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Cancelling the meeting, Sev put the problem of the charity to be dissolved into the hands of one of his finance team and began to make plans. He was worried about Amy. The last thing she needed in her current condition was stress. He devoted the rest of his day to exploring Oaktree Hall as a viable option, checking the condition of the place and putting his PA onto the task of hiring local staff and equipping the house for occupation. Those demands met, he visited the veterinary surgery in the village nearby to get the answers to certain questions and nothing that he learned there was likely to please Amy, he conceded ruefully. On the other hand, if his plans were agreeable to her, she would have a huge amount of other stuff to keep her busy. He worried that it would all be too much for her and that, rather than releasing her from stress, he would actually be giving her more.
Sev rang Amy late that evening. ‘I may have found somewhere for you and the animals...a new base,’ he told her briefly. ‘But you’ll need to see it to tell me what you think before I make any further arrangements.’
‘Meandthe animals?’ she emphasised in astonishment.
‘Yes, but you’d be in charge of them and their needs. I can get you help but it would be a huge responsibility for you to take on,’ he warned her worriedly.
‘Oh, I could do it...yes, I definitely could!’ she rushed to assure him.
Sev felt momentarily guilty for having baited the trap and set it to ensnare her but he wanted her back, he wanted her safe and happy, and it was just a fact of life that making Amy happy meant throwing a lot of animals into the mix. ‘I’ll pick you up tomorrow at ten,’ he told her.
‘Even if this doesn’t work out, thanks for trying,’ Amy said gratefully.
‘I see no reason why it shouldn’t work out,’ Sev told her confidently.
He dined with Annabel that evening. When she enquired about Amy, he admitted that he had messed up with her. She asked him what he had done and frowned when he refused to give her details. He told her about Amy’s current predicament and explained what he was hoping to do. By the time he had finished speaking, his sister was staring at him in growing wonderment.
‘Sev to the rescue? Since when were you a white knight for anyone but me?’
‘Amy’s pregnant and the baby is mine,’ Sev volunteered between clenched teeth, because baring his soul did not come naturally to him, but he had to be honest with Annabel because sooner or later she would discover that Amy was Oliver Lawson’s daughter and she would make her own deductions about what had gone wrong between them. Annabel had told him that she had heard from Oliver’s solicitor with regard to future financial support for the baby she was carrying but she had heard nothing more from her child’s father, which seemed to be a source of relief to her after the upsetting arguments that had previously taken place between them.
Annabel gave him a shocked appraisal, concern softening her eyes. ‘Oh, poor Amy...and all that happening right on top of a new pregnancy...how ghastly.’
‘Not to mention me having let her down before she found out that she had conceived,’ Sev dropped in grittily. ‘I have a lot of ground to make up.’
Amy didn’t sleep much that night and wakened early, glancing round the small room that had become her home and feeling sad that she had to leave it. For years though her life had been subject to sudden moves and changes. There had been the move into a council-run children’s home from her mother’s apartment, followed by her passage through several foster homes before she had made the wonderful move to Cordy’s cosy house. Ultimately that stability had been wrenched from her again and she had ended up in the surgery’s store room, simply grateful for the free roof over her head.
Amy was masking a yawn with an embarrassed hand as she climbed into Sev’s limo. He was working on a laptop and when he immediately flipped it shut, she flushed uncomfortably and said hurriedly, ‘Oh, don’t stop working on my account... I’m half asleep anyway.’
Even so, her drowsy eyes clung to him while he worked, lingering on the dark down-bent head with the wonderfully glossy black hair that she remembered running her fingers throughthatnight, the chiselled perfection of his strong profile. Colour heightening as a wave of guilty heat engulfed her, Amy dredged her attention off him again and sat face forward instead, but the image of him lingered, sleek and sophisticated even in tailored chinos and a casual jacket teamed with an open-necked green shirt. Fabric sheathed his long powerful thighs, shaping lean hips and a narrow waist as effectively as fine wool defined his broad shoulders. And beneath the clothes, he looked even better, she found herself thinking, recalling the lean, taut golden musculature of his chest and taut stomach and quivering inside her skin. At that point she wanted to slap herself to somehow suppress the steady march of mortifyingly sexual reactions he awakened in her. It was like a hunger that never quite quit, a hunger she hadn’t known until she met him, and it embarrassed her to death.
‘Why do you have to move from above the surgery at such short notice?’ Sev enquired abruptly, endeavouring not to stare at her soft full pink lips and imagine what she could do with them, but evidently his body hadn’t got that message. Even when she was casually garbed in the same shapeless black sweater and jeans, there was something spookily sensual and appealing about Amy and she didn’t need to bare an inch of flesh to exercise that power over him.
‘I don’t have the right to expect much notice,’ Amy explained. ‘It was an unofficial arrangement that I could use a storage room to live in until I finished my course.’
‘Astorageroom?’ Sev cut in, his astonishment palpable. ‘You’re living in a storage room? I thought you were using a caretaker’s flat on that floor.’
‘No, there’s only storage upstairs. My boss was doing me arealfavour,’ Amy informed him. ‘I don’t earn enough to pay a decent rent. I’ve been comfortable enough staying there. I have a mini oven in my room and use the surgery washroom downstairs.’
‘Paying you a living wage would have been the better option,’ Sev commented drily, believing that her employer had been taking advantage by keeping her conveniently on site, while being equally aware that she would not accept that view.
‘My boss is already paying for a full-time nurse. I’m not able to do much more than grunt work until I qualify,’ Amy retorted wryly. ‘Everything was easier when Cordy was alive because I wasn’t paying rent to live with her, but after she passed, I had to move out and London rents are extortionate. There was nothing within my budget.’
‘And yet you told me that you didn’tneedmy financial help?’ Sev censured.
‘I was managing fine until all this happened. Everything going wrong at once hasn’t left me any choices or much time, and the chances of Harold finding me a placement with another vet at this time of year are slim to none, never mind where I would find to rent with my budget.’ She sighed. ‘Where are we going?’
‘Somewhere in the country that has space for the rescue animals as well.’
Amy sat bolt upright in the seat beside him, her triangular face lighting up with sudden intense interest, and he almost laughed, not at all surprised that she was more concerned about the animals than herself. ‘Seriously?Allof them? Where? How?’
‘It’s a country house with outbuildings. My English great-grandfather built it in the nineteen-twenties, and I inherited it as my mother’s eldest son. I’ve never used it, so it was rented out for years.’
‘Why haven’t you used it?’
‘It’s too big for a single man. Most recently it was used as the backdrop for a costume-drama series on television. I can’t sell the place because it’s tied up in a trust and if I have a son or a daughter, it will eventually go to him or her.’
Her smooth brow furrowed in surprise. ‘Butthatmeans...’
