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  It couldn’t possibly be the baby, she reassured herself as the tight spasm receded. The baby wasn’t due yet. These pains were nature’s way of warning you what the real thing was like.

  But the spasms continued throughout the night, and by three o’clock in the morning Catherine could stand it no longer and rang Finola.

  ‘I think it’s the baby!’ she gasped. ‘I think it’s coming!’

  ‘Jesus, Mary and Joseph! Don’t do a thing. I’m on my way!’

  ‘I couldn’t do anything,’ said Catherine weakly, and clutched at her middle. ‘Even if I wanted to.’

  Finola arrived and took one look at her. ‘Let’s get you straight up those stairs,’ she said, ‘and then I’m calling the doctor!’

  ‘But I’m supposed to be having the baby in hospital!’

  Aunt Finola snorted. ‘And how do you suppose we’re going to get you to hospital? On a sledge?’

  Catherine giggled, and then groaned. ‘Don’t!’ Her mouth fell open. ‘And Finn’s supposed to be here! I want Finn here with me.’

  ‘Finn’s in London,’ said Finola gently. ‘Just think about him. Pretend he’s here. He’ll get here eventually.’

  And so he did, by which time Catherine was propped up on the pillows, illuminated by the sunshine which was fast melting the snow, cradling a black-haired baby who was not as tiny as she should have been.

  He burst in through the bedroom door, his face a stricken mixture of panic and joy, and was beside the bed in seconds, kissing her nose, her lips, her forehead.

  ‘Catherine! Oh, sweetheart. Sweetheart! Thank God!’

  Both Finola and Catherine heard the break in his voice and for one brief moment their eyes met across the room. The expression in the older woman’s said as much as, Are you completely mad? and Catherine knew that she mustn’t wish for the stars. Stars were all very well, but they were a million miles away. This was here. And now. Grounded and safe. Far more accessible than stars.

  ‘You’re okay?’ he was questioning urgently.

  ‘More than okay,’ she said, with the first stirrings of a new-found serenity she suspected came hand in hand with motherhood.

  ‘And is this my daughter?’ he was saying in wonder as he stared down at the ebony-dark head and then slowly raised his head to look at his wife. ‘My beautiful daughter.’

  The soft blue blaze dazzled her, enveloped her in its warmth and wonder. ‘Meet Mollie,’ she said, and handed him the bundle who immediately began to squeak. ‘Miss Mollie Delaney. She hasn’t got a middle name yet—we hadn’t agreed on one and I thought you might like to—’

  ‘Mary,’ he said firmly, as she had known he would. His mother’s name.

  Finn looked down at the baby in his arms.

  ‘Hello, Mollie,’ he said thoughtfully, and when he looked up again his eyes were suspiciously bright.

  Aunt Finola made a great show of blowing her nose noisily.

  He had come full circle, Catherine realised. Mollie had given him back something of himself. His own childhood had been snatched away from him by the death of his mother and now having his own baby gave him a little of that childhood back.

  ‘What can I say, Catherine?’ he said softly. ‘Other than thank you.’

  At which point his aunt got abruptly to her feet and glared at him. ‘I’m off!’ she said briskly. ‘I’ll be back tomorrow!’

  After she had gone, the two of them just gazed at their sleeping infant for long, peaceful seconds.

  He put the baby down gently in the crib and then sat on the edge of the bed, taking Catherine into his arms as though she was a fragile piece of porcelain which might shatter if he held her too hard.

  ‘Catherine,’ he said shakily.

  She wanted him closer than this. ‘I won’t break, you know.’

  He pulled her against him and kissed her then, soothed and excited her with just the expert caress of his lips. Catherine sighed with pleasure and then with slight irritation when he stopped, and opened her eyes to find him looking at her rather sternly.

  ‘This changes everything, you know.’

  ‘I know it does. No more sleep, for a start!’

  But he shook his head. ‘You know what I’m talking about, Catherine.’

  That was just the problem. She didn’t. Or rather, she didn’t dare think about it. Hence her attempt at a joke.

  His eyes were burning into her with such intensity—so blue, so beguiling. ‘This baby cements what we have between us. You know that, don’t you?’

  It wasn’t the most romantic way he could have put it, but then, whoever said anything about romance? She and Finn were about compatibility and maturity and making the best of a situation they had not chosen. And making the best of things was surely a sound bedrock from which to work?

  She recognised, too, that Finn would do all in his power to make sure their relationship flourished—for the sake of Mollie if for nothing else.

  She nodded, her eyelids dropping to hide her eyes, afraid that he might see traces of wistful longing there.

  ‘Catherine,’ he commanded. ‘Look at me.’

  She lifted her head and met the soft blue stare.

  ‘Living with you is so easy,’ he murmured. ‘In so many ways.’ There was a pause. ‘You make me happy,’ he added simply, and he lifted her fingertips to his lips and kissed them.

  And if Catherine’s heart ached to hear more then she was just being greedy. She made him happy—he had said so. And he made her happy. Which was more than most people had. Expecting those three lit tle words said more about society’s conventions and expectations than anything else. For how many people said ‘I love you’ and then proceeded to act as if they didn’t? Why, Peter had said it, and then he had run off with someone else!

  No, she would count her blessings—and they were legion.

  They made each other happy.

  Who could ask for anything more than that?

  Epilogue

  EPILOGUE

  CATHERINE sighed a contented sigh. ‘Not exactly a conventional honeymoon, is it?’

  Finn glanced up from sleepy eyes. In the distance, the dark blue waters lapped rhythmically onto the sand. ‘Well, it was never a conventional relationship, was it, sweetheart?’ he asked sleepily.

  ‘Finn Delaney, will you wake up and talk to me properly?’

  He rolled over onto his back, screwing his eyes up against the bright sunshine, and gave a lazy smile. ‘It’s all your fault, Mrs Delaney—if you didn’t make such outrageous demands on me every minute of every day, then I might be able to keep my eyes open!’

  Catherine rubbed a bit more sun-cream onto her tanned arm. ‘And you honestly think that Mollie will be okay?’

  He propped himself up on one elbow. ‘With your mother and Finola looking after her? And Aisling having to be forcibly restrained from dragging her off to the beach every second? Are you kidding, sweetheart? Sounds like bliss for a two-year-old, to me!’

  ‘Mmm. I guess you’re right.’

  ‘And anyway—’ he pulled her into his arms, feeling the stickiness of the lotion on her skin and pushing his hips against hers in a decidedly provocative way ‘—I thought we’d decided to do things more conventionally from now on?’

  She kissed his neck. ‘Mmm.’ The church wedding had been conventional enough—even though she had balked at wearing full white bridal regalia. But the snazzy silk suit in softest ivory, purchased from a shop in Grafton Street, had certainly won Finn’s approval! And so had the miniature duplicate she had secretly ordered for Mollie!

  They had flown out to Pondiki that same afternoon, to discover that Nico had himself found a bride, and was soon to be a father!

  Finn gazed at her. ‘Are you happy, Catherine?’

  ‘It’s a way of travelling, Finn,’ she reminded him. ‘Not a—Finn!’ For he had pulled her onto her back and was lying above her, his gorgeous face only an inch away.

  ‘Are you?’ he whispered, his breath warm against her face.r />
  ‘Blissfully.’

  And she was.

  Finn now worked from home two days a week—though he claimed that she and his daughter distracted him far too much.

  ‘So what?’ she had asked him airily. ‘You’ve enough in the bank, and a bit more besides!’

  ‘Have you a shameless disregard for your future, woman?’ he had demanded sternly.

  Catherine’s mother was a frequent visitor, and she and Finola had struck up a firm friendship.

  ‘Would you ever listen to those two?’ Finn would often say, when the rise of their laughter made Mollie giggle. ‘What the hell do you think they’re concocting now?’

  And Mollie continued to thrive. The most beautiful child on the entire planet, as her adoring parents were so fond of saying when they looked at her sleeping every night.

  Her early birth, while unexpected, had soon been explained by Catherine’s gynaecologist. It seemed that Catherine really had got her dates wrong, and that Mollie had been conceived in Dublin, not London, which made her heart lift with pleasure.

  ‘You know what that means, don’t you, Finn?’ she had asked him.

  He certainly did. It meant that their child had been conceived in passion, not anger—thank God.

  Catherine had abandoned the book she had been writing; she found motherhood much more rewarding. ‘Doesn’t mean that I’ll never write again,’ she’d told Finn. ‘Just not now.’

  And Finn had taken to helping her in the garden sometimes—a plot which she had so transformed that word had spread of its beauty through Wicklow and beyond. Last year she had opened it up to the public, charging entry to those who could afford to pay and selling tea and cakes to raise money for the local library.

  Finn called it ‘helping’ her in the garden, but in reality he just planted things occasionally. Primroses and roses and hollyhocks, and an unusual variegated tulip. And a peach tree, and the arbutus which did so well in that part of Ireland and which was known affectionately as the strawberry tree.

  She had leaned on her spade one day and looked at him. ‘Odd choice of plants, Finn.’

  ‘Mmm.’

  Something in his tone had set her thinking, set a distant memory jangling in her head, and she’d gone to her computer that evening, when he had gone up to the pub for a pint with Patrick. She’d browsed through her search-engine and had looked up the language of flowers. And there it all was, in black and white before her eyes.

  Primrose—fidelity.

  Variegated tulip—beautiful eyes.

  Peach tree—my heart is thine.

  And most lovely of all was the arbutus, which meant esteemed love.

  Her eyes had been moist when she’d opened the door to him later.

  ‘You’ve been crying!’ he accused.

  ‘Oh, you stupid man!’ she exclaimed, flinging her arms around him. ‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

  ‘Tell you what?’

  ‘The garden! All those things you planted and I never knew why! Why didn’t you just come out and say so?’

  ‘That I love you?’ he said tenderly. ‘Is that what you want to hear, my sweet, beautiful Catherine?’

  ‘Of course it is!’

  They ended up in bed, and afterwards she rolled over to lie on top of him, a fierce look in her eyes. ‘Finn?’

  ‘Catherine?’

  ‘Did you ever give another woman flowers with a message?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘So why me?’

  He shrugged, and gave a contented smile which still somehow managed to be edged with sensuality.

  ‘I never wanted to before.’

  ‘Tell me you love me again,’ she begged.

  ‘I’ll tell you that every day for the rest of our lives,’ he promised.

  He did. But Catherine had more than words to warm her. She had only to look out at her garden to see Finn’s love for her growing every day.

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-6721-7

  FINN’S PREGNANT BRIDE

  First North American Publication 2004.

  Copyright © 2002 by Sharon Kendrick.

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher, Harlequin Enterprises Limited, 225 Duncan Mill Road, Don Mills, Ontario, Canada M3B 3K9.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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  Table of Contents

  Finn's Pregnant Bride

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue