He finally wrung pancakes out of Mrs Gregory-by throwing in a few more Christian duties and an agreement to take an extended break for as long as they could manage without her-and now he carried the tray toward the bedroom with the air of one who’d achieved a major triumph. When he saw the grateful smile in Erin’s eyes the feeling grew, so his chest felt a whole six inches broader.

There was still something wrong, though. Something majorly wrong. The twins were polite-sort of-about the pancakes but they sat up in bed with the pancake tray on the table between them and they poked at Matt’s offering as if the end of the world was nigh.

‘You didn’t yell at them because of the fire?’ he asked Erin, frowning as she crossed to the window with her pancake plate. She’d done it as a deliberate ruse to talk to him without the twins hearing and it worked. He’d figured it out and followed her. Now they stood with their backs to the twins, as if the cattle grazing in the paddocks was taking all their attention.

She took umbrage at his suggestion. Yell at the twins? ‘Of course I didn’t,’ she told him. ‘They feel dreadful enough without me yelling at them. What do you think I am?’

‘Far too kind,’ he told her promptly, and she smiled but in an absent sort of way as she munched her pancake-which told him her thoughts were still on the twins.

‘I’m not.’ She glanced back at the twins. ‘Sometimes I feel I’m not kind enough. They need so much…’

‘Why the sad faces? Are they still scared?’

‘No.’ She shrugged, After all this man had done for them it seemed stupid to let him see how upset they were about one small Tigger, but there was something in his eyes that said he really wanted to know. He cared. ‘It’s just that they had a stuffed toy that they loved. They’ve now realised it’s been burned.’

He stared.

Then…

‘Wait right here,’ he told them soundly, and without another word he strode from the room and left them gaping after him.