The Bride's Baby

The Bride's Baby
Liz Fielding

The wedding of the season!Events manager Sylvie Smith is organizing a glittering fund-raising event: a wedding show in a stately home. She has even been roped into pretending to be a bride… a bride who's five months pregnant!The bride everyone is talking about!It should be every girl's dream to design a wedding with no expense spared, but it's not Sylvie's. Longbourne Court was her ancestral home, and she's just discovered that the new owner is Tom McFarlane–her baby's secret father. Now Tom's standing in front of her, looking at her bump…

The bride everyone is talking about!

It should be every woman’s dream – organising a glittering wedding show at a stately home. But for events manager Sylvie Smith, it’s a total nightmare! Not only is she being forced to wear a wedding dress to the event, but she’s also five months pregnant. She just has to hope no one asks her who the father is…

Then Sylvie bumps into the new owner of the stately home, Tom McFarlane, her baby’s secret father! They haven’t spoken since that sizzling encounter, but now Tom’s standing in front of her, looking at her bump, and Sylvie knows her secret’s out…!

Sylvie turned to find her way blocked by six and a half feet of broad-shouldered male and experienced a bewildering sense of dеj? vu.

A feeling that this had happened before.

And then she looked up and realized that it was not an illusion. This had happened before—except on that occasion the male concerned had been wearing navy pinstripe instead of gray cashmere.

“Some billionaire…” her friend had said, but hadn’t mentioned a name. And she hadn’t bothered to ask, pretending she didn’t care.

She cared now, because it wasn’t just “some” billionaire who’d bought her family home and was planning to turn it into a conference center.

It was Tom McFarlane, the man with whom—just for a few moments—she’d totally lost it.

The man whose baby she was carrying.

The Bride’s Baby

Liz Fielding

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR (#u543e811b-1836-5ce6-9169-9d6e2cae2535)

LIZ FIELDING was born to travel. She made it to Zambia before her twenty-first birthday and, gathering her own special hero and a couple of children on the way, lived in Botswana, Kenya and Bahrain—with pauses for sightseeing pretty much everywhere in between. She finally came to a full stop in a tiny Welsh village cradled by misty hills, and these days allows her imagination to do most of the traveling. When she’s not sorting out the lives and loves of her characters, she works in the garden, reads her favorite authors and spends a lot of time wondering What if…? For news of upcoming books and more, visit Liz’s Web site at www.lizfielding.com (http://www.lizfielding.com).

CONTENTS

Cover (#ua35787e3-e637-5b78-94b5-ee46aa95148b)

Title Page (#ua2118108-6857-5c01-9e9c-b7c3f26338b4)

About the Author

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_333bdb08-857e-559b-8a95-d55101b7dbc3)

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_abd896da-3675-580c-bd84-2def73e29fb3)

CHAPTER THREE (#ulink_01a9db29-375e-5025-aeb9-27af9b2d8d9b)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)

Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE (#ulink_a75ee6b3-8ee6-566b-be47-91e4c29fe1a0)

SYLVIE SMITH checked the time. Her appointment had been for two o’clock. The time on her laptop now read two forty-five—because she hadn’t just sat there in the luxurious reception of Tom McFarlane’s penthouse office suite twiddling her thumbs and drinking coffee.

Chance would have been a fine thing.

The message couldn’t have been plainer.

She was the enemy and so she’d been left to twiddle her thumbs without the courtesy of a cup of coffee to help fill the time.

Not a problem. Her nerves were already in shreds without adding a surfeit of caffeine to the mix. And she hadn’t twiddled her thumbs either. She didn’t have time to waste thumb-twiddling. Didn’t have time to waste, full stop.

Instead she’d occupied herself finalising the details of an Indian-style wedding she was coordinating for a supermodel. She’d even managed to track down an elephant that was for hire by the day.

She’d also soothed the nerves of a fading pop diva who was hoping to revive her career with a spectacular launch party for her new CD.

All of which had helped to keep her from dwelling upon the approaching meeting. When—if—it ever happened.

She knew she was the last person in the world Tom McFarlane wanted to see. Understood why he’d want to put off the moment for as long as was humanly possible. The feeling was mutual.

The only thing she didn’t understand was why, when he’d been so obviously avoiding her for the last six months, he was putting them both through this now.

She checked the time again. Ten to three. Enough was enough. Her patience might be limitless—it was that, and her attention to detail, that made her one of the most sought-after event planners in London—but her time was not.

This meeting had been Tom McFarlane’s idea. The very last thing she’d wanted was a meeting with a man she hadn’t been able to get out of her mind since she’d first set eyes on him. A man who had been about to marry her old school friend, and darling of the gossip mags, Candida Harcourt.

All she wanted was his cheque so that she could settle outstanding bills and put the whole sorry nightmare behind her.

She closed down her laptop, packed it away, then crossed to the desk and the receptionist who had been studiously ignoring her ever since she’d arrived.

‘I can’t wait any longer,’ she said. ‘Please tell Mr McFarlane that I’ll be in my office after ten o’clock tomorrow if he has any queries on the account.’

‘Oh, but—’

‘I should already be somewhere else,’ she said, cutting short the woman’s protest. Not strictly true—her staff were more than capable of dealing with any crisis involving the CD launch party, but sometimes you had to make the point that your time—if not quite as valuable as that of a billionaire—was still a limited commodity. And maybe, on reflection, he’d be as glad as she was to avoid this confrontation and just put a cheque in the post. ‘If I don’t leave now—’