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Standing in the darkness of the herb garden, Emily could just about make out the small window and, yes, it was open. Her satisfaction was short-lived; actually it wasn't small, it was very small, and it looked an awful lot higher up than she'd mentally pictured. Getting in by this route would call for a ladder and a good head for heights, neither of which she possessed.

"Are you going to stand there all night?"

Emily jumped and spun around, her heart racing.

"How did you get in there?" she demanded indignantly of the tall dark figure suddenly outlined in the golden light filling the open doorway.

Finn dangled a key ring and thumbed through a healthily thick wallet. "Spare key and cash in the car. My days as a Boy Scout were not wasted after all. Always be prepared," he quoted virtuously.

Not always, he hadn't been, Emily recalled, lowering her eyes in panicky confusion as the intrusive recollection of the first time they'd made love crept into her head. She remembered lying there in a blitzed condition staring at the ceiling, feeling the warm fluttery aftershocks of the shattering climax. A good-night kiss that hadn't been!

"Oh my god!" she'd mumbled for the umpteenth time since his heavy frame had finally slipped off her trembling, sweat-slick body.

"If anything happens, you mustn't worry, Emily."

Emily nodded. She supposed she should have been sensibly alarmed by the idea of an unwanted pregnancy, but she wasn't feeling sensible.

"I want you to know I don't make a habit of this...carelessness," Finn had emphasized worriedly as he took her chin in his hand and looked into her hazy unfocused eyes.

"Well, you already know that I don't," she replied with a shaky laugh.

The reminder made him flinch.

Finn had been pretty devastated to discover that he was her first. In fact, if she hadn't assured him he'd have her death on his conscience if he didn't continue, Emily was pretty sure he would have stopped right then! Thank God he hadn't!

"Hell, I'm so sorry, I was too?"

Emily had halted the torrent of self-recrimination with a kiss. "Too gorgeous for words is what you are!" she'd told him firmly. "You were incredible, Finn!" she'd whispered rapturously. "It was amazing, and when can we do it agai?"

"Come on in before you get hypothermia, woman!"

Finn's irritated voice tugged her back to the present.

"I think I already have," she jittered. Wrapping her arms around her body, she walked past him into the small vestibule that led into the heart of their home ? the big farmhouse kitchen.

She took a seat at the big refectory table bought at an antique fair on a weekend trip they'd taken to Normandy. Had he and Maeve been...together even then? Had they ever not? I'm my mother all over again, she thought in self-disgust, acknowledging her deepest fear.

Emily had known about her father's mistress, the whole village had known, but not her mother.

Finn, after seeing she was literally shaking with cold, opened the lids on the woodstove that sat in the inglenook. Extra heat immediately flooded the room.

"I don't know why you're looking at me like that, Emily. Things are going to plan, aren't they? Haven't I done what I was supposed to do ? run after you?"

"I didn't want you to run after me!" she denied, thrown off balance by his cool observation.

"Sure, it must have come as an enormous surprise when I turned up," he drawled. "I suppose the next thing I'm Supposed to do is plead with you to believe that Maeve's baby isn't mine?"

His eyes hardened. "Well, news flash, sweetheart. I'm not going to!"

To be continued...



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