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nose.

      ‘I’ve had worse things in my mouth.’

      ‘Now there’s a challenge,’ grinned Tom.

      ‘Not only do you have a tongue that smells like the gutter, you’ve got a mind that’s already there.’

      Tom glided his body over towards Holly, sliding his hand across her torso and then slipping his legs between hers. It was a well-rehearsed and familiar manoeuvre that placed him over her and left Holly breathless.

      ‘I can talk dirty, if you want me to,’ Tom offered.

      Holly wrapped her arms around his neck before letting her fingers trail down his spine. Hidden beneath the shadow of Tom’s body, Holly could only sense the dappling of morning light as it played across his back.

      ‘How dirty?’

      ‘Well . . .’ Tom said. He drew out the word with a teasing hiss, then he smiled, or was it a smirk? ‘I’m not talking five-year plans here.’

      ‘I should hope not,’ replied Holly. She was watching the curves of his mouth intently, the dampness of his lips, the glimpse of his tongue. She pushed her body towards him, encouraging him on.

      ‘Oh, no,’ Tom said, ignoring her blatant desire. ‘I’m not even talking seven years.’ He kissed her nose. ‘Not even ten.’

      Holly tangled her fingers in the luxurious waves of his hair. She reached up to kiss him but he moved his head away. He hadn’t finished teasing her yet.

      ‘I might be talking twenty years here. Hell, no, I’m perverted enough to even count on forty.’

      ‘You have a sick mind, Tom Corrigan,’ agreed Holly. Her body was tingling with anticipation and she writhed beneath him. She could tease too.

      ‘I want a plan that takes us right up to our dotage, in this house, surrounded by our family, our children, our children’s children and maybe even our children’s children’s children.’

      For a fraction of a second, Holly’s body froze. Then she blinked hard in an attempt to push away the fear that had fluttered across her eyes. She forced a smile, hoping that Tom hadn’t noticed her reaction, hoping that she could resurrect the moment, but the air in her ballooning passion had well and truly popped.

      ‘What?’ Tom asked with a quizzical look that pierced Holly’s heart. ‘Does the thought of children terrify you so much?’

      ‘No,’ lied Holly.

      ‘Yes, it does,’ insisted Tom. He leaned his body over to her right side, resting his arms. The moment for passion had most definitely been lost.

      ‘I want children,’ insisted Holly. ‘It’s just the being a mother part that I struggle with.’

      ‘You want to give me children. That’s different from wanting them yourself,’ corrected Tom, his tone a mixture of concern and frustration. ‘And you can and will be a good mum. It’s not hereditary, you know.’

      Tom was, of course, referring to her childhood. Holly was the product of a broken home, broken long before the bitter divorce that followed. Her mother had left home when Holly was only eight years old, but rather than feel abandoned, she had actually felt relief. Her mother had had a perverse attitude to motherhood and replaced love with cruelty, nurturing with scorn. After the divorce, Holly saw little of her and by the time she was a teenager her mother had drunk herself into an early grave. Her father by contrast was distant and completely uninterested in his daughter, but in some ways that made him every bit as cruel. He left Holly to bring herself up, so when she moved into student digs at the age of eighteen she never returned home again, not even for his funeral.

      ‘I know it’s not hereditary, but you learn by example. You really don’t know how lucky you are with your family. Yours is so, it’s so . . .’ Holly just couldn’t find the words. Tom knew all about her childhood, but he could never really know what it was like to grow up without the security of a loving family. ‘It’s so linear,’ she said at last.

      ‘Linear?’ laughed Tom. ‘What does that mean?’

      ‘You have a mum and a dad who love and support you, and they had parents who loved and supported them. Your grandparents probably had wonderful parents too, and so it goes on and on, handed down, generation after generation.’

      Tom’s parents were wonderful in Holly’s eyes and she was sometimes overwhelmed by the way they had accepted her into their family and loved her like one of their own. Being part of a classic nuclear family had been a steep and very emotional learning curve for Holly. When Tom’s grandmother Edith had died recently, Holly had witnessed first-hand how the family had drawn strength from each other, how their love for Edith had somehow bridged the void that her death had left in their lives.

      ‘We’re not that perfect,’ Tom replied. ‘We have the odd black sheep in the family.’

      ‘Oh, but you are perfect. Compared to my family, you are.’ Holly gently touched the side of Tom’s face. ‘What if I’m the weak link that’s going to break the chain in your family? What if I can’t learn to be the kind of mother that your family has been built on through the generations?’

      ‘Don’t ever think you’re weak. Yes, your parents were weak and that had an effect on you, but it had the opposite effect. You’re the strongest person I know. Your parents were awful at parenting but that just means you’re going to make sure you’re the best mum you possibly could be. You have to believe that.’

      Tom’s body had become tense and she could feel a growing anger inside him. Anger that she knew was directed at her parents and at himself for not being able to heal her and banish the demons of her past.

      ‘I know I have to believe in myself,’ conceded Holly, although she didn’t think she ever would. But Tom wasn’t going to rest until she had her next plan all worked out. Not that he needed a plan to work to. Tom was a free spirit who preferred to make things up as he went along, but he was thirty-two now and he was desperate to be a father or to at least know that he would be one day.

      Tears had started to well in Holly’s eyes and the sunlight that surrounded Tom’s head was a blurred halo. The only thing Holly could see clearly was his soft green eyes.

      ‘Hey, you’re crying,’ Tom said, sounding shocked.

      Holly blinked, willing the tears to disappear. ‘I’m not,’ she lied defiantly.

      ‘Ah, I forgot, you never cry.’

      ‘I do. Not that I am now, but I do.’

      ‘When?’

      Holly paused, struggling to find a recent example that would prove Tom wrong. ‘There was that film, the one where the dog died.’

      Tom frowned as he tried to remember. Then he stifled a laugh. ‘That must have been over two years ago, I don’t think we were even married then.’

      ‘But I cried, point proven.’

      ‘OK, point proven,’ conceded Tom. ‘But I don’t want to push you into anything you don’t want for yourself. I had hoped that when Lisa had her baby and then Penny, you’d just want to follow suit, but I can see it’s not going to be that simple. If you’re not ready to start talking babies yet, then I understand.’

      Lisa and Penny were the closest thing Holly had to friends in London and they’d had their babies within a year of each other. She knew Tom had been disappointed when Holly hadn’t miraculously become broody at the sight of a newborn. Little did he know that her enthusiasm to move to the country had in part been fuelled by a desire to put as much distance between herself and the endless baby chatter.

      ‘Once I’ve got the house in order, then we can start on the next five-year plan. A joint one this time, and making a baby will most definitely be on the list,’ she told him.

      ‘A baby? Singular?’ Tom said. His body had begun to relax again

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