Grace Green - The Pregnancy Plan

Will they…?

Won’t they…?

Can they…?

The possibility of parenthood: for some couples it’s a seemingly impossible dream.

For others, it’s an unexpected surprise….

Or perhaps it’s a planned pregnancy that brings a husband and wife closer together…or turns their marriage upside down?

One thing is for sure, life will never be the same when they find themselves having a baby…maybe!

This emotionally compelling miniseries from Harlequin Romance® will warm your heart and bring a tear to your eye….

Their Doorstep Baby (#3718)

by Barbara Hannay

Grace Green grew up in Scotland but later emigrated to Canada with her husband and children. They settled in “Beautiful Super Natural B.C.” and Grace now lives in a house just minutes from ocean, beaches, mountains and rain forest. She makes no secret of her favorite occupation—her bumper sticker reads: I’d Rather Be Writing Romance! Grace also enjoys walking the seawall, gardening, getting together with other authors…and watching her characters come to life, because she knows that once they do, they will take over and write her stories for her.

HARLEQUIN ROMANCE®

3622—THE BABY PROJECT

3658—TWINS INCLUDED!

3706—THE NANNY’S SECRET*

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For John

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

SHE came to him in the garden, on a morning gray with fog.

“The decision is yours, darling.” Tears shimmered in her eyes. “But you must make it soon.” Her voice caught. “This waiting…it’s breaking my heart…”

Dermid ached to hold her, to comfort her, but even as he reached for her, she began to slip away.

“Wait!” he called, panicking. “Alice, wait!”

But she was already disappearing into the mist, the loose sleeves of her cloud-white dress billowing out behind her like angel wings floating her heavenward.

“Alice!” he cried again and tried to follow her, but the mist snaked wet tendrils around him, binding him—

“Dad!” A shake on his arm, a child’s low urgent voice. “Dad!”

He groaned, and jerked from his nightmare, he came slowly, blearily…gratefully…awake.

Jack stood by the bed, in his unironed flannel pyjamas, his brown hair tufted, his hazel eyes anxious—far too anxious, Dermid thought with a pang of guilt—for a boy who had yet to celebrate his fifth birthday.

Leaning up on one elbow, clearing the rust of sleep from his throat, he said, “Sorry, son. Did I wake you?”

“You were shouting really loud. Was it bad?”

“It’s been worse.”

“But the same old nightmare?”

“Yup, same old one. And no, don’t ask, I’m not going to tell you what it’s about. Someday I will, when you’re old enough to handle it.” Dermid swung his long legs over the edge of the bed. “But right now—”

“But right now it would give me nightmares, too.”

“You got it.”

Dermid stood, and setting a firm hand on his son’s shoulders, walked him to the window. “Now enough about nightmares. Will you just look at that morning out there?” The sun, an explosion of fire atop Vancouver Island’s snowcapped Mountain Range, promised an unusually dazzling late-May day. “It’s going to be a scorcher.”

“Too bad we have to spend half of it on the ferry!”

“Don’t you want to go over to the Lower Mainland to see your new cousin being christened?”

“I’d rather stay here on the ranch and help Arthur look after the animals.”

“I’m not much of a party man myself, son, but we have to make the effort when it comes to family occasions.”

They weren’t really his family, only by marriage. They were Alice’s family. But he was fond of them all. Except for Lacey. Lacey left him cold…because Lacey, herself, was cold. Superficial. Useless. Oh, she was decorative, he wasn’t denying that, but useless. A pretty ornament. That was all. A bauble. She was Alice’s sister, but as unlike Alice as two women could have been.

Alice. He’d wanted to shut himself away from the outside world after she died, but for Jack’s sake he couldn’t. And for Jack’s sake, he’d remained in close contact with his in-laws these past three years, although being with them only refreshed his grief and made it more difficult to put the past behind him. Not that he had a hope in hell of putting the past behind him until he found the courage to end the situation that was bedeviling him—

“Dad, do we have to go?”

“Yeah.” Dermid stared out over the gardens below—Alice’s gardens, once lovingly cared for as he himself had been and now—like himself!—sadly abandoned. “I need to talk to your uncle Jordan about something.”

“Couldn’t you do that over the phone?”

Dermid lifted his gaze beyond the gardens, to the pastures beyond. Over seventy acres, home to his herd of alpacas and llamas. “No, this is something really important, something I have to discuss face-to-face.”

“You make it sound like a matter of life or death!”

But Jack had lost interest in the conversation as a lanky figure loped into view from the main barn.

“There’s Arthur, I’m gonna get dressed and go help him muck out the shelters.”

As Jack dashed away, his earlier comment echoed in Dermid’s head and he felt a wave of despair.

Little did his son know how accurately he had assessed the situation, for the dilemma facing him truly was a matter of life or death.

And the decision he had to make—the one that had been giving him nightmares now for so very many months—was surely the cruelest that any man could ever have to face.

“Lacey, thank goodness you’re here!”

Lacey Maxwell switched off the engine of her silver convertible. Taking the key from the ignition, she looked questioningly at her sister-in-law Felicity who had run down Deerhaven’s front steps and was hurrying to the car.

Felicity came to a breathless stop just as Lacey was about to drop her keys into her gray leather bag.

“Don’t put those away, Lace!”

“No?” Lacey paused, her slender crimson-tipped fingers splayed over the bag.

“I need to ask you a favor. Dermid called from the ferry a while ago to say there had been a long delay at Departure Bay so to save time he’d left the car at Nanaimo and he and Jack were on their way over as foot passengers. Jordan said he’d pick him up at Horseshoe Bay but he’s been detained at the office so—”