Laura's Big Break (22 page)

“Answer the man Laura, the sooner you do, the sooner you’ll have your feet on the ground.”

She pursed her lips. This was insane.

“Come on honey.” Charlie grinned, he was loving every minute. “You know you want to. I’ll make it up to you later. I promise.”

“How?” Her eyes narrowed.

He shrugged.

“I’ll do anything you want.”

“Anything?”

“Cross my heart. Now answer the man before he falls into a coma.”

She stared at Charlie. Looked at the group of strangers. She was a million miles away from her life and had turned into someone she didn’t even recognise.

“I do, I do, I do, I do,” started a chant in the crowd.

As it got louder Laura found herself struggling not to laugh.

“Fine,” she shouted at last. “I’ll marry the Neanderthal.”

“That’s good enough for me,” said the vicar. “Consider yourself hitched.”

The crowd cheered as they threw brightly coloured petals at her.

“Can I please get down now?” she pleaded to anyone who would listen.

Apart from anything else she had been hanging around for hours and really needed to visit the toilet.

“Big Mike,” Charlie shouted above the crowd. “Please put my wife on the ground.”

Big Mike reached up, grabbed her under the arms and unhooked her. As soon as she was on the ground she kicked him as hard as she could in the shin. It barely registered with him.

“That’s for starters,” she promised.

Charlie stepped towards her, his arms open wide.

“Wife, you may kiss your husband.”

Laura punched Charlie in the stomach making him double over. The crowd were silent, jaws hanging open.

“That’s how we celebrate in England,” she told them. “Now the drinks are on Charlie.”

There was a whoop as they all ran in the direction of town and the only place within miles that sold anything to drink.

“That was a bit low,” Charlie said when he stood up.

“You made me really angry,” she told him.

“I also made you my wife.”

He took a step towards her with the goofiest grin on his face.

“Only until I find out how legal this whole thing is,” she said.

“Okay, then we better not waste a minute of married life.”

In a flash she was in his arms.

“I do love you, Mrs Lewis,” he said before he kissed her.

His touch made a milkshake of her insides.

“I love you too,” she told him when she came up for air. “Although I’m seriously disappointed in myself because of it.”

“I can live with that,” Charlie told her as he dragged her off in the direction of his bunk house.

Laura’s smile was so wide it made her cheeks ache. She hoped it would never stop.

EPILOGUE

“Do you have any idea where my wife is?”

Charlie paced the tiny office that belonged to the medical centre manager. Jacques was out of town and his assistant wasn’t being helpful.

“She said there was a group of children in the hills that she needed to interview.”

Charlie gritted his teeth. A habit he’d picked up from Laura.

“And when will she be back?”

The woman shrugged.

“When the plane gets back.”

With a disgusted ha, he picked up the car capsule with his daughter strapped in it and stomped out of the office. Typical. She would wait until he was holding the baby, literally, before she went running off after a story.

He could hear the noisy engines of the small plane in the distance. It was time to settle this once and for all. He strapped the baby into the jeep and gunned down the dirt road towards the air field. The jungle humidity was getting to him today and he hoped the rainy season would arrive soon. He checked the sky but there was no sign of a single cloud. He could however see the plane.

He arrived at the air strip just as the plane landed. Laura waved enthusiastically as she climbed out of the tiny aircraft and Charlie tried not to let his sense of relief at seeing her ruin the fact he was mad.

“Honey.” She trotted over to him, went up on tiptoes and planted a full kiss on his lips.

So he kissed her back. Men can compartmentalise when they’re mad. Laura skipped round to the baby.

“Ruby darling,” she cooed and cuddled their daughter.

His heart softened at the way her face glowed when she was around their baby. She glanced his way out of the corner of her eye. He was being played. Again. He folded his arms across his chest and stood up tall. At least she could never win on the height thing.

“I thought we agreed you weren’t going to go into the jungle alone anymore. Especially not to chase stories.”

She tried to look apologetic, but she couldn’t quite pull it off.

“And you.” Charlie turned on Big Mike. “I thought we agreed that you weren’t going to enable her anymore?”

Big Mike held up his hands in surrender.

“She threatened me,” he said.

Charlie rolled his eyes; the two of them were as bad as each other. He was beginning to think he was the only sensible person in Bolivia. Ever since she’d wrangled a spot reporting for the BBC, he hadn’t been able to stop her chasing anything. The first whiff of a story and she was gone. But things were different now. They had Ruby.

He watched as Laura cuddled Ruby to her chest and chatted to her. It made him want to puff out his chest and shout to the world that this was his family. His woman.

“I won’t do it again,” Laura said when she noticed him watching. “Honest. This was too good an opportunity to pass up.”

“She was safe with me,” said the man mountain, which was probably true. But still, they had a family to think about now. She couldn’t do every crazy thing that came into her head. They had responsibilities.

She walked around the car to lean against his chest; instinctively he put an arm around her. When had things changed so much, when had he become the responsible one?

“Seriously, Laura. It’s too dangerous.”

She looked up at him with those wide green eyes that always undid him.

“I know. It won’t happen again.”

He pulled them tight to him. It won’t happen again. Yeah, right. He seriously considered taking the office job that they kept offering him in London. If this was what it was like now what would it be like when they had two kids, or more? He should never have encouraged her to loosen up in the first place, once she got a taste for the wild side she’d never looked back. He felt Laura smile against his chest. No doubt she was planning her next trip into the Amazon. He’d created a monster. All he wanted her to do was lead a full life, not become a dare devil.

As he looked down at his wife and child he realised for the first time that he’d actually succeeded. She was living a full life. And it was all thanks to him.

Of course, she probably thought that she’d made him a better man too.

There was just no winning with her.

MAD LOVE

By janet elizabeth henderson

PROLOGUE - TWENTY YEARS AGO

Icarus was an idiot. Everybody knew that. If you are going to fly to the sun you don’t use wax to stick your wings together. With this insight nine year old Maddie had used extra strength sticking tape. As she stood on the roof ready to jump her only concern was that she didn’t want to fly
too
high. She’d run out of sunscreen and didn’t want another red nose.

‘I don’t think this is a good idea,’ Laura said.

Her best friend sat perched in Maddie’s bedroom window. With her knees pulled up to her chest and thick round glasses she looked a lot like an owl.

‘I used good magazines. Look.’ Maddie held out a wing clad arm for inspection. ‘Nice thick paper.’

Laura bit her lower lip.

‘Your mum says if you break something else she’s not taking you to the hospital this time.’

Maddie’s deep chocolate eyes narrowed with determination.

‘Mum isn’t here.’

She inched closer to the edge. It didn’t bother her that it was a long way down, she planned to go up.

‘Okay, I’m going,’ she announced as Laura went pale.

She pulled her swimming goggles over her eyes. Now, she looked like Amelia Earhart – only with wings. Without another word she spread her arms, held her chin high and launched herself off the roof.

She didn’t go up.

As the ground rushed towards her she felt annoyed. Obviously she should have used real feathers rather than the ones she’d made from magazine pages.

Thankfully Dean was there to break her fall; with his head. Her older brother’s best friend was often in the wrong place, at least this time it was handy.

‘Madeline!’ her fifteen year old brother shouted as she hit Dean, and the ground, with a thud.

‘I’m okay.’

She stood and dusted herself off. Dean groaned beside her.

‘Thanks Dean,’ Maddie said before stomping back towards the house.

‘You alright?’ she heard her brother say.

‘I think so. I feel like a nine year old fell on my head.’

Maddie glanced over her shoulder to see Dean rubbing his neck. She felt a momentary pang of guilt which slowed her pace slightly. Charlie shook his head as he glared at Maddie. She stuck out her tongue at him before pushing the front door open. She knew that his loud disgusted sigh was aimed at her. Before the door closed, Maddie watched as her brother helped Dean to his feet.

‘What happened?’ Dean asked; he looked a little dazed.

‘You just saved Maddie’s backside. That’s what happened.’

CHAPTER ONE

Present day

Dean Montgomery had been saving Madeline Lewis for the past twenty years. He was done playing Sir Galahad. This time he was going to let her fall. He leaned back in his scientifically designed office chair and raised a sceptical eyebrow in her direction.

‘I don’t think so.’ He sounded firm because he felt firm.

‘Come on Dean. I need your help. This is a great idea; even you can see that.’

Maddie’s brown velvet bob made her look a lot like Velma Kelly from the movie Chicago. The comparison was right on the money. He’d often imagined that under her carefully maintained exterior beat the heart of a man eater. Although she was batting her cow length lashes at him in a picture of innocence, he knew better. Dean tented his fingers in front of him, a look that intimidated boards of directors.

‘It’s time you got a real job, or better yet finish any one of the degrees you’ve started.’

The look in her eye told him she was regrouping, working on a new tactic to suck him into her latest misadventure. He gave a mental eye roll; if only Charlie was here to deal with her, but he was in Afghanistan for at least another month. Dean couldn’t help wonder if Charlie had chosen the easier option.

‘Just listen to my pitch okay?’

Although he’d seen her enthusiasm before it still weakened his resolve.

‘Fine, I’ll listen. But that doesn’t mean I’m going to support you.’

A wide Julia Roberts grin lit up her face. He felt a tightening in his stomach. Man, she was breath-taking. Her pencil skirt was the colour of mulled wine, slit to mid thigh. She’d teamed it with the cashmere sweater of the same colour that he’d given her last Christmas. Get a grip, he ordered himself as he tried to focus on her words.

‘So, it’s like this. The hours people work in the city are long then there is the commute on top of that. There often isn’t time to do domestic chores, like shopping, or paying bills, or taking clothes to the dry cleaner. I thought I could offer a service that took care of all that. Kind of like a personal assistant for your life. What do you think?’

‘Or a butler?’

Her hair caught the light as she shook her head, bringing out the golden hues.

‘Nope. A butler works with one person at a time and most people can’t afford to keep a member of staff on full time. I’m talking about something else. You register and pay a fee to be part of the service then you pay as you use it. So a client would only have to pay me for the time I spent picking up her dry cleaning, not for the whole week.’