A Mother by Nature

A Mother by Nature
Caroline Anderson

New paediatric surgeon Adam is a devoted father with a burning desire to seek sanctuary in Anna’s arms.Their passion is instant, but he won’t let Anna into his family’s life. He understands a woman’s need to hold her own child – something he just can’t give her – and knows it would eventually drive her away. But Anna knows he’s just plain…wrong!

Praise for Caroline Anderson:

‘From one of category romance’s most accomplished voices comes a beautifully told, intensely emotional and wonderfully uplifting tale of second chances, new beginnings, hope, triumph and everlasting love. Caroline Anderson’s Wedding of the Year is an engrossing, enthralling and highly enjoyable tale that will move you to tears and keep you riveted from the first page until the very last sentence. Moving, heartbreaking and absolutely fantastic, with Wedding of the Year Caroline Anderson is at her mesmerising best!’ —www.cataromance.com on St Piran’s: Wedding of the Year

‘Photojournalist Maisie Douglas and businessman Robert Mackenzie have been more or less amicably divorced for almost two decades, but the upcoming marriage of their daughter, Jenni, stirs up old emotions on both sides. Very young when she married him, Maisie—pregnant and disowned by her family—was miserable living in Scotland with Rob’s judgmental parents, and left after little more than a year. Maisie hasn’t found another partner and neither has rob. Can they find a way to trust each other again, after all this time? This lovely reunion romance is rich with emotion and humour, and all of the characters are exquisitely rendered.’

—RT Book Reviews on Mother of the Bride

About the Author

CAROLINE ANDERSON has the mind of a butterfly. She’s been a nurse, a secretary, a teacher, run her own soft furnishing business, and now she’s settled on writing. She says, ‘I was looking for that elusive something. I finally realised it was variety, and now I have it in abundance. Every book brings new horizons and new friends, and in between books I have learned to be a juggler. My teacher husband John and I have two beautiful and talented daughters, Sarah and Hannah, umpteen pets, and several acres of Suffolk that nature tries to reclaim every time we turn our backs!’ Caroline also writes for the Mills & Boon

Cherish

series.

Recent titles by Caroline Anderson:Mills & Boon

Medical Romance

THE SECRET IN HIS HEART

FROM CHRISTMAS TO ETERNITY

THE FIANCÉE HE CAN’T FORGET

TEMPTED BY DR DAISY

ST PIRAN’S: THE WEDDING OF THE YEAR* (#ulink_32176122-e707-5788-a0ad-02bccfa0986d) THE SURGEON’S MIRACLE * (#ulink_32176122-e707-5788-a0ad-02bccfa0986d)ST PIRAN’S HOSPITAL

MILLS & BOON

CHERISH

THE VALTIERI BABY VALTIERI’S BRIDE THE BABY SWAP MIRACLE MOTHER OF THE BRIDE

A Mother

by Nature

Caroline Anderson

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

CHAPTER ONE

HE STOOD in the bay window, his eyes scanning the dimly lit street with quiet contentment. It was a pleasant street, the large houses set back from the road and shielded from prying eyes by an avenue of old flowering cherries.

Their branches swayed in the wind, leafless still, the whispered promise of spring barely showing in the brave shoots of daffodils nudging the earth under the garden wall, but the signs were there, and he guessed it would be glorious when the trees blossomed.

A movement in the house opposite caught his attention, and he focused on it. There were lights on downstairs, and he could see people moving about, settling down for the evening.

His house was settled already, silent now except for the running footsteps on the stairs. They ground to a halt by the door.

‘Adam? I’m going out now, OK?’

He looked towards the disembodied, slightly accented voice with resignation. ‘OK. What time will you be back?’ he asked, without any real hope that he would like the answer. He was right. He didn’t.

‘Late,’ she said. ‘I’m going to the pub again—maybe meet my new friends. I’ve got my keys.’

‘OK. Goodnight, Helle.’

The front door slammed behind her, echoing through the house and making the windows rattle. Her feet crunched against the gravel of the drive, and she slipped through the gateway and disappeared, swallowed up by the eerie night. Adam dropped his head back against the edge of the window and let out a quiet sigh.

He was tired. It had been a hectic week. The move had taken three days, and he’d spent the next four unpacking and slotting things into their new places while the children had got under his feet and rushed about excitedly and Helle had done the bare minimum. The big Edwardian semi still seemed empty, the huge rooms swallowing up their meagre possessions with ease, but given time he could decorate all the rooms and buy more furniture to fill them.

It was a daunting thought, but there was no hurry, and just for now they were enjoying the novelty of having too much room. After nearly three years of battling for elbow room and falling over toys and clutter, it was wonderful to have the space to spread out.

Skye had her own bedroom for the first time, the boys’ room was big enough to have a separate area for each of them, and Helle, their Danish au pair, had a room on the top floor, a huge room with a little shower off it next to the spare bedroom that would double as his study. That gave her privacy, and he had privacy and space of his own in the master bedroom suite at the front—most particularly space.

The size of his bedroom was the only incongruous thing. Like Helle’s room above him, it ran across the full width of the front of the house, excluding the bathroom at the end, absurdly big compared to the middle bedroom he’d had at the other house and somehow highlighting his loneliness in a way which that cluttered little room had never done.

He dropped into a chair and closed his eyes, suddenly weary, and wondered how the children and Helle would cope without him tomorrow, his first day in his new job. How would he cope, come to that? It was not only a new job, but his first consultancy, and he felt a little rush of adrenaline at the thought. Nerves?

Absurd, Adam told himself. He was more than capable of doing it, more than ready for the responsibility and the challenge. It was just that with the move to a new area and a new house, a new school for Skye and Danny and a new nursery school for Jaz, there was so much change, so much to deal with.

Someone to share it with would have made it all so much easier, he thought with an inward sigh, but that hadn’t been an option. And Helle had been more of a hindrance than a help since they’d moved. She’d been unhappy before, restless and discontented, and now, since they’d moved, she’d seemed permanently attached to the cordless phone, drifting aimlessly around and talking into it in Danish whenever she thought he wasn’t listening. Phoning home? Lord alone knows what the phone bill will be, he thought grimly.

He had a feeling his au pair was destined for a fairly imminent departure, which would mean replacing her and settling the new girl in with the children while coping with the new job and trying to sort out the house.

That in itself would be no mean feat. They’d only been able to afford it because it needed to be grabbed by the scruff of the neck and dragged, kicking and screaming, into the next century. The plumbing was ancient and suspect, the heating was intermittent and unreliable, the wiring was safe but woefully inadequate, and there wasn’t a single room that didn’t need decorating and a new carpet and curtains.

Even on his new consultant’s salary he couldn’t afford to deal with it all at once, and he certainly couldn’t afford to pay anyone to do it for him. Catapulting restlessly out of the chair, he went into the kitchen and poured himself a glass of wine. His eyes scanned the room without the benefit of his earlier rose-tinted spectacles, and the enormity of what he’d taken on swamped him.

It was the little things—the cupboard door that hung at a crazy angle because the top hinge had gone, the worktop that had a hole burned in it next to the cooker, the cracked and broken tiles, the broken sash cord that dangled from the window, taunting him.

How many others were on the point of breaking? What else was wrong that he hadn’t noticed or worried about on the building society’s huge and extensive survey report? OK, structurally it was sound, but everything he looked at seemed to need some attention. The loo off the hall needed to have its door rehung because it smashed into the basin behind it if you opened it more than halfway, the fireplace in the dining room needed to be opened up and revealed—the list was endless.

Endless, but cosmetic. Nothing time wouldn’t cure. Once he’d had time to deal with it, it would be warm and light and a wonderful family home.

One day.

Adam went back to the drawing room, threw another shovel full of coal on the fire, put on a CD and settled down in the chair with his eyes firmly shut against the list of chores awaiting him in that room.

He didn’t want to see the crack across the corner of the ceiling, the wallpaper easing off the wall just below it, the chipped paint on the skirting board, the worn and frayed carpet begging to be replaced.