With This Baby... by Caroline Anderson

Author:Caroline Anderson
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2013-02-15T00:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SIX

LUNCH was a great success.

Jess spent the entire time on her grandmother’s knee, chewing furiously on her plastic keyring and enjoying all the unexpected attention. And because they were in the garden and the weather was wonderful, there was a lovely alfresco party feel to the whole thing.

Patrick heaved a silent sigh of relief and sat back, leaving them to it. Claire was coping fine, and his parents were managing not to ask searching and insensitive questions, and the baby was quiet. What more could a man ask for? he thought, and relaxed.

The food had been wonderful. Nothing complicated, just fresh ingredients simply cooked and served in the fresh air in the dappled shade of the gnarled old apple tree—the tree from which Claire had picked the fruit for the apple pie the previous autumn, she’d told him.

There was something incredibly satisfying about that, he thought. Satisfying, basic and fundamental. He could understand why farmers carried on against all odds and in all weathers, working the land, reaping the rewards.

Had the old hunter-gatherers felt like that, too, when they’d found a tree full of ripe, soft fruit, or hunted down a mammoth? He laughed softly to himself. The nearest he ever got to hunting down a mammoth was a quick sortie to the local supermarket, crammed in between endless site meetings and arguments with planners.

So safe, so reliable, so remote from the precarious reality of famine and crop failure—even when they were out of stock of the things he wanted!

Not that he’d want his livelihood to be precarious, but he’d often thought that there should be a more simple life, some happy medium between the chaotic mouse-in-a-wheel existence of today and the hand-to-mouth existence of his early forebears.

There was just something so profoundly peaceful about sitting there in the shade of the tree with the taste of the apple still fresh on his tongue and the quiet hum of bees in the blossom, ensuring the next crop.

It might be nice to have some chickens, he thought absently—or then, perhaps not. It wouldn’t be fair to Claire, with him away so much, but the idea was tempting. The baby could help feed them, when she was older, and watch the chicks scratching in the dirt. She’d love that.

He nearly laughed. There was a way to go before Jess was ready for that, he reminded himself, and found his eyes drawn to her yet again.

She had finally stopped chewing on the plastic ring, and was sleeping peacefully in her pram just beside the table. He met his mother’s eyes and she smiled at him mistily, and he wondered why he’d waited nearly five weeks before telling them about Jess.

They’d been so pleased to meet her, and they’d really taken to Claire, as well. He was hugely relieved about that, because if they liked her and trusted her, then they wouldn’t worry about her being responsible for Jess’s upbringing—which meant they wouldn’t be permanently on his case.

Well, not about that, anyway. There

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