From Waif To His Wife. Lindsay Armstrong

one. I would like to get my master’s degree in music. There’s no age limit on that, luckily, so I might still achieve it.’

      ‘Are you planning to cope on a single-mother’s allowance?’ he queried.

      Maisie grimaced. ‘I have a few assets. I inherited my parents’ house and the boat, but their nest egg and my father’s superannuation will have to go to pay off the mortgage they took out to renovate the house. But,’ she paused then uttered the words she hadn’t been able to make herself say, ‘I will have something when I sell them both.’

      ‘Tell me something else,’ he said. ‘Did you believe you were madly in love with this guy?’

      Maisie folded her napkin then unfolded it and finally nodded. ‘It all came at me…’ She moved her shoulders. ‘One moment I had my feet on the ground, the next I seemed to be flying and living and laughing again. It was extraordinary.’ She pushed the napkin away.

      ‘And how do you really feel about him now? I mean, obviously in the circumstances you’ve described, you’d be entitled to be angry and betrayed, but what say, hypothetically, I got him back for you?’ he queried.

      Maisie took an unexpected breath. ‘I—I don’t know. It’s a bit like a dream now, and it’s hard to disassociate it now from…seeing how gullible I was. But I think it would be too late to recapture the—the magic. It could only be unwillingly, if he did somehow come back now.’

      ‘Maybe not.’ He paused. ‘What say he came back of his own accord because he found he couldn’t forget you or live without you?’

      ‘Do you know, I don’t think I’d believe him?’ she said barely audibly. ‘I don’t think I’d believe a word he said.’ She swallowed.

      ‘So you wouldn’t take him back because of the baby?’

      She hesitated. ‘That wouldn’t be any good, would it? If I didn’t believe in him.’

      He ran his fingers along the blue cut-velvet settee back and watched her narrowly. ‘You don’t sound especially gullible now.’

      She made a steeple of her fingers then propped her chin on her fists. ‘If there’s one good thing that comes out of the school of hard knocks, it’s that you grow up rather fast. And you suddenly begin to believe all the warnings you dismissed so lightly about falling in love and men.’

      His grey eyes rested on her thoughtfully for a long moment. He’d lent her another old khaki shirt for their endeavours with the fan belt. She’d since removed it and his sister’s cable-knit sweater was clean, but a little smear of grease she hadn’t noticed remained under her chin.

      Otherwise, completely au naturel, with no make-up and with her cloud of curls, she was ethereally attractive in an understated way. Her skin was pink and white and perfect. Her rosy mouth was delicate and her green eyes were stunning.

      As well, as he now knew, there was a perfect little figure beneath Sonia’s clothes with high, pointed breasts, a tiny waist and peachy hips.

      He frowned suddenly. Why the hell he’d been moved to kiss her had been a mystery to him at the time. He had put it down to a salute for a mad act of bravery. He’d actually felt a surge of affection for her—so half drowned but still capable of yelling at him. He had regretted insulting her, but…

      Had he also experienced a protective instinct?

      If so, could he be falling into a trap she was building with gossamer strands around him?

      Well, he decided and took the last sip of his beer, it mightn’t be a bad idea to keep that in mind against any further protective urges. Because he still wasn’t sure she wasn’t a great little actress.

      ‘I’m off to bed,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

      ‘Yes, please.’ She covered her mouth with both hands as she yawned again.

      

      Horseshoe Bay was beautiful in the starlight.

      The casuarinas along the wide curve of white beach were smudgy shadows and all the boats riding at anchor had their anchor lights reflecting in the glassy water.

      Maisie was asleep in the forward berth, a comfortable cabin with two V bunks. She wore a pair of Sonia’s pyjamas, a bit too big for her—and she was dreaming. Weird dreams that prompted her to do something she thought she’d grown out of—sleepwalk.

      It could have been, she was to think later, a day and night full of unusual events that produced the episode, but at the time she had no idea what she was doing.

      She got out of the bunk and let herself out of the cabin and up the stairs to the saloon. She walked forward and then started to climb the companionway in a slow, dreamy way. When she got to the top of the stairs she unerringly unlocked the door that led to the cockpit and was about to step outside when Rafe intervened.

      He couldn’t say what woke him but he got to the saloon in time to see Maisie’s ghostly figure climbing the stairs. He said her name but she didn’t respond so he climbed up behind her and said her name again. She didn’t even turn to him.

      ‘For crying out loud,’ he murmured, ‘what’s this? Maisie?’

      Still no response, and he realised that she was sleepwalking.

      He swore softly and turned her around gently then led her down the stairs. She came unresistingly and she rested against him at the bottom.

      He examined his options. There was no way he could lock her in—some stratum of her mind was capable of dealing with locks. So how was he going to stop her from getting up on deck and perhaps falling overboard?

      ‘There’s only one thing for it, Miss Wallis, I just hope to heaven you don’t misinterpret it.’