His Convenient Proposal

by Lindsay Armstrong

  He watched her as she expertly measured, sawed and bevelled dowling. She’d changed into her yellow cotton dress but wore a butcher’s apron over it and had tied her hair back exposing an unexpectedly slender neck with damp curls clinging to it—it was a warm, humid night—and he asked her how she’d come to be such an expert.

  She looked up with the little gold flecks in her eyes most noticeable. Then a shadow crossed those rather remarkable eyes. ‘My father taught me. We used to fly our kites together.’

  ‘Happy memories, Ellie?’

  ‘I think I told you that my mother died when I was ten? Well, my stepmother and I…just didn’t hit it off. It was only after Simon was born that I realized why she was so jealous even of little things like Dad and I making and flying kites. She couldn’t have children of her own. The ultimate tie to him she craved, I guess.’

  For a moment Ellie sat quite still staring down the years then she shrugged and her nimble fingers resumed work.

  And Brett thought, So that explains it. That lack of confidence in Ellie Madigan, that tantalizing vulnerability about her he remembered rather suddenly…

  ‘Tell me about your job?’ he suggested, and was gratified to see her brighten.

  In fact she became animated as she told him how she seemed to be having quite a bit of success with children who stuttered and they discussed it medically for a while.

  Then he said, ‘You obviously have a way with kids as well, Ellie.’

  She glanced at him through her lashes. ‘I would say you have too, Brett.’

  He shrugged. ‘What makes you say that?’

  ‘Oh, the way Simon took to you virtually on sight. Considering the fact that he thought you were the new man in my life—’ she grimaced ‘—that was quite a feat.’

  He looked at her humorously. ‘I’ve always found it especially either heart-wrenching or gratifying to work with children. So we have that in common,’ he added almost to himself.

  Ellie glinted him a questioning look.

  He said nothing, however, and presently took himself to bed after thanking her for a nice evening. It shouldn’t have surprised him but it did touch him to find that his bed had been remade and there was a flask of juice beside it.

  Ellie made herself a cup of tea one evening and wandered out onto the terrace. Brett had been home for a week and was recovered from the worst of his virus so she was beginning to wonder what lay ahead.

  But it had been a busy week and she laid her head back and could only think that October was a pretty month in Brisbane. The jacaranda at the bottom of the garden was in full bloom, the African tulip tree beside the drive was dropping its waxy scarlet blooms and the hibiscus hedge beside the pool was in full flower. Not that she could see the wonderful colours but the white, mauve and violet blooms of the several ‘yesterday, today and tomorrow’ bushes she’d planted beside the terrace were perfuming the night air.

  Brett was on the phone once again exhorting the airline to track down his overnight bag.

  She sat down in a basket chair, pushed off her shoes and studied the pool, a crystal blue with its underwater lighting. Presently, something alerted her to his presence. ‘Pull up a chair,’ she invited without turning her head. ‘Would you like a cup of tea?’

  ‘No, thanks.’ He sat down and clasped his hands between his knees.

  Ellie tucked her feet up. ‘Any luck?’

  ‘No. The passenger in question is still not at home at the address they have listed. Thanks to you they’re sending someone out on a daily basis, though.’

  ‘Damn—I suppose there’s not a lot more they can do.’

  ‘No.’ He studied his hands for a moment with an expression she couldn’t identify, then he shrugged and looked directly into her eyes. ‘So what do you think, Ellie?’

  Ellie didn’t pretend to misunderstand. ‘About you and I—and the future? I don’t know what you’re proposing,’ she said slowly.

  ‘Maintaining the status quo for the time being.’

  ‘Brett, that’s fairly complicated—’

  ‘I don’t see why it should be.’

  She glinted him an ironic little look. ‘I have the strong feeling that my difficulties in getting Simon to relate to any men in my life will only increase once he has you in his life.’ She gestured. ‘On a full-time basis.’

  He sat back and crossed his hands behind his head. ‘That could have been a simple matter of the wrong choices, Ellie.’

  She finished her tea and put her cup back carefully in the saucer. ‘OK, my choices may not have been that inspired—’

  ‘Have you ever fallen in love again—as opposed to wanting to enhance your son’s life?’

  She was silent.

  ‘I guess it happened for you with Tom so you must have an idea of how it feels.’

  She swallowed something in her throat. ‘No, not like that. I don’t think it can ever happen quite like that for me again.’

  ‘Or it may—’ he smiled at her ‘—suddenly spring up out of the sidewalk and hit you on the head.’

  I wish you wouldn’t smile at me like that, she thought crazily.

  ‘Brett, there’s one thing I don’t understand—what’s in it for you?’ She saw him arrange his thoughts. He was sitting in a shaft of lamplight spilling out on to the terrace from the lounge.

  He looked around. ‘I’m at a bit of a loose end, to be honest.’

  ‘You…regret coming back?’

  He shrugged—with a trace of unease, she thought. ‘No, but the transition from that kind of life to this—well, it’s going to take some adjusting. So, what’s in it for me at the moment? I feel at home here with you and Simon.’

  Ellie felt a pleasant little glow and enjoyed the thought that she might be able to pay Brett back in this way. But presently she frowned. ‘Brett, you’ve been a bit scathing about my love life, or lack of it,’ she said dryly, ‘but what about you? Before you took off for places like the Congo, you weren’t exactly a loner.’

  ‘Perhaps not,’ he conceded, ‘but marriage and what I’ve wanted to do with my life so far just haven’t been compatible.’

  ‘That would be true,’ she agreed wryly. ‘Although it doesn’t rule out someone in the same line of work.’

  He laid his head back. ‘Perhaps we’re both loners in a certain sense, Ellie. Me because of my work and you because of losing Tom.’

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean—?’ She stopped as she heard footsteps coming up the drive and someone calling her name softly.

  Brett lifted his head and frowned. ‘Who…?’

  ‘Dan Dawson,’ she said. ‘You remember the people who live next door? Dan is their son. He works on an oil rig and spends some of his time off with them. Hi, Dan!’ She waved to the big young man crossing the lawn towards them. ‘Do you remember Brett Spencer? He’s come home.’

  As it turned out, they remembered each other and, after shaking hands, Dan sat down with them. He was twenty-six and over the years he and Ellie had become friends. When he was home, he quite often called on her. He also appeared pleased to meet up with Brett again and brought him up to date on his career. At present he was stationed on an oil rig in the Timor Sea.

  But when he got up to go, things took an unexpected turn. He said goodnight to Ellie but asked Brett if he could have a moment of his time. Brett looked surprised but suggested they step into the kitchen.

  Ellie watched them go with a frown, then succumbed to her curiosity and crept round the terrace to a vantage point outside the kitchen window.

  She arrived in time to hear Dan Dawson say to Brett Spencer, ‘I’ve been keeping an eye on Ellie—when I’m home.’

  ‘That’s good of you, Dan,’ Brett replied.

  ‘As a matter of fact,’ Dan continued, looking both embarrassed but determined, ‘although I haven’t told Ellie this yet, she’s the one who keeps me sane sometimes. Oil rigs can be bloody boring, but I’ve got a picture of her next to my bunk. Just thought,’ he said as Ellie’s
mouth dropped open, ‘I’d let you know, old man. Because my contract is due to expire shortly and I’m thinking of coming back to Brissie full time and proposing to her. It’s what she needs now Simon is growing up.’

  Ellie shut her mouth with a click and scuttled back to her chair, missing Brett’s response, but a moment later both men emerged and Dan walked away down the drive with a wave.

  ‘I don’t believe it!’ Ellie said as soon as he was out of earshot.

  Brett grimaced. ‘I wondered if you’d be tempted to eavesdrop. Well? Why not? He’s nice enough.’

  ‘Brett, when I first moved in here Dan was still at school!’

  ‘You weren’t that long out of it yourself. He’s only four years younger, he doesn’t appear to have alienated Simon—’

  ‘But he’s never said a word to me, I had no idea! Oh,’ she groaned, ‘how do I get myself into these things?’

  ‘At least this is a genuine guy who would appear to have fallen in love with you.’

  ‘There is one disadvantage—I haven’t fallen in love with him,’ she pointed out. ‘That is the accepted reason to marry someone, isn’t it? A mutual falling in love?’

  ‘Sure,’ he agreed. ‘But Dan is right about one thing. Simon is growing up and you need help. You must be aware of this yourself or why else would you be experimenting with—?’

  ‘Don’t say it,’ she warned.

  He grinned.

  ‘What did you say to Dan?’ She eyed him frowningly.

  He considered. ‘I told him I had the same aspirations and may the best man win.’

  Ellie closed her eyes. ‘I don’t think I heard you right.’

  Brett studied her as her eyes remained closed, with a mixture of amusement and something else. Something that caused him to wonder if this woman hadn’t lain on the back roads of his mind for a long time in a way he’d failed to identify… Why else would he be issuing challenges to the likes of Dan Dawson? Why else had he come home to stay? Why had she stayed in his home for so long? A question he’d asked himself before.

  Then her lashes shot up and her eyes were accusing. ‘This is a game for you, Brett! I don’t appreciate it!’

  He debated with himself for a moment. Was this the right time to tell her how his thoughts were running? Or was Tom still firmly entrenched in her heart?

  ‘Uh,’ he said as her gaze didn’t waver, even got fiercer, ‘there’s a certain territorial aspect involved, I guess. It may have led me to responding in kind. Don’t say it,’ he added softly as her expression changed. ‘Men!’

  After a frozen moment an involuntary smile curved her lips. ‘How right you are,’ she agreed, but unheatedly. ‘Getting back to you, though,’ she said slowly, ‘in five years or whenever this bit of research is over, will you go off again?’

  ‘That remains to be seen.’

  Ellie stared out over the lawn and couldn’t for the life of her understand what prompted her to say it, but she did. ‘You didn’t think I was good enough for Tom, did you, Brett?’

  ‘What gave you that idea?’

  She twisted her hands. ‘I just got this feeling you thought I was a passing romance, a case of Tom sowing his wild oats. And when you found out about Simon,’ she said baldly, ‘it was almost as if you’d been expecting me to get myself into that situation.’

  ‘Ellie…’ He paused and sighed. ‘It wasn’t that you weren’t good enough for Tom. But it did cross my mind that you were rather naive and unsure of yourself in those days—and that you might have been looking for more than Tom had in mind.’

  Ellie flinched. ‘We’ll never know, will we?’

  ‘I didn’t—I shouldn’t have said that—’

  ‘Don’t worry, I sometimes wondered it myself. It still doesn’t get us any further forward.’ She sighed suddenly.

  ‘Why don’t we have a trial period?’

  She looked at him helplessly.

  He laughed softly. ‘I’m not proposing a bed of nails. Only a trial period of going on as we have been.’

  ‘Is this what you came home in mind with, Brett?’

  He sobered rather abruptly. ‘I didn’t have any preconceived plans—how could I? I didn’t know what the situation was. But now I’ve got to know Simon…’ he paused ‘…and I’ve seen how things are, it seems like a good idea. It is,’ he said slowly, ‘the only thing I can do for Tom, now.’

  She stared at him for a long, long moment.

  ‘Ellie, no disrespect intended towards your handling of Simon thus far—I think you’ve done a marvellous job with him. But it’s going to get harder.’

  She put her feet down onto the cooling tiles. A breeze had risen and it was lifting Brett’s dark hair. She shivered suddenly and stood up.

  ‘I’ll think about it.’

  He got up and came to stand in front of her so they were only inches apart. And he watched her intently, her slim outline in the long indigo dress she was wearing again, her shuttered expression when normally she was like an open book, her new hairstyle—did she spend a lot of time fiddling with it? he wondered. It looked refreshingly natural to him…

  ‘Have I offended you?’ he asked quietly.

  Yes! Of course she didn’t say it, but something in her heart said it for her as that frisson tiptoed up and down her spine again and she came alive, not only to him, but alive in a way no man had made her feel since Tom; achingly, dangerously starved of love…

  ‘No, Brett,’ she said with an effort. ‘I can never repay you for all you’ve done for us so perhaps I’m…to be honest, I feel as if I’ve already imposed on you far more than I ever should have. That’s why I really need to think about this. Goodnight.’

  She checked Simon on her way to bed.

  As usual, he’d fallen asleep with his lamp on and the latest Guinness World Records open beside him. As usual, his clothes were scattered everywhere. She tidied up quietly, put a bookmark in the book and put it on his bedside table. Then she simply stared down at her son for a while with new eyes. Was it because she lived with him all the time that the resemblance to Tom didn’t strike her so much these days? Was it so long ago now, anyway, that Tom had faded in her consciousness in more ways than one? Or was Simon simply his own person to her now?

  But it was true that it was getting harder as a single mother with a growing son. Take the ‘skateboard, roller blade’ dilemma, she thought ruefully. Most of Simon’s friends had one or the other, if not both, but she hadn’t agreed to either because of the visions she’d had of broken limbs or broken heads, although her excuse to date had been the expense. But were her injury concerns legitimate?

  Would a man have a better idea of a boy’s limitations? Would a man be better at enforcing the skullcap rule against peer pressure? Was she heading towards being a clinging, fearful mother, in other words?

  Perhaps most of all, though, how was she going to provide Simon with a suitable role model?

  She stared down at her sleeping child, then switched the lamp off and left the room quietly.

  Her bedroom was a lovely room, serene, spacious and furnished in buttery creams and jade green. On this night she prowled around restlessly, however, once she’d changed into her pyjamas, until she finally forced herself to sit down at the dressing table, and, in the process of applying cleansing cream to her face, come face to face with her other dilemma—Brett Spencer as a man.

  And the shocking revelation that he had offended her this evening because his proposition—even though she’d made him feel at home—was mostly based on helping with Simon. Which meant…?

  When did it happen? she asked herself helplessly as she tissued off the cleansing cream and reached for her toner. Of course, he’d always been attractive, but it was one thing to acknowledge that in a man and another to feel desolated, as she did now, about him having no interest in her as a woman.

  It was quite another matter to ponder whether, of all the batterings life had handed out to her, this might be the worst. And just when she’d thought sh
e was doing so well, apart from the problem of a role model for Simon.

  Then she stared at herself in the mirror and was forced to acknowledge it couldn’t have happened in the space of one week. So, for how long had she been burying in her subconscious the fact that she’d fallen in love with Brett Spencer? Way back to when he’d rescued her from public humiliation beside a parking meter?

  She took an appalled breath. Was that why she’d always refused to admit it? Was that why she could never admit it to anyone but herself without being unfaithful to the memory of Tom?

  If only he hadn’t come home, she thought despairingly. If only she’d got herself out of this position years ago. And how to deal with living under the same roof indefinitely? It might have been eleven years ago, but she could still vividly recall that fighting Brett when he’d made up his mind was not something she had excelled at previously.

  You were also battling nausea, panic, grief and loneliness at the time and then the threat of pre-eclampsia, she pointed out to herself.

  She patted toner onto her face and finally took herself to bed. But her dilemma didn’t leave her, in fact it got worse as she contemplated one scenario after another. Brett having mistresses, for example, while he pursued the jolly cause of providing Simon with a role model. Had he kept up his apartment? she wondered. Because he wouldn’t be able to bring them to 3 Summerhill Crescent, Balmoral.

  And what would he expect of her in that line, not being privy to the fact that no other man would do for her now—not ever being privy to that fact if she could help it? Perhaps—that they could roster his apartment, she thought rather grimly.

  Oh, no, was her final thought before she fell asleep; it simply couldn’t work!

  She was slow and dithery the next morning, and only just got Simon off in time for school. Fortunately it wasn’t a work day for her, and Brett wasn’t up yet.

  So she brewed a pot of coffee and had a leisurely cup to get herself into a better gear and was about to start the housework when the front door bell rang.