Welcome to Penhally Bay!

Nestled on the rugged Cornish coast is the picturesque town of Penhally. With sandy beaches, breathtaking landscapes and a warm, bustling community—it is the lucky tourist who stumbles upon this little haven.

But now Mills & Boon® Medical™ Romance is giving readers the unique opportunity to visit this fictional coastal town through our brand-new twelve-book continuity… You are welcomed to a town where the fishing boats bob up and down in the bay, surfers wait expectantly for the waves, friendly faces line the cobbled streets and romance flutters on the Cornish sea breeze…

We introduce you to Penhally Bay Surgery, where you can meet the team led by caring and commanding Dr Nick Tremayne. Each book will bring you an emotional, tempting romance—from Mediterranean heroes to a sheikh with a guarded heart. There’s royal scandal that leads to marriage for a baby’s sake, and handsome playboys are tamed by their blushing brides! Top-notch city surgeons win adoring smiles from the community, and little miracle babies will warm your hearts. But that’s not all…

With Penhally Bay you get double the reading pleasure… as each book also follows the life of damaged hero Dr Nick Tremayne. His story will pierce your heart—a tale of lost love and the torment of forbidden romance. Dr Nick’s unquestionable, unrelenting skill would leave any patient happy in the knowledge that she’s in safe hands, and is a testament to the ability and dedication of all the staff at Penhally Bay Surgery. Come in and meet them for yourself…

THEIR MIRACLE BABY

AND

MAKING MEMORIES

Caroline Anderson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

THEIR MIRACLE BABY

CHAPTER ONE

‘DADDY!’

‘Hello, pickle!’ Mike scooped Sophie up into his arms and whirled her round, their laughter ringing round the yard and echoing off the old stone walls of the barn, bringing a lump to her throat.

These two adored each other, and now both their faces were lit up with a joy so infectious Fran couldn’t help but smile.

‘How’s my favourite girl today?’ he asked, hugging her tight and looking down into her beaming face.

‘I’m fine—Daddy, where’s Fran? I’ve got something really special to show her—Fran! Look!’ she yelled, catching sight of her and waving madly.

She wriggled out of his arms, running across and throwing herself at Fran. She caught her little stepdaughter, hugging her close and laughing, kissing her bright, rosy cheek and holding out her hand for the little box Sophie was thrusting at her eagerly.

‘It’s a model—I made it at school!’ she confided in a stage whisper. ‘It’s Daddy milking a cow—see, here’s Amber, and this is Daddy, and this is the cluster…’

She pointed underneath the misshapen reddish blob that could just conceivably have been a cow, and there was a thing like a mangled grey spider stuck on her underside. She supposed if the blob could be Amber, then the spider could be a milking machine cluster. Why not? And as for Mike…!

‘I’m going to give it to him for his birthday,’ she went on, still whispering loud enough to wake the dead. ‘We’ve got to wrap it. Have you got paper?’

Fran smiled and put the lid back on the box. ‘I’m sure we’ve got paper,’ she whispered back. ‘It’s lovely. Well done, darling. I’m sure he’ll be really pleased.’

A flicker of doubt passed over Sophie’s earnest little face. ‘Do you think so? Amber was really hard to make.’

‘I’m sure, but you’ve done it beautifully. He’ll be so pleased. He loves everything you make for him. It makes him feel really special.’

Sophie brightened, her confidence restored, and whirling round she ran back to her beloved father and grabbed his hand. ‘I want to go and see the cows—Oh, Brodie!’ she said, breaking away again and dropping to her knees to cuddle the delighted collie who was lying on her back, grinning hideously and wagging her tail fit to break it. ‘Hello, Brodie,’ she crooned, bending right down and letting the dog wash her face with meticulous attention.

‘Sophie, you mustn’t let her do that!’ Kirsten protested, but Sophie ignored her mother, laughing and hugging the dog while Brodie licked and licked and licked for England.

‘Yeah, not your face, it’s not a good idea,’ Mike chipped in, backing Kirsten up simply because he just did. It was one of the many things Fran loved about him, the way he defended Sophie’s mother’s decisions to their daughter even if he didn’t agree, and then discussed it with her rationally when Sophie wasn’t around.

The fact that Brodie washed his face whenever it was in reach was neither here nor there! Now he held out his hand to Sophie and pulled her to her feet—and out of range of Brodie’s tongue—with a grin.

‘Come on, scamp, say goodbye to your mum and then let’s go and see the cows. I’m sure they’ve missed you.’

Missed the treats, no doubt, because the six-year-old always seemed to have her little pockets bulging with pellets of feed, and she’d happily give it to them despite the cows’ slippery noses and rough, rasping tongues. Nothing fazed her, and she was deliriously happy trailing round after her father and ‘helping’ him.

‘Fran?’ Sophie said, holding out her hand expectantly after they’d waved Kirsten off, but she shook her head. This was their time, precious and special to both of them, and she wouldn’t intrude.

‘I’ve got to make supper,’ she said with a smile. ‘You go with your father and say goodnight to the cows. I’ll see you both soon.’ And with a little wave she watched them head off towards the field where the cows were grazing, Mike shortening his stride to accommodate his little sprite, Sophie skipping and dancing beside him, chattering nineteen to the dozen while her pale blonde bunches bobbed and curled and flicked around her head.

They went round the corner out of sight, Brodie at their heels, and with a soft sigh Fran went back inside, the little cardboard box containing Mike’s present in her hand. She opened the lid and stared down at the little lumps of modelling clay so carefully and lovingly squashed into shape, and her eyes filled. He was so lucky to have her. So very, very lucky.

If only it could happen to them.

They’d come so close—twice now.

It often happened, she’d been told. Miscarriages were common, and her first, three years ago—well, that had just been one of those things, they’d said. It probably wouldn’t happen again.

And it hadn’t, of course, because she hadn’t conceived again, and so they’d undergone endless intrusive and humiliating tests, all of which had proved nothing except that there wasn’t any obvious reason why they hadn’t had a baby yet.

So they’d gone through the difficult and challenging process of a cycle of IVF, and she’d become pregnant, and then, just like before, she’d lost it.

Not unusual, they were told again, especially with IVF, possibly because the embryos weren’t always as perfect as they might be with a normally conceived embryo, and this, it seemed, was probably what had happened to theirs.

All very logical, but she didn’t feel logical about it, because there was nothing wrong with either of them, they just hadn’t managed to make a healthy baby yet, and it was tearing her apart.

Looking on the bright side, they hadn’t made an unhealthy one either, so if that was why the embryos had both failed, maybe it was for the best.

Small consolation.

Whatever the reason, she’d lost the embryos, and she wasn’t sure she had the strength to go through it again. If she had another miscarriage…

And, anyway, they still had Sophie coming to visit them and bringing so much sunshine into their lives. OK, it wasn’t like having her own child, but Sophie was gorgeous, and she loved her to bits. Was it greedy to want more?

To want a child of their own who would come home from school bubbling with excitement and giving them some little blob of modelling clay to treasure?

She dragged in a breath, pressing her fist against the little knot of pain in her chest. Not now. She couldn’t think about it now. Blinking hard, she put the little box in a safe place, opened the fridge and started pulling things out.

Supper. Practicalities. Forget the rest.

Just like the funny, amazing little present, she had to put her feelings in a box and put the lid on and put them all away.

It was the only way to survive.

They were sitting at the kitchen table.

Mike had finished milking on Saturday morning and he was hurrying back to join them for breakfast. Glancing through the window, expecting to see them cooking, he was surprised to see them seated side by side, Sophie’s untamed blonde curls close to Fran’s sleek, dark hair, and he could hear them laughing.

They were busy wrapping something that could well have been the little box Sophie had been brandishing yesterday so, instead of kicking off his boots and going in, Mike opened the door a crack to give them warning and said, ‘Just going over to the shop to make sure everything’s OK. Anything you need?’

‘Daddy, go away, you can’t see!’ Sophie shrieked, plastering herself over the table.

‘I’m not looking, I’ve got my eyes shut,’ he said, squashing a grin and screwing his eyes up tight. ‘Want anything, Frankie?’

‘Bacon?’ she said, a smile in her voice. ‘I thought we could have a nice cooked breakfast if you’ve finished milking.’

‘OK. I’ll be five minutes.’ That should give them long enough to wrap whatever it was, he thought with the smile still tugging at his mouth.

‘Fine.’

He went out, leaving Brodie behind to fuss over Sophie, and had a quick chat to his sister-in-law, Sarah, in the farm shop. She was just about to open up, and she threw him a smile as he went in.

‘Hiya. How are you? Looking forward to tomorrow?’

‘What—getting older, you mean? I can’t wait.’ He chuckled and picked out a packet of local dry-cured bacon. ‘I’ve been sent to fetch breakfast,’ he told her. ‘You OK here? Need anything?’

‘More blue cheese from the store, when you’ve got time. It’s gone really well this week and we’ve only got half a wheel left.’

‘I’ll drop it in later,’ he promised.

‘Oh, and eggs? We’ve had a run on them—must be all those desperate women in Penhally making you a birthday cake in the hope of tempting you away from Fran!’

He chuckled again. ‘Hardly. But I’ll get Sophie on it right after breakfast. She likes collecting the eggs. We’ll do it in the next hour or so, OK?’

‘Fine. See you later.’

He sauntered back, whistling cheerfully so they could hear him coming and get the present out of the way, and when he opened the door a crack and called through it, Sophie dashed over and opened it, her eyes twinkling mischievously.

‘We’re all finished. You can come in now,’ she said primly, and he tweaked one of her curls and hugged her against his side.

‘I’m glad to hear it. Give this to Fran, could you, sweetheart?’

She skipped across the kitchen with the bacon in her hand. Fran turned and met his eyes over her head, and they shared a smile.

‘Here,’ Sophie announced, handing it over, then sat down on the floor next to Brodie and sang, ‘Bacon, bacon, bacon, we’re having bacon! Do you want some?’

‘Of course she does but she’s not allowed,’ Mike reminded her.

‘Not even just a teeny, tiny, weeny little bit?’

‘Not even a sniff.’

‘Oh. Never mind, Brodie,’ she said comfortingly, and cuddled the dog, who promptly rolled over and sprawled right in front of Fran.

‘Come on, guys, out of the way,’ she said patiently, and they decamped to the far end, Sophie propped up against the wall, Brodie propped up against her, both watching the bacon intently.

‘Time to wash your hands,’ Mike reminded her, washing his own and laying the table while Fran finished the cooking. He made a pot of coffee, poured some juice for Sophie and they settled down to eat.

Well, he and Fran did. Sophie couldn’t even eat quietly, humming and jiggling while she ate, making appreciative noises and pretending that she wasn’t sneaking bits of food down to Brodie, clamped firmly to her side.

‘Brodie, go and lie down,’ he said, and the dog, crestfallen, went and flopped apparently casually in a pool of sunshine and watched Sophie’s every move.

Poor old thing. She adored Sophie, loving every moment of her visits, and she’d wander around like a lost soul after she’d gone, looking for her.

She wasn’t allowed in the bedrooms but somehow, when Sophie was here, she seemed to find her way out of the kitchen door and up the stairs to the foot of her bed, and there she slept, one eye on the door and grinning manically every time they went in to tuck Sophie up, rolling onto her back and wiggling her tail, her melting amber eyes beseeching.

And getting away with it, because Sophie adored her and he couldn’t see any harm in it, so they turned a blind eye, even to the point where they’d bathe Brodie before Sophie’s visits. She’d been in there last night, and Mike had no doubt she’d be in there tonight, but he didn’t care. Kirsten didn’t approve, but she’d made her choice and she’d chosen to leave, and he’d moved on.

He’d met Fran four years ago when she’d come back to the village; they’d fallen in love on sight and were blissfully happy.

Or they had been.

If only they could crack this baby thing…

He put their plates in the dishwasher, bent and kissed Fran on the forehead and ushered Sophie towards the door. ‘We’ve got to pick up eggs and take some cheese to the shop. Want to join us?’

Fran shook her head and smiled. ‘I’ve got things to do. You go and have fun,’ she told him, but the smile didn’t go all the way to her eyes, and in their depths was something he couldn’t bear.

He loved his present.

Sophie came creeping into their bedroom with the first rays of the sun, Brodie on her heels, and they ended up with her in the bed between them, with Brodie lying on Mike’s legs and Sophie snuggled under his arm, watching in a dreadful mixture of excitement and trepidation as he slowly, carefully peeled the wrapping paper off and opened the box.

A frown creased his brow, and then a smile, and then a great big laugh as he hugged Sophie hard against his side and kissed her. ‘It’s me and Amber, isn’t it?’ he said, and Sophie turned to Fran with a huge grin before bouncing up and taking the models from Mike’s hands and showing him the intricacies of her design.

‘Look—see the cluster.’ She showed him, turning Amber over. ‘And you’ve got your hat on. It was meant to be red but I’d used up all the red making Amber and there wasn’t enough, so you had to have pink.’

‘Close enough,’ he said, but Fran could see his mouth twitching and she had to bite her lip to keep the bubble of laughter inside.

‘Do you like it?’ Sophie asked, bouncing on the spot, and he reached out and hugged her again, his eyes suspiciously bright.

‘I love it. Thank you, darling. It’s really nice.’

‘I was going to make Brodie too but Mrs Pearce said I couldn’t have any more clay, so you’ll have to have her for Christmas.’

His lips twitched again. ‘I’m sure she won’t mind waiting.’

Sophie sat back on her heels. ‘So can I help you milk the cows today?’

‘I’m not doing it. My brother’s doing it so I can have a lie-in,’ he said, and Fran, glancing at the clock, stifled a sigh.

It was only five-thirty. So much for his lie-in! And Sophie was looking crestfallen. ‘Does that mean I have to go back to bed?’ she asked. ‘Because I’m wide awake now.’

Mike wasn’t. He looked exhausted, and without his usual alarm he might well have slept another couple of hours.

‘I tell you what,’ Fran said quickly. ‘Why don’t you and I go downstairs for a little while and see if we can find something to do while your daddy has a birthday lie-in, and then, when he’s up, maybe we can go to the beach?’

‘Brilliant! We can make sandcastles!’ Sophie shrieked, leaping up and down on the bed until his present nearly fell off the edge. He made a grab for it, and Fran threw back the bedclothes and got up, holding out her hand to Sophie.

‘Come on, you, I’ve got something I want us to do together.’

Sophie slid over the bed, bouncing on her bottom until her skinny little legs hung off the side. ‘What?’ she asked.

Fran bent over and whispered in her ear, ‘We’ve got to make his birthday cake.’

Sophie’s eyes sparkled. ‘Can I help?’

‘Of course. I’ll need your help—lots of it.’

She spun round, kissed Mike and pulled the bedclothes back up round his chin. ‘You go back to sleep, Daddy, for a nice long time,’ she ordered. ‘And don’t come in the kitchen without knocking. We’re going to be busy making a secret.’

He winked at her, and Fran ushered her away, throwing him a smile over her head as she closed the door.

‘Dog!’ he yelled, and she opened the door again, called Brodie and they went down to the kitchen and left him in peace.

‘How many eggs?’ Sophie asked, kneeling up on a chair at the table to help.

‘Three.’

‘Can I break them into the bowl?’

‘No—break them into this cup, and we can check they’re all right before we add them to the mixture, just in case.’

‘Just in case what?’

Just in case she mashed the shell, Fran thought, but couldn’t dent her pride. ‘In case one’s a bit funny,’ she flannelled.

‘Funny?’ Sophie said, wrinkling her nose.

‘Sometimes they smell a bit fishy or they have bits in.’

‘And we don’t want a fishy, bitty cake,’ she said sagely, and Fran suppressed her smile.

‘We certainly don’t.’

‘Can I measure the flour and the sugar and the butter?’

‘Sure.’

It took longer—much longer—and they didn’t use the mixer but a wooden spoon in a bowl, the way Fran’s grandmother had always done it, because that way Sophie could be more involved and Mike got a longer lie-in. They grated the rind of an orange, and squeezed in some juice, and then, when it was all mixed together they spooned it into the tin, put it in the top oven of the Aga and set the timer.

‘An hour? Really? That’s ages! Can we make Daddy breakfast in bed?’

‘We can make him breakfast in bed if you like, but not yet. He’s tired, Sophie. He works very hard.’

Too hard, for too long, and the strain was beginning to tell. And no matter how badly she wanted to crawl back into bed beside him and go back to sleep herself, for now she had to entertain his daughter and keep her out of his way so he could rest.

‘Want to help me make some things for the project I’m doing with my class?’ she suggested, and Sophie, bless her, responded with her usual boundless enthusiasm.

If only Fran could say the same for herself…

‘Bye-bye, sweetheart. Love you.’

‘Don’t forget I’m coming next Sunday for tea ’cos I’m going on holiday the next week!’

‘I haven’t forgotten. You take care.’

Fran watched as Mike kissed his little sprite of a daughter goodbye and closed the car door, lifting his hand to wave farewell. Sophie waved back, her hand just visible through the water streaming down the car window, and Fran waved too, her feelings mixed.

She adored Sophie; she was a lovely girl, sweet and bright, just like her mother to look at, and for that Fran was profoundly grateful. If she’d been the image of her father, the knife would be twisted every time she looked at her. As it was, it was easy enough most of the time to pretend she was just another little girl, just like the many little girls Fran taught all day.

But delightful though Sophie was, the very fact of her existence only served to underscore Fran’s own failure to successfully carry a baby to full term.

Having Sophie to stay every other weekend, for a couple of weeks every holiday and at half-term once or twice a year was like a two-edged sword. When she was there, she brought sunshine and laughter into their lives, and after she’d gone, the house—a beautiful old house that should have been filled with the sound of children—rang with silence.

It might be better if she didn’t come, Fran thought, and then shook her head. No. That was ridiculous. They both loved her to bits, and without her their lives would be immeasurably poorer. They’d had a lovely weekend, and even the rain today hadn’t spoilt things, because by the time it had started they’d finished at the beach and were home, making sandwiches to go with Mike’s birthday cake for tea.

And Sophie had been an absolute delight.

The car moved off across the streaming concrete yard, and Fran turned away from the cover of the doorway, steeling herself for the silence. Not that she had time to sit still and listen to it. She had a lot to do. Mike’s parents and Joe and Sarah had joined them for tea, and the sitting room was smothered in plates and cups. Brodie went with her, tongue lashing, and cleared up the dropped birthday cake crumbs from the floor while she dealt with everything else.

She saw Mike’s feet come into range as she was fishing for a fallen knife beside the sofa. There was a hole in the toe of his left sock, she noticed absently. Another failure in her wifely duties. She gave a muffled snort, and Mike dropped down onto his haunches beside her, his hand warm on her shoulder.

‘You OK?’

Her fingers coaxed the knife closer. ‘Of course. Why shouldn’t I be?’

‘I just—I thought you looked—’

‘I’m fine, Mike,’ she said firmly. ‘I just have a lot to do and I’m a bit tired. I didn’t get a lie-in.’

He sighed and stood up, and she could hear him scrubbing his hands through his damp hair in frustration. ‘I’m sorry. I’ll go and get the cows in, then. I’m late starting the milking.’

She straightened, the errant knife in hand at last, and threw him a tight smile. ‘Good idea. I’ll do supper for seven.’

‘Don’t bother to do much, I’m really not hungry after all the cake. Come, Brodie.’

And that was it. No offer of help. No thanks for his birthday tea, or having Sophie for the weekend.

No hug, no cuddle, no ‘Don’t worry, darling, it’ll be all right.’

Not that she’d believe him, anyway. How could it be all right? They’d run out of time on the NHS, and she was wondering if she could psych herself up for another IVF cycle and failing miserably. Not that they could afford it, although the way things were going, she wasn’t even sure Mike wanted a child with her. It was so much hassle and, despite his assurances, he seemed more than happy with just Sophie.

And why wouldn’t he be? She was gorgeous.

Gorgeous, and his, and if she was honest Fran had to admit that she was simply jealous of his relationship with her. They’d spent hours together over the weekend, and every time she’d looked up they’d been there, giggling about something, Mike chasing her, catching her and throwing her up in the air, turning her upside down, leading her by the hand and showing her the chicks, showing her how to feed a calf—just being the doting, devoted father that he was, with Sophie right there being the doting, devoted daughter.

And every laugh, every hug, every smile had turned the knife a little more. Sure, Sophie spent time with her, and they’d had fun, but it wasn’t the same as Sophie’s relationship with Mike. That relationship was special, different, and Fran yearned for one like it.

Yearned and ached and wept for it.

She picked up a plate, catching it on the edge of the table, and it flew out of her fingers, clipped the edge of the hearth and shattered. She stared at it, at the wreckage of the plate, splintered into a thousand pieces, just like her dreams, and a sob rose in her throat.

She crushed it down, threw the bits back onto the tray and carried it through to the kitchen. She didn’t have time to be sentimental and stupid. She had a pile of project work to mark before school tomorrow, and the house hadn’t seen the vacuum cleaner in nearly a fortnight. Not that they’d been in it much. Mike was busy on the farm, she was busy with the end of the summer term coming up and lots of curriculum work to get through in the next week. And just as if that wasn’t enough, they’d extended the farm shop in time for the summer influx of tourists and were run off their feet.

Which was just as well with the amount of money they’d sunk into that and the new cheese-making equipment, not to mention last year’s investment in the ice-cream venture that her sister-in-law, Sarah, was running, but the result was that there weren’t enough hours in the day.

So she needed to clean the kitchen, which was pointless since it was raining and Brodie coming in and out didn’t help in the least, even if Mike wiped the dog’s feet on an old towel, and she needed to clean the bathroom and their bedroom and change Sophie’s sheets. That pretty much was it, because they hadn’t had time to make the rest dirty.

Except for the sitting-room floor, of course, which now had crumbs, dog hair and bits of broken plate all over it.

She got the vacuum out and started in there.

‘Hello, my lovely,’ Mike murmured, wiping down Marigold’s teats with a paper towel before attaching the cups to them. He rested his head against her flank for a moment, feeling the warmth of her side and the gentle movement of her breathing. She smelt safe and familiar. Nothing unexpected there, no emotional minefield, just a cow doing her job, as he was doing his.

He pulled the cluster down and slipped the cups over her teats, one at a time, the suction tugging them rhythmically, and watched in satisfaction as the milk started to flow in a steady, creamy stream.

Beautiful. He loved his Guernseys. Their milk was fantastic, the cheese and ice cream and clotted cream they made from it a lifesaver in the current dairy-farming climate. ‘Clever girl,’ he murmured, running his hand over her rump and patting it before moving on. Clever, uncomplicated, undemanding, a lovely old girl who still, after six calvings, delivered the goods better than any other cow. If only his own life were as straightforward.

Her daughter Mirabelle was next to her, her head in the trough, and he ran his hand over her udder and frowned. There was heat in the right front quarter, and when he tugged the teat down gently, she raised her head and lowed in protest.

She had mastitis. Damn. As if he didn’t have enough to do.

‘Sorry, sweetheart,’ he murmured, and he wiped her other teats, attached the cluster to the three which were OK and then, taking advantage of the let-down reflex which the routine of the milking parlour always stimulated, with gentle, rhythmic movements he stripped out the infected quarter, discarding the milk. After dodging her disgruntled kick, he carefully inserted the nozzle of an intermammary tube of antibiotic ointment into the teat canal, squirted it into the udder and left her to finish.

The others were waiting patiently, the sound of their gentle mooing and soft, warm breath endlessly relaxing.

Funny. Most people who came to watch him milk, and it could be hundreds over the course of the summer, were fascinated from a distance, but thought it was smelly and dirty and couldn’t understand why anybody in their right mind would want to get up at four-thirty in the morning and work right through till seven at night.

Including his ex-wife.

Kirsten had thought he was insane, but he loved it, and couldn’t imagine doing anything else in the world. He could have been a vet, and he’d thought about it long and hard. He was clever enough, his school exam grades more than adequate for the entry requirements, but he’d gone instead to agricultural college because the farm was in his blood.

OK, it was hard work, but he was young and fit and it didn’t hurt him. You had to do something with your waking hours, and the warmth of the animals and the relationship he had with them was all the reward he needed.

It was servicing the investment in the ice cream, clotted cream and cheese-making equipment and expanding the farm shop that made him tired and brought him stress, but that was only the other side of the coin, and he could deal with it.

Or he would be able to, if only Fran wasn’t so stressed out herself.

He let the first batch of cows out and let the next ten in. It never ceased to amaze him the way they came in, all bar the odd one or two, in the same order, to the same places every time. It made his job that much easier.

Too easy, really. So easy that he had far too much time to think, and all he could think about was the look in Fran’s eyes every time she saw him with Sophie. Which, when she was with them, was always. Sophie was his shadow, trailing him, helping with the calves and the chickens and the milking, asking endless questions, nagging him about having a pony, tasting the ice cream and chattering about the cheese, wanting to stir it and cut it and sieve it.

She was too small to reach right across the vat so he had to lift her and hold her, and she’d been known to drop the spoon into the vat. Not that it mattered if the paddles weren’t turning, but if they were still at the mixing stage, he had to strip off to the waist, scrub his arm and plunge it nearly to the armpit in warm milk to fetch the spoon out so it didn’t foul on the paddles.

Yes, she was a hazard, but he missed her now she was gone, and he knew Fran missed her too, although her presence just rubbed salt into the wound.

He sighed and let the last ten cows in. They were nearly all pregnant now. The last three had calved in the past six weeks, and it would soon be time to artificially inseminate them.

He was trying to build the herd on really strong genetic lines, and he’d got a young bull growing on his brother’s farm which had excellent breeding and was showing promise. When he was mature, they’d see about using him, but until then they did it the clinical way, in the crush, with a syringe of frozen semen.

He gave a hollow laugh.

Not quite the same, not for the bull or the cows. He could empathise. He’d done his share of producing semen for his and Fran’s fertility investigations and treatment, and it was the pits.

It was all the pits, the whole damn process. So many questions, so much personal intervention that in the end they’d felt like lab rats. He couldn’t remember the last time he and Frankie had made love for the hell of it.

Not had sex, not timed it to coincide with her ovulation, or gone at it hammer and tongs for a fortnight in an attempt at quantity rather than quality, or done it out of duty and guilt because it had been months since they had, which was the current state of affairs, but made love in the real sense of the words, slowly, tenderly, just for the sheer joy of touching each other.

Or, come to that, clawed each other’s clothes off in desperate haste to get at each other! There hadn’t been any of that for ages.

Years. Two years? Three? Damn, so long he couldn’t even remember what it had felt like. Certainly he hadn’t touched her at all since the miscarriage in April.

He propped his head against Amber’s flank and rubbed her side absently. The calf shifted under his hand, and he swallowed the sadness that welled in his throat. Would he ever feel his own baby like that, moving inside Fran, stretching and kicking and getting comfortable?

‘You’re getting a bit close, aren’t you, girl? Last milking tonight, and tomorrow you can go and munch your head off in the meadow till you have your baby.’

She mooed, a soft, low sound of agreement, and he laughed and let them out.

He still wasn’t finished. He’d milked them, but he had to flush the lines through and hose down the yard before he could go in for supper.

Not that he minded. The longer the better, really, because Fran would be in a foul mood and they’d eat their supper in an awkward, tense silence.

It was always the same after Sophie had been to stay.

‘Mirabelle’s got mastitis.’

‘Oh. Badly?’

‘No, just one quarter. I’ve given her a tube of antibiotic. It might be enough. I’ll watch her.’

‘Mmm.’ Fran poked the cake crumbs around on the plate and pushed it away.

‘Don’t you want that?’ he asked, and she shook her head.

‘No. I’ve had too much cake.’ Which was a lie. She’d hardly had any, but he wouldn’t know that. She pushed the plate towards him. ‘Here, finish it off. I know you’re always starving.’

He picked up the almost untouched slice of cake and bit into it in silence while she cleared her plate away and put it in the dishwasher, then she heard the scrape of his chair against the tiles as he stood. ‘That was lovely. Thanks.’

She took the plate from him. ‘Don’t lie,’ she said with a pang of guilt for giving him such a scratch supper on his birthday. ‘It was just a slice of cake, not a romantic candlelit dinner.’

The sort of dinner most wives would give their husbands on their birthdays. Shortly before they went to bed and made love…

A puzzled frown flickered across his face and was gone, leaving his eyes troubled. ‘Fran, what’s wrong?’

‘Nothing,’ she said, shutting down her runaway thoughts in case he could read them.

‘That’s not true. You didn’t eat your cake just now, you hardly had anything this afternoon—And don’t argue,’ he added, as she opened her mouth. ‘I saw you give that sandwich to the dog. And except for the time this morning when I was having my lie-in, you spent the whole weekend sending me off with Sophie and keeping out of the way. What the hell is it, love? Talk to me.’

She looked away, her conscience pricking. Had it been so obvious? She didn’t want to hurt Sophie, but having her there…

‘Frankie?’

She couldn’t. It was a real Pandora’s box and there was no way she was opening it now. ‘I’m fine. Just preoccupied. I’ve got a lot to do before tomorrow morning. You know what the end of the summer term is like—so many things to finish off.’

He just looked at her for a long moment, then turned away with a sigh. She watched him out of the corner of her eye, her peripheral vision picking up the moment he gave up. Damn her, then, she could almost hear him thinking. Damn her, if she wants to be like that.

‘I’ll be in the farm office,’ he said. ‘Don’t wait up.’

And he went out, the dog at his heels, the door banging shut behind them. She felt the tears threaten, but swallowed them down, straightened her shoulders and got her class’s project work out, spreading it out on the dining-room table and forcing herself to concentrate. The last thing she could afford to do was neglect her job and end up losing it. At the moment, with the farm overstretched because of the expansion, her income was the only thing keeping them afloat.

She gave a ragged little laugh. Perhaps it was just as well she wasn’t pregnant.

CHAPTER TWO

IT WAS obviously going to be one of those weeks.

Mirabelle’s mastitis had cleared up overnight, but Betsy had gone down with milk fever and needed IV calcium. Guernseys were prone to milk fever, and Betsy had had it before. And Mike should have been on the alert for it as she’d just calved, but his mind had been elsewhere.

Still, he’d caught her in time and given her the injection, so she’d made a rapid recovery. And he’d turned Amber out that morning to await the arrival of her calf. Her milk had dwindled to a halt, and it was time for her to rest and gather her strength. He’d have to take a walk up there later and check on them. They were near Ben and Lucy Carter’s, grazing on the field by Tregorran House, the one with the barn where Lucy had had her baby at Christmas.

He could go with Fran when she got back from school—or perhaps not. It was a gorgeous day today, unlike yesterday, and no doubt Lucy would be out in the garden with the baby and would want to say hello.

He didn’t think either of them needed that at the moment.

Fran had been moody for the past week, short with him for no particular reason. And every time he tried to talk to her, she changed the subject. Whatever it was.

He went into the farm office and put a mug under the spout of the coffee-machine. It was one of those new pod ones, which meant he could have real coffee without fiddling around too much, and when reps from the wholesalers and farm shop outlets came to visit, he could give them decent coffee quickly that hadn’t been stewing for hours. It also meant they didn’t have to go into the house.

And recently, for some reason, he just didn’t want to go into the house if Fran was around. She was always busy making something for school, and it was simpler to keep out of her way.

Not that that was going to sort anything out, but if he left her alone, she’d get over it. She always did, but usually quicker than this.

He was just taking the milk jug out of the little fridge when there was a tap on the door. Since it wasn’t closed, knocking was a bit of a formality, but nevertheless he was surprised to see Nick Tremayne there.

‘Hello, Nick,’ he said, summoning up a smile. ‘Come on in. Coffee?’

‘Oh—yes, why not. Thanks.’ He propped his hips against the battered old desk and Mike could feel the searching stare of those dark brown eyes burning into his back. They’d seen enough of their GP in the previous three years to know that Nick Tremayne never did anything without a reason, and Mike had no idea what it could be. Not unless Nick knew something that he didn’t.

‘So—what can I do for you?’ he asked, turning round with the coffee in his hand and holding it out to Nick.

‘Oh, nothing. I’ve just finished my visits and I was just passing, thought I’d have a look in the farm shop, pick something up for Ben and Lucy. You’ve got some interesting things now.’

‘We try. The ice cream’s going well, and the blue cheese is a runaway success. We can’t keep up with the demand—but I’m damn sure you aren’t here to talk about that.’

Nick’s smile was wry. ‘Am I so transparent?’

Mike just grunted, and Nick smiled again. ‘OK. Point taken—but I really was just passing!’ He hefted the farm-shop paper carrier in evidence. ‘Ben’s got a few days off and my daughter’s invited me for lunch, and I didn’t want to go empty-handed. And as I was here, I thought I’d just see if you were around. We haven’t seen you recently—I wondered if you were both OK.’

Mike snorted softly and stared down into his coffee-cup, swirling the dark brew while he tried to work out how to reply. Honestly, he decided, and put the cup down.

‘Not really. We haven’t been since the miscarriage. Fran’s preoccupied, her temper’s short, she’s lost all her sparkle—I don’t know, she doesn’t have anything to say to me any more, and I think it’s pretty mutual. Frankly, Nick, I’m beginning to wonder if the strain of all this isn’t going to be too much for our marriage.’

‘Do you still love her?’

He hesitated, his eyes locked with Nick’s, and then he looked away, scrubbing his hand through his hair and letting his breath out on a harsh sigh. ‘Yes. Yes, I still love her. I just don’t know if she still loves me.’

He swallowed hard, emotion suddenly choking him, and Nick tutted softly and put his cup down as well. ‘Time for a stroll?’

‘Yeah. You going to Tregorran now?’ Mike asked.

‘I am.’

‘I’ll come with you. If you give me a lift there, I’ve got some stock to check and I’ll walk back. It only takes five minutes across the fields.’

They pulled up on the drive at Tregorran House, and while Mike stood waiting by the car, Nick handed over the bag of shopping to Ben. ‘There’s some strawberry ice cream in there that needs to go in the freezer,’ he said. ‘Back in a minute. Mike’s just going to show me something.’

A likely story, Mike thought with a mental snort, but he raised his hand and dredged up a smile for Ben. He liked his neighbours, and he was delighted they’d bought Nick’s old family home, but it would have been easier if Ben hadn’t come to the door with baby Annabel gurgling on his hip and rubbing salt into the wound.

‘Mike, I’m glad I’ve seen you,’ Ben said now, coming out onto the drive. ‘I’ve been meaning to talk to you about something. Any chance we could have a chat some time?’

He nodded. ‘Sure. Give me a call when you’re not busy, or drop round. I’m usually about.’ Mike gave him his mobile number and Ben keyed it into his own phone, then slipped it back into his pocket and smiled.

‘Cheers. I’ll call you.’

Ben waved, lifting the baby’s chubby little hand as Mike himself had done with Sophie so many times, and Mike waved back to them both, his breath jamming in his throat as Annabel’s face split into a cherubic smile, and he turned away.

Nick fell in beside him, and they went down the track at the side of the house and to the field at the side. It wasn’t right on the cliff top, because that field had a footpath through it, part of the Cornish Coastal Path, and he didn’t want his dry cows disturbed in their last few weeks of pregnancy by all the walkers.

‘Here we are—my ladies-in-waiting,’ he said to Nick, his eyes scanning the field to check that the six cows in there were all looking well. Amber came over to him, her gorgeous coat, fox-red splashed with white, gleaming with health in the summer sun, and he rubbed her poll and spoke softly to her for a moment.

‘You love your farm, don’t you?’ Nick murmured, and Mike nodded.

‘Can’t imagine doing anything else, but it’s a constant reminder of our own failure. With a dairy herd, all you do all the time is monitor their pregnancies and deliver their calves and manage their lactation. And it’s impossible not to draw parallels.’ He smiled, but he could feel it was off kilter. ‘If we were livestock, Fran and I would be shot. It seems we’re useless together. Giant pandas have more success.’

‘That’s not true. Fran’s been pregnant before, and you achieved a pregnancy on your first cycle of IVF.’

‘Yeah—which we also lost. We can’t afford another cycle at the moment, and we’ve run out of NHS funding, so where do we go from here? It wouldn’t be so damned frustrating if they could find anything wrong with us! But they can’t, Nick. We’re both well, there are no physical problems, we just can’t seem to get it right. And right now I’m not sure I even want to, the way we are. Well, the way Fran is, anyway. I just can’t get through to her at all.’

‘But that’s probably just a reaction to the miscarriage. Perhaps she needs to talk it through. Will she come to see me?’

Mike snorted again and shook his head. ‘Not a chance. She might talk to Kate—woman to woman and all that.’

Nick’s mouth tightened, and then he nodded. ‘That could work. She knows Kate. It’s an idea.’

One that was growing on Mike by the second. Kate was working as a midwife again now, and Fran had known her for years because of her son, Jem, who was at the school. Maybe she’d be able to get through to her. ‘She could catch her at school,’ he suggested, but Nick shook his head.

‘Not really the place. But she could call in—maybe one day after school? On her way to see Ben and Lucy? Kate does drop by from time to time to cuddle the baby. I could make sure she doesn’t have Jeremiah with her, and maybe you could make yourself unavailable?’

He laughed shortly. ‘That won’t be hard. I don’t have a lot of time to hang around. By the time Fran’s home, I’m usually milking so Kate should be able to talk to her undisturbed between four-thirty and six, and if I know she’s going to be here, I can always drag it out.’

‘Sure. Give me your mobile number. I’ll let you know what she’s planning so you’re forewarned.’

He pulled out his phone and they swapped numbers, and then Mike turned his back on the cattle and stared out over the sea, which was flat and smooth and sparkling, the lazy swell scarcely visible. The surfers wouldn’t be happy today, but the families with little children would be having a great time, just as they themselves had had with Sophie last weekend—just as they might one day be doing with another child of their own. His chest tightened with longing and he hauled in a breath and turned back to the GP.

‘Thanks, Nick,’ he said gruffly. ‘I don’t know if it’ll do any good, but thanks for trying.’

‘You’re welcome. And you can call me whenever you want a chat, you know. Any time.’

Mike nodded, and they strolled back to the house in thoughtful silence. Nick went in, lifting his hand in farewell, and Mike nodded and set off back across the fields to the farm.

Fran would kill him for interfering, but he couldn’t watch her falling apart any longer. He just hoped that Kate was able to reach her, because frankly he was at a loss, and if something didn’t happen soon, the remains of their marriage would be unsalvageable.

He tried a little salvage that night.

They’d had supper, and for once they were sitting down together in front of the television. There was nothing on that either of them really seemed to want to watch, though, so he turned it off, found an easy-listening CD, soft and lazy and romantic, and instead of going back to his chair he went over to the sofa and sat down beside her, giving her shoulder an affectionate little rub.

‘You OK, my love?’

She nodded, but she didn’t meet his eyes and there wasn’t a trace of a smile. ‘Just tired. I’ll be glad when the holidays come.’

‘So will I. You can give me a hand—we’ll try that new fresh curd cheese you’ve been talking about.’

Beneath his hand her shoulder drooped a little, then she straightened up. ‘Yes, we can do that. I might give Sarah a hand with the ice cream as well. See if we can get the raspberry one smoother. It’s a bit too juicy and it tends to get ice crystals.’

‘It’s gorgeous. Maybe it just needs stirring for longer as it cools, and agitating more often. You’ve got it cracked with the strawberry, doing that. Maybe it just needs more of the same.’

‘Maybe. We’ll try a few things, see how we do.’

She stood up, moving away from him, and went out, coming back a moment later with a book. So much for cuddling up together on the sofa. He peered at the cover.

‘Anything interesting?’ he asked, and she lifted the book so he could see it.

‘CBT—cognitive behaviour therapy. One of my pupils is having it, so I thought I’d read up a bit.’

And she curled up in the corner of the sofa again, opened the book and shut him out as effectively as if she’d left the room.

So he did.

He went upstairs, had a shower for the second time that day and came back down in a clean pair of jeans. He hadn’t bothered with a T-shirt. It was still hot and, anyway, she’d never been able to keep her hands off him when he took his shirt off. All that rippling muscle, she’d say with a smoky laugh, and grab him.

But she didn’t even look up.

The CD had finished, so he put the television back on and settled down to watch a repeat of something he hadn’t enjoyed a lot the first time round.

Anything rather than be ignored.

* * *

What was happening to them?

She raised her eyes slightly from the book and let them dwell on his body. Long, lean and rangy, his muscles sleek and strong, not the muscles of a weightlifter but of a man who worked hard with his body, and it showed.

Lord, it showed, and there’d been a time not so very long ago when she would have got up and gone over to him and run her hand over that bare, deep chest with its scattering of dark hair, teasing the flat copper coins of his nipples until they were tight and pebbled under her fingertips. Then she’d run her hands down his ribcage, feeling the bones, the muscles, the heat of his body radiating out, warming her to her heart.

He would have pulled her onto his lap, his eyes laughing, and then the laughter would fade, and he’d kiss her, his hands exploring her body, searching out its secret places, driving her crazy with his sure, gentle touch.

What was that song about a lover with a slow hand? That was Mike—or it had been. Just lately he didn’t seem to be interested, and if he had been, she wouldn’t have. Just the thought of him touching her so intimately made her shrink away. She didn’t think she could cope with the intimacy, baring her soul to him as well as her body. Not when her soul was hurting so much and her body had become public property with all the investigations. Even the idea of being touched there…

And he’d give her a lecture on getting too thin, which probably wasn’t unjustified but wouldn’t make her feel sexy. Right now, she didn’t think anything would make her feel sexy.

Not that he’d tried recently. He’d been too busy, and every night he was buried in the farm office until late. It was almost as if he was avoiding her. Hard to say, when she was so busy avoiding him, holding herself back because if she did that, if they didn’t try, then it didn’t hurt so much.

If you didn’t try, you couldn’t fail, could you?

The book—interesting under other circumstances—couldn’t hold her attention, so she shut it and unfolded herself from the corner of the sofa and winced as the circulation returned to her foot. ‘I’m going to have a bath,’ she told him, limping for the door. ‘Don’t bother to wait up for me. I feel like a wallow.’

He flicked her an enigmatic look, nodded and turned his eyes back to the television, and swallowing down her disappointment she headed up the stairs.

‘Kate, have you got a minute?’

She paused and glanced at Nick, then at the clock. ‘Literally. I’ve got a meeting with Chloe—’

‘It won’t take long,’ he said, holding open the door of his consulting room, and after a tiny hesitation she braced herself and went in, wondering what was coming as he shut the door behind them.

‘I saw Mike Trevellyan yesterday.’

‘Oh.’ She felt the tension drain out of her shoulders and turned to face him. ‘How are they?’

‘Not sure. He’s worried about Fran. They don’t seem to be talking.’

She gave a soft snort. ‘There must be something in the water.’

Nick’s mouth tightened and he looked away, but not before his eyes flicked over her in contempt. ‘You’ve had nearly ten years to talk to me about that, so don’t get stroppy if I don’t seem to be in a hurry to talk to you about it now.’

‘That? It? We’re talking about your son, Nick.’

‘We don’t know that.’

‘We do.’

‘It was just the once.’

She sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘How many times have I heard that from a pregnant woman? And you only have to look at him. His eyes…’

A muscle worked in his jaw, and she gave up. For now. A gentle sigh eased out of her and she squared her shoulders. ‘So—about Fran. What do you want me to do? She had a follow-up appointment with me after her miscarriage and she cancelled it. I don’t know if I can get her into the surgery.’

‘No, we thought of that. I’ve got Mike’s mobile number. I thought if you could drop by there after school one day, when Fran’s around and Mike’s milking, maybe you could engineer the conversation.’

She stared at him in silence for a long moment, and eventually he turned and looked at her.

‘Well? What do you think of it?’

‘I think it’s a conversation I should have without Jem—your son—since I’ll have him with me after school.’

‘Well, perhaps you could find someone to leave him with for an hour.’

‘Mmm. His father springs to mind.’

His eyes widened with horror. ‘I can’t.’

‘Well, then, neither can I,’ she retorted. ‘Not at short notice.’

‘He must have school friends,’ Nick said, looking a little desperate, but she wasn’t going to back down.

‘I’m sure he does—but I need to save them for emergencies, and my childminder’s not feeling great at the moment so I can’t ask her. Besides, Jem needs me. It’s our time together—so if you want me to do this, and I agree it seems like a very good idea, then I think it would be an excellent opportunity for you to get to know him a little bit better. As his other parent.’

She watched him struggle, knew the moment he gave in. His jaw tightened, his eyes became shuttered and he gave a curt nod. ‘Just don’t let it become a habit.’

She laughed. ‘What—dropping in on Fran?’ she said, deliberately misunderstanding him. ‘Hardly. She’ll smell a rat before I get up the garden path! What am I supposed to tell her, Nick?’

‘Tell her you’re visiting Ben and Lucy. Tell her you’re going to the farm shop and wondered how she was.’

‘I’ll tell her I was worried about her, because I am. I’ve been watching her at school, and a couple of times when she’s been outside when I’ve picked Jem up, she’s looked very tired. Don’t worry, Nick,’ she said soothingly, with only a trace of patronage. ‘I’m sure I can manage to manoeuvre the conversation in the right direction.’

He shot her a blistering look and opened his mouth, then clearly thought better of it as a fleeting, rueful smile cracked his face just for a second. ‘Thank you. When were you thinking of doing it?’

‘Tonight? I can’t tomorrow,’ she said, thinking ahead. ‘I’ve got a clinic, and on Thursday there’s the school sports day, and Friday’s the end of term.’

Nick nodded, a muscle working in his jaw. ‘OK. I’ll get Hazel to shift my patients to Dragan or Oliver. You can drop Jeremiah round to me on your way there, and I’ll give him supper.’

‘I’ll do that. Now, if that’s all…?’

‘That’s all,’ he agreed, opening the door for her with something that could have been relief. Poor Nick, she thought as she walked away. He really, really didn’t like this. The truth was obviously much too much to take, but that was tough.

He was going to have to get used to it, no matter how unpalatable—get used to the fact that ten years ago this summer, on the very night of the storm that had torn a hole in their community, while his father and brother had lain cooling in the mortuary and her husband’s body was being sucked out to sea and shattered on the rocks, their frenzied, desperate coupling had given rise to a child.

And that child was their son.

She looked out of the window, across the bay to the headland where Nick had found her staring out to sea, her body drenched and buffeted by the wild storm, her eyes straining into the darkness. Not that there had been any hope. Even the coastguard had given up, at least for the night, but she hadn’t been able to tear herself away.

So Nick had taken control—taken her back to her house, stripped off her sodden clothes, dried her—and then somehow, suddenly, everything had changed. It could have been put down to that old affirmation-of-life cliché, she thought, but it had been more than that. She’d loved him since she’d been fifteen, had wanted him for ever, and it had seemed entirely natural to turn to him for comfort.

And it seemed he had felt the same, because, laid bare by their emotions, when the world had been falling apart all around them and it had seemed as if they were the only people in the world left alive, they’d finally done what they’d come so close to before he’d gone to university and met Annabel. The timing had been awful, but maybe it had been because it was so awful that they’d been able to break through those barriers and reach for each other. And in that moment, when they’d both been too racked with grief and guilt to know what they were doing, they’d started another life.

Like it or not—and he clearly didn’t—Nick Tremayne would have to acknowledge the result of their actions that night, and learn to live with it every day of his life, just like she had for the past ten years. After all, it had given her a son, a child she’d never thought she’d have, and he’d brought her so much joy.

So she’d learned to live with herself, with the shame she felt at having given in and taken comfort from Nick at that dreadful time, and she’d slowly, painfully, learned to forgive herself.

Now it was Nick’s turn. He’d have to learn to live with himself, too, and maybe, with time, forgive himself.

And perhaps, in the end, he could even learn to love his son.

‘Fran!’

She heard the knock, heard the voice calling and went to the window, leaning out and seeing Kate there, to her surprise. ‘Kate, hi! Come in, the door’s open. I’m just changing Sophie’s sheets—Come on up, I’m nearly done.’

And then she wondered why on earth she’d said that, because the house wasn’t looking fantastic and Kate wasn’t a close friend, not the sort of person who you just invited in—although maybe she was exactly the sort of person, she amended as Kate arrived in the bedroom with a smile, got hold of the other side of the quilt cover and helped her put it on.

‘Thanks.’

‘Pleasure. It’s always easier with two.’

Fran plumped up the pillow and straightened up. ‘I only did it yesterday, that’s the frustrating thing, in time for Sophie’s next visit, but the dog sneaked up here last night with filthy feet, and I didn’t realise till this morning. So—what brings you here on a Tuesday afternoon?’ she asked, finally voicing the question that had been in the forefront of her mind ever since she’d heard Kate calling her.

‘Oh, I was just passing. I’ve been to see Ben and Lucy and I popped in at the farm shop. I thought I’d say hello and see how you are. It’s always so busy at school and I haven’t seen you for ages, not to chat to.’

Not since before the miscarriage but, then, you didn’t really need antenatal care when there wasn’t going to be any natal to worry about, Fran thought with a sharp stab of grief.

‘I’m fine.’

She scooped up the washing and carried it downstairs, leaving Kate to follow. She ought to offer her a cup of tea, but that would open the door to all sorts of things she didn’t want. A cosy chat. A more penetrating ‘How are you’. A ‘How are you really, now your dream’s been snatched away’ sort of ‘How are you’.

But the teapot was there on the side of the Aga, and the kettle was next to it, and without being offered, Kate went over to it, lifted it and raised an eyebrow at Fran. ‘Got time to give me a cup of tea?’ she asked, and put like that, it would have been too rude to refuse.

She gave in.

‘Of course. I’ll make it.’

‘No, you deal with the washing. I can make a cup of tea. I spend my life making tea and drinking it. That’s what midwives do—didn’t you know that?’

‘Really? I thought they interfered.’

Kate met her eyes and smiled. So the gloves were off, their cards were on the table and they could both start being honest.

Kate lifted the hotplate cover and put the kettle on the hob. ‘Fran, I haven’t seen you for ages—not since the miscarriage. I’m worried about you,’ she said gently.

Fran looked up from the washing machine, slammed the door on it and stood up. ‘Don’t be.’

‘I am. You’ve got a lot of pressures on you. Sometimes talking them through can help.’

‘Kate, I don’t need counselling,’ she said firmly and a little desperately.

‘I never said you did. But a friend who understands the pressures you might be under and the choices open to you might be a help—a sounding board, someone to rant at that isn’t your husband?’

Had Mike been talking?

‘I don’t rant at him.’

‘But maybe you want to. Maybe you need to—not because he’s done anything wrong but just because you need to rant, to let out your anger. It’s all part of the grieving process, Fran. And you have to grieve for your baby.’

Fran swallowed. ‘It was just a failed embryo—just like my other miscarriage. There was no baby.’

‘But there was—there were two, and you loved them,’ Kate said gently, and that was it. The dam burst, and Kate took the washing powder out of her hands, wrapped her arms firmly around her and held her tight. At first Fran could hardly breathe for the wave of pain, but then it got easier, just slightly, so she could actually drag in the air with which to sob.

And sob she did, cradled against Kate’s comforting bosom, her hand smoothing rhythmically up and down her back, telling her without words that it would be all right.

‘That’s it, let it go,’ Kate murmured, and when the tears had slowed to a trickle, when the pain had eased to a dull ache instead of the slice of a sword, Kate let her go, and she sat down at the table and groped for a tissue.

‘Sorry—heavens, I must look a wreck,’ Fran said, sniffing and patting her pockets until Kate handed her a clump of kitchen roll. She mopped her face, blew her nose, sniffed again and tried to smile. It was a wobbly effort, but it was rewarded by an answering smile and a mug of tea put in her hand.

When had Kate made it? In the few seconds she’d been mopping up? Must have. God, she was losing it.

‘Thanks,’ she said, wrapping her nerveless hands around the mug and hugging it close.

‘Better now?’

She nodded, and Kate smiled sympathetically.

‘Good. It always helps to get all that backed-up emotion out of the way. Helps you see things more clearly. Was that the first time?’

‘Since April? Yes. Properly, like that, yes. I’ve always tried to stop it before, because it didn’t help with the first miscarriage, and I cried so much then. Silly. I might have known it would come out in the end.’

‘And Mike’s too close to allow him to see it. Because he’s hurting, too, and you don’t want him to feel bad for you.’

‘When did you become so clever?’

A fleeting shadow passed over Kate’s face, and Fran was so preoccupied she nearly missed it. Not quite, though, but she had no idea what had prompted it, and Kate was smiling now.

‘Oh, I’m not clever, Fran,’ she said softly. ‘Just human. Maybe I just try and put myself in someone else’s shoes, and I know the difference Jem’s made in my life, so it’s not hard to imagine how I would feel if I’d been unable to have him.’

Fran didn’t know what to say. She hadn’t been in Penhally when Kate’s husband had died, but she’d heard about it from her parents, and how sad it was that he couldn’t have known that Kate had been pregnant after several years of marriage. But she didn’t feel she could say anything about that now. It had been years ago, intensely private and nothing to do with her.

So she sipped her tea, and sniffed a bit more, and blew her nose again, and all the time Kate just sat there in a companionable silence and let her sift through her thoughts.

‘Have you noticed,’ Fran said finally, as the sifting came to a sort of conclusion, ‘how just about everybody seems to be pregnant at the moment? I don’t know if it’s just because I’m hypersensitive, but there seems to be a plague of it right now, especially among the school mums. Every time I look up, there’s another one.’

Kate nodded. ‘And it hurts.’

‘Oh, yes,’ Fran said very softly. ‘It really hurts. You have no idea how much I want a baby, Kate. It’s like a biological ache, a real pain low down in my abdomen—No, not a pain, it’s not that sharp, but a sort of dull awareness, an emptiness, a sort of waiting—does that sound crazy?’

‘No,’ Kate murmured. ‘It doesn’t sound crazy at all. I’ve heard it before, so many times.’

‘The frantic ticking of my biological clock—except it’s not ticking, is it? The spring’s broken, or it needs oiling or something, but nobody can find out what exactly, and sort it out. And in the meantime we’ve run out of time on the NHS, we don’t have any money to pay for another cycle of IVF privately, and even if we did, Mike’s been so odd recently I don’t even know if he wants a baby with me!’

Kate studied her tea thoughtfully. ‘Do you want a baby with him?’ she asked gently. ‘Or do you just want a baby?’

That stopped her. She stared at Kate, opened her mouth to say, ‘Of course I want a baby with him!’ and then shut it again without saying a word, because suddenly she wasn’t sure, and she felt her eyes fill again.

‘I don’t know,’ she replied instead, looking down and twisting the tissue into knots. ‘I really, really don’t know.’

‘Do you still love him?’

Again she opened her mouth, then shut it, then said softly, her confidence wavering, ‘Yes. Yes, I do, but I don’t know if I can live with him like this. And I don’t know if he loves me any more.’

‘Then you need to talk. You need to spend time together, find out if you’ve still got what it takes, because there’s no point killing yourselves to have a baby together if you don’t in the end want to be together. If being with Mike, with or without a child, is the first and most important thing in your life, then go ahead and keep trying for a baby. But if it’s not, if the baby’s more important than being together, then you need to think very carefully before you go ahead. And so does he.

‘Think about it,’ she went on. ‘Talk to Mike. Take some time together. And play, Fran. Take time out. The weather’s gorgeous now. As soon as you break up at the end of the week, try and find some time away from the farm and all its distractions. Is there any chance you can get away?’

She laughed, but with very little humour. ‘Not exactly. There’s the milking, and the cheese making, and then we share the weekends with Joe, so they each get one weekend off in four. Well, Saturday afternoon and Sunday.’

‘And when’s your next one?’

‘This weekend,’ she said slowly. ‘But Mike won’t stop. He’ll just use the time to catch up on paperwork.’

‘So stop him. Find a little hotel or a guest house or something, and go away for the night.’

‘I doubt if he’ll wear that. Anyway, we’ve got Sophie coming for tea on Sunday because she’s away the next weekend.’

‘You can be back by teatime.’ Kate stood up and put a hand on Fran’s shoulder. ‘Try it. You’ve got nothing to lose. And you might have everything to gain. And in the meantime, I’ve heard some very interesting things about miscarriage and diet and the relationship to damaged and defective sperm.’

Fran frowned. ‘Are Mike’s sperm defective? I don’t think they said anything about it at the fertility clinic—well, not to me, anyway.’

Kate shook her head. ‘Not particularly, according to the report from the clinic, but although there were a good number, a slightly higher proportion than one might hope for were defective or sluggish. That in itself might have been enough to cause your miscarriage, if it was a damaged sperm that fertilised the ovum. And this diet is supposed to reduce the numbers of defective sperm quite significantly, according to the study I’ve heard about. If you’re going to try again, maybe you need to take a while to make friends again, and while you do that, you could try the diet to boost Mike’s sperm production. It might as well be as good as it can be, and even if you decide not to go ahead and try again, it won’t do either of you any harm.’

It sounded a good idea, but she wasn’t sure she’d get it past Mike. ‘Is it freaky?’ she asked. ‘I don’t want to start giving him weird stuff. He’ll ask questions or refuse to eat it. You know what men are like. And he’s always starving.’

Kate laughed softly. ‘Typical man, then—and, no, it’s not freaky. It’s more a supplement to his normal diet rather than any radical alteration. I can let you have all the details, if you like—why don’t you come and see me tomorrow after school? I’ve got time, and we can go through it then properly.’

Fran nodded slowly. ‘OK. Thanks. I will.’

And in the meantime, she’d try and talk him into going away. Just a few days, right away from the pressures of the farm.

She felt a shiver of something that could have been fear and could have been excitement. Maybe both. Probably.

She’d ask him tonight.

CHAPTER THREE

‘THIS is ridiculous.’

Fran stared out across the yard. She couldn’t see the farm office on the other side, but she could see the spill of light from the window, and she knew exactly what he’d be doing.

Avoiding her.

Night after night, week after week for months now.

It was becoming a pattern. He’d get up at the end of their evening meal, kiss her absently on the cheek and thank her, then go out, Brodie at his heels, to the farm office.

And he’d stay there, wrestling with the accounts and the endless paperwork, until nearly midnight. Sometimes she’d hear him come to bed, sometimes she wouldn’t. And in the morning, when the alarm went at five, he’d get up and go into the bathroom and dress, then go out and do the milking.

On a good day, or at the weekend, she’d see him for breakfast before she went to work herself. On a bad day, and there were increasingly more of them, she wouldn’t see him at all.

Tonight was no exception. He’d kissed her vaguely on her cheek, said, ‘Don’t wait up for me, I want to get those quota forms filled in,’ and he had gone.

Well, she was sick of it.

Sick of not having a relationship, sick of not having anyone—not even the dog, for heaven’s sake!—to talk to in the evenings, sick of going to bed alone. Even on his birthday.

No wonder Kirsten had left him.

She sighed and turned away from the window, sick, too, of staring out and willing him to come back in. It hadn’t always been like this. At first, when they’d started going out together, he’d been able to find time for her, and after they’d married he’d been lovely. OK, he’d worked late and started early, but when he’d come to bed he would wake her, snuggling up, either for a cuddle or to make love to her, slowly, tenderly, languorously—or wildly, as if he couldn’t get enough of her.

When had it changed? she asked herself, but she knew.

The miscarriage—the most recent one, three months ago.

That was when it had changed—when he’d withdrawn from her so completely. When she’d lost the baby she’d thought they’d been so thrilled about.

Except maybe she’d been wrong. Maybe he hadn’t been thrilled at all. Maybe this last miscarriage had been a lucky escape, a narrow squeak in the midst of all the happy, fluffy stuff—choosing the colour of the paint for the nursery, discussing names, telling both sets of parents. Thank God they hadn’t told Sophie, but they’d been waiting till after the three-month watershed, till it was safe.

Except it hadn’t been.

She scrubbed away the sudden, unexpected tears and swallowed hard.

No. She wouldn’t cry again. Not after all this time. She’d cried all over Kate today, embarrassingly, but she wasn’t doing it again. It didn’t help. She’d cried an ocean after the first miscarriage, and it hadn’t done any good.

And neither had anything else they’d tried, because she still hadn’t conceived again until they’d gone down the IVF route.

Of course, the opportunity wouldn’t have gone amiss and, looking back on it, she realised that ever since the first miscarriage things had been different. She’d put it down to too much work and the pressure of the farm, but really he’d been avoiding her for years, she thought with shock, and she’d been more than happy to let him, because it meant she didn’t have to confront her fears and feelings.

Well, not any more.

She stared out of the window again, and decided it was time to act. If she was going to save her marriage, she was going to have to fight for it—she just wished she knew what it was she was fighting…

‘We can’t go away!’

‘Why not?’

Mike stared at her, puzzled by her sudden insistence, but maybe more puzzled by his own curious reluctance.

The truth was, with Joe already fixed to cover him for the coming weekend there was no reason at all why they couldn’t go away. Sophie was coming on Sunday afternoon, but otherwise they were free—the animals were taken care of, and Brodie would be perfectly content down at Joe and Sarah’s house with their two dogs. They spent a lot of time together anyway.

So there was no reason, no reasonable excuse he could give, and he wasn’t sure why he wanted to get out of it, but he did.

‘I’ve got a lot of paperwork.’

‘You always have a lot of paperwork.’

‘Yes, and it won’t just go away because we have!’

‘No, it won’t,’ she agreed. ‘It’ll still be there when we come back. Mike, nobody’s going to die if you don’t do the paperwork this weekend. We can do it together.’

‘No. Fran, I can’t go.’

‘Or won’t.’

He met her eyes, wondered what the hell was happening to them, and, abandoning his coffee, he walked out of the farm office and headed for the machinery store. ‘I haven’t got time to talk about this now,’ he said shortly. ‘I’ve got to get on. Brodie!’

And he walked away, haunted by the look of hurt in her eyes and kicking himself, but he couldn’t imagine what the hell they’d do for the whole weekend.

He laughed bitterly. His own wife, the woman he loved, and he couldn’t work out what they’d do alone together for a night? ‘Hell, man, you’re losing it,’ he muttered, and Brodie nudged his hand, her face anxious.

‘It’s all right,’ he said reassuringly, giving her a pat, but it wasn’t. It was far from all right, and he didn’t quite know how they’d ended up there.

He threw the chainsaw into the back of the pickup, loaded in the other tools he’d need for his day’s work, opened the cab door for Brodie and followed her in, starting up the engine and getting out of the farmyard before Fran came up with any other excuses for—what? Finding time with him?

Was that really such a bad thing?

Yet just the other night, when he’d sat with her and tried to get through to her, she’d stonewalled him and got a book out. Well, let her run after him. Maybe she’d find she wanted him after all…

‘So how did it go with Fran?’

Kate gave a ‘so-so’ shrug. ‘Not sure, really. I think I gave her something to think about. She’s coming in to see me at the end of the afternoon, before my clinic. I’m going to give her the details of that fertility-boosting diet I was telling you about, so that if they decide to go down the IVF route they’re starting from the best possible position.’

‘Do you think they will? IVF’s not cheap and they’ve invested a lot in the farm recently. I don’t know if they can afford it.’

‘I don’t know if they even want it,’ Kate admitted quietly.

Nick sighed. ‘It seems such a damn shame that they got pregnant and then she lost it.’

‘But at least we know she can get pregnant, which is a good starting point.’

Nick nodded and pushed a hand through his hair, the fingers parting it, leaving it rumpled. It was greying now, pepper and salt, but still thick, and her fingers itched to feel it, to thread through it as his had, to see if it still felt as soft and heavy as before…

She was going crazy. She had no business thinking things like that. She had to get on.

‘Just seems so tough, when the rest of the world seems to have babies at the drop of a hat.’

‘Well, you would know,’ she said, a touch bitterly, reminding herself of all the reasons why Nick was so very bad for her. ‘And at least if and when they have a child, it’ll know it was wanted.’

‘My children are wanted!’ he retorted.

‘All of them?’

He coloured and turned away, staring out of the window and stabbing his hand through his hair again. ‘We still don’t know—’

‘Yes, we do,’ she said with quiet emphasis. ‘James was sub-fertile. He’d had a test.’

Nick turned slowly and stared at her, his eyes carefully expressionless. ‘So—he really is mine?’

She felt her heart kick. ‘Yes, Nick. He really is. There’s no doubt at all. Jem is your son.’

The colour seemed to drain from his face, and for a moment he just stood there, rooted to the spot. Then he swallowed, dragged in a breath, straightened his shoulders. ‘Right. Um—got to get on.’

‘That’s it—run away.’

He stopped, paused, then started walking again, then paused once more with his hand on the doorhandle. ‘I’m not running, Kate,’ he said, defeat in his voice. ‘There’s no point. There’s nowhere to go.’

And, opening the door, he strode out into the waiting room and left her there.

‘Brodie, get out of the way! Come on. Stupid dog—what the hell are you doing?’

Brodie was tugging Mike’s trousers, trying to get him to play, but he wasn’t interested. He’d been clearing up fallen and dead timber all day, and he’d just found an old willow which had snapped halfway up the trunk but stayed attached, the top swinging down to make a ragged arch, but it was still hanging by a thick rope of twisted wood and bark, propped on a lower branch that had dug into the ground and broken its fall.

Under normal circumstances he’d get up the tree and cut it off at the trunk, but it was straddling the river, one end high in the air, the other, in a tangle of broken branches and twigs, sprawled across the ground on this side. There was no way to get to it without crossing the river, and he didn’t have time to keep driving backwards and forwards over the nearest bridge.

And Joe had the forklift with the long reach for bringing in the hay and silage bales, otherwise he could have used that. No, he’d just have to tackle it from this side.

But it was big.

He’d tried levering it off the supporting branch with a smaller branch wedged under it and over another log, but he wasn’t heavy enough to shift it. He couldn’t leave it there, though, because it was unstable and if the wind got up again, it could fall—and the cattle had been grazing down here around it. So he had to shift it now, before the end of the day, so he could let the cows back into the field in safety.

He tried Joe again, but he wasn’t answering his mobile. Probably couldn’t hear it. Damn. And the dog was still begging for a game.

‘Brodie, give it up,’ he said crossly, and, picking up the chainsaw, he cut away a few more branches so he could roll the tree when it fell. But the dog was in the way, and he’d get her with the saw in a minute, so he put her in the cab and told her to stay, then went back to it.

‘Right, you stubborn bloody thing,’ he said, glaring at the tree, and touched the underside with the saw. It creaked, sagged a fraction.

Better.

He touched it again, but the tree was weaker than he’d thought, and the creaking was more ominous.

Too ominous.

He looked up, to where the fallen part of the tree was joined to the trunk on the other side of the river, and watched in horror as, almost in slow motion, the wood started to split away and flip up, freeing the hugely heavy upper section of the tree. It was going to fall, and he was right in its way.

He didn’t have time to think. He didn’t have time to do anything but turn and run, throwing the saw aside, and as he turned, he heard a loud crack and a sound like thunder, then a branch whipped round and felled him at the same time as the trunk rolled down and came to rest across his legs.

The pain was blinding, but the adrenalin was kicking in, his heart racing, and gradually the pain receded to a dull scream.

He lay motionless, waiting, listening, but apart from Brodie’s frantic barking, there was silence. The tree had settled, and he could still feel his feet. And his legs. Hell, he could definitely feel his legs, especially the right one.

Well, the ankle really. The left one was OK, and he could even move it a little. It was in a bit of a hollow, but the right—there was no way he could move that, and no way he was going to try. Just lying there was agony.

So now what?

He was lying there, contemplating his very limited options and trying not to retch with the pain, when he felt the vibration of his phone against his hip. Great. It might be Joe. He’d be able to get him out of this mess. He wriggled around a little, gasping at the pain in his ankle and his ribs, and the tree creaked again and shifted in a little gust of wind, sending pain stabbing through him.

Hell! He’d thought it had settled! He tried again for the phone, and finally managed to get it out of his pocket. ‘One missed call,’ he read, and tapped the keys with a shaking thumb to bring up the number. Not Joe.

Ben Carter.

Well, it was a start. If that tree kept shifting, an emergency consultant might not be a bad man to have around. He called him back. ‘Ben? It’s Mike.’

‘Mike, hi. I was just calling to have that chat—is this a good time?’

Mike gave a strangled laugh, his breath constricted by the branch over his back. ‘Um…I’ve had better. Bit…um… stuck at the moment.’

‘Oh, I’ll call you later—’

‘No! I mean—really stuck. I’m lying under a tree.’

There was a pause. ‘As in lying under a tree on the grass, contemplating the meaning of life, or—?’

‘Lying under a fallen tree that I was cutting up,’ Mike finished for him. ‘Sort of literally stuck. And I think my leg might be broken, and the tree’s not stable.’

Just to underline that fact, the tree groaned again, and he felt sweat break out all over him. ‘I’m down by the river—only a short way from you over the fields, but you’ll need help. I’m trying to get hold of Joe, but maybe we need the fire brigade—they’ve got a few strong lads who could help shift this thing.’

‘Tell me where to come, and I’ll get them on their way, too,’ Ben said, his voice all calm business, and Mike felt his confidence like a soothing hand.

‘Out of your drive, turn left, down the hill to the river, then there’s a track to the right. Follow it—shut the gates behind you—and you’ll find me there. You’ll see the pickup and hear the dog barking.’

‘Right. Are you bleeding?’

He considered that for a second. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘OK. Stay still, don’t move and I’ll be with you.’

‘Like I can move,’ he said, but the line was dead, and he tried Joe again, getting him this time. Joe’s language was colourful, and he could hear the fear in his brother’s voice, but he’d know what to do and how to get him out, and he could use the chainsaw.

They arrived simultaneously, Joe on the tractor, Ben in his BMW, grounding on the track, and Mike felt a stupid, stupid urge to cry with relief.

‘Nice one, guys,’ he said, cracking a grin, and Joe swore and knelt down beside him, reaching through the twigs covering him to squeeze his shoulder hard.

‘Stupid bastard. This tree’s huge, far too big to tackle alone—why didn’t you call me?’

‘I did. Several times. You weren’t answering.’

Joe swore again. ‘Sorry, I was clearing the auger. Right, let’s have a look at this tree. If I could only get the tractor in here I could lift it off you with the forks, but there isn’t enough room. The other trees are too close.’

‘So what’s plan B?’

Joe looked around. ‘I’m going to get this branch off you first, so you can breathe better. Then we can get a closer look.’

‘Great.’ Mike grunted. ‘Just make sure it’s not holding up the tree.’

‘It’s not. There’s a good-sized branch wedging it.’

‘Good. Cut this one off, then, because I really can’t breathe. The chainsaw’s about somewhere.’

He got up, and Ben took his place, hands running confidently over Mike’s body. ‘Tell me what hurts.’

‘My leg? My pride?’

‘Idiot. Not your back? Only your legs?’

‘No, my back’s fine—well, in comparison to my legs. The right one, anyway—and, believe me, it’s enough,’ he said, fighting down bile and wondering how the hell Joe was going to get him out. The scream of the saw sounded, and the pressure on his back and ribs eased, but it didn’t take away the other pain.

‘What kind of pain is it?’ Ben was asking. ‘Sharp? Sickening? Dull? Raw? Tender?’

‘No. More—excruciatingly sharp. And sickening, yeah.’

‘Right. Sounds like a fracture.’

‘Feels like it, but I’m not an expert.’

‘Can you feel your foot?’

He gave a choked laugh. ‘All too well.’

‘That’s good.’

Good? Mike snorted and turned his face down, resting his head on the back of his hand and closing his eyes. He felt sick—sick and scared. If he’d died, what would have happened to Fran? Or the farm? Joe couldn’t cope alone, and his father was too old to want to start all over again. He’d just retired, handed over the reins to his sons and put his feet up.

That damn tree had better not fall any further, he thought, and, craning his neck, he saw Joe shifting logs, making a pile under the trunk so it couldn’t roll any further and couldn’t sag any more.

Or that was the theory, but it was so heavy it could probably shift the logs quite easily.

Then he heard a fire engine lumbering down the track, felt the ground tremble under the weight of it, and the tree shifted again. Just a fraction, but enough to make him swear and eye the pile of logs nervously. Would they hold?

‘We need to clear these branches to get the airbags under it,’ someone said, and he could hear people running, and then the sound of the saw, then the weight shifted again and he groaned as pain shafted up his leg.

‘Stop! It’s moving on him. He needs pain relief—where are the paramedics?’ That was Ben.

‘There’s been a big pile-up. All the ambulances are out. They’re having to send one from Plymouth. It’ll be another twenty minutes, and I don’t think we’re going to be able to use the airbags. There isn’t enough room to get them underneath without cutting off the branches, and they’re supporting it. We need to get heavy-lifting gear and it’ll take a while—it’s at the pile-up too.’

Great. Sweat dribbled down his face and into a graze, stinging it. He turned his cheek against his sleeve to wipe it away and caught Ben’s troubled eyes. He smiled reassuringly but for some reason it didn’t work. Nothing to do with the tons of timber hovering over his body just waiting to crash the rest of the way down and kill him…

‘Right. I’ll get Nick.’

Mike heard Ben key in a number, then heard rapid instructions, and a hand came back on his shoulder. ‘Nick’s going to bring some drugs.’

‘Excellent,’ he mumbled. ‘I love drugs. Drugs are good.’ The tree creaked again, and he bit down on his hand and gave a grunt of pain as the fire crew started to shift whatever they could to prop the broken trunk.

‘Fran, come on in, have a seat,’ Kate said, her smile welcoming, and Fran sat down at the desk, her fingers knotted tightly together in her lap.

‘Are you OK?’

She consciously relaxed her hands and smiled back. ‘Fine. So—tell me about this diet.’

‘I’ve got the details here for you.’ Kate straightened up and reached for a sheet of paper, sliding it across the desk towards her. ‘It’s very simple—suggestions, really, for how to include certain things, trace elements and so on which, although probably present in your diet, might not be there in sufficient quantity.’

‘Things?’

‘Zinc, selenium, folic acid, vitamin C. You need Brazil nuts and shitake mushrooms and oysters—not together, obviously,’ she said with a chuckle, and Fran smiled with relief.

‘I wondered how I was going to work them in!’ she said.

‘Well, oysters are out of season at the moment, you’ll have to wait until the end of October if you want local ones, but the mushrooms and Brazil nuts you can get any time. And fruit smoothies. Fruit and veg smoothies—do you eat a lot of fruit and veg?’

‘I do. Mike’s usually crunching an apple and he eats what I give him but he’s not over-fond of salads so he tends to eat cooked veg. He drinks apple juice sometimes—does that count?’

‘Not really, but it makes an excellent base for the smoothies, so make him smoothies with apple juice instead of giving him coffee—it’s hot now, so you’ve got the perfect excuse. And you should both be avoiding having a high caffeine intake as well. It’s been related to delayed conception, so avoid coffee if you can, and also colas, dark chocolate and black tea—that’s not tea without milk, by the way, but any tea that isn’t green, white, fruit or herbal. Oh, and cut out alcohol. It can reduce a man’s sperm count by half.’

‘Good grief. I don’t mind that but I think he’ll kill me if he can’t have tea or coffee! Apart from the odd glass of wine and the occasional apple juice, that’s all he drinks!’

‘He’ll love the smoothies. You can use the veg ones as chilled soups—lovely in the summer. And they’ll do you good as well—boost your vitamin levels. If they help sperm production, they might have a beneficial effect on your ovaries, too. Just try, Fran. If it does nothing else, it’ll improve your general health and make you feel much better. In fact, it’ll do you a power of good to eat something nutritious. You’ve lost too much weight recently, and being underweight can harm your chances of conception—did you know that?’

She shook her head, wondering why they were having this conversation when Mike clearly didn’t even want to spend one night—one miserable, solitary little night!—alone with her, without the dog or his daughter or the endless bloody paperwork to hide behind.

‘Encourage him to take cool showers and not hot baths—does he have baths?’ Kate went on.

‘Sometimes—if he’s been doing something very strenuous and he’s aching. Usually he showers.’

‘What about underpants? Does he wear loose boxers or tight briefs? Because if they’re too tight, the testicles can overheat and that can affect the sperm count as well. The whole design of the scrotum is to allow the testicles to be at a slightly lower temperature, but because we wear clothes and bundle them up nice and tight, they cook a bit. Of course, going commando is the best answer, but I can imagine he might object if you steal all his underwear.’

Fran chuckled. ‘I’ll just steal the tight stuff and tell him it was worn out. To be honest, as long as there’s something in the drawer I don’t think he’d care what it was. I can tell him I had a crisis with the washing machine or the dog ate it or something.’

Or she could just tell him the truth, but the whole thing was irrelevant at the moment. She was hardly going to get pregnant if they didn’t—

‘You need to eat lots of dairy, too,’ Kate was saying, ‘but be careful with the soft cheese and unpasteurised milk products if there’s the slightest possibility you might be pregnant.’

A humourless little huff of laughter escaped from Fran’s mouth. ‘Chance’d be a fine thing.’

Kate clicked her tongue sympathetically. ‘Did you broach the subject of going away?’ she asked gently.

Fran laughed again, but it was just as bad as the last one and utterly unconvincing. She swallowed hard. ‘He’s—He hasn’t got time.’

‘Is that true?’

‘Probably, but if he wanted to, he’d make time—wouldn’t he?’

Kate smiled. ‘Don’t ask me. Men are a mystery.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Fran murmured.

‘So do something romantic at home. Cook a nice meal, put something pretty on…’

‘He’ll think I’ve run up a credit card,’ she said dryly, and then felt saddened that they’d come so far down the line that they’d come to this, her talking about her marriage to a woman she hardly knew, trying to gain insight into her husband’s behaviour. Not to mention her own…

‘Kate, sorry—Ah. Fran. I’m glad you’re here,’ Nick said, his face troubled. ‘Um, I’ve had a call from Ben. Mike’s got a bit of a problem. He was apparently cutting down a tree—’

‘What?’ The word came out soundlessly from lips suddenly numb. She felt the colour drain from her face, her limbs curiously heavy and her heart lumping with dread. She lifted a hand to her mouth. ‘Not the chainsaw…’

‘No—no, a branch rolled onto him and it’s pinning his leg down. Ben’s with him—thinks he’s got a fracture but the ambulances are all out on a big RTA and it’ll take them ages to get to him, so I’m going to pop over there with a bit of pain relief while the fire crew get the branch off him. I’m taking morphine, but I just wondered if we’d got Entonox, Kate.’

‘Yes—I’ll get it. And we’ll come. Come on, Fran, I’ll drive you.’

The props weren’t working. The weight of the upper trunk was too great, and they couldn’t shift enough wood to secure it. The fire crew was gathered round Mike, having a muttered conference that didn’t inspire confidence. He just wanted to get the hell out, and he needed those drugs.

‘I’m going to dig it out,’ Joe said. ‘If I undermine it, under that leg and foot, we can ease him out. The other one’s free.’

‘Sounds like a plan,’ he mumbled, but the fire officer in charge had other ideas.

‘Sorry, I can’t let you get that close,’ he said.

Joe’s reply was pithy and not in the least bit polite, and it made Mike smile. Seconds later he felt him digging, felt Joe’s hands under his leg while Ben supported it, stripping away the shale that was digging into his shin, and then his foot moved a fraction and he let out a whimper as he felt his leg sliding down gradually, away from the weight of the trunk.

He bit down on his lip, knowing it was necessary to dig around his foot so he could wriggle free but not sure he could take it.

Not without pain relief, but Nick was there, bringing him Entonox. He knew about that—Kirsten had had it when she’d been in labour with Sophie, and he sucked greedily on the mouthpiece while Joe tunnelled away like a mole, shifting the stony soil away from his leg and foot while he tried not to yell. Nick was putting something in his hand—some kind of IV set—and then injecting something that made him feel woozy and light-headed.

‘Whazat?’ he mumbled.

‘Morphine, and metaclopromide, to stop you feeling sick from the morphine.’

‘’S lovely,’ he replied. It was. The pain was going, fading a bit, less global.

‘Right, that’s as good as it gets,’ Joe said.

‘OK.’ That was Ben. ‘Mike, can you get your legs out yourself? Just slowly and carefully.’

He took a deep breath of the Entonox, wriggled his left leg free, took another suck of the gas and tried to move.

Pain lanced through him despite the drugs, and he swore viciously, suddenly wide awake. ‘I need a hand, guys,’ he said, sweat beading on his brow. ‘Just pull me out, nice and carefully. I can’t do this myself.’

‘It is free,’ Ben said, feeling round his leg gently. ‘We should be able to do it. It’s a very unstable fracture, though, and I don’t want to drag you. And you need a spinal board.’

‘To hell with that. What I need is to get out of here now,’ he muttered as the tree groaned again. He felt it shift against his calf, and yelled, ‘Just get me—Joe and Nick maybe?—and he could feel Ben’s hands on his leg, steadying it. On the count of three they pulled, he gasped and swore and bit hard on his lip, and then he was free, and they were dragging and lifting him away from the tree while everything went black for a second and he fought the urge to scream with the pain.

As they put him down and shifted him to his back, Fran’s white, terrified face swam into view. He thought she was going to yell at him, but she just smiled a little shakily and said, ‘I didn’t know you knew half of those words.’ And then with a last tortured groan the tree slipped and fell the last few feet with a thundering crash, and she burst into tears.

‘What the hell were you doing down there on your own with the chainsaw?’

He gave a rueful smile, and Fran felt a terrible urge to smack him. She’d hung on as long as she could, but the ‘what the hell’ question just wouldn’t stay locked up any longer, and she sat by his bed in the hospital and clamped her hands together. So she didn’t strangle him, or so they didn’t shake?

She didn’t know. She didn’t care. All she cared about was that Mike was alive—damaged, but alive—and only because Ben, Joe and Nick had got him out when they had.

She and Kate had got there just as he had been yelling at them to pull him out, and she’d watched in horror as his face had blanched and he’d let fly a string of words she’d never heard him use before.

And then the trunk had dropped, right where he’d been lying, and one of the firemen had been lucky to duck out of the way of the flying branches.

It could have been so, so much worse.

Infinitely worse. Unimaginably worse—

‘I’ve done the milking for you, you idle skiver—and can you stick to Monopoly and not pick-up-sticks in future?’ Joe said, walking up behind her and saving him from the strangling he so surely deserved.

‘Hi, Joe,’ she said with a smile of welcome. ‘Give your brother a hard time for me, could you? I’m just going to ring your mother again and let her know they’ve moved him.’

‘She’s here. She and Dad have just pulled into the car park. I told them where to come.’

Ensconced in his hospital bed, Mike groaned. ‘Did you have to? They’ll make such a fuss.’

‘A fuss? A fuss!’ Fran all but shrieked. ‘I’ll give you fuss, Michael Trevellyan! If that tree had fallen a minute earlier—ten seconds, for heaven’s sake—’

‘Michael! Oh, my goodness, are you all right? We came as soon as we heard but we were on our way back from Plymouth and there was a huge tailback because of this accident—’

‘I’m fine, Mum,’ he said, grimacing as he caught sight of his father’s stern face.

‘How many times have I told you—?’ Fran’s father-in-law started, and Fran just smiled, stepped back and left them to it. She didn’t need to strangle him. His parents would do it for her. In the meantime, she might go and get herself a cup of coffee.

‘So how’s the invalid?’ Ben asked as she bumped into him at the ward entrance.

‘Getting an earful from everyone,’ Fran told Ben with a wry smile.

Ben smiled back, but his eyes were gentle with concern, and she felt hers fill again. ‘You OK?’ he asked, and she nodded, then shook her head, then shrugged a little helplessly and laughed, her traitorous eyes welling.

‘I don’t know. Yes. Maybe. At least he’s alive.’

‘He’ll be fine. He’ll be going to Theatre shortly to have it plated, and he’ll be in for a couple of days, then they’ll send him home in a cast to rest.’

‘He’ll be horrible. He’ll be so bored,’ Fran said with a sigh, and Ben raised an eyebrow.

‘So entertain him,’ he said with a smile. ‘He’ll be laid up and fizzing over with all that pent-up energy. I’m sure you’ll be able to find something to do together to alleviate the boredom!’

She felt herself colour slightly, and found a smile. If only, she thought. ‘I’ll buy him a Sudoku book,’ she said, and Ben chuckled.

‘Yeah, right. Like that’ll do it!’ He tipped his head on one side. ‘You going anywhere important?’

‘Yes—to get a coffee,’ she said, wondering if it mattered if she started Kate’s diet a day later and deciding that today justified it. She could have lost Mike—so easily. And today had proved to her beyond any doubt that she wasn’t ready to lose him. Not in any way. There was nothing like staring that dreadful possibility in the face to bring it home to her, so, yes, today justified a delay in the start of the diet, because at the moment whether or not they had a child was way down the list of her priorities.

And Mike—her beloved, darling, infuriating, broken Mike—was right at the top.

‘Mind if I join you?’ Ben was saying. ‘I was just about to make a drink when I called him, and I still haven’t had one yet. I’ll even treat you to a chocolate muffin.’

She laughed. ‘You truly know the way to a woman’s heart,’ she replied, and wondered when she and Mike had last laughed like that, about nothing in particular, just for the sake of laughing. Ages. A lifetime.

But they would again. She’d make sure of it…

CHAPTER FOUR

THEY were sending him home on Friday, and he couldn’t get out of hospital quickly enough.

Not that he’d really known that much about it for the first twenty-four hours, because he’d been in so much pain he’d been drugged up to the eyeballs.

It was the bottom of his fibula where it joined the tibia on the outside of his ankle—the lateral maleolus, or some such bone—that had sheared off, and his fibula was fractured again just above the ankle joint. Such a skinny little bone to cause so much pain, although the ligaments between the two bones hadn’t ripped. This, apparently, was a good thing, or it would have been ages before he could bear weight.

Even so, he’d have to be in a cast for weeks.

Fabulous. In the summer, when he relied on the longer hours of daylight to do all those endless jobs about the farm that he couldn’t simply do in the dark. Hedging, fencing, repairing the fabric of the buildings—cutting up fallen trees?

But on the bright side, luckily the skin hadn’t broken. It seemed a very slight thing to worry about, considering they’d had to cut it open anyway, but apparently it made a great difference to the sort of repair they could do, and it meant it could be plated and screwed, and he didn’t have to have an external fixator.

Thank God, because there was no way he could work on the farm with a metal frame on the outside of his leg and pins going through into the bone, carrying filth and infection right into the heart of the injury. And, anyway, even the sight of them made him feel sick. There were several people in the orthopaedic ward with them on, and others in traction, even one screwed into a special revolving frame, bolts into his head and shoulders and hips and legs…

Hideous. God only knows what it must feel like to be in there, he thought, but the man didn’t seem to be aware of too much. That had to be a good thing—probably the only good thing, if the drawn faces of his relatives were anything to go by.

He glanced across at the man. On second thoughts, maybe it wasn’t a good thing. He discovered he was extremely grateful he wasn’t in so bad a way that he wasn’t aware of his surroundings, never mind his ankle.

Although he felt all too aware of it most of the time, and he was desperate for a good night’s sleep in his own bed, with soft cotton sheets, their lovely down duvet and his own pillow.

And Fran.

God, he missed her. She’d been in to visit him each evening, but it wasn’t enough, and he couldn’t believe he’d been so reluctant to go away with her this coming weekend for the night. He’d give his eye teeth for the chance to do it now, he thought, lying there waiting for someone to come and discharge him.

And then Ben strolled in, hitched his hip onto the edge of the bed and grinned. ‘Want to cut loose?’

‘Oh, do I ever!’ he said fervently. ‘Got the power to spring me?’

‘Absolutely. Well, not really, but I’ve just seen your consultant and he’s happy to lose you. They’re just filling in the paperwork, and I thought, as I’ve got the afternoon off, I’d give you a lift—unless you’re organised?’

He shook his head. ‘No, not at all. I was going to ring my father or my brother, but I haven’t done that yet. I’m supposed to be getting a lesson on my crutches.’

‘Yeah, the physio’s on her way. I’ll get them to give me a call when you’re done, and I’ll get you out of here.’

‘You’re a star. Cheers.’

‘My pleasure.’

It took another hour, but finally he was ready to go, and Ben came up, put him into a wheelchair and trundled him out into the fresh air. He dragged in a great lungful of it, closed his eyes and sighed hugely. ‘Oh, that feels so good. You can’t imagine what it’s like when you’re used to being outside all the time, to be cooped up in there without feeling the wind in your hair and the sun on your face. I just kept telling myself I was lucky not to be six feet under.’

‘Shouldn’t think you needed to,’ Ben said dryly, pushing him through the car park to his BMW. ‘I would have thought you’d got Fran doing that for you, on the minute every minute. She was beside herself, you know, when she realised how dangerous it might have been.’

Mike gave a rusty chuckle. ‘She wasn’t alone. When I heard that tree go—well, let’s just say I won’t be taking chances like that again.’

‘Good. I’m glad to hear it, and I’m sure she will be. Right, shift across and I’ll get rid of the wheels while you settle yourself.’

Easier said than done, he realised. God, how could anything so simple be so profoundly awkward? It took him ages, while Ben stood holding the wheelchair and telling him to take his time.

But so much? Finally there, he slumped back in the seat, his skin breaking out in a cold sweat, and concentrated on getting his breath back. Not easy with his ribs screaming in protest.

He was shocked at how hard he’d found it, how even such a comparatively minor injury could have taken such a toll on him. And once he was at home, he’d have to go up and down stairs. How the hell was he going to manage that? And bathing, for crying out loud. He’d have to shower with his leg in a bin bag.

He gave the cast a jaundiced look and wondered for the umpteenth time how he could have been so stupid. It was going to be weeks before he was fixed—months, even. Certainly a couple of weeks before he could do anything even remotely useful on the farm. Even the dreaded paperwork would be too much for him at the moment.

He swore under his breath, hauled his broken leg into the car, swung the comparatively uninjured one in beside it and eyed the bruises with disgust.

Pity he couldn’t have worn trousers to hide them a bit, but he didn’t have any that would go over the cast, so he was wearing shorts and a T-shirt and his Technicolor injuries were all on display.

Well, not quite all of them. His body under the clothes was also black and blue all over, a million points of pain and mutilation. He’d caught a glimpse of the bruises over his cracked ribs in the bathroom mirror this morning and had nearly had a fit. Fran would take one look at him in the nude and run, if she had any sense. Probably just as well, because he didn’t have the strength to argue with her about how stupid he’d been and just now she wasn’t wasting a single opportunity to lecture him.

He closed his eyes and dropped his head back against the seat. He just wanted her to come home and hug him. He’d missed her so much, and his family had all been in telling him off, so their visiting times had hardly been cosy, intimate occasions.

‘Come on, Ben,’ he muttered. ‘Take me home.’

As if he’d heard him, Ben opened the driver’s door, slid behind the wheel and shot him a smile. ‘Sorry about that. Somebody wanted the chair and then couldn’t manage to get her husband into it. As he was having a heart attack, I didn’t feel I could leave them.’

‘Of course not,’ Mike said, trying for a smile and probably producing a grimace.

‘Right, let’s get you home.’

He hadn’t heard anything so good in ages.

‘Mike?’

Fran ran lightly up the stairs, crept down the landing and pushed open the bedroom door, tiptoeing round the bed so she could see his face.

He was fast asleep, his lashes dark crescents against his cheeks. He looked pale under his tan, drained of warmth, and she bit her lip and blinked back tears. He looked awful. Washed out and exhausted, and it made her want to cry.

She’d been fighting the urge since it had happened, moaning at him about being stupid when all she’d really wanted to do was curl up in his arms and howl her eyes out.

She backed away, meaning to leave him alone, but her foot hit the creaky board and his lids fluttered open, those gorgeous brown eyes fixed on hers.

‘Hi.’

‘Hi,’ she replied softly, perching carefully on the edge of the bed and giving him a shaky smile. ‘Welcome home.’

His answering smile was tired but contented. ‘Thanks. It’s good to be back.’

‘How long have you been home?’

He glanced at his watch. ‘Two hours? Ben gave me a lift.’

‘Ben?’ she echoed, surprised. ‘That was kind of him. I thought Joe or your father would do it.’

Mike shrugged. ‘He was there, he offered, and they were busy.’

‘Can I get you anything—a drink?’

He shook his head, his eyes intense. ‘Not yet. The first thing I want is a hug from my wife without an audience.’

‘Oh, Mike…’

She kicked off her shoes, lifted the quilt and slid carefully under it, turning towards him as his arms reached for her and he gathered her up against his chest with a sigh. She breathed deeply, drawing in the scent of him, a strange mixture of hospital and warm, earthy man, and she squeezed her eyes shut and slid her arms carefully round him and hugged him.

He grunted, and she froze, lifting her arms away. ‘Mike?’

‘It’s OK. I’ve got a few bruised ribs.’

She lifted the quilt back and propped herself up, staring down at the vicious bruises over his side and back, a huge spreading stain of vivid, deepest purple where the branch had fallen on him, the bruises so many they’d all run together in a great blotchy sheet. She hadn’t seen them before, because he’d been in a T-shirt and boxers in the hospital, but now, with his T-shirt removed and just the boxers on, she could see them, and they brought tears to her eyes.

‘Bruised?’ she questioned sceptically, a give-away shake in her voice. ‘Is that what you call it? Just…bruised?’

His smile was a little crooked. ‘Well, the odd rib might be cracked.’

She shut her eyes again and lay down, keeping her arms well away from his ribs, one hand lightly resting on his shoulder, her face cradled against his chest. It rose and fell slowly, then stopped, and she looked up and saw his lips pressed hard together.

‘What is it? Are you OK? Where do you hurt?’ she asked, panicking, and he turned his head and stared at her, his eyes raw with emotion.

‘It’s just so good to be home—to hold you,’ he said, and she was stunned to hear a catch in his voice. ‘I’ve missed you.’

‘Oh, Mike…’ She broke off, the words dammed up behind the tears, and she lifted a hand to his cheek, letting it linger as she feathered a kiss over his lips. ‘I’ve missed you, too,’ she said, knowing that they weren’t just talking about this last two nights but the months and months before, the aching void since things had been good between them, natural and relaxed and just plain happy.

A sob broke free, and his arms tightened around her, easing her closer. ‘Don’t cry,’ he murmured gruffly. ‘I can’t bear it when you cry. It tears me apart.’

‘You could have died,’ she whispered, her chest shuddering, and his arms squeezed tighter.

‘But I didn’t, and I’m home now. Stay with me, just for a while. Dad’s here, doing the milking, and Joe and Sarah have still got Brodie—it’s just us, Fran, and we don’t have to do anything or be anywhere. So stay with me. Let me hold you—just for a little while.’

It had been so long since he’d held her that she’d have been happy to stay there for ever. He didn’t need to talk her into it. She tilted her head and kissed him again. ‘Just for a while,’ she agreed, and, closing her eyes, let herself relax against him.

She was asleep.

It felt so good to hold her after all this time, but he needed the bathroom, and he didn’t think he could get up without help. He couldn’t bear to disturb her, though.

Not that they could stay there for long, because he could hear his mother moving around in the kitchen, and his father would have finished milking now. With a sigh he bent his head and brushed his lips against her cheek.

‘Wake up, darling,’ he murmured.

‘Mmm,’ she said, snuggling closer and ignoring him.

‘Fran, I need a pee and I can’t get up when you’re holding me.’ He probably couldn’t get up at all, but they’d cross that bridge when they got to it.

She eased away, lifting herself up on one arm and turning back the quilt, her eyes widening as he sat up with his back towards her and she saw the full extent of his bruises. Her lips pressed together but she didn’t say a word, just slid out of bed and came round to his side, moving the quilt the rest of the way off him and helping him shuffle forwards to the edge of the bed.

‘Stay there for a moment, give yourself time,’ she said, and handed him a clean T-shirt. ‘Here, put this on. You don’t want to frighten your mother to death.’ When he’d carefully eased his way into it, trying not to wince, she gave him his crutches. ‘OK?’

He nodded, shifted his weight to his left foot and the crutches and stood up carefully. Hell. He was still wobbly, and she was so tiny that if he started to go he’d crush her.

He gave it another second, then tried a step. Fran reached up, steadying him by the shoulders as he adjusted his weight and swung slowly forwards on the crutches. OK. So far, so good. He took another step, then another, and he was at the bathroom door in a few more steps without incident.

‘Can you manage?’ she asked, and only his pride made him say yes.

‘I’ll be fine,’ he assured her with more confidence than he felt.

‘OK. I’ll go and put the kettle on.’

‘Great. I could kill a decent cup of tea,’ he said. Shutting the bathroom door, he leant on it quickly before he fell over. Damn.

Triple damn with a cherry on top.

He eyed the loo in disgust. Who on earth had decided to put it right on the other side of the bathroom?

‘How is he?’

Fran shook her head, sat down at the kitchen table and smiled unsteadily at his mother, still ridiculously close to tears after watching him struggle to the bathroom. ‘OK, I suppose, but he’s very sore. I didn’t realise—I thought it was just his legs, but it’s everywhere. He says he might have a cracked rib.’

Joy nodded. ‘Joseph said there was a big branch across his back. He was lucky—’

She broke off, biting her lip, and Fran realised she wasn’t the only one who’d been through hell. And it was so stupid!

But she wasn’t going to fight with him any more about it, or tell him off. He was well aware of how close he’d come—he had to be, he wasn’t an idiot. Although how anyone as clever as him could be so frustratingly dense was incredible.

His father, Russell, came in, followed by Sarah and Brodie, and then Joe, shucking off his overalls and grinning at her.

‘You look a bit rumpled,’ he said, and she ran a hand through her hair and smiled self-consciously, colour warming her cheeks.

‘I just lay down next to him for a minute and fell asleep,’ she said, oddly embarrassed to have been caught napping with her own husband, but Sarah hugged her as if she understood.

‘Are you OK?’

‘I am now he’s home. He’s in the loo—I must go and help him back to bed.’

But he was there, in the doorway, as white as a sheet and fending off Brodie with one hand while he leant heavily against the doorframe.

‘So where’s that tea, then?’ he said, cracking a smile. ‘I don’t know, five of you in the kitchen and the kettle isn’t even on.’

‘We were just debating on the slowest and most painful way to kill you,’ Joe said mildly, scrubbing his hands in the sink. ‘I’ve cleared the slurry pit.’

‘I can tell—I can smell it on you,’ Mike said, wrinkling his nose.

‘The lengths some people will go to to get out of the worst jobs,’ Joe quipped, and, shaking his hands, he wiped them on his jeans and gave his brother a crooked smile. ‘Take a pew, for God’s sake, before you fall down.’

He pulled a chair out, steered his brother towards it and propped his broken leg on another chair while Joy put the kettle on. Fran moved to his side, laying her hand gently on his shoulder, afraid to hurt him until her mental map of his bruises was more accurate, but he just tilted his head and smiled at her, covered her hand with his and squeezed her fingers.

In the busy, crowded kitchen you would have thought such a tiny gesture would go unnoticed, but suddenly you could have heard a pin drop. Everyone stopped talking and stared at them, then looked away, finding things to do, a burst of conversation ending the brief, deafening silence.

Was it really so strange that she should go to him, that he should touch her, that his entire family had stopped in their tracks and stared?

Evidently it was.

Mike, looking up at her, hadn’t even noticed, but she had, and it made her wish they’d all go away. Their marriage felt so fragile at the moment; they needed to work on it, to find out if they had anything left, to piece together, slowly and painstakingly, the fragments of their love, and she wasn’t sure she could do that under the penetrating gaze of their relations.

Because what if, like Humpty Dumpty, they couldn’t put it together again? If, at the end, they found there simply weren’t enough pieces left to make it work…?

They had to make it work. Anything else was unthinkable. And so, burying her natural reticence, she bent her head and kissed him. It was the merest touch of her lips to his, but it was a sign, and a promise, and his eyes met hers and held them for a long moment. Then he squeezed her hand again where it rested on his shoulder, and the world started to breathe once more…

CHAPTER FIVE

‘SHALL I sleep in the spare room?’

Mike looked up, frowning, but Fran’s eyes were unreadable. ‘You don’t have to do that.’

‘I didn’t want to crowd you. With your foot—if I hit it in the night, I might hurt you.’

‘You won’t hurt me. It’s all pinned and plated, Fran—it’s not going anywhere. You’re more likely to stub your toe on the cast.’

‘But what about your ribs? If I shift around…’

‘You won’t. You never disturb me. Anyway,’ he added, sure that there was more to it than just concern about hurting him but not knowing what, or how to deal with it, just that he had to keep her with him come hell or high water, ‘what if I need to get up in the night? I might need help.’

For the longest moment she hesitated, then with a tiny, almost imperceptible sigh her shoulders sagged in defeat and she nodded.

‘You’re right. I’ll try and keep out of your way.’

‘You’re not in my way,’ he said, feeling a wave of relief at her submission. He’d really thought she was going to sleep in another room, and it had scared the living daylights out of him.

It was the thin end of the wedge, the beginning of the end, and for all they were hovering on the brink, he couldn’t let it go that far. Not yet. Not now. Hopefully not ever.

He was curiously reluctant to let her out of reach, even though he’d actively avoided her for months. But he’d better not scare her off. Shucking off his dressing-gown and letting the new, loose boxers she’d got him that fitted over his cast fall down around his ankles, he kicked them carefully away and lay down, wondering if he could find a position that didn’t hurt his leg and then deciding that it was his leg and not the position that hurt, and it wouldn’t frankly matter if he hung the damn thing out of the window…

‘You haven’t had your painkillers, have you?’ she said, and he wondered if she was a mind-reader.

‘I didn’t think I needed them,’ he lied. He knew perfectly well he needed them, but they made everything blurred at the edges and he was worried he’d say or do something—

What? Something affectionate? Romantic?

Desperate?

Damn. Perhaps he should have kept the boxers on.

She handed him the pills and a glass of water, and he swallowed them down. What the hell. He’d just lie with his back to her and keep his hands to himself and his mouth shut, and hopefully he’d be asleep soon…

He was restless.

Fran lay awake beside him, keeping a careful distance and wondering how much pain he was in.

A lot. He must be. She’d seen the X-rays, seen the metal framework holding his leg together, seen the screws that went right into the bones…

It made her feel sick just to think about it, sick and scared and as if she wanted to gather him up against her and hold him close, to ease it, to take away the pain in any way she could.

Except she couldn’t take it away, of course, and, besides, he’d lain down with his back firmly towards her, discouraging any repeat of their earlier cuddle. But then he mumbled something in his sleep, and she reached out a hand and laid it gently on his side, and he sighed softly and went quiet.

Comforted by her presence? She felt a tear leak out of the corner of one eye. She’d missed him so much. He’d only been gone two nights, but they’d been lonely and endless. Crazy when, apart from their earlier hug, they’d hardly even touched each other by accident in bed recently, never mind deliberately, but nevertheless she’d missed his presence there.

He murmured again, and she moved closer, curling her body behind his and snuggling up, her hand resting lightly on his hip, afraid to wake him. But the painkillers must be keeping him under because he didn’t stir, just sighed and relaxed against her, the tension she hadn’t even been aware of seeping out of him, and she felt her own tension dissipate into the night.

Her eyes drifting shut, she laid her cheek against his shoulder and fell asleep…

He woke to find her curled around him.

It was his leg that had woken him—that and the ribs he was lying on—and he really needed to turn over, but she was in the way and he couldn’t bear to wake her.

She’d move away—he knew that, knew she must have ended up lying against him by accident, because, God knows, apart from their cuddle when she’d got home from work and the briefest of brief kisses in the kitchen, if there’d been a way to avoid it she hadn’t touched him in ages. There could have been chainlink fencing down the middle of the bed since April for all the difference it would have made, they’d kept so strictly to their own sides of the bed.

He straightened his leg a fraction and, as if she’d read his mind again, she shifted away, giving him room.

‘You OK?’

‘Mmm. Just need to move my leg.’

‘Sorry.’ She scooted across to the far side of the bed, and he rolled carefully over towards her.

‘Better?’

‘Mmm,’ he said again. Better, but too far from her. He lifted a hand, almost reached for her, then, letting his breath out on a silent sigh, he lowered his hand back to the mattress. No. Too dangerous. He didn’t trust himself, and the last thing he wanted to do was drive her away.

He shifted a fraction, trying to get comfortable, and listened to the sound of her breathing. It took her ages to fall asleep again, and he wondered if she was listening to him breathe as well, so he deliberately slowed his respiration rate down and after a few more minutes he heard a subtle change in hers as she slid into sleep.

But it wasn’t a happy sleep. She was restless, murmuring, and he reached out a hand. Should he?

Yes.

This time, he let himself touch her, let his fingers curl over the slender, fragile curve of her shoulder, and with a contented little sigh she wriggled backwards until she was touching him, the soft roundness of her bottom brushing his thighs, her back against his chest, and she relaxed again.

Lucky her. He didn’t. He couldn’t.

It had been so long since he’d touched her. She was wearing a nightshirt, not much more than a long T-shirt, and it had ridden up so that the soft, bare skin of her bottom was against his legs, silky smooth and unbelievably arousing; he ached to rest his hand on her thigh, to slide it up and round her slender, tiny waist, up over her ribs, curling his fingers round to cup one of her small, firm breasts in his palm—

His body reacted instantly, and he felt his erection brush against her, sending shockwaves racing through him. Dear God, he wanted her. Wanted to hold her, touch her, bury himself in her, but he couldn’t. Couldn’t risk it. Couldn’t put her in that position again.

He shifted his hips, pulling back away from her, but she followed him, her bottom bumping against his penis, and then he heard a soft gasp as she came suddenly, instantly awake.

Fran froze.

What the hell was she doing? Snuggling against him, her back against his chest, her bottom spooned—oh, lord. She couldn’t move away. If she moved, he might know she was awake, and if she didn’t…

If she didn’t, and he reached out for her again, wanted to make love to her—could she do that? Let him? After so long, she really wasn’t sure, wasn’t sure at all that she could let him touch her, kiss her…

She felt the brush of his erection again, felt the stillness in his body and knew he was awake. Awake, and aroused, and waiting for her to make the next move.

Oh, dear God. She couldn’t deal with this. Her emotions were too close to the surface, and if he touched her, all hell might break loose. So she faked a mumble, shifted away, rolling onto her front with her head turned away from him, and after an endless moment she heard him sigh.

Had she fooled him? She closed her eyes, squeezing them shut against the threatening tears, and after a few more minutes she heard the rustle of the quilt, felt the mattress shift and heard him grunt with pain as he sat up.

What was she to do? Pretend he’d disturbed her and get up and help him? Stay put with her eyes closed and listen out for him until he’d got down the corridor to the bathroom?

He was naked. If he was still aroused…

She stayed put, her ears straining as he picked up the crutches, took a step, swore softly and moved again. The bedroom door was open and as he went unsteadily down the corridor, she turned her head and watched him until he was in the bathroom.

The door closed softly, and she dropped her face into the pillow and sighed. What now? Pretend she’d been asleep? If she was a decent wife she’d get up and make him a drink, but that would mean talking to him, and she felt awkward—gauche and nervous and oddly apprehensive. What if he said something about it?

What if he knew she’d been awake?

Oh, why on earth had she wriggled up against him? Because she had, of course. She’d been right on her side of the bed after he’d rolled towards her, and when she’d woken, she’d been slap in the middle, her bottom rammed firmly up against him—as in, Sit on my lap and we’ll talk about the first thing that comes up, she thought, and groaned with embarrassment.

No wonder he’d had an erection. He’d have to be dead not to react to that, whether he’d wanted her or not. He was a relatively young man after all, fit and healthy and in the prime of his life. And it had been literally months since they’d made love. After such a long time, he’d surely react to anything female.

He came back to bed, and she heard the crackle of the pill packet, heard the swallow as he took his painkillers, felt the mattress dip slightly as he lay down with a muffled groan.

She cracked an eye open. He was lying on his back, staring at the ceiling with one arm flung up over his head.

‘Fran?’

His voice was soft, little more than a breath, but she ignored it, afraid to answer, afraid to open that Pandora’s box.

After an age, he sighed quietly, the arm settling over his eyes, and eventually a soft snore heralded his slide into sleep.

She wasn’t so lucky. Every cell of her body was aware of him, every breath he took, every slight shift, every grunt. She daren’t relax, daren’t go to sleep in case she ended up curling into his side. So she lay awake, staring at the ceiling and listening to him breathe, until the sky lightened and she could creep away…

Mike woke alone.

Odd, that. He was always the first to wake, the first to get up, the last to come to bed. He was never alone in bed.

He hated it.

He had no idea where Fran was, what she was doing, and how she’d greet him when he finally caught up with her.

He thought back to the night, to the way she’d recoiled from him, pretending to be asleep and rolling away from him—because she had pretended, she had been awake, and in the end he’d had to get up and move around or he’d have screamed with frustration.

So he’d gone to the bathroom, and the pain in his leg had dealt with his untimely arousal, and he’d gone back to bed and stared at the ceiling for ages while Fran had lain rigid beside him and feigned sleep. Again.

He swore, softly and comprehensively. Where on earth did they go from here?

The kitchen would be a good start. He could hear voices, and he got up, slowly and carefully, and struggled into his boxers. He didn’t bother with his dressing-gown. It was hot today, and he needed a shower. Maybe Joe was about.

He made his way slowly and carefully downstairs, shuffling down on his bottom because he’d been warned in no uncertain terms not to put any weight through his leg yet—not that he needed warning. Even resting it on the floor made it ache like hell.

The kitchen, when he eventually got there, was rammed again. It had obviously become Party Central since his accident, he decided, and discovered that he was relieved, because otherwise he’d have to deal with Fran without anyone to run interference.

Except she wasn’t there.

‘Morning.’

They looked up, Joe and his father from breakfast, his mother from the sink, Sarah from sorting a pile of vegetables by the fridge. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘Fran’s gone over to the shop to get some fruit. Joe, shove up, let him sit down. Want a cup of tea, Mike?’

‘Um—thanks,’ he said, sinking gratefully into the chair Joe had vacated and stretching his leg out cautiously. Brodie propped herself against the other one and gazed soulfully up at him as if she couldn’t understand why he’d deserted her. He rubbed her behind her ears, and she washed his hand, her eyes still on him anxiously. Sarah brought his tea over, set it down and stared at him open-mouthed.

‘Wow,’ she said, and his brother grunted.

‘That’s my brother you’re eyeing up,’ he reminded her, and she laughed.

‘Really? I thought he was a refugee from a film set. The last time I saw bruises like that was a post-mortem in a forensic science drama. Impressive. You ought to take photos.’

‘Don’t overdo the sympathy,’ Mike said, but he was smiling, knowing that in her way Sarah was telling him how sorry she was that he was hurt. ‘Any more of that bacon, Mum?’

She dragged her eyes from his side and tried for a smile. ‘Coming up. Want it in a sandwich?’

‘Lovely. With an egg in it. You’re a star.’

And then Fran was back, with a box full of fruit, and he stared at it in surprise. ‘Is that all close to its sell-by date?’ he asked. They often got a surplus of one kind of fruit or another, but not normally so much at once unless it had been over-ordered, and they tried not to do that. It dented profits.

But to his surprise she coloured a little and put the box down on the side. ‘There was a lot and I just thought it looked nice,’ she said, avoiding his eyes. ‘Fruit’s good for you, and I’ve got some cheese and yoghurt as well. You need all those vitamins and minerals to help you mend and build your strength up.’

What for? he thought. What have you got in mind for me? Because it’s clearly not sex…

He felt his body reacting at the thought, and regretted leaving his dressing-gown upstairs, but his mother put the sandwich down in front of him and he leant forwards, giving himself a bit of privacy until he got his crazed libido under control. Hell, he must be nuts, but all he could think about was her bottom, soft and warm and snuggled up to him…

She bent over, putting the fruit in the fridge, and he was treated to the curve in question, her jeans, loose now since she’d lost weight, pulling taut as she bent and giving him a tempting view of the very part of her that was giving him so much trouble.

He yanked his eyes off her and concentrated on not dribbling the softly fried egg down his chest.

‘You around for a while?’ he asked Joe around a mouthful of sandwich.

‘Why?’

‘I need a shower.’

Joe arched a brow. ‘Long time since we shared a shower,’ he said dryly, and Mike felt himself colour.

‘I don’t want to share it with you, you jackass. I need someone to grab me when I fall over, and Fran’s too little. I’d squash her.’

Joe looked disbelieving, but he shrugged and nodded. ‘I can give you a hand. Be more fun with Fran, though.’

He felt himself colour again, his neck reddening, and his hands itched to strangle Joe. Not that his brother realised he was being tactless. How could he? Only they knew their marriage was in tatters.

‘Don’t tease him, Joe,’ their mother said gently, and Mike heard something else in her tone. A warning? A warning to tread softly?

So maybe their problems weren’t as private as he’d thought.

Damn.

He pushed the plate away. ‘That was lovely, Mum. Thanks. Right, Joe, are you ready? I don’t want to hold you up, I know you’ve got loads to do.’

‘Tell me about it,’ Joe said, dropping his mug into the sink and handing his brother the crutches. ‘Come on, then, Hopalong, let’s get you scrubbed. Pity we haven’t still got the sheep-dip.’

‘Ha-ha. I need a bin bag and some elastic bands,’ he said, and while Joe found those, he headed upstairs the same way he’d come down.

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