The Baby Deal

by Alison Kelly

  ‘C’mon, Deb, she’s probably bored with nothing to occupy her. In Sydney she would’ve had an active social life and—’

  ‘Bet that gave her blisters.’

  ‘Debbie… Look, surely you can find her something uncomplicated to do. Couldn’t you just let her answer the phone or something?’

  ‘She did yesterday. And when Lou Abrahams asked if the part for his new two-stroke was in she told him we were a garage and he should call a lawnmower shop!’

  Amusement and surprise warred inside Reb. ‘Well, there you go!’ he said with theatrical triumph. ‘Evidence that she shows mechanical promise. You and I know bikes come in two- and four-stroke varieties, but not many women from her background could be expected to know lawnmowers have two-stroke motors.’

  ‘Oh, I give up! You’d find a way of excusin’ her actions if she stormed the council chambers with an AK47 and took the mayor hostage,’ Debbie grumbled, shoving the invoices she held in his face. ‘Here, what do you want me to do about these bills? There are two dozen of them and they’re all overdue by at least sixty days.’

  Reb scanned the names on the top of the invoices. He knew that with the exception of three regularly delinquent accounts none of the other long-time customers were in a position to pay their bills. Many had been unemployed since the saw mill closed eight months ago, some longer.

  With a resigned sigh, he handed the papers back to Debbie. ‘Can’t get blood out of a stone, kiddo. Guess we’ll just have to let them slide for another month.’

  ‘That’s what I figured you’d say,’ Debbie said. ‘Okay. I’ll be getting back to the statements, then… Oh, by the way I need a couple of cheques signed before I leave; I wanna post ’em on the way home.’

  ‘Since I’m intending to take an early mark, I better come and do it now. Listen, did Gunna happen to say how long he’d be at…?’

  As quietly as she could Amanda-Jayne turned and hurried back to the apartment from her position halfway down the stairs. She hadn’t meant to eavesdrop, but Debbie’s scathing reference to her had momentarily frozen her to the spot. They said eavesdroppers never heard good of themselves, but obviously they sometimes heard a whole lot more than they’d expected…

  ‘Reb, are you planning to have a party?’ she asked as he paused in row ten of the supermarket and added several varieties of corn chips to an already cramped shopping trolley.

  ‘No. Why?’

  ‘Because there’s no way you, Savvy and myself will possibly get through this much junk food in a week.’

  ‘I know. But with luck it should save you having to shop for anything except meat and vegetables for at least a month. Now, what else do we need?’ he mused aloud. ‘Oh, right, orange juice.’

  ‘I bought orange juice when I came here earlier today.’

  ‘No, you bought that concentrated rubbish. Which I can’t stand and doesn’t have enough vitamin C left in it to be of any use to a pregnant woman.’

  Amanda-Jayne stopped herself from pointing out she was already on a vitamin supplement; the announcement would probably only encourage him to rush back to the health food section and grab forty bottles of the stuff and the mental tab she was keeping was already rocketing worryingly high. While it was his money he was spending, not for the first time she wished there were some way she could relieve some of the additional financial burden the circumstances of their marriage was putting on Reb. In the past she’d always spent a lavish sum on her lingerie, but the cost of the three maternity bras she’d had no choice but to buy earlier today had suddenly seemed criminal—and not merely because their ugliness offended her sense of taste.

  When she’d married Reb she hadn’t given much thought to his financial situation except to acknowledge that what it had cost him to clear her debts would have put a large dent in his cheque book, but she’d assumed that if he’d not been well ahead of financial insolvency he wouldn’t have done it. Now, in view of what she’d observed these past weeks and what she’d inadvertently overheard today, she had a horrible feeling that solvency for the Browne Bike and Auto Emporium was very much a day-to-day proposition. It was therefore an enormous relief that when they reached the checkout Reb not only produced sufficient cash to pay for the goods, but also a discount card; she just wished it had occurred to her to use hers today—

  Her thoughts came to a screeching halt. What was Reb doing with a card issued only when people bought a certain number of shares in the nationwide company?

  ‘How’d you get that card?’ she asked more aggressively than she intended. ‘Only shareholders get those!’

  ‘Oh, no, staff get them too!’ the teenaged checkout operator butted in without pausing in her scanning of the goods. ‘Cool, huh?’

  Amanda-Jayne opened her mouth to argue that Reb wasn’t staff, but he apparently read her thoughts.

  ‘I’ve got the tender to supply the petrol and mechanical maintenance for the company’s trucks in this region,’ he said. Then, after instructing the cashier to have the packed groceries sent to the customer pick-up bay, he took Amanda-Jayne’s elbow and steered her to the mall exit and out into the street.

  Despite the fact the days were still mimicking the last of summer, the early evening air was embracing autumn and the dress of Thursday night shoppers of Vaughan’s Landing reflected both seasons.

  ‘Anything special you have to do?’

  She shook her head. ‘I did all my personal shopping today.’ Again the cost of the bras pinched her conscience, even though she’d passed the point of where their purchase could have been called premature weeks ago. Secretly she suspected it was the sheer novelty of having breasts large enough to spill over the top of her normal A cup which had had her postponing the purchase this long, but finally comfort had won out over vanity.

  Caught up in her own inane thoughts, she took a moment to realise they weren’t heading back to where Reb had parked the four-by-four.

  ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘Eventually…somewhere to eat,’ Reb told her, snaring her close to his body and out of the way of danger as two boys appeared from nowhere to make a kamikaze-like run at them on skateboards. ‘But Savvy’s been going on and on at me about letting her go to the year twelve social next term and dropping subtle hints that she wants a new dress—’

  ‘Subtle isn’t a word I immediately associate with Savvy,’ she cut in dryly.

  Reb frowned. ‘She still giving you a hard time?’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Amanda-Jayne said hastily, then amended her comment with, ‘Not really. I just meant that she usually isn’t backward in coming forward.’

  ‘True. But by hints I meant she’s been making obscure comments such as how everyone always says she looks fabulous in black and then suggesting I really should take a look at the renovations they’ve done to Murphy’s hardware store,’ he said wryly.

  ‘So?’ Amanda-Jayne frowned. ‘I don’t get the connection…’

  ‘Think,’ Reb said. ‘What’s right next door to Murphy’s?’

  ‘Aha!’ she exclaimed on a chuckle as she mentally turned the corner ahead and saw the hardware store flanked by a newsagency and a boutique. ‘Hey, you’re sharper than you look,’ she teased. ‘I wouldn’t have picked up on a hint that subtle.’

  ‘Oh, I was on the receiving end of a heap more,’ he said dryly. ‘But, to condense it into something resembling lucidity, the particular dress she wants should leap out from the display and grab me by the throat. Since I doubt very much it will I’m going to be relying on your female instincts to help me out.’

  ‘Dream on!’ Amanda-Jayne laughed. ‘Like Savvy and I have even remotely similar tastes! Wouldn’t it be easier if you just came shopping with her?’

  Reb stopped dead and shot her a horrified look. ‘I’d sooner perform microsurgery and she’d rather be the patient.’

  Their light-hearted banter continued until they reached the boutique, but nothing hanging in the artfully arranged window immediately snagged Amanda-Jayne’s att
ention. What did was a notice taped in the bottom right-hand corner of the glass.

  POSITION VACANT !

  PART-TIME SALES ASSISTANT REQUIRED WITHIN NO EXPERIENCE NECESSARY,

  BUT MUST BE WELL GROOMED WITH A COURTEOUS MANNER.

  Feeling as if she were Cinderella and her fairy godmother had just zapped a pumpkin into a coach, she struggled to contain her excitement. She wanted to rush into the store and speak with the manager right away, but the voice of pessimism reminded her that given her previous track record in endeavouring to secure employment she ran the risk of embarrassing herself. The last person she wanted to witness her being told she wasn’t qualified to handle the job was Reb, who’d more or less told her he regarded her as spoilt and pampered to the extent of being almost completely useless. Oh, he mightn’t have used those exact words or suggested it recently, but that didn’t stop her from wanting to change his opinion of her. And in fact this time it was her spoilt, pampered past which made her eminently qualified for the advertised position; one thing she knew her way around was a dress shop! Co-ordinating, mixing ’n’ matching and accessorising was stuff she could do in her sleep; the only difference was this time she’d be doing it for the benefit of someone else and getting paid for it.

  ‘There is no way in hell I’d consider buying that for her.’

  She jumped at the harsh intrusion of Reb’s voice, her gaze following his viciously jabbed finger to a slinky black beaded dress. After a quick glance to assess the other garments on display Amanda-Jayne decided that since this was the only black one it presumably was the one Savvy had been talking about. It was, however, nothing like the dress she’d pictured the girl wanting.

  ‘I…er…take it,’ she ventured, ‘you don’t like it.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake, A.J., Savvy’s a schoolgirl. She’s going to a school dance, not the Academy Awards. What they’re charging for that minuscule piece of fabric would keep every girl her age in uniforms for the next three years!’

  Reb was exaggerating in the extreme, but again guilt prickled down her spine. She doubted she owned anything other than a few T-shirts which had come in under the dress’s three-figure price tag. ‘Under the circumstances I guess it is a bit much,’ she said aloud.

  ‘A bit much? It’s way too much. Too much of everything except dress,’ he muttered.

  Giving the window one last baleful glare, he snared her hand. ‘C’mon, maybe my good mood will return if I get some food into my stomach. Let’s head to Captains.’

  ‘Captains? Dressed like this?’ Her eyes took in their blue jeans and bulky sweaters.

  ‘It specialises in seafood, we’re wearing fishermen’s sweaters…’ He shrugged. ‘Doesn’t get any more appropriate than that in my book.’

  She burst out laughing. ‘You’re incorrigible! Even if we had a reservation we’d be lucky to get past the door looking like this.’

  ‘Then we’ll have to hope our luck is good…’ He grinned and flicked her nose. ‘’Cos it just so happens we do have reservations. In the name of Browne. For…’ he checked his watch… ‘ten minutes from now. Which is a good thing because I’m starving.’

  She should have argued that Captains was too expensive, that they could be home in fifteen minutes and that she didn’t mind cooking. But she didn’t…for two reasons. One was that he was looking so adorably pleased with himself… The other was because her heart was bouncing with joy and her mind kept flashing, First Date! First Date!

  Reb knew that, after looking him up and down, the maître d’ was on the verge of bouncing him out of the place, before Amanda-Jayne moved into the guy’s line of vision and greeted him by name. Watching the guy’s superior attitude slide to perplexed confusion made Reb smile, but mere moments later he found himself struggling to stifle a belly laugh when the tuxedo-clad idiot attempted to lead them to what was obviously the worst table in the place, and A.J. oh, so coolly informed him that since her stepmother’s favourite table was vacant they’d have that one. With the restaurant practically empty, the waiter had no way of graciously refusing her and the self-satisfied gleam in her eye revealed how much she’d enjoyed outmanouevring the man.

  The decor and the clientele backed up Captains’ reputation as being the swankiest eatery within a fifty-kilometre radius and Reb couldn’t help feeling disappointed that, without even consulting the menu, A.J. announced she only wanted salad. He also wondered if he hadn’t made a bad choice when he mused aloud that he felt like lobster and she looked aghast. But her reaction became clear when he opened the menu and the absence of prices sent the silent message that if you needed to know them you couldn’t afford to eat there. He smiled inwardly, suspecting he was the first mechanic ever to darken Captains’ doors.

  ‘Relax, A.J.’ He stilled her hand worrying the stem of her water glass and her gaze instantly rose to meet his. ‘I promise you won’t have to wash the dishes. Not only do I suspect they have a dishwasher, but I wouldn’t have brought you here if I couldn’t afford to pay the bill.’

  She blushed. ‘I…er…this just seems a bit extravagant.’

  He lifted one eyebrow to give her his most sceptical look. ‘You’re not going to try and tell me you’re uncomfortable, are you? Because I won’t buy it. You’re on a first-name basis with the maître d’.’

  ‘It’s not me I’m feeling uncomfortable for,’ she retorted. ‘I’m surprised you aren’t bleeding to death from the number of daggers that went into your back as we walked in.’

  Her indignation on his behalf made him want to dive across the table and kiss her senseless. He limited himself to just lifting her hand and kissing her palm.

  ‘As much as I appreciate your concern,’ he said, pleased with the flush his innocent kiss brought to her cheeks, ‘I’ve survived twenty-seven years of daggered looks from the people in this town; a few more won’t finish me off.

  ‘Now.’ He smiled. ‘Do you think you can sit back, stop worrying about what everyone is thinking and just enjoy the evening? Apart from a meal at a truck stop this is the first time we’ve shared a table alone.’

  Looking pleased and mischievous, she reclaimed her hand and sat back in her chair. ‘All right, but you better signal the waiter… I’ve decided I don’t want just salad after all.’

  From that point on they became oblivious to everything and everyone around them, their conversation ceasing only when the waiter brought their meals. They discussed everything from their opposing political beliefs to their favourite colours, but, while Reb initially claimed he didn’t have one, as the night sped on he found himself thinking that he had several… The copper of her hair, the precise brown of her eyes, the sunshine-gold of her laughter.

  He still wasn’t sure what had possessed him to phone and make the reservation here when he’d finished work, but suddenly it seemed like the third smartest idea he’d ever had. Ahead of it was the dead heat of taking her back to his hotel that night and marrying her. Yet even while things between them were better than he’d imagined they would be—to his mind getting better and better every day—he was still caught up in the internal debate of how honest he could afford to be with her.

  Maybe that was subconsciously why he’d brought her here… She’d seemingly been fitting so contentedly into his lifestyle that he wanted to see if sudden re-exposure to the rarefied existence she’d known before would cause her to regress. The notion was enough to make him feel guilty, but not enough to overlook that she’d done nothing to indicate she envisaged the possibility that their marriage would stretch beyond the agreed three-year term. How would she respond to an outright question on the possibility? he wondered.

  The temptation to call her on it was strong, but the fear of having her laugh in his face was stronger. He’d rather have her under false pretences than find her true colours weren’t as attractive as those she currently flew.

  Oh, who was he trying to kid? Even back when he hadn’t seen anything that argued against her cold, rich-bitch reputation, he’d wanted he
r with a need that sent him hard in his sleep. These past months might have exposed a warmer, more sensitive and decidedly more vulnerable side of Amanda-Jayne Vaughan to him, but the truth was his need for her was such that, be she saint or sinner, the thought of losing her chilled him to his soul.

  ‘Can I ask you a personal question?’ Though her voice was soft it had no trouble triumphing over his rowdy, disturbing thoughts.

  He nodded seriously. ‘I think wives and lovers are allowed to do that.’

  She pertly wrinkled her nose before saying, ‘I was wondering how you came to be Savvy’s legal guardian…’

  ‘I’d have thought the town grapevine would’ve made that common knowledge by now.’

  Her shoulders rose in a dismissive shrug. ‘The last nine years I’ve only come to Vaughan’s Landing to fulfil the obligations and expectations my dual role of perfect daughter and town princess required.’ The self-deprecating statement was accompanied by a wry smile. ‘The last gossip I heard about the town’s resident Bad Boy was that he’d left town after getting arrested in a pub brawl.’

  ‘He did. But he came back five years ago when his uncle was killed in a bike accident and his ten-year-old cousin was going to be made a state ward.’ The genuine concern and interest in her silent appraisal encouraged him to continue.

  ‘Savvy’s mother hadn’t been heard of since she walked out when Sav was a toddler. Having done stints in state-run institutions myself as a kid, there was no way I was going to let Savvy be put into one so I filed for guardianship. My uncle had taken me in when my old man crucified himself on a syringe; I figured I owed him.’

  The pallor of her face made him wish he hadn’t phrased things quite so brutally, so he hurried to finish the story and end the discussion.