‘Only so it’s occupied, and to be honest I’d much rather have you. At least I know you’re housetrained. And you’ll be better off there than anywhere else because it’s properly maintained, if anything goes wrong it’ll be fixed instantly and—well, you’ll be close by. I’ll be able to help you with things.’
‘Things?’
He shrugged. ‘Walking up and down in the night with a colicky baby?’
‘Planning ahead?’ she said drily. ‘It might not have colic.’
‘Hopefully not. I like my sleep and there’s enough going on to compromise it, but the offer’s there, and it’ll remain on the table whatever happens.’
‘So—where is it?’ she asked, feeling herself weaken. ‘The cottage?’
‘On the other side of the rose garden. It used to be the shooting lodge. Come on, I’ll show you, it’s still just about light enough. Emily’s right, it’s really pretty.’
And it was very close, she realised as they walked round the corner of the rose garden and past a small copse of birch and hazel. Single storey, it was built of red brick, with roses tumbling over the porch and glorious views across the parkland from the pretty arch-topped windows, and as he opened the front door she could imagine being there with the door open, letting the light and air flood in and fill the house.
She followed him in and looked around at what might be about to become her new home.
It was simply furnished, with comfortable sofas, a wood-burning stove, a well-fitted modern kitchen and bathroom and two bedrooms. Just enough for her on her own with the baby, she realised, and to do anything other than take it would be foolish.
‘We need to agree the rent,’ she said, and he sighed patiently.
‘Emelia, there is no rent. This is my baby, too, and I have as much of a duty towards it as you do. I’m in this for life now, like it or not, and there’s no need for you to be grateful, it’s just the way it is. You’re having my child, I’m supporting you. That’s all.’
‘And you’d do this for any woman? If the clinic had mixed this up in any other way, if it was someone you’d never met, a total stranger instead of someone only a little bit strange—would you offer her your cottage?’
He opened his mouth to say yes, and shut it again. ‘I don’t know. But it isn’t a total stranger, it’s you, and as you said before, you’re not that strange.’ He smiled fleetingly, and she shook her head and smiled back, feeling a little overwhelmed still by the speed of all this. Just forty-eight hours ago she’d been packing up her things and breaking the news to Brian and Julia.
‘Sam—I don’t know what to say.’
‘Try yes.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. It’s just standing here, Emelia. A few tweaks and it’s done. You can move in in a couple of days. Think about it.’ He handed her the key. ‘Here, you can lock it up when you leave. Have a good look around, see how you feel about it. I’ll be in my study.’
And patting his leg for Daisy, he left her there, standing in the middle of the sitting room, with the endless views over rolling countryside in front of her, and the key in her hand.
The key to her new life?
Maybe. She went around the cottage again, checking out the storage, the furniture, the bathroom and kitchen; she sat on the sofas and realised one was a sofa bed for guests, and then she went out of the back door into the garden.
It was overgrown, as she might have expected, but given time and a little effort it could be lovely. It wasn’t formal like the ones at the house, but a proper cottage garden, and she could see lupins and hollyhocks and foxgloves all coming up, little cushions of campanula between the paving stones that by June would be a blaze of brilliant blue—it would be gorgeous.
An absolute haven for the soul, she realised, and exactly what she needed. Even if it was only for a while, she’d be a fool to turn it down.
Smiling, and with the weight of worry slipping off her shoulders, she walked back to the house, her tread lighter, her spirits lifting. Maybe, after all, it was going to be all right…
CHAPTER FIVE
‘WELL?’
‘I’ll take it—but there are rules,’ she said firmly, perching on the edge of his desk just inches away from him, and he sat back in his chair to give himself space, twiddling his pen between his fingers and searching her face thoughtfully.
‘Such as?’
‘I pay rent. We keep a tally, and when I get the compensation, I’ll pay you back. I’ll need living expenses, as well, because I’ve got nothing for food or electricity or gas—’
‘No gas. It’s heated with electricity or the woodburner,’ he told her.
‘OK, fuel, then. I’ve got nothing for food or fuel, no way of taxing my car, which I’ll have to do in the next few weeks, and I can’t afford to buy any baby equipment—’
‘I’ll buy the baby equipment.’
‘No! Sam, these are the rules!’
‘Yes. And you don’t get to make them all. You want to be self-sufficient, that’s fine. I admire your independence and I’d feel the same way. But the baby’s mine as well as yours, and if it needs equipment, I’ll buy it equipment. And I’ll provide you with a car—’
‘I have a car.’
‘So sell it and bank the cash. I’ve got a safe, sensible car here doing nothing, and I’ll pay the running costs.’
‘What car?’ she asked, ready to dismiss it. He could see it in her eyes.
‘The Volvo,’ he said, and her eyes widened.
‘That great big four-wheel-drive thing? You must be crazy. It’s huge!’
‘No, it’s just safe, all the baby equipment will fit easily in it, and it’s doing nothing most of the time so you might as well use it.’
So what would he drive? His BMW, of course, she realised. He drove a BMW with a folding hard-top—she knew that because she’d seen him putting the top up in the café car park on the first day of this fiasco. And it looked pretty darned new.
But that wasn’t the point.
‘I don’t want it,’ she said flatly. ‘I’ve never driven a car that size, and I don’t intend to start now when I’m pregnant.’
‘But it’s easy!’ he said. ‘Really, Emelia, it’s just a car! Do we have to fight about everything?’
‘Apparently! I can tell you haven’t got a wife. You remind me so much of James when we first got married.’
He tilted his head slightly. ‘That didn’t sound like a compliment,’ he said warily, and she snorted.
‘It wasn’t,’ she retorted. ‘Just for the record, I don’t like being told what to do. I don’t like being told how to do things. I don’t like being told I shouldn’t do things. I don’t like being told what I like.’
‘Ouch,’ he said slowly, wincing. ‘That’s a little harsh. I’m only trying to help, but you’re not making it easy.’
‘Because it isn’t easy!’ she wailed in exasperation. ‘None of this is easy! I feel as if a bomb’s gone off in my life, and it’s blown away a whole lot of things that were hemming me in and I thought I was finally free, but now—now I look around and there’s another fence, a more attractive fence, admittedly, but it’s still a fence, still containing me, ruling my actions, my movements— Sam, what if I don’t want to live round here just so you can see your child? This isn’t where I come from. It’s not where my friends are!’
‘So where are they, Emelia?’ he asked softly. ‘Why didn’t you go to them after you walked out? Why did you come to me?’
She couldn’t answer for a moment, face to face with a truth she didn’t want to acknowledge.
‘Tell me,’ he ordered softly.
She felt her shoulders slump. ‘Because you were the only person who would really understand,’ she admitted slowly. ‘Or I thought you would, but sometimes I don’t think you do.’
His smile was wry and a little bitter. ‘Oh, I do. I understand more than you know. But think about it logically. This is where I live, but it’s also a great place to bring
up children. Look at the grounds—it’s like an adventure playground! Trees to climb, paths to cycle on, a little stream to splash in—and then there are all the places in the house to hide. It’s amazing. I would have loved to be a child here. And I own it, and there’s room here for you—more than enough. So if not here, then where else? We’ve got this fabulous resource. Why on earth not use it?’
‘No. You’ve got this fabulous resource,’ she reminded him. ‘I, as you very well know, have nothing at all. So I have very little choice, and I know that, but I need to be able to manage that choice if I’m not going to end up feeling every bit as trapped as I did by Brian and Julia! They suffocated me, Sam, and I won’t let it happen again. It’s my life! OK, our lives are going to be linked by this child, but I still demand the right to have a life of my own, to be more than a mother. And if I want a relationship, I don’t want you breathing down my neck and vetting the man of the moment.’
Man of the moment? Man of the moment? He felt sick suddenly, and he shut his mouth with a snap and turned his head away, staring out of the window and seeing her in the arms of another man.
You’re mad, he told himself. Utterly mad. She’s not yours to be jealous over! And there is no man—
‘Is there a man of the moment at the moment?’ he found himself asking, and then could have kicked himself for revealing interest in her love life.
‘It’s none of your business, but of course there isn’t. How would there be? Look at me, Sam! I’m pregnant, and getting more pregnant by the minute! Who the hell would want me?’
He would—since she’d asked. And since she’d asked, he looked at her. He looked and he wanted, but there was no way he was sharing that. Instead he made a joke of it.
‘I didn’t think you could get more pregnant. I thought either you were or you weren’t.’
She laughed, a little reluctantly, he thought, and then sighed and scraped her hair back off her face and shook it out behind her. He closed his eyes and bit back the groan. When he opened them again she was looking at him a little oddly.
‘So—where do we go from here?’
‘How about into the kitchen to find something to eat?’ he suggested hastily, and wondered how on earth he was going to survive the next twenty years with this temperamental, fiery, gutsy and incredibly lovely woman hovering just out of reach…
‘How hungry are you?’
‘Starving,’ she said honestly, because it seemed a long time since they’d had the carrot cake and she’d somehow missed out on the biscuits when Emily and Andrew were there, but he was frowning into the fridge as if he didn’t like what he saw, and then he shut it and turned to her.
‘Look, it’s eight o’clock, I’m famished and I can’t be bothered to cook. D’you fancy going out? We could go to the pub in the village. The food’s OK, I’ve eaten there a few times, and you can always have something light. Or there’s a really nice little restaurant, but we’re talking about driving a few miles for that. Up to you.’
She hesitated. The pub sounded more casual, less like a date, really, but he’d be known there, and everyone would start talking if he rocked up with a pregnant woman—
What on earth was she thinking about? If she was going to be living here, and he really meant what he said about being involved with the baby, then everyone was going to know soon anyway, surely?
‘Are you ready to go public?’ she asked, and she saw the realisation of what it meant flicker in his eyes.
He gave a reluctant grin. ‘We’re going to have to do it some time,’ he said. ‘We might as well get it over with.’
‘It’s a pity Andrew and Emily aren’t still here so we’re more of a group.’
He didn’t think so. In fact he was glad they weren’t, glad he was finally going to have time to talk to her one to one, to get to know her, the mother of his child. The woman who didn’t like to be told what to do, etcetera.
‘The restaurant’s nicer,’ he said, trying to tempt her. ‘The food’s amazing. It’s got a Michelin star but it’s not ridiculously experimental. And the puddings are fantastic,’ he added, going for her Achilles’ heel, and she crumbled.
‘How dressy is it? Because I’m a bit short of decent things that still fit.’
‘Not dressy at all, you’ll be fine as you are. It’s all about the food.’ He smiled at her. ‘I should go and grab a cardigan, though, it might get cold later. I’ll wait for you down here.’
She nodded and went up to her room, opening the wardrobe and searching through the clothes. Perversely, even though it wasn’t dressy, she wanted to change into something nice, but there was very little that still fitted her and although Brian and Julia had been more than generous with the baby things, they’d only given her a small allowance for herself.
So, with her options pretty limited, she pulled out a fine silk and linen mix cardi with a waterfall front that framed her bump nicely, and just because she had pride, she put on a little make-up—not much, just enough to boost her confidence a little and cover the tinge of red still around her eyes that gave away the emotional afternoon—then she added a set of chunky beads to dress it up a bit and checked in the mirror again.
Stupid. It was only for her, she wasn’t trying to impress him—and if she told herself enough times, maybe she’d start to believe it. She shut her eyes and sighed sharply at the nonsense, and went downstairs to Sam.
He was just coming out of the kitchen, still in the crisp shirt, well-cut jeans and casual shoes he’d had on earlier, but he’d knotted a soft-as-thistledown cashmere sweater the colour of his eyes over his shoulders, and one look at him and she knew she’d been lying to herself.
He glanced up at her and hesitated for a second, then smiled, holding out his arm to usher her through the door, and it felt suddenly, ludicrously, as if this was all real, as if he was taking her on a proper date, and she was his—what? His wife? His partner? Girlfriend?
Or just the accidental incubator of his child.
They were stuck with each other, she reminded herself sharply, and if it wasn’t for the baby, there was no way he’d be taking her anywhere, so allowing herself to think about him like that would just add another complication to a situation that was already complicated enough.
And she needed to keep reminding herself of that…
He was right, the menu was amazing, and she stared at it in despair. ‘There are too many lovely things!’ she wailed, and he chuckled.
‘We can come again,’ he told her, and she felt her heart hitch a little.
Really? That sounded like another date.
‘Will you think I’m throwing my weight around if I make a suggestion?’
She blinked, and then the day caught up with her and she started to laugh. ‘You? Throwing your weight around? Surely not?’
He smiled. ‘Try the fillet steak in pepper sauce. It’s absolutely amazing. Or if that’s too heavy, the sea bream is fabulous.’
‘Whatever. Surprise me.’
He ordered both. ‘You can try them and have the one you fancy,’ he told her. ‘Just remember to save room for the pudding.’
She grinned. ‘Oh, believe me, I will.’
The waiter came and took their order, and Sam propped his elbows on the table and studied her thoughtfully.
‘Tell me about yourself.’
Emelia blinked at him, as if he’d said something really weird. ‘Me?’
‘Well—I wasn’t talking to the waiter,’ he murmured.
She coloured softly. ‘Oh. Well—what do you want to know?’
‘I don’t know. What is there to know?’
She gave a little thoughtful sigh. ‘Not a lot. I’m twenty-seven, nearly twenty-eight, I was born and brought up in Oxford until I was nine, then my father moved to Edinburgh University and we were about to relocate up there when he died, so my mother and I went to Lancashire, where her family are from, and we lived just north of Manchester for six years, then she met Gordon and we moved to Cheshire. I stayed wi
th them until I went to university in Bristol, and I met James in my second year. He was reading maths, I was reading English, and I stayed on and did a fourth-year post-grad teaching certificate and he did a Master’s. We got married at the end of that year, when we were twenty-two, and then two years later we discovered he’d got testicular cancer. And two years after that, he was dead.’
There didn’t seem to be anything he could say that wouldn’t be trite or patronising, so he didn’t say anything. And after a moment she lifted her head and smiled gently at him.
‘So, your turn.’
‘What do you want to know?’
‘Whatever you want to tell me.’
Nothing. Nothing at all that would open him up to her and make him any more vulnerable than he already was, but he found himself doing it anyway.
‘I’m thirty-three, I was born in Esher, in Surrey, and by the time I was twenty-one I’d started my first company and bought another one. I was still at uni—I did an MBA, kept trading on the side and it snowballed from there. Then—’
He broke off.
‘Then?’ she prompted, her voice soft, and he sighed. The next bit wasn’t so nice, and he really didn’t want to go there, so he gave her a severely—severely!—edited version of the truth.
‘Someone cheated me,’ he said bluntly. ‘It left a bad taste in my mouth, and I threw myself into work, and then I ended up in hospital and realised I wasn’t enjoying it any more so I walked away from it. That was when I saw the house. It’s taken the last two and a half years to reach this point in the restoration, but once the local planning people and English Heritage make up their minds about what I can and can’t do with the inside, I’ll be able to finish it off.’
He ground to a halt and shrugged. ‘So, that’s me.’
‘Was it her?’
‘Pardon?’
‘The person who cheated you. Was it the woman you were going to marry? The one who wasn’t having your child?’
Hell. He thought he’d been vague just now, but Emelia was just too good at joining up the dots. He stuck to facts. ‘Yes. But there were two of them—a couple. Professionals. I’m older and wiser now.’
The Baby Swap Miracle Page 8