australia & nz 

MEET THE HERO

"In the context of the body of Liz Fielding's romances, SECRET BABY, SURPRISE PARENTS stands out as one of her most emotional romances --- and one of her best! If you love an emotional romance, reserve a block of time just to enjoy this romance uninterrupted. SECRET BABY, SURPRISE PARENTS is a romance you won't want to put down until the last page."
 

Amazon Reviews 5 stars

"SECRET BABY, SURPRISE PARENTS by Liz Fielding is a sweet, romantic story that plays on the readers every emotion. My heart broke for Grace. Not only did she give up her baby in a completely selfless act to her sister but then to have to face the fact that she might lose her again."

JOSH told himself that he should wait. 

Go down to the basement flat, take a shower.  But to do that, he’d need the key and the key cupboard was in the kitchen. 

For the first time for as long as he could remember, he was frozen in indecision, unable to move.  Staring down at the hall table where a pile of post, cards, some addressed to Grace, some to him, waited to be opened.  Read. 

He frowned.  Cards? 

He opened one, saw the lilies.  In sympathy…

He dropped it as if burned, stepped back, dragged his hands over his face, through his hair as he looked down the hall.  Then, because there was nothing else to do, he turned and walked slowly towards the kitchen.

He pushed the door very gently.  It still squeaked.  How many times had he heard Michael promise Phoebe that he’d do something about it? 

He’d offered to do it himself, but Phoebe had just smiled.  She liked the warning squeak, she’d told him.  Liked to have something to complain about once in a while.  It  wasn’t good for a man to believe he was perfect. 

He could have told her that Michael didn’t believe that.  On the contrary.  But that had been a secret between the two of them and, somehow, he’d managed to smile back.      

He paused, holding his breath, but there was no sound and he stepped into the room that had always been the hub of the house.  Warm, roomy, with a big table for everyone to gather around.  An old armchair by the Aga that the fourteen year old Grace had taken to like a security blanket, homing in on it when she’d arrived clutching a plastic bag that contained everything she possessed under one arm, a small, scruffy terrier under the other. 

The pair of them had practically lived in it.  And it was the first place she’d taken the puppy he’d given her when old Harry had died a few months later and he’d been afraid her heart was going to break. 

The puppy, too had finally died of old-age, but now she had a new love.  Posie.  The baby she had borne with the purest heart as surrogate for the sister who had given her a home and who was now lying, boneless in sleep, against her shoulder. 

Michael, hoping that if he saw the baby he would finally understand, forgive him even, had emailed him endless photographs of Posie, giving him a running commentary on her progress since the day she’d been born, refusing to be deterred by his lack of response.

There had been no photographs of Grace until the Christening and then only in a group consisting of Grace, as godmother, holding Posie, flanked by Michael and Phoebe.  A happy picture in which everyone had been smiling and sent, he suspected, with just a touch of defiance.  A “see what you’re missing” message. 

He hadn’t cared about that.  He’d only cared about Grace and he’d cropped the picture so that it was only of Grace and Posie.  Blown it up.  Printed it so that he could carry it with him.    

Her face had been outwardly serene, but a photograph was just a two-dimensional image.  It was without warmth, scent.  You could touch it, but it gave nothing back.  But then it had been a very long time since Grace had given anything back to him.  Keeping her distance, her eyes guarded on his visits home. 

At least he’d had time to get over his shock that, sometime in the last year, she’d cut her beautiful long hair into a short elfin style.  Come to terms with the fact that her boyish figure had finally filled out in lush, womanly curves.

But this scene was not a photograph.    

This was an intimate view of motherhood as only a husband, a father would see it and he stood perfectly still, scarcely daring to breath, wanting to hold the moment, freeze this timeless image in his memory.  Then, almost in slow motion, he saw the empty feeding bottle that had dropped into her lap begin a slow slide to the floor.

He moved swiftly to catch it before it hit the tiles and woke her, but when he looked up he realised that his attempt to keep her from being disturbed had failed. 

Or maybe not.  Her eyes were open and she was looking at him, but she wasn’t truly awake.  She wasn’t seeing him.  He froze, holding his breath, willing her to close them again and drift back off to sleep. 

She stirred.  ‘Michael?’ she said.

Not quite seeing him, not yet remembering.  Still he hoped…

She blinked, focussed, frowned.  ‘Josh?’

He saw the exact moment when it all came flooding back, and instinctively reached out to her as he had a year ago.  As if he could somehow stop time, go back, save her from a world of pain.  ‘Grace…’

‘Oh, Josh…’

In that unguarded moment, in those two little words, it was all there.  All the loss, all the heartache and sinking to his knees, this time he did not step back, but followed through, gathering her into his arms, holding her close. 

For ten years he’d lived with a memory of her in his arms, the heavy silk of her hair trailing across his skin, her sweet mouth a torment of innocence and knowing eagerness as she’d taken him to a place that until then he hadn’t known he wanted to go. 

Lived with the memory of tearing himself away from her fully aware that he’d done the unforgivable then compounded his sin by leaving her asleep in his bed to wake alone. 

He’d told himself that he had no choice.    

Grace had needed security, a settled home, a man who would put her first while, for as long as he could remember, he’d had his eyes set on far horizons, on travelling light, fast.  That he needed total freedom to take risks as he built an empire of his own.  

But nothing he had done, nothing he had achieved, not even a hastily conceived and swiftly regretted marriage had ever dulled the memory of that one night they’d spent together and still, in his dreams, his younger self reached out for her.

It had been unbearably worse during the last twelve months.  Sleep had been elusive and when he did manage an hour he woke with an almost desperate yearning for something precious, something that was lost forever. 

This.  This woman clinging to him, this child…

He brushed his lips against her temple and then, his head full of the warm, milky scent of baby, he kissed Posie and for one perfect moment all the pain, all the agony of the last twenty-four hours fell away.

 From the book Secret Baby, Surprise Parents, by Liz Fielding
ISBN: 978-0373175796

Imprint: Mills and Boon Romance TM & Harlequin Romance (R)
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