by Penny Jordan
Without a word Garrick picked Michael up and carried him over to his waiting bath. Once there, he asked Kate over his shoulder, ‘And his father…what part does he play in Michael’s life?’
There was no harm in turning the screw just a little, he told himself, justifying his underhand actions with his conviction that Michael would be better off with him.
‘Michael’s parents are dead,’ she told him quietly, the pallor of her skin making him feel uncomfortably guilty. He hadn’t expected her to show such distress. He knew she had been close to Jennifer. The report had told him that much; they had, after all, grown up together in the children’s home, but he had gained the impression from the report that she rather tended to keep people at an emotional distance, and he had formed the opinion that she would look upon the responsibility of Michael as an unwanted one. Now he wondered uneasily if he had been too sanguine in his assumptions.
To cover his own inner disquiet, he said quickly, ‘So he isn’t really your child, then?’
Not really hers! Kate caught her breath on an unsteady shock of tension, increased by her awareness of just how much she feared and resented the assumption behind the casual words. Michael was hers… When she thought of Michael, she thought of him as being her child, she recognised. She loved him, and not just because of Jen.
Panic bit into her…the kind of panic she always experienced at the thought of allowing anyone to come too close to her emotionally, but where Michael was concerned it was already too late.
She heard the man saying calmly, ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’
And she focused on him, her body as taut as a bow string as she fought off the feelings threatening her.
‘You didn’t,’ she denied shortly, hoping he would drop the subject. To her dismay, he didn’t.
‘You must have been very close to the boy’s parents. He doesn’t look like you, though,’ he added, looking first at her and then at Michael.
Kate drew a sharp breath, aching to simply demand that he leave. He had no right to ask her these questions, to pry into her life. And then she tried to control her reactions and remind herself that he was simply trying to do his job and that it was only natural that he should want to have as much information as possible about Michael.
Taking a deep breath, she said as calmly as she could, ‘Michael isn’t a blood relative. He’s the child of a very close friend. She and her husband were killed in a motorway accident.’
‘I’m sorry.’ He wasn’t looking at her now, whether out of compassion or simply by accident, she wasn’t sure. ‘It can’t be easy for you…a single woman suddenly having a baby thrust into your life. Doesn’t he have any family?’
He was probing too deeply now, but there was nothing she could do to stop him without betraying herself. She could feel the old, familiar tension building up inside her stomach. She wanted to tremble with the force of it, but she had long ago learned to control that reaction.
‘Not really,’ she told him shortly. ‘Jen and I are…were both orphans. We grew up together in a children’s home. Alan, Jen’s husband, was an only child, his parents are dead, and I believe there is a distant family connection…a second cousin.’
‘Orphans,’ Garrick mused, ignoring the reference to himself. ‘I see.’
Here was his chance to subtly undermine her self-confidence by pointing out that as an orphan she was hardly qualified to act as a substitute family to such a young child…to ask her if she didn’t think Michael would be better off in the care of someone who could communicate to him through their own experiences, just what it meant to be part of a loving family.
Whatever else he might or might not be…however cynical his views on marriage had become over the years, he could never doubt the happiness that his parents had had…nor dismiss the love and security they had given him as a child.
It would be oh, so easy to make some idle comment that would increase the doubts he could see so clearly shadowing her eyes…to reinforce what he was beginning to suspect was her own private fear that she was not an adequate parent for Michael, but to his own consternation he found that he simply could not do it. He was as amazed by the recognition of his weakness as he would have been to discover that the world had suddenly turned upside-down.
This couldn’t be him, deliberately holding back on beginning his campaign to win Michael away from her, simply because he had looked into her eyes and seen the lonely, proud child she must once have been, fighting desperately to pretend that nothing was wrong…that her world hadn’t been destroyed…that she wasn’t….
He shook his head, wanting to dispel the unwanted images. What was happening to him? What was wrong with him? He must be going soft in the head.
‘What’s wrong?’ Kate demanded suspiciously, her tension increasing as she sensed his hesitancy and knew instinctively that it had something to do with her.
‘I was just thinking how very hard it must have been for you as a child,’ he said quietly. ‘And how much Michael must mean to you.’
Later he would ask himself what on earth had come over him, what on earth he had thought he was doing, but in the moment he said the words he saw the fury and panic fight for supremacy in Kate’s eyes, and he reacted instinctively to them, reaching out his hand to touch her in an age-old gesture of comfort.
Even before he touched her, Kate froze, and immediately Garrick realised what he was doing and cursed himself under his breath. What the hell was happening to him? He must be going soft in the head, feeling sorry for her.
A nanny… God, he could just imagine what the press would do to him if they ever found out!
CHAPTER THREE
SEVERAL miles away, Camilla listened anxiously to the telephone call between her husband and his mother.
‘Dad’s been rushed into hospital with a suspected heart attack,’ he told her as he hung up. ‘Mum wants us to go down.’
‘I’ll pack a couple of overnight bags and we can leave straight away.’
Camilla loved her mother-in-law, but knew that she was quite incapable of dealing with an emergency.
It wouldn’t be for several hours that she remembered that she had never told Kate that Sue had rung to say Peter Ericson had already accepted a post with someone else. She would do her best to find a suitable alternative, she had promised, but men willing to take charge of small children were not easy to find.
Kate, meanwhile, in blissful ignorance, watched as Garrick bathed Michael. It was true that he was less skilled than the other nannies she had employed, but his lack of expertise was more than made up for in the way that Michael responded to him.
Perhaps she had been wrong, she reflected, watching them, perhaps it was possible, after all, for even such a small baby to miss a male influence in his life. Michael, normally wary with strangers, was laughing and clapping his hands as Garrick bathed him, dunking his toys, and generally behaving as though there was nothing he wanted more than to keep on playing with this man who had come to take care of him.
The bath had its own stand, but Kate preferred to put it on the floor, for reasons of safety. She also normally armed herself with protective clothing, knowing Michael’s propensity for soaking everything and everyone around him with water.
By the time Garrick had managed to fish Michael’s wriggling wet body out of the bath, he was almost as wet as the small child.
As he handed Michael over to Kate, after swaddling him in a warm towel, he asked directly. ‘First question. Do I get the job?’
He had removed his watch while he bathed Michael, and observing him strapping it on, Kate noticed that it was an expensive gold model that she knew must have cost several thousand pounds. Rather a luxury for a man who was prepared to work for less than a hundred pounds per week, all found. But then, perhaps he had bought it in better times, when he worked abroad.
She hesitated, and he gave her a frowning look. At that moment Michael managed to free his arms from the towel and stretched out towards him
. Kate made up her mind, praying that she wouldn’t regret it.
‘Yes. Yes…you do,’ she agreed firmly, adding, ‘What was your next question?’
‘Do you have a dryer so that I can dry my shirt, and will it be OK if I bring my computer terminal with me?’
‘Your what?’ And then Kate remembered that he was re-training. Presumably he wanted to work on the computer in his off-duty time. ‘Oh, yes. I don’t see why not. There’s a desk in the room. I’ll show you. Unfortunately, though, it doesn’t have its own bathroom. There is a bathroom here off Michael’s room, but there’s no bath—only a shower. The other bathroom is off my room, and…’ She broke off, remembering what Camilla had said about his previous employer.
He had been direct with her, and in the circumstances she felt she was entitled to be direct with him. After all, she was employing him, although, looking at him, she found it very hard to believe that any woman was capable of sexually intimidating him…even when that woman was paying his wages. In fact, the more she studied him, the more astounded she was that any woman would ever dare to make unwanted sexual approaches to him. He struck her as very much the kind of man who wanted to be in control of his own life and everything and everyone in it.
Garrick waited, wondering what on earth it was she wanted to say to him. He wondered if she realised how very illuminating her expression could be, and suspected not.
‘I know…I know all about the problems you had with your previous employer,’ Kate said at last. ‘And I just wanted to assure you that there is no question of them being repeated here.’
Garrick stared at her, wondering what on earth she was talking about. What kind of problems was he supposed to have encountered?
‘Which problem in particular are we discussing?’ he asked her silkily, surprised to see a dull flood of colour warm her skin. From her file he had assumed there could be little that had the potential to embarrass her, but it seemed he was wrong.
Was he deliberately being obtuse, Kate wondered angrily, or was he simply testing her to make sure he knew where he stood? She had a momentary desire to change her mind and dismiss him, but Michael had taken to him so well. He moved, and she couldn’t help noticing the way the wet shirt clung to his chest. He must be anxious to get out of it; she knew from experience that there was nothing more unpleasant. Hastily averting her eyes, she said hurriedly, ‘The problem of your ex-employer making…sexual advances to you.’ She couldn’t look at him, and so missed the stunned look that crossed his face.
Garrick didn’t know whether to burst out laughing or pretend outraged male vanity. It happened, of course. He had been the victim of some very subtle forms of it himself, but he had never been in a situation where his livelihood depended on him acquiescing to the sexual favours being demanded of him.
He was looking at her in an extremely odd way, Kate realised as she raised her head, and it occurred to her that it might be that he didn’t believe her. He was, after all, an extremely physically compelling man; a very male man…the kind of man, in fact, that many a single woman might fantasise about having as her lover. And many a not so single one as well, she acknowledged, giving him a covert glance.
His body had the kind of male power that promised all kinds of enticement and pleasure, if one was that way inclined, which she thankfully was not, but she didn’t like the way he was looking at her, and so she rushed impulsively into an unplanned speech, saying quickly, ‘I have no desire to have any kind of relationship, sexual or otherwise, with you or any other man. It’s not part of my plan for my life.’
She had his attention now, but oddly he wasn’t looking at her in the way that men normally looked at her when she made this statement. Indeed, if she had to define his expression, she would have had to describe it as faintly disapproving.
Garrick did disapprove—his immediate, almost emotional reaction to her statement, so surprising that he found himself forced to question it.
After all, she was perfectly free to live her life however she chose, and it was chauvinistic of him in the extreme to succumb to the wholly male feeling that in denying his sex any place in her life she was wasting the feminine gifts nature had given her. He was also angry with himself for allowing himself to think of her as a person, and not simply as an obstacle in his path.
Kate noticed the way he masked his expression, and a tiny inner voice warned her that here was a man it would never be easy to read.
‘I see,’ he said smoothly. Too smoothly? she wondered, uneasy without knowing why.
‘And Michael… Surely he couldn’t have been part of this life plan?’
Kate felt a surge of conflicting emotions. Anger that he had so easily found her weak point, and an uncomfortable, illogical dread that refused to be analysed.
‘It can’t be easy for you, a career woman, and single, presumably without any previous experience of child rearing, to take on the task of bringing up someone else’s child. Wouldn’t it have been easier to let the State take charge of him…’
Once again her expression betrayed her, although Kate herself wasn’t aware of it. Without being able to stop herself, she said fiercely, ‘I couldn’t let that happen. Michael’s mother was my closest friend. I….’
She broke off, and Garrick, realising that he was pushing too hard for a supposed employee, backed off a little, saying fake casually, ‘Obviously nothing would make you give him up?’
‘Nothing,’ Kate agreed shortly, unaware that she was confirming his grimmest thoughts. ‘You know I want to start work as soon as possible, don’t you?’ she asked him, changing the subject. ‘Will that be a problem?’
‘No,’ he confirmed.
‘And I’m afraid I don’t seem to have your name as yet…’
‘It’s G…Rick…Rick Evans,’ he told her calmly, watching her closely to see if she recognised the name. There was no reason why she should. Evans was a common enough surname, and there was no reason for her to connect Rick with Garrick, even though it had been his boyhood nickname.
He was right, she didn’t. Kate was too busy worrying about whether she had made the right decision to wonder about that brief hesitation before he gave his name.
‘I can start on Monday, if that’s OK with you. I’ll move my stuff in some time tomorrow evening.’
‘Yes, that’s fine. I’ll show you your room. Oh, and your shirt…the dryer is in the kitchen.’
‘Right. I’ll take this off and put it in, if you don’t mind.’
It wouldn’t have mattered if she had, he was already removing it to reveal a hard, brown male chest so very powerfully muscled that she wondered where he did his exercising. The faint male scent of his body reached her and she stepped back automatically. Garrick, catching the reaction, was slightly surprised by it. His sexuality was something he had come to take for granted over the years, but it didn’t normally elicit that kind of response from women.
Strange how her reaction had piqued his interest, making him aware of himself as a man in a way that he had not been for months. He hadn’t missed having a woman in his bed, but that hesitant backward step, that covert look of apprehension laced with shock, that very definite reaction he had seen to her awareness of his male scent, caused him to suddenly become aware of the curves of her body, the narrowness of her waist and the rounded fullness of her breasts, so discreetly and tantalisingly covered by the softness of her silk shirt.
He liked silk on women, but a shirt like that should be worn without a bra underneath it so that…
‘The room’s this way.’
Grimly he followed her, subduing his wayward thoughts. They were neither timely nor necessary.
The room would have fitted into a small corner of his bedroom in his London apartment, but the desk seemed large enough to house a computer terminal. He was going to have one hell of a lot of work to do in the next twenty-four hours. For starters he was going to have to find a nanny to take charge of the boy during the day so that he could concentrate on his work.
He would have to alert his secretary to reroute all his calls through his carphone. Luckily he was pretty clear of appointments. He would organise things so that Gerald didn’t make any more… He could just imagine his impassive secretary’s face when he announced what he was doing. Fortunately Gerald Oswald was the soul of discretion. He had been with Garrick for eight years and was completely loyal.
As to the rest, the fewer people knew what was going on, the better. It was just as well Kate worked long hours, he reflected grimly; the last thing he wanted was an employer who was going to pop home unexpectedly in the middle of the day. But somehow or other events were going to have to be engineered to prove that she was unfit to have charge of Michael.
None of what he was thinking showed on his face as he followed Kate downstairs, his damp shirt in one hand and his jacket in the other.
Michael was tucked up in his cot, apparently for once quite happy to go straight to sleep.
In the kitchen, while they waited for his shirt to dry, Kate showed him where she kept Michael’s things and ran through the typed routine she had prepared for his previous nannies, handing him a copy.
‘And if there are any problems?’ Garrick asked her.
‘In that case you’ll have to ring me at my office…but only in the event of an emergency.’ She saw his face and said defensively, ‘I have a career, Rick. A career which I need in order to support Michael and myself, and so it’s important that while I am at work I’m free to concentrate on it. That’s why I’m employing you,’ she reminded him sharply.
It was hot in the small kitchen with the dryer on, and she was acutely conscious of the bareness of his torso. She wished she could ask him to go and wait in the sitting-room, or to put on his jacket, but he would probably think she was mad if she did so. She still found it almost impossible to picture this man looking after children, but he had proved to her that he was capable of doing so. He had bathed Michael with a tenderness that none of his previous nannies had matched, and instinctively she knew that where Michael was concerned she could trust him implicitly. Where Michael was concerned…so was it then on her own behalf that she felt this vague feeling of disquiet, of…danger almost? And what kind of danger? Not sexual danger, surely?