‘Me, too,’ Josh added.
‘Eat the monster switchwitch.’
‘And drink the milk.’
Phoebe hummed and hawed, but offered to share with a gleam in her eye that revealed a certain satisfaction.
Moments later, his sons were eating with every indication of pleasure. They drank a small cup of milk apiece, while Phoebe scooped up dishes and dumped them into the over-flowing dishwasher and Max stared, stupefied, his feet rooted to the floor.
Phoebe had only been here minutes and she had the boys literally eating out of her hand. This minor miracle. How had it come about? He had no time to consider further, because as fast as his sons had eaten and drank they drooped, and Phoebe swooped.
‘Clean jammies, Max, in the bathroom.’ She scooped a boy on to each hip, as though she did it all the time, and swept them away.
By the time Max joined her, bemused, with two pint-sized pairs of pyjamas in his hands, she had washed faces, supervised teeth and stripped two small bodies to the bare minimum. The boys were slipped into their night attire and herded along to their beds.
‘I’ll be sleeping in the room next door to yours if either of you get scared or decide your beds are too lumpy or anything.’ Phoebe gave each child a quick pat and backed towards the door. ‘I happen to know my bed is the most comfortable in the house, because I’ve slept in it heaps of times before.
‘See you.’ With a wave and a grin she stepped out the door, somehow managing to herd Max with her. As she did so, she brushed against him. Max’s body tensed in reaction to her nearness.
‘They’ll be crying before you can say boo.’ He stood in the corridor, waiting for the yells of rage or screeches of fear, but they didn’t come.
That just left Max, trying to deal with wanting Phoebe and wanting her out of his house in roughly equal measures. Or he told himself the balance was about fifty-fifty.
‘I’m too tired to deal with you tonight.’ He grumbled the words at her gracelessly, a counterpart to his body’s unwelcome reaction to her. She was his sister’s best friend, not to mention all wrong for Max in every way it was possible to imagine.
He did not need to desire her on top of every other thing going on in his life at present. ‘Now that they’re asleep I can’t leave them in order to drive you back into town, either. Brent—my new gardener—was going out for the evening, so I can’t ask him to do it. You’ll have to go tomorrow.’
‘No need to thank me. Yet.’ Phoebe stepped past him into the doorway of the room she always used when she visited, which, thank God, Max thought, hadn’t been often lately.
‘I realise your pride must be tangled around your ankles right now,’ she added. ‘Get some sleep. Maybe tomorrow you’ll be able to accept that I’m the best thing that’s happened to you this week.’
‘You’re not staying.’ The forceful words were a wasted effort because she’d closed the door in his face.
Disgusted, speechless, Max stared at it. Who did she think she was, anyway?
It was more of a splintering sound than an all-out crunch. In fact, as accidents went, this one almost registered as a non-event. Until Phoebe looked over her shoulder and saw the damage.
‘Oh, poop. I’m in trouble now.’ She had her hand on the door latch of Max’s monster four-wheel drive, preparing to get out, before she remembered what she had, for a split second, forgotten. She wasn’t alone.
Her two small charges didn’t hesitate to offer their reminders, gleefully, from the back seat of the Range Rover.
‘Poop, poop, poop,’ Josh crowed, getting louder with each use of the word. ‘Poop, poop, poop!’
‘You crunched it.’ This came from Jake, who had managed to slither himself around enough in his car seat to survey the farmhouse’s wrecked veranda latticing. ‘Max be mad. Mad, mad, mad.’
Phoebe grimaced a smile into the rearview mirror at the identical mirthful faces. Isn’t it great that they feel safe and happy enough to express themselves to me this morning?
‘It’s probably best if you don’t say poop too often, Josh,’ she corrected automatically. ‘Words like that are really best left for the big people. And, Jake, Max is your father, as I’ve already explained several times today. You address him as Dad or Daddy, not Max, and you don’t know if he’ll be mad because he hasn’t seen the damage yet.’
Phoebe knew, but that wasn’t the point. She had been doing so well today, too. She had got the boys up, had dressed them and herded them outside, all the while allowing Max to sleep. Total consideration, that was what she had delivered to him.
She had then forced herself to drive his enormous car to the nearest reasonably sized town, despite her trepidation at getting behind the wheel of something so intimidatingly large. With almost the last of her own dwindling funds, she had bought the boys’ breakfast and stocked up on a few necessities. All of this to help out, but would Max think about that now? She doubted it.
Phoebe didn’t want to admit that she might have wanted, even slightly, to gain Max’s approval for her extra efforts. What would be the point of that?
She kicked the toe of one booted foot against the brake pedal in frustration. ‘It’s his fault anyway, for letting the foodstuffs run out that way. No cereal in the cupboards. Barely any milk, no bread, no fruit. What was he thinking?’
She refused to acknowledge any other feelings. Like dread, anxiety or guilt. Those were for the past, for an uneasy teenager who hadn’t felt at home with herself, let alone with anyone else, and especially not here, under Max’s ever watchful eye.
‘Katherine’s friendship was worth it,’ she muttered. Meanwhile, there was only one thing for it, she decided. She had to get to Max before he got to her.
‘Jake, Josh.’ She fixed the boys with her most practised stern expression. ‘Wait here until I’m ready to get you out. Do not move. Understand?’
Phoebe emerged from the vehicle into the cool morning air and drew a deep, calming breath. A young man was working inside one of the sheds in the distance, but didn’t appear to have noticed her. Brent—the new gardener? At least he hadn’t witnessed the result of her rush of overconfidence.
What had she been thinking about, to try to back the vehicle up to the steps that way? She couldn’t even see over the headrest. ‘Oh, well. Might as well go face the music.’
As she started towards the house Max came charging out. An ominous-looking frown marred his face. Jeans, sturdy boots and a dark T-shirt all appeared to have been pulled on in a hurry, and his hair stood on end. Straight from his bed, Phoebe decided, and told her raging hormones to get over it. Like, for ever!
‘Why am I not surprised to see my car butted up to the veranda, which is now completely smashed to bits?’ Max’s question cut through the space separating them. ‘Oh, that’s right,’ he added. ‘It’s because you’re in residence.’
His gaze moved to his sons, who were still peering, grinning, over the backs of their booster seats. ‘I knew you’d be a bad influence and here’s the proof, not even twenty-four hours later. I don’t suppose you’d care to explain what you were thinking.’
‘I knew you’d react like this. How predictable.’ She may have been slightly in the wrong in this particular skirmish but, even so, Phoebe wasn’t about to admit it.
They met nose to nose at the foot of the veranda.
‘What’s predictable is you taking my car and mangling things with it.’ Max pointed to the four-wheel drive, then at the latticework, which was lying in fragments on the ground. ‘Look what you’ve done. You know you’re not a good driver. You should never have got into it.’
‘If