After he’d recovered, Ross didn’t offer to move out of Nella’s room and Danny didn’t ask. She secretly preferred seeing the room looking messy and lived-in again—Ross’s presence helped erase some of the bad memories it held for her and the children.
Sleeping in Nella’s room surrounded by her possessions fed Ross’s current obsession about twins.
Wanda couldn’t wait for Ross to send her more chapters of the draft manuscript. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever seen you write so well from the female perspective, Ross. You’ve gotten right under the skin of the two sisters. There are some interesting photos circulating of you and a girl with blue hair at the Findlays party,’ she added. If Wanda had seen the photos, the odds were his mother and sisters soon would. ‘What were you thinking? I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.’
Wanda had seen before a side of Ross he kept tucked away from public view. When her fourth husband had died unexpectedly a few years ago, Ross had supported Wanda through the difficult days that followed. Louis had been the love of her life, the only one of her husbands with whom she’d been truly happy.
‘I wasn’t thinking at all. When I’m with Danny I don’t think, I just react.’
‘Ah.’ Wanda tactfully changed the subject. ‘Don’t forget you’ll need to be back here at the end of November for the John Doe publicity and premiere.’
Days of back-to-back interviews in a multitude of cities wasn’t Ross’s idea of fun, but there was no avoiding it. Wanda had also mentioned spots on Oprah and David Letterman. He’d far rather spend the time arguing with Danny and fixing the roof of her house. Ross worried that if he was gone for too long he’d lose any ground he’d gained. Finally, though, he called his parents to let them know he was coming home.
‘I’ve seen those photos in the magazines,’ Vito said. ‘You seemed to be getting on good in one—not so good in the other. Things better now you’ve moved into the house?’
‘I’m ripping out the bathroom.’
‘Good! Good! I told your mother you’d make things right. She’s a pretty girl, Ross.’
‘Yes,’ he agreed cautiously.
‘I could tell from those photos you sent to your mother and me.’
‘The photos I sent you were of Daniella, the children’s mother.’
‘I know that, but they’re matching twins, aren’t they? Like Annie and Aoife?’ Vito never referred to twins as identical but matching.
‘Yes, but—’
‘So, you seen one you seen the other. Yes, she’s a pretty girl,’ Vito repeated. ‘Blonde, like your mother.’
No, blue at the moment.
‘Your mother wants to talk to you.’
There was a clatter as the phone was dropped, and Ross could hear his parents arguing.
‘She’s a lovely-looking wee lass, isn’t she, Ross?’ Breda said. ‘I was only saying to your father when we looked at the photos: “Vito, she’s a lovely looking wee lass” I said.’
Ross pressed his thumb and index finger against his eyelids. ‘Who?’
‘Why little Mia, of course,’ Breda replied innocently. ‘Who else would I mean?’
There was nothing innocent about his mother. In another life she would have been masterminding bank robberies.
‘It was a good idea to move in with Danny.’
‘I’ve moved in with Danny and the children.’
‘Is she a midwife, too, Ross?’
‘Who? Mia?’
‘Show a few manners when you’re talking to your mother. You won’t have me forever, you know.’
If St Peter had any sense he’d lock the Pearly Gates the moment he heard Breda Fabello was shuffling off the mortal coil.
‘Are you a midwife?’ he asked Danny.
‘No. Why?’ she asked. ‘Are you pregnant?’
Danny seemed to be preoccupied with the new job. A gruffvoiced guy called John and a smooth, oily-sounding jerk who had to be Lance Ashburn sometimes called her at home.
‘You should be careful around Ashburn,’ Ross said.
She raised her brows. ‘Really? Why’s that?’
‘He’s got a reputation.’
‘For what?’
‘Ask Christine,’ Ross replied tersely.
‘Maybe I will. Or maybe I’ll ask Lance.’
Ross felt like kicking himself for being such an idiot. When had Danny ever listened to anything he said? It was a sure-fire way to make her do the opposite. He was still fuming later that afternoon as he and Joe clambered about the roof assessing the rust. Joe was working for Ross almost fulltime now, and they got along well. Joe saw the funny side of everything and had a skin like a rhino, so Ross’s moody growls bounced right off him. Ross enjoyed Joe’s sense of humour and the fact he didn’t give a rat’s ass who Ross was. Joe thought the paparazzi outside the house were a huge joke, and kept asking them if they wanted to take his photo.
‘Who’re you?’ one of the photographers asked.
‘The plumber.’ Joe grinned cheekily, displaying the wide gap between his upper incisors.
‘Can you get me an interview with RF O’Rourke?’
‘No. But if you’ve ever got a blocked toilet, I’m your man.’
‘Hey, Ross,’ Joe pointed across the rolling green paddocks, ‘aren’t those your sheep?’
Ross shaded his eyes against the glare from the sun. It was a baking hot day and sweat was dripping from his hair and down his nose. He remained unimpressed with Auckland weather. Today was like the middle of summer, but tomorrow it could be pouring with rain. Ross watched as two woolly shapes, one black, one grey, trotted up a hill in the direction of Jarvis Wainwright’s place. A quick check of the garden below revealed that Persil and Charcoal were missing and part of the fence was down.
Ross swore and threw his hammer over the fence and into the paddock.
‘Hey, bro?’
‘What?’ Ross snapped.
Joe nodded at a photographer aiming a telephoto lens at them. ‘I think he just got a photo of you chucking that hammer.’
Ross’s description of what he was going to do to the photographer when he got hold of him made Joe laugh so hard that he had to climb down from the roof.
The phone was already ringing when Ross stormed into the kitchen to call Jarvis about the sheep.
‘Is Danny there?’ Jarvis asked.
‘No, she’s at work.’
‘I’ve got your sheep.’
‘I know, I—’
‘I promised Danny I’d shear them for her, so I might as well do it while they’re here. You be sure to tell her.’
‘I will, Jarvis, thanks a lo—’
‘Don’t need any thanks from you,’ Jarvis said brusquely. ‘I’m doing it for her. You can pick ’em up in half an hour.’
‘Pick them up? How?’
‘That’s your big, fancy four-wheel drive parked outside Danny’s house, isn’t it? ’Bout time you got some mud on it.’
One of the photographers couldn’t believe his luck when he got an even better shot than his colleague, who’d prudently left when RF O’Rourke climbed off the roof with murder in his eyes. Pictures of the reclusive writer clambering about a roof, stripped to the waist, would sell like hotcakes to the women’s magazines, but a photograph of RF O’Rourke driving his immaculate dark-green SUV with two sheep sitting on the back seat while their chauffeur cursed a blue streak was priceless. The photographer beat a hasty retreat when O’Rourke launched himself from the driver’s seat, snarling.
Ross had had enough of Danny Lawton, her sheep and her demented neighbours. He called Jeff and asked him to arrange a date with Christine’s cousin.
‘Selena’s smart, talented and attractive. She’s great company,’ Jeff told him.
‘Just promise me she’s not a stalker, has all her own teeth and hair, and isn’t a George Clooney fan,’ Ross said.
‘Selena’s sane and I think her teeth are her own. But I can’t answer for George Clooney. Even Chris has got a thing about him. I’ll get her to call you with Selena’s number.’
After the first week working with Lance Ashburn, Danny knew she’d made a mistake spurning his invitation because it only seemed to encourage him. Chris and Jeff were right: he was a good engineer, which made up for his other shortcomings. If he weren’t so good, she’d probably have clobbered Lance with his cylinder of drawings. Danny pointed him in the direction of some of the other nurses in the Emergency Department, but Lance was like a boomerang—he just kept coming back. She even tried to throw him Vanessa’s way, but Vanessa insisted she made it a rule never to date anybody who was prettier than she was.
‘Did I do something to offend you, Daneka?’ Lance kept asking. He never called her Danny.
‘No. But if you keep on hounding me I’m going to do something I’ll regret, like tripping you into the concrete foundations. What about Gabby, the nurse I introduced you to—she’s really nice. Why don’t you ask her out?’
‘Maybe some other time.’ Lance took it for granted that Gabby would be available when he wanted her.
Danny shook her head in disgust. ‘You are a piece of work.’
‘I am?’ he said cautiously.
‘Most definitely, Lance.’
Lance was baffled and also fascinated. He’d seen the photos and read the story about Danny and RF O’Rourke in one of the women’s magazines, and didn’t believe for one second that the guy was just her brother-in-law. Which made Daneka Lawton a challenge, and Lance could never resist one of those…
On Saturday night, the children were watching television in the living room and Ross was in his room getting ready to go out when the phone rang.
Danny sat at the kitchen table, reading the newspaper. She’d helped herself to some of Ross’s red wine and was pretending she didn’t want to know where he was going. She stared at the phone on the kitchen counter as if it were an instrument of the Devil, sipped her wine and waited for Ross to answer it. She avoided speaking to his family, but loved eavesdropping on Ross talking to his father in Italian. It was at times like those that she most wished he wasn’t her almost-brother-in-law.
Mia and Matt had long chats with their Fabello relatives.
‘Auntie Aoife/Annie/Deirdre/Carmel called,’ Mia would tell Danny. ‘She’s so funny! She calls herself my ant-eee and she laughs when I call her my arntie!’
‘Does she?’ Danny tried not to feel jealous. ‘She sounds nice.’
‘Did you know me and Mia have got twelve cousins and four of them are boys?’ Matt asked.
‘Mia and I.’
‘What?’
‘Never mind. Have you?
She was losing them to the Fabellos.
Ross strode into the kitchen, tugging a shirt cuff into place beneath a silky, tobacco-coloured jacket. Danny sniffed as he passed by. He smelt great. He looked better. She knew it—he was going on a date.
‘Couldn’t you move your butt a few feet to answer it?’ he asked.
‘Nope.’
He pressed the phone to his ear. ‘Hello?’
Pause.
‘She has?
Pause.
‘Is she OK?’
He grinned and Danny’s heart rate picked up.
‘And the baby? I bet Tom’s over the moon to get a boy.’
Danny picked up her wineglass. Just what the world needed, another male Fabello. She guessed his sister Carmel must have had her baby.
Ross frowned.
Danny paused, her wineglass halfway to her lips.
His frown deepened. ‘No!’
Danny rose from her seat and moved closer.
‘Is there anything they can do? Reconstruction? Or something?’ he asked.
She laid a hand on his arm.
Ross was so surprised, he lost the thread of the conversation. ‘What, Annie? I missed that.’ He finished talking to Annie and replaced the phone.
Danny looked up at him, her golden eyes glowing with concern. ‘What is it? Is something wrong with the baby?’
The last time she’d looked at Ross like this was the night of the Findlays’ party. Ross watched her mouth move and remembered how she’d tasted.
Danny shook his arm gently. ‘Ross? Is everything alright with the baby?’
‘Mmm? Yes. I mean—no—I mean…Annie says he’s got Uncle Carmine’s nose, and Annie is the last person on earth who would ever criticize—she even called Aoife’s newborn daughter Nicole pretty when everybody else thought she looked like she’d been in a train wreck.’
‘Nose?’ Danny’s voice rose in disbelief. ‘He’s got your Uncle whatever’s nose? I thought the poor little kid had something serious!’
‘Uncle Carmine’s nose is serious.’
Danny dug her fingers into his arm.
Ross prised them off. ‘It’s not my fault you got the wrong idea.’
‘That was unforgivable! Even for you! You mentioned reconstruction for God’s sake!’ Danny left the kitchen.
‘If your kid was born with a honker like that you’d be talking reconstruction!’ Ross yelled after her. There was a good chance Kevin Kornecki would be the only baby to ever receive a nose job.
In the living room Mia looked at Matt and said, ‘They’re at it again.’
‘Yeah,’ Matt shrugged. ‘It’s my turn for the remote.’
Before he left, Ross knocked on Danny’s bedroom door, something he’d never done before. ‘Danny?’
‘Yes?’ She sounded surprised.
‘Can I come in for a moment?’
‘I suppose so.’
He opened the door.
Danny was sitting cross-legged on her bed with a photo album propped on her lap. ‘Congratulations about the baby,’ she said. ‘I’m sorry I snapped at you.’
‘That’s OK. I’m sorry I gave you the wrong impression.’
‘Are they both OK?’
‘Yes. Although Carmel didn’t make it to the hospital: her husband Tom delivered the baby on the dining room floor.’
Danny gasped. ‘Is he OK?’
‘Oh yeah, he’s fine. Tom’s getting to be an old hand—their last baby arrived in the car.’
They smiled at each other, and Ross wished he wasn’t going out and they could toast his new nephew’s birth with a glass of wine.
‘Annie said he—the baby—is perfectly normal. Apart from the nose.’
‘This nose,’ Danny queried, ‘it’s bigger than yours?’
‘I have not got Uncle Carmine’s nose.’
‘Keep your hair on, I just needed something for comparison.’
Ross saw a book on the floor beside the bed. It was his second novel, Faithless.
Danny swung her feet over the side and kicked it out of sight with her heel. ‘Going somewhere nice?’
‘Just dinner.’
The more elusive he was, the more determined Danny was to get an answer. ‘Planning an all-nighter?’
‘Don’t worry, I’ve got my key.’
‘Great,’ she said through her teeth. ‘Goodnight.’
Danny hugged the photo album to her chest and listened to him drive away. ‘Remember to use a condom you oversexed, Italian/ Irish, big-nosed…pain in the bum.’
Christine’s cousin Selena was lovely.
She reminded Ross of Christine, except that Selena’s hips were rounder, her breasts more generous. Selena had warm, chocolatebrown eyes and dark brown hair swept up into an elegant twist. She wore black wide-legged pants with the right leg slit to the middle of her thigh. Her shimmering gold tank top dipped at the front to reveal a hint of her deep cleavage. Selena was warm and witty, interesting and interested.
‘You like Crazy Frog?’ she asked when she spotted the CD in Ross’s car.
‘It belongs to my nephew,’ he said.
‘ABBA’s Greatest Hits?’
‘My niece.’
Ross took her to a restaurant that Christine had recommended, and while they were waiting for their entrées to be served he asked Selena what she did.
‘I’m a journalist,’ she smiled. ‘We already have a lot in common—I write and earn peanuts, and you write and earn millions.’ Seeing Ross’s frown, she leaned over and lightly touched his hand. ‘It’s OK, Ross, I don’t have a tape recorder in my handbag or a photographer hidden under the table.’
Ross forced a smile. Jeff wouldn’t have arranged the date with Selena if she wasn’t totally discreet and reliable. She was easy to talk to, easy on the eye and, judging by the look in her eye as the night progressed, she was every bit as pleased with her end of the deal.
They lingered over coffee until Selena stroked her foot up Ross’s calf beneath the table, indicating she was done lingering. He thought of Danny pressing her foot against his thigh and moved his leg away. Ross called for the bill and wondered why he didn’t feel the hunger and passion that was lighting up Selena’s brown eyes. Instead, he kept seeing a pair of snapping, narrowed golden eyes in a face that was all sharp angles and narrow, pointed chin.
When they got in the car, Selena turned towards Ross. He cupped her cheek and kissed her. She was smooth and sensuous, not in too much of a hurry, not too dry and not too wet. Ross didn’t feel so much as a flicker of excitement, but deepened the kiss.
Selena moaned and drew back. ‘Can we go somewhere? I’m really past the age of making out in the car.’
He could have taken her to his apartment. But he didn’t; it seemed too personal. Instead, Ross took her to a good hotel and booked a suite, not because he wanted to impress her, but because she was a nice woman and Christine’s cousin. If she hadn’t been Christine’s cousin, he would have thanked her for the evening and taken her home, but, seeing the arousal in Selena’s eyes, Ross felt he owed it to her and to himself to have sex. His inexplicable lack of desire for such an intelligent, attractive woman scared the hell out of him. Selena had made it clear that she wanted him, and Ross was certain that once they got naked he would want her just as much.
They did get naked in the black marbled bathtub, with a bottle of red wine for company. Ross looked at Selena’s lovely breasts, lapped by the scented bubbles. He looked at the long, elegant curve of her neck and the soft dark hair piled on her head. He slid his hand along the smooth, wet curve of her calf where she had her foot propped on his right shoulder—and nothing happened.
Ross had never before encountered this particular problem, and again it scared the shit out of him. When Selena reached over and stroked her hands through the wet hair on his chest, he had to close his eyes and think of Danny giving him a bed bath before his body began to respond.
That pretty much set the scene for the rest of the night. The only way Ross could perform was by pretending it was Danny, not Selena, beneath him, and because he felt like such a cheat he went out of his way to take his time and make sure she enjoyed herself.
Selena finally collapsed on the bed in front of him and looked over her shoulder at him, gasping, ‘My God…did you…take classes in this?’
Ross lay beside her, thinking it was a shame Selena was such a nice lady and he didn’t like her more. He was awake most of the night wishing he could go home to Danny and the kids. By seven he was up and dressed. And by nine-thirty he’d forced a couple of croissants and a cup of excellent coffee down his throat over a shared breakfast with Selena in the hotel room and was trying to figure out how to tell her he wouldn’t be asking her out again.
Selena already knew, but for the life of her couldn’t work out why.
Ross knew why. He just didn’t want to admit it.
Danny kept busy.
Keeping busy meant she wouldn’t think about Ross staying out all night and wonder what he had been up to. Keeping busy meant she wouldn’t have to think about why it upset her so much imagining him making love to some woman in the king-sized bed in his apartment. Whoever she was, Danny loathed her.
Which didn’t make sense: Ross was like a weed in her life, Danny told herself firmly as she attacked the weeds in Nella’s neglected herb garden. She needed to get rid of him, too. But something had happened when Ross was sick, something so subtle it had slipped under Danny’s radar, unnoticed until now. He’d stopped being Ross her enemy and become Ross the man. They still fought, but it had become more like a game because they both enjoyed fighting with one another. It was exciting. It was addictive. In fact, their arguments were almost like foreplay. Danny sank back on her heels in the warm, brown earth.
Bloody hell. Just what was she going to do? Snatching up her little green spade, she attacked whatever was growing in front of her, so absorbed in taking her feelings out on the plants that she didn’t see Ross until he was beside her.
‘That’s basil.’
Danny jumped and dropped the spade.
She looked up. Ross was watching her, with Mia swinging on his hand. His clothes were different to the ones he’d gone out in the night before; this morning he was dressed in faded blue jeans and a grey T-shirt with San Diego Chargers emblazoned on the front. His dark eyes were sombre. For a man who’d probably just been laid, he didn’t look so happy.
For once Danny didn’t launch a verbal attack. She looked stupidly at the plant she’d been hacking at. ‘Oh.’
Ross stepped over the wooden edge of the raised herb bed and squatted beside her. He took the spade from Danny. ‘Move over.’
She scooted sideways and watched as he began to dig around the plants.
He pointed and dug. ‘Basil.’
Danny nodded.
‘Thyme.’
Nod.
‘Marjoram.’
Danny shook her head.
‘No, it’s maarjoram, not mahjawram.’
The corners of his mouth curled. ‘I stand corrected. Now, listen up: I’m only saying this once.’ When he smiled, Danny stopped paying attention to what he was saying about the herbs.
Together they worked their way through the herb bed with some help from Mia and later Matt. Danny sat back and looked at the kids and Ross digging, laughing and squabbling, and blinked back tears. Ross looked up in time to catch her doing it. She braced herself for a sarcastic comment, but he only turned away to rescue a coriander plant from Mia.
This was way more serious than she had realized. She was becoming infatuated with Ross Fabello. Danny was so unnerved, so utterly appalled, she was a lot quieter than usual for the rest of the week while she tried to figure out what to do. How did you handle a crush on your not-quite-brother-in-law who also happens to be a wealthy, big-shot bestselling author with designs on your niece and nephew?
Ross was so perplexed by her uncharacteristic silence that he asked if she was sickening for something.
She blushed. ‘No.’
‘Did you just blush?’
‘No. It was a hot flush.’
‘You’re too young for hot flushes.’
‘I’ve always been mature for my age.’
One afternoon after work, Danny took Mia and Matt for a walk on the beach, leaving Ross behind to make homemade pasta. Not the dried stuff or the stuff in the cellophane packages on the refrigerator shelves at the supermarket that ordinary mortals bought and ate—no, he had to make homemade pasta, or, as Ross put it, Anolini al ragu di prosciutto, carefully omitting to mention the calf brains customarily used for the stuffing, for which he had swapped chicken livers.
‘Is that frog?’ Matt asked suspiciously when he heard what was for dinner.
‘Nope, I checked—no frog.’ Danny settled down on the sand to idly thumb through the magazine she’d bought at the petrol station. ‘If you two want to go and take a look at the rock pools, you can. Uncle Ross wants us back in an hour.’
Matt and Mia departed for the other end of the beach.
Danny chewed on her lower lip and tried to figure out a way to deal with her current dilemma. Perhaps she needed some other male company? It was worth a try. She flipped through the last few pages of the magazine and was about to close it when she saw a photograph of Ross with a sultry-looking brunette tucked beneath his arm. The woman wore a shimmery gold top that showcased a spectacular set of breasts, and Ross had on the tobacco-brown jacket he’d worn the night he didn’t come home. A quick scan of the caption revealed that RF O’Rourke had been seen taking the lovely Selena Harrison, respected current affairs journalist, to dinner at an Auckland restaurant.
Danny closed the magazine.
No prizes for guessing who Ross had spent the night with. Selena what’s-her-face had a round, voluptuous figure to go with that sultry face. She was a serious journalist, not one of Ross’s airhead fans. She was the real deal.
As soon as Danny got home she phoned Lance Ashburn and told him he could take her out on Friday night.
‘I—I can?’ Mr Smooth was so astonished he could hardly get the words out, until his normal self-assurance reasserted itself. ‘I knew you’d come around once you got to know the real me, Daneka.’
‘Yeah, something like that.’ Danny checked that Ross wasn’t in earshot. ‘You can take me out to dinner. Don’t bother packing any condoms, because you won’t be needing them.’
‘Danny—’ Lance was so shocked that for once he forgot to call her Daneka.
‘Just so we know where we both stand,’ she continued. ‘I’ll go out for a meal, but I don’t want to have sex. The plus for you is that you’ll get to spend enough time with me away from the hospital to realize that you and I are never going to be Yin and Yang, and I get a nice dinner somewhere very expensive.’ She paused to let that sink in. ‘Can you pick me up at seven-thirty?’
‘I…I guess so—I mean—yes.’
‘Great, that’s settled.’ Danny was about to hang up when she remembered something. ‘Oh, and Lance?’
‘Yes?’ he asked warily.
‘If you mention this to one person at the hospital, I will drug you and while you’re semiconscious zap your balls with the defibrillator paddles in the re-suss room. Do you understand?’
There was a prolonged silence. Danny waited for him to tell her that he’d changed his mind.
‘I understand, Daneka.’
Damn. The guy was keen. Or mentally unstable.
Danny’s code of silence deal extended only to Lance, not Vanessa.
‘You’re going out with Lance Ashburn?’
‘Don’t look so amazed. You’re the one who’s been nagging me about not getting out enough.’
‘You’re doing it to make Ross jealous, aren’t you?’ Vanessa cried out.
‘I am not!’
‘You are.’ Vanessa shook her head. ‘Well, I won’t be around to see the damage, because I’ll be in Rarotonga sunning myself. Lust hasn’t made you forget you promised to water the plants and pick up my mail while I’m away, has it?’
‘No,’ Danny scowled, ‘it has not.’
Vanessa smirked.
‘I am not in lust.’
At least not with Lance Ashburn.