The Pregnancy Plan

It was too bad he didn’t have a personality to match!

Lacey had her own key to Deerhaven, and taking it out, she unlocked the door. He followed her into the foyer.

From upstairs came the fretty cry of a baby.

Lacey moved over to the foot of the stairs. “Fliss, we’re here!”

A few seconds later, Felicity appeared on the landing. She beamed down at them.

“Hi, Dermid, delighted you could make it. Where’s Jack?”

“He went round the back to look for his cousins.”

“Good, they’re playing there with Shauna—my baby-sitter from next door. Jordan called, he’s on his way home. I’m just going to put Verity down for a nap and we’ll have a drink before lunch. We’ve loads of time, the christening’s not till two-thirty.”

“Anything I can do to help?” Lacey asked.

“You’re such a whizz at setting the table, would you mind…?”

“Not at all.”

“And Dermid, could you take Andrew’s high chair from the kitchen and set it up in the dining room?”

“Sure.”

As Felicity went back to the nursery, Dermid ambled off and Lacey went into the dining room.

She set the table, using Felicity’s best linen and silver and crystal, and then taking white linen napkins from the drawer, she fashioned them into intricate swans and set them in the glasses by each place mat, smiling to herself as she stood back to admire her handiwork.

She detested housecleaning and she couldn’t cook but there was no denying she could set a mean table.

Dermid, on the other hand, hadn’t even managed to bring through the high chair!

As she made her way to the kitchen to take him to task, she heard Jordan’s voice.

“…yes of course we can talk about it,” he was saying.

“Later,” Dermid said. “After the party’s over. It’s private, Jordan, and personal. A family matter.”

“But if it has to do with Alice, as you said, shouldn’t Lacey be involved, too?”

“No!” Dermid’s tone was sharp. “She’s the last person whose input I’d want on this. Jordan, I’ve struggled with this situation for far too long and I have to make a decision. At least, I’ve made my decision, and what I need from you is support—”

Lacey became aware of footsteps running down the stairs. And realizing, with dismay, that she’d been eavesdropping, she hurried back to the foyer and arrived there just as Felicity reached the foot of the stairs.

“You’ve set the table?” her sister-in-law asked.

“Mmm. Come along and see my swans!”

But though she managed to put on a cheerful face, Lacey felt edgy and upset.

What was going on in her brother-in-law’s life that required him to ask Jordan for support?

It was clear he didn’t want her to know anything about it. And that made her furious. She was a Maxwell, too, and if it was a family matter concerning Alice, then Dermid McTaggart had no business trying to shut her out!

One way or another, she promised herself, she would get to the bottom of it!

CHAPTER TWO

THE christening took place outdoors at Deerhaven, the sunken rose garden made a perfect setting and Jordan and Felicity looked blissfully happy.

“I think,” the minister said later in the afternoon, before he left, “that everything went off rather well.” His eyes twinkled. “Baby Verity is blessed with a remarkable pair of lungs.”

Jordan laughed, saying “She may well be a budding opera singer!” as he walked the minister into the house from the patio, where the adults had enjoyed champagne and tea and a slice of Felicity’s delicious homemade white-chocolate christening cake after the ceremony.

Felicity had gone upstairs to put the baby down for a nap and the other children were having a picnic in the play area…which left Dermid alone on the patio with Lacey.

He noticed that though she’d taken an active part in the conversation while the minister was present, now she lay back in her cushioned lounger and closed her eyes.

Shutting him out.

And he could hardly blame her. Ever since she’d picked him up at the ferry, some perverse impulse had driven him to snipe at her. That comment he’d made, about her job being a “3-2” had been totally uncalled for. So what if she lived an easy glamorous life, one that was shallow and useless? Just because he despised that kind of nonproductive existence was no excuse for taking potshots at her. But what had impelled him into goading her further today had been the fact that she hadn’t responded with her usual acerbity. And what satisfaction was there in needling someone who refused to be needled!

She looked, right now, totally oblivious to him. She also looked as if she were posing for some fashion spread. Elegance personified.

But her silk dress, which she’d changed into before the ceremony—black with a pattern of tiny white flowers—probably cost more than one of his prize alpacas!

“I can see,” she drawled, “by the derisive curl of your lip, that you’re thinking a nasty thought about me.”

She’d barely raised her eyelids but he could detect a challenging glitter from beneath the coal-dark lashes.

She tilted her head, provocatively. “Go ahead,” she said. “Spit it out. It can’t be good for you, to keep all that poison bubbling inside.”

He decided to accept the challenge. “I was just thinking,” he said lazily, “that your dress probably cost more than one of my prize alpacas.”

“Yes,” she said, “I shouldn’t be surprised if it did. And you were probably thinking, also, what a useless life I lead, compared with one of your beloved beasts.”

He glanced at the table. “It did occur to me,” he murmured, “that if Alice had still been here, she’d have whipped all these dishes and glasses inside and be cleaning up in the kitchen, to take some of the load off Felicity.”

Now he was being mean, and he didn’t like it—or himself—one bit. He saw her stiffen. But when she spoke, instead of an angry retort, he got a restrained reply.

“I know you miss Alice, but you won’t ever get to me by holding her up as an example—I’m in total agreement that she was one in a million. I know she meant the world to you, and I know how unhappy you’ve been since she died. And I’m guessing you’re stuck at the ‘anger’ stage of your grief. If it helps to use me as a whipping boy, feel free to continue.”

The patio doors behind her slid open and Felicity came out, with Jordan following.

As casually as if she and Dermid hadn’t been spatting, Lacey looked up at Felicity and said in a pleasant tone, “Did you get the baby settled?”

“Mmm, she’s out like a light. Wasn’t she sweet, in her christening gown?”