Luke Marriott was in the kitchen with Amy and. Beattie. Amy was involved in helping Beattie serve, and Luke seemed to be supervising. In his hand he held a glass of wine, and as Nikki walked in he raised it in salutation.
‘The worker emerges,’ he said drily, and Nikki flushed.
‘I would have described you all as the workers.’ She frowned at the glass. ‘Did you buy wine, Beattie?’
‘I bought wine,’ Luke told her. He filled another glass. ‘Have some.’
‘No, thanks. I never do when I’m working.’ She was being a wet blanket but the man unnerved her.
‘One glass isn’t going to interfere-’
‘I don’t want it!’ Nikki bit her lip, ashamed of her outburst. ‘I’m sorry,’ she managed. She turned to the housekeeper who was regarding her in astonishment. ‘Can I help, Beattie?’
‘I’ve all the help I need in young Amy here,’ Beattie told her. ‘You two go in. Shoo.’
‘I’ll wait and help carry in the plates.’ The last thing Nikki wanted was to be alone in the dining-room with Luke Marriott. Alone anywhere…
Nikki ate in silence while Beattie, Amy and Luke chatted amiably over the events of the day. Nikki couldn’t join in. Her overwhelming emotion was anger with herself.
Why on earth had she behaved like a tiresome child? Nikki hadn’t the faintest idea why this man was making her react like this, and she hadn’t a clue what to do about it. Her normal, cloistered existence was shattered. She was having to share her home with a man who made her feel…who made her feel like a gauche schoolgirl.
Luke lapsed into silence as Beattie left to clear the table, Amy virtuously helping, but he didn’t seem in the least uncomfortable. On the contrary, his deep blue eyes held the trace of a twinkle, as if he was aware of and enjoying the discomfiture his presence engendered in the girl at the other end of the table.
Finally the interminable meal came to an end and Nikki rose. She hadn’t tasted a thing and Beattie had gone to extraordinary trouble. It was a shame.
‘I’m going to put Amy to bed,’ she said stiffly.
‘You mean you do occasionally spend some time mothering?’
Nikki bit her lip. ‘I spend heaps of time with Amy,’ she said hotly. ‘And Amy understands how important my job is.’
‘Does she?’
‘Look, I don’t have to answer to you…’
‘No,’ he said slowly. ‘Only to Amy.’
Nikki pushed back her chair, scraping it harshly on the polished boards. ‘Amy has to understand that life is serious,’ she told him. ‘And work’s important. Now, if you’ll excuse me…’
‘Don’t you want to know about Karen?’ Luke enquired, raising his brows. ‘I thought a bit of professional concern might be in order.’
Nikki flushed bright red and sank down. She was going crazy. Not to have enquired…
‘Tell me about her,’ she said stiffly. ‘Of course I’m worried.’
‘Are you?’
‘Of course I am.’ Nikki bit her lip as again her anger threatened to burst out.
‘So why haven’t you interfered before now? You do know the child is being abused?’
‘Abused…?’
‘There are bruises all over her. And the X-ray shows the arm has been broken before.’
‘Not that I’m aware of.’
‘Well, it was.’ Luke grimaced. ‘The fracture is further up the arm from the original break. The bone’s calcified around the old fracture. It happened around a year ago, I’d say.’
Nikki closed her eyes. ‘I didn’t…Neither her teacher nor I picked that up,’ she whispered. ‘It must have happened during the long vacation. I’ve seen the bruising, though.’
‘And turned the other cheek?’
‘I contacted community services. They sent a social worker up from Cairns.’
‘That did a lot of good, I’ll bet.’
Nikki rose. ‘So what would you have them do?’ she snapped. ‘Take the children away? Sandra had Karen when she was fourteen. Fourteen! She’s only twenty-two now and she has four children. She married a no-hoper, had one child after another and now he’s left her and she has nothing. The community here labelled her eight years ago when she had Karen out of wedlock, and she’s been isolated ever since. She struggles on to hold them together-’
‘Well, she’s not struggling enough,’ Luke said grimly. ‘I’d say she has a temper and Karen’s taking the brunt of it.’
‘So we take all the children?’ Nikki shook her head. ‘Where does that leave them-or Sandra? I asked Karen about the bruises. She told me she kept falling over-Sandra’s obviously warned her about telling the truth-but if you gave her the choice of going to a strange foster home or staying with her brothers and sister, then I know the choice Karen would make.’
‘So you’re proposing we patch her up and send her back to face her mother’s temper again.’
‘No, of course not.’ Nikki subsided again into her chair. Some things were just so hard. ‘Not if it’s reached the stage of bones being broken. But I don’t know…I’ll have to contact Cairns again.’
‘The social worker?’
‘Well, what else do you suggest?’ Nikki demanded.
He smiled then, the blue eyes challenging. Rising, he came around to her end of the table and placed a hand on the back of her chair.
‘I suggest you abandon your studies for a couple of hours,’ he said firmly. ‘Let’s go and see Sandra now.’
‘What, now?’
‘As soon as Amy’s in bed.’ He looked at his watch. ‘She won’t be expecting us. It will give us a chance to assess what things are like at home, and we just might be able to do something constructive.’
‘Like bring all the children back here?’ Nikki said bitterly, and Luke’s smile deepened. He looked around appraisingly, through the French windows to the swimming-pool beyond.
‘Well, there’s certainly enough room.’
‘In case you hadn’t noticed,’ Nikki said icily, ‘this is my home. And I like my privacy!’
‘And I wonder why?’ Luke said thoughtfully. ‘This place is enormous. It needs half a dozen kids to bring it to life.’
‘So you propose going and taking Sandra’s? Just to keep Amy company, I suppose.’
‘Dr Russell?’
Nikki looked up at him suspiciously. ‘Yes?’
‘Don’t be so bloody stupid.’
They stopped at the hospital first. The children’s ward was in darkness. The nurse rose to greet them, her finger raised to her lips in a gesture of silence.
‘Karen’s only just gone to sleep,’ she whispered. ‘Despite the medication.’
Luke frowned. ‘Why? She should have drowsed off hours ago.’
‘She was too frightened to go to sleep. She said…’ The nurse hesitated. ‘She kept saying we’d take her away while she was asleep.’ She sighed. ‘And her mother didn’t come.’
‘Was Karen asking for her?’
‘No. But her eyes never left the door, waiting. Poor wee mite…’
Luke crossed silently to the bed and Nikki followed. The child was sleeping soundly in a drug-induced sleep. Her injured arm was flung out at a rigid angle. In the dim ward light her face was a wan pool of dejection. There were shadows under the huge eyes-shadows that spoke of abject misery. Nikki felt her heart wrench within her. Maybe this little one could come back to Whispering Palms for a while…
‘Professional detachment,’ Luke said softly from the other side of the bed, and Nikki raised her eyes as she realised he was watching her. ‘It’s a bit hard, isn’t it?’
‘It’s impossible,’ Nikki said wearily, and turned to go.
Nikki directed Luke mechanically, out past the town boundaries, along the coast road and then inland to an old farmhouse set well back from the road. This had once been the homestead for the sugar plantation it was on, but the owners had long ago wearied of the fight with white ants and age, and had rebuilt a mile further down the road. They were renting this house out for a pittance, waiting for nature to take its course.