Caroline Anderson - With This Baby...

Independent? She snorted. She’d be more dependent on him than ever like that, and it wasn’t what she wanted. Nor did she want him taking any interest in the baby. Not that it seemed likely, because he certainly hadn’t shown any interest in her today!

No. All she wanted—needed—from him was enough money to pay for child care so she could concentrate on her job for a few hours a day and work herself out of this financial hole. Earn enough money, perhaps, to fund a bank loan to convert the barn and turn it into a studio so she could run the painting holidays she’d dreamed of.

She’d got it all worked out. She could live upstairs, with a farmhouse kitchen downstairs big enough to do all the catering, and she’d have a huge studio at one end, and the cottage could be the guest accommodation. Then she’d be able to earn money, indulge her creative streak and look after the baby, all at the same time.

Oh, yes. She’d thought it all through—all except how to pay for it, but Patrick Cameron had plenty of money, and giving his baby a future was little enough to ask of him under the circumstances.

And in less than a week she’d see him again, she was sure of it. He couldn’t afford all the mud-slinging the tabloids would get up to, not in his position, so he’d have to co-operate to a certain extent. He couldn’t continue to deny knowing Amy once he’d seen the photographs, and he’d have to start playing ball.

First off was the DNA check, of course, and then there would be no question about it.

It would be interesting to see how he dealt with that, she thought. In so many ways he’d been a real gentleman, but his stubborn refusal to acknowledge his relationship with Amy gave the lie to that. So which was the real Patrick Cameron? Her curiosity was piqued, and she realised with a shock that she was looking forward to seeing him again.

Not that she was interested in him in any personal way—of course not. He’d been Amy’s lover, and that made him strictly off limits. Besides, that dark hair, unruly even though it was short, and those curious green-grey eyes that should have been soft and yet were strangely piercing—they didn’t appeal to her in the least, except academically, because he was Jess’s father.

And that body—not that she’d seen much of it, of course, except in the photos which she’d been reluctant to study in any detail.

Liar!

Claire ignored her honest streak in favour of self-delusion. Much more comfortable, because acknowledging her interest in a man rich enough to buy her out hundreds of times over, a man whose work she respected and admired, a man who, if she allowed herself to be honest for once, was the most attractive man she’d seen in years—actually, make that two and a half decades—acknowledging her interest in him would only underline just how fruitless that interest would be.

She was nobody. Nothing. Just a frustrated interior designer and graphic artist making a tenuous living freelancing at her drawing board, working for anyone who needed her draughtsmanship and visualising skills, with no future, no hope of career advancement, no pension prospects.

She laughed silently. Pension prospects? She was twenty-six—but suddenly, since she’d become responsible for this little scrap, that seemed to matter.

And without Auntie Meg’s unexpectedly generous bequest, they’d be homeless as well.

‘Oh, Auntie Meg, I wish I knew what to do,’ she sighed, staring out of the window at the dark shape of the barn just fifty or so paces away. She could sell it, of course, but that would mean the end of her dream.

Oh, well. Maybe Patrick Cameron would prove himself to be a guardian angel in disguise. She could only wait and hope.

Patrick looked at the letter from the DNA lab that had performed the last paternity test for him a year ago—a test that had proved unnecessary, because the woman had broken down in the end and confessed she’d just wanted to get some money.

Nevertheless, the test had been done, and, in case it should happen again, the lab had agreed to keep his profile on record, the details of the individual bar-code that identified each and every one of his cells as his and his alone.

He sighed. Until last year, he couldn’t have said that, but now Will was gone.

His clone, Will used to joke, but last year he’d been serious. It had been just before he’d gone away, and he’d said, very quietly and with some considerable dignity, that it was time to move on and stop living in his brother’s shadow.

‘It’s as if I’m a clone of you, and they left some vital nutrient out of the Petri dish—that extra je ne sais quoi. Still, without you standing beside me, who would ever know? And not even you, dear bro, casts a shadow long enough to reach Australia.’

And his smile had been wry and sad, and Patrick had hugged him hard.

‘Don’t be a fool,’ he’d said, choked, but Will had meant every word of it. He’d gone to Australia, bent on making himself a new life, and two weeks later he’d been dead, drowned in a stupid accident with a surfboard.

And now it seemed he might have had a child.

Patrick dragged in a deep breath and filed the information in its envelope, then tucked it into his jacket pocket. The car—the psychedelic 2CV—was sitting in the underground car park beneath the building, and it was time to go.

As he strapped Dog into his harness and fastened him to the front seat belt, he wondered if the car would make it. By the time he reached the M11, he was almost certain that it wouldn’t. Despite its service, it ran like a pig, it was hideously noisy and uncomfortable, not to mention terrifyingly vulnerable amongst the heavy lorries, and he decided the truck driver who’d winched it away had had excellent judgement.

Paying her fine was just doing the decent thing. Bothering to have the damn car serviced and valeted and returning it to her, on the other hand, seemed a ludicrous waste of money, because he was convinced it was destined for the crusher.

Still, maybe she’d be grateful. She’d seemed sorry enough to see it go—though why he wanted her gratitude he couldn’t begin to imagine. He certainly wasn’t sure he wanted it enough to risk his life in this bit of pink tin foil she called a car!

On second thoughts, tin foil might be better—it didn’t rust. This clapped-out old heap might be a classic, but it must be thirty years old if it was a day, and it was well and truly past its sell-by date. Hell, it was at least as old as him, and considerably older than Claire Franklin.

Claire.

He rolled it round his tongue, savouring the shape of the word, remembering her eyes, her mouth, that soft, lush figure, the delicate fragrance that had still been lingering in the air when he’d gone back up to his apartment with Dog at the end of the day.

Was it really only two days ago? It seemed like a lifetime.

He could feel the little bulge of the pink rabbit in his pocket, and he wondered if the baby had missed it. Jess, she was called. Jessica? Jessamy? Jessamine?

The realisation that he was looking forward to seeing her again shocked him. He hated babies! Smelly, leaky little things—but this one could be Will’s, his last gift to the world, and for that reason alone he wanted to see her again.

The fact that she came with a rather attractive young aunt attached was nothing at all to do with it!

CLAIRE heard the car coming long before it pulled upon her drive.

Of course, if things had been going right, she wouldn’t have heard it at all, but she’d hit something in the long grass in the meadow behind the barn and the cutting deck on the little tractor mower had collapsed, and so it was silenced.

Silenced and broken, yet another thing in her life that was going wrong.