Sharon Kendrick Collection. Sharon Kendrick

taking the baby from him even though he made a half-serious sound of protest.

      ‘We’ll be down in the kitchen,’ she told him. ‘What would you like for breakfast?’ she asked, and then wished she hadn’t, for in the early days she had asked him that very question and the answer had always been the same—‘You!’

      The brief clouding of his eyes told her that he had remembered too, but the careless smile which followed drove all other thoughts from Triss’s mind.

      ‘What does Simon have?’ he murmured.

      ‘I thought I’d give him scrambled eggs this morning,’ she told him, feeling strangely shy. Something seemed to have happened between the two of them, and some of the old ease and magic was back. And she liked it. She liked it very much.

      Cormack gave a roguish smile. ‘Then I’ll have the same as Simon, please.’

      Triss went down and put Simon in his high chair, only her hands were shaking so much that she could barely crack the eggs into the bowl. As it was, some of the mixture plopped onto the shiny linoleum floor, and Triss moved to the sink to find a sponge to mop it up with.

      She was just rinsing out the sponge under the tap when Simon leaned right over his tray at such a precarious angle that Triss was certain he was going to go hurtling to the floor.

      ‘Simon!’ she yelled, and rushed from the sink towards the high chair, not seeing the egg white where it lay in an innocently transparent pool.

      Her foot went from under her as it collided with the sticky mess and Triss was caught off balance, too startled to have the presence of mind to put her hand out to save herself.

      Her last thought before she hit the floor was her baby—nothing must happen to her baby.

      ‘Cormack!’ she called out, in a thin, reedy voice. ‘Oh, please... Cormack...’ And then the whole world went black.

       CHAPTER ELEVEN

      WHEN Triss came to she was lying down. Not on the kitchen floor, but stretched out on one of the sofas in the sitting room with Cormack hovering over her, his ashen, worried face barely recognisable.

      At the sight of her eyelashes fluttering. open he heaved a huge sigh of relief.

      ‘Triss! Thank God! Oh, thank God!’

      ‘Wh-where’s Simon?’ came her automatic response.

      ‘In his pram. Outside.’

      ‘Outside where?’ she demanded in alarm. She tried to sit up, but with a firm, decisive hand he stopped her.

      ‘Just there. Look.’ He pointed out through the window. ‘In the sunshine. Babies need fresh air. He’s fine.’ He knitted his black brows together furiously and a look of sweet concern came over his face. ‘But it isn’t Simon I’m worried about—it’s you! Darling, how’s your head?’

      Darling? Triss wondered if hearing things was a well-known side-effect of banging your head. ‘What happened?’

      ‘You slipped on the kitchen floor. You must have spilt something—’

      ‘Egg,’ she put in, as if in a trance, and saw him frown at her rather dreamy response.

      ‘You were only out a couple of minutes,’ he continued, his gaze scanning her face closely. ‘But I called Michael and Martha immediately. Michael is on call at the hospital, but Martha is on her way over. She’ll be here shortly. She’s going to look after Simon while I take you to the hospital.’

      ‘Hospital?’ Triss protested. ‘But I don’t need to go to hospital!’ She tried to sit up again, but waves of nausea washed over her and she slumped back against the pile of cushions which Cormack must have built up into a small mountain behind her head.

      ‘Oh, yes, you do!’ he retorted swiftly. ‘Martha says that as you lost consciousness—’

      ‘Only for a few seconds!’ she pointed out.

      ‘A few seconds or a few hours—either way, you still need an X-ray.’

      ‘Rubbish!’

      ‘Beatrice—’ he began, and Triss could not remember seeing him look quite so stern. ‘I am not playing games here. Now, either you allow me to take you to the hospital when your sister-in-law arrives or I call an ambulance and we go there right now, with sirens blaring and lights flashing and a very confused little baby into the bargain!’

      Triss slumped back again, feeling weak and helpless but also oddly satisfied. She had been on her own with Simon for so long that she had forgotten what it was like to be able to lean on someone else for a change. And it was rather comforting, she realised, to have someone else to make the decisions—even if Cormack did tend towards the very bossy!

      ‘OK?’ he quizzed.

      ‘OK,’ she agreed, at the same time as the doorbell pealed out. Cormack hurried out of the room to answer it.

      He returned minutes later with Martha, her sister-in-law, who rushed over to Triss’s side, her worried expression clearing slightly when Triss managed a wide smile.

      ‘Are you OK?’ she demanded, her fingers swiftly moving to Triss’s pulse.

      ‘I’m fine.’

      ‘Where’s Simon?’

      ‘In his pram outside,’ answered Cormack. ‘He needs some breakfast.’

      ‘Right.’ Martha nodded decisively.

      ‘But I can give him his breakfast!’ objected Triss on a pathetic little wail. ‘And I don’t want to go to the wretched hospital either!’

      Martha merely looked up and said serenely, ‘Cormack?’

      He bent down, scooped Triss up into his arms and carried her out to the car, and Triss could not help but notice the rather complacent smile on her sister-in-law’s face as he buckled up her seat belt for her.

      She felt dozy in the car, and she caught Cormack giving her a sharp, sideways glance before turning an even paler colour—something which Triss had not thought was physically possible.

      ‘It should be you going to hospital!’ she joked shakily.

      ‘Keep talking,’ he said grimly.

      ‘Why?’

      ‘Because Martha told me you weren’t to sleep. Talk to me, Triss,’ he implored.

      ‘About?’

      ‘About anything. About what is closest to your heart. Tell me about the day our son was born.’

      It was the hardest thing she had ever had to do, but it served its purpose because it kept her talking. The words spilled out in an emotional torrent as she described the first sharp pain of labour which had speared at her womb in the middle of the night.

      ‘He came a couple of weeks earlier than he was meant to,’ she explained. ‘I hadn’t planned to be on my. own.’

      She saw the muscle which had begun to work convulsively in his left cheek.

      ‘What did you do?’

      ‘I rang Martha. She came straight away—which was loyalty beyond the call of duty, considering it was three in the morning! She kept me calm, kept me talking. Helped with my breathing. She...’ Triss, bit her lip.

      ‘She what?’

      ‘She wanted to ring you.’

      His mouth thinned. ‘But you wouldn’t let her, I suppose?’

      ‘No. And you must hate me for that. For denying you the opportunity of seeing your son born.’ Was it the wooziness from knocking her head which gave her the courage to voice her greatest