The Inheritance by Tilly Bagshawe

Author:Tilly Bagshawe [Tilly Bagshawe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Published: 2014-04-29T04:00:00+00:00

PART TWO

The Reckoning

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Five years later …

Logan Cranley ran a finger along her lower lashes, deliberately smudging her black eyeliner into what she hoped was a sexy, rock-chick effect, and admired the results in the mirror of the tack-room loo.

Perfect.

Logan wasn’t especially vain for a sixteen-year-old girl. But she was especially beautiful, a fact she understood and accepted with the same calm appreciation that another girl might feel for a sunny day, or a better-than-expected mark at school. Her looks didn’t particularly interest her. They were a means to an end, a useful weapon in her romantic armoury. At least, they were supposed to be. So far they’d been no bloody use at all.

Tall, almost five foot eleven in her riding boots, with long, slender legs, a tiny waist, and the sort of glowing, translucent skin that rich older women spend their lives trying to recapture, Logan Cranley was now officially employed as a stable hand at Wraggsbottom Farm. It was, without reservation, her dream summer job. And she had Laura Baxter to thank for it.

‘We may as well employ her, as she’s here all the time,’ Laura observed to Gabe over breakfast one morning, pushing away a plate of untouched scrambled eggs.

‘I’ll employ her if you eat something,’ said Gabe sternly.

‘I can’t,’ Laura groaned. ‘Truly.’

After five long years of fertility treatment and three miscarriages, each more heart-breaking than the last, Laura Baxter was finally twenty weeks pregnant. It was the furthest along she’d ever been, and she felt sicker than the proverbial dog. Having Gabe flapping around her day and night like a useless chicken didn’t help matters either, although Laura could see how delighted he was, and how terrified of something going wrong. They’d been through hell these past five years, but they’d been through it together.

Tired of passively watching while Gabe sailed their marital ship into bankruptcy, Laura had sat down at her computer one winter morning and not got up again, other than to eat and sleep, until she’d finished a new teleplay. An Archers-esque drama about farming life, it was the best thing she’d written in years. Within a month she’d sold it to Sky TV, and been commissioned to write a further two daytime soaps. The money wasn’t spectacular, but it was decent, and steady, and it had meant the difference between the business surviving or Gabe’s farm being repossessed. Deeply grateful, but with his manly pride more than a little wounded at having to be rescued by his wife, Gabe had thrown himself into diversifying Wraggsbottom to try and protect against another run of bad harvests. He’d begun by converting six outbuildings into holiday lets, a business that had started generating income almost immediately. Stage two had been to open up a livery stables and riding school. That had taken longer, but it hadn’t required much investment to get it started. The stable blocks and paddocks were just sitting there, waiting for a lick of paint, and some fencing, jumps and a few tons of sand had been all he needed to create an outdoor ‘school’.

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