by Penny Jordan
No. Although he was a very sexual man; she was sure of it. His private life was no concern of hers, she reminded herself, and then her face flamed as it suddenly occurred to her that he might quite reasonably expect to entertain his friends here in her house. After all, her female nannies had expected that privilege.
The thought of him bringing a woman home with him and very probably making love with her aroused the most acute and unpleasant sensations inside Kate. She knew she ought to say something, to tell him that she couldn’t permit him to do so, but she found she simply could not say the words. It was a problem she would have to deal with at a later date, she told herself, inwardly praying that the occasion would never arise, but all too aware that it most probably would.
The dryer stopped, buzzing its message of readiness. Before she could do so, Garrick reached behind her and opened the door. She moved in order to get out of his way, and instead found that she was trapped between his body and the dryer.
It was a nerve-racking sensation, although after he had gone and her pulse had returned to normal she wasn’t able to understand why. He hadn’t menaced her in any way, done anything, said anything to set off that sudden terrifying feminine reaction to his proximity. No…this fear was unique and hitherto completely outside her experience, and it was a fear of herself rather than of him…of her reaction, her arousal, her awareness rather than his.
Instinct aided her, making her lower her eyelashes to shield her eyes, making her tense and breathe shallowly until he had retrieved his shirt and put it on, making her avert her head so that she didn’t have to look at him or breathe in his scent.
As she walked with him to the front door, she was half hoping that he would announce that he had changed his mind and had decided against working for her. She didn’t want him in her home; he was too male, too challenging. When Camilla had suggested a male nanny, she had envisaged a quiet, much younger man; a man who somehow or other would come across as asexual and unthreatening. In fact, the very last thing she had envisaged was this man, and the more she studied him, the more astounding she found it that he should want to work for her, looking after Michael.
As she opened the door for him, impulse made her ask quickly, ‘Are you sure you want this job? It can be very lonely. The others found that…and Michael isn’t always as lovable as he was today.’
The hair at the back of Garrick’s neck rose warningly. She was having second thoughts. He had felt it in the kitchen, sensed it when she backed off from him so surprisingly.
Quickly he reassured her. ‘I’m sure. I like kids. Michael and I will get along fine…and besides,’ he added, with what he hoped passed for sincerity, ‘I need the money.’
The car parked outside her small front garden belied that fact. It was an expensive and almost brand-new Ferrari. Kate stared at it in amazement, and Garrick cursed inwardly.
He had forgotten about that, and he could hardly disclaim ownership. If he did, she might even ring the police in order to trace the owner, and then the fat would be in the fire.
‘I suppose you bought it while you were working abroad,’ Kate said weakly, unwittingly offering him an escape route.
‘Yes. That’s right,’ he agreed with studied nonchalance. ‘Of course, it’s much older than it looks. It had to be re-registered when I came home. It’s surprising what a difference new number-plates make to an old car.’
Kate didn’t know all that much about cars, and so she simply accepted what he was saying, although she did inwardly question the wisdom of a man who was apparently in dire financial straits running a car that must surely be heavy on petrol. It was not her concern, she reminded herself. She was employing Rick as a nanny for Michael and nothing more.
She didn’t wait to see him drive off, for which Garrick was profoundly thankful. His carphone was bleeping frantically as he unlocked the door, and he spoke into it harshly, answering its imperative summons.
He was going to have one hell of a lot of work to do if he was going to start his new ‘job’ by Monday morning, and he might as well get started right away.
He finished the call which was from a casual acquaintance inviting him to a ‘charity’ ball. No doubt hoping for a generous donation from him as a result, he reflected as he gave a cool refusal. He was generous when it came to supporting his chosen charities, but he had no time for the antics of those people who spent almost a hundred thousand pounds in order to make a couple of thousand pounds profit for a specific cause, then thought they were being generous.
He picked up the phone and punched out a number. His secretary answered, and Garrick gave him several curt instructions.
Gerald Oswald was used to Garrick’s terse commands, and to being on call virtually twenty-four hours a day, but the perks of being Garrick Evans’ personal assistant far more than outweighed the disadvantages.
As he drove into the private car parking bay attached to the prestigious block that housed his apartment, Garrick was surprised to discover how tired he felt.
His shirt was still slightly damp, and it smelled of baby powder, he recognised in mild disgust as he climbed out of the Ferrari and locked it.
She had smelled of it too, only on her… He frowned, disliking the turn his thoughts were taking and irritated that he should find Kate Oakley even mildly attractive. She wasn’t his type. He disliked career women as lovers. When he was involved with a woman, he liked her to be able to fit in with his career demands, not to expect him to fit in with hers. His mouth quirked a little in wryly humorous acknowledgement of his own foibles. He doubted very much that Kate Oakley would be quite as indulgent.
Most mornings she got up at six-thirty, she had told him, adding coolly that he needn’t follow suit.
‘I enjoy the hour or so I have alone with Michael in the morning,’ she had warned him in that controlled voice she had.
Well, at that hour of the morning she was welcome to it. He only hoped it wouldn’t be too long before Gerald was able to find him a reliable nanny who could take over his supposed duties from him.
A little to his surprise, he discovered that he was almost looking forward to the challenge of the coming weeks. Of course, there could be no doubt as to the eventual outcome. He would win, and he had no compunction at all about what he planned to do. Fond though she seemed to be of him—surprisingly so, in fact—there was no doubt that it was going to be a struggle for her to bring up the child alone. A struggle from which he was going to free her. One day she would be grateful to him…and if she wasn’t…
His mouth compressed. The feelings of Kate Oakley were no concern of his. No concern at all.
CHAPTER FOUR
KATE sighed and replaced the receiver. She had rung Camilla several times to tell her the news about Rick, and also to have her small but unnerving doubts as to the wisdom of what she was doing allayed by her friend’s sensible counsel, but every time she dialled Camilla’s number the only response she could get was a recorded message to say that Camilla and her husband had been called away indefinitely.
She was sitting in her favourite cross-legged position on the floor of Michael’s room, while he crawled energetically around her, picking up building blocks. She was wearing a pair of well-washed jeans and a comfortable top. Since Michael’s advent into her life, her weekends had changed dramatically: meals out, visits to the theatre and a variety of gallery and exhibition openings that had previously been a feature of her weekends had now given way to walks in the park, shopping, and if she was lucky half an hour of peace and relaxation on Sunday evening after Michael had gone to sleep and before she started going through her diary for the coming week.
Today it was too wet to spend too much time outside. In the park the leaves had lain in damp clusters on the paths, and it seemed to Kate that the temperature had dropped several degrees almost overnight.
Michael demanded her attention by dropping one of the bricks in her lap. They were brightly coloured wooden blocks that linked together to spell his name,
an impulse purchase she hadn’t been able to resist, and now she obligingly took the letter from him and painstakingly collected the others. As she linked them together, she was acutely conscious of an unfamiliar tension tautening her muscles, a straining awareness of the fact that she was not really concentrating on what she was doing but listening for the sound of a car outside, footsteps on the path, the ring of the doorbell. All of which could herald the arrival of Rick Evans.
Had she done the right thing? To virtually hand Michael into the care of a stranger… The girls she had previously employed had also been strangers. But that had been different; Rick was a man…
She wriggled uncomfortably, all too aware of the fact that she was being guilty of mental sexual discrimination; something she bitterly resented when it operated against her own sex. There was no reason at all why a man should not be able to take perfectly good care of a small child, and Michael had taken to Rick with an immediacy he had not exhibited towards his other nannies.
No. If she got to the heart of things, her doubts and fears were not just fuelled by concern for Michael, but by her own ambivalent feelings towards Rick Evans.
For one thing, he was so different from what she had imagined. So much more intensely male, carrying about him an aura of power she was familiar with in the heads of large corporations and other successful businessmen, but which she had not expected to find surrounding a male nanny. Because society might consider the task of looking after a child to male nanny. Because society might consider the task of looking after a child to be less meaningful than running a company?
She wriggled again, uncomfortable with her own thoughts and what she recognised as her childhood prejudices and conditioning. Until the importance of the work women did in bringing up children was not just recognised but also respected, there could be no true equality for her sex. Kate knew that, but she also knew that she herself was helping to maintain that lack of equality by her own feeling of ill-ease at the thought of employing a man to take care of Michael.
* * *
Halfway through the evening, when Rick Evans had still not returned, Kate decided that he had changed his mind. She was surprised to discover that it wasn’t just relief she felt; there was also an odd sense of having won a reprieve. But a reprieve from what? Now she would be put to the trouble of starting her search all over again.
Upstairs, Michael was asleep. Kate had just been going through her diary, checking on her appointments. She already had several small clients, but she desperately needed the security that having a client like James Cameron would give her.
She got out all her meticulously filed data and started checking on it to make sure there was nothing she had missed. The two girls who worked for her had been responsible for putting together the lists of the various local TV and radio stations with the best advertising records. She herself had checked rigorously to discover which packaging companies were most likely to supply the right kind of image for the new look supermarkets, and which magazines it would be best to advertise in. She had also prepared data on which advertising agencies held the best record of success for their campaigns in the same kind of field, and, even though she knew she had already done everything it was possible to do to ensure that she won the contract, she was still unable to put her work away.
A burst of nervous energy was driving her on, a relentless feeling that there was still something she had left to do. She wasn’t happy about the thought of working closely with James, she acknowledged, putting down her pen. He made her feel wary and on edge, especially when he paid her sexually loaded compliments.
She had made it clear to him firmly and pleasantly that she was not in the market for a sexual relationship, and he had appeared to accept this with good grace, but something niggled at her: an inner awareness that he was not going to be an easy man to deal with. But she needed the contract.
She was so busy worrying about it that she almost missed the sound her nerves had been stretched tensely to catch all day. It was only the sharp slam of a car door that broke through her concentration, making her half rise from her chair, so that she was on her feet when the front door bell rang.
She went to open it.
‘Sorry I’m late,’ Garrick apologised tersely. ‘My stuff’s in the car. Is it all right if I bring it in?’
Gerald, excellent assistant that he was, had managed to keep his face wooden and composed when he had explained to him that for the next few weeks he was going to be virtually incommunicado, and that all his appointments would have to be cancelled.
He had not even said anything when Garrick had added that he was going to need a computer terminal that would allow him to tap into the complex system set up in their main office, and that the only way he, Gerald, would have of reaching him would be either via this terminal or on the carphone, and then only between a certain set of hours.
It was only when Garrick had instructed him to find him a discreet and properly trained nanny to take charge of a nine-month-old child that he had shown any reaction, and even then he had controlled it quickly.
Garrick had had no difficulty in realising that his assistant thought that the child in question was his own, and he had not enlightened him. Time enough for that later, once he had sole guardianship of the boy.
The Ferrari was parked outside; Kate could see the scarlet gleam of its paintwork in the streetlights. Garrick had to make several trips between it and his new quarters. Kate left him to it, not wanting to appear curious about his personal possessions. She stifled a yawn as she tidied up her papers.
She was tired and looking forward to an early night. She heard the car door slam and then the front door close. Garrick knocked briefly on the sitting-room door and then opened it.
‘All done. I expect you’ll want to run through Michael’s routine again with me.’ He pushed back the cuff of the same blouson jacket he had worn the previous day. ‘Can you give me, say, half an hour to get my stuff unpacked, and then we can discuss it?’
Too startled by his assumption of command to object, Kate could only stare at the closing door. When he came back, she deliberately wouldn’t offer him a cup of coffee or a drink. One thing she intended to make very clear to her new employee was that he was exactly that, and that she was the one who gave the commands, although she doubted that she had the flair to deliver them with quite the high-handed insouciance he had just employed.
When he came back downstairs, she was ready for him. As he knocked and walked into the sitting-room, she stood up and handed him a printed list.
‘I think this makes everything clear,’ she told him calmly. ‘I’ve got an early start tomorrow, so I’m going to bed now. If you want any supper, please help yourself. I think you’ll find everything you need in the kitchen.’
With a cool nod of dismissal, she opened the door and went straight upstairs.
Garrick stared after her, frowning, conscious of an odd let-down feeling, which he decided was all too probably caused by the pangs of hunger attacking his stomach.
The last time he had eaten had been lunch time, having been too busy to make the dinner date with friends he had previously arranged. But the thought of making himself something to eat was totally unappealing, as was the notion of going to bed at half-past ten at night.
He wasn’t quite sure what Kate Oakley was trying to prove by her actions, but if she thought she was in some way asserting her authority over him by sending him supperless to bed, like a naughty child… Grimly he opened the door, having picked up the set of keys Kate had given him.
She heard the powerful roar of the car as she stepped out of the bath. She walked into her bedroom just in time to see the lights of the Ferrari as it disappeared out of sight. Where was he going?
It was no concern of hers, she told herself sharply. Just as long as he took proper care of Michael, what he chose to do in his own time was his own affair.
Affair perhaps being the operative word. He didn’t look like the kind of man who lived
the life of a celibate. She wondered who she was, the woman who shared his bed, and was horrified by the immediacy of the images that flashed through her mind.
From where had she got this ability to visualise so precisely the structured grace of his naked body? From what dark corners of her psyche came this unwanted awareness of him as a man? Wherever it came from, it would have to be banished.
Tired as she was, she couldn’t sleep; at least not until she heard the Ferrari return, and the comforting click of the front door as Rick locked it behind him. He was back. She fell asleep before she could question just why knowing that had been important enough to keep her awake.
Garrick had been out for a meal which now sat uncomfortably heavily on his stomach. It was gone midnight when he got back, and it took him almost a further two hours to set up the terminal to his satisfaction.
As a consequence he slept through Kate’s half-past six alarm, and his first intimation that a new way of life had started came when Kate rapped sharply on his door, having returned from her walk with Michael.
‘I’m going to give Michael his breakfast now,’ she announced, half opening the door but not walking into the room. ‘And then I’ll be leaving for the office shortly afterwards. I’ll put him in his playpen when I’ve fed him.’
A judicious move, she had discovered in her early days of looking after him, since it gave her time to get changed into her office clothes without any danger of Michael’s sticky fingers coming into contact with them.
Kate was a meticulous timekeeper and worked to a very strict routine. At eight o’clock, she walked into Michael’s nursery to kiss him goodbye, as she did every morning. There was as yet no sign of Rick, although she could hear sounds of movement from his room. She called out a brief ‘goodbye’ to him, as she went downstairs to collect her briefcase.