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‘No.’ Shelley shook her hair back from her face and her expression hardened. ‘Look, you don’t have to sleep with me if you don’t want to. Though I’m sure that’s only a matter of time.’ Her gaze flicked up and down the length of Jason’s body. ‘I’ve no objections.’

  Jason wished he was wearing more than his pyjama bottoms. He also vowed never to look at a woman again in a way that could be construed as sizing up their potential performance in bed. It didn’t feel like he was being appreciated. It was downright degrading, but he managed to keep the ‘in your dreams’ comment silent.

  ‘You’ll have to live with me, though,’ Shelley said calmly. ‘And make it look like more than a marriage in name only. And it’ll have to last long enough for me to get my permanent resident’s status. That will take a year or so after you agree to sponsor me and make an application to the immigration department.’

  ‘You’ve got it all worked out, haven’t you?’

  ‘I know what I want.’ Shelley stood up and walked towards the door. ‘And I intend to get it. I’m sure that fat girlfriend of yours will understand. She can live with us too, if she wants. We could use a nanny.’

  She turned as she reached the door. ‘The alternative is that I take Megan back to England and you never see either of us ever again. I might have her adopted, and it will probably be at least twenty years before you manage to track her down. Your choice, Jason. Have a think about it. I’m going back to bed.’

  ‘I don’t know what to do.’

  ‘How about drinking that coffee before it’s stone cold?’

  ‘I mean, I’d love to just kick her out, but she says that if she goes then Megan goes with her.’ Jason picked up his coffee mug but then put it down without drinking from it. ‘She doesn’t give a damn about Megan. OK, she might have got up at five a.m. yesterday but helping to feed a baby wasn’t what she had in mind.’

  ‘Oh?’ Laura felt the cold, hard knot in her stomach grow a little heavier. ‘Did she try and seduce you, Jase?’

  Jason shook his head but it was a movement of disgust rather than denial. ‘She’s making a big mistake if she thinks she can use sex to get what she wants.’

  Laura stared into the remaining liquid at the bottom of her own coffee mug. Shelley was probably very successful in using sex to get exactly what she wanted. Just how far had the attempted seduction gone? Laura felt sick. It wasn’t as if she had any real claim on Jason. She was an aberration in his normal lifestyle as far as women were concerned, and she had won her place purely because of Megan’s presence. How long would it take for Jason to revert to type with that kind of temptation laid out on a plate?

  ‘What are you going to do, Jase?’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Jason said miserably. ‘It’s really doing my head in.’ He glanced at the baby sleeping peacefully in the car seat beside his chair, then his gaze took in the rest of the kitchen and the small adjoining living area. ‘This is a really nice little house, Laura. Could Megan and I stay here with you for a few days, maybe?’

  ‘What would that solve?’

  ‘It would get me away from Shelley. Give me some time to think of what to do. She’s so bloody determined to get what she wants and I can’t talk any sense into her.’

  What Shelley wanted was Jason. And Jason clearly wasn’t prepared to risk losing his child if he could find a way to keep her.

  ‘Have you spoken to a solicitor? Asked about trying to get custody?’

  ‘No.’ Jason pushed his fingers through his hair in a frustrated gesture that created spikes in the blond-streaked waves. ‘That would antagonise her right now. I’ve made it bad enough by saying I’m not prepared to marry her.’

  ‘She wants you to marry her? Just like that?’

  Jason nodded unhappily. ‘She’s been quite upfront about it. She wants to live in New Zealand and marriage is the easiest ticket to permanent residency. She says if I don’t marry her she’ll go back to England and I’ll never see Megan again. She’s threatened to have her adopted so I can’t even trace where she is. I don’t know what the adoption laws in England are like but I’m not going to find out by letting that happen.’

  Laura could feel the tension in her jaw as she unconsciously gritted her teeth. Shelley was some kind of monster. How could anyone play with a child’s life like that? And this wasn’t just any baby. This was Megan they were talking about.

  Jason caught Laura’s gaze. ‘She also says it doesn’t have to be a real marriage. As long as we live together and make it look real. She’s even got that planned out. She reckons that big old house on the corner of the street would be cheap and I could do it up on my days off. Then we could sell it for a great profit, get divorced and everyone would be happy.’

  Laura held his gaze long enough to let him know just how happy such a plan would make her. Jason’s smile was grim.

  ‘She even said she doesn’t mind if you live with us.’

  Laura snorted. ‘What as, the nanny?’

  His embarrassment was a dead give-away. The fact that Jason was even considering Shelley’s proposition enough to repeat it let Laura know how right she had been in thinking she didn’t have a hope of winning this competition. She only had a small window of hope that she might be a lot more than a nanny as far as Jason was concerned. With her heart beating a tattoo, Laura tried to find a reason to hang onto that hope.

  ‘Keeping Megan is what matters most, isn’t it?’ Please, Laura thought desperately. Tell me that I’m just as important. That it wouldn’t be the complete end of the world if you didn’t get to keep your daughter.

  ‘I don’t think I could live with myself if I let Shelley take her. What if she just abandoned her again? Left her on the doorstep of some orphanage or something?’

  Or, worse, kept her in a home where she was unloved and unwanted. Laura could feel the sharp need to take responsibility herself, and Megan wasn’t even her own child. She had to admire Jason for the depth of his caring, and she knew that what he said was right…but it wasn’t exactly reassuring her of any priority she herself might have in his life.

  Jason seemed to take her silence as support. ‘You understand how I feel about this, don’t you, Laura? I mean, you love her too, don’t you?’

  ‘You know I do, Jase.’

  ‘And we love each other.’ The smile was a pale shadow of the usual winning variety but the clasp of Jason’s hand was warm and strong. ‘I do love you, Laura.’

  ‘I love you, too,’ she whispered.

  ‘And I need you.’ The squeeze on her hand was gently persuasive. ‘So does Megan. You, me and Megan. We could be a real family…for ever.’ Jason was still smiling. ‘So how ’bout it, babe? Would you marry me?’

  It wasn’t really a proposal, was it? Jason was just testing a possible scenario, wasn’t he? His next words vaporised any thrill that Laura hadn’t been able to suppress.

  ‘I mean, if we were married, we’d have a great case for going for permanent custody of Megan.’ Jason looked around again. ‘And this is such a great house. You own it, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’ Laura swallowed hard. She had a lot going for her, didn’t she? ‘I’m sharing it with Charlie at the moment, though.’

  ‘Your best friend, right? The serious crash investigator?’

  Laura pulled her hand away from Jason’s. It hadn’t been difficult to distract Jason from any thoughts of proposing marriage, had it? Laura couldn’t bear trying to analyse why that might be the case. Changing the subject was probably a wise move.

  ‘Did you hear about the mass casualty incident up north yesterday?’ Her voice sounded oddly high pitched so Laura cleared her throat and tried again. ‘The train v. bus?’

  ‘It was all over the news. Wish I’d been there. Once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, working on a job that big.’

  ‘Huge,’ Laura agreed. ‘Charlie and her partner got sent up to help.’

  ‘So she’s away?’ Jason looked hopeful. ‘You do have room for a visitor or two, then?’