‘You have to be kidding. He’s a bargain!’

‘You mean he’s really good at his job?’

‘You’d better believe it. That man’s a brilliant manager and he’s darned clever with computers.’

‘I didn’t realise,’ Natalie murmured.

‘You’ve been too wrapped up in having the baby to notice anything else.’

‘You’re right,’ she said, and cast an adoring glance over at her daughter. ‘Could you pick her up for me, Mike? I want to hold her again.’

She watched as Mike carefully scooped his daughter up into his large arms, rocking her gently back and forth when she woke up and started crying.

‘I think she’s hungry,’ he told Natalie as he handed her over.

Natalie rolled her eyes. ‘Four hours old and you’re already anticipating her needs. I suspect your daddy’s going to spoil you rotten, Tess, my girl,’ she murmured to her baby, who stopped crying when her mother put her little finger in her mouth to suck.

‘That’s why you need to have another baby quickly,’ Mike said. ‘So that I don’t.’

‘Children are a lot of work, you know. You should listen to Holly. Her Andrew’s just started to walk and she says it’s bedlam most of the time.’

‘That’s because he’s a boy. Alanna’s little girl is much quieter. And easier to handle.’

‘We might have a boy next time.’

‘I won’t mind that. I’d call him Tony, after my little brother. The one who died of meningitis.’

Natalie could already feel herself melting. ‘Tony’s a nice name.’

‘So’s Tess,’ Mike said, his voice sounding a bit choked up.

It suddenly came to Natalie why Mike wanted to call his daughter that particular name.

‘Tess was your mother’s name, wasn’t it, Mike?’ she said gently.

He looked away as he did sometimes, when his emotions threatened to embarrass him.

‘Yeah. Yeah, it was.’

‘You loved her a lot, didn’t you?’

‘Yeah. I did,’ he admitted gruffly.

Natalie’s stomach tightened when she glimpsed tears glistening in the corners of his eyes. ‘She did love you, Mike. She loved you and Tony. She just couldn’t cope.’

‘You’re probably right. She was very beautiful, you know.’

‘I’m sure she was.’

‘Little Tess looks a bit like her.’

‘I’m glad.’

He turned his head back to face her and, yes, his eyes were definitely wet.

The noises of impending visitors coming down the hospital hallway stopped Natalie from crying herself. It was her parents, their faces beaming, their arms full of flowers and gifts.

‘Oh, isn’t she just beautiful?’ her mother gushed when Natalie handed her daughter over to her grandmother. ‘Look, John.’

‘A real beauty,’ her grandfather agreed. ‘What are you going to call her?’

‘Tess,’ Mike answered, then added quite loudly and proudly, ‘She’s named after my mother.’

Copyright

ISBN: 978-1-4268-5893-2