The Baby Swap Miracle by Caroline Anderson Read Free Book Online Page A

the growl of a tractor in the distance, a dog barking, the pure, sweet song of a blackbird. Somewhere fairly close, a cockerel crowed. Sam’s? Probably. She’d heard one this morning at some ungodly hour.
    Her eyes still closed, she breathed in deeply through her nose and caught the scent of new-mown grass and the heady sweetness of a spring-flowering viburnum. And it was warm—so much warmer than outside, the sheltering embrace of the walls making a micro-climate where tender plants would thrive.
    All it needed was some loving care.
    ‘It’s lovely,’ she sighed wistfully, looking around again and trying to take it all in. ‘A real secret garden.’

    ‘Exactly—it’s a mess,’ he said with a wry laugh, but she shook her head.
    ‘It’s full of treasures, Sam. Some of these roses are ancient, and they just need careful pruning and a bit of a feed, and they’ll be wonderful again.’
    ‘But it all takes time and I’ve been concentrating on the house. It seemed fairly important as the roof was falling in.’
    ‘Oops.’ She smiled and met his eyes, wondering yet again if their baby would inherit them. Beautiful, beautiful eyes… ‘Emily said you were a bit mad buying it,’ she said, bringing her mind back to order, and his mouth twitched.
    ‘Did she?’ He looked around, taking in the faded beauty of the house and garden—not nearly so bad if you half closed your eyes so it went into soft focus. ‘She’s probably right,’ he admitted slowly, ‘but I love it here. I bought it at auction. I was trawling the net, looking at property, feeling restless—it wasn’t a good time in my life and I just wanted—well, whatever, I saw it, and it was being auctioned that day, so I got in the car and drove out here and had a quick walk through the ground floor and the outside of the house and bid for it.’
    ‘And you got it?’
    He knew his smile would be wry. ‘There was a bit of a tussle.’
    ‘I’m not surprised,’ she said with a little chuckle. ‘It’s gorgeous. So—you didn’t have a survey first?’
    ‘No. No time. Literally. I had ten minutes to decide if I was going to bid or not, but they say you make up your mind about a house in the first eleven seconds or some such ridiculous thing. It didn’t even take me that long. I’d decided before I set foot in the house, after I stuck my head in here on the way round. That was enough to convinceme. And there was dry rot in the roof, and the bedrooms underneath were trashed because the weather had been coming in, and it was a mess. But that was fine. Nothing that couldn’t be sorted by throwing money and a lot of effort at it, so that’s what I’ve been doing. There’s a cottage that was sort of habitable, and I lived in that and started getting the house sorted out, bit by bit, and then once the kitchen was useable and I had a bathroom and a couple of bedrooms and somewhere to sit in the evening by a fire, I moved in here and started work on the cottage.’
    ‘On the cottage ?’ she said, puzzled that he hadn’t finished off the house first. They were strolling along the paths between the beds, and she could see the structure of the garden, the little lavender hedges that had escaped and run wild…
    ‘I needed guest accommodation, but it’ll make a lovely holiday cottage eventually, so I’ve been fixing it up, but it’s just about done and then I need to turn my attention back to the house. There’s still loads that needs doing, but it’ll take a while.’
    She looked up at the house and blanched at the thought of the maintenance and repair bills—never mind a major renovation.
    ‘The cost must be horrendous. Do you have a really good job or are you just naturally wealthy?’
    He gave a hollow, slightly cynical laugh. ‘No, I’m not naturally wealthy, but I’ve worked hard. I used to buy and sell companies. I kept a few and I’ve got a steady income, but to be honest I’ve lost interest in that way of life. It’s not all it’s