tim’s heart was so real, so vivid Jennifer could almost see her.