CHAPTER ONE

      Early December—Sydney

      ADAM TOWNSEND knew something was wrong. Very wrong. The moment he heard Claire’s hasty footsteps enter the room he sensed it. Then he looked up and saw her deathly white face.

      Even her lips were bleached of colour and her dark eyes shimmered with tears as she stared at him. She was clutching the timber door frame for support. What had happened? She looked ill—as fragile as a porcelain doll.

      ‘Claire, what’s the matter?’ He scrambled to his feet, ignoring the cries of protest from his little nephews as he abandoned their noisy game of wrestling. ‘What on earth’s happened?’

      ‘I think I’ve made a terrible mistake,’ she whispered and her words brought fear clenching in his stomach like a cold and clammy fist.

      Was this the moment he’d been dreading for weeks now? Had his wife’s growing unhappiness finally pushed her to say something she’d regret? To do something they’d both regret?

      ‘What kind of mistake?’ he forced himself to ask.

      But she seemed unable to answer. Her face crumpled as she shook her head and then she turned and left as quickly as she’d appeared.

      ‘Stay here, guys,’ he ordered the three little boys.

      His heart rocketed into overdrive as he followed Claire’s stumbling progress back through her brother Jim’s shabby cottage to the kitchen.

      Jim and his wife Maria were both there, looking just as shocked and upset as Claire. Maria leant against her husband, one hand pressed to her mouth while the other held a slim rectangle of paper.

      Adam recognised it instantly as a bank cheque and he had a sickening premonition that he could guess exactly what this was all about.

      Maria’s lips quivered. ‘The baby,’ she said, in a voice barely above a whisper. ‘Claire has given us a cheque for Rosa.’

      With an angry grunt, Jim shoved the cheque under Adam’s nose and his heart leapt when he saw an alarming string of zeros. He whirled around to face Claire. ‘You want to give all this to the baby?’

      ‘Yes,’ Claire said softly, but she didn’t look at Adam and he knew why. She hadn’t consulted him about this decision. Normally, they discussed everything—certainly anything as important as handing over such a large sum of money to Jim and Maria Tremaine’s tiny, new daughter; the fifth baby the couple had produced in as many years.

      ‘I wanted to help,’ she told him and her voice seemed to crack beneath the weight of overpowering emotion.

      ‘Come off the grass, sis,’ Jim cried. ‘You didn’t just want to help. Tell Adam the whole story.’

      Claire’s lips trembled and tears spilled down her cheeks. ‘It’s—it’s a kind of exchange.’

      Oh, God! Adam’s stomach dropped like a plane falling out of the sky. Sweetheart, you can’t be doing this!

      ‘An exchange for Rosa,’ Maria clarified and then burst into tears.

      ‘It’s crazy!’ Jim yelled. ‘She wants to buy our baby!’

      ‘I just wanted to help—to help you out.’ Claire’s tormented eyes sought Adam’s. ‘I’m sorry,’ she whispered.

      Bewildered, he shook his head. This disaster had happened in the ten short minutes he’d spent playing with his nephews. It