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Nick could not believe for a moment that Dave’s sister owned this place. A new house this size in Balmain, down near the water, would cost the earth! Journalists, unless of the famous television variety, did not earn enormous salaries.
Which turned his mind to the mysterious Madge. Was she a wealthy girlfriend with whom Linda lived? One of those sleekly groomed and glamorous women who believed you could never be too rich or too thin?
Nick pressed the bell on the super-stylish recessed door and waited for Madge to show her wares. He kept a superbly straight face when a very plump elderly lady answered the door. She had short grey permed hair and was puffing with exertion, probably from hurrying down the steep staircase Nick could see behind her.
When she looked him up and down with a hint of old-fashioned disapproval in her narrowed eyes, Nick was glad he’d left his leather jacket and gloves stuffed in his rucksack on the back of his bike. He didn’t think he looked too disreputable in jeans and a white T-shirt, though nothing could hide his unshaven state—which seemed to be capturing Madge’s critical attention.
Nick was glad the Harley was out of sight as well. He’d left it on the other side of the high, cement-rendered wall which enclosed the block and hid the offending lawn from the street.
‘Nick, is it?’ she speculated at last.
‘That’s me.’ He smiled, having slotted her happily into the role of maiden aunt or pensioner boarder. Much better than lesbian lover. ‘And you must be Madge!’
His easy smile seemed to do the trick. She smiled back, all her earlier wariness disappearing.
‘Yes, it is. My, but it’s hot out here, isn’t it?’
‘Sure is.’
‘Come inside. Would you like a cool drink before you start on the lawn? Or should I lead you straight through to the garage and the mower?’
‘I think I’d better mow first and drink afterwards. I wouldn’t be surprised if it storms later.’
She peered past his shoulder up at the clear blue sky. ‘Really? Oh, I hope not. Linda will be so disappointed if it rains. She wants to serve dinner out on the back terrace tonight.’
Maybe Madge is a cook, Nick reassessed.
‘Come through this way,’ she said, and bustled off to her right.
Nick followed, closing the front door against the hot afternoon sun and quickly heading in Madge’s wide wake. The downstairs interior was pleasantly cool and had one of those open-plan designs, with polished parquet floors, high ceilings and no doors, only tall, wide archways.
Nick glanced around as they moved into a huge rectangular living room which was divided into two distinct areas by three wide wooden steps. In the middle of the closest area, sitting on a multicoloured Persian rug, was a very expensive-looking black leather sofa with matching lounge chairs grouped around a glass-topped coffee table.
Down the dividing steps, in the slightly smaller sunken area, rested a matching glass-topped dining table surrounded by six black leather chairs. A huge black stone figurine of a panther crouched in the centre of the table top. Even from a distance the big cat looked both original and priceless.
Other than that one piece, however, there were no other objets d’art in the sparsely furnished area. No sculptures in the bare corners. No paintings on the stark white walls, which were only broken by a fireplace framed in black ironwork.
Still, Nick liked the stark simplicity of the decor. He’d never been one for clutter.
‘Nice place,’ he murmured.
‘Linda hasn’t finished decorating the downstairs yet. But it’s going to be lovely.’
Nick absorbed this information with a degree of surprise, for it certainly sounded as if Dave’s sister did own this house. You didn’t go to so much trouble decorating a rented establishment. Had she won the lottery? Or been a workaholic since the year dot and saved all her pennies?
Perhaps she and Dave had inherited money, Nick speculated. He knew next to nothing of his friend’s finances. Just because Dave frequented a very ordinary hotel, that didn’t mean he and his sister weren’t wealthy.
But money could never buy style, and that was what this place had—style. Nick hoped that ‘finishing decorating’ didn’t mean putting curtains up at the far wall, which was ninety per cent glass and gave a spectacular view of the highly original back yard and the harbour beyond.
The block sloped very steeply at the back, the land covered by a series of flagged terraces. On the top level sat an eclectic but attractive selection of outdoor furniture flanked by huge pots full of flowering plants. Nick could imagine that sitting out there on a balmy spring evening would be very pleasant, provided it didn’t rain. But the dark clouds already gathering on the horizon did not herald well for Linda’s outdoor dinner-party plans.
‘This way,’ Madge said, opening a white door which had been well camouflaged in the white wall. It led down several steps into the double garage, which housed more crates and cardboard boxes than Nick had ever seen. No car, but there was room for one. Just. Either Linda didn’t have one or she’d driven it to work.
‘The mower’s in the corner over there,’ Madge pointed out. ‘Try not to be too noisy—I’ve just got the baby to sleep.’
Nick looked up, startled. ‘Baby? What baby?’
‘Linda’s, of course.’ Madge frowned at him, while Nick tried not to look too taken aback. ‘I thought you were a friend of the family?’
‘Not really. I’m Dave’s friend. Linda and I have never met.’
‘Oh, Dave.’ Madge pulled a face. ‘He’s been absolutely useless, that man. He acts like he’s scared stiff of Rory, but I think it’s all just a ploy to get out of babysitting.’
Nick deduced that Rory was the baby.
‘And the baby’s father?’ Nick asked, intrigued. No wonder Dave was worried about his sister. Being an unmarried mother was not uncommon these days, but it was still not an ideal situation.
Madge tut-tutted. ‘Now that’s a sad story. The baby’s father was killed—blown up by a land-mine in Cambodia. Linda was with him at the time. She’s a journalist, you know, and he was a very famous photographer. They went everywhere together. They simply lived for each other.’
Madge suddenly became a little teary. ‘Poor thing. She didn’t even know she was pregnant when the accident happened. Not only that, they’d been finally going to get married when they came home.’
Nick’s heart contracted. What a bloody rotten world it was. He shook his head sadly. ‘What terrible luck.’
‘Yes. I don’t know how Linda’s coped, I really don’t. But she’s a very brave lady. We’ve been neigh-bours for ages, you know, but, strangely, I didn’t get to know her till some time after Gordon was killed. They bought the original house together some years back, then had it done up. Actually, they were as good as married. I used to think they were. Of course, they weren’t here all that much. Always flitting around the world on some assignment or other, those two. He’d take the photographs and she’d write the stories.’
Nick didn’t say a word for fear of stopping the woman’s flow of gossip.
‘Anyway, one day late in her pregnancy Linda appeared on my doorstep and asked if she might come in for a cup of tea and a chat. She was so lonely, the poor love. As I said, that brother of hers is useless. And her parents have passed on, so she has no mother to turn to.
‘After that she used to visit me nearly every day and we became firm friends. When Rory was born and she had so much trouble with him it was me she turned to for advice. Quite desperate she would get some days. I did all I could to help her, but, quite frankly, Linda’s just not one of those girls who took to motherhood and staying at home all the time. It drove her crazy.’
‘It can’t be easy with no father te-help,’ Nick murmured sympathetically.
‘Yes, you’re quite right. Still, with a bit of luck Linda will find someone else to marry her eventually, and to be a father to Rory. She’s a good-looking girl. Meanwhile, I was only too happy to come in and mind Rory when she went back to work,’ Madge raved on. ‘Though he’s a bit of a devil at times. High-spirited, like his mother. Oh, goodness, listen to me, gossiping away and probably boring you to death. I’d better check on Rory, and you’d better get on with mowing that lawn!’
Nick did just that, but his mind remained with Linda’s story. It was really tragic, he thought. Dave’s sister didn’t sound as if she was coping all that well. But he didn’t think the answer was for her to race out and marry again. He’d seen some disasters with unsuitable stepfathers who didn’t have it in them to love and care for another man’s child.
Still, it wasn’t any of his business, was it? He was only here to mow the lawn.
It only took him fifteen minutes to complete the job. When he stopped the mower and wheeled it back into the garage, the muffled sound of a baby crying filtered through the door which led back inside the house.
Nick sighed his regret at waking the child, but there was nothing he could have done about it. Mowing lawns was a noisy occupation. It was also a hot one. Even in that short space of time, beads of perspiration had pooled all over his upper body, and the T-shirt was clinging to his back. He decided to take up Madge’s offer of a cool drink before he got back on his bike and headed home to the convent.
The baby’s crying seemed to grow louder and more frantic in the minute it took Nick to return the mower to its place in the corner of the garage then pull down the rolling door. When he opened the door which led into the interior of the house, his ears were blasted with high-pitched cries which alternated between shrieks and sobs.
Why in God’s name didn’t Madge go and see to the child?
Nick frowned as he strode across the living-room floor. He did not approve of the idea of letting a baby cry itself back to sleep—not when that crying had gone beyond crying to hysteria.
The unexpected sight of a very still Madge lying at the bottom of the stairs was self-explanatory. Nick sucked in a shocked breath then raced to see to the inert figure’s plight.
A pulse reassured him she was still alive. Her colour wasn’t good, however. He wondered if she’d had a fall or a coronary. He was about to start resuscitation procedures when Madge groaned, her eyelids fluttering open.
‘What happened?’ Nick asked swiftly.
Her eyes closed for a moment, then opened painfully again.
‘Fell,’ she rasped. ‘Dizzy. My side hurts. I think I might have broken something.’
‘I’ll call an ambulance straight away,’ he said, glancing around. ‘Where’s the phone? Right, I see it. Hang on, Madge. We’ll have you in hospital before you can say lickety split.’
‘Rory,’ she croaked weakly as the baby’s cries heightened even further, if that were possible.
‘Is he in a cot?’
‘Uh-huh.’
‘Then he’ll live. You come first, Madge. After I’ve rung the ambulance I’ll go get him.’
‘All right,’ she agreed, sighing.
Nick dialled the emergency number and was assured an ambulance would be dispatched immediately. Then he dashed up the stairs, following the racket to a bedroom where a red-faced infant of perhaps twelve months was standing in his cot, screaming and shaking the sides as though the hounds of hell were after him. Nick took one look at the fury of the child’s tantrum, at his big liquid dark eyes and thick mop of black curls, and decided his father must have been in the Mafia.
On sighting Nick, Rory stopped mid-scream for a split second, as though assessing this stranger who didn’t look at all like his mother or Madge. And then he found his second wind and began to bawl again, even more fortissimo than before.
Nick shrugged, walked over and scooped him up, balancing him on his hip and ignoring his piercing protests.
‘Do shut up, Rory,’ he said sternly. ‘Madge is hurt and the last thing she needs is to listen to your infernal wailing.’
Rory fell silent a second time, round eyes inspecting this person who knew his name and who spoke with such authority. Nick noticed there wasn’t a real tear in sight on his chubby cheeks.
He smiled wryly. ‘You old faker, you.’
Rory suddenly smiled back, a gloriously brilliant smile which showed the beginnings of a tooth just breaking through his gummy mouth.
Nick felt something curl around his heart, then squeeze tight. The sensation shocked then annoyed him.
‘Not on your life, you little con man,’ he muttered as he carried the child from the room. ‘You can’t get round me as easily as that.’
But it seemed he could.
As could Madge.
Nick found himself promising her all sorts of things—the main one being that he would stay and look after Rory till his mother got home.
‘If you think you can manage, that is,’ Madge added faintly.
Unfortunately, Nick had already shown how well he could manage during the fifteen minutes it took the ambulance to arrive. In that short space of time he’d made Madge comfortable on the floor, changed Rory’s nappy and given him some orange juice. The child had really taken to him, too. Either that or he liked playing with his hair, which, though not really long, was a darned sight longer than Madge’s tight frizzy curls.
Whatever, there was not a peep of further protest from his rosebud mouth, which was apparently unusual. Rory, Nick was beginning to appreciate, had a reputation not dissimilar to Linda’s—he could be...difficult.
Unfortunately, however, his mother could not be contacted before Madge’s departure. Her work number was engaged. So Nick’s promise to stay with Rory till his mother got home looked like being more than a simple half-hour of emergency babysitting. Madge said Linda should be home by five at the latest, but that was a couple of hours away.
Still, what else could he do? Madge was in pain and had enough to worry about. Luckily, he’d been able to contact Madge’s eldest daughter, who lived on the North Shore and said she’d go straight to the hospital.
After the ambulance left, Nick carried Rory outside where with one hand he wheeled his much valued bike inside the walled-in front yard. He didn’t mind playing knight to the rescue, as long as he didn’t lose his trusty steed. Tossing his equally trusty rucksack over his spare shoulder, he went back inside and set about filling in the time till Rory’s mother came home.
He found a television in a family room upstairs, and sat watching a football match with Rory on his lap. By half-time Rory was beginning to droop, so Nick put him back in his cot and was gratified when those big dark eyes closed.
He watched the sleeping child for a while, fascinated by the way his baby lips made little in-and-out movements as he slept. He wasn’t twelve months old, as he’d first thought. He was just on nine months, Madge had informed him.
‘Cute little beggar,’ he said as he turned and tiptoed from the room.
Nick tried Linda’s number again. Still engaged. Frustrated, he rang Sister Augustine and explained he might not arrive tonight after all, giving him plenty of leeway. He didn’t explain what he was doing, for fear of all the wrong conclusions she might come to. Sister Augustine had for too long tried to talk him into settling down, and Nick did not want to give her false hopes. He just told her he’d been held up on the road with mechanical difficulties.
After he hung up, he tried Linda’s work number again. Still engaged. He bet it was an office full of women. Women sure liked to talk. Sister Augustine would rattle on for hours whenever he visited, questioning and probing, wanting to hear about everything he’d done since his last visit. But she wasn’t content with finding out the whats and wheres; she always wanted to know the whys and the wherefores.
And she always asked him how he was feeling these days. Didn’t females know a man liked to keep his feelings to himself? Why did they always have to chip away at you till you either exploded or simply walked away?
Nick was scowling as he marched back upstairs to check on Rory. But his scowl softened to a smile when he peeped over the side of the cot. Sleeping like a baby. All that yelling must have tired him out.
Nick’s watch showed three-twenty—still ages away from Linda’s anticipated home time. He rubbed the stubble on his chin. A shave was called for, he decided. And a shower. He couldn’t have the lady of the house thinking he was some kind of yobo.
But first he did a swift reconnoitre of the top floor. There was a bathroom right next to Rory’s room, separating the nursery from a large bedroom which opened out onto a back balcony with an even better view of the harbour than downstairs. On the other side opposite the nursery lay a third, smaller bedroom plus the family room where Nick had already spent some time and which also led out onto that same back balcony.
The decor upstairs was cosy and comfy as opposed to the starkly modern look of downstairs. Wall-to-wall smoky grey carpet covered all the floors. The spacious family room was especially relaxing, and very functional.
A huge wrap-around sofa covered in royal blue velvet faced the large entertainment unit which contained a television, video and sound system. There was a large grey granite-topped bar in one corner which doubled as a kitchenette. Besides the small built-in fridge, there was a long counter against the wall behind, carrying all sorts of cooking equipment from a microwave to a kettle and a toaster. Spacious under-counter cupboards carried a supply of drinks, glasses. crockery, cutlery, coffee, tea, biscuits and baby foods.
Nick assumed there was another. larger kitchen downstairs—he hadn’t looked around down there properly yet. But for now this one sufficed his and Rory’s needs. If Linda didn’t come home by dinner time he might have to go down and see what other food supplies were in stock. But he figured she would be home long before then since she was planning a dinner party tonight.
Another glance at his watch showed three-thirty. Time for that shower, he thought, and headed for the bathroom.
Nick had a tendency to sing in the shower. Opera. mostly. Or one of those old Mario Lanza numbers the good sisters had fed him on during his growing-up years. Especially the religious ones.
He had a good tenor voice too, and launched into one of his favourites while he soaped and shampooed. He entirely forgot about Rory, and was still in full voice when he snapped off the water and heard the baby’s cries.
The next line of his song was immediately replaced by an expletive which would have made both Sister Augustine and Mario Lanza blush. Nick swiftly wrung out his dripping hair, wrapped a navy blue bath sheet around his hips and strode from the steam-filled room.
‘Keep your nappy on!’ he called out as he reached for the doorknob to Rory’s room. Once again, Rory shut up the second Nick appeared in the doorway.
Nick halted, his big hands finding his hips. His mock glare was accompanied by glittering black eyes. ‘I have a feeling you need some discipline, young man. I’ve a good mind to leave you there while I go and get dressed.’
When Rory gave him one of those glorious grins of his, Nick relented. ‘You’re worse than even the most beautiful woman,’ he said, shaking his head as he came forward to scoop the child up again. ‘I just can’t say no to you. Come on; you can watch me make myself respectable for your mother.’
Once settled on Nick’s hip, Rory immediately picked up a wet lock of Nick’s hair and stuffed it in his mouth, sucking on it as if he were dying of thirst.
‘Oh, so it’s a drink you’d be wantin’, is it?’ Nick teased in an Irish accent as he made his way from the room. ‘It wasn’t more of me fine singin’?’
