LITMIR.BIZ

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all over myself.’ She looked down and watched a bead of liquid travel down her torso towards her belly button.

      He loosened the sash just enough to let her turn to face him. ‘We’ll just have to clean it up, then, won’t we?’ he said, a truly wicked glint in his eyes.

      Ellie sighed as he started tugging her back towards the bedroom. She was pretty sure he wasn’t going to fetch a towel.

      Ellie wandered outside and sank her feet into the dewy grass. The vibrant green carpet welcomed her feet and she sighed. It was wonderful to be home. She might have lived on in the cottage after Sam and Chloe had gone, but it turned from a home to a shell of bricks and mortar the day they died. She turned and looked at the majestically crumbling manor house. Larkford Place felt like home—but then she’d feel at home in a caravan if Mark was there.

      She was surprised at how easy the transition had been. She’d been so worried that she would feel different when they returned from the Caribbean. Over three weeks later she still felt alarmingly peaceful. She’d experienced a strange sense of foreboding on the flight home, but if trouble was looming in the distance it was hiding itself round a dimly lit corner.

      She looked at the open French windows and wished that Mark would stroll through them any second and join her. The curtains rippled in promise, but she knew he wouldn’t appear. He was off on business for a few days and due home first thing tomorrow. She’d had the opportunity to go with him. She’d already travelled with him once since they’d been back, but she’d been feeling a bit below par for a couple of days and had decided to stay home and recharge her batteries while Mark flew to Ireland. The idea of sleeping in her own bed rather than a hotel one, however luxurious the surroundings, was too much of a lure. She took a careful sip of her hot tea.

      Yuck!

      It tasted awful. The milk must be off. She would just have to make a new one. She walked into the kitchen and poured the rest of her tea down the sink, then put on the kettle for a fresh cup. While she was waiting for it to boil she went in search of the offending milk in the fridge.

      A row of unopened bottles stood like pristine soldiers in the door. Where was the one she’d used earlier? She moved a couple of items around on the nearby shelf to see if the half-used bottle was hidden away behind something. Nope. Hang on! What were the teabags doing in here?

      Oh, well. She popped open a fresh pint of milk and sniffed it, while keeping her nose as far away as possible. No, this one was fine. Having done that, she made herself another cup of tea and sank into one of the wooden chairs round the table. She took a long sip, scowled, then spat it back into the cup. What was wrong with the tea today? It would have to be orange juice instead. She returned the rather chilly box of tea bags to its proper resting place in the cupboard—or would have done if a bottle of milk hadn’t been sitting in its spot.

      Obviously her absent-minded tendencies were getting worse. She’d been under the mistaken impression she’d been improving recently, but she was clearly deluded. She laughed quietly to herself as she returned the milk to the fridge.

      Then she fell silent. These weren’t her normal memory lapses. This was something new. Should she be worried about that? She’d never been scatty like this before, unless you counted that time years before the accident when…

      Oh, my!

      Ellie continued staring into the open fridge, the cool air making no impact on her rapidly heating face. When she let go of the door and let it slam closed she realised her hands were shaking. She sat back down at the table, her thirst forgotten, and tried to assemble all the evidence in her cluttered brain. The milk, the tea, the lack of energy—it was all falling into place.

      She’d completely gone off both tea and coffee when she’d been carrying Chloe—hadn’t even been able to stand the smell when Sam had opened a jar of instant coffee to make himself one. She’d made him drink it in the garden! And then she’d developed an overwhelming craving for tinned pineapple sprinkled liberally with pepper.

      Her palm flattened over her stomach. She stood up, then sat down again.

      I can’t be pregnant! Not already.

      She hadn’t even considered the possibility, although it would certainly explain her sudden lethargy. A creeping nausea rose in her throat, but she was sure it was more a result of shock than morning sickness.

      How could this have happened?

      Er…stupid question, Ellie! You spent more time with your clothes off than on on honeymoon. Yes, they’d been careful, but nothing was guaranteed one hundred percent in this life.

      She wasn’t sure she was ready to have another baby! Life was changing so fast at the moment she could hardly keep up. She needed to get used to being married before she could consider all the possibilities for the future.

      And what was Mark going to say?

      She hoped he would be pleased, but what if he wasn’t? They hadn’t even talked about this stuff yet, having been too caught up in a whirlwind wedding and being newlyweds to think about anything sensible.

      Calm down! You’re getting ahead of yourself!

      She didn’t even know if she was pregnant yet. All she knew for sure was that she’d had a dodgy cup of tea and had misplaced the milk. She didn’t have to turn insignificant minor events into a major crisis, now, did she?

      Ellie shook her head. Talk about her imagination running away with her. What she needed to do right now was take a few deep breaths and have a shower. Which was exactly what she did. However, all the time she was washing she couldn’t shake the nagging voice in the back of her head.

      You can’t run away from this one, Ellie. You can’t bury your head in the sand. But she hadn’t been running away from things recently, had she? She’d run to Mark, not away from something else. At least that was how it had felt at the time.

      She stepped out of the shower and got dressed. She needed to find out for sure. She’d go down to the chemist in the village and buy a test. Strike that. She’d already got to know the local residents, and if the village drums were doing their usual work the news that she might be expecting would be round the village in a nanosecond. The fact that dashing Mr Wilder had married his housekeeper was still the main topic of local gossip. A baby on the way would be too juicy a titbit for the village grapevine to ignore.

      She’d be better off going into town and shopping at one of the large chemists. Much easier to be anonymous then. At least when Mark got home tomorrow she’d have had a chance to absorb the outcome herself.

      The thought that the test might be negative should have made her feel more peaceful. Instead she felt low at the prospect. If the test was negative, she would make a lighthearted story of it to tell Mark over dinner tomorrow. She’d tell him how freaked out she’d been, see what his reaction was, test the waters.

      Two hours later she was standing in the bathroom, holding the little cellophane-wrapped box as if it was an unexploded bomb.

      You’re not going to find out by staring at it.

      She removed the crinkly wrapping and opened the box. How could something as mundane as a plastic stick turn out to be the knife-edge that her whole life was balanced on? She sat on the closed toilet lid while waiting for the result, the test laid on one thigh. Two minutes to wait. If someone had told her she was only going to live another two minutes, it would seem like a measly amount of time. How, then, could this couple of minutes stretch so far they seemed to be filling the rest of the day?

      First the test window. Good. One blue line. It was working. Then wait for the next window. She waited for what seemed an age. Nothing. She stood up, threw the test onto the shelf over the sink and ran out of the room crying.

      All that stress for nothing. She ought to be relieved! It gave her a little more time to think, to plan, to find out what Mark wanted.

      Suddenly she wished he was there. She wanted to feel his strong arms wrapped

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