A Father For Poppy
From no-strings fling to family man!It might have been a brief fling, but Tessa Gilroy fell hard for gorgeous surgeon Drake Melford and was devastated when he left to pursue his hot-shot career abroad.Now he's back–and even more irresistible than ever! But Tessa's life has changed drastically in the past four years. She's a mother now, to her adorable adopted daughter Poppy, and she needs more than a fleeting affair–she needs someone who can be a father…Dare she dream that Drake's the one for her and for Poppy?
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‘Who is she?’ he questioned, standing transfixed in the doorway.
‘She’s my daughter,’ Tessa told him. ‘Her name is Poppy.’
‘How old is she?’ he asked hoarsely.
‘Three.’
‘Is she mine too?’ he questioned after a pause, in barely a whisper as the colour drained from his face.
She shook her head and watched the dark hazel of his eyes become veiled.
‘Who is her father then?’ he choked as the small vision on the bottom step rubbed her eyes sleepily.
‘Poppy is my adopted daughter,’ she told him. ‘Her parents were killed in a car crash and we got to know each other when she was brought into Horizons with a bleed behind her eyes from the accident. She was with us for quite some time and we became close. I used to sit beside her whenever I got a spare moment and take her a little surprise every day. In the end I applied to adopt her and was successful. So there you have it. No cause for alarm.’
Turning, she scooped Poppy up into her arms and held her close.
As their glances met she told him, ‘Poppy has brought joy into my life.’
‘Yes, I’m sure that she must have,’ he said.
Hello once again. In this book, A Father for Poppy, I have left Heatherdale for a while and chosen another delightful place to set this story—namely, The Cotswolds, where in a famous eye hospital two people who have lost contact meet up again and make up for lost time as they find a deeper meaning to their relationship.
I hope that you will enjoy getting to know Drake and Tessa, with romance in the air once more.
Do you believe, as I do, that love makes the world go round?
Abigail Gordon
(From Marple Bridge, where the river bends …)
ABIGAIL GORDON loves to write about the fascinating combination of medicine and romance from her home in a Cheshire village. She is active in local affairs, and is even called upon to write the script for the annual village pantomime! Her eldest son is a hospital manager, and helps with all her medical research. As part of a close-knit family, she treasures having two of her sons living close by, and the third one not too far away. This also gives her the added pleasure of being able to watch her delightful grandchildren growing up.
For my dear friend Jill Jones.
Table of Contents
THEY HAD MADE love for the last time with the evening sun laying strands of gold across them. It had been as good as it had always been—sweet, wild and passionate. But there had been sadness inside Tessa because deep down she’d known it was the end of the affair, although neither of them were prepared to put into words that it was over.
It had been the agreement when they’d met—no commitments, take what life offered and enjoy it. Wedding rings were a joke, brushed to one side with babies and mortgages. Having spent her young years amongst her parents’ quarrelling, unfaithfulness and eventual divorce, she was wary of the kind of hurts that a gold band on the finger could bring.
So she’d kept her distance from the men she’d met until Drake Melford had appeared in her life and everything had changed. He hadn’t asked anything of her except to make love and when they had it had been magical. There had been no suggestion of any kind of commitment and in the beginning she’d been totally happy.
The attraction between them had been intense. So much so that when they’d been together at either of their apartments they’d made love on the rug, the kitchen table, and even once on a park bench in moonlight when the place had been empty, giving no thought to the future. Only the present had mattered.
So what had gone wrong? Something had changed the magic into doubt and misgivings, telling her in lots of ways that it was over, and whenever she’d wanted to ask Drake what was happening to them there had been the ‘no strings’ pact that had made the words stick in her throat.
Her only comfort had been in knowing that she wasn’t competing against another woman, that it was his career that was going to take him away from her, and ever since then Tessa had kept the memory of that time buried deep in one of the past chapters of her life.
But a fleeting glimpse of the back of a man’s neck and the dark thatch of hair above it as he’d got into a taxi outside a London railway station had been a reminder that anything as memorable as the time she’d spent with Drake Melford would never stay buried.
She brushed a hand across her eyes as if to shut out a blinding light. It wasn’t the first time she’d given in to wishful thinking, and she knew how hard she had to fight to keep sane once the raw and painful memories were allowed to intrude into the life she had worked so hard to build in Drake’s absence.
She groaned softly and an old lady next to her in the taxi queue asked, ‘Are you all right, dear?’
Managing a smile, Tessa told her that it was just a stitch in her side instead of a thorn in her heart.
