Trish Wylie - Rescued - Mother-To-Be

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Donna, Mary and Natasha,

who gave me enough information on pregnancy

to scare any sane single gal silly!

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

‘WELCOME home, Eamonn.’

Colleen McKenna pinned a smile on her face and tilted her head back to look up at him where he stood, leaning against the doorway of the yard office. She had managed to keep her voice calm—even thought she’d come across as welcoming. Which was the least he deserved, on his first visit home after so long.

He hadn’t changed a bit, had he? Still disgustingly good-looking, still able to dominate by sheer presence as much as size. And still, after fifteen years, capable of making her mouth go dry and butterflies flutter their wings erratically in her stomach. It really wasn’t fair.

Surely a thirty-year-old woman should have long since been over the unrequited love she’d felt as a fifteen-year-old? Shouldn’t she?

She felt a sudden ridiculous urge to raise her hand to her hair, to straighten it, tuck a loose strand behind one ear. As if those simple actions would somehow make her look less dishevelled than she felt. But it wasn’t as if Eamonn Murphy had ever cared how she looked before, was it?

And it wasn’t as if she could hope to measure up to the breathtaking sight of him. Not while he was dressed in spotless walking boots, dark, low-slung jeans, and a thick chocolate-coloured sweater that hinted at the breadth of him as much as it hid.

He was glorious.

While Colleen knew she probably resembled a used teabag as much as she felt like one.

Hazel eyes, framed with thick dark lashes, pinned hers across the room, taking a brief moment to make an inventory of her face before a flicker of recognition arrived,

‘Colleen McKenna.’A small smile lifted the edges of his sensually curved mouth. ‘Well, you grew up, didn’t you?’

‘That happens, y’know. I could say the same thing about you.’ She leaned back a little in the ancient office chair, the bulk of her body still obscured by the ridiculously large desk, and allowed her eyes to stray over his face. She swallowed to dampen her mouth. Oh-boy-oh-boy.

Had he got better-looking as he’d got older? She searched her memory to see if his hair had curled that way before, in an uncontrolled mass of dark curls that framed his face and touched his collar. Curls that invited fingers to thread through them, that looked as if that was exactly how they’d got that way in the first place. Yes. She remembered that. It had been a little of that irresistibly sensual edge which had been such a big part of him, and of his attraction.

She continued her mental checklist of his attributes, comparing old memories to the reality. Had he been as tall? Oh, yes, that she remembered. He’d always stood head and shoulders above every other boy she’d known, before and after he’d left. But the lean edge to him was gone, replaced by wide shoulders and a broad chest that made him seem even larger than she remembered.

It wasn’t fair that he’d aged so well. But some people really did get better with age. Like good wine was supposed to. Not that there was enough in Colleen’s weekly budget to cover the screw-top variety, never mind the kind that deserved being swirled around in a glass and savoured before drinking. Not that she was allowed alcohol presently. Not that she couldn’t have used large quantities of it for self-medication these last few months.

Maybe just as well. If she’d started drinking to cover her problems she might not have stopped.

Eamonn dragged his eyes from her face and looked around the office, his eyes taking in the usual disorganised chaos. And inwardly Colleen squirmed.

It was stupid of her. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t known he would appear some time soon. But she maybe could have cleared up, filed things away, thrown a cloth over a surface or two. But all it really would have been was window dressing.

It wouldn’t have helped to hide the awful truths she would have to tell him now that he was here.

But the least she could do was let him settle in first. There wasn’t much point panicking about what had to come after that.

To hell with it.

When it came to the office he had to remember that paperwork was usually bottom of the chain around the place. He couldn’t have forgotten everything?

It was plainly obvious she hadn’t.

She cleared her throat and focused on less mundane matters. ‘I’m sorry we couldn’t hold off the funeral for you coming home. I really am, Eamonn. I know you’d have wanted to be here…’

Her voice died off into the silence and was eventually answered with a shrug of broad shoulders and in a husky deep voice. ‘It’s no one’s fault, Colleen. You couldn’t have got word to me where I was even if you’d known where to look. They didn’t have phones there.’

Even with his easy dismissal she felt guilty. But what else could she say? She remembered only too well how people had struggled to say the right thing to her when her parents had died. It had been almost as awkward waiting for them to find what they considered to be the ‘right words’as it had been for them to find them. And so many times she had wished they would just drop it, say what they had to in a card, or with a squeeze of her arm or even a hug.

But somehow she definitely didn’t see herself offering a hug. An arm-squeeze was a possibility, maybe.

In the meantime, she picked up the conversation from what he’d said last. ‘Another great adventure?’

‘Something like that.’

She nodded. He was still a great talker, then. It was like getting blood from the proverbial—always had been. Just another thing that hadn’t changed that much.

As a teenager he’d been dark and brooding ninety per cent of the time, and that had fulfilled all of Colleen’s romantic notions. In her adolescent mind she had been going to be the one to tame him, to tease out his smile and put a spark in his eyes. She had even been encouraged by how he’d been in her company—how he had laughed, teased her, ruffled her hair. If he’d just once opened his eyes and noticed her the way she’d dreamed he would…

But she’d been a child and he’d been a mature eighteen-year-old, ready to leave the small hamlet they lived in to take on the world. And he’d left her behind.

Now, as he walked around the office, lifting breeding books and feed invoices and flicking them over, she knew she’d lived several lifetimes since then. She wasn’t some doe-eyed teenager any more—wasn’t a romantic dreamer. A kick or two in the teeth had that effect on a person over time.

He stopped and turned around, leaning back on one of the counters that were attached to three of the four walls and crossing his feet at the ankles before he folded his arms across his broad chest. ‘I have to say I’m a bit surprised. The old place looks like hell. I take it Dad wasn’t up to much the last few years?’

The American twang to his accent distracted her momentarily from his actual words. But when she caught them she automatically straightened her spine in her chair, words in defence of his father immediately jumping out of her mouth. ‘Blaming it on Declan is hardly fair. He wasn’t exactly fit for a lot of the heavy stuff after the second heart attack. You wouldn’t even wonder about that if you’d seen him the way he was.’