Later, snuggled up against him, she heard him murmur in her ear, "That marquee Chrissie was talking about... How about using it to celebrate our wedding?"

"So soon?" Rosie protested.

"My parents--' "They'll be there. Chrissie will see to that, and besides..." In the darkness he kissed her gently and then touched her stomach. Immediately Rosie knew what he meant.

"I wouldn't want our child to think it wasn't conceived in love any more than I would want you to think it," he told her softly.

Chrissie was overjoyed when they told her the news.

"Leave everything to me," she told them firmly.

"What's this?" Rosie asked Jake uncertainly as he handed her a small, gift-wrapped box. They had been married just over three months, and she had never been happier. The shadows thrown by the past had completely disappeared and no longer held any fear or threat for her. They had just come back from a fortnight's holiday in Greece, Jake having decided to retain his interest in the marina project but to take a smaller active part in its management "I don't want to be away from you," he had told Rosie when they had discussed it.

"Your own business means that you won't always be free to come with me..."

And so, rather than ask her to put their relations.h.i.+p before her work, he had been the one to make that decision and that choice.

"You're more important to me than anything else in my life, Rosie," he had told her.

"I've loved you for too long, wanted you for too long, to let anything come between us now that we are together."

She hadn't told him yet that she suspected she was soon going to have to look for a partner to take over her role in her business be cause she had conceived their child.

Now, as she unwrapped the gift he had given her and saw the small gold teddy bear dangling from its delicate chain, she wondered if somehow he had guessed after all, but then he said quietly, "I'm not sure if I've got the dates right... I thought it must have been about this time..." and she realised that this gift wasn't for the child they had conceived together but for the one she had secretly lost.

Tears burned her eyes as she went into his arms.

"I don't ever want you to think you can't grieve for him... talk about him," he told her huskily as he held her.

"Or that I've forgotten what you went through... what you suffered ... or how I wasn't there for you when you most needed me."

Rosie shook her head.

"Oh, Jake..."

"Don't think I don't realise what it must have cost you to have Ritchie here when we got married. To treat him normally... to "Ritchie doesn't bother me," Rosie told him truthfully.

"If you want the truth... what happened with him ... it doesn't worry me any more, Jake. Losing my baby that was different although I accept now that it wasn't necessarily because I'd willed it to happen. You've driven out all my bad memories and replaced them with good ones."

She kissed him and then smiled mischievously at him.

"It's a pity you bought this, though..." she told him.

"A pity?" Instantly he frowned.

"Rosie "Because now you're going to have to buy another one," she told him, watching his face as he realised what she was actually saying.

"Are you pleased?" she asked him after he had finished kissing her.

"Pleased?" He held her tightly, his voice raw with emotion as he told her, "You're having my child. Pleased doesn't come anywhere near describing how I feel.

"I loved you for so long without thinking you could ever love me, Rosie. Sometimes I still can't quite believe that any of this is real, and then I look at you, hold you... touch you... love you, and I see in your eyes that it is real, that you do love me.

"Of course I'm pleased," he whispered against her mouth.

"Come here and let me show you how much..."

"Mm... That sounds like a good idea to me... A very good idea," she

whispered dreamily against his mouth as he began to kiss her.

end.