* * *
Max Grayland was a man accustomed to control. Complete control. He’d been that way almost since birth. Absent parents, a succession of nannies, a succession of strange apartments, homes, hotels and then boarding schools, had seen him develop a shell that was pretty near impermeable. He lived a self-contained, independent life where everything was ordered. He had the means, the staff and the will to ensure all stayed that way.
This woman—this cleaning lady—was asking if he’d step into a world he knew nothing of and wished to know less. A dilapidated house somewhere in the suburbs. Her grandparents and whoever and whatever else might be there.
He was being classified as...a waif or stray?
He was in his pristine hotel penthouse. He had room service at his beck and call. He had his bed, his desk, his work.
But he had a baby who was red in the face from screaming. The childminder had finished her shift at four. She’d fed her, put her into her cot and left her asleep. He’d thought he could cope.
Phoebe had been screaming now for an hour. She wouldn’t take another bottle. She’d arched back in his arms, seemingly desperate, and he didn’t have one clue what to do about it.
He stood staring at the woman in the doorway, with her bland offer of help. It was ridiculous. There had to be other options.
‘Could you take Phoebe home with you?’ he asked and her eyes widened in incredulity. And anger.
‘Are you kidding? What do you know about me?’
‘I assume the hotel will vouch for you.’
‘I was hired as a cleaner, not a childcare professional. Would you really do that? Hand your baby over to a stranger?’
‘I’ve watched you care for her. You’re good.’
‘And how do you know I don’t come from a house full of drunken louts and rotting garbage?’
‘Miss Raye!’ The manager sounded appalled, but Sunny wasn’t focused on the manager.
‘I don’t,’ Max said stiffly.
‘Is that why you won’t come yourself? But you’ll send your sister?’
‘I... Okay. Bad idea,’ he managed. ‘I hadn’t thought it through.’
‘Obviously. The offer was both of you or nothing. You seem to be all this little one has, and I’m not interfering in that for the world.’
‘What, you’re forcing us to bond?’
‘I’m not forcing you to do anything. I’m going home.’
And Max Grayland’s world suddenly moved to full-blown panic.
She was leaving. The hotel manager would walk out too. He’d be left...not with this. With his sister.
You seem to be all this little one has.
Sunny’s words resonated in his head. So did the screams behind him. Or were they sobs? Phoebe had been crying for so long she was sounding exhausted. He’d walked the floor with her, tried to feed her again—for heaven’s sake, he’d even tried rocking and singing. The next few days stretched ahead, frightening with their lack of help.
What were his options?
Option one: stay here and hope the screams settled, hope he’d be able to feed her, calm her, keep her alive until Tuesday. The prospect had him terrified.
Option two: take her to the nearest hospital. Say her mother had dumped her and he couldn’t cope. The authorities would surely step in, hand her to a professional whose job it was to care for abandoned children.
Abandoned.
Sunny was watching him. He could read the condemnation in her eyes. She knew what he was thinking? What the...?
So...option three. Throw himself into the unknown. Go with the hotel cleaner to a Christmas with people he’d never met, to an environment he had no idea of. To lose control.
But he was out of control now, and Sunny was watching.
And he thought suddenly of the slivers he knew of this woman’s background. Abandonment had been in this girl’s past too, he thought. She knew it and somehow he knew she was expecting the same for Phoebe.
So now, seeing the condemnation on her face—or was it resignation?—he had no choice.
‘Can you stop her screaming?’ he asked. ‘For now? While I think?’
She gave him a hard, assessing look and then she sighed. Laying her precious chocolates on the hall table, she walked to the cot, adjusted the swaddle and lifted Phoebe into her arms. Tucking the baby’s head under her chin, she cradled her so she was almost moulded against her. Then she rocked, rubbing her back, crooning a faint tune barely audible to the men watching.
The sobs were still there, but Sunny seemed oblivious. She crooned and rubbed and rocked and crooned and rubbed...
And then Phoebe belched. It was a belch to make a grown man proud. It was a belch that stunned both watching men.
The baby’s eyes widened as if she’d shocked herself that she could possibly make such a noise.
And then her eyelids drooped, her tiny head curved into Sunny’s soft neck—and she was asleep.
‘I’m thinking your childminder was in a hurry when she fed her,’ Sunny said as the silence stretched on and the two men watched the magic in amazement. ‘A too fast bottle, no burping and the crying will have made things worse. She should be right now.’
‘Until when?’ Max demanded, incredulous at this small display of magic.
‘I have no idea,’ Sunny said truthfully. ‘Shall I put her back in the cot?’
Max Grayland was known throughout the finance world for his intelligence, his instant assessment of risk, his capacity to make fast decisions that almost always turned out right.
He was so far out of his comfort zone that he felt as if he were drowning, but he was facing three options. The first was to keep this baby and have her wake again the moment Sunny left. The second was to abandon her to social services... Yeah, he could. After all, what did she have to do with him? A token blood relationship?
But Sunny was looking at him, waiting for an answer, and he could read exactly what she thought of him.
So what? She was a hotel cleaner.
She was a hotel cleaner holding a baby who looked exactly like the photographs he’d seen of himself as a newborn.
She was a feisty, warm woman, with skill and humour, and she’d offered him a place at her Christmas table.
So...
So Max Grayland made his decision. He shook his head and moved to stand between Sunny and the cot.
‘Let’s not put her down,’ he told her. ‘If I could accept your offer...if it’s still on the table...?’
Sunny looked at him, wary now. ‘I guess.’
‘I’ll pay for my accommodation,’ he told her. ‘Hotel rates.’
‘Wait until you see the accommodation before you say that.’ And was that laughter behind her eyes?
No matter. Decision made, he was moving on. He turned back to the hotel manager. ‘Could you hold this room for me? I’ll return on Tuesday and I’ll need professional full-time childcare. I’m not sure how long for—I imagine the legalities will take time to work through. Meanwhile, could you arrange a limousine to take me, Miss Raye and...and Phoebe to wherever Miss Raye directs? With baby supplies?’
‘You’re really going with her?’ the manager demanded, stunned.
‘Do I have a choice?’ Max said drily. ‘I appear to have none, and Miss Raye, believe it or not, I’m grateful.’
CHAPTER FIVE
MAX HAD RESERVATIONS before he arrived at the house. When the hotel limousine pulled into the driveway of Sunny’s grandparents’ home he very nearly demanded the driver pull out again.
This was like something out of a Gothic novel—in an Australian setting. All it needed was a Halloween moon and a couple of witches hovering overhead on broomsticks to make the picture complete.
It was a ramshackle, tumbledown mansi
on, or maybe not a mansion, just a house that had been extended upward and outward at random, that had had balconies and turrets added as an afterthought, and had been almost swallowed by the mass of bushland growing right up to the rickety verandas.
It was a wilderness in the middle of suburbia, a house set on a huge block that had been allowed to grow wild.
‘Don’t tell me,’ Sunny said, seeing his look as he unfolded his long frame from the car and looked disbelievingly at what was before him. ‘The letter box could do with a splash of paint.’
And he couldn’t suppress it. He chuckled and Sunny grinned back at him.
‘Yep. Awful. But it’s home. Gran and Pa have been caretakers here for fifty years. Miss Murchison passed away almost twenty years ago and left them life tenancy. It’s a double-edged sword. It’s been fabulous to live in but there’s no money to maintain it. I do my best but...’
‘You...?’
‘Gran and Pa are getting on now and the kids are all busy. So, as I said, the letter box needs painting. Ignore it though and come inside. I texted Gran and she’s expecting us.’
And, as if on cue, the front door swung wide. A stout little lady peered out at them and then waved wildly. ‘Come on in,’ she called, beaming. ‘Everyone’s here for dinner. Bring the man in, Sunny, and let’s meet this baby.’
After that, it turned into a confused mass of faces, noise, laughter. Max struggled to get names. There were Sunny’s brothers and sisters, Daisy, Sam, Chloe and a gap-toothed Tom. There were assorted boyfriends and girlfriends and a few general hangers-on. More importantly, there were Ruby and John, Sunny’s grandparents. Ruby seemed cheerful, bustling, full of Christmas energy, but it was obvious John wasn’t well. Frail and wizened, he sat in state at the head of the dining table. His seat was a wheelchair. He welcomed Max with quiet dignity and apologised for not rising, but he beamed on the noisy proceedings with pride.
And Sunny was everywhere. She showed Max to a room close to the kitchen. ‘It’s officially the sunroom now, but Daisy used to sleep here and it still has a bed. It’s close to the kitchen so we can hear Phoebe.’ She sorted the borrowed baby gear and then scooped Phoebe back from Ruby, who’d been cooing over her, and settled her into her new bed. She set up the baby monitor. She then towed the almost speechless Max back to the dining room, demanded the crowd make room, wedged him between Daisy and Tom and then bustled on.
Dinner was a barbecue of sorts. Tom and Sam were officially in charge but were distracted so a stream of blackened sausages were making their unsteady way to the table. No one worried. There were mounds of fresh bread, vast bowls of simple salads, huge bowls of strawberries—‘Picked this morning,’ Daisy announced proudly—an ocean of cream and a myriad of assorted treats each guest had brought to contribute.
Sunny was busy around the table, making sure plates were filled, reloading empty bowls, refilling glasses, nagging the boys to check the sausages—the standard of cooking did seem to have improved since she’d arrived—and gently chiding her grandfather to eat. All unobtrusively. The family hardly seemed to notice. Ruby seemed to have relaxed the moment Sunny arrived. It was obvious the responsibility for making things work pretty much devolved onto Sunny.
And Max thought of the last thirty-six hours. He thought of Sunny as he’d first seen her, on her knees scrubbing his bathroom floor. A double shift. How many floors had she scrubbed in the last two days? And last night... She’d been up and down to Phoebe. She’d slept on a hard settee with no pillows. She’d woken to another shift of cleaning today.
She was cheerful, happy, laughing and her gaze was everywhere. She was worrying about her Grandpa. She was making sure the myriad guests—including him—felt welcome.
He looked closer and saw shadows under her eyes and wondered if they were always there.
All her siblings seemed much younger than she was. He wondered if they noticed the shadows.
There was little he could do about it. He was wedged between Tom and Daisy. Once they realised he was American they launched into basketball talk. He knew enough to keep his end up, and the rest of the table joined in. As the strawberries were finished he was challenged to throw some hoops, which was the signal for everyone to head outside.
‘I’ll open Phoebe’s window so she can be heard outside but I’ll hear her from the kitchen,’ Sunny told him.
‘She’s my responsibility.’ He was so at sea here.
‘So as soon as she wakes she’s over to you, but meanwhile you’ve been challenged.’
‘You’re not coming outside yourself?’
‘Are you kidding? I have a turkey to stuff, gifts to wrap...’
‘I could help.’
‘No need. Off you go, kids, and enjoy yourselves.’
So that was how she saw him? One of the kids? One of her responsibilities? But he had little choice but to be ushered outside.
Out the back was the remains of an ancient tennis court. Long ago someone had attached hoops to trees growing at either end. The ground was pitted with tree roots, but that didn’t stop a long and very rowdy game being played between makeshift teams.
Max had gym shoes—when did he ever travel without them?—and tossing a basketball was one of his life skills. It was a skill that he’d practised as a teenager with little else to fill his time. He’d never played competitively but the gym had him toned.
‘Yay, Max,’ was the call as the game was declared over. Thirty-seven to twenty-nine, and twelve of the thirty-seven goals had been his.
And suddenly he was thinking of what he could be doing tonight. Back in New York he’d be well into the company accounts by now. And if he’d been alone at the hotel with Phoebe... Whoa, that didn’t bear thinking of.
He’d buried his father this morning and the death was still a heavy weight. It’d probably take years to come to terms with his relationship with the old man. Added to that, he was still shocked to the core by Phoebe’s arrival, but tonight had given him time out.
He wondered if Sunny knew it. If she knew she’d given him a gift.
The kids were dispersing. Boyfriends and girlfriends were leaving, Daisy and Sam with them. ‘But we’ll be back tomorrow,’ they called and whooped their way out onto the road to collect their myriad cars and head home. Chloe and Tom headed to their rooms to sleep or do last-minute wrapping. Sunny had appeared momentarily halfway through the game to help Ruby take John to bed, so they were gone too.
Sunny.
He headed to the kitchen and found her sitting by the kitchen range, feeding Phoebe.
The sight of her was almost a physical jolt.
She hadn’t had time to change since she’d arrived home. She was still in the jeans and T-shirt she’d put on before she left the hotel.
That she’d been cooking was obvious. A mountainous turkey was under a mesh cover on the bench, stuffed and trussed, ready to go into the oven in the morning. A load of fresh baked mince pies sat on cooling trays and another tray of pastry cases was waiting to be filled.
She had bowls out on the table. A whisk. Eggs. Cream. Brandy.
She’d obviously been interrupted mid-bake by Phoebe’s need for a feed. She had smudges of flour on her face. Her curls had flour in as well, and her clothes...
‘Yeah, I’m a messy cook,’ she said and grinned at him and that jolt turned into something he had no hope of identifying. She looked...
Nope. He had no descriptor. He only knew that the sight of her, flour-coated, no make-up, shadowed, holding his baby sister, smiling up at him—it did something to him that he’d never felt before.
‘You won,’ she said, still smiling, and he thought yeah, he’d won and he hadn’t even heard Phoebe. He’d been out there competing for inconsequential hoops while Sunny had taken over everything else.
He glanced through to the dining room, which two hour
s ago had been sketchily cleared. It was now transformed, covered with a faded lace tablecloth, glassware, cutlery, bonbons, a tangle of crimson bottle brush acting as a Christmas centrepiece...
She must have done this too.
‘It gets a bit busy in the morning,’ she told him, following his gaze. ‘Gran loves us all to go to church so I like to get ahead. The basketball kept them all outside and gave me space. Thank you.’
She was thanking him?
He was feeling about two inches high. That she’d done all this—and now fed his...fed Phoebe.
‘I should have heard her,’ he said weakly and there was that smile again. It really was an extraordinary smile. There were dimples right where dimples should be. A smudge of flour lay on the right dimple and he could just...
Or not. Did he want to be tossed out into the snow for Christmas? Or into whatever Australians decreed was their outdoor norm at this time of year?
‘It’s a lovely warm night so you’d be fine if we threw you out,’ she said, still smiling. ‘But it’s not hot, hooray. I can eat loads more when it’s not hot.’
What the...? Had she guessed what he was thinking?
Was she fey?
‘And you couldn’t have heard her because she didn’t cry,’ she continued, as if she hadn’t just poleaxed him. ‘I checked and she was snuffling, so I thought I’d get in first. Much better to feed her before she gets distressed, don’t you think?’
‘I...yes.’ He didn’t have a clue. ‘Could I take her?’ he asked weakly. ‘I should feed her. You obviously have things to do.’
‘Well, I do,’ she agreed and that smile appeared again, but it was a weary smile. ‘I should say yes. You two need to bond. But you know what? I’m sitting down and I haven’t sat down for a while. How about you make the brandy sauce while I supervise?’
The Billionaire's Christmas Baby Page 6