by Penny Jordan
She was just applying a fresh coat of lipstick when her taxi arrived. Rick was still upstairs with Michael, and she only realised when she was in the cab that she hadn’t told him that she wouldn’t be in until late. She would have to ring him from the office.
In the event, she didn’t need to. Garrick rang her at four o’clock, his voice terse as he told her that Michael wasn’t very well.
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Kate demanded anxiously. ‘Have you called the doctor?’
‘I don’t think it’s that serious. He’s got a temperature, and he’s very fretful. Can you come home?’
Could she go home? Her heart sank. Of course she couldn’t. She had a thousand things to do, and then the cocktail party, which it was essential that she attend if she was to persuade the gallery owner to take her client.
She took a deep breath and said quietly and firmly, ‘No, Rick, I can’t. You are Michael’s nanny. If you think it’s necessary, then you must ring the doctor. The number’s on the pad by the phone. Oh, and by the way, I shan’t be back until around nine. There’s a gallery opening I have to attend.’
As he placed the receiver back, Garrick looked with grim satisfaction at the recorder he had placed next to it. If he had written the words for her himself, he couldn’t have chosen anything more damning. A mother who refused to come home when her child needed her. How could that look in court?
He reran the tape, listening to the crisp, incisive tone of Kate’s refusal as he watched Michael playing happily with his building blocks. There was nothing wrong with the little boy, and Garrick had already known that Kate would not be able to come home, not after her late start this morning, not with the schedule she had. He had looked in her diary before he woke her, and had been a little startled to see James Cameron’s name there. He had had dealings with the man himself and didn’t like him. He was a bully and not above asserting unwarranted pressure when he thought he could get away with it. He caught himself wondering if Kate knew about his reputation, and then dismissed the thought angrily, irritated with himself for his momentary weakness.
Kate couldn’t concentrate. She put down the presentation she was working on for a potential client and tried to banish from her mind tormenting images of Michael’s face. Small children were so vulnerable when they were ill. A high temperature could be nothing at all, or on the other hand…
Her imagination worked overtime, busily fuelled by her guilt. How did other women cope with these situations? she wondered miserably. Common sense told her that Rick Evans was perfectly capable of calling the doctor should the situation necessitate it, but instinct and emotion argued unremittingly that she ought to be with Michael. That it was her responsibility and duty to be with him. She pictured his flushed, uncomfortable little body, heard his plaintive cries, and before she knew what she was doing she had risen from her desk and opened the door to the outer office.
‘Sara,’ she asked the dark-haired girl bent over a list of local TV and radio stations, ‘are you doing anything this evening?’
‘I’ve got a date…but I could cancel it. Why?’
‘I wondered if you could go to a gallery opening in my place. Michael isn’t well and I have to go home.’
Pleasure and ambition brought a pink flush to her assistant’s face, and in her eyes Kate read the message that she considered her foolish to miss the opportunity of making such a good contact simply because of a sick child.
Once she would have shared her view, would have gloated in the presentation of such an opportunity, without giving a thought to the child responsible for it.
‘Will you be in tomorrow?’ Sara asked her casually as Kate stuffed papers into her briefcase and tried to concentrate on what she was saying. Now that the decision was made, she was in a fever of impatience to get home, to see for herself how Michael was. Manlike, Rick Evans had probably not told her the worst. Feverishly she pulled on her coat, mentally picturing Michael in hospital fighting for his life…
‘Tomorrow?’
Kate stared blankly at her as Sara repeated the question, her heart sinking as Sara reminded her, ‘It is tomorrow that you’re having dinner with James Cameron, isn’t it?’
‘Yes. Yes…I will be in.’
But would she? Ought she to ring James and rearrange their meeting?
It was an evening meeting, she reminded herself. Even if she had to stay at home with Michael tomorrow, she ought to be able to make it for the meeting.
Two-fold guilt nagged at her as she managed to flag down a taxi. Breathlessly she gave him her address. So much hung on her getting James’s business. By rights she ought to be concentrating on making sure that her presentation was as close to perfection as possible. She had meant to do that last night. She ought to be doing it tonight. But if Michael was ill…
She paid off the taxi with fingers that trembled, desperately searching in her handbag for her doorkey, for once her normal powers of organisation deserting her.
The door opened before she found her key.
‘Michael? How is he? Is he worse?’ she gabbled as Rick stepped back to let her in. She rushed past him, heading for Michael’s bedroom.
Garrick followed her. He was still recovering from the shock of her unexpected arrival. Her white face and trembling hands had told their own story and looking at her, he had had to quell an unexpected impulse to reassure her.
Upstairs Michael was sitting in his playpen, contentedly pulling apart the complex interlocking tower Garrick had built from his locking bricks.
He beamed up at Kate when he saw her, so obviously healthy and well that Kate started to shake with relief.
‘Here…sit down.’
She was pushed gently into a chair. She subsided into it without a word of protest, saying only, ‘He’s all right. There’s nothing wrong with him.’
‘I know,’ Garrick admitted. ‘I suppose I panicked. He seemed very flushed and hot, and wouldn’t eat his lunch.’
Strangely enough, instead of the righteous anger she knew she ought to feel, what she did experience was an almost uncontrollable desire to burst into tears. Shock and reaction, she told herself, absently fighting to control the unfamiliar weakness.
‘You should have rung me.’ The words lacked conviction, sounding vague and woolly. She felt confusingly weak. ‘I’d better get back to the office. I’ll be late this evening.’
‘A date?’ Garrick questioned her, knowing it wasn’t. She had gone so white that he had thought she might actually faint. He could see the struggle she was having to stop herself from betraying her emotions, and he felt a sudden surge of self-dislike.
She might not be Michael’s natural mother, but there could be no doubts about her love for the little boy. Would he in the same circumstances have dropped everything to rush home to assure himself that the child was all right? He was uncomfortably aware that most probably he would not, and that while it was true that financially he was able to buy the best care there was for Michael, that care could in no way compare with Kate’s love for him.
‘A gallery opening,’ Kate responded briefly, too drained to resent his question. ‘I’d better ring the office.’
Sara was going to be very disappointed, she reflected wryly as she went downstairs and picked up the receiver. Now that she was home, she might as well get changed.
She had a couple of discreetly elegant black dresses she kept for such occasions. Neither of them were openly fashionable, but they both came from good designers and enhanced the image she wished to project.
The one she chose was plain black wool crêpe with a neat neckline and long sleeves. The neat waist and discreetly curved skirt skimmed her body rather than clinging to it. It was a business woman’s dress that made a very positive statement against sexual availability.
Knowing that it was going to be a cold night, Kate wore a three-quarter-length black velvet jacket over it, that was dressy enough for an evening engagement, and plain high-heeled black shoes.
Two pea
rl and diamanté clips in her hair were her only concession to vanity. She was perfectly well aware that a physically attractive woman could tease and flatter a man into giving her a good deal, but that was not the way she wanted to do business, because invariably the man would expect to be given something in return.
When she went into the nursery to check on Michael, Rick Evans wasn’t there. The little boy’s skin felt reassuringly cool, his eyes bright and clear.
Kate kissed him and hurried downstairs, wishing she did not have this increasingly urgent desire to spend more time with him. If the rest of her sex felt like this the moment a small child arrived in their lives, then she could only marvel that so many of them were mothers as well as successful career women. Perhaps she was more anxious over Michael because he was not her own…because she felt a duty to him for Jennifer’s sake which nagged at her all the time she was away from him.
Garrick watched her leave from his bedroom window. She looked tired and drawn. A mixture of guilt and irritation carried him over to the phone. He dialled the number of his own office, drumming his fingers impatiently on the the table while he waited to be connected.
‘Gerald, Stephen Hesketh is opening his new gallery tonight. I need to speak to him immediately. Find out where I can get in touch with him, will you?’
‘Hesketh. Didn’t you buy the Canalettos through him?’
‘Yes,’ Garrick agreed tersely, without vouchsafing any further information.
* * *
Kate’s evening went surprisingly well. Stephen Hesketh had indicated that he would be more than pleased to repay the small favour he owed her, by giving her client a private view.
Kate, who had expected to have to work very hard to persuade him to agree to her suggestion, had been caught off guard by his ready acceptance. He was not a man who was known for his good nature.
‘I’ll get my secretary to give you a ring to confirm it, but I think I’m free for lunch on Friday. We can discuss all the details then.’
‘That’s fine,’ Kate told him, wondering where she could take him for a meal. To her astonishment he went on to add, ‘We’ll eat at the Connaught, shall we? I’ll get Elise to book a table,’ indicating that he was going to take her out and moreover pay the bill.
Concealing her surprise, Kate left the party early, not wanting to push her luck by staying and perhaps running the risk of him changing his mind.
Having time in hand, instead of going straight home, she rang Edmund Howarth, the artist for whom she had arranged the ‘view’ from a call box, giving him the good news, and then agreeing to go round and discuss the preliminary arrangements for the ‘view’ with him.
Edmund was a very gentle and shy man, as evidenced by his paintings. A bad stammer had isolated him as a child and he had turned to painting as an outlet for his feelings. Some of the earlier work he had shown Kate evidenced the violence of his teenage emotions, and he had once told her that he had kept them as a reminder of the depth of his despair during those younger years.
He was now in his early forties and very happily married. His wife was six years his senior and they had met when he was attending a summer school for artists. She had been teaching one of the courses, and it had been she who had first suggested that the best medium for him might not be oils but watercolours.
Kate liked both of them. She had always related better to non-threatening men.
It was gone nine when she left, conscious of the fact that she was both tired and hungry, and yet she knew from experience that once she got in her appetite would have deserted her. Tiredly she got in the taxi Edmund had called for her.
Her evening had been overwhelmingly successful, and yet it struck her as she got in the cab that there was no one with whom she could share her triumph. Camilla was still away, Michael was far too young. There was a small ache of pain inside her which she tried to dismiss. What was happening to her? Her whole focus of attention seemed to be shifting almost daily; the foundations on which she had built her life crumbling away with frightening speed; the goals she had set herself with such confidence and determination no longer anything like as clear as they had once been.
And yet now she needed to succeed more than ever. She needed to succeed to provide security for Michael and herself. She must stop spending so much of her time thinking about the little boy. She must concentrate on her work, on her career. Tiredly she closed her eyes and leaned back in the cab. Her head was starting to ache and she massaged her temple and thought longingly of a hot bath and then bed, knowing that by rights she ought to be out celebrating tonight’s success with something like a champagne supper. That was, after all, the public image of a successful PR person. That was how contracts were made and contracts won. How long would it be before she was able to leave Michael in the care of others without this constant nagging sense of guilt, this fear that something would happen to him in her absence? It must be soon, otherwise she was going to tear herself apart with overwork and guilt, and that wouldn’t help either of them.
Just for one treacherous second she allowed herself to wonder what it would be like to have someone to share the responsibility with her. Someone like…her heart thumped uncomfortably fast as a name and a face formed within her brain.
Rick Evans. It disturbed her that he should occupy so many of her thoughts. It was just overtiredness, that was all. Overtiredness and reaction to the adjustments she was having to make in taking on a male nanny. This constant and unwanted awareness of him would fade in time. After all, she had never reacted like this before, never experienced such an awareness before. It was bound to fade. It had to fade.
CHAPTER SIX
TENSELY Kate studied the presentation in front of her; she had been through it so many times before, she suspected that she was no longer objective enough to make any useful criticism of it, but nervous energy drove her on, refusing to allow her to relax and let her body recoup itself as she knew she ought.
Tonight she was having dinner with James. By the end of the week the entire future of her young company would be decided. So much hung on James’s decision. She had other clients, of course, but none of them were of the financial standing of James.
With James as her client, she would automatically be moving up the status ladder; she would attract larger and wealthier clients; she would be able to expand, to allow herself to relax a little. Success in obtaining James’s business meant security for Michael and herself.
She knew her presentation was good. The chain of supermarkets was only a very small part of James’s empire, but he had tacitly indicated that success with the supermarkets would lead to the chosen PR company getting the rest of his business. Yes, she knew her presentation was good, but what she didn’t know was the strength of her rivals’ presentations.
If only Camilla was here. She needed the boost of being able to talk to someone who understood her and who understood her business, but when she had rung her home this morning, she had learned that her father-in-law had suffered a second heart attack and that Camilla was continuing to stay with her mother-in-law.
She put the presentation away carefully with a faint sigh. Given free choice, she would have preferred to discuss her suggestions either here in her own office or in James’s.
The idea of having dinner alone with him in his flat did not appeal to her. She knew his reputation, but she felt reasonably sure that she had already convinced him that she was not in the market for a one-night stand or even an affair.
And it was true, as he had pointed out to her when she had originally expressed dislike of his suggested venue, that they would be able to discuss and study her presentation far more easily in the comfort of his flat than in some restaurant.
She had planned to leave the office early, but a sudden rash of telephone calls delayed her, and it was gone six when she eventually hurried breathlessly up to her front door.
By rights she ought to have taken a cab rather than use the underground, but the long years of rigorous s
elf-denial after she had left the children’s home had left their mark, and, while she wasn’t mean, she was very careful about what she spent on herself.
From the sounds reaching her from upstairs, Rick was obviously giving Michael his bath. Discarding her coat and gloves in her own room, Kate hurried through to the nursery.
Rick had put the bath on the floor on a large towel rather than use its stand. Shirt sleeves rolled up, he was kneeling beside it with his back to her, both he and Michael totally engrossed in a game they were playing.
Watching them, Kate felt a sharp surge of envy. Normally his bathtime was her special time with Michael, and she resented the fact that Rick was taking that from her, even while she recognised that it would hardly be fair to the little boy to disturb his routine to fit in with her own uncertain hours.
Even so, as she heard his laughter and watched the small pink body wriggling delightedly in the water, she had a sudden fierce desire to snatch him up into her arms. So fierce, in fact, that it was almost as though she feared that in some way Rick was going to take Michael from her.
At that moment Rick looked up and saw her, and Kate flushed, wondering what it was he had seen in her eyes that made his own darken fractionally.
‘You were late, so I thought I’d give Michael his bath.’
‘Yes… Thank you.’ She knew that her voice sounded strained, her thanks insincere. ‘I’d better go and get ready. I take it Michael has had his supper?’
How shrewish and sharp she sounded, almost as though she wanted to find fault with him.
‘At five o’clock,’ Rick told her calmly. ‘Shall I finish off here, or would you…’
Flushing angrily that he should so easily read the resentment in her eyes and know the cause of it, Kate shook her head and said tersely, ‘Yes, if you would. I have to get changed. I’m being picked up at eight.’
‘A dinner date?’ Rick asked her.
Kate shook her head again.