Buch lesen: «Her Boss's Baby Plan»

CHAPTER ONE

MARTHA looked at her watch. Twenty to four. How much longer was Lewis Mansfield going to keep her waiting?

His PA had apologised when she had turned up as instructed at three o’clock. Mr Mansfield, she said, was very busy. Which was fine. Martha knew about being busy, and she couldn’t afford to make a grand gesture and walk out in a huff. Lewis Mansfield was her best chance—OK, her only chance right now—of getting out to St Bonaventure, so she was just going to have to wait.

Only she wished that he would hurry up. Noah had woken up and was getting restless. Martha hoisted him out of his buggy and carried him over to look at the enlarged black and white photographs that lined the walls.

They were not very interesting. A road stretching out across a desert. A runway. A port. Another road, this one with a tunnel. A bridge. Dramatic in their own way, but personally Martha preferred a bit of life. Including a person in the shot would have given the structures some sense of scale and humanised the pictures. Now, if they had just had a model striding across the tarmac…

‘I’m thinking like a fashion editor,’ Martha told Noah. ‘I’d better stop it, hadn’t I? I’ve got a new career now.’

Could you call being a nanny for six months a career? It certainly wasn’t the one she had had in mind when she left university. Martha thought about her exciting job at Glitz, and sighed inwardly. Somehow, being a nanny didn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Noah, at eight months, was not yet up to much in the way of conversation, but he bumped his forehead affectionately against Martha’s jaw in reply and she hugged him back. He was worth more than any dazzling career.

The door to Lewis Mansfield’s office opened and Martha turned hopefully as his PA reappeared.

‘Lewis will see you now,’ she said. ‘Sorry you’ve had to wait so long.’ She looked a little doubtfully at Noah. ‘Do you want to leave him with me?’

‘Thanks, but now he’s awake I think I’d better take him with me,’ said Martha. ‘Could I leave the buggy here, though?’

‘Sure.’ The PA lowered her voice and nodded her head towards the closed door. ‘He’s not in the best of moods,’ she warned.

Oh, great, thought Martha, but it was too late to turn back now. ‘Maybe he’ll cheer up when he discovers that I’m the answer to his prayers?’ she suggested, but the PA’s answering smile was disturbingly sympathetic.

‘Good luck,’ was all she said.

Behind the closed door Lewis shuffled the papers morosely on his desk and waited for Martha Shaw to appear. To say that he was not in the best of moods was an understatement.

It had been a hellish day so far, kicked off bright and early by Savannah turning up on his doorstep in a terrible state, followed inevitably by reporters ringing the bell, eager to discover the sordid details of the last instalment in the long-running melodrama that was Savannah’s relationship with Van Valerian.

He had finally calmed his sister down, fought his way through the pack of paparazzi at the door, and champed in frustration at endless traffic delays, only to get to work and discover one crisis after another, all of which had to be dealt with urgently. Just to make things more interesting, the nanny had turned up at lunchtime saying that her mother had been taken into hospital and dumping Viola with him until the evening.

At least Viola was behaving herself, thought Lewis. So far, anyway. He eyed the carry-cot in the corner dubiously. She was sleeping peacefully, but the way today was going that wouldn’t last.

He would have to make the most of the time he had left today. He wished he hadn’t agreed to see Martha Shaw, but Gill had been so insistent that her friend was just the person he needed to look after Viola that in the end he had given in just to shut her up. ‘Martha will be absolutely perfect for you,’ she had insisted.

Lewis wasn’t so sure. Gill was a friend of Savannah’s and worked on some glossy, glittery magazine. He couldn’t imagine her being friends with a nanny at all, let alone the kind of calm, sensible, solid nanny that he wanted.

The door opened. ‘Martha Shaw,’ said his PA brightly, and ushered in exactly the kind of woman Lewis least wanted to see right then.

He should have known, he thought bitterly, taking in the slightly dishevelled glamour and the brittle smile. She was attractive enough, with a swing of dark straight hair and that generous mouth, but she was far too thin. Lewis preferred women who didn’t look as if they would snap in two the moment you touched them.

So much for a calm, solid nanny. Martha Shaw radiated nervous exhaustion. Her huge dark eyes were smudged with tiredness, and she held herself tensely.

And she wasn’t just holding herself.

‘That,’ said Lewis, ignoring her greeting and levelling an accusing stare at her hip, ‘is a baby.’

Martha followed his gaze to Noah, who was sucking his thumb and gazing around him with round blue eyes. Nothing wrong with Lewis Mansfield’s powers of observation then, even if his manners left something to be desired.

‘Good heavens, so it is!’ she exclaimed with an exaggerated start of surprise. ‘How did that get there?’

Her facetiousness was met with a scowl that made her heart sink. Not only was Lewis sadly lacking on the courtesy front, but he clearly had no sense of humour either. Not a good start to her interview.

Time to try charm instead. ‘This is Noah,’ she said with her best smile.

It was not returned. Somehow she hadn’t thought that it would be. Lewis Mansfield was the walking, talking embodiment of dour. He was tall and tough-looking, with an austere, angular face and guarded eyes. It was hard to believe that he could be related in any way to the golden, glamorous Savannah Mansfield, with her famously volatile temper and celebrity lifestyle.

Gill might have warned her, thought Martha with a touch of resentment. Admittedly, Gill had said that Lewis could be a bit gruff. ‘But he’s a sweetie really,’ she had hastened to reassure Martha. ‘I’m sure you’ll get on very well.’

On the receiving end of his daunting glare, Martha somehow doubted that.

She studied Lewis with a dubious expression as she waited for him to apologise for keeping her waiting, or at least to ask her to sit down. Very dark, very thick brows were drawn together over his commanding nose in what looked suspiciously like a permanent frown, and she searched in vain for any sign of softness or sensitivity in the unfriendly eyes or that stern mouth. He looked grim and grumpy and, yes, definitely gruff, but a sweetie? Martha didn’t think so.

‘He’s very good,’ she offered, ruffling Noah’s hair when it was obvious that no apology would be forthcoming. They could hardly stand here all afternoon glaring at each other, so one of them was going to have to break the silence and it looked as if it was going to have to be her. She hoped Lewis couldn’t see her crossed fingers when she thought about all the broken nights. ‘He won’t be any trouble.’

‘Hah!’ grunted Lewis, prowling out from behind his desk. ‘I’ve heard that before—usually from women who promptly hand over their babies and go off, leaving you to discover for yourself just how much trouble they are!’

Oh dear, this wasn’t going well at all. Martha sighed inwardly. Gill had given her the impression that Lewis Mansfield was a frazzled engineer, struggling to build up his own company and overwhelmed by the unforeseen responsibility of looking after his sister’s baby. She hadn’t actually said that he was tearing his hair out and desperate for help, but Martha had come fully expecting him to fall on her neck with gratitude for turning up just when he needed her.

Dream on, Martha told herself wryly. One look at Lewis Mansfield and it was obvious that he wasn’t the demonstrative type. He didn’t look the slightest bit desperate or overwhelmed, and as for feeling grateful…well, there clearly wasn’t much point in holding her breath on that front!

She thought about St Bonaventure instead and forced a cheerful smile. ‘That’s why I’m here,’ she pointed out, and sat down on one of the plush black leather sofas.

To hell with waiting to be asked, she thought. Noah was heavy and she was tired and her feet hurt. If Lewis Mansfield didn’t have the common courtesy to ask her to sit down, she would sit anyway.

She settled Noah beside her, ignoring Lewis’s look of alarm. What did he think Noah was going to do to his swish sofa? she wondered, exasperated. Suck it apart? He was only eight months. He didn’t have the teeth or the hands for wholesale destruction.

Yet.

‘Gill said that you’re looking after your sister’s baby for a few months,’ she persevered. ‘I gather you’re going out to the Indian Ocean and will take the baby with you, so you need someone to help. Gill suggested I could be the someone who makes sure that she isn’t any trouble to you while you’re away.’

‘It’s true that I need a nanny,’ said Lewis, as if unwilling to admit even that much. ‘Savannah—my sister—is going through a very…stressful…time,’ he said carefully, as if Martha wouldn’t have read all about his sister’s tempestuous affair, wedding and now divorce in the pages of Hello!

‘She’s finding it hard to cope with the baby and everything else that’s going on at the moment,’ he went on, ‘and now she wants to check herself into a clinic to sort herself out.’

Martha knew about that too. Hello! was required reading in the Glitz offices and it was a hard habit to kick. She didn’t blame Lewis Mansfield for the faint distaste in his tone. Savannah Mansfield was ravishingly pretty, but she had always struck Martha as a spoilt brat who was far too prone to tantrums when she didn’t get her own way. Her marriage to the brooding rock star Van Valerian, not renowned for the sweetness of his own temper, had been doomed from the moment their engagement was announced with full photo coverage and much flaunting of grotesquely large diamond rings.

Now Savannah was checking herself into a clinic famous for its celebrity clientele, most of whom seemed to Martha to be struggling solely with the pressure of being too rich and too thin. Meanwhile poor little Viola Valerian had been abandoned by both parents and handed over to her grim uncle.

Martha felt sorry for her. Lewis Mansfield might be a responsible figure, but he didn’t look as if he would be a very jolly or a very loving one.

Which was a shame. It wasn’t that he was an unattractive man. Her dark eyes studied him critically. If he smiled he could probably look quite different, she thought, her gaze lingering on the stern mouth, but when she tried to imagine him smiling or loving a queer feeling prickled down her spine and she looked quickly away.

‘Who’s looking after Viola at the moment?’ she asked, really just for something to say while she shook off that odd sensation.

‘Her nanny. She’s been with Viola since she was born, but she’s getting married next year and she doesn’t want to be away from her fiancé for six months.’

It seemed fair enough to Martha, but Lewis sounded impatient, as if Viola’s poor nanny was being completely unreasonable in wanting to stay with the man she loved.

‘I need someone experienced at caring for babies who’s prepared to spend six months in St Bonaventure,’ he went on, and Martha straightened her back, pleased that they had at last come to the point.

‘I’m your gal!’ she told him cheerfully. ‘You need someone who knows how to deal with babies. I know how to deal with babies. You want someone who doesn’t mind going to St Bonaventure for six months. I want to go there for six months. I’d have said we were made for each other, wouldn’t you?’

She should have known better than to be flippant. Lewis regarded her with deep suspicion. ‘You don’t look much like a nanny to me,’ he said finally.

‘Well, nannies nowadays don’t tend to be buxom and rosy-cheeked old retainers,’ Martha pointed out.

‘So I’m discovering,’ said Lewis glumly. He was obviously hankering after a grey-haired old lady who had been with the family for generations and who would call him Master Lewis.

Come to think of it, why didn’t the Mansfields have someone like that to call on? Martha wondered. She didn’t know much about them, but they had always sounded a famously wealthy family, the kind that threw legendary parties and flirted with scandal and generally amused themselves without ever doing anything useful.

At least, that was how she had thought of them until she met Lewis. Perhaps he was a throwback?

‘We may not be very good at tugging our forelocks, but it doesn’t mean that modern nannies don’t understand babies just as well,’ she said, and smiled fondly down at Noah, who had propped himself up on one chubby hand and was patting the leather cushion with a puzzled expression. He hadn’t come across anything quite so luxurious before.

‘I suppose so.’ Lewis sounded unconvinced, and was obviously eyeing Noah’s exploration of his sofa askance.

Martha dug around in the capacious bag she always carried with her now and pulled out a rattle to distract Noah. Grabbing it, he shook it energetically and squealed with delight. The sound that it made never failed to amuse him, and the way his round little face split into a smile never failed to squeeze Martha’s heart.

He was so adorable. How could anyone resist him?

Glancing back at Lewis, she saw that he was resisting Noah’s appeal without any trouble at all. Still, at least he had come to sit on the sofa opposite her. That was something, Martha thought hopefully.

‘Is this your current charge?’ he asked, as if Noah were some kind of bill.

‘He’s my permanent charge,’ Martha told him, pride creeping into her voice. ‘Noah is my son,’ she added patiently when it was clear that Lewis was none the wiser.

‘Your son?’ He didn’t actually recoil, but he might as well have done. ‘Gill didn’t mention anything about you having a baby.’

Gill hadn’t mentioned anything about him being the human equivalent of the north face of the Eiger either, thought Martha. You could hardly hear yourself think for the sound of illusions being dashed all round.

Not that she really blamed Gill. The other woman had taken over from her as fashion editor at Glitz, and she was clearly keen to pack Martha off to the Indian Ocean where she wouldn’t be in a position to angle for her old job back. Martha could have told Gill that she was welcome to the job, and she certainly would have done if it had meant that she had been rather better prepared to face Lewis Mansfield.

As it was, things seemed to be going from bad to worse. She would never get to St Bonaventure at this rate.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said carefully. ‘I assumed that Gill would have told you about Noah.’

‘She just said that you were experienced with babies, that you were free for six months and that you could leave almost immediately,’ said Lewis, as if bedgrudging allowing even that much. ‘She also said that you were very keen to go to St Bonaventure.’

Thanks, Gill, said Martha mentally, revising her earlier, less grateful opinion of her successor.

‘All that is true,’ she told Lewis. ‘I’m very—’

She stopped as Noah threw his rattle at Lewis with a yell. ‘Shh, darling,’ she admonished him, reaching over to retrieve the rattle, but it was too late. The baby sleeping in the carrycot had woken up and was uttering sputtering little cries that signalled a momentous outburst.

Lewis rolled his eyes. ‘That’s all I need!’

Leaping to her feet before Lewis could get too harassed, Martha went over to pick up Viola and cuddled her against her shoulder until her cries subsided into hiccuping little sobs.

‘Now, let’s have a look at you,’ she said, settling back on the sofa and turning Viola on her knee so that she could examine her. ‘Oh, you’re very gorgeous, aren’t you?’

All babies were adorable as far as Martha was concerned, but Viola was exceptionally beautiful, with her golden curls, pansy-blue eyes and ridiculously long lashes where the tears still shimmered like dewdrops. She looked doubtfully back at Martha, who smiled at her.

‘I think you probably know it too, don’t you?’ she said, and Viola dissolved into an enchanting smile that in anyone older than a baby would have undoubtedly been classified as a simper.

‘How old is she?’ Martha asked Lewis as she tickled Viola’s tummy and made her giggle.

‘What?’ Lewis sounded distracted.

‘She looks about the same age as Noah.’

Annoyed for some reason by the unexpected sweetness of Martha’s smile, Lewis pulled himself together with an effort. How old was Viola?

‘She’s about eight months,’ he said after a mental calculation.

‘Oh, then she is the same as Noah.’

Noah was beginning to look a bit jealous of all the attention Viola was getting, so Martha put them both on the carpet where they could sit and subject each other to their unblinking baby stares. She watched them fondly for a moment.

‘They could almost be twins, couldn’t they?’

‘Apart from the fact that one’s blonde and the other is dark?’ countered Lewis, determined not to be drawn into any whimsy.

‘OK, not identical twins,’ said Martha mildly. ‘When’s Viola’s birthday?’

‘Er…May ninth, I think.’

‘Really?’ Forgetting his disagreeable manners, Martha beamed at Lewis in delighted surprise. ‘That’s Noah’s birthday, too! Isn’t that a coincidence? You really are twins,’ she told the two babies on the floor, who were still eyeing each other rather uncertainly.

She glanced back at Lewis. ‘It must be fate,’ she said hopefully.

Lewis looked discouraging, not entirely to Martha’s surprise. She hadn’t really expected him to be the type who set much store by signs and superstitions and intriguing coincidences. No point in bothering to ask him his star sign, she thought resignedly. He was the kind of man who would just look at you in disgust and not only not care what sign he was but not even know.

‘You haven’t told me why you’re so keen to go to St Bonaventure,’ he said, disgruntled in a way he couldn’t even explain to himself. It was something to do with the way she had held Viola, with the way she had smiled at the two babies on the floor, with the way her face had lit with surprise. He didn’t have time to notice things like that, Lewis reminded himself crossly.

‘Does one need a reason to want to spend six months on a tropical island?’ Martha turned his question back on him. Her voice was light, but Lewis had the feeling she was holding something back and he frowned.

‘I’d want to feel that a nanny who came with us knew exactly what she was getting into,’ he said repressively. ‘St Bonaventure is isolated, in the middle of the Indian Ocean, and whichever direction you turn it’s hundreds of miles to the nearest major city. The island is very small, and once you’ve been round it there’s nowhere else to go except for a scattering of even smaller islands with even less to see.’

It was at that point that Viola, after subjecting Noah to a long, considering stare, reached out deliberately and pushed him over. Startled, Noah let out a wail, and Lewis looked irritated.

Oops, maybe putting the babies together wasn’t such a good idea after all. Martha scooped them both up and settled them on either side of her, giving Noah his rattle and finding Viola a dog-eared toy which she promptly stuffed in her mouth.

‘Sorry about that.’ Martha looked back at Lewis. ‘You were saying?’ she asked him politely.

Lewis watched his niece glaring haughtily over Martha’s lap at Noah and looking for a moment so like her mother that he almost laughed. He glanced at Martha with reluctant respect. He had to admit that she seemed surprisingly competent for such an unlikely-looking nanny.

Viola, as her current nanny was always telling him, could be a handful, and if she took after her mother, as she was already bidding fair to do, that would turn out to be a masterly understatement. But Martha seemed to have got her measure straight away, dealing with her with a combination of tenderness and firmness.

Belatedly, Lewis became aware that Martha had asked him a question and was waiting expectantly for the answer. Cross with himself for letting himself get diverted from the issue, he scowled.

‘You were telling me about conditions on St Bonaventure,’ Martha prompted kindly.

Not that that made Lewis feel any better. He didn’t like looking foolish, and he suspected that was exactly how he did look right then. Abruptly getting to his feet to get away from that dark stare, he prowled around the room.

‘The island was hit by a cyclone last year which wiped out most of the infrastructure. That’s why I’m going,’ he told her. ‘The World Bank is funding a new port and airport with access roads, so it will be a major project.’

‘But surely all that will take longer than six months?’ said Martha in surprise.

Lewis gave a mirthless laugh. ‘It will certainly do that! We’re going to be doing the design and overseeing the construction, so there’ll be a resident engineer out there for the duration of the project, but I want to be there for the initial stages at least. It’s a prestigious project and this is a critical time for the firm. We need it to be a success.’

‘So you’ll spend six months setting everything up and then come back to London?’

‘That’s the plan at the moment. I might end up staying longer—it depends how things go. We’ll need to do various surveys, which may mean incorporating various changes into the design, and it’s important to establish a good working relationship with all the authorities and suppliers. These things take time,’ said Lewis, very aware of Martha’s eyes on him.

He wished she would stop looking at him with that dark, disturbing gaze, stop sitting there with a baby tucked under either arm, stop being so…unsettling.

‘In any case, Savannah should be able to look after Viola herself in six months’ time,’ he concluded brusquely, uncomfortably conscious that he had lost the thread of what he was saying. Martha didn’t need to know about the project, or why it was important to him. Anyone would think he cared what she thought. ‘It would be a strictly short-term contract as far as a nanny is concerned.’

‘I understand,’ said Martha.

‘The point I’m trying to make is that it’s not going to be an extended beach holiday,’ Lewis persevered. ‘St Bonaventure isn’t developed as far as tourism goes, and there’s a very small expatriate community. I’m going to be extremely busy, and will be out all day and probably a number of evenings too.

‘Whoever comes out to look after Viola is going to be in for a very quiet few months. She’s going to have to look after herself. Sure, the weather’s nice, but once you’ve been down to the beach there’s nowhere else to go and nothing else to do. The capital, Perpetua, is tiny and there are hardly any shops, and where you do find one it’s dependent on imports that can be erratic, to say the least. Sometimes the shelves are empty for months, which can make the diet monotonous.’

‘I think you’ve made your point,’ said Martha, smiling slightly, as if she knew that he was doing his damnedest to put her off and wasn’t having any of it.

Lewis scowled and dug his hands in his pockets. ‘All I’m trying to say is that if you’re expecting paradise you’d better think again!’

Martha met his gaze directly. ‘I’m not looking for paradise in St Bonaventure,’ she said.

‘What are you looking for, then?’

For a moment, Martha hesitated. She had hoped that it wouldn’t be necessary to tell Lewis Mansfield the whole story at this stage, but it was probably better to be open.

‘I’m looking for Noah’s father,’ she said clearly.

If she had expected a sympathetic response from Lewis she was doomed to disappointment. ‘Careless of you to lose someone as important as that,’ he commented, and then lifted a sardonic eyebrow. ‘Or did he lose you?’

Martha flushed slightly. ‘It wasn’t like that. Rory is a marine biologist. He’s doing a PhD on something to do with ocean currents and coral reefs…I’m not sure exactly, but he’s doing his fieldwork on some atoll off St Bonaventure.’

‘If you know where he is, he’s not exactly lost, is he? Why do you need to go all the way out to the Indian Ocean when you could just contact him? If he’s a student he’s bound to have an email address, if nothing else. It’s not hard to track people down nowadays.’

‘It’s not that easy,’ said Martha. ‘I need to see him. Rory doesn’t know about Noah, and it’s not the kind of thing you can drop in a casual email. What would I say? Oh, by the way, you’re a father?’

‘It’s what you’re going to have to say when you see him, isn’t it?’ Lewis countered.

Martha bit her lip. ‘I think it would be better if Rory could actually see Noah. He won’t seem real to him otherwise.’

‘You mean you think you’re more likely to get money out of him if you turn up with a lovely, cuddly baby?’

The dark eyes flashed at his tone. ‘It’s not about money,’ she said fiercely. ‘Rory’s a lot younger than me. He’s still a student and finds it hard enough to survive on a grant himself, never mind support a baby. I know he can’t afford to be financially responsible for Noah, and I’m not asking him to.’

‘Then why go at all?’

‘Because I think Rory has the right to know that he’s a father.’

‘Even though presumably he wasn’t interested enough to keep in touch with you and find out for himself that you were all right?’

‘It wasn’t like that,’ said Martha a little helplessly. How could she make someone like Lewis understand?

‘I met Rory at the beginning of last year. It wasn’t just a one-night stand,’ she added, hating the idea that he might think there had been anything sordid or casual about the affair. ‘I liked Rory a lot and we had a very nice time together but at the same time we both knew that it wasn’t a long-term thing.

‘We had completely different lives, for a start. He was only in the UK to go to conferences and write up some of his research, and I had a great job in London. It was always clear that he had to go back to St Bonaventure to finish his thesis, and we both treated it as…’ she shrugged lightly, searching for the right description ‘…as a pleasant interlude.’

‘So he didn’t know you were pregnant?’

‘Yes. I found out just before he left, so I told him. I felt I had to.’

‘And he left anyway?’ Lewis sounded outraged and Martha looked at him curiously.

‘We discussed it,’ she told him, ‘and we agreed that neither of us was ready to start a family. It was obviously out of the question for him, and I was very involved in my own career. I was incredibly busy then too. There was no way I could imagine fitting a baby into my life…’

She trailed off as she remembered how obvious everything had seemed at the time. ‘Anyway,’ she went on, recollecting herself, ‘the upshot was that I told Rory that I was going to be sensible. I said he didn’t need to worry, I would take care of everything.’

For a moment the image of Rory’s expression of stunned relief as he realised what she was saying was vivid in her mind. ‘It didn’t feel like a big deal, then,’ she remembered. ‘I just thought it would be a straightforward operation and that I would be fine.’