by Penny Jordan
She arrived at her office at ten to nine and unlocked the door. Soon after, Sara and Harriet, the two girls who worked for her, arrived within minutes of one another. While Harriet made them all a mug of coffee, Kate opened the mail.
It was disappointingly bereft of new business. Times were hard in the city; the euphoria caused by the ‘Big Bang’ change in the stock-market had died away to be replaced by a new atmosphere of caution. People were not prepared to risk their reputation with a PR agent who was not known to them, and the clients Kate did have were in the main small, struggling businesses like her own.
Camilla had helped as much as she could, and Kate had got some business via that help. If she could just succeed with James…
She dialled Camilla’s office number and learned from her husband’s secretary that his father had had a heart attack over the weekend and that, although he had returned home, Camilla was staying in the country to help her mother-in-law and would not be returning for some time.
Thanking her for the information, Kate replaced the receiver. She was still uneasy in her mind about the wisdom of employing Rick, but what other option did she have? The agency she had used previously had pointed out rather sharply to her when she rang them that the turnover of nannies in her household was alarmingly high. Their tone had implied that the fault lay not with their girls but with Kate herself, and perhaps it did, she acknowledged. Perhaps she expected too much of people, set standards that were too high; then again, perhaps in other households there were others to share the responsibility of the caring: partners, parents, family. She had no one.
The words seemed to echo dully inside her head, tormenting her, and yet previously she had congratulated herself on her solitary state because it left her free of any emotional ties so that she could pursue her career without any interruptions.
But that had been before Michael…and now, ironically, despite the havoc he had caused in her life, she knew that she could not bear to part with him.
Before, she had never understood what drove some single women to have a child, especially when they had demanding careers to cope with. She had always assumed that she was lacking in that maternal instinct, but now she was not so sure. Over recent weeks, she had sometimes realised to her horror that Michael had crept into her thoughts when they ought to have been concentrated exclusively on her work. She had even caught herself staring dreamily into space, remembering how he had smiled at her, or some new clever skill he had learned.
Outside in the main office she could hear the two girls talking about their weekends. Harriet had been home to the Cotswolds to stay with her parents. Sara had spent her free time with her fiancé who was on leave from the army. Both girls came from moneyed families and worked for her for a very small salary indeed. They were both Camilla’s god-daughters and, fortunately, despite their cushioned backgrounds, hard workers. Kate had never felt the remotest twinge of envy of them, but suddenly, listening to them, she was bleakly conscious of how empty of people her life was. What would happen to Michael if anything befell her?
She could feel an unfamiliar sensation of panic claiming her, swelling and building inside her, a terrifying awareness of Michael’s vulnerability. Apart from her, he had no one.
Her phone rang and she picked it up.
‘Ah, Kate…how are you this morning?’
‘James…I’m fine, and you?’
‘Look, I was wondering if I could bring our dinner date forward to Wednesday. I’m going to be rather tied up later in the week—a possible new acquisition.’
Kate’s heart sank. She was as sure as she could be that her presentation was good, but she had wanted to discuss it with Camilla before submitting it to him. What was it about having a dependent child to look after that was so damaging to a woman’s self-confidence? Perhaps it had something to do with the sleepless nights, she decided grimly, as she acceded to James’s request.
‘I’ll pick you up, shall I? Say eight o’clock…’
Kate thanked him and gave him her address, making a mental note to be ready on time so that she didn’t have to invite him in. It would do nothing for the image she was so determined to cultivate for James to discover Michael…or his nanny.
Unless she was lunching with clients, Kate did not have an official lunch hour. It was just gone one when her phone rang. Both girls were out and she picked it up, giving her name absently.
‘Michael won’t eat his dinner.’
The abrupt comment delivered in an exceedingly irate male voice startled her for a second.
‘Kate, are you there?’
Kate? When had she given him permission to use her Christian name? The girls she had employed had all referred to her very correctly as Miss Oakley.
‘Yes. Yes, I am here,’ she responded crisply. ‘What did you give him to eat?’
He told her and she frowned a little, realising he had used one of her emergency standby tins of prepared food, instead of using fresh ingredients and blending them as she preferred.
‘That isn’t one he likes very much,’ she told him. ‘Try the banana pudding, he seems to have a weakness for that.’
‘Thanks.’
‘Oh, and Rick…’
She could almost hear his impatience humming down the telephone wires.
‘Yes?’ he responded tersely.
‘In future, perhaps you would follow my instructions and prepare Michael’s food from fresh ingredients, using the blender. I think I did mention to you that I don’t like him having convenience meals unless it’s absolutely necessary.’
As he replaced the receiver, she thought she heard him mutter, ‘It was necessary, believe me,’ but the mutter had not been clear enough to be sure.
Her fears for Michael in her own absence, always latent, no matter who was in charge of him, rose to swamp her with guilt, distracting her from concentrating on the presentation she was trying to prepare.
What on earth had she done, allowing a mere man to take charge of Michael? A man who, it seemed, had flagrantly flouted her instructions and fed him tinned baby food. A man who didn’t have the sense to read her instructions properly, who rang her up at work and completely destroyed her concentration.
What she needed right now, she recognised was some calming reassurance; the kind of reassurance that Camilla invariably gave her, but Camilla had problems of her own.
* * *
The afternoon brought a flurry of telephone calls, and the promise of some additional business from one of her existing clients who was thinking of expanding. In order to make up for the time she had lost worrying about Michael, Kate had to work late. Normally she enjoyed the peace of the office when she had it to herself, but this evening she found it hard to concentrate.
At half-past seven she gave in and called it a day. It took her over an hour to get home due to a problem with the underground, and when she did she was cold and tired.
As she put her key in the lock and opened the door, the house seemed unnaturally silent. Her heart did a somersault, all manner of terrible images flooding her brain. Something had happened to Michael…an accident. Dropping her briefcase, she rushed upstairs. Michael was standing up in his playpen, holding on to the bars. He grinned when he saw her. His rompers were filthy and his bib was generously stained with what looked like tomato purée. The room looked as though a whirlwind had hit it, toys strewn everywhere, and there in the middle of the chaos, dead to the world in the Victorian nursing chair she had bought and re-covered herself, lay Rick Evans—fast asleep.
Kate studied him covertly, noting the way the thick, dark lashes gave him an air of vulnerability. He was wearing jeans, and his shirt, like Michael’s rompers, looked decidedly worse for wear.
As he crowed his delight at seeing her, Michael held up his arms to her and promptly sat down on his well-padded bottom. Kate picked him up, frowning as she discovered the odd shapelessness of his nappy. A brief investigation showed her that, whatever else Rick Evans might know about small childr
en, he was not apparently au fait with the art of fastening a nappy.
She redid his handiwork to her own and Michael’s satisfaction, and then quietly set about restoring order to the untidy nursery while Michael chattered unintelligibly to her, telling her all about his day.
He was a good-natured baby, physically affectionate and responsive, and Kate had been surprised to discover how much she enjoyed holding and cuddling his small body.
The room tidy, she picked him up, enjoying the way he nestled against her, before remembering that she was still wearing her office clothes. Normally the first thing she did when she got in was get changed. Thanks to Rick Evans her routine had been overset, and the result was that Michael was happily chewing on the shoulder of her very expensive Paul Costello suit.
Taking him with her, she went through to her own room, putting Michael down on the floor.
Stripping off her suit and blouse, she was standing in her satin teddy, reaching into her wardrobe for a pair of jeans, when her bedroom door was suddenly thrust open and Rick Evans walked in, calling anxiously, ‘Michael? Oh…I didn’t realise you were back.’
‘Obviously not,’ Kate agreed drily.
She wasn’t used to men walking into her bedroom, and even though common sense told her that she was as decorously clad as any woman lying on a summer beach, she felt acutely vulnerable and uncomfortable with him standing there, watching her.
‘I must have fallen asleep. I had no idea it was so late.’ He yawned as he spoke, stretching so that his shirt clung tautly to his body.
‘Yes,’ Kate agreed tersely. She was holding her jeans in front of her as though they afforded some form of protection. But against what? He seemed to have no idea that she found his presence in her bedroom both an intrusion and embarrassment, and to her astonishment, instead of apologising and leaving, he sat down on her bed, picking Michael up and making the little boy laugh as he tossed him into the air and caught him again.
‘Perhaps you’d like to take Michael and get him ready for his bath,’ she suggested in some exasperation when he made no move to leave.
He looked at her over the little boy’s head, and Kate was suddenly acutely aware of the way in which the satin fabric clung to her body. She moved her weight uncomfortably from one foot to the other.
‘Aren’t we going to have dinner first?’
Dinner? Kate forgot her embarrassment and frowned.
‘I shall be having a light supper when I feel hungry,’ she told him freezingly. ‘If you had read my instructions you would have realised that you should have had your meal at six o’clock, after Michael had had his tea. Look, I don’t think this is going to work,’ Kate told him, suddenly exasperated. ‘I’m sure you’re every bit as good as your agency says, but I don’t think for a child as young as Michael…’
‘Michael ate the instructions,’ he interrupted her. ‘Well, at least—I left them on the table and he got hold of them, but by the time I’d realised what had happened it was too late.’
Kate could visualise the scene all too easily. Michael had a propensity for destruction, unlike anything she had previously experienced.
‘Please give me another chance…I need this job.’
The very fact that he obviously found it very difficult to ask her softened her reluctance to keep him on. Who knew what kind of personal problems he might have which she knew nothing about? If she was honest with herself, it was his maleness and not his mistakes that was upsetting her so much. And that, surely, was her problem and not his?
‘I’ll give you another copy of the instructions,’ she told him quietly, ‘and tonight, as it’s so late…I was only going to have quiche and salad for supper, but you’re welcome to share it.’
What on earth was she saying? He looked as surprised as she felt, and she made a hurried attempt to re-establish the right amount of distance between them by saying coolly, ‘In future, please don’t come into my bedroom. To be honest with you, I find it rather strange that you did, especially in view of your complaints about your last employer.’
He looked almost mystified and she reminded him curtly, ‘I was told that your last employer made unwanted advances towards you.’
‘Er—yes…but you see, I thought you were out. I woke up and found that Michael had gone and I was in such a panic…’
Kate knew that feeling all too well.
‘Yes, it’s surprising how far they can travel,’ she agreed wryly.
Garrick turned his head and looked at her. Nothing in the day had gone as he had planned. For a start, he had not been able to get hold of a nanny, and, although he had witnessed his mother caring for countless numbers of small children over the years, he had soon discovered that watching someone else do the work was one thing, doing it oneself was quite another.
It had taken him nearly an hour just to change Michael’s nappy. For one thing the little boy just wouldn’t keep still, and for another he couldn’t seem to get the damn thing secure. Then there had been the débâcle of lunch—a meal which he had not been able to consume himself, since by the time he managed to get some of the revolting puréed mixture into Michael and clean up the mess this operation had involved, he had totally lost his appetite.
Gerald, summoned to drive round to the house with a large flask of coffee and some sandwiches at four o’clock in the afternoon, had taken one look at his normally immaculate boss and simply stared at him open-mouthed.
‘You breathe one word of this to anyone and you’re fired,’ Garrick had told him threateningly.
They had gone through the mail together, while Michael played on the floor. Gerald had left promising to do everything he could to expedite the arrival of a properly trained nanny.
‘The problem is,’ he explained earnestly to Garrick, ‘that none of the reputable agencies are keen on allowing one of their girls to work for an unknown man. Well, you can see their point, but you said not to disclose your name…’
‘Couldn’t you give them yours?’ Garrick had demanded testily.
‘Well, yes, but you see they wanted to see the house and the baby. It seems that good nannies are in very great demand.’
‘I can see why,’ Garrick had told him grimly.
After Gerald left it had been time to give Michael his tea. His first attempt to use the blender had resulted in the fiasco which even at this minute still decorated the kitchen, despite his attempts to remove most of the evidence.
It had been after that he had fallen asleep. Now he felt more tired than he had ever done in his life, and that included cross-Atlantic travel and the resultant jet lag.
He was also extremely hungry. So hungry that even quiche and salad made his mouth also extremely hungry. So hungry that even quiche and salad made his mouth water.
As he carried Michael back to his bedroom, he wondered where on earth the day had gone. He had nearly had heart failure when he woke up and found the little boy gone, and in the ten seconds it had taken him to find out, he had wondered what on earth he was going to tell Kate when she demanded an explanation for the baby’s absence.
It only struck him as he put Michael down in his playpen how odd it was that his first concern had been for how he was going to tell Kate, rather than the upset Michael’s potential disappearance might cause to his own plans.
He frowned heavily. His whole purpose in carrying out this idiotic charade was to collect enough proof to ensure that the legal system would give him sole custody of Michael through the negligence of his present guardian. And yet in his own heart of hearts he knew already that Kate Oakley was devoted to the little boy, and that she would defend and protect him as aggressively as a tigress with her cub.
Kate’s feelings for Michael were not his concern, he reminded himself. If she wanted a child so desperately, there was nothing to stop her finding a man and having one of her own. She was an attractive woman, with a surprisingly voluptuous body. Very few men would turn down the opportunity to make love with a woman like her. She could hav
e as many children as she wished.
He resolutely ignored the inner voice that pointed out austerely that so could he. It was different for a man: a man would always be vulnerable to the woman who carried his child. No matter what agreement might have been reached, women were notoriously emotionally unbalanced. He wanted the child without the complications of the mother. He wanted Michael.
Dressed in jeans and a sweater, Kate went through to Michael’s bedroom, stopping on the threshold when she saw that Michael was in his playpen while his nanny was standing staring out of the window.
‘Perhaps you’d like to go and get changed?’ she suggested as he carried the plastic bath into the shower room. She deftly undressed Michael as she waited for the bath to fill. ‘Oh, and remind me to show you how to fasten a nappy,’ she added drily when Rick turned round to watch her.
She was surprised to see a faint burn of colour darkening his skin.
‘All right, I admit it,’ he agreed harshly. ‘I don’t have very much experience with such young children. But I do need this job…more than you can possibly realise, and I give you my word that while Michael’s in my care, I’ll see to it that he doesn’t come to any kind of harm.’
Strangely she found his admission and his promise far more reassuring than she found his original contention that he was fully capable of looking after the small boy. Just for a moment she had seen something human and real in his eyes, something that touched a chord inside her.
She was tired of constantly worrying about the skill and responsibility of whoever was in charge of Michael. She trusted this man at least to display common sense and hard-headedness, even if he might lack a few of the more practical mothering skills. And who knew, perhaps Camilla was right when she said it was never too soon for a child to experience the male as well as the female influence in its life.
For better or worse, Rick Evans was Michael’s nanny. For better or worse…odd that she should have picked those words from out of the marriage ceremony.
‘Perhaps you’d like to bath Michael?’ she said briskly to cover the confusion of her feelings. ‘I’ll stand and watch.’