Tom Corrigan wasn’t exactly what Holly had in mind for husband material. On the face of it, they couldn’t have been more different. There was the obvious contrast in their looks. Her pale, mousy complexion was even more pronounced in comparison to Tom’s tall, dark, and handsome looks. There were other fundamental differences, too. She was organized; he was not. She prepared for and expected failure; Tom saw every setback as an opportunity. She admitted when she needed help; Tom, the man who had just been given the opportunity to travel the country reporting, wasn’t about to admit that he couldn’t even find his way out of the studio. After bumping into Holly on that fateful tour of the place, he neglected to mention that he was lost and offered to hang around and help her until she was finished for the day, at which point he would escort her off the premises and take her to dinner.
“I can see the cogs turning,” Tom warned her, drawing her out of her reverie. “Starting the next five-year plan already?”
“I’m quite happy working my way through my current lists, thank you,” replied Holly. “The unpacking, the redecorating, my new studio, not to mention the new commission for Mrs. Bronson.”
“Quite happy?” Tom asked her with mock surprise.
Holly smiled. “Very happy. Quite possibly very, very happy.”
“Quite possibly?” he said, raising a mischievous eyebrow.
“Give it up already,” Holly scolded. “Are we going to stand here all day in the hall arguing about the scale of my happiness, or are we going to make use of some of the other rooms?”
“What a good idea. How about I get the champagne and meet you in the bedroom in precisely two minutes?”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” answered Holly, but Tom was already heading back to the kitchen.
The next morning, Tom and Holly were as reluctant to leave their bed as they had been eager to jump into it the night before. Tom was on leave from work for two weeks, so there was no alarm clock demanding their attention, no fixed routine to comply with, nothing to do but finish their unpacking and explore their new surroundings. They just had to get out of bed first.
The bed faced a large picture window, which looked out on a rambling garden bordered by a rambling orchard and, beyond that, the rambling English countryside. It was a bright spring morning and the sun was doing its best to rouse the new inhabitants of the gatehouse out of their deep sleep. The insistent sunshine played patterns across the white linen curtains, fluttered down the pale blue walls, skipped across the polished wooden floor, and crept stealthily across Holly’s sleeping face, tickling her into wakefulness.
Her first thoughts quickly formed into a list of all the things that needed to be done, urgent actions vying for attention. Holly silenced those thoughts, mentally folding over the pages of her newly formed list. They could wait. She wanted to savor at least one day with her husband in their new home with no one else’s needs to satisfy except their own. Time at home with Tom was going to be at a premium in the coming months.
No sooner had they closed the deal on the gatehouse, which they had chosen specifically because it was within commuting distance of London, than Tom was offered a new job. It was an offer he couldn’t refuse, not least because the studio was going through a painful reorganization and he was one of the lucky ones. But he would now be expected to do more work in front of the camera, covering politics as well as environmental issues, and he could also expect to be sent farther afield. The farther-afield clause in his contract arrived sooner than expected and his first assignment was a six-week stint in Belgium, making his commute a little longer than either of them had anticipated.
“Are you awake?” Tom asked.
“Hmm,” answered Holly, turning toward him so that they were nose to nose.
“Whoa, morning breath!” teased Tom.
“You can talk; you smell like a man.”
“Thank you.”
“I hadn’t finished,” Holly corrected him. “You smell like a man who’s spent the night licking the carpet of one of those really old pubs where your shoes stick to the floor. In fact, I can see you’ve still got half the carpet coated on your tongue.”
“So you don’t want a kiss then?”
“Are you sure you can cope with my morning breath?” challenged Holly. She deliberately breathed out each word.
“I’m willing to take the chance if you don’t mind risking a mouthful of old pub carpet.” Tom poked his tongue out and licked the tip of Holly’s nose.
“I’ve had worse things in my mouth.”
“Now there’s a challenge,” grinned Tom.
“Not only do you have a tongue that smells like the gutter; you’ve got a mind that’s already there.”
Tom glided his body over toward Holly, sliding his hand across her torso and then slipping his legs between hers. It was a well-rehearsed and familiar maneuver that placed him over her and left Holly breathless.
“I can talk dirty, if you want me to,” Tom offered.
Holly wrapped her arms around his neck before letting her fingers trail down his spine. Hidden beneath the shadow of Tom’s body, Holly could only sense the dappling of morning light as it played across his back.
“How dirty?”
“Well …” Tom said. He drew out the word with a teasing hiss. Then he smiled, or was it a smirk? “I’m not talking five-year plans here.”
“I should hope not,” replied Holly. She was watching the curves of his mouth intently, the dampness of his lips, the glimpse of his tongue. She pushed her body toward him, encouraging him on.
“Oh, no,” Tom said, ignoring her blatant desire. “I’m not even talking seven years.” He kissed her nose. “Not even ten.”
Holly tangled her fingers in the luxurious waves of his hair. She reached up to kiss him but he moved his head away. He hadn’t finished teasing her yet.
“I might be talking twenty years here. Hell, no, I’m perverted enough to even count on forty.”
“You have a sick mind, Tom Corrigan,” agreed Holly. Her body was tingling with anticipation and she writhed beneath him. She could tease, too.
“I want a plan that takes us right up to our dotage, in this house, surrounded by our family, our children, our children’s children, and maybe even our children’s children’s children.”
For a fraction of a second, Holly’s body froze. Then she blinked hard in an attempt to push away the fear that had fluttered across her eyes. She forced a smile, hoping that Tom hadn’t noticed her reaction, hoping that she could resurrect the moment, but the air in her ballooning passion had well and truly gone out.
“What?” Tom asked with a quizzical look that pierced Holly’s heart. “Does the thought of children terrify you so much?”
“No,” lied Holly.
“Yes, it does,” insisted Tom. He leaned his body over to her right side, resting his arms. The moment for passion had most definitely been lost.
“I want children,” insisted Holly. “It’s just the being a mother part that I struggle with.”
“You want to give me children. That’s different from wanting them yourself,” corrected Tom, his tone a mixture of concern and frustration. “And you can and will be a good mum. It’s not hereditary, you know.”
Tom was, of course, referring to her childhood. Holly was the product of a broken home, broken long before the bitter divorce that followed. Her mother had left home when Holly was only eight years old, but rather than feel abandoned, she had actually felt relief. Her mother had had a perverse attitude toward motherhood and replaced love with cruelty, nurturing with scorn. After the divorce, Holly saw little of her, and by the time she was a teenager her mother had drunk herself into an early grave. Her father, by contrast, was distant and completely uninterested in his daughter, but in some ways that made him every bit as cruel. He left Holly to bring herself up, so when she moved into student digs at the age of eighteen she never returned home again, not even for his funeral.
“I know it’s not hereditary, but you learn by example. You really don’t know how lucky you are with your family. Yours is so, it’s so …” Holly just couldn’t find the words. Tom knew all about her childhood, but he could never really know what it was like to grow up without the security of a loving family. “It’s so linear,” she said at last.
“Linear?” laughed Tom. “What does that mean?”
“You have a mum and a dad who love and support you, and they had parents who loved and supported them. Your grandparents probably had wonderful parents, too, and so it goes on and on, handed down, generation after generation.”
Tom’s parents were wonderful in Holly’s eyes and she was sometimes overwhelmed by the way they had accepted her into their family and loved her like one of their own. Being part of a classic nuclear family had been a steep and very emotional learning curve for Holly. When Tom’s grandmother Edith had died recently, Holly witnessed firsthand how the family had drawn strength from each other, how their love for Edith had somehow bridged the void that her death had left in their lives.
“We’re not that perfect,” Tom replied. “We have the odd black sheep in the family.”
“Oh, but you are perfect. Compared to my family, you are.” Holly gently touched the side of Tom’s face. “What if I’m the weak link that’s going to break the chain in your family? What if I can’t learn to be the kind of mother that your family has been built on through the generations?”
“Don’t ever think you’re weak. Yes, your parents were weak and that had an effect on you, but it had the opposite effect. You’re the strongest person I know. Your parents were awful at parenting, but that just means you’re going to make sure you’re the best mum you possibly could be. You have to believe that.”
Tom’s body had become tense and she could feel a growing anger inside him—anger that she knew was directed at her parents and at himself for not being able to heal her and banish the demons of her past.
“I know I have to believe in myself,” conceded Holly, although she didn’t think she ever would. But Tom wasn’t going to rest until she had her next plan all worked out—not that he needed a plan to follow. Tom was a free spirit who preferred to make things up as he went along, but he was thirty-two now and he was desperate to be a father, or at least to know that he would be one day.
Tears had started to well in Holly’s eyes and the sunlight that surrounded Tom’s head was a blurred halo. The only things Holly could see clearly were his soft green eyes.
“Hey, you’re crying,” Tom said, sounding shocked.
Holly blinked, willing the tears to disappear. “I’m not,” she lied defiantly.
“Ah, I forgot. You never cry.”
“I do. Not that I am now, but I do.”
“When?”
Holly paused, struggling to find a recent example that would prove Tom wrong. “There was that film, the one where the dog died.”
Tom frowned as he tried to remember. Then he stifled a laugh. “That must have been over two years ago. I don’t think we were even married then.”
“But I cried. Point proven.”
“OK, point proven,” conceded Tom. “But I don’t want to push you into anything you don’t want for yourself. I had hoped that when Alice had her baby, and then Penny, you’d just want to follow suit, but I can see it’s not going to be that simple. If you’re not ready to start talking babies yet, then I understand.”
Alice and Penny were the closest thing Holly had to friends in London and they’d had their babies within a year of each other. She knew Tom had been disappointed when Holly hadn’t miraculously become broody at the sight of a newborn. Little did he know that her enthusiasm to move to the country had in part been fueled by a desire to put as much distance between her and the endless baby chatter.
“Once I’ve got the house in order, then we can start on the next five-year plan. A joint one this time, and making a baby will most definitely be on the list,” she told him.
“A baby? Singular?” Tom said. His body had begun to relax again and he was back in teasing mode. “Have you looked at this body? It’s a well-tuned baby-making machine if ever there was one. You won’t be able to so much as look at me without getting pregnant.”
“Hold on, tiger,” smiled Holly, relaxing too. “I think that baby-making machine of yours could do with a little more practice.”
“Your wish is my command,” replied Tom.
It was lunchtime before they managed to explore the rest of their new home.
The days disappeared in a blur and Tom’s departure was drawing painfully near, painfully fast. They had unpacked everything that needed to be unpacked, cleaned everything that needed cleaning, and replaced as many of the things that needed replacing as they could afford. What little savings they had left had already been set aside to pay for the renovation of a small outbuilding at the side of the house that was going to be used as Holly’s studio.
Tom’s parents had visited, bearing gifts and even helping out with the physical demands of turning the gatehouse into a home. Typical of Diane and Jack, they had stayed long enough to help but hadn’t outstayed their welcome. They knew without being told that Holly and Tom had a lot of quality time to try to cram into two weeks.
Diane had made sure the kitchen was organized and fully stocked with a range of cooking essentials before she left. She was keen to support Holly in one of her new projects. Holly wanted to learn to cook. Her dad had been keen to show Holly the basics, if only to keep himself well fed, but the basics had involved how to open tins of beans, how to pierce the cellophane before putting ready meals in the microwave, how to make instant noodles, that kind of thing. Now that Holly and Tom were living so far away from the conveniences of fast-food takeaways and restaurants on every corner, she was keen to improve her skills. The move to the country was more than simply a change of address; Holly wanted it to be a change of lifestyle.
“It’s a beautiful house, Holly. Jack and I are so happy for you both,” Diane told her as they unpacked a mind-boggling assortment of kitchen utensils. “And Mum would be, too. It makes the pain of losing her a little easier to bear, knowing that her legacy is to help you and Tom start a new life of your own.”
“I’m just sorry Grandma Edith isn’t here to see her money being well spent. It means a lot to me and Tom that you’re happy with how we’ve used the inheritance.”