Danny hunched over the laptop and gently tapped the keyboard. It was 4 a.m. and she was researching the enemy. If—when— Vanessa discovered her missing, Danny knew Kommandant Cooper would march her straight back to bed. Danny didn’t mind, it was nice having somebody take charge for a change. She’d given up trying to sleep after Vanessa woke her for the second time to check she hadn’t lapsed into unconsciousness.
‘How’d you feel?’ Vanessa asked.
‘My head hurts.’
Vanessa yawned. ‘I know that, but do you know where you are?’
‘I’m in hell, and I don’t belong here. Ross bloody Fabello does, but I don’t.’
‘Nothing wrong with you.’ Vanessa lay down and went back to sleep.
Danny watched her from the other side of her double bed, wishing she could do the same. Eventually she gave up trying. The gyrations and contortions required to slide from the bed without disturbing Vanessa alerted Danny to what to expect in the morning. Bruises seemed to have blossomed all over her body.
She shuffled past Matt and Mia’s bedrooms to the kitchen and booted up the miniscule, shiny, grey laptop that Patrick had bought on his last visit—or at least, semi-bought: Danny had taken over the repayments when Nella died. When she first saw the size of the tiny machine, Danny was worried Patrick had bought himself a make-up case to go with all his hair products.
The light from the laptop lit up the dark interior of the kitchen. Danny squinted at the screen, her head tilted sideways; one side of her nose was more swollen than the other, and it was the only way she could see over it.
Several things concerned her about Ross Fabello: foremost that he was here, but also that he didn’t seem to be anything like his brother, and had a presence that Patrick had lacked. Patrick might have got the looks, but it was obvious that his big brother had got the brains. Danny was a good judge of character and trusted her instincts. One look from those penetrating black eyes had alerted her that Ross couldn’t be manipulated like his brother. Danny had run rings around Patrick in a verbal argument—although, in fairness, Mother Nature had also contributed by making Patrick a doofus. Danny’s conversation with Ross after the accident had revealed him to be shrewd and—even more worrying—just as thick-skinned and rude as she was. By stealing her best weapons, he’d done more than wrong-foot her; he’d knocked Danny flat on her bum. She needed to regroup and quickly come up with a different plan of action. Sticking her head in the sand and hoping he’d go away hadn’t worked.
Danny briefly considered employing Nella’s tactics, but discarded the idea. She’d never pull it off; she didn’t find arrogant men with bloodshot eyes and big noses attractive, and she knew Ross wasn’t attracted to her either. Unlike her mother and sister, Danny was a lousy actress. While they were growing up, it was Nella who had the boys falling at her feet, Nella who fell in and out of love, Nella who was always getting her heart broken—sometimes it even lasted an entire week. Danny was choosy about who she went out with, and was always the one who broke things off. The more she liked a guy, the sooner she exited the relationship; and she had enough insight to recognize that she got rid of them before they could abandon her the way her father had. She also understood that Nella’s relationship with Patrick Fabello was a carbon copy of their mother and father’s. Mike Lawton was an English-born seaman who’d settled in New Zealand in the ’seventies. He never married Rose Smith, and spent weeks at a time away from home, working the coastal routes up and down New Zealand and returning to England at least once a year for a prolonged visit. He never took Rose or the twins with him, saying it was too expensive. Danny was convinced he’d had a wife and family they knew nothing about and who knew nothing about them.
‘You’re tough, Danny,’ Mike had told her before he departed for England the last time, supposedly to see his sick mother. ‘You’re not like your mother or your sister. While I’m gone, you’re in charge.’
Danny was much closer to her father than to her mother. It was Mike who encouraged her tomboyish tendencies and shortened her name to Danny instead of the more feminine Dani. She missed Mike much more than Nella did when he was away, and was his shadow when he returned.
‘You’re like me, Danny. You’re ruled by your head, not your heart,’ he always said.
Danny wondered if her apparent toughness had made it easier for him to walk away from them. The letters Rose sent to the address in England that Mike had given them came back marked Wrong Address, and she was told that the telephone number was disconnected. The day Danny finally admitted that her father wouldn’t be coming home, she’d cropped her hair and painted it with pink and green hair mascara. It was the only show of rebellion she allowed herself. She was now the head of the family, and if she didn’t keep her act together her mother would disintegrate completely.
Four years later, Rose died from breast cancer. She’d fallen out with her family before the twins were born, so the girls had never met their maternal relatives. They were nineteen and alone. While Danny got tougher, Nella grew more dependent, and was content to let Danny call the shots until Patrick Fabello arrived on the scene. It didn’t take long for Danny to figure out that Patrick wasn’t offering her sister a lifetime commitment. When Matt and then Mia arrived, Danny took on responsibility for them, too.
She googled RF O’Rourke and watched as pages of information came up on the screen. He had a website, but Danny wasn’t interested in reading about how old Ross was when he was toilettrained and lost his first tooth. She wanted to look at photos of RF O’Rourke so that she could compare them with the face of the Serial Killer, and she wanted dirt—the filthier, the better.
There were plenty of photos. And they were all of Ross Fabello, admittedly a tidier, smoother-looking Ross Fabello, but there was no mistaking that surly expression and those intense, dark eyes. Until a couple of years ago he’d lived with the ballerina Simone Marchant—even Danny had heard of her. Danny studied a photo of Ross wearing a tuxedo at some red-carpet do with Simone draped on his arm. Simone was a doe-eyed, raven-haired beauty with a radiant smile, and the graceful, upright posture and toned body of a dancer. She was wearing a Vera Wang original and looked nice—way too nice for Ross, who looked about as cheery as a turkey at Yuletide. Although Danny had to admit he did clean up OK, but then what man wouldn’t look good in Armani? The only reason Danny knew Ross was wearing Armani and Simone was wearing Vera Wang was because it said so beneath the photo. If Simone was representative of the kind of woman who attracted Ross, Danny had been bang on the mark about him not being attracted to her. Her interest and knowledge of designer clothes was about as extensive as a plumber’s, her hair was short and blue (at the moment), and her breasts were so small she didn’t bother buying bras. Danny peered over her swollen nose at Ross Fabello’s most prominent feature—there wasn’t a tuxedo made that’d be able to shrink that honker to normal proportions.
His split from Simone hadn’t been amicable; she’d tried to take him to court, claiming mental cruelty and loss of earnings, because she’d sacrificed her career while living with Ross. Danny snorted, and winced at the pain. Simone Marchant was an idiot if it had taken her three years to figure out what had taken Danny just a few hours: Ross Fabello was a ruthless bastard. She clicked in and out of a few more sites—a very wealthy ruthless bastard. All his books had made the New York Times bestseller list, and one of them, John Doe, was about to be released as a movie with Kevin Spacey and Marisa Tomei in the lead roles.
‘So why is he so miserable?’ Danny muttered. ‘He’s got money coming out of every orifice, beautiful women dumb enough to live with him, and he has the gall to look unhappy. The man deserves a slap.’
‘Who are you talking to?’
Danny started. Vanessa was standing in the doorway glowering at her. ‘Don’t do that!’
‘What are you doing out of bed? You’re supposed to be resting.’
‘I couldn’t sleep.’
Vanessa pointed towards the bedroom. ‘Get to bed!’
Danny began closing down the laptop.
‘What were you looking at?’ Vanessa asked.
‘Ross bloody Fabello, or at least RF O’Rourke Ross bloody Fabello.’
‘Really?’ Vanessa’s slippers almost left scorch marks on the wooden floor. ‘You can leave the laptop if you want, I’ll close it down. You go back to bed.’ She was a sucker for gossip and celebrity pages.
‘Don’t be fooled by that Armani tux,’ Danny warned. ‘He’s still Darth Vader—he just left his helmet at home.’
Vanessa peered at the screen and squawked, ‘He slept with Simone Marchant!’
Danny winced. ‘Please, I’m already feeling nauseous. Can you imagine what it’d be like sleeping with him? Like a trip to the Death Star.’ She shuffled to the door. ‘I’m going to bed.’
‘You do that,’ Vanessa sat down in front of the laptop. ‘He does look like George Clooney.’ She leaned closer. ‘With a bigger nose, of course.’
In the morning, before she left for her shift at the hospital, Vanessa made Danny promise she’d get Deryl, her neighbour, to take the children to school. Overnight, Danny’s face had puffed up like a blowfish and turned purple and black.
‘You need to take things easy today,’ Vanessa said.
‘What I need is a hitman to take out Ross Fabello.’
Reading his website had dampened down some of Vanessa’s take-no-prisoners attitude to Ross. The guy was loaded and wellconnected, whereas Danny was broke and unconnected. ‘I checked on his website: RF O’Rourke is thirty-six years old. He has a brother called Patrick and four sisters. He’s also got a house with a turret.’
The house was spectacularly beautiful. It was tucked away down an overgrown driveway behind a rusty gate and stood on a cliff overlooking the ocean. The photos had been taken from a boat out in the bay below the white stone house. RF O’Rourke was notoriously reclusive and jealously guarded his privacy. He wasn’t the kind of man who’d invite journalists in for tours of his inner sanctum.
‘He probably uses the turret to practise pouring boiling oil on his enemies,’ Danny sniped. ‘Van, will you do me a favour? If I have to murder him, will you help me bury the body?’
Vanessa nodded solemnly. ‘Absolutely.’ She decided not to mention another thing she’d discovered on the website: that Ross Fabello’s birthday was November the seventeenth, the same as Danny’s. It was a day Vanessa knew Danny was dreading—her first birthday without her twin.
‘So what’s an uncle again, Auntie Danny?’ Mia asked as Danny crept about the kitchen spilling cereals into bowls and snack bars into lunchboxes.
Danny barely heard her. Her head felt as if it was stuffed with wadding that was swelling and contracting in time with the thud of her heart.
She still wore her nightclothes, a shapeless, over-sized fuchsiapink T-shirt beneath an orange-and-brown leopard-print dressing gown, and a pair of grey and pink slippers with Hot Stuff in faded black writing across the instep. The slippers had seen better days. Canary-yellow socks poked through the holes worn by her big toes, but she refused to buy a new pair because summer was just around the corner. Unfortunately, several days of southerlies and torrential rain were making Danny feel as if spring and winter were having a good old laugh at her puny human expense—one day it was sunny, the next cold and wet. She scrubbed a hand wearily across her hair. In the morning, it always stood up on one side of her head and was flat as a pancake on the other, which meant she looked as bad as she felt.
Mia had cried when she saw Danny’s battered face, and Matt had offered to fix breakfast. After sleepless hours spent worrying about Ross bloody Fabello and what she should tell the children, Danny was exhausted.
‘Auntie Danny?’ Mia asked.
‘Mmm?’
‘What’s an uncle?’
Matt spoke around a mouthful of cereal. ‘It’s the brother of your mother or father.’
Danny considered telling him not to speak with his mouth full, but couldn’t be bothered. He sat at the kitchen table, one eye on the book wedged beneath the table leg closest to him. It was imperative the leg didn’t fall off the book—it had taken them ages to find the right-sized book and get it positioned just so.
Matt studied the back of the cereal packet. ‘What do you call somebody who poisons cornflakes?’
‘I don’t know,’ Danny replied. ‘What do you call somebody who poisons cornflakes?’
‘A cereal killer.’
She laughed weakly.
‘Mum didn’t have any brothers—just Auntie Danny,’ Mia said.
Matt rolled his eyes. ‘He’s Dad’s brother, stupid!’
That started a row, just as there was a knock on the front door. Danny expected it to be Deryl, the neighbour who looked after the children when she was at work, but when she opened the door she found herself looking up at Ross Fabello. ‘Oh shit…’ she mumbled.
He looked rested and almost human in faded denim jeans and a white T-shirt beneath a black leather jacket. Clearly he hadn’t been awake all night worrying about her. Danny eyed the black jacket. It wasn’t the kind you found in a cheap chain store. Danny could hear the ka-ching ka-ching of a cash register as she stared. With the stubble gone and his eyes no longer tinted red, Danny reluctantly conceded that the photo on the back of the book might not be George Clooney after all. She was upset that his nose appeared to have shrunk, or maybe she was just getting used to it. It didn’t seem to be nearly as big—well, perhaps, large, arrogant, noteworthy—but not the epic proportions she recalled from the day before. He also seemed to have got a lot taller. Danny checked his feet to see if he was wearing platforms, and was disgruntled to see a pair of bright white Nikes sparkling up at her.
‘Good morning to you, too.’ Ross looked her over. Hell, she was a mess. He hoisted a plastic bag. ‘I brought breakfast.’
Danny looked at the bag suspiciously. Why was he suddenly being so nice? Whatever was in there was probably laced with arsenic.
‘No, it’s not poisoned.’
Was she that transparent?
The night before, Jeff had counselled Ross to be nice. ‘You’ll catch a lot more bees with honey.’
‘Does that count for hornets, too?’ Ross asked.
Jeff sighed. ‘You’re doing it again—remember Simone.’
How could Ross forget? He’d been totally upfront with Simone Marchant before she moved in with him. He told her he wasn’t looking to get married or have children; that his Irish mother, Italian father, spendthrift brother, four voluble sisters and twelve nieces and nephews were all the family he could handle, and his writing would always come first. Simone insisted she understood how Ross felt about his writing, because she felt the same way about her dancing, and she thought his noisy, intrusive family was wonderful. Simone loved all things Irish, and considered Breda to be a Celtic treasure. Ross kept telling her his mother was a Celtic crock. For her part, Breda was flattered and willing to forgive Simone for not being a Catholic if she got Ross to put a ring on her finger and get her pregnant—in that order.
Aoife looked Simone up and down the first time they met and accused Ross of always hooking up with doormats. ‘What you need is a woman who’ll kick your ass at least once a day.’
Ross was truly surprised when, three years after she’d moved in, Simone had announced she was leaving him because their relationship was going nowhere.
‘I kept thinking you’d fall in love with me, but I don’t think you’re capable of falling in love with anybody. You’re generous with your money and your body, but you never share yourself with me. You built this beautiful, romantic house, and I thought that meant deep down you were romantic, too.’
Ross felt exasperated—and guilty. ‘If you were so unhappy, why did you stay?’
‘The sex, I guess. You’re the best lover I’ve ever had.’ Simone shook her head. ‘I don’t understand how you always know what I’m feeling and what I want in bed before I even know it myself, but the moment your feet hit the carpet you disappear inside a bubble I can’t penetrate.’
He was furious when Simone was reported in a newspaper interview as saying that if Ross hadn’t been so hot in bed she would have left him a lot sooner. Findlays, his publishers, had to bring in extra staff to manage the sudden increase in fan mail sent by crazed nymphomaniac women sending him their panties and contact details. When Simone took him to court for mental cruelty and lost earnings, they settled out of court for a figure that was nowhere near what Simone had wanted. For Ross, it wasn’t about the money; it was the loss of trust and the seediness of the whole sordid affair that sickened him. He hated having his personal life splashed across the tabloids and magazines, hated being kept a prisoner in his own house by the paparazzi and nutcases camped at the end of his driveway. The only winners were the lawyers.
Ross looked at Danny’s blackened eyes and squashed nose and decided she had something in her favour: she’d never want him to fall in love with her, and the only piece of herself she would ever want to give him would be the sharp edge of her tongue or her knee in his groin. He would never make the mistake of trusting her. A sentiment she returned.
Danny pointed at the disposable cup Ross held. ‘Is that what I think it is?’
He looked at the coffee. ‘What do you think it is?’
She sniffed and gagged.
Ross took a hasty step backwards. ‘You’re not going to be sick are you?’
Danny looked regretfully at his Nikes. ‘Unfortunately not.’ She gestured to the cup. ‘I hate coffee.’
He stared at her in disbelief. ‘You hate coffee?’
She nodded. ‘I hate coffee.’
‘Everybody likes coffee.’
‘Not this body.’ Ross waved the bag and Danny’s traitorous nostrils flared. ‘What’s in there?’
‘Freshly baked flaky croissants.’ He moved it from side to side like a hypnotist with a watch.
Danny followed it with her eyes, her saliva buds bursting. Ross inched his way towards the door. She backed up a step at a time, her eyes flickering between the bag and the disposable cup of coffee. ‘How did you get that? Starbucks isn’t open this early in the morning. Is it?’
‘Sure it is.’
Ross noted the cracked paintwork and pitted wooden floors in the hallway and tried to decide which looked worse, the house or Danny. She still wore the safety pins in her ears, her blue-tipped hair was squashed flat on one side of her head, and her battered nose slanted in the opposite direction. Her eyelids looked like fat bruised pillows wedged against her eyes. The godawful robe didn’t help matters; even his mother owned a more attractive one. It was the first time Ross had seen Danny on her feet. She was average height and as straight up and down as a boy. He eased forward another step. ‘How’s your head?’
‘Fine.’ Danny halted her backwards shuffle. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘Bringing you breakfast.’ Ross attempted another step.
She dug in, her holey old slippers toe-to-toe with his Nikes. ‘Stop right there!’
He dredged up his best publicity smile; it was so rusty it was a wonder his facial muscles didn’t squeak. It was wasted on Danny, who couldn’t have cared less that RF O’Rourke was on her doorstep, smiling. She folded her arms beneath her non-existent breasts and said, ‘You can’t just come bursting into my house uninvited.’
‘Auntie Danny? Who’s that?’
Ross looked behind Danny and got his first look at Pat’s daughter. A variety of emotions swamped him—uppermost disbelief that Pat was partly responsible for this beautiful child. Long, blonde hair hung down her back. She wore pink Barbie pyjamas and carried a faded cloth doll. She’d inherited Pat’s blue eyes, and had already mastered the knack of looking at people from beneath her lashes.
‘Are you our uncle?’ she asked.
Ross looked at Danny. She opened her mouth, but for once nothing came out.
‘Yes,’ he said.
A boy, a few years older, joined the junior interrogator. Like his sister he wore pyjamas, but his were blue and decorated with Bart Simpson. Ross drew a deep, shuddering breath. Goosebumps pebbled his skin. Here was all the proof he needed that these children were his brother’s. The boy was the image of Pat, with the same long, black, curly hair, bright blue eyes and olive skin. ‘Who’re you?’ he asked.
‘He’s the uncle Auntie Danny told us about,’ Mia—Ross remembered their names—told Matt.
Matt wasn’t convinced. He had clearer memories of his father, and apart from the curly hair this guy didn’t look much like him.
Danny came out of her trance. She grabbed Ross by the wrist to check his watch and nearly upended his coffee over his T-shirt. As Ross cursed, she flapped her hands at the kids. ‘Get a move on! You’ll be late for school!’
There was a mass exodus, leaving Ross to find his own way to the kitchen and take a seat amongst the breakfast dishes littering the big wooden table, one leg of which had been propped on a worn, red book. He was glad to see it wasn’t one of his.
There were cracks in the kitchen ceiling, the walls needed replastering, and the plumbing over the sink looked ancient. Blue and white gingham curtains hung around the bottom of the sink bench, and the floorboards were planed from beautiful timber, like the ones in the hallway, but they needed a lot of work to return them to anything approaching their original beauty. Ross saw all the telltale signs of an old house that had been let go.
He carried his coffee over to look out the old double-hung window above the sink, and caught his breath. The view was magnificent. Acres of rolling green pasture with a few clusters of trees swept away to the distant cliffs. It was prime real estate. Whoever had made the decision to buy the place had made a good investment—Ross doubted it would have been Pat.
Behind the house was a roughly fenced back garden with a couple of kids’ bikes and a trampoline perched drunkenly on a broken leg. Some tumbledown sheds constructed from red, rusting iron stood beneath large evergreen trees at the back of the garden area. Chickens pecked the ground outside the larger of the sheds, and a couple of fat, fleecy sheep—one black and one white—grazed beneath a washing line full of clothes, revolving slowly in the wind as the long, green grass flattened and tossed in a constant, undulating wave.
Danny reappeared and Ross froze, his coffee cup suspended in midair. Holy crap, what the hell was she wearing? Her trousers were baggy and mustard-yellow, her shirt was green and white stripes, topped by a burgundy paisley waistcoat and a long, black, shapeless cardigan that hung to her knees. She had a woollen turquoise scarf wound around her neck, and scuffed brown boots on her feet. Ross stared, his coffee forgotten. She looked like Coco the Clown. The leopard-skin robe and holey slipper thing she’d had going earlier had looked a whole lot better.
Danny searched the counter for the grocery list she’d written out the previous day. Clothes didn’t interest her much, and with money tight she bought most of her wardrobe from second-hand shops. Each morning Danny pulled on the first thing she found, adding more layers if her first choice wasn’t warm enough. The results ranged from highly original to downright appalling. Today was downright appalling.
She went up on tiptoe to reach a stack of letters on top of one of the cupboards, and the hem of her shirt momentarily parted company with the top of her pants to expose a smooth expanse of light olive skin and the indentation of her navel. It wasn’t pierced or tattooed, just a cute little belly button. He’d still put money on Danny having a tattoo hidden away somewhere, most likely a skull and crossbones. Danny’s search for the list grew more frantic.
Ross lounged against the kitchen counter watching her. He was beginning to recognize the telltale signs of her moods: how her nostrils flared slightly when she was angry, and how she chewed her bottom lip when she was nervous. ‘What have you lost?’
‘The shopping list.’ Ross thought he heard her add, ‘And my mind.’
He pointed to the plastic lunchboxes—one burgundy, one green—sitting on the draining board. ‘Do the kids need those?’
‘What?’ She looked at the boxes. ‘Oh! Yes!’
‘I’ll pack the boxes. You find the list.’
Danny muttered, ‘Now I know how the Stormtroopers felt.’
Ross shook his head. Strange things went on inside that blue head.
He reached for one of the lunchboxes, and saw the children’s names written on them in black permanent marker pen. MATT FABELLO. MIA FABELLO. It unnerved Ross to see the Fabello family name; all his other nieces and nephews were his sisters’ children.
He scooped up the boxes and squatted to pack them into the backpacks lying on the kitchen floor. When he glanced up Ross saw that Danny was watching him, and was disconcerted by the understanding in her puffy amber eyes. She knew he was upset and why. They abruptly broke eye contact, each of them feeling confused by the silent communication they’d shared.
I can’t believe it.
I know, neither can I.
‘Why did you turn up so early?’ Danny sounded grumpy.
His reply was terse. ‘To make sure you hadn’t flown the coop.’
‘My yacht is in dry dock and I’ve loaned my private jet to a friend.’
He grabbed the bags and rose. ‘You’re a regular wise-ass aren’t you?’
Danny smiled sweetly. ‘One tries.’
During the night she’d decided it would be wrong to prevent Matt and Mia meeting their paternal relatives. If she did, she would be repeating her mother’s mistakes and the children would suffer the way she and Nella had. But Danny was determined that the Fabellos were going to earn their right to a place in the children’s lives. Ross’s obvious impatience to do the job and get home did nothing to allay Danny’s fears. She thrust the shopping list into a huge, black bag and nibbled at her bottom lip.
Matt and Mia rushed into the kitchen.
‘Have you got a car?’ Danny asked Ross.
‘No, I flew here.’
‘The frightening thing is I can believe that.’ She turned to the children. ‘Come on, we’re going for a ride in Uncle Ross’s car.’
‘Cooo-ool!’ Mia cried and raced after Matt to the front door.
Ross followed Danny, wondering what had prompted her sudden change of heart.
Danny had to bang the warped front door twice to close it. She kept meaning to borrow a wood-planer from Deryl’s husband, Lloyd, but never seemed to get around to it, just as she never seemed to get around to fixing the toilet. It had to be flushed by pulling on a shoelace. Thanks to her father, Danny could repair almost anything.
Matt and Mia charged towards the deep-green Explorer gleaming in the sunshine on the weed-infested driveway.
Danny walked beside Ross towards the car. ‘You do know we drive on the left-hand side of the road here, don’t you?’
‘Just get in the car, will you?’
As they headed down the narrow country road, Matt and Mia became engrossed in a discussion about the car and acted as if they were taken to school on a cart drawn by oxen each day and not their aunt’s perfectly respectable Nissan.
Ross asked, ‘Where are you going after this?’
‘To give blood. I’d invite you along, but they only take the human kind.’ Danny kept her voice down so the children didn’t overhear. The moment in the kitchen had unnerved her. She needed to get things back on track.
Ross glanced at her blue hair. ‘You’re giving blood? Who do they collect it for? Klingons?’
‘You are so not funny.’ Danny stared at his nose. ‘It must be hell when you get a cold.’
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
‘I just wondered how you coped; I mean, do you buy industrialsized tissues or just use towels?’
‘Sticks and stones, sticks and stones,’ Ross said. He might not have a pretty-girl nose like Pat’s, but it wasn’t as bad as his Uncle Carmine’s. There was a family joke that Carmine once caused a stampede at the beach when he was floating on his back a few yards offshore and somebody mistook his nose for a dorsal fin and yelled Shark!
Danny oozed fake sympathy. ‘Hey, I think it’s great that even though you’ve probably got thousands and thousands in the bank—’
Ross stiffened at the mention of money. ‘Yes?’
‘—you haven’t felt the need to get a nose job.’
He was too surprised to answer, wondering what she’d do if he told her he didn’t have thousands in the bank, he had millions. He decided he must still be suffering from jet lag. His experience with Simone had taught him to only ever discuss money with his accountant and his agent.
Mia spoke up. ‘Auntie Danny, that’s not very nice. Uncle Ross can’t help having a big nose.’
Uncle Ross glared at Auntie Danny.
She widened her eyes innocently. ‘You’re right, Mia. If Uncle Ross is comfortable with his nose, that’s all that really matters.’
‘Have you ever considered getting your vocal cords tied?’ he growled.
Mia looked at Matt. ‘What does that mean?’
‘He’s telling Auntie Danny she talks too much,’ Matt replied.
Ross studied Matt in the rear-vision mirror. The resemblance to his father was obviously only external: they really had to be more careful about what they said in front of the kids.
‘What do you call somebody who poisons cornflakes?’ Matt asked.
Danny cleared her throat. ‘Ah Matt, I think—’
Ross interrupted her. ‘I don’t know; what do you call somebody who poisons cornflakes?’
‘A cereal killer!’ Matt and Mia cried together.
‘It was my joke! I get to say the answer!’
‘I can too!’
Ross narrowed his eyes at Danny. She sniggered.
When they reached the school, Matt asked, ‘Are you picking us up from school?’
‘No,’ Danny said.
Ross smiled at Matt. ‘We’ll see.’ He sniffed. ‘What’s that smell?’
Danny looked over her shoulder at Mia, who was hastily sliding from the car, and spotted a wet patch on the seat. Mia’s face crumpled. She began to jiggle from one foot to the other, wailing, ‘I couldn’t hold on! I didn’t mean to!’
Ross spied the wet stain on the pale leather. ‘Oh, for chrissakes—’ He was stopped by Danny’s ferocious glare and Mia’s tears. ‘OK! OK!’ He held up his hands. ‘It’s…OK!’
Matt looked disapproving. ‘She can’t help it.’
Danny grabbed Mia’s hand. ‘Come on, blossom. Let’s get you sorted out.’