Fiona Lowe – Double Trouble: Pregnancy Surprise: Two Little Miracles / Expecting Royal Twins! / Miracle: Twin Babies (страница 25)
She looked away and bit her lips. ‘Sorry. It’s just—we seem to be getting on so well, and then the future rears its ugly head and there’s no way round it.’
And the babies were fussing and bored.
‘Let’s dress them up and go for a walk,’ he suggested. ‘We could use the slings.’
They’d bought slings the day before, to carry the babies on their fronts so they could go for walks without taking the buggy, and so they sorted them out. He ended up with Ava and Julia with Libby.
They swapped them all the time, he realised, as if neither of them wanted to create a closer bond with just one of the twins. Odd, how it had just happened and they hadn’t talked about it, but then it had always been like that with them. They’d hardly ever needed to discuss things, they’d just agreed.
Until now, and it seemed that sharing the babies equally was the only thing they could agree on.
Well, out of bed, at least. That, he was relieved to know, was still as amazing as ever. And he wasn’t going to think about it now.
They strolled along the riverbank for a way, while Murphy rushed around and sniffed things and dug a few furious holes in search of some poor water-vole or other unfortunate creature, and then they walked back to the house.
‘Do any of these barns belong to the house?’ he asked, and she nodded.
‘Yes, all of them. It was a farm—Rose Farm—but the farmland was all sold off and they took the name, so it was renamed Rose Cottage. Which is silly, really, because it’s a bit big to be a cottage, but there you go.’
He looked around curiously. There were lots of buildings that were too small to do anything specific with, but others—like the range of open-fronted, single-storey brick cartlodges—could be converted into office accommodation.
If only they could find something like it for sale, then there was a possibility that he could work from home. Not just him, but one or two other members of the team—a sort of satellite office. He knew lots of people who’d scaled down their operations and ‘gone rural’, as one of them had put it, but he’d never seen the attraction.
Until now.
‘Come and see the garden,’ she said, and led him through the gate at the side.
He’d been out there with the dog, of course, but he’d never really examined it, and, as she walked him through it and talked about it, he began to see it through her eyes.
And it was beautiful. A little ragged round the edges, of course, in the middle of winter, but even now there were daffodils and crocuses coming up, and buds were forming on the rose bushes, and, if he looked hard, he could imagine it in summer.
‘I’ve got photos of it with the roses all flowering,’ she said. ‘It’s stunning.’
It would be. He could see that. And he remembered what she’d said, on the day that she’d left him.
Well, she had her garden now, and her roses. Watching her talk about them, he could see the change in her, the glow in her eyes, the warmth in her skin, the life in her. Real life, not just the adrenaline high of another conquest, but genuine satisfaction and contentment.
And what shocked him more than any of that was that he wanted it, too.
‘Why don’t you have a day out with Jane?’
‘What?’ She shifted forward on the sofa and stared down at him on the floor; he was lying at right angles to her with his hands linked behind his head and Libby sprawled asleep on his stomach.
‘You heard. I’ll look after the girls. We’ll be fine.’
‘Are you sure?’ she asked doubtfully.
‘Yeah, we’ll be great. Don’t you trust me?’
‘Well, of course I trust you. I’m just not sure you know what you’re letting yourself in for.’
‘Undiluted hell, I expect, but I’m sure we’ll all survive.’
She thought about it, and shook her head. ‘No. But I might meet her for a coffee,’ she suggested, toning it all down a little and going for something more manageable. ‘Besides, she’s got the baby, and the others will need dropping off at school and picking up again, and she’s always really busy. But I’ll ask her. When were you thinking of?’
‘Whenever you like. Tomorrow?’
Tomorrow was Monday. One week since he’d arrived. It was two days since they’d ended up in bed. And it had been incredible, but she was letting herself get too addicted to it, and there were other things to think about. Like him in London and her here with the children.
Still, it could work. Lots of couples did it.
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