Her Ideal Husband

Her Ideal Husband
Liz Fielding

Ideal marriage material?Stacey O'Neill was perfectly happy being single. The trouble was, her two little girls wanted a father–and they'd decided on Nash Gallagher!Nash was great with the children, and kissed like a dream–though it would take more than gorgeous lips and a sexy body to tempt Stacey into marriage again! This time she wanted a husband she could trust. And Nash wasn't quite what he seemed….

“You’re perfect.”

Nash put his arm around her waist and did what he’d wanted to do since he’d first set eyes on her. He kissed her. Hard and sweet.

Behind him, Clover was standing in the doorway, her eyes narrowed thoughtfully. Oh, hell! What had she seen? Say something…anything….

“Is Nash going to be my new daddy?”

Stacey managed a laugh. “New daddy?” she repeated, unable to look at Nash.

“He was kissing you.”

“Oh, yes, well, Nash was trying to cheer me up,” she improvised.

Clover didn’t look convinced. “When Sarah Graham’s mummy was cheered up like that, Sarah had a new daddy and a new baby sister.”

Oh, great. Stacey finally looked at Nash, hoping for a little assistance.

“Would you like a baby sister?” he asked Clover.

Born and raised in Berkshire, U.K., Liz Fielding started writing at the age of twelve, when she won a hymn-writing competition at her convent school. After a gap of more years than she is prepared to admit to, during which she worked as a secretary in Africa and the Middle East, got married and had two children, she was finally able to realize her ambition and turn to full-time writing in 1992.

She now lives with her husband, John, in West Wales, surrounded by mystical countryside and romantic crumbling castles, content to leave the traveling to her grown-up children and keeping in touch with the rest of the world via the Internet.

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The Bachelor’s Baby

#3666

Her Ideal Husband

Liz Fielding

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

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER ONE

NASH GALLAGHER knew he was crazy. He hadn’t intended to stay. He was just passing through, stopping for a last look at the garden before the bulldozers moved in. Keeping a promise to an old man.

It had been a mistake.

Somehow he’d expected it to be the way it was in his memory. Everything ordered, everything perfect, the one place he had always been sure of in a confusing world.

Stupid.

Gardens weren’t static things.

The walled kitchen garden might have survived the break-up of the estate, but the small garden centre his grandfather had run from it had been closed for nearly two years. Everything had run to seed, gone wild...

He dragged a hand over his face in a vain attempt to obliterate the image. He’d sworn he wouldn’t fall for his grandfather’s attempt at emotional blackmail, but maybe the old man knew him better than he knew himself.

It was the peach trees that did it.

Remembering how, when he was a boy, he’d been lifted up to pick the first ripe fruit, the taste of it, the juice running down his chin...

The memory was so strong that Nash rubbed his chin against his shoulder, as if to wipe the juice away, then he angrily pulled away a handful of the weeds that crowded against an ancient trunk, choking it.

Stupid. In a few weeks it would all be gone.

But the old trees were covered with small fruit, swelling in the sudden burst of hot weather, refusing to give up despite the lack of pruning, despite the thick choking weeds at their roots. Like his grandfather, they refused to give up in the face of the inevitable. He couldn’t leave them like that.

He wanted the men with the bulldozers to know they were smashing something that had once been cared for. It wouldn’t take long. He could spare a day or two for the peach trees.

Except it wasn’t just the peach trees.

There were the greenhouses with their old coke stoves and hot pipes. A wonderful place to play when it was too cold outside. A magic place full of warm, earthy scents.

It still was, despite the damage. A thin cat had given birth to a litter of kittens behind the stove. He’d spotted her once or twice, flashing through the long grass with some small creature clamped in her jaws and, as he stood there, the bravest of the kittens ventured out amongst the broken glass that littered the floor.

He moved it out of harm’s way and then reached for an old broom. He was sweeping up the broken glass, wondering at how swift nature was to reclaim its own, when a ball blasted him out of the past as it smashed through the roof and he swore volubly as the fine shards showered him and sent the kitten flying back to safety of the nest.