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In the good old days, if she’d been grumpy like this he would have made a wisecrack about her hormones. Not now. He knew better now, because PMT was an indicator of just how monumentally unsuccessful they were being in the baby department, and frankly it just wasn’t funny.
He pressed a kiss to her hair, and she snuggled closer, letting him hold her. He wasn’t really comfortable. He should have had his leg up on a pillow, but it wasn’t as bad as it had been and for now it wasn’t his priority.
Fran was, and he wasn’t going to do anything that might make her leave his arms. He wished he knew what to say, how to comfort her, but he didn’t, so he just held her, and after an age she fell asleep.
It was hot—too hot to lie so close—and he shifted slightly, easing away from her and stretching his leg out, wishing he’d propped it up on the pillows first before they’d started this conversation.
She’d rolled to her side away from him, and he shifted to face her, hunting for a better position. It wasn’t, but his good leg brushed hers, and she wriggled back towards him, seeking him out in her sleep the way she always did if things were tough.
The way she always had, he corrected himself, and let his arm circle her waist, drawing her back more firmly against his chest. To hell with the heat. She needed him, and it was little enough to do for her.
Even if the feel of her soft, warm body in his arms was killing him …
Fran woke to Mike’s arm around her, his fingers curled gently around her breast, the insistent nudge of his erection against her bottom.
Heat speared through her, flooding her with a fierce, desperate need, a hollow ache that only he could fill. It was so long since she’d felt it, felt anything at all except empty and cold. And she wanted him—wanted the old Mike, the man who laughed and chased her around until she let him catch her, who made love to her, tormenting her until she was sobbing with need, then taking her with a wild and uncontrolled passion that left her spent and boneless in his arms.
Where was that man? Gone for ever? Or was he still here? If she only had the courage to reach out …
‘Mike?’ she whispered.
For a moment he said nothing, so she almost wondered if he was asleep, but he was too still, too silent, and then he spoke, his voice gruff and low.
‘I’m sorry. It’s just—I’ll move.’
‘No!’
The word was out before she could stop it, and he froze again. ‘Fran, please. I can’t do this. Can’t lie here night after night, wanting you like this, and—’
‘Wanting me?’ she breathed, stunned. Turning, she stared at him in the moonlight. ‘Do you want me? I thought you didn’t.’
‘Of course I want you,’ he whispered roughly. ‘I’ll always want you.’
‘But—you’ve been avoiding me. Going over to the farm office, telling me not to wait up, getting out of bed in the morning without waking me.’
‘I’ve always done that. I never wake you that early.’
‘Not like this, Mike. Not like this, so I thought you didn’t love me any more.’
‘Oh, Frankie, of course I love you.’ He sighed. ‘I just …’
‘Just can’t bring yourself to touch me?’ she said, her voice hollow to her ears—hollow and empty, like her heart.
‘No! How could you think that?’
‘Then why are you avoiding me?’ she wailed softly, ridiculously, all but inviting him to make love to her when she couldn’t even contemplate his intimate touch.
He sighed again, his hand coming up, the knuckles grazing her cheek with infinite tenderness. ‘It’s not that I can’t bring myself to touch you, Fran. It’s—oh, hell, much more complicated than that.’
‘Then tell me! Talk to me, Mike!’
He didn’t answer, but she could hear the cogs turning, feel the tension radiating out of him.
‘Mike?’
‘Frankie, I’m no good with words. I’m a farmer, for God’s sake. I don’t talk about my feelings.’
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Why not? Dammit, I’m not enjoying this either, but we have to talk. Our marriage is in tatters, we’re falling apart and I’m trying here, really trying to get through to you, to sort it out, to find out if we’ve still got anything, and I can’t do that on my own! I can’t lay myself bare, wide open to you—not on my own! You have to do it too, Mike. You have to tell me how you feel. You have to share. Please …’
Her voice cracked, and with a ragged sigh he reached out and found her hands in the darkness, gripping them so tight she nearly cried out, but she wasn’t letting go, not now, when they were so close …
‘It’s not that I can’t bring myself to touch you,’ he said gruffly. ‘Far from it. It’s more that—I daren’t.’
‘Daren’t?’ she breathed. ‘Why ever not?’
He hesitated an age, then said, so softly she could hardly hear him, ‘In case you get pregnant.’
She froze with shock. So she was right, she thought numbly, her eyes searching his but unable to read them in the shadows. Her voice cracking, she said desperately, ‘I knew you didn’t want a child with me—’
‘Oh, Frankie, no!’ He reached out, wrapped her in his arms, dragged her against his chest with a groan of protest. ‘Of course I want a child with you. But every time you’re pregnant, every time you lose it—I just can’t bear to watch you go through that, sweetheart—not again. I can’t bear watching you fall apart, seeing what I’ve done to you destroying you—’
‘What you’ve done?’ She pushed away, tilting her head so she could look into his eyes, her hand cradling his face. ‘Mike, don’t be silly! You’ve done nothing to me.’
‘Except get you pregnant with dodgy sperm.’
‘We don’t know that. It could be my eggs. Maybe they’re dodgy. What makes you think it’s you? There’s nothing dodgy about Sophie.’
‘Maybe she was a one-off. My lucky break. And anyway, you’ve been avoiding me, too,’ he added softly. ‘Sometimes, when I’ve reached the end of my tether and I really, really needed you, you’ve turned away, reading a book or going to have a bath or—I don’t know, almost anything rather than be alone with me. I’ve even wondered …’
‘Wondered what?’ she asked, when the silence stretched on.
‘If there was someone else.’
‘Mike! You know I wouldn’t!’
‘I know. I do know. Or I know you wouldn’t have an affair, at least, but—you can’t stop yourself falling in love, Frankie. And if there’s someone else—someone you’d rather be with—I know you don’t want me to touch you. I’ve felt you recoil …’
‘When?’
‘The other night?’
‘Oh, Mike.’ She felt tears fill her eyes, felt the anguish in his voice cut through her like a knife. ‘It wasn’t that.’
‘What, then? What is it that makes you flinch away from me as if I’m somehow … repugnant to you?’
‘Oh, darling, you’re not. Not at all. It’s just—I feel like a medical investigation. As if so many people have looked at me there, touched me, talked about me—as if the part of me that had belonged to us is suddenly public property. And I don’t know if I could bear for you to touch me, or if it’ll just bring it all back—’ She broke off, biting her lip, then went on unsteadily, ‘Mike, I don’t know if I can respond to you any more. I don’t know if it hasn’t just killed it for me, and I’m scared to find out.’
His breath sighed against her face, warm and reassuring. ‘Oh, Frankie. Oh, my love—what’s happened to us?’ he whispered, folding her against his chest again and rocking her. She could still feel the brush of his erection, but softer now, less urgent, and as he cradled her so her confidence grew, her need to hold him, to touch him building until finally she found the courage to reach out.
‘Mike?’ Her voice was soft, gently questioning, and her hand stroked against his shadowed jaw, the rasp of stubble unbearably erotic against her palm. Leaning in to him, she brushed her lips lightly against his, tentatively, not sure of her reception or how she’d react if he took it further than this, but he wasn’t going to let her find out.
He drew back, taking her hand and turning his face into it, pressing a kiss against her palm. ‘No,’ he said softly. ‘Not tonight. Not when you’re still unsure—still not ready.’
‘I am,’ she lied, but he knew her better than that. So much better. And he was right, of course. She wasn’t ready, and maybe he wasn’t either. They still had a long way to go, a lot to unravel, much to talk through.
And for a man who didn’t talk and a woman usually too shy to reveal her inner self, it was going to be uphill all the way.
They slept in each other’s arms, only waking to the sound of his family in the kitchen at seven.
She groaned, and he chuckled and hugged her closer to his chest. ‘Maybe they’ll cook us breakfast,’ he suggested.
‘And maybe I should be up and helping them, not lying here with you and—’ She broke off, and he let her go.
Lying here with him and—what? Wanting him, the way he wanted her? God, he hoped so, because a few more nights of persistent arousal was going to give him a serious medical problem.
But what if she didn’t? What if she never wanted him, couldn’t ever bear his touch? What if all the investigations had turned her off so thoroughly that they never made love again?
The thought took his breath away.
‘Coming down?’ she asked, and he shook his head.
‘I’ll have a shower first.’
‘Need a hand?’
‘No,’ he said firmly. Not to have a cold shower. And it would need a bucket of ice to settle him down after last night. He watched her as she walked down to the bathroom, the nightshirt hitched up slightly by the clothes she’d scooped up to take with her, revealing an incredibly tempting glimpse of the crease below her left buttock as she walked.
The softly shadowed fold did nothing to help his state of arousal, and with a groan he shut his eyes and dragged his mind to something dull. Anything. The paperwork? Farm records?
Funny how his mind had emptied, how he couldn’t think of a single thing except that soft shadow and the warm, silky feel of her skin …
She was busy all day, out on the farm, and he was driven crazy. He started to read the book Ben had given him, but it couldn’t hold his attention. Not against such fierce competition.
And he was getting so unfit it was driving him mad.
He went into the kitchen, poked about in the larder and found an unopened bag of rice. That might do the trick. He sat down on one of the chairs, draped the rice bag over his cast and did some lower-leg lifts until his thigh and abdominal muscles were burning. Then he shifted onto his right hip and lifted the leg up and in towards the centre, over and over, then stood up and held on to the sink and lifted his leg out sideways until the muscles round his hip were screaming in protest.
He looked at the clock and sighed. Ten minutes. Barely that, and he was cream-crackered. Still, it was a start.
He put the kettle on, then went to the freezer and hunted around for the packet of coffee. Funny, he had been sure there’d been one in here, but he couldn’t find it. Oh, well. He picked up his crutches and went slowly over to the farm office. Joe was in there with his father, and he stuck a coffee-pod in the machine and put a mug under the spout.
‘So how are things?’ Mike asked while he waited for the coffee.
‘OK. How about you?’
‘Bored to death. Doing exercises so my leg doesn’t wither and drop off. Why?’
‘I’m going to cut up that tree,’ his brother said. ‘Want to come and keep an eye on me?’
‘I can’t do anything.’
‘You can dial 999 when I cut my leg off,’ Joe pointed out dryly, and Russell snorted.
‘I hate to point this out to you two but I can’t run the entire farm alone without either of my suicidally reckless sons.’
‘Don’t worry, Dad, I’ll look after him,’ Mike assured him. ‘And tell Fran not to worry about lunch, we’ll grab something from the shop.’
He drained his coffee—the first decent one for days, he realised—and climbed into the cab of the pickup with Joe. Maybe if he was careful he could stack some of the logs …
‘Cheers. You’ve been a real help—hope you haven’t overdone it.’
‘I’m fine. It was good to get some fresh air,’ Mike told Joe, and slapped his shoulder. ‘Right, I’m going in. No doubt I’ll get a lecture. I’ll see you later.’
He went into the kitchen and sniffed appreciatively.
‘Wow, that smells good.’
‘It’s more than you deserve,’ Fran growled, but when she turned she was smiling and he hobbled over to her, stashed his crutches in the corner of the worktop and hugged her.
‘I was sensible. I was just going crazy, stuck in the house, sweetheart.’
‘I know.’ Her arms were round him, holding him close, and she felt so good he could have stayed there for ever, but she pushed him away and told him to wash.
‘You’ve got ten minutes before supper,’ she said. ‘And I want you clean and presentable. We’re eating in the dining room.’
He peered through the door on the way past and did a mild double-take. Candles?
He yelled back, ‘Give me fifteen minutes. I’m having a shower.’
A nice hot one, followed by a shave and a slosh of the citrusy cologne she’d given him for Christmas two years ago. He contemplated the cast with disfavour, pulled on a fresh pair of the baggy boxers, then his favourite aqua-blue soft cotton shirt and his decent shorts—his dress shorts? he thought with a chuckle—and went downstairs.
Wow.
She’d said clean and presentable, but she hadn’t expected him to go to so much trouble. He was even wearing aftershave!
She was wearing a sundress—she’d changed into it after she’d finished turning the cheeses and had a shower, and she’d been out in the garden picking fresh herbs and deadheading the roses. She could feel the warmth in her shoulders, even though she’d been out of the sun at midday, but it had obviously been enough.
Now, though, looking at him in his shorts and that lovely shirt, which did incredible things to his fabulous chocolate-brown eyes, she wished she’d made more effort—put on a touch of make-up, her best underwear—
She cut herself off. This was supper for her husband. Nothing more. Nothing huge. They were going to eat, and they were going to talk and make friends again. And if tonight went like last night, he wouldn’t let it go any further.
‘Anything I can do?’
‘Yes—sit down in the dining room and light the candles. I know it’s not dark yet, but it’s gloomy in there.’
‘You’re an old romantic, do you know that?’ he murmured softly, right behind her. Feathering a kiss over her bare shoulder, he stumped out, the clatter of his crutches almost drowned out by the beating of her heart.
Brodie was looking hopeful, but she was banned. ‘Sorry, sweetheart, two’s company and all that,’ she said, and shut the dog out.
They had oysters to start with. Not Falmouth oysters, because they were out of season, but imported oysters that she’d found on the supermarket fish counter. Normally she wouldn’t have dreamed of buying anything so unlocal, out of season and environmentally unsound, but they were on the list, they were reputedly an aphrodisiac and, besides, Mike loved them and he deserved a treat.
‘I can’t believe we’re having oysters,’ he said, raising his eyebrows.
‘They were on special offer,’ she lied, and wondered how many more lies she’d have to tell him before the end of the meal.
He squeezed lemon juice over them and sucked one off the shell. ‘Mmm,’ he said. ‘Not bad. The Fal ones are fresher.’
‘Well, they would be. They’ve only come fifty miles.’
He chuckled. ‘Fair point. These are still good, though. Thanks.’
‘Pleasure.’
‘So—are they part of this diet you’ve got me on?’ he asked casually. ‘Because, if so, I think I like it. And I should certainly heal fast.’ He looked up, laughing, and was arrested by the guilty look on her face. ‘Fran?’ he said, slowly lowering the next shell to the plate untouched. What the hell was going on?
She swallowed and knotted her fingers together. She always did that when she was nervous—but why?
‘Talk to me,’ he said, and she looked up and met his eyes, her own filled with remorse, and he knew—he just knew—that she was hiding something. ‘It’s nothing to do with my leg healing, is it?’ he said slowly. ‘So what’s it all about?’
She got up and went out, coming back seconds later with a folded sheet of paper. She handed it to him, and he opened it and scanned it.
‘Fertility-boosting diet?’ he said, noticing all the things that were on it that should have rung alarm bells. The lack of tea and coffee, the extra fruit, the smoothies, the raw veg soups, the lack of alcohol—not that they drank much, but if she was going to this much trouble they’d usually share a bottle of wine, but there was fruit juice by their plates, and a jug of water on the table.
He lifted his head and met her wary and slightly defiant eyes. ‘Fran?’
‘I saw Kate—about the baby thing. She discussed our diet with me.’
She looked guilty, and he had a feeling they’d talked about a lot more than diet. Good, because he’d wanted her to have someone to talk to, but he’d never dreamt she wouldn’t discuss things like this with him.
‘Why didn’t you say anything?’ he said, hurt and puzzled that she’d felt the need to lie—lie, for heaven’s sake!—about something so uncontroversial and trivial. Or was it? Was it that she hadn’t been sure if he wanted a child with her? She’d said that last night—did she really believe he didn’t? If so, maybe that was why she’d been reluctant to get it out in the open.
‘She said it wouldn’t hurt to try it, to improve our diet, to get fitter—and then, if we decided we wanted to go ahead and try again for a baby, we’d be in the best possible position.’
He felt a flicker of fear for her, dread that yet again she’d be faced with crippling disappointment or a gut-shredding loss that would leave her devastated.
‘If?’ he said softly.
Her eyes flicked back to his. ‘I wasn’t sure if you wanted one—if you didn’t feel it was just a lot of angst and hassle, if Sophie wasn’t enough for you.’
‘This isn’t about me, Fran, it’s about you, and if you want a baby.’
‘I do—but I want yours. And I need you to want it, too. And right now I’m not sure you do.’
He sighed. ‘It’s not so urgent for me,’ he pointed out. ‘I’ve got Sophie, and my clock’s not ticking the way yours is. And anyway …’ he scanned the paper again, noted the section about boosting sperm production and reducing DNA damage ‘ … if you want a baby, maybe you’d be better off with someone else.’
‘What?’
Her soft, shocked exclamation tore at him, but he went on regardless. ‘Maybe, if you want a healthy baby, you’d be safer trying with someone who hasn’t already got you pregnant twice with an embryo that was probably flawed.’
‘We don’t know that that was you!’
‘We know that some of the sperm were damaged—that the motility was down a little, that they weren’t all perfect.’
‘But—everyone’s are like that, Mike! It’s perfectly normal to have a proportion of sperm that aren’t a hundred per cent. It could just as easily have been something to do with the IVF process.’
‘Not the first time.’
‘Mike, miscarriage is really common,’ she said, repeating to him all the things he’d told her again and again, trying to encourage her, to give her confidence to try again, but it sounded as hollow now as it had when he’d said it, and he felt the burden of guilt settle firmly on his shoulders.
‘But if it is me,’ he said quietly. ‘If it is my fault, then I may not be able to give you a baby, Fran. And how many times are you prepared to try? How many miscarriages are you going to go through before you give up? And what if—just consider, for a moment—what if we have a baby that you should have miscarried but didn’t? A baby nature would normally have rejected as unviable? What if we have a baby with problems—physical or mental disabilities, developmental problems—what then, Fran? Will you be able to forgive yourself for not choosing a better partner? Will you be able to forgive me? Because I’m not sure I could.’
She stared at him for an age. ‘That could happen to anyone at any time. Are you telling me if we had a disabled baby you couldn’t love it?’
‘Of course not!’ He didn’t even have to stop and think about that one. In fact, for a while now he’d been on the point of suggesting to Fran that they adopt a child with special needs, but he’d held back, not ready to concede defeat in the fight for their own child until she was. But she didn’t know that, didn’t realise that he’d considered it, and now she thought he just couldn’t hack it if they had a child with problems.
‘Of course not,’ he said again. ‘But I don’t know if I could forgive myself for bringing a child into the world if I had a fair idea that that child would be damaged in some way because of my contribution to its existence. And if that was the case, maybe it would be better to adopt. That’s all I meant. Nothing more sinister. And if it is me—’
‘But I don’t want anybody else’s baby,’ she said with a certainty that brought a lump to his throat. ‘I want yours, Mike—and if I can’t have yours, then I don’t want one at all. We’ve got Sophie. That’s enough. We should be grateful and concentrate on loving her.’
Her voice cracked, and he was up and round the table in a second, his crutches abandoned, hauling her into his arms and cradling her against his chest, unable to bear the desolate look in her eyes. ‘Don’t give up,’ he said gruffly, his eyes prickling. ‘We’ll take our time, try the diet, have some more tests. And then—if you want to, if you think you can cope with it—we’ll try the IVF again.’
‘But we can’t afford it, Mike, so it’s pointless,’ she said, her voice clogged with tears.
‘Maybe we can,’ he told her. ‘Ben and Lucy want to buy some of our land around their house. Joe and I are going to have a look at it at the weekend. Ben’s talking about paying amenity rates—that’s about double what it’s worth, at least. I don’t want to fleece them, but it’ll add significantly to the value of their property, and Joe and Sarah want to do their kitchen—and it would mean we could afford to try again. If you want to.’
She looked up at him, her eyes uncertain, and as he watched, a flicker of hope came to life. ‘Really?’
‘Really.’
She smiled slightly. ‘You’d better sit down and finish your oysters, then,’ she said with a return of her old spirit, ‘because we’ve got baked sea bass and new potatoes and mangetout, followed by hazelnut meringue ice cream with mango coulis and chocolate Brazil nuts with decaf coffee to finish up.’
‘And then?’
She smiled again, and he could see a pulse beating in her throat.
‘Then we go to bed.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
IT WAS the longest meal of his life.
He didn’t want it. Every mouthful, delicious though it undoubtedly was, was just another step on the path to the bedroom, and the anticipation was killing him.
Not just the anticipation, though. There was also the fear of failure, of letting down.
What if he rushed her—if, while she was still uneasy about her body, he was too fast for her, in too much of a hurry for his own satisfaction that he left her behind?
No. He couldn’t. Not tonight, when it was clearly so significant in the salvation of a marriage he’d realised he wanted more than anything else in the world.
So he ate his meal slowly, mouthful by mouthful, and he talked to her about what he and Joe had done that day down by the river, and they laughed about him taking the saw from Joe and cutting up the part that had trapped him into tiny little bits.
‘It’s just matchsticks now,’ he said, and she laughed again.
‘That’ll teach it,’ she said, and then her laughter faded. ‘I was so scared,’ she confessed. ‘When I saw you trapped under it, when they were just about to pull you out and I saw it shift—I knew it was going, and I thought I was going to lose you.’