Beauty and the Wolf / Their Miracle Twins

by Faye Dyer, Lois, Logan, Nikki

  But it hadn’t, and not because she couldn’t bear his touch.

  Quite the opposite.

  Her skin shivered every time Flynn’s earth-roughened fingers brushed it, which was often. He was a good looking, charismatic man and—despite everything going on between them—she was a young, fertile and apparently healthily responsive woman. He touched, she crumbled. He brushed, she shivered. He leaned, she absorbed.

  He faked … she believed.

  But his family were believing, too. They were delighted and patently relieved when Flynn finally started showing some interest in their guest and the probing questions eased off almost immediately. Now their roused suspicions lay comfortably, quietly snoring.

  And twin babies were only going to push the doubt out of their minds for ever.

  She turned to face him. ‘So how do you want to handle the marriage?’

  ‘We’ll go back into Sydney in a couple of weeks. As soon as we get our licence.’

  She stared at him. ‘A registery office marriage?’

  He frowned at her gaping expression. ‘Don’t tell me you want the full white-dress catastrophe? I wouldn’t have thought—’

  ‘Not me, Flynn, your mother. From what you told me, she already missed out on one son’s wedding. You can’t seriously be thinking of excluding her from this one? Poor Denise.’

  The frown deepened. He turned back to the road and was silent for a long time. They turned off the main road before hitting Oberon and started heading towards Bunyip’s Reach.

  ‘Are you angry with me?’ she risked after another few kilometres of stony silence.

  His lips pressed together and his eyes spat sparks. ‘I’m angry at myself, Bel. I should have thought of that. For Mum.’

  Oh. His distress disarmed her entirely. He wasn’t a man to admit to his mistakes often. And he was clearly beating himself up over it.

  He looked sideways at her. ‘You’d really stand up at a formal wedding ceremony with me?’

  ‘It’s still a marriage on paper only,’ she cautioned past suddenly tight breath. ‘Whether there’s a performance to go with it or not is all the same to me. But your whole family’s going to expect it.’

  ‘There’ll be vows.’

  When so much of your life was lies, what were a few more? She twisted her lips. ‘My parents had vows, too. They weren’t terribly binding.’ Love. Honour. Obey …

  But Gwen and Drew’s had been. Personally written and heartfelt. She’d cried buckets while they were reciting them. Somewhere deep inside she’d always wondered if she’d find a man like him to pledge himself to her so beautifully. She’d never dreamed that vows could be as fake as touching. Or that she’d wind up exchanging them with Drew’s little brother. It was somehow right and so wrong at the same time.

  ‘Leave it to me, then. I’ll sort something.’

  A twinge yanked deep inside. Why that irritated apathy was hurtful, after everything he’d done … Her lips twisted. ‘How romantic.’

  He slid those deep grey eyes her way again but didn’t say a word. Then he steered the powerful car down the long turn that marked the entry to Bunyip’s Reach and everything but the impending tangle of lies fled her mind.

  The Bradley dinner table had not been this silent since she’d first sat in Drew’s chair all those weeks ago.

  Flynn cleared his throat. ‘Somebody say something. Please.’

  It was the first time Bel had seen him anything less than completely composed. His tension showed in the tiny crescent lines at the corners of his mouth and his white-knuckled grip on the table edge. It made her feel a whole lot better about being such a wreck herself.

  Four sets of eyes around the table were wide and shocked. But not horrified—Bel was together enough to notice that. But then Denise moved and everyone else exploded into life behind her. She threw her arms around Flynn just as Arthur threw one around Bel.

  ‘Twins!’ Arthur said, chuffing and puffing and doing what one of them should have done back in Sydney. Being thrilled.

  ‘A wedding,’ Denise cried, ‘here in Oberon.’ She pushed her son away long enough to stare into his eyes. Her own were wary, preparing for another blow. Her voice lowered. ‘It is here?’

  Flynn flicked Bel the briefest of glances before reassuring his mother in a deep rumble, ‘Yes. Here.’

  She squealed and turned a delighted face to Bel, who smiled back as best she could. ‘A wedding!’

  ‘Welcome to the family, Belinda,’ Arthur Bradley said quietly in her ear, and his eyes fell to her belly.

  Guilt gnawed hard and vicious on her soul. She’d wanted this sort of reception her whole life but … like this? Knowing she’d have to confess everything later? ‘Thank you, Arthur …’

  ‘I knew it,’ Alice said, squeezing past her husband to embrace her. ‘I was burning to say something.’

  ‘The pickled eggs?’

  The older woman laughed. ‘The eggs. The way your skin changed. Your hair. The way Flynn was so careful with you.’

  ‘Oh, no …’ But then she remembered not to deny it. And truthfully she was curious. ‘When?’

  ‘When you first arrived.’ Alice smiled. ‘Like you were extra-precious. Always hovering. Always watching. I understand now.’

  Bel couldn’t remember him being at all careful of her, she could only remember his absence. And his silence.

  ‘You shouldn’t be working with the wildlife—’

  ‘No!’ Her fervent plea startled Alice to silence. ‘Please don’t take them away from me. I … need them.’ They were the only things keeping her sane.

  ‘Need?’

  Alice’s lined face creased and Bel rushed in to undo her gaffe. ‘Enjoy. I really enjoy working with them.’

  Alice nodded but her frown didn’t ease. ‘Okay. But we might need some health precautions.’

  ‘Precautions are fine.’ Whatever it took.

  The older woman chuckled and dropped her voice, glancing at Flynn discreetly. ‘Though precautions might have been a good idea a few months ago, no?’

  Oh, my God … Bel’s laugh was critically tight. Was every single word out of her mouth from now on going to be deceit?

  ‘Flynn, get over here and join your future wife. Mother of your child!’ Bill’s booming voice rose above the general hubbub.

  ‘Children!’ Denise cried. ‘Grandchildren!’

  Bel’s eyes fell shut briefly, but when they opened he was moving towards her with a warning disguised in the smile he offered. His arm slipped around her middle easily and he pulled her against him, hard. Her skin did its usual tingly thing even though the message was clear.

  Stay the course.

  She plastered a wide smile on her face, slid one arm around Flynn’s hips and crossed the other one in front of him in a public embrace. He stiffened immediately but she held on. If she was going to burn for the lies she was telling, then she was taking him with her.

  He’d be good-looking company in hell.

  The ceremony was going to be brief.

  That was about the only good thing Bel could think to say about it. Flynn had told her it would be fifteen minutes max, family only. And though he had friends aplenty here in Oberon, Bel didn’t know any of them, and so the only ‘reception’ he’d planned was a family dinner back at the homestead.

  Denise and Alice had fussed around her all morning, working hard to be the bridesmaids she was missing out on, being so far from home, seeing to everything so that there wasn’t a thing for Bel to do. It was so kind of them but so painfully awkward, given she was repaying their kindness with deception. Plus, she’d been relying on being busy so that she wouldn’t have to dwell on what was about to happen. What she was about to do.

  Marrying Flynn Bradley.

  She took another deep breath.

  ‘Aren’t you the slightest bit curious about where the ceremony is?’ Alice said to her now, just back from doing the rehab chores they hadn’t allowed her to do today because of her perfectly manic
ured wedding nails. Again, not her idea.

  Bel gauged the women’s suspicion level. A bride should be burning with curiosity, she knew, but it was too late to suddenly invent excitement she clearly wasn’t displaying. ‘I trust Flynn,’ she improvised, infusing her voice with artificial tranquillity. ‘He knows exactly what he’s doing.’

  In so many ways.

  Denise smiled. ‘That he does. He’s always been such a capable boy. And so thoughtful. I’m sure he’ll pick the perfect place for you.’

  Actually, it would make this whole thing easier if he chose the least perfect place. Like some glitzy, chrome and glass high rise in the city. Then it would be easy for her to maintain the artifice and go through the motions of yet another lie. Her only condition was that it shouldn’t be a church. Not that she was overtly religious, but lying in God’s House—right under His all-seeing nose—was not something she could bring herself to undertake, regardless of her denomination.

  Bad enough that she was lying to a group of people who were fast feeling like a proxy family.

  ‘We could get married in a hole in the ground for all I care—’ the two older women exchanged knowing glances and Bel forced a smile to her face ‘—just as long as Flynn turns up.’

  Denise laughed and took her hand. ‘Oh, he’ll come. He’s very excited about all of this.’

  Then he’s a better actor than I am if he’s fooling the people who know him best. And apparently without conscience.

  ‘It may not be the conventional order to do things in, Bel,’ Denise continued gently, ‘but Flynn’s never been a man to do anything he didn’t want to. If he’s asked you to be his then it’s because he wants you to be his.’

  It would be so easy to imagine both women knew exactly what was going on. About Drew and Gwen, about their babies. And tempting to imagine that—in full knowledge of everything that was happening—Denise and Bill were happy that their son would be married today to a Rochester girl. Just so that there’d be one fewer untruth lying before her like a darkened pit trap. One fewer thing to worry about stumbling into and not being able to crawl out of. Or that the girl Alice and Arthur thought they were getting was really her. A capable, reliable, lovable Bel Rochester.

  Or that the babies she was carrying were really Flynn’s.

  Her body tightened immediately at the thought of carrying Flynn’s babies—of making Flynn’s babies—and heat suffused her.

  She’d done her best to habituate herself to all the touching, but he was getting so good and frequent at it, it was all too easy to kid herself it might be real. Instead of being about his family and anyone who might be watching. Her mind kept trying to tell the rest of her, but it seemed her body was operating in blissful, intentional ignorance. If it didn’t listen to the truth then her muscles could continue to quiver when he leaned into her as they walked. Her flesh could continue to thrill when his fingers brushed her hair, and her heart could continue to flutter when he leaned close to speak warm breath in her ear.

  Only weeks ago she’d sat on the flight out of London and scrunched herself as close to the window as she could to avoid even pressing her hip against Drew’s arrogant brother in the tight confines of the aircraft seating. Now she was fantasising about making babies together.

  How it would feel.

  How Flynn would feel.

  Her abdomen coiled and she straightened and shifted away from the window where she’d been staring off down the same gully she could see from Flynn’s place. What was wrong with her?

  ‘That’s better,’ Alice murmured, approving. ‘A bit of colour in those porcelain cheeks to replace the nervous blanch. Whatever you were just thinking, keep it up until the ceremony.’

  The rogue thought had sneaked through in the first place; she certainly wasn’t walking down a carpeted aisle with visions of strong, binding limbs and slippery, sweat-drenched muscles swilling through her mind.

  Denise took her hands and warmed them between her own. The heat—and the gesture—soaked straight to Bel’s soul. Kind brown eyes twinkled at her. ‘Time to go, eh? Before you make yourself sick with nerves.’

  Bel glanced sideways at the full-length mirror in Alice’s room in the grandparents’ wing of the Bradley household. Her filmy dress was simple—one she’d packed from home, expecting Australia to be sizzling hot and in case she had need of something vaguely formal. Something that could expand with her. Ironic that she’d be one of few twenty-something women these days who could genuinely wear white at their wedding, yet she’d be in a pale blush. A dress that toned unusually perfectly with her neon hair.

  Alice had woven sprigs of tiny white flowers into the twisted braids that Denise had spent hours creating; it was about the prettiest she’d ever seen her hair. Both were simple in their execution and perfect in their intent, and so close to what she would have chosen for herself the sight brought a prickle of tears to her eyes.

  This was all such a sham …

  ‘No, you don’t, missy. Not with all that eye make-up on …!’

  Alice spun her away from the mirror and gathered her hands in front of her before letting her eyes grow unusually sombre. ‘Belinda, you look like something that truly belongs in a fairy forest. Oberon himself could not have wished for a more transcendent bride. When you walk down that aisle, Flynn’s heart may just stop.’

  Something in the truth of Alice’s words stilled Bel’s breath. And in that moment she knew she wanted Flynn Bradley to look at her as if she was his bride—the woman his heart would stop for—even if he didn’t mean it. Just for those moments she wanted to stand before him in her fairy forest wedding dress and look at the man waiting for her at the altar and pretend that they were truly, madly and irrevocably in love with each other.

  Because—for the first time—the person she really wanted to lie to was herself. She’d earned a tiny moment of denial and it might just be the only wedding she was ever going to have.

  She lifted her eyes and smiled at both women. ‘Okay. Let’s go.’

  She turned and walked down the carpeted landing of the Bradley homestead calmly and graciously—exactly as she planned on moving down the aisle towards Flynn.

  As it turned out, there was not so much an aisle as a set of steep steel stairs that plunged like a gangplank deep into the bowels of the earth. Her dress colour changed with the artificial lighting hidden amongst the rocks of the cave system until it was impossible to know what colour it had originally been, as she moved a couple of hundred metres through a series of dramatic underground caverns flanked at the rear by Denise and Alice and at the front by a formally dressed guide.

  The humidity rose and the temperature dropped as they followed the cut deeper into the primary cave system and then through and out into the secondary ones until Bel’s skin almost sparkled with the zillion tiny droplets that clung to the translucent hairs on her skin.

  Her breath came in tight puffs but it was awe that shoved her nerves aside, practically gaping at everything as Bel moved through one spectacular cavern and into the next. Their guide unlocked a chained-off walkway and sealed it up behind them and then drew them through a darkened low-point until they emerged on the other side into a towering maw.

  ‘And here we are,’ the guide announced quietly as Bel’s eyes adjusted to the natural lighting that suddenly flooded the cavernous opening. Her breath rushed back in an unexpected gasp. She was standing in a natural fissure what had to be halfway up a cliff face, opening out onto the most stunning natural view Bel had ever seen. A lake, other-worldly in its intense blinding blue and flanked on all sides by deep, green, foreign Australian bush.

  ‘Bel …’ Someone nudged her from behind. Denise? Alice? It didn’t matter. Her watering eyes flicked left, along the steel walkway until she saw an unmistakable shape silhouetted against the bright outside light.

  Flynn.

  And a few paces to his left two dark shapes she assumed were Bill and Arthur. Standing for their son and grandson.

  She s
tarted to tremble. She’d begged Flynn not to choose a church for the ceremony so that she could look God in the eye later despite what they were about to do, and he’d chosen this … The closest thing to nature’s birth place she could imagine.

  So utterly, awfully perfect.

  The guide nudged her onward.

  Left and right of the walkway, giant ancient spurs stuck up like fangs from the gums of the earth and acted as silent sentinels for what was about to take place. Warm air rushed in the fissure opening and met the cool air of the cave system, and caused tiny eddies that blew dry the damp curls about her face.

  The rock base of the cave slowly rose to meet the platform until she stepped off and trod the same granite mound that Flynn waited on.

  Waiting for her.

  Her pulse began to hammer in earnest.

  The blue lake stretched out behind him but Bel couldn’t take her eyes off the man standing before her. It wasn’t a tux or even a formal wedding suit, but it was dark and imposing and all shoulders and totally suited a man one might find in the belly of the earth. His hair was neatly groomed and the collar of his crisp formal shirt gaped like the cave mouth to reveal just a hint of dark hair against a tanned throat.

  And his eyes as she stepped closer … Her heart thumped. Had they always been the colour of tarnished pewter?

  He brought her gently closer to him and murmured low, ‘I thought you might have backed out.’

  She studied his expression for disapproval but only saw caution. ‘Am I late?’

  His lashes dropped to look down at her. ‘You’re shaking. Are you okay?’

  Bel knew without looking that all eyes were on them. She forced her lips apart into a parody of a smile. ‘I … It was cold, coming through …’

  Great. Now she was officially lying to everyone here.

  ‘Not long and we’re done. Remember, try to make it convincing.’

  Her nostrils flared. As if she hadn’t been trying all this time …

  Their guide stepped forward and picked up a folder from a small cloth-covered table Bel had only just noticed and stepped before them, his back to the amazing outlook, his kind face to them.