LITMIR.BIZ

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blackbird, and then began following the narrow, meandering path towards the small gate she could see ahead of her. Opening it, she stepped through into the garden proper. The manicured lawn, courtesy of an excellent gardener, looked almost emerald after the morning’s rain. A riotous profusion of flowers bordered each side, spilling lazily across the paths, and led the eye towards the old red-brick house before her. Grays Manor. Envy was as foreign to her nature as greed, but this house generated it in her. The first time she had seen it she had wanted it to be hers. Dream on.

      With a wry smile she began walking along the path, past the French doors that stood slightly open, until she came to another wrought-iron gate. Pushing it open, she entered the paved courtyard. A vintage car stood before the old stable block. A pair of long legs protruded horizontally from the left-hand side—and the baby was crawling determinedly towards a cat that was lazily sunning itself beside a tub of geraniums.

      ‘Hello, pumpkin,’ she greeted softly, and the baby, presumably knowing he was about to be thwarted, increased his pace towards his goal. With a laugh in her eyes, she walked across to the car and gently touched her foot to one protruding leg. And no one would ever know, she thought pensively, how such a small action could set her heart beating into overdrive. With no hint of how she was feeling in her voice, she asked quietly, ‘Should that baby be crawling out here unattended?’

      There was the thump of a head hitting the bottom of the car, a curse, and then the rapid emergence of the mechanic. Dark tousled hair, a filthy face, hands covered in black grease, one of which held a spanner. Dark eyes surveyed her with languid interest before he turned his head to watch the baby.

      ‘He’s investigating,’ Adam drawled. ‘He won’t come to any harm. Lydia’s watching him, and you’re late.’

      ‘Traffic was bad,’ she said mildly. Checking to see that the housekeeper really was watching him, she walked on. Some days were better than others. Some days she could get through all their working hours without actually wanting to touch him. And some days she couldn’t. With a determination she sometimes found quite frightening, she firmly dismissed the matter.

      Reaching the side door of the house, which stood open, she walked quietly inside. A feeling of age enveloped her, of centuries past, and she breathed in the heady aroma of polish and musk and antiquity. A baby-gate was fixed incongruously across the bottom of the beautiful staircase.

      ‘I love this house,’ she murmured.

      ‘You can’t afford it,’ Adam said from behind her.

      ‘Yet,’ she said softly, and he laughed.

      Turning, she watched him wiping his hands on an oily rag. She wasn’t quite sure which was doing the best job of transferring the grease. ‘I forgot to take the device to open the front gates,’ she informed him, ‘and so I had to leave my car in the lane and walk round the back.’

      He grunted.

      ‘But if I hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t have found the secret garden. It’s beautiful.’

      ‘It’s a mess.’

      She smiled again. ‘You have no soul.’ Her heels clipped on the tiled floor as she walked into the room on the left, and then she halted. Boxes littered the floor; files were stacked on the desk, the chair, and on one of the filing cabinets. Paper spewed from the fax machine and the computer was buried beneath the pink sheets of the Financial Times. Turning, she gave Adam a look of admonishment.

      ‘Neville sent down the rest of the papers I needed,’ he told her indolently as he leaned in the doorway. ‘I’ll clear them away later.’

      ‘Your accountant knows very well that the information is on disk,’ she countered mildly. ‘We don’t need paper.’

      ‘I do. What did they say?’

      ‘Two weeks.’

      He waited, eyes amused.

      She gave a slow smile. ‘You know me too well.’ In fact, he didn’t know her at all. There was a clunk from behind him, and they both turned to look. With a little tsk, Adam bent down to remove the radiator cap from the baby’s fist. ‘No,’ he said firmly.

      Nathan beamed at him and crawled energetically towards Claris. Using her legs as an aid, little fingers pinching into the flesh, causing her to wince, he climbed to his feet and stared up at her. His scrutiny was as intense as hers. And then he laughed and tugged on her skirt. Dropping her large handbag, she bent to scoop him up and into her arms, and then gave a little grunt of pain as he dug his feet into her waist and proceeded to try and climb higher. All attempts at restraint failed.

      ‘You’re a pickle,’ she told him. ‘And don’t pull my hair.’

      ‘Dib, dib.’

      She grinned, and he suddenly lunged forward, mouth open to reveal a row of tiny teeth. Quickly jerking backwards, she gently placed him back on the floor. ‘Piranha,’ she scolded.

      ‘How well do I know you?’ he prompted.

      ‘Well enough to know that your replacement printer will be here tomorrow.’

      ‘And if it wasn’t?’ he asked softly.

      ‘Then the order would be cancelled and we would go somewhere else.’ There was a slithering sound and she turned quickly to see the pile of files on the chair slowly topple.

      Adam was faster, and scooped the baby out of the way of the avalanche just in time. She took Nathan from him before he could get grease all over the baby, and put him down the other side of the desk. Like a needle to a magnet, he headed straight for the bookcase.

      ‘And?’

      ‘And I would make very sure that their reputation suffered,’ she added as she headed in the same direction. ‘I’m a very good—negotiator.’ The bookcase wasn’t fixed to the wall, and she held it steady as the baby hauled himself upright and put one foot on the bottom shelf—from where the books had all been removed. Yesterday. In haste. ‘Did you really expect me to fail?’

      ‘No. You’re a very resourceful lady.’

      ‘Clever,’ she corrected with a grin. ‘The word is “clever”. No,’ she added softly.

      Nathan looked at her, looked at the bookcase, thumped to his bottom and went to investigate the wastepaper basket instead.

      ‘We’ll have to—’ she began.

      ‘We?’

      Pursing her lips, eyes alight with self-mockery, she corrected, ‘I will have to get someone to screw it to the wall. I called in at the hospital,’ she added quietly. ‘No change. I said you’d be in later.’

      He nodded.

      Her eyes on the baby, she said, ‘He’s adjusted very well, hasn’t he? It’s only when he wakes up…It breaks my heart,’ she added softly, ‘to see the look of expectancy on his face, as though this time it will be his mother, but then he smiles…He’s such a happy baby.’

      ‘I thought you didn’t like babies?’ he mocked softly.

      ‘I didn’t say I didn’t like them; I said I didn’t know anything about them. Has he had his lunch?’

      He nodded again.

      ‘Then I’ll take him up for his nap.’ Scooping up the baby, she walked out. Hitching up her skirt, she climbed over the baby-gate and walked slowly upstairs. And, almost against her will, the feel of the warm, squirmy body in her arms woke something inside that she thought would never again entirely sleep. She’d never had very much to do with babies, and would have said, even as little as a week ago, that she wasn’t maternal. And yet this energetic little scrap was beginning to tug on her heartstrings as no one else ever had.

      Gently stroking his hair, she walked into his bedroom and laid him in his cot. ‘Go to sleep,’ she ordered softly as she bent to give him a kiss. Putting a light blanket over him, she smiled into the big

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