The Australian's Desire: Their Lost-and-Found Family / Long-Lost Son: Brand-New Family / A Proposal Worth Waiting For

It was a flat statement of intent. She meant it. She shivered and Alistair was suddenly holding her close, hugging her against him.

‘She’s had enough,’ he said, and Harry nodded.

‘Yeah. I know that. I didn’t want to ask. But you’ll let me know, Georg.’

‘If I hear, I’ll yell it to the rooftops.’

‘Even if it means jail for Ron?’

‘You think I want him outside? Messing with Max? I want sole custody but they won’t give it to me.’

‘So you want him in jail,’ Harry said, with a lopsided grin. ‘You’re putting them all away tonight. I’ll do my best to get him where you want him to be. Can I put out a missing person bulletin for Max?’

‘Ron won’t have deserted him. He wouldn’t dare.’

‘It can’t hurt to broadcast that he’s missing. People are more likely to respond to a plea for a missing kid rather than information wanted about Ron.’

‘OK,’ she said wearily. ‘If it’ll help … Please, Harry.’

‘Leave it with me,’ he told her, and then, with a last curious look from one to the other, he left them, striding down through the garden to the beach path below.

There was a long silence. The wind was rising to storm level now, bending the palms between them and the beach, whistling around the old house, making their sheltered veranda seem even more isolated. Even more of a refuge.

He should go in and leave her to her thoughts, but Alistair didn’t want to. She’d pulled away from him. Now she was leaning on the veranda rail, staring at nothing.

He shouldn’t get involved.

He was involved, like it or not.

‘Your … Max left six months ago?’ he said softly, and she didn’t respond.

‘Georgie?’

‘Yeah,’ she said flatly, at last. ‘The night of Gina and Cal’s engagement party. Ron just arrived and demanded Max go with him. He had the right. He took Max, even though Max was desperate to stay. Max is almost the same age as Gina’s CJ. They’d just started to be friends. It was …’ She broke off. ‘Sorry. It’s boring. Ron has the right and I don’t.’

‘So your behaviour the night of the engagement party….’

She rounded on him then, angry. ‘I was drunk. I was out of my mind with worry. You don’t think I really fancied you, do you?’

‘I …’

‘I was dumb, right?’ she snapped. ‘Get over it.’

‘But you’ll get Max back,’ he said, thinking maybe he ought to leave it, but, regardless, he was compelled to keep going.

‘If Ron’s caught.’

‘How the hell did you get caught up with a man like Ron?’

Silence.

‘Georgie—’

‘Leave it.’

‘No,’ he said, stupidly maybe, but, hell, he couldn’t leave it like this. ‘Georgie, I’m no expert but it seems to me the courts usually give custody to the mother. That’s the way it is in the States at least, and I can’t see why it’s different here. If they granted Ron custody … well, maybe you were wild in the past. But there’s enough people here who’d vouch for you now. You’ve got a great job in a terrific little community. If Ron goes to jail you could apply again …’

There was a deathly silence. He’d messed it up, he thought. He shouldn’t have said it.

‘You think I might have been a bad mother in the past,’ she whispered.

‘Hell, I don’t know …’

‘Just because I wear leathers.’

‘They’re great leathers.’

‘But they put me in the right socio-economic class to be a bad mum.’

‘Georg …’

‘I’d slap you,’ she said wearily, ‘but I’m all slapped out. You stand there with your righteous answer-to-all solution. Prove to the courts that I’m respectable and … Hell, you think I should wear a twinset?’

She was close to hysteria, he thought.

‘I think it’d be a damned shame if you wore a twinset.’

She stared—and then she choked, half with laughter, half with tears. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about,’ she whispered.

‘I do know you look fantastic.’

‘In leathers. Every man’s fantasy.’

‘Actually, I was thinking you look fantastic in nightie, scuffs and bandages.’

‘Cut it out.’

‘Right.’

‘You propositioned me last time you were here,’ she whispered. ‘Behind … What’s her name? Eloise or something’s back. Slime-ball.’

‘You’re talking about my fiancée?’

‘Yeah, isn’t that presumptuous of me? Low-life talking of her betters.’

‘Where the hell did you get that chip on your shoulder?’

‘If you give crazy compliments when you’re engaged to another woman …’