The Baby Swap Miracle (7 page)

‘It’s in the freezer,’ he said, ‘but it’s decaf, too. That’s all I have—can you cope with that?’ he asked, and she laughed softly.

‘Decaf is fine. I don’t want the baby buzzing.’

‘No, you don’t. I had to give it up. I hardly ever have caffeine now—I put myself in hospital once, and never again. That was one of the reasons I quit the City.’

‘Caffeine?’ she asked, intrigued.

‘The way I was using it, to keep me awake and counteract jetlag and overwork. I was drinking several jugs of strong coffee a day, sleeping about three hours a night, working all over the world—at one point the companies I owned were responsible for an international workforce of over a hundred thousand. I was ridiculously busy, and I realised while I was lying in hospital on a heart monitor that I was killing myself and I wasn’t even sure why.’

‘So you looked on the internet and found this house.’

He smiled wryly. ‘Exactly,’ he murmured. ‘They’d discharged me once they realised I wasn’t having a heart attack, and I was at home in my apartment chewing the walls for caffeine and letting my system recover, and I started to look for an alternative. This was it. And now I work as hard physically as do mentally, I get at least six hours’ sleep a night and, except in extreme circumstances, I don’t drink caffeine.’

But he’d had a double espresso yesterday.

Extreme circumstances? Oh, yes…

‘Sam, why aren’t you married?’ she asked suddenly, her mouth moving without her permission, and he went utterly still, his hand poised on the kettle while she kicked herself.

‘Should I be?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said carefully. ‘You’ve got a big house that’s crying out for a family, you obviously don’t hate children or you wouldn’t have offered to help your brother have one, it’s not that you can’t have them, that’s pretty obvious, and you’re not exactly hideous—I just wondered why you weren’t married yet, that’s all. Or maybe you were. Maybe it didn’t work. I just—You’re my baby’s father. Maybe I should know?’ she suggested tentatively.

He didn’t answer at first, just poured water into the
cafetière and reached for two mugs while she wished she’d kept her mouth shut, and then at last he spoke.

‘I nearly was,’ he said eventually. ‘Very nearly. But—things didn’t work out. She’d lied to me, told me she was having my baby.’

‘And she wasn’t pregnant?’

‘Oh, she was pregnant all right, but it wasn’t my child, she wasn’t what I thought she was, and I lost it all—the wife, the child, the family thing—the whole lot of it all just lies.’

She felt her eyes prickle. ‘That must have been awful,’ she said softly, and he gave a hollow laugh.

‘It wasn’t much fun. So let’s just say I’m a little more cautious now and don’t take things on trust any more. It’s better that way.’

‘I’m sorry,’ she murmured. ‘I shouldn’t have asked. This huge place—it just seems odd, you living in it on your own.’

‘It’s fine, I like it that way. Elbow room,’ he said, and turned round, his eyes curiously blank. ‘So—enough about me, what about you, Emelia?’ he asked as he sat down, sliding a mug towards her and straddling a chair backwards as he shifted the subject firmly back to her. ‘What are you going to do next?’

‘I don’t know,’ she said quietly, trying to think about that instead of him being so cruelly deceived. No wonder he seemed remote sometimes. ‘I suppose I’ll have to look further away. It’s very rural here, there aren’t many schools. I might be better in a town.’

‘There isn’t a town for miles.’

‘So I’ll have to go miles. Maybe back to Cheshire—’

‘No! You were going to live around here until after the baby was born—the first year or so. Emelia, we’d agreed.’

The first year? ‘No, we hadn’t, Sam, we’d just talked about it. And if there’s no work, I’ll have to go, or I won’t be able to pay my rent.’

‘Unless you have the cottage.’

She frowned. ‘The cottage you’re doing up?’

‘Yes.’

‘But it’s your guest cottage.’

‘I think this takes priority,’ he said drily. ‘And you’ve got to live somewhere, so why not there?’

She shook her head, suddenly feeling panicky. It was too cosy, too easy, too convenient. Too claustrophobic, after Julia and Brian. ‘No. And anyway, maybe I want to be near my mother.’

‘No! I can’t see the baby if you’re living on the other side of the country. Visiting you at weekends and so on won’t work at all. It’s not fair on any of us. I want to be part of every day, pick it up from school, babysit, share all the milestones. It means a lot to me. I want to be hands on with this, Emelia. I
have
to be.’

‘Do you? What if I don’t want that?’ she said stubbornly, feeling the net closing. ‘What if my lifestyle and independence are more important to me than your convenience? I’m sorry you lost your dreams of a family, Sam, but I wasn’t part of that dream, and this is me we’re talking about as well as you. You’ll be taking over my life, and I’ll be taking over yours.’

‘Nonsense.’

‘Sounds like it, if you have your way.’

He sighed sharply and rammed his hands through his hair. ‘Look, I’m sorry, I’m not trying to take over your life, and I know you aren’t trying to take over mine, but in a way the baby’s taken them both over. So let’s work with what we’ve got, and try and find a solution.’

‘Such as? Because I’m fresh out of ideas, Sam, and I
have to live. And I don’t do charity. Brian and Julia kept me, and I hated it. I’m not going there again because you have some misplaced sense of responsibility.’

‘It’s not misplaced, and it’s not charity,’ he said firmly. ‘The cottage is sitting there, empty. It’s just common sense.’

‘Are you saying I don’t have any?’ she growled, and he could see she was getting angry now, working herself into a corner where there was no room for compromise.

So he stood up and put his mug in the sink. ‘Time out,’ he said flatly. ‘You look tired. Go and have a rest while I make some phone calls, and we’ll talk again later.’

‘Phone calls to who?’

He felt his eyebrow twitch. ‘You want to vet my phone calls?’

‘No. I don’t want you pulling strings for me.’

‘I wasn’t. I have a conference call booked in ten minutes, so I’ll be in the study, and I don’t want to be disturbed.’

She coloured slightly, and he could see the wind go out of her sails as if he’d punctured them. ‘I’m sorry. You’re right, we need a breather. I’ll keep out of your way,’ she muttered, and disappeared towards the little sitting room.

Damn. Now he felt guilty. He detoured into the study next door, pulled out a book he’d found in the house when he’d moved in, then took it to her as a peace offering. ‘Here—the original planting plans for the rose garden and the knot garden,’ he told her. ‘I thought you might like to see them, since you seem to be interested.’

She met his eyes, studying him in silence for a moment, then she reached out her hand and took the book.

‘Thank you,’ she murmured politely, and then turning her back on him, she settled into the corner of the sofa and opened the book.

He was dismissed.

Sam retreated to his study and his conference call, leaving Emelia to browse through the old garden plans. He was sure from the look on her face when he’d glanced back at her that she’d be occupied for hours.

Which suited him just fine, because spending time with her was harder than he could possibly have imagined.

It wasn’t just that he found her insanely, ridiculously attractive, he thought as the call ended and he realised he’d hardly registered a word. It was the insane, ridiculously attractive idea of spending much more time with her—maybe even pottering out there with her in the rose garden while their child puggled about making little mud pies, and in the corner, under the shade of a tree, would be a pram—

‘No!’

He slammed on the brakes and closed his eyes, ramming his fingers into his eye sockets and trying to blot out the image. Crazy! He wasn’t letting his imagination run away with him. He’d done that before, and it had turned to dust before his eyes. He wasn’t doing it again. This was
his
house,
his
dream, and he wasn’t sharing it with anyone. That way, he couldn’t lose it.

He’d have her close, but not that close. He couldn’t afford to let her that close. It would be too easy to fall into the honey trap.

A cold, wet nose nuzzled his wrist, and he lifted his hand and fondled Daisy’s ears gently. ‘It’s all right, sweetheart, I didn’t mean you,’ he said softly. ‘I’m just going slightly mad here.’

She gave a low wuff and ran to the French doors, her eyes pleading, and he gave up the unequal struggle. Emelia would be busy with the book, curled up in the sitting room where he’d left her, so he and the dog could go out in the rest of the garden and stretch their legs and play a game without fear of interruption.

He went through to the kitchen and grabbed her ball on a rope, and opened the back door. Maybe after an hour or so of brisk walking with the odd ball game chucked in for good measure, he’d be back in control of his mind—

Or not. Emelia was standing on the path by the knot garden, staring at the scruffy little hedges with a frown furrowing her brow, and he wanted to press his thumbs against it and wipe away the frown, to touch his lips to the tiny creases and soothe them. And then he’d tilt her head and kiss her—

‘We’re just going for a walk,’ he said, as Daisy ran up to her and licked her hand.

She met his eyes warily. ‘Can I come?’

He stared at her, wondering how to tell her, politely, that he was trying to get away from her before he went mad. He couldn’t.

‘Sure,’ he said, and her mouth tipped in a smile that sent his guts into free-fall.

He walked like a man possessed!

They’d hardly gone ten steps before she realised what she’d let herself in for, but she kept up without a murmur, and then he stopped her, finger to his lips, as the deer had come out of the woods, and they stood motionless and watched until something spooked them and they melted into the trees like shadows.

‘They’re beautiful,’ she murmured, and he gave a wry grin.

‘They’re immensely destructive, and they make a heck of a racket at night, especially in the autumn with the rutting season. Everyone thinks the countryside’s quiet, but between the deer, the foxes, the badgers and the owls it can all get a bit much. Then the birds start at four o’clock, not to mention the cockerel, and once I’m awake I tend not to
go back to sleep, so I’ll apologise in advance if I disturb you at five in the morning in the shower. I just get up when I wake up and get on with the day.’

She wondered what on earth he found to do at five in the morning, but maybe that was when he kept tabs on his business. Whatever, it sounded horribly early.

‘Don’t worry about me, I think it must be the hormones but I can sleep through anything at the moment,’ she told him, and then in the second before he looked away, she caught a flash of something in his eyes.

Something she’d seen before. Something he didn’t like and was trying to deny.

Desire?

No way. She was pregnant, for heaven’s sake! Why on earth would he be interested in a pregnant woman?

He wouldn’t, she told herself firmly, and followed him, concentrating on putting one foot in front of the other until they were back at the house, and then she retreated to the sitting room and curled up on a sofa with Daisy and the garden plans and waited for her legs to stop aching.

She was sitting there now, her hand idly stroking the dog, when Sam came in.

‘Fancy a cup of tea?’

‘I’ll make it,’ she said, starting to get up, but he just frowned.

‘No, you won’t. I must have nearly walked you off your feet—you look shattered. You should have said something.’

And he walked out again before she could answer, coming back moments later with a tray laden with tea and biscuits—more cookies, only chocolate this time. She was going to be like a house.

He sat down, picked up his tea and stared at it for a moment. ‘I’ve been meaning to ask about your things,’
he said abruptly, without any preamble. ‘Do you want to get them sent here, or do you want to go back and collect them?’

She chewed her lip thoughtfully, and Sam saw a flicker of uncertainty on her face. ‘I ought to do it myself—if you’re sure it’s all right? I could put them in store but there isn’t much, really, other than my clothes. I just feel I ought to get them out sooner rather than later.’

‘It’s fine.’ His mouth firmed. Damn them for putting her through this! ‘Of course I’m sure. I wouldn’t have offered if I wasn’t and heaven knows the house is big enough, whatever you’ve got. I’ll come with you. I’ve got an estate car, it’ll be easier, and we can always take the trailer,’ he added, before he could think better of it, and the relief on her face was almost comical.

‘Sam, would you? We won’t need the trailer, everything’ll fit easily in a biggish car, and I’ll tell them you’re a friend. It might be a bit much if they realise you’re the baby’s father.’

It hadn’t even occurred to him to worry about them, but of course Emelia was worrying. She was the sort of woman who’d worry about everyone, no matter how unkind they’d been to her. She’d be a great teacher, kindly but firmly sorting out the bullies. He could picture her with children clustered around her, snuggled up and hanging on her every word.

He could quite easily do that…

‘That’s fine,’ he said hastily. ‘Any time will do. Just arrange it.’

‘OK. Have you told Emily and Andrew yet? About the baby?’

He shook his head. ‘No. They’re flying back tomorrow. I might have to do it after they’re home. In fact it’d probably be better. Do you want another cookie?’

She gave him a good-natured, indulgent smile. ‘No, but you go ahead. You’ve got a way to go before you look as fat as me.’

‘You don’t look fat, you look—’

He broke off. He’d been going to say gorgeous, but it was inappropriate and dangerous and would get him into all sorts of hot water. And he wasn’t going there.

‘Pregnant. Yes, I know. It takes a bit of getting used to…’ She trailed off, her hand on the baby, and that tiny frown was back.