High-Stakes Bride. Fiona Brand
and tossed it to a hungry gull.
Jaw set, she stared at the distant view of the horizon, and the hazy line where sea met sky, her heart still pounding from the embarrassing near-death experience followed by the hike up the hill.
She had been that close to landing the fish. If what’s-his-name Rawlings hadn’t come along she would have caught it—guaranteed.
Susan sent her a warning glance. “His name’s Carter and he’s your next-door neighbour.”
For how long? “That doesn’t mean I have to like him.”
Dani wrung out her still-dripping plait, toed off her remaining sneaker and strode to her new room to change. When she was dressed, she grimaced at the pile of wet things in the laundry basket. She had lost a sneaker. Her mother had been too preoccupied to notice that detail, but when she did, she would go crazy. Susan had been out of work for the past three months, ever since her last job as a counter assistant at one of the town-and-country stores in Mason had dissolved after the business had merged with a larger firm. In theory they couldn’t afford to eat—let alone spend money on shoes.
Dani stared at the unfamiliar bedroom; the pretty bed with its white-and-green patterned quilt, the elegant lines of the dressers and the needlework sampler on the wall. Not for the first time the strangeness of moving into someone else’s home, of being surrounded with someone else’s things, hit her. She’d been used to bare rooms and minimal furniture—all of it impersonal and second-hand—of keeping clothing and possessions sparse and relationships nonexistent, so that if they had to pick up and leave in a hurry they wouldn’t lose too much. For four years the isolation of that existence had worked—until they’d landed in Mason and Susan had met Galbraith.
After years of staying on the move and never putting down roots there was no way she could like the permanence that was building here—no matter how much either of them craved it. This life—the settled-in comfort and the homeliness—just didn’t fit with the tactics that had kept them safe.
Dani trailed, barefooted, back to the kitchen, eyeing a line-up of gloomy oil paintings in the hallway and taking care not to touch any of the highly polished furniture or the pretty ornaments placed on dainty occasional tables.
Everything about the Galbraith house radiated family and permanence—from the slightly battered antiques to the family photos depicting grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins: generation upon generation of Galbraiths—so many of them that every time she looked around she felt exactly as she had when she’d lost her footing and been swept into the surf—off balance and floundering.
Eyeing the crystal chandelier that hung from the ornately molded ceiling in the dining room, she stepped into the kitchen. Her mother was placing a large bowl filled with apples in the centre of the table—one of the many little touches Susan Marlow did to make a room look just so, whether they were living in a crummy little one-bedroom flat or a caravan.
Dani glanced around the high airy room with its antique dressers and air of fading elegance. Or on an impressive homestead sited on a large sheep and cattle station.
She could see why her mother had been bowled over by Robert Galbraith and the Rawlings family next door—and why she liked it here. Who wouldn’t? As people went, they had it all: nice homes, acres of land, and their own private beach that was so mesmerizingly beautiful she had just wanted to stand there and stare.
Her mother finished setting the lunch table and stood back to admire the gleam of porcelain and old silver. She lifted a brow. “Carter’s a nice-looking boy. I think you do like him.”
Fierceness welled up in Dani. “I don’t.”
Boyfriends weren’t on her agenda—they couldn’t be. She’d seen the way girls at school mooned after them, and the way Susan had changed. If she were going to depend on anyone, it would be herself. From what she’d seen, falling in love was nothing but trouble.
The bark of dogs and the sound of footsteps on the veranda heralded Robert Galbraith’s arrival. Seconds later, he appeared in the kitchen doorway, tall and broad-shouldered, with a kind of blunt, weathered handsomeness that seemed to go hand-in-hand with the rugged contours of Galbraith Station.
Warily, Dani watched as her mother’s face lit up, and noted Galbraith’s corresponding expression. Her mother was an attractive woman, not beautiful exactly, but tall and striking, and today she looked a lot younger than thirty-five. She might not have a million dollars, but with her hair piled on top of her head and the simple but elegant clothes she was wearing, she looked it.
Galbraith set his hat on a small dresser just inside the door. Dani’s head snapped around, almost giving her whiplash as she instinctively avoided witnessing the kiss. A count to ten later, she risked a look.
Ten seconds hadn’t been long enough.
The meal stretched on interminably. Dani ate bites of her sandwich, helped down by sips of water while she observed Robert Galbraith, reluctantly fascinated. He was a new phenomenon in her life—the only man she had ever known Susan to date—and now they were living with him.
Abruptly, a nightmare image of the shadowy man cleaning up at the sink after he’d broken into their cottage made her stomach clench. She hadn’t told Susan she had seen his face, or that she had injured him. They had simply packed and run, leaving everything but the necessities behind and driving through the night.
Dani transferred her attention to Susan, her gaze fiercely protective. There was no question; they would have to leave, and the sooner the better. The risk Susan was taking was unacceptable. In every attack she had always been the focus. The only time Dani had been hurt had been when she had finally gotten up the courage to run at him and he had swatted her away like a fly.
When Galbraith finally left the lunch table, Dani began clearing dishes. As she piled plates and cutlery in the sink, the words erupted out of her. “We’re making a big mistake.”
Susan’s expression turned sharp. “For the first time in years I’m making the right choice. He’s asked me to marry him.”
Dani froze in the act of turning a tap. “Does he know?”
“No.” Susan scraped leftover food scraps into the compost bucket under the sink. “And don’t look like that, missy.”
Dani clamped her jaw and retrieved the empty salad bowl from the table. She stared at the fragile porcelain. It was so fine and translucent she could see the shadow of her fingers through it. “We’re not safe here.”
That was an understatement. They were sitting ducks. After years of lying low, of Susan working for cash under the table—even forgoing welfare payments because that would pinpoint where they were—of never forming relationships, let alone dating, the abrupt turnaround was stunning. A marriage meant legal paperwork and bank accounts. The paper trail would point a huge neon arrow in their direction.
Susan snatched the bowl and rinsed it. “Yes. We are.” The bowl hit the draining board with a clatter. Susan’s fingers gripped the edge of the bench, her face abruptly white.
Dani stared at her mother, heart pounding. Susan was tall and lean and strong. She’d worked all sorts of jobs from legal secretary to shop assistant to picking fruit. They might be poor, but she had always prided herself on having the constitution of an ox. Apart from the occasional sniffle, neither of them was ever sick. “What’s wrong?”
Susan straightened. “I’m pregnant.”
Dani stared at her mother. Of all the answers she might have expected, that hadn’t ever been one of them. Suddenly the move and the way her mother was behaving began to make sense. “Does Galbraith know?”
“His name’s Robert. And no, not yet. I’ve only just realized myself.”
The expression on her mother’s face made Dani feel even sicker. Dani’s father had left before she’d been born, the only remnant of that brief relationship a name on her birth certificate. The concept that Galbraith would willingly take on not only a