Beauty and the Wolf / Their Miracle Twins (39 page)

‘Brothers …’ he murmured, and she knew he’d be thinking about Drew just then. They all were. Denise’s eyes shone with pain and a kind of healing and Bill tucked her against him gently. Alice’s face was split in a smile wider than the gully running down to the caves, even though she had the messiest end of the whole proceedings to still deal with.

The babies were perfect. Silent and overwhelmed by the curious new world they found themselves in, but they had everything in the right quantities. And they had their father’s eyes.

And their uncle’s, technically.

Flynn placed the tiny firstborn on Bel’s chest closer to his brother and both babies instinctively turned towards the other, fussing. She shifted them hard up against each other and they immediately settled.

‘They know each other …’ Flynn murmured.

‘They should. They’ve been each other’s world for eight months.’ Her crooning did nothing to draw their attention back to her but their eyes closed after a moment of the soft sound.

His deep voice rumbled, ‘They know their mother, too.’

Their mother.
But there was no question, regardless of their genetic origins. She’d carried them, talked to them, loved them and birthed them. These children were hers.

The impossible responsibility of that washed over her in a wave of anxiety and her heart rate picked up. What did she know about being a parent? To twins? In a tiny flat in London. What had seemed so straightforward in theory—when it was just an intangible
one day
—seemed insurmountable now. These were little human beings. There was no room for mistakes. Their needs had to come first.

‘They’re so small …’

‘Their growth was inhibited by each other and they’re a little early, but they’ll make up for lost time.’ Alice appeared next to her, wiping her hands on the last clean towel. It was only then Bel realised what a blood-bath the Bradleys’ living room had become. She owed them some serious linen. And a rug. And some dressmaking scissors.

Alice pushed damp hair from her own forehead and then looked at Flynn. ‘As soon as you’re ready, we need to get her to a hospital.’

All the colour drained from his face. ‘Why? What’s wrong?’

Her aged laugh was a bark. ‘She’s just given birth on the floor. Twice. That’s what’s wrong.’ She patted his hand. ‘She and the babies need a full check-up and some time in a comfortable bed, getting up to speed with all of this.’

His arms tightened. ‘I’ll take her myself. Now.’

‘Is that the best plan, Flynn? Squeeze two newborns and a traumatised woman into your luxurious two-seater … with no one along to assist if anything happens? Would an ambulance be a better idea, dear?’

Despite the pain and the anxiety and the overwhelming-ness of everything that had happened and was yet to happen, Bel had to smile. The whole Alice good-cop-bad-cop thing took some getting used to. As tough as a military sergeant while she was in labour, but as gentle as pie on her poor, shocked grandson.

‘I’ll do it on the CB radio,’ Arthur called from the kitchen where—bless his socks—he’d popped the kettle on for yet another restorative cup of tea before heading out to his vehicle. But, as Bel brought her eyes back towards the babies, she saw the tremor in Alice’s fingers and the pallor at her hairline. She’d been through quite a trauma, too. Seventy-nine-year-old women didn’t participate in marathons all that often. Bel tucked the babies tighter to her chest with one arm and reached
out with the other. ‘Alice. Thank you. I could not have done this without you. These boys are alive because of you.’

Her lips tightened but Bel knew it was to corral the tears that threatened in her aged grey eyes. ‘Rubbish. They’re alive because of you. And Flynn.’ Although she hadn’t lost the speculative glint. ‘Though I don’t mind saying I don’t want to ever do that again. Not sure my heart is up to it. And there’s a reason I crawled up to this end of you, Bel. I think my knees have gone …’

Bill helped his mother excruciatingly to her feet and supported her to the nearest sofa, where she sank gratefully into it and tucked her trembling hands from view while her son clucked around her. Denise collected up all the soiled linen and disappeared upstairs before returning with a fresh quilt, which she draped over Bel and the babies.

Bel spent the time just staring at her boys—all three of them—and snuggling back into Flynn.

‘Are you in pain?’ he whispered against her ear.

You have no idea.
And not all of it physical. But pain had no place here for the next few minutes. This was for them alone. She shook her head. ‘Look at them, Flynn. They look just like—’
too many ears in the room
‘—their father.’

His eyes glittered and he smiled. ‘I know.’

‘Look at those Bradley foreheads,’ Denise piped up from the sofa. ‘But if you ask me, they look more like Drew at birth. Flynn was so much darker.’

Bel’s whole body tightened up.

The glance Alice slid past Bel made her wonder if the wily woman wasn’t slowly piecing together the puzzle. Though, never correctly—there was no way she possibly could. Who in a million years could imagine what she and Flynn had done? But she was definitely doing quiet mental maths. ‘They don’t look much of anything at the moment, all squashed from the birth.’

‘I wouldn’t care if they ended up looking like your legendary Bunyip,’ Bel said fiercely. ‘I think they’re perfect.’

‘Hear, hear …’ Arthur said from the kitchen and suddenly the entire family began buzzing with excitement and remembering the births of their own children at great speed and volume. Bel sagged into the happy cacophony and stared at the two little people suddenly dominating her world.

Massively, overwhelmingly, entirely dominating.

Flynn kissed her sweaty head and murmured, ‘Need anything?’

‘Just to lie here. Just to look at them.’ Just to have you close. For however long it lasts.

Baby number one pressed its face to Baby number two and began sucking his tiny chin.

‘Should I try and feed them, Alice …?’ Her mouth dried at the thought. The terrifying learning curve began now. She really had no clue. Everything she knew about babies she knew from books or dolls. Yet she thought she could do this alone? She’d only just grown used to Flynn seeing her breasts; now they were going to become public property …

‘They feel like a feed about as much as you feel like one right now, Bel. They’ve been through an ordeal at least as traumatic as yours. Sleep and medical care are the most important things for the next little while. And contact with their parents. The rest will come in its own time.’

She was happy with that. Delaying the inevitable. Holding them—loving them—was the easy part. She’d willingly do that until the end of time.

The family bustle went on. Eventually Alice pulled herself to her feet and disappeared to take a well-earned shower.

Bel picked her moment and whispered to Flynn, ‘Alice knows.’

He looked at her sharply. ‘What do you mean?’

‘She felt … She knows I was a virgin.’

His lips tightened.

‘I didn’t think, Flynn …’

He squeezed her hand. ‘It’s not your fault. We both thought this would happen in a controlled medical environment.’ He glanced at his occupied parents. ‘Do you think she’ll believe it’s just a freak of nature?’

‘If I’d been quicker on my feet, maybe. She knows there’s some kind of secret, just not what it is.’

Flynn nodded. Thought. Hard. ‘Okay. Well, we’ll think of something.’

‘No. No more lies. No more half- and quarter-truths.’ She kept her voice calm for the babies’ sake but put all her seriousness into her eyes. ‘I’m done.’

He wanted to argue. She could see it. But the dark shadows at the back of his expression coagulated into visible pain. ‘I suppose it’s going to be a moot point soon, anyway.’

Bel frowned. What did he mean?

‘But you don’t have to deal with that now. We’ll talk about this more when you’re fully recovered. I’ll deal with any questions Nan might have.’

To spare her the humiliation? Or to control what was said? ‘No. I’m not hiding behind you, Flynn. I need to face the music. Tell them personally. It’s the least I owe them, especially after today.’ She caught and held his gaze. ‘I won’t taint the start of these lives with more deception.’

She felt his body sag behind hers. ‘Okay, Bel. When you get out of hospital. Just focus on getting you and these little blokes strong.’

They couldn’t go on calling them
Baby number one
or the
little blokes
. ‘We need to choose names, Flynn.’

Flynn’s large thumb brushed some of the rapidly crusting wax residue from the baby closest to him and, after a long thoughtful pause, said what they’d both been thinking.

‘Andrew?’

It was totally appropriate, given his origins, and anyone looking in from the outside would just see one brother honouring
another. And he did have a kind of Andrew look about him. But knowing now how much of Flynn’s emotional heart was tied up in his past with his brother …

‘Are you sure?’

He thought about it some more and nodded. ‘I’m sure.’

She frowned. ‘But Andy for short.’ She didn’t think any of them could call him Drew without it hurting.

Flynn turned his eyes to the second-born baby. He was harder. There was no male equivalent of Gwendoline, at least not one he’d have a hope of getting a classroom of school mates to pronounce correctly. Bel moved on to her sister’s middle name. Liana.

‘Liam?’

They both stared at the babies.
Andrew and Liam Bradley.

‘Perfect,’ Flynn said.

The longer she stared at the sleeping infants, the heavier her own eyes felt. And as the natural hormone high wore off and the pain spread out to an awful, full body ache, the rigours of the birth finally registered on her exhausted muscles.

A drug-free home birth had definitely not been on her must-do list.

‘Sleep, Bel.’ Flynn pressed the words into her temple, tucking his arms more securely around them all and flexing his own muscles in anticipation of a long stay. ‘I’ll be here when you wake.’

But for how long? The thought drifted in and onwards as she started to doze into exhausted slumber, her senses filled with the smell of newborn baby and the warmth of the man she loved. Though it wasn’t entirely restful. Soon they’d have a verdict and one of them would be heartbroken and empty-handed.

Empty-lived.

And right up until Alice had placed Liam, hot and tiny, on her chest, she would have said it wasn’t going to be her. No way. But that was before the intense weight of two tiny lives
bore down on her and before she realised that what
they
needed was what mattered most.

Although right now—like their mother—they just needed sleep.

B
ATHURST HOSPITAL
was the nearest major centre and, because there were no serious complications with Andrew and Liam’s births, they got to stay there rather than be transferred to Sydney.

Which was not to say there were no complications at all. Liam’s little lungs struggled to drain as quickly as his brother’s and Andrew proved himself to be an unaccomplished feeder. Bel had been secretly relying on them knowing instinctively what to do and so she was more than a bit anxious to find they had to learn what went where every bit as much as she did.

‘It’s the blind leading the blind, isn’t it, Andy …’

She tried him again, endlessly patient but determined their breastfeeding planets would align at some point. Frustration and fear of failing him hovered permanently in the wings but she kept them at bay by remembering what a miracle it was that she had him and his brother at all and how these were moments she might have to carry in her heart for ever if things didn’t go her way in the courts. Besides, for little Andy there was always what Flynn called
express-o
. Her firstborn gorged himself on the bottle full of her pumped breast milk.

Appetite was clearly not an issue.

Flynn tried to be circumspect about it but she could tell he delighted in the chance to have the bonding experience of feeding Andy. And one tiny, secret part of her knew that keeping a
hint of emotional distance might be critical for when the court’s verdict came in. So maybe it was a blessing in disguise …

Nutrition was more important than technical correctness or societal expectations right now. She grabbed a bottle now, left by the nurse in case things didn’t go well, and negotiated the teat into Andy’s mouth. He latched on and sucked harder than any of the kangaroo joeys she’d helped rear

‘Maybe it’s just not meant to be …’ She sighed and stroked his tiny pink cheek with her fingertip, talking about a whole lot more than just their inability to get the feeding going.

‘It’s only been a couple of days, Bel. Give it a chance.’

Flynn walked back in from the en suite bathroom at that moment. He’d been with her every minute of those couple of days and was giving no sign of leaving soon. Not until he was driving them all back to Oberon. Together. His perpetual closeness had started to scrape on her nerves. It was humiliating enough that he was witnessing her at her incompetent worst, or seeing her fumbling around with suddenly udder-like breasts, but watching the nurses falling over themselves to catch his eye only reminded her what a fairy tale existence they’d been leading out on his property. Why would a man like Flynn tie himself to her when he could have any woman in the district? Australian women. Country women. Women who knew what to do on the land he loved so much.

And why did he feel the need to stay glued to her side like this? Did he think she’d skip town with the babies now that they were born? Was this just an extension on dragging her to Australia to keep her in his sights? Or was he trying to make a point about how plainly ill-equipped she was to look after two babies without help? Well, not everyone had family to go home to …

‘Maybe if you didn’t hover so much …’ she snapped.

Flynn’s only response was to lift one eyebrow and then lift baby Andy carefully away from her irritable fingers and take over the express-o feed, infinitely calmer. She glanced at Liam,
sleeping off his full belly in the boys’ joint crib, and shook her head.