The Wrong Sister Read Free

work, well out of her way.
    Anyway, he was Jan’s, first and always, she reminded herself sternly as she removed the much more successful porridge from the microwave oven and added milk to cool it.
      “Open wide, Nicola Jane Hartley.” She brought the teaspoon down with a flourish to her niece’s rosebud mouth, playing jet-planes—copying those that dropped steadily lower over the sparkling water to land at the international airport not far away.  
    Nicola opened her mouth like a baby bird and Fiona zoomed the spoon in. Nicky liked to feed herself, but that was a slow and messy process. The jet-plane game sped things up wonderfully, and she could do without more mishaps today.
    She knew Christian still leaned against the doorframe behind her. He’d been there for several long, tense minutes. Fiona kept her full attention on Nicky rather than risk another confrontation.  
    He also said nothing, then finally turned and left them to it. She heard the soles of his trainers squeaking slightly on the marble-tiled floor as he departed, and her spine sagged at last and all the muscles across her shoulders and down her back relaxed in a grateful slump.    
    He’d made her really uneasy with his unrelenting suggestions she should leave. She couldn’t—partly because of the promise she’d made to her parents. They were hundreds of miles away in Auckland now. Both were busy doctors and had opted to return to their duties. She suspected their absorbing work would be the best distraction for them, anyway.  
    Once she’d known her beautiful sister would be irrevocably lost, Fiona had arranged tentative bereavement leave with her employers. As the entertainments officer on the ‘Mediterranean Queen’, she could be replaced for a number of cruises. Jan’s condition grew critical; Fiona returned to New Zealand for a last precious time. And far sooner than anyone expected, Jan had slipped away.
    Now, Fiona’s luxury liner plowed through the sunny blue ocean without her, disgorging toasted passengers to admire the scenery in Spain, the south of France, Italy, Greece, Turkey, and North Africa. Until her appointed time to rejoin it, she was literally homeless.
    Another five and a half weeks stuck in a hotel or rattling around her parent’s Auckland apartment didn’t appeal in the least. Nicola was desperately in need of mothering—by turns truculent and clingy, confused and sorrowful. She wanted MommaJan, and no explanation sufficed to placate her.  
    Her big blue eyes fastened again and again on Fiona’s, as though Auntie Fee could suddenly produce her missing mother. Fiona felt guilty and helpless. She barely had Nicola’s trust yet, and she ached to bring the little girl whatever comfort was possible. Her visits home had been so sporadic she’d seen her only three times.
    And why is that, Ms Delaporte? Because you knew you had to stay away from Christian?  
    She sighed as she lined up the next spoonful of porridge, acknowledging the truth of it. Christian made her heart spark and flutter. Made her skin burn. Made her yearn. She had only to be close to him and she was lost—just like she’d been lost the first time she’d met him—on his wedding day.

    The rest of the morning passed peacefully enough. Christian had holed up in the cavernous garage, tinkering with one of his vintage cars. Leaving Nicky in the sandpit again, Fiona intruded with a mug of coffee for him and was amazed to find he had part of an engine in pieces. She’d assumed he’d had washing or waxing in mind.
    “So you don’t just do toasters?”
    He laughed at that, more relaxed than he had been earlier. “A methodical man can take anything apart.”  
    “And put it back together again?”
    “Unless it’s broken beyond repair. These old girls are a good deal easier to play with than modern cars.”
    Among other things, Christian and his father owned a highly profitable business creating reproduction vintage motor vehicles, and repairing