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deck, his baby daughter wrapped in a blanket in his arms, only an unhappy little face and a halo of black curls visible. She was fussing a bit, gnawing on one tiny fist.
    “Can you fin ish up?” Koti asked Finn. “I need to take her to Kate. Anika’s still asleep,” he told Hemi. “Clearly, you train them better than I do.”
    “No worries,” Finn said, transferring an eye fillet to a platter. “We’ll do our best to save you a steak, though I’m not making any promises.”
    Kate chose that moment to turn up again, however . “Good to go,” she informed her husband. “Oh. Maia wake up? Talk about timing. Just when we’re sitting down to eat, as usual.”
    “All changed and ready for you,” Koti said.
    “Time to head on back with the rest of the kids, Charlie,” Hugh said. He knew he should say something else, something positive, but he couldn’t think what.
    “ I’ll come with you,” Kate said. “I need to take this little monster back and feed her. That’s the only way I ever manage to pry her away from Koti, she’s such a Daddy’s girl. I can’t imagine what she’ll be like when she’s five.”
    She took the baby from Koti’s arms. “You’re going to be toast,” she told him.
    He grinned. “Pushed around by strong women. It’s my curse.”

    So there he was, Hugh thought as he did the fifteen-minute drive down the North Shore to Devonport after a grand total of two and a half beers over four hours, two sleepy kids in the back seat, barely nine-thirty and his evening, such as it was, over, and what lay ahead not looking much better.
    He’d go to training with the others for the bare week they’d put in before the squad left for Europe, offer what help he could, and then they’d be gone, and he’d be spending an unaccustomed and most unwelcome November in New Zealand. The team, some team, anyway, had been his real family for his entire adult life, and missing a tour, particularly such an important one, being left behind, was going to leave a hole that he didn’t want to examine and didn’t know how to fill.
    He knew how he wasn’t filling it, anyway, and if this were going to be his life, he might as well be married after all. Will was right, it was hard to imagine one woman for the rest of it, but at least he might get lucky now and again. Because unless somebody actually came to his door and invited him to have it off with her then and there, or had her way with him in the vegie aisle of New World, it didn’t look like happening. How did single dads do it?
    He needed a babysitter , that was all. Then he could try chatting up Chloe again after Amelia’s next lesson, invite her for a drink. Or a coffee first, maybe. Take it slow like Finn had said, loosen up a bit of that reserve. If he still remembered how to be charming, which he doubted. He wasn’t feeling too charming. He was feeling decidedly grumpy, what with the injury, the kids, and the lack of sleep. Not to mention the lack of sex.
    Yeh, a babysitter would help , he thought with more optimism. Maybe the mysterious Josie. Soft, jolly, and Charlie’s kind of woman? She’d do.

    His more cheerful mood was immediately put to the test when his mum called the next morning and he was forced to explain his new circumstances to her.
    “What?” she asked, the outrage coming straight through the phone. “How could she possibly expect that of you?”
    “Well, she has a point.” And here he was, in the middle once again. He stepped out onto the patio so the kids wouldn’t hear, because he had a feeling this was a conversation that wouldn’t do Charlie any good at all. “She has been here doing this for eighteen months, and she probably does need a break.”
    His mum snorted. “A break from what, I’d like to know. Some of us manage to raise children on our own while we work more than full-time, with a man who can barely be troubled to send a check, much less lend a hand or, God knows, get involved. And there she’s been,