upwards in a crooked smile. ‘When Jenny and Rod called the girls Peach and Pears, Mum thought the names were terrific and Rosie and her husband were horrified. There isn’t a more devoted aunt and uncle than Rosie and Geoff though. Sums us up, really.’
‘What about you?’ she asked interestedly. ‘What did you think about the names?’
‘Jenny had survived what proved to be a traumatic birth when she haemorrhaged and we nearly lost her and the twins were well and healthy. They could have called them Noddy and Big Ears as far as I was concerned.’
Male logic. Cory smiled. ‘I like Peach and Pears,’ she said very definitely. ‘I don’t see why people are locked into tradition about names. Flower names are considered perfectly proper so why not fruit or anything else for that matter?’
‘Do I detect a smidgen of bohemian coming through? Is it possible that in the future you might be considering artichoke or cabbage, or even New York if the unfortunate infant was conceived away from home?’
Her smile faded. She didn’t reply for a moment and then she said flatly, ‘I don’t intend to have children.’
‘Perhaps all for the best if cabbage is a possibility.’
His voice was light and easy and he was smiling, but the warm intimacy in the car was gone and they both knew it. Cory felt a moment of deep regret that she had broken the mood.
The nifty little sports car fairly ate up the hundred and seventy miles or so to Barnstaple once they were out of London, but it was still almost dark when they neared the coast.
For some reason Cory was feeling an illogical sense of panic at the thought of seeing Nick’s house. She couldn’t actually have said why. It wasn’t so much that this was the weekend she would finally take the plunge and go to bed with him, more that this house—his home—would reveal more about him than the flat ever could. And what if she didn’t like what it revealed? Certainly the flat, beautiful as it undoubtedly was, didn’t do a thing for her. But then he had said he didn’t live in the flat, merely occupied it.
The morning star was high in a sky which was turning from mauve washed with midnight-blue to deep velvetblack when the car finally turned off the wide, pleasant avenue they’d been travelling along for a minute or so. A smaller road, almost a lane, took them past several houses set in beautifully manicured grounds. After several hundred metres there were no buildings at all, just the high stone wall one side and to their left rolling fields in which the round white bodies of sheep stood out in the evening shadows. Then the stone wall curved round in front of them, forming the end of the lane, and after drawing to a halt Nick opened the wrought iron gates set in the wall by remote control.
This was going to be some property! Even before they drove on to the long gravelled drive winding between established flower beds and mature trees, Cory was preparing herself for her first sight of Nick’s home. And then there it was in front of her. A large mellow-stoned thatched building flanked either side by magnificent horse chestnut trees, its leaded windows on the ground floor lit by lights within the house.
‘Good,’ Nick murmured at the side of her. ‘Rosie’s remembered to leave the lights on. She always comes in and stocks up the fridge when she knows I’m coming home,’ he added as they drew up in front of the huge stone steps leading to the front door.
‘Nick…’ For a moment Cory was devoid of speech. ‘This is beautiful, just beautiful.’
He smiled at her in the shadows, his blue eyes glittering. ‘I fell in love with the place the first time I ever saw it,’ he admitted softly. ‘It dates from 1703, although bits have been added here and there. Come in and have a look.’
The minute Cory stepped into the wide gracious hall she knew the inside of the house was going to match the outside. Warm-toned oak floorboards stretched into every room on the ground floor, their richness interspersed with big rugs. The huge sitting room, which overlooked the grounds at the back of the house, had big squashy sofas, one wall lined with books, low coffee tables and an enormous fireplace with a pile of logs in one corner ready for burning. The dining room, big breakfast room, Nick’s study and