Stand-In Wife (15 page)

Tilly gasped.

Harry’s grin faded to apprehension. “Iv?”

She looked down at the T-shirt, one of her own, which could pass—just—as belonging to Merry. “I bet you didn’t mean to do that,” she said seriously.

“He did, too,” ratted his older sister.

Harry thought about it. “No?”

Viv kept a straight face. “Well, I’m going to give you
the benefit of the doubt.” She picked the biggest wet lump off Marilyn Monroe’s beauty spot. “Like you’re going to give me the benefit of the doubt when I do
this.
”

Carefully, she tossed some wet sand in his direction and it plopped square on his round belly.

Harry looked at his T-shirt and then up at her with such utter astonishment that she didn’t have to feign this smile. “Uh-oh,” she prompted.

Tilly giggled, that giggle kids got when adults stopped pretending to be grown-ups.

Chuckling, Harry picked up another fistful and threw it at Viv. She replied in kind.

Tilly scrambled out of the car. “Can I play?”

“Sure, anywhere but faces.”

Tilly bent and scrabbled for sand, turned with a cunning expression. Splat. Viv struck first. “Now tell me I’m not fun,” she invited. Harry squealed.

Splat. Tilly got her revenge.

“Run, Harry, run.” Grabbing his hand they broke into a toddler-paced trot down the beach. Splat on Harry’s bottom. Splat on Viv’s. Harry shrieked.

Their joy was balm to her wounded spirit.

Splat. Lacking the coordination to miss faces, Harry hit her right in the kisser. Spitting out a gritty mouthful, Viv grinned and returned to the battle.

A
S
R
OSS CRESTED
O
TAKAMIRO
P
OINT
after jogging the goat-steep track up from Maori Bay, he paused in the downpour, letting the blustery easterlies refill his lungs with salt-tanged air, and looked down to Muriwai Beach. Some five hundred meters below, the tiny figures of an adult and two kids crouched next to a sodden sandcastle, near the edge of an incoming tide.

Some lunatic had taken their kids to the beach in the rain.

Sheets of rain buffeted his naked torso and plastered his running shorts against his body, trickled into his trainers. It had been showering when he’d started forty minutes ago—who’s really the lunatic?—so he’d seen no point in wearing a T-shirt. His leg throbbed with an ache like a tooth abscess.

Massaging it impatiently, he looked for Salsa and spotted a soggy blog of disconsolate gray-white picking its way up the hill. Damn Viv and her food bribes and damn the dog for his stubborn refusal to let Viv exercise him. Even absent the woman could still make Ross’s life difficult.

Salsa’s tail started to wag as he caught sight of Ross. Giving an apologetic yip, he broke into a trot for the last few meters. Suppressing his irritation, Ross bent to pat the wet head. “Home stretch, dog.”

As he did every time he visited, Salsa cast a wistful look toward the gannet colony lying just below a viewing
platform to their left. The schnoodle never gave up hope of finding a way to the birds, and there was always the prospect of barking at the fur seals occasionally basking on the rocks below. “Trust me, no one’s sunbathing today. C’mon.” Turning downhill, Ross broke into a jog, Salsa following reluctantly.

Rain slicked the trail and made rivulets down the edges. Traversing one of the wide steps, his left foot shot forward on the slippery clay and he fell backward on his ass. A jolt of pain shot up his weak leg, so sharp that he jackknifed forward over his knees with a gasp. “Son of a—” Ross waited for it to pass, cursing the weather, cursing his infirmity, cursing his luck.

He was so tired of fighting the odds.

Anxiously Salsa licked his face. “I’m okay, dog.” Ross levered himself to a standing position and tested his leg. On a pain scale it was about an eight, only two higher than normal.

He’d expected his life to recalibrate when he cut free of family distractions, disentangled from Viv Jansen’s intrigues and came home.

He’d always been good at compartmentalizing. Unfortunately Viv wasn’t staying in her box.

Stockholm syndrome he told himself. He’d been trapped in his mad captor’s world for so long she’d brainwashed him into caring what happened to her.

Gingerly he walked out the limp, picking his way downhill, the wind dropping as he descended to the shelter of the bay.

He’d also been suffering through Charlie’s enthusiastic updates. “Merry was right,” his brother confided at lunch in town yesterday. “Putting the physical aside really helps us concentrate on communication. We were on the phone
an hour and a half last night. I think this is going to work, Ross.”

Was Ross’s silence about the twin swap setting his brother up for a bigger fall? He found his sister-in-law’s new cell number on Charlie’s phone when his brother went to pay the bill and called her as soon as he reached his car.

“I know what I’m doing,” she said. “Anyway, my blood tests show the infection is clearing. I’ll be home before Charlie gets back from his conference.” The truth or wishful thinking? Ross could only ask Viv or Dan and he wasn’t talking to either of them.

Frustrated, he’d cut to the chase. “Eventually you have to tell Charlie the truth, Meredith.”

“And risk everything I’ve regained,” she’d said sharply. “Would you?”

“Yes,” he’d replied without hesitation.

“Let’s give this context, Ross. If withholding one fact was the only thing that stood between you and active service would you tell it?”

He was silent.

“You have your obsession, I have mine,” she said. “We were good friends once, so please, let me do what I think is best for my family.”

The ground leveled out, sandstone became beach and the ache in his leg eased up. Sweet relief. Gritting his teeth, Ross forced himself to resume jogging, but the heavy wet sand was hard going. Enough, he told himself, that you’re doing it. Enough today, that you’re not giving up. Beside him, Salsa caught sight of the lunatics and tore off down the beach with an excited bark. “
Now
you find your second wind,” Ross grumbled, picking up his pace. Some kids were scared of dogs.

Drawing closer, the figure holding the baby resolved into a woman. Her skirt clung wetly to her legs, an olive T-shirt
was plastered to her upper body. She was splattered with black sand. The older of the two children frolicked in the shallows, racing away from the white-water of an incoming tide and shrieking like a banshee.

A bigger wake took the woman by surprise, surging and foaming around her thighs, lifting the skirt so it floated around her like brown seaweed. She held the baby high, all of them oblivious to the rain, as wild and primitive as the weather and the setting. Ross grinned, a grin that faded as he recognized her.

S
PECIAL
F
ORCES SOLDIERS
had a presence…a charisma that was almost palpable, even at a distance. So Viv knew, even before her pulse kicked, that it was Ross jogging toward them. As he drew nearer she noticed his gait, jarring and not graceful. He shouldn’t be doing this.

It hurt to see his struggle, hurt to sense the desperation behind it. It must be terrible to be a soldier who couldn’t fight.

Above a pair of black running shorts, his torso was bare, glistening with rain and she found herself drawing a quick breath. His body was like this landscape, without softness or compromise.

Harry straightened in her arms. “’Oss.” Harry pointed. Another new word. Their nephew would be writing dictionaries at this rate.

“Uncle Ross, Uncle Ross!” Tilly galloped out of the surf and tore along the waterline toward her uncle, who’d slowed to a walk. “Look, I’m swimming in my clothes!”

Harry squawked and, backing out of the tide, Viv put him down to stagger after Tilly, sea-soaked nappy hanging below his knees.

Closer still and she could pick out detail. Scars like leopard markings crossed his ribs and abdomen where metal
shards had sliced into the flesh. A deep scar crisscrossed his right thigh, ragged and as ugly as a shark’s bite, purplered against his pale skin.

His recovery to date was extraordinary. She could only marvel at the will that had got him this far. But Dan had told her everything—Viv suspected to deter her from pursuing an affair. He needn’t have worried. The kiss had already sent Viv’s own early warning system into hyperdrive. However impulsive she might be in other areas of her life, she didn’t go near love. Not with the example of her parents’ marriage behind her.

Ross bent to scoop up Harry and laid a protective hand on his excited niece’s shoulder. His gaze met hers, wary, unwelcoming.

“You said if there was a crisis I couldn’t handle alone….” The morning’s events crashed down on her like a wave. Hoping he’d mistake her sudden tears for rain, Viv bent to pat Salsa, received a warning growl and withdrew her hand. “If you could take the kids tonight,” she managed gruffly, “I’ll pick them up in the morning.”

She waited for him to argue. Instead a key appeared in front of her. “Salsa and I will meet you at the house.”

“Thank you.” Blinking hard, Viv took a bedraggled Harry and turned toward the parking lot.

“I’ll walk with Uncle Ross,” Tilly announced. She grabbed his hand and the pair continued along the beach. “Uncle Ross, you have to help my team with soccer on Monday after school. Dad’s not here for the final or Mum and you
have
to. Please!”

Even when she was asking a favor, Tilly couldn’t quite take the command out of her tone. “As long as Viv doesn’t mind an assistant coach,” he hedged.

“I think I can put my ego aside!” she called over her shoulder. Her doubts about coming here fell away. What
was it about this taciturn, disapproving guy that fostered in her a sense of security?

Tilly’s voice came faintly down the beach. “Uncle Ross, after we change can I use the weights machine?”

“They’re not toys, Attila.”

“I know that! I’m building muscle.”

By the time everyone had showered and changed, the kids were hungry. They ate canned soup and toast around the white oak dining table, while Tilly chatted about soccer plays.

“I’ll get going, then.” Viv took her bowl to the kitchen counter.

“Til,” Ross said casually, “Go put on the SAS CD you like—take Harry.”

He had every right to an explanation if she was dumping the kids on him. Steeling herself, Viv told him what happened, sitting at the table, looking at her hands, the ragged nails, trying to control the tremor in her voice. “I’ve been so arrogant,” she finished. “Assuming that I can bluff my way through any crisis…if that child had died, Ross.” Her throat tightened, cutting off the words.

She jumped as he put a hand on her shoulder. “Don’t give me sympathy,” she said. “I don’t deserve it.”

“You didn’t deserve what happened, either.”

She closed her eyes and leaned against him, felt his hand, gentle against her hair. He wore jeans and another ThinkGeek T-shirt. She’d sent Dan one a year back and he’d mentioned that Ross was hooked. This one read Resistance Is Futile—If < 1 ohm—and smelled of shampoo and pine soap. Having used his shower, so did she. Silent tears ran down her cheeks. She buried her face against him and cried.

He didn’t offer any platitudes, didn’t try to make her feel better, he simply let her cry it out. And Viv was grateful.

“C’mon, Uncle Ross,” Tilly wandered in from the living room and Ross turned to shield Viv from their niece’s view. Hurriedly, Viv wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her sweatshirt. “Let’s all go work out.”

“I’ll bring Harry in a minute,” Viv said. It was ten before she’d composed herself enough to follow, splashing her face with cold water and fingercombing the tangles out of her hair.

Something had changed. She just wasn’t sure what.

T
HE FIRST THING
H
ARRY
did when Viv carried him into the basement weight room was bang on a cupboard door until she opened it. He rolled out a Swiss ball bigger than he was and prodded it around the carpet with a toothy grin. Under Ross’s supervision, Tilly was busy adjusting the setting on a rowing machine.

“These two know how to make themselves at home,” Viv commented. She was feeling a little shy since her crying jag. People expected her to be upbeat.

“Charlie used to come stay weekends with them when he and your sister first separated.” Ross gave Tilly a thumbs-up and she hauled on the “oars.”

A series of framed photographs lining the back wall caught Viv’s eye and she wandered over for a closer look. The first was of the guys sitting in a Dumvee, sharing a casual moment of camaraderie. Ross, Nate, Dan, Lee and Steve. Young and smiling. Gently, she touched her late cousin Steve’s face. “How did you become interested in the SAS, Ross?”

“Mum and I had an elderly neighbor—George—who’d been in the Unit. After her death, I begged Dad to let me move in with him. Naive, really.” Absently, Ross stood back from the rowing machine and massaged his knee. “We stayed in touch.”

“Is your injury paining you more than usual?” Viv asked quietly. “You’ve been favoring it since you took Salsa for a run.”

All expression disappeared from his face. “If you think I can’t keep up with that fat dog—”

“Salsa prefers ‘big-boned.’”

Ross raked a hand through his hair, still slightly damp from the shower.

“I slipped and fell,” he admitted. “Not badly but there’ll be a bruise on my hip in the morning.”

Want me to kiss it better?
Lust was interfering with her risk radar. Viv returned her attention to the other photos for fear he’d read her eyes.

Ross, Dan and Jo at her brother’s wedding, the best man holding the bride’s ring finger out to the camera showing the beer tab that had been her last-minute wedding ring. Work commitments had stopped Viv from attending. Merry had arrived without Charlie and finally confessed he’d left her. Ross had kept his mouth shut, didn’t want to ruin his friend’s wedding.

A picture of Nate, ripped from some celebrity magazine. All macho chic in a plain black suit and wraparound shades, some Hollywood starlet on his arm, and the azure-blue of an L.A. swimming pool behind him.

Lee and his fiancée Jules…Steve and Claire holding their newborn son.

The photographs were a constant reminder of what Ross had lost and why he was doing this, she thought with a flash of insight. When you opened your heart to so few people you couldn’t afford to lose any. Ross had lost two and considered himself betrayed by a third. She suspected Ross knew he couldn’t make this better. What he was really struggling with was accepting it.

The Swiss ball came rolling toward her, Harry an unseen
propellant behind it and she stepped aside as he staggered past, palms planted against the juggernaut, teetering on the edge of balance.

“Save the sampler, Viv,” Ross called. In Harry’s path, the frame sat on the floor, leaning against the wall.

“Got it.”

She had the leisure today to examine it, and again she noted the quality of the stitching—wool silk threaded on linen. The fabric had yellowed with age but the colors in the silk hadn’t faded, vibrant reds and greens. She glanced across the room to the weight bench where Ross was helping Tilly grasp the pull-down bar. The little girl’s face was flushed with exertion, her expression fiercely focused. “I can do it, myself,” she warned, hauling down the weight-free crossbar.

Viv held up the sampler. “Why haven’t you hung this?”

“No time.” It bothered her that he couldn’t find five minutes from his training schedule.

“Why don’t we hang it now? Unless…” she hesitated “…you’re still ambivalent. Because of Linda?”

“No.” He paused. “Thanks to your pep talk at Linda’s. I’ll find a hammer.”