She took a deep breath, searching for the right words. ‘Your aunt and uncle were wrong to cut your hair, Laura, when it meant so much to you,’ she managed. To her horror, Erin found she was choking back tears. ‘But—but I don’t think the answer is to run away.’
‘It is!’ Matthew whispered. Laura seemed too drained to speak, and it was Matthew who was now spokesman.
‘No.’ Finally unable to help herself, Erin reached forward to hug them both. ‘And I think you know it. Your uncle is the person who looks after you now, and you need to accept that. You don’t have a choice, kids. You must go home and face him—and tell him how you feel about Laura’s hair.’
‘We can’t.’ Both children stared at her, appalled.
‘Well, how about if I take you?’ Erin suggested softly. ‘What if Paddy and I take you home and stay with you while you talk to your uncle? What if we help make him understand?’
‘But she’ll be there,’ Laura whispered, her voice laced with revulsion. ‘Aunt Caroline.’
‘Paddy and I can cope with Aunt Caroline,’ Erin promised. ‘You see if I’m right.’ She looked across at her old horse and smiled. ‘We’ve had a lot of experience with crabby aunts. Paddy had one once who could make him turn to jelly in his horseshoes, but together we fixed her right up.’
Laura and Matthew looked at Paddy and the first trace of smiles dimpled out from the pair. ‘Really? Paddy’s aunt... What...what did you do?’
‘We sprinkled Aunt Nobby’s hay with a whole container of pepper,’ Erin smiled. ‘As far as we know Aunt Nobby’s still sneezing.’
Matthew’s pale little face creased into the beginnings of laughter.
‘Could we do that to Aunt Caroline?’ Laura asked breathlessly.
Erin pretended to consider—and then solemnly shook her head.
‘I don’t think so. I don’t know how you’ll make your Aunt Caroline eat hay.’
A chuckle. Then Laura gripped Erin’s hand and looked down at her feet, as if figuring out a confession.
‘Aunt Caroline’s not really our aunt yet,’ the child confided. ‘But she says to call her that because she will be after she marries Mike.’
No six children. Not even a wife—yet!
‘Well, there you go.’ Erin smiled, shoving away such a treacherous thought. Such a useless thought! ‘Caroline’s not even a dinky-di aunt, and maybe if she gets to be one you could put pepper in her wedding cake. That’d fix her.’
Heaven help her if the twins really did pepper a wedding cake, Erin thought ruefully, but it was more important now to put a smile on the two small faces than to consider consequences. ‘But believe me,’ she added, ‘Paddy and I can cope with an “almost aunt” with our hands and hooves tied behind our backs. Now...’ She smiled down at both of them. ‘If I promise to stay with you until no one’s angry, and if I also promise to ride Paddy over and see you tomorrow, will you let me take you home?’
Matthew looked at Laura and Laura looked at Matthew. The bleakness falling back into their eyes made Erin’s heart melt, but some unspoken message passed between the twins and they nodded as one.
‘Okay, Erin,’ Laura sighed in a voice much too old for her years. ‘Matthew and I would be grateful if you’d take us h—’ She caught herself. ‘We’d be grateful if you could take us back to Mike’s and Aunt Caroline.’
CHAPTER TWO
MIKE McTAVISH...
How many times had Erin said that name aloud to herself when she was fourteen? For weeks she’d been in a daze of teenage ecstasy, thinking and dreaming of nothing but Mike McTavish. She remembered saying his name as a mantra to put herself to sleep and practising her signature as Erin McTavish, Erin McTavish, Erin McTavish—but now every time Mike’s name ran through her mind she was conscious of nothing but anger.
The children sat beside her in the truck as Erin drove the short distance to the McTavish farm, their eyes staring straight ahead and their expression stoic.
It would be easier to cope with tears, Erin thought grimly. This bleak resignation was breaking her heart.
What sort of hard-hearted toad had Mike McTavish become? He and his precious Caroline.
The McTavish farm was just past Erin’s grandpa’s. ‘We’re neighbours,’ Erin smiled. ‘That means I’ll be able to see you heaps. I’m staying here for ages.’
‘Why?’ Laura asked, her tone implying that Erin was mad to even think of living here.
‘Because my grandpa’s old and he needs me,’ Erin said softly. ‘And I love my grandpa.’
‘Not like us,’ Laura said bleakly and turned away. ‘We don’t love anybody. Except...except each other.’
‘You don’t think you could love your uncle Mike?’
‘We might,’ Laura said bitterly. ‘But he says he can’t look after us on his own—so he’s marrying Aunt Caroline.’
End of conversation. Nothing else was said until they turned into the McTavishes’ gate.
Erin hadn’t visited the McTavish house before, but she’d seen the house from the road and little had changed in ten years. The McTavishes were ‘old money’—part of what the Australian establishment called the ‘Squatocracy’. The McTavish forebears had been squatters generations ago, wealthy Britons taking up huge tracts of rich farming land and handing their wealth on to their children and their children’s children.
The children’s children hadn’t squandered their wealth. The McTavish homestead was long and low and gracious, set in beautiful gardens with mature oaks giving blessed shade from the summer sun. It was the biggest house in the district. It was the biggest farm.
And it seemed Laura and Matthew had been missed.
As Erin’s truck and trailer pulled into the yard the front door of the house burst open and a woman came striding quickly down the verandah steps towards them.
It didn’t take the children’s automatic bracing beside her to know this was the feared Aunt Caroline. The woman was older than Erin’s twenty-four years—closer, in fact, to Mike’s thirty—and somehow Caroline was just how Erin had imagined her.
Erin knew women like this. What Caroline wore was almost a uniform in upper crust rural circles—a uniform the same almost everywhere in the world.
Everything about this woman was oh-so-carefully casual. She wore designer jeans and her silk shirt fell softly open at the throat to reveal a single strand of pearls. A silk scarf casually tied back her immaculately sculpted, shoulder-length hair and her oh-so-chic sunglasses were pushed up from her beautifully made-up face.
And her face, underneath the expensive cosmetics, was cold and angry.
The woman ignored Erin. She cast one disdainful look at Erin’s truck as she strode towards it, saw the children and reached up to haul the passenger door open. Matthew and Laura instinctively cringed against Erin.
‘Oh, you naughty children.’ The woman’s voice was carefully modulated but it was razor-sharp for all that. ‘Where on earth have you been? Your uncle’s wasted half the morning out scouring the country and we were just about to call the police.’ She fixed them with a look of dislike. ‘How dare you cause us such trouble? Your uncle will be so angry!’
‘Hi,’