Expecting Miracle Twins by Barbara Hannay Read Free Book Online

in herself, in the romantic twaddle everyone called love.
    Her friends had tried to tell her that she shouldn’t see this as a failure. Easy for them to say. They hadn’t been a hair’s breadth from happily-ever-after and then discarded by remote control.
    Mattie thought it was perfectly reasonable that she’d given up on her foolish dream of a husband and family. Utterly logical that she’d retreated from the dating circus and hadn’t had a boyfriend since. It was far safer to care for people and find countless ways to be helpful than to risk another train wreck for her heart.
     
    Next morning, however, Mattie was pleased she’d agreed to visit Roy. She took one look at his twinkling blue eyes and she liked him instantly. He had thinning hair, carefully combed over his sun-spotted scalp, a wiry body and thinlegs, bandy from a lifetime spent astride a horse, but there was something lived-in about him that made her feel very comfortable as they shook hands.
    Impulsively, she gave him a hug. Then she saw the shining joy in Roy’s eyes when he greeted Jake, and a fresh coil of happiness warmed her heart.
    ‘You must be keen to get out of here, mate,’ Jake told Roy lightly. ‘You came bolting out of that door like a racehorse out of the starting gate.’
    ‘I didn’t want to waste a minute.’ Roy’s pale blue eyes were shining with the wicked glee of a schoolboy planning to skip school. ‘The nursing mafia ganged up on me,’ he told them. ‘They reckon I can only stay out for two hours.’
    ‘What happens if you’re not back in time?’ Jake asked. ‘Do you turn into a pumpkin?’
    ‘More likely Prince Charming.’ Roy laughed and gave Mattie a wink.
    He wasn’t walking too steadily, and she quickly offered her arm for support as he made his way to the car.
    ‘Thank you, sweetheart,’ he said, but then he shot a gimlet glance Jake’s way. ‘How did a black-hearted rascal like you find this lovely lass?’
    Mattie held her breath and watched Jake’s face. She wondered how he would answer this. He would be as keen as she was to make sure that Roy didn’t jump to the wrong conclusion about them. He was unlikely to say, Oh, Mattie turned up on my doorstep. Or, We’re sharing a flat. But how else could he explain?
    She needn’t have worried. Clearly, Jake was more practised at coming up with smooth answers to awkward questions than she was. ‘Mattie and I met through a mutual friend,’ he said with a slow smile that did not include her.‘One of my mates from Mongolia comes from the same country town as Mattie.’
    ‘Where’s that?’ Roy asked and Mattie silently congratulated Jake for managing to steer the conversation in a safe direction.
    ‘A little town called Willowbank,’ she told him. ‘West of the Blue Mountains.’
    Roy was delighted. ‘So you’re a country girl.’
    ‘Born and bred.’
    ‘I knew it.’
    Roy might have waxed lyrical about the superior charms of country girls, but they’d reached the car. Mattie suggested that Jake should drive and that Roy should have the front passenger seat because it was easier for him to get in and out, and she insisted that she was perfectly happy in the back.
    As Jake drove out of the nursing home’s carefully manicured grounds he said, ‘Mattie and I planned a ferry trip on the harbour, but I don’t think we’ll have time for that if you only have a couple of hours. Is there somewhere else you’d like to go?’
    They’d emerged onto the busy main road and Roy peered through the windscreen at the expanse of red-roofed houses with television aerials and powerlines. He squinted at the busy lanes of traffic zooming up and down. ‘I don’t s’pose there’s a park nearby? Somewhere with a little patch of bushland?’
    ‘Sure to be,’ Jake asserted confidently. ‘We’ll keep our eyes peeled.’
    ‘If all else fails, we could go to the Botanical Gardens,’ Mattie suggested. ‘But, I must admit, I don’t know much about the parks