Raye Morgan - Baby on Board - Secret Baby, Surprise Parents / Her Baby Wish / Keeping Her Baby's Secret

But those two tiny words— ours, us —like the infant who’d dropped off to sleep in the buggy, joined them in a unique alliance that set them apart from the rest of the world. They were a family.

He was a father and that was a responsibility he couldn’t run away from.

They reached the corner where their ways divided but, instead of parting, they stood, her hand linking them together, and for a moment it seemed that she was as reluctant as him to break the connection.

He was on the point of suggesting that perhaps, after all, she should go with him to talk to Michael’s lawyer, when she finally took her arm from his and said, ‘I’d better let you go.’

He caught her hand. ‘We’re in this together, Grace.’

‘Are we?’

‘I’ll do whatever it takes to protect Phoebe and Michael. I owe them that.’

‘And Posie?’

‘I’ll protect her with my life.’

As he would Grace. He couldn’t begin to guess how hard this was going to be for her. Desperate with worry about the future of a child who she had never, whether she’d admit it or not, truly given up, when she should be left in peace to grieve for her sister.

‘This is all my fault,’ she said. ‘If I hadn’t—’

‘Don’t!’ He’d done everything he could to prevent her from having this baby, prevent himself from becoming a father, but he couldn’t bear to hear her put what he’d wished into words. Not now he’d held Posie, seen her smile. ‘Please, don’t do that to yourself.’

Or to him.

She lifted her stricken face.

‘But it’s true. I wanted them to go away for the weekend, planned it, gave it to them as my treat because I wanted to have Posie to myself. Just for the weekend. Only for the weekend…’

Oh, dear God. It wasn’t colluding with Phoebe that was tormenting her. She was blaming herself for the accident.

‘No,’ he said. And, when she would have argued, he said it again. ‘No. It’s always like this when someone dies,’ he said. ‘The guilt kicks in. You can only think of the things you did wrong. Or didn’t do at all,’ he added, thinking of his own miserable, selfish response to something that had made his brother so happy. ‘They can overwhelm you, take on an importance completely out of proportion to their true meaning.’

She shook her head.

‘You have to remember the good things. Remember how happy you made them both.’ He squeezed her arm reassuringly, then touched the sleeping baby’s head. ‘I’ll see you both later,’ he said, taking a step back, saving the picture of the two of them in his mind before tearing himself away.

Grace unlocked the door to her workshop, kicking aside the mail so that she could get the buggy in, turning on the lights.

She’d expanded from her original tiny workroom, moving into this wonderful airy space when it had become vacant a couple of years ago.

She’d kept the walls and furnishings a stark black and white to accentuate the vivid colours of her jewellery. At one end there was a secure walk-in storage space for the basic tools of her trade and a tiny office. There was her working area, with her drawing board and the workbench where she put together her designs.

The centre of the room offered a display area for photographs of some of the special pieces she’d made, as well as the dramatic spiral stands that Toby had designed and made to display examples of her work.

There was a comfortable seating area for clients who came to discuss special commissions and at the far end was another long workbench where she worked with the students who took her classes.

She didn’t waste time going through the mail, but put it to one side to take home with her. Instead, she made the most of the fact that Posie was asleep to download and pack up the Internet orders for beads, findings, the jewellery kits that kept the cash flow ticking over.

After that she called Abby, a stay-at-home mum who’d taken one of her classes and proved to be one of her most talented students. She was happy to come in for a few hours a day for the next couple of weeks and, while Grace was waiting for her to arrive so that she could walk her through the Web site ordering systems, she took the armature for the tiara she’d designed from the workroom, the tray with the teardrop pearls and each size and colour of semi-precious stone she would use, counted and placed in individual compartments. Then, with the deceptively simple design in front of her, she began to build the sparkling fairy tale confection that a young bride would wear on the most special day of her life.

When, finally, it was finished, she sat back and looked at it, glad she’d come here. Glad she’d done something positive. Something life-affirming.

Posie, who’d been an angel and had slept while she’d worked, finally woke and began to make her presence felt.

‘Well, haven’t you been a good baby,’ she said, as she lifted her bag from the carrier and plugged in her bottle-warmer before changing her.

She was just about to settle on the sofa in the customer area, when there was a tap at the door.

Josh would have just walked in despite the ‘closed’ sign on the door and, expecting it to be Abby, she called out, ‘It’s open.’ Then, as she realised it was neither, she said, ‘Oh, Toby…’

Her disappointment must have been evident because he didn’t come beyond the doorway.

‘I know you’re not open but I saw your light on and I thought I’d come over and see if there was anything you need. If it’s a bad time…’

Toby Makepeace restored and made bespoke rocking horses across the cobbled yard of what had once been a huge coaching inn, but had long since been converted into craft workshops and small boutiques. He was easy to get along with and she’d taken him home as her ‘date’ the last time Josh had come home on a proper visit.

Still trying to prove to him, or maybe just to herself, that he didn’t mean anything to her. No, definitely to herself. He hadn’t given her a thought a minute after he’d left her sleeping in his bed.

Toby, unlike her other ‘dates’, had quickly cottoned on to the reason for his presence and had played his part to the hilt. Michael had teased her about him for weeks afterwards, referring to him as her ‘lovelorn swain’ until Phoebe had finally told him to stop embarrassing her.

Had Phoebe seen, understood more than she had ever let on? She had never said anything, but she’d never pressed her about boyfriends, either. She’d never remarked on the fact, that despite the fact that Grace had always said she was too busy to get involved, she had always managed to have a date when Josh had come home.

It must have been blindingly obvious, now she came to think about it. Bless Phoebe…

Toby had laughed when she had told him and it had somehow cemented a genuine friendship and he had been the first person she’d thought of when she’d needed help at the hospital.

‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s never a bad time to see a friend. I don’t think I ever thanked you properly for what you did.’

‘Don’t even think about it,’ Toby said, closing the door, coming across and giving her a hug. Leaving his hand on her arm. It was no more than a gesture of comfort from a friend, but it was where Josh’s hand had so recently lain. It felt so much like an intrusion that it took all her concentration not to pull away. ‘Anything I can do, you know you only have to ask.’

‘Actually, I’m just about to feed Posie. If you really want to make yourself useful, you could put on a pot of coffee.’

Posie, growing impatient, began to whimper.

‘Poor little angel,’ Toby said, touching a finger lightly to her cheek before taking himself off to fill the coffee-maker. ‘But at least she’s still got her real mummy to take care of her.’