by Penny Jordan
‘I think that might be a good idea,’ Garrick agreed. ‘Oh, and by the way, I had a small problem with the blender.’
CHAPTER FIVE
WHO other than the male of the species would dream of filling a blender with hard-boiled eggs and heaven alone knew what else, and then switch it on without the top on? Kate reflected wearily when she had removed the last of the mess from her normally pristine kitchen walls.
It was gone eleven o’clock and she hadn’t done a single stroke of office work. What had happened to that interlude of calm quietude she normally enjoyed after her evening meal?
Rick had retired to his room to tamper with his computer, after she had refused his solicitous offer to help with the washing up.
‘I have a machine,’ she had pointed out drily to him. She was so tired now that her bones ached, but she could hardly leave the mess in the kitchen to be tackled by Mrs Riley who came in once a week to clean for her.
There, at last it was done. What she needed now was a hot, milky drink and an even hotter bath, and then bed. At least the activity of the evening had kept her from worrying about the fact that she hadn’t been able to test her presentation out on Camilla.
Rick Evans came into the kitchen just as she was pouring milk into a pan.
‘Supper?’ he asked her, looking pleased at the prospect.
‘No, not supper,’ she told him coldly. ‘Simply a hot drink which I am making for myself. I don’t eat supper, but if you wish to do so, please feel free to make yourself something. Actually, Michael’s previous nannies normally preferred to take advantage of the fact that I’m here in the evening to take a few hours off.’
‘Meaning that’s what you’d prefer me to do?’ Garrick asked her shrewdly.
Something in the way he looked at her made Kate feel almost uncomfortable, and she found herself saying hastily, ‘No…no, not at all,’ which was exactly the opposite of what she meant.
‘Do you go out much yourself in the evenings?’ he asked her carelessly as he walked behind her to open the fridge door and inspect the contents.
It was a natural enough question, but Kate found she was stiffening slightly, ready to bristle with defensiveness should he indicate either by a look or a comment that he found it odd that a young woman of her age preferred to concentrate on her career rather than go out on dates.
‘Sometimes—on business,’ she told him coolly, letting her voice indicate that she was not pleased that he should question her on her personal life.
He didn’t take the hint, removing a carton of eggs from the fridge, saying approvingly, ‘Free range…good. I think I’ll make myself an omelette, if that’s OK with you,’ and then adding before she could say a word, ‘So when do you get the chance to let your hair down—meet men?’
Kate turned on him angrily. ‘My private life isn’t your concern,’ she began, her eyes widening in startled shock as he put down the carton of eggs and took hold of her, virtually lifting her off her feet.
As she started to protest, her eyes registering her shock that he should manhandle her in such a way, he put her down, and deftly removed the pan of boiling milk from the hot-plate behind her.
‘Sorry about that, but it was going to boil over,’ he said easily, leaving her scarlet with mortification and temper.
She was beginning to bitterly regret her soft-headedness in allowing him to stay. It was becoming quite plain to her that he did not have the slightest idea of how a nanny should behave. It was not that Kate expected her employees to be subservient toward her—far from it. But she did expect a quite natural acknowledgement of the fact that their relationship was one in which hers was the more dominant role. Rick Evans seemed to have absolutely no awareness of this fact, and looking at him, standing in her small kitchen, watching her with eyes that held intelligent awareness of her confusion, and something else that was less obvious and harder to define, she found it very hard indeed to believe that this was a man who had been so intimidated by the sexual overtures of his previous employer that he had sought another job.
For all that she had known him only a very short time indeed, she found it hard to imagine that anyone, male or female, might intimidate him.
She reached for the pan of milk, pouring it shakily into her mug.
‘I’m going to bed now,’ she told him, trying to sound both cool and in control. ‘And if you must use the blender, please remember to put the lid on.’
Garrick watched her go. Her back was ramrod stiff, but her eyes had given her away when he touched her. He had seen all too clearly that flash of near panic darken her eyes. Women did not normally panic when he touched them. Far from it. She obviously wasn’t used to being touched, either. So she couldn’t be involved in a relationship. That was a pity. A woman in love might quite easily tend to neglect the small child in her care in favour of that lover, and he was beginning to suspect that he would need all the ammunition he could find if he was going to succeed in his intention of taking the child away from her. No judge seeing them together could fail to see the relationship which she had already established with Michael.
What he needed now was a thoroughly reliable young woman he could employ as Michael’s nanny. Someone who could take charge of him and establish a relationship with him that would eventually oust Kate from his affections. But what woman of that calibre would ever agree to the deception that would be needed for her to be able to work with Michael without Kate’s knowledge? And how would he be able to trust a woman who did?
As he ate his omelette, he reflected rather wryly that this evening he should have been attending the premiere of a new film, with supper afterwards at the Ritz. His date for the evening had not been at all pleased at the cancellation of their arrangements, so Gerald had told him.
It struck him as he finished his meal that things weren’t going according to plan. It had been a long time since anything had been allowed to disrupt the smooth running of his life, and even longer since that ‘anything’ had been a woman.
The problem was that he had not taken into account the effect of the enforced intimacy of living in such close contact with another adult human being, especially an adult female human being.
* * *
Kate had her hot bath and fell asleep the moment her head touched the pillow. When Michael cried out, she was awake instantly, groping in the dark for the switch to her bedside-light, pulling on her robe even as she registered the fact that it was three o’clock in the morning.
With the central heating off, her bedroom felt chilly and she shivered as she made her way to Michael’s room. As she had suspected the moment his cry had woken her, there was no sign of Rick Evans.
Picking Michael up out of his cot, she checked automatically that he was not running a temperature and that there was nothing else obviously wrong with him. He was wet, which she had half expected, and now that he had his favourite adult with him, he was quite happy to stop crying and nuzzle contentedly into her shoulder. Sitting down in the nursing chair with him, Kate studied him severely.
‘There’s nothing wrong with you at all, is there?’ she chided him softly.
He gurgled and grinned, reaching out to tug on her hair.
‘You’re a fraud, that’s what you are,’ Kate told him. ‘Waking me up in the middle of the night just so that you can have a cuddle.’
Her expression belied the severity of her words, and Kate herself was still half surprised by the tender responsiveness that Michael always managed to arouse within her. By rights she ought to be thoroughly cross at being woken out of her badly needed sleep, but the pleasure of cuddling the soft, warm body…the way Michael smiled and gurgled at her, more than made up for her initial irritation.
Engrossed in the little boy, it was a shock to hear Rick Evans saying softly from the open doorway, ‘And who can blame him?’
Instantly Kate was acutely conscious of her untidy hair and shabby dressing-gown. All her life she had fought against appearing vulnerable to others, and
now here was this man, a stranger, an employee from whom she ought to have been able to preserve a protective distance, and yet who made her feel acutely conscious of herself and him in a way that made her feel acutely uncomfortable.
For instance, now as he watched her with Michael, she was intensely aware of the drag of her cotton nightdress against her breasts; sensitive to the sensation of the fabric in a way she had never known before.
She was equally conscious of the fact that Rick Evans was wearing a towelling robe beneath the hem of which his legs were bare, suggesting that he had pulled it on to cover his nakedness.
A soft shiver gripped her, convulsing her body on a hot tide of shame. It was both ridiculous and foolish for her to be so aware of him as a man. It suggested a weakness, a vulnerability she had not hitherto realised she possessed.
Anxiety coiled tensely in her stomach, locking her body into rigid watchfulness. She didn’t like the way Rick Evans made her feel, she didn’t like her unwanted awareness of him as a man, and she liked even less her body’s awareness of itself as acutely female. She wasn’t used to this kind of experience. The male sex was a race she had determinedly held at a distance, permitting no intimate place in her life.
It had been desperation which had prompted her to agree to Camilla’s suggestion that she hire a male nanny, and a ridiculous and dangerous compassion which had led her into allowing Rick Evans to stay, despite his obvious lack of experience with very young children. She had not given enough thought to the problems that the intimacy of sharing such a small house was bound to cause.
Why not? Normally she was careful and cautious in all that she did, never allowing herself to make a decision until she had explored all the possible results.
She had already given herself the answer. Sheer desperation, plus the anxiety of carrying the sole responsibility of both Michael and the business. Since Michael had come into her life, she had lost some of her armour of confidence. The little boy’s vulnerability had transferred itself to her. She no longer only had herself to worry about; she had a small dependent child as well. And, just as Michael had shown her an unexpected vein of love and need within herself, so he had shown her a corresponding vulnerability and uncertainty. She was no longer the cool, controlled woman who believed herself to be invulnerable.
And Camilla had deceived her, she thought bitterly. Oh, not deliberately. No, she was quite sure that her friend had not meant to give her a totally erroneous impression of the kind of man Rick Evans would be. She knew her better than that. No. Her friend had acted in all good faith. It was not her fault that Kate had expected to have to deal with quite a mild-mannered type of man…the type of man who instinctively shied away from the female sex, the type of man one would quite naturally expect to meet on learning of his inability to cope with the sexual advances of a forceful female employer. Instead she had been confronted by a man who seemed the exact opposite of what she had expected.
Michael had gone to sleep. He lay heavily against her. Lost in thought, she wasn’t even aware of Rick crossing the room until he gently lifted the sleeping baby from her arms. Her body tensed as his hand brushed accidently against the soft curve of her breast, her face unwittingly betraying her shock.
Garrick saw it and recognised her shock for what it was. The women he knew were sexually experienced and sophisticated. The accidental touch of a man’s hand against their body did not cause them to go pale and then flush, their eyes mirroring open bewilderment at the recognition of their awareness of him as a man.
It made him feel both angry and protective at the same time. He didn’t want to be aware of Kate’s sexual vulnerability. It gave him an unfair advantage over her in this battle she didn’t even know had begun.
He frowned as he carried Michael over to his cot, wondering why he should find the idea of taking advantage of her vulnerability so distasteful.
Garrick wasn’t used to vulnerable women. The women he knew, knew exactly what life was all about. They would never allow themselves to be woken up in the middle of the night by the cry of a child who wasn’t theirs.
Kate focused blindly on his robe-clad back, trying to will away the memory of the fluttering sensation of unfamiliar pleasure she had felt when he touched her. It was so very shaming, that flutter of pleasure; so embarrassingly unwanted and unlooked for, and that knowledge made her clench her muscles painfully and say curtly to Rick Evans, ‘It might be a good idea if you invested in a pair of pyjamas. I’m beginning to understand why your previous employer might have thought her advances would be reciprocated.’
‘Is that how you see me?’ Garrick countered smoothly. ‘As sexually available?’
He was on familiar ground now, his expression tinged with faint amusement as he turned from the cot to look at her.
To Kate, his amusement, coming on top of the confusion of her own awareness of his effect on her senses, was like acid thrown on to her skin. She burned with the torment of realising what he thought, immediately getting to her feet and drawing her shabby robe protectively round her body.
‘I see you as a nanny who has so far shown an appalling lack of awareness of his duties and responsibility,’ she said pointedly. ‘In fact, I’m beginning to think—’
She was going to dismiss him, Garrick realised, cursing his own stupidity. Just because her vulnerability had caught him off guard, that had been no reason for him to try to undermine her self-confidence by underlining his awareness of the sexual tension between them.
In some perverse way, he had wanted her to react sexually to him, he recognised, almost as though by inviting her to recognise and acknowledge that faint sexual frisson he could free himself of his own guilt in what he was doing. And in attempting to do so he had created a potential hazard to his own ultimate success in proving her unfit to have charge of Michael. If she dismissed him now, it would be ten times harder for him to gather the information he needed.
‘No, please…’ he interrupted her quickly, and then, gambling desperately on the reality of the sense of humour he suspected she possessed, he added with a smile, ‘I promise I’ll go out and buy myself a pair of pyjamas first thing in the morning.’ Shrewdly he refrained from pointing out that if she dismissed him she would undoubtedly face problems in finding a suitable replacement quickly, sensing that to challenge her would have the opposite effect from what he wanted.
His teasing comment gave Kate time to reflect on her own behaviour. She was over-reacting, there was no doubt about it. If she carried on like this… It was almost as though she were looking for an excuse to get rid of him because she was frightened of her own reaction to him, and that was impossible.
‘And a manual on how to take care of a baby,’ she suggested wryly, acknowledging that he could stay.
Long after she had gone back to bed, Kate was still awake. As a consequence, she overslept, waking only when she was disturbed by someone shaking her out of her deep sleep.
She opened her eyes reluctantly and focused on Garrick in confusion.
‘It’s eight o’clock,’ he told her. ‘I thought you’d want me to wake you up. I’ve made you a cup of coffee.’
Gone eight? That was impossible. But a quick look at her alarm told her it wasn’t! It was the first time in her working life that anything like this had happened. Panic hit her as she realised that she was going to be late.
‘Michael’s still asleep as well.’
‘You should have woken me earlier,’ Kate told him fretfully.
‘I heard your alarm go off, and I presumed you’d heard it as well. Can I do anything to help?’
‘No. Not really.’
The moment he left the room Kate jumped out of bed, showering quickly, and pulling on the first clothes that came to hand. There wasn’t time to wind her hair into its normal immaculate chignon, and she was acutely conscious of the heavy mass of her hair as she hurried downstairs.
The rich aroma of freshly brewed coffee filled the kitchen. She was hungry, but there wasn’t
time for her to have anything to eat. She rushed into the sitting-room, gathered up her papers, mentally calculating how long it was going to take her to reach her office. The girls would wonder what on earth had happened to her. Luckily Sara had a spare set of keys, so they could at least let themselves in.
And it would have to be today, when she had a lot on. Three appointments with prospective clients, and a celebratory lunch she couldn’t possibly get out of with a client for whom her PR work had resulted in a twenty per cent increase in business.
There was also the normal paperwork to get through, and then at six she had a cocktail party to attend at a new gallery which had just opened and where she was hoping to persuade the owners to give a ‘view’ for one of her new clients, an artist who specialised in very delicate and appealing watercolours.
She was just stuffing the last of her papers into her briefcase when Rick walked into the sitting-room.
‘Come and have your breakfast. Grapefruit, wholemeal toast and coffee. I hope that’s OK.’
Her mouth watered desperately, but she shook her head.
‘Thanks, but no. I haven’t got time. I’m already running late.’
‘You’ve got ten minutes,’ Rick told her inexorably. ‘I’ve ordered you a cab and he won’t be here for fifteen minutes. Ten minutes to have your breakfast. Five minutes to clean your teeth and get your coat on.’
A cab? She stared at him in confusion. She wasn’t used to someone else taking charge of her life like this, and Rick took advantage of her momentary bewilderment to gently usher her into the kitchen.
Her breakfast had been set out for her on the counter: the wholemeal toast was deliciously warm, the coffee fragrant and strong, just how she liked it, and the grapefruit properly segmented and free of sugar.
‘I’ll just go up and check on Michael,’ she heard him saying, and as he disappeared she wondered if he had guessed that she preferred to eat her breakfast alone and in silence. It was remarkable how efficiently he had taken charge.