Unexpected Pleasures Read Free Page A

told her. ‘Why don’t you come in for a few minutes?’
    Rosie started to protest, but Neil overruled her. A quick search of the road and drive had confirmed that the only other cars there beside her own belonged to Gemma and Neil, and that all the party guests had gone home.
    ‘I didn’t want to disturb you,’ she started to protest, but Neil had already taken hold of her arm and was coaxing her towards the house.
    ‘There’s something we wanted to discuss with you anyway,’ he told her. ‘Abby has received quite a few gifts of money as christening presents and we were wondering about starting one of these baby bond things for her... What do you think?’
    Ten minutes later she was sitting in the Hopkinses’ comfortable family kitchen, listening carefully as Gemma outlined their wish to provide some small lump sum for their new daughter when she was older.
    The baby herself was fast asleep in Gemma’s arms. Neil had gone upstairs to discover what had caused the argument they could hear taking place between their two sons. The phone in the hall rang, causing the baby to stir and cry.
    ‘Here, hold her for me will you please, Rosie, while I go and answer the phone?’ Gemma asked her, thrusting the baby towards Rosie so that she had no option other than to take her from her.
    She felt warm and solid, with that undefinable but instantly recognisable baby smell.
    Tensely Rosie held her, her body rigid, her stomach churning, tremors convulsing her.
    Unused to being held at such a distance, and missing the warmth of her mother, the baby’s cries increased.
    She was still young enough to have that piercing, womb-aching cry of a new baby, and as she heard it Rosie reacted instinctively to it, cradling her against her shoulder, as she supported her small, soft head and soothed her rigid, tense body.
    The baby turned her head, nuzzling into Rosie’s skin—an automatic reflex action that meant nothing, Rosie knew—and her own body’s reaction to it was so immediate and devastating that she could feel herself starting to shake.
    Abby had stopped crying now, apparently content with her new surroundings, snuggling sleepily against Rosie’s shoulder, but for Rosie to overcome her emotions was not so easy.
    She always deliberately avoided this kind of situation, making sure that she had as little physical contact with small babies as she could.
    Once they were older it was different, the pain less devastating and primitive, the sense of loss, of deprivation, of agonising guilt, easier to deal with.
    She heard Gemma coming back into the kitchen and immediately handed Abby back to her.
    ‘I must go,’ she told her quickly. ‘I’ve got an early start in the morning. I’ll do some work on some comparison tables for you and drop them around later in the week.’
    It was only later, when she was on her way home, that she remembered that in her desperate anxiety to get away she had forgotten all about her hat.
    Before going to collect her car she had meticulously gone over and over the proposals she planned to put before Ian Davies.
    She was confident that they were at least as competitive as anything anyone could offer him; where she believed she had the advantage over much larger concerns was the personal touch.
    It was almost eleven o’clock when she went upstairs to prepare for bed. She was just about to get undressed when the phone rang.
    It was Chrissie, wanting to know how she was.
    Firmly she assured her sister that she was feeling fine but, ten minutes later, when she had removed her make-up and was studying her face in her bathroom mirror, she had to admit that her appearance belied her words.
    She had always been pale-skinned, and for that reason had always had to protect her sensitive skin from the sun, but tonight her pallor was sharpened by tension and pain.
    Shakily she turned away from the mirror, not wanting to see...to remember.
    Jake Lucas. He had remembered. She had seen it in his eyes when he looked at