Liz Fielding - The Five-Year Baby Secret

RITA ®Award-winning author Liz Fielding “gets better and better with every book!”

—Romantic Times BOOKclub

Dear Reader,

Some books spring from our own experiences, needing nothing more than the well of memory and imagination to fill the pages. Others are driven by ideas that require much research: reading any number of fascinating books, delving about on the Internet, sending impertinent e-mails to total strangers who respond with amazing patience and kindness. Fleur Gilbert’s story falls into the second category.

Whilst I understood the basics of plant breeding, I am eternally grateful to Clare Green at the Royal Horticultural Society (www.rhs.org.uk), Derek Luther at the British Fuchsia Society (www.thebfs.org.uk) and Bob Hall at the Ammanford Fuchsia & Pot Plant Society for many of the details I used in this book. I am also indebted to the Web site of the Stroke Association (www.strokeassociation.org).

Any errors are my own.

With love,

Liz

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Liz Fielding started writing at the age of twelve, when she won a writing competition at school. After that early success there was quite a gap—during which she was busy working in Africa and the Middle East, getting married and having children—before her first book was published in 1992. Now readers worldwide fall in love with her irresistible heroes, and adore her independent-minded heroines. Visit Liz’s Web site for news and extracts of upcoming books at www.lizfielding.com.

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

FLEUR GILBERT hesitated on the registry office steps. This was not how her wedding day was meant to be.

She should have spent the morning being fussed over by her mother, laughing and crying, remembering all the stupid things she’d ever done. Her friends should have been there, the girls she’d known all her life. She wanted Sarah, a posy of little bridesmaids in frilly frocks.

Bells should be ringing in the village church where her parents had been married, as had countless generations of Gilberts before them.

She should be dressed in white with her father at her side, squeezing her hand to give her courage, to tell her that she was the most beautiful bride ever; proud and happy and hiding a tear as he gave away his little girl to some man who couldn’t possibly be good enough for her.

But she was marrying Matthew Hanover and their wedding could never be like that. She knew Matt was right. This was the only way, but, locked inside their private world, insulated by a love so intense, so perfect that nothing and no one else had seemed to matter, she had overlooked the reality of what today would be like.

‘Not having second thoughts, are you?’ She looked up at the man she loved, for one blissful moment believing that he was seeing this from her point of view. Had, at the last minute, recognised how far from her dreams this day must be.

But he was smiling. Joking to cover his own nerves.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No, of course not.’

His smile faltered. ‘I’d be happier if you sounded a little more confident.’

She shook her head, smiled and leaned against him.

Her first thought on meeting Matthew Hanover face to face, seeing beyond his name, had been that this was it. That he was the one. Nothing had changed that.

‘I’m not having second thoughts about you, Matt. I’m just not looking forward to telling either of our families what we’ve done.’

‘What can they do? A month from now we’ll be working far away from Longbourne.’

‘I suppose so.’

‘Whatever happens we’ll be together, Fleur, man and wife.’ His hand closed protectively over hers. ‘Nothing our families do will ever be able to change that.’

‘HAS the post come?’

Fleur paused to scoop up the bills, catalogues and other mail scattered over the doormat, then called up the stairs, ‘Tom, if you’re not down here in two minutes I’m taking you to school just as you are.’

‘Slow down, girl. The world isn’t going to end if the boy is a minute or two late for school.’

She dumped the mail on the kitchen table beside her father. ‘Maybe not, but it’s a distinct possibility if I’m late for my appointment with the new bank manager. We need her on-side if we’re really going to take this stand at the Chelsea Flower Show.’

He must have caught the uncertainty in her voice, the un-asked question, because he stopped sorting through the mail and, with a certainty she hadn’t heard from him in a very long time, he said, ‘Yes, Fleur, we really are.’

Then, whatever it took, she’d have to make it happen. Taking a deep breath, she said, ‘Right.’

Which made today’s appointment even more important.

The retirement of a sympathetic bank manager couldn’t have come at a worse time for them. Brian had understood the difficulties of their business, had celebrated their successes with them and had patiently seen them through the last difficult six years, giving them breathing space, a chance to recover.

She wished she’d been able to do more than fill the bank’s window-boxes to reward his faith in them. Even with every single thing running on oiled wheels until Chelsea, it was going to be a huge gamble. She wasn’t convinced that her father’s health would stand up to the stress of producing show plants at the peak of condition on a given day in May, but nothing she could say or do to dissuade him had had any effect. All she could do was try and shield him from financial worries. Unfortunately, Ms Delia Johnson, the new person at the bank, had wasted precious little time in writing to invite them into the office for a ‘chat’.

It was concern that their luck was about to run out—actually a cast-iron certainty that the new manager planned to stamp her own mark on the branch by weeding out accounts that weren’t flourishing—that made her so snappy this morning.

She was going to have to be in top form to ‘sell’ the business, convince Ms Johnson that it would be in the bank’s interest to see them through the additional expense entailed in mounting an exhibit at the premier horticultural show of the season.

‘Don’t fret,’ her father said comfortingly, ‘you’ll be fine. You might have inherited my green fingers and your mother’s beauty, but thankfully you missed out on our business brains.’ He smiled as he took in the effort she’d made with her appearance. ‘You look lovely.’

She knew how she looked. She had to live with her reflection in the mirror; there was nothing she could do about that—although with no time and less money for visits to the hairdresser or expensive cosmetics, the likeness to her mother was less obvious than it might have been—but she’d had to learn to manage the business the hard way when she’d been tossed in at the deep end. Sink or swim. She was still floundering. It had never been possible to make up the ground lost during that terrible year when her world—all their worlds—had fallen apart.

Her father’s lack of interest in the finances of the company, and the discovery that her mother was in the habit of using their capital resources as her own personal piggy bank, had left her out of her depth and swimming against the current.