The Pregnancy Surprise by Caroline Anderson

Author:Caroline Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

‘I THINK I’ve found out where Tango got the chicken fleas.’

Maisie, in the act of weeding the little bed outside her sitting-room window, jumped a mile and stood up, hand on her heart.

‘Are you trying to frighten me to death?’

James’s crooked grin was appallingly sexy and made her stupid heart beat even faster. ‘Sorry. Want to come and see?’

She scrambled over the low wall and followed him round the side of the house to the utility area behind the coach-house.

And there, tucked down in the woodshed behind a pile of logs, was Helga, fluffed up and indignant at their presence, sitting, if Maisie wasn’t very much mistaken, on a clutch of eggs.

‘You silly girl,’ Maisie chided, and squirmed in through the narrow gap and grasped the little white chicken firmly. She was pecked for her pains, of course, but not hard, and there under the hen were nine little pale brown eggs, beautifully arranged in a circle, narrow end in. Maisie put her back on them and sighed. ‘Well, at least she’s still alive.’

‘She’s lucky not to have been eaten by a fox, I guess,’ James suggested, and she nodded.

‘She is lucky—but she’s been missing about two to three weeks—which means those eggs are going to hatch any day now. I’ll have to put her in the slammer and chuck the eggs—’

‘But they’re about to hatch, you said.’ He sounded horrified, and she tipped back her head and looked up at him, a slightly hysterical laugh rising in her throat.

‘Yes—and absolutely the last thing I need in my little garden is any more chickens, so given a grain of sense I’ll put her in solitary confinement on a wire floor and throw away her babies. You, on the other hand,’ she added, eyeing his garden meaningfully, ‘have room for nine little chicks and their mummy, surely?’

He threw up his hands. ‘Oh, no—no, Maisie, not me. I don’t do chickens.’

She shrugged and reached for Helga again, ruthlessly calling his bluff. ‘OK, I’ll just chuck them, then.’

‘All right!’ His hands were up again, but this time in surrender. ‘All right. I’ll have the damn chickens. What do I do with them?’

She laughed and straightened up. ‘Not a lot. You need a broody run, hay to make a nest, some chick crumbs, some flea treatment which I can give you, plenty of fresh water in a shallow container so they don’t drown when they’re tiny, and Helga will do the rest.’

He looked utterly bewildered, and Maisie took pity on him. ‘I think there might be something round here you can keep them in, unless it’s all been cleared out by the builders,’ she said.

‘No. I had enough on my plate with the house. I thought I’d worry about the garden when I got here, all bar the routine maintenance. I had that done, but nothing else, so whatever was here should be here still. I seem to remember something in the orchard.’

‘Right, let’s have a look,’ she said, and under the apple trees at the far end of the garden she found a little ark almost buried in the long grass.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.