Buch lesen: «The Nanny's Secret»

CHAPTER ONE

FELICITY FAIRFAX’S gray eyes pricked with tears as she gazed into the window of West Vancouver’s Kiddi Togs store. “Wouldn’t Mandy look adorable in that daffodil-yellow dress, Joanne? Oh, I’d love to buy it for her. If only—”

“If only Jordan Maxwell would let you anywhere near his daughter. But that,” Joanne declared, “is never going to happen.”

“How can he be so cruel?” Heart aching, Felicity turned to her friend, her heavy blond braid glinting in the early June sunshine as she flicked it back over her shoulder. “Yes, his wife and my brother Denny had an affair, but that had nothing whatsoever to do with me!”

“Of course it didn’t. But you’re a Fairfax and that’s enough for Mr. High and Mighty Maxwell. As far as he’s concerned you’re persona non grata…and will be for ever.” In an obvious effort to divert her, Joanne indicated a quilt displayed in the window. “Is that another of yours?”

“Mmm.”

“I love the kitty motif. And I’m impressed. You’ve really upped your output lately!”

“I’ve had lots of time to sew now that I don’t have Mandy to look after.” Felicity clutched her friend’s hand. “I miss her desperately, Jo. I’ve cared for her since she was a week old and I’ve always loved her as if she were my own. My life feels so empty, so pointless, now.”

“I know, sweetie…but you must try not to dwell on it.” Gently, Joanne eased her away from the window. “Let’s go treat ourselves to a latte and a chocolate biscotti and talk about something else.”

“I can’t even think about anything else.”

But Felicity allowed herself to be led along the sidewalk toward the Hill o’ Beans café on the corner.

“Jo,” she fretted, “I worry about her. I know her mother didn’t pay her much attention, but even so, for Mandy to have lost both of us in one fell swoop…she must feel utterly abandoned and must be missing us terribly.”

“Missing you, at any rate—you’re the one she spent most of her days with for the past almost four years. Jordan Maxwell must be either incredibly stupid or incredibly stone-hearted to have cut you out of her life.”

“I hear he’s enrolled her at the Wedgwood Avenue Day Care.”

“Really? It has a terrific reputation and wonderful staff. She’ll be happy there.”

They’d reached the Hill o’ Beans, and as they entered the café with its tantalizing aroma of freshly ground coffee beans, Joanne added, a little anxiously, “Don’t you think?”

“I hope so.” With a deep and soul-felt sigh, Felicity followed Jo to the counter. “Oh, I certainly do hope so.”

Jordan Maxwell swung open the door of the Morningstar Realty office building and strode into the umber-carpeted foyer.

“Good morning, Jordan.” The middle-aged receptionist grimaced. “The meeting’s already started.”

He was late. Again. His boss was going to be hopping mad. If Phil Morningstar had one obsession, it was punctuality. The world of real estate waited for no one! And every morning this past week, since enrolling Mandy at the Wedgwood Avenue Day Care before returning to work after a prolonged absence, Jordan had been late for Phil’s daily finger-on-the-pulse meetings.

“Thanks, Bette, I’ll prepare myself for the usual flack attack. So…did you apply for that raise yet?”

“Not today I haven’t. His ulcer’s playing up.”

“Oh, great, just what I want to hear!”

“Jordan, just a second, you’ve got a—”

“Later, Bette.” He loped past the reception desk.

“But—”

He shook his head, and rounding the corner to the corridor, headed toward the boardroom. As he went, he scraped an exploratory hand over his jaw…and muttered under his breath as he felt the unevenly bristled skin.

He should’ve taken the few extra minutes to shave at home. He’d never mastered the art of running an electric razor over his chin while driving—and trying to shave while dodging his way through rush-hour traffic and at the same time trying to pacify Mandy who was wailing her heart out in the passenger seat beside him was nerve-shattering at best.

The boardroom door was ajar, and he could hear Morningstar’s abrasive voice all the way along the corridor. But when he pushed the door open, a hush fell over the room.

Jordan felt a dozen pairs of eyes fixed on him, but his own came up against Phil Morningstar’s steely glare.

“Sorry, Phil. I got held up.” He slipped into his seat, the rustle of his suit jacket against the polished mahogany table the only sound in the room.

Then somebody chuckled.

Dumping his briefcase on the floor, Jordan glanced around the table, and saw his colleagues were smiling. Jack LaRoque, the office Lothario, grinned and, focusing his gaze on the breast pocket of Jordan’s jacket, tapped his own.

Jordan looked down and saw Mandy’s pink hairbrush sticking out of his pocket. He must have stuffed it there after tidying her mop of blond curls. His gaze shot back to his boss, whose lips were compressed to a pencil-thin line.

“Sorry,” Jordan muttered. But as he thrust the brush into his briefcase, his cell phone rang. Cursing silently, he checked the caller ID.

“I’ll have to take this.” He threw Phil an apologetic glance. “It’s my daughter’s day care.”

The caller was Greta Gladstone, the owner.

“You’ll have to come and pick Mandy up,” she said. “She’s been having hysterics ever since you dropped her off. This isn’t going to work out, Mr. Maxwell. You’ll have to come up with some other arrangement.”

His day was going rapidly from bad to impossible.

“I’ll be there,” he said, “in five minutes.”

He surged to his feet. “Phil, I’m sorry, I have to—”

“You took three months off to be with your daughter after you lost your wife, Maxwell. Fine. Understandable. But enough is enough.” Morningstar pressed a hand to his chest and belched. “I’ll give you one more week. Get your personal problems sorted out before next Monday or—”

“Next Monday. Right. Thanks, Phil.” Jordan was already halfway out the door. “Thanks a bunch. I’ll have everything sorted out by then. I swear.”

Jordan called his sister the moment he got Mandy home.

“Lacey, thank the lord you’re there.” His daughter had fallen asleep in the car, and he held her limp figure in his arms as he spoke. “I need you to come up. Are you free?”

Lacey was twenty-five to his thirty-four and a world-famous model. She was forever flying off somewhere to a shoot; and she routinely smiled or pouted at him from the cover of top fashion magazines when he passed the local newsstands. With hair like sable, skin like cream, and legs that didn’t know when to stop, she was drop-dead gorgeous.

She was also super-smart, and he was hoping she would come up with some way out of his present dilemma.

She lived just a few minutes away, in a waterfront condo, and by the time he heard her car purr up his drive, he’d made a pot of coffee. As he was walking across the foyer to the sitting room with two steaming mugs, Lacey let herself in by the front door with her own set of keys.

“How come you’re at home?” she asked. Lending elegance to a simple white cotton T-shirt and blue jeans, she preceded him into the sitting room, walking with the trademark fluid glide that had graced hundreds of catwalks. “Shouldn’t you be out selling houses, now that Mandy’s at the Wedgwood Avenue Day Care?”

“Sit down, Lace.” He waited till she’d arranged her long willowy body in an armchair, before he handed her one of the mugs. Setting his own mug down on a side table, he paced the room. “Mandy’s not at day care. She’s upstairs, asleep.”

“Is she sick?”

He shook his head.

“Then wh—”

“She was expelled.” He scratched a despairing hand through his hair.

“Oh, honey.” Lacey rested her mug on her knee. “She wouldn’t stop crying?”

“Yeah, she’s been the same all week. When I made to drop her off today, she was sobbing and clinging to me like a terrified kitten. I felt like a monster, prying her little fingers free and then handing her over…as if I didn’t want her.” He squeezed his eyes shut for a moment, to try to blot out the ugly image. When he opened them again, he saw worry clouding his sister’s face.

“Oh, Jordan, I’m so sorry.”

“What the hell am I going to do?” he asked. “If this goes on, she’s not the only one who’s going to be thrown out. Morningstar’s had it up to here with me. I may be one of the top salesmen in the Lower Mainland but he’s given me till a week Monday to get my personal affairs in order and if I haven’t, it’s—” He slashed his throat with his index finger. “Game over.”

He slumped down in a chair and somber silence fell on the room as they drank their coffee.

When they’d finished, Lacey said in a tentative tone, “Honey, won’t you even consider Fel—”

“No!” He shot up from his chair and scowled down at her. “Don’t even say that name in here, I don’t want—”

“We’re not talking about what you want now.” Lacey stood and confronted him, her green eyes pleading. “Jordan, I understand how you feel—after what happened, I don’t blame you for hating Denny Fairfax—”

“Lacey, I’m warning you—”

“But his sister had no part in what he did, she didn’t even know until after the car accident that he and Marla had been involved in an affair for several months before it happened. And although you lost your wife—”

“In more ways than one!”

“—Felicity Fairfax didn’t come out of the whole mess unscathed. She lost her brother—or as good as lost him. According to all reports, he’s never going to come out of that coma. And, honey, Felicity and Mandy adored each other. I saw them together, it was beautiful. Won’t you at least consider rehiring her? You wouldn’t even have to see her—at least, not too much, only when you dropped Mandy off as Marla used to, and then pick her up again at night—”

A heart-rending wail coiled its way down the stairs and into the sitting room.

Jordan blew out a sigh. “She’s awake,” he said. “Let’s see what you make of her.”

They went upstairs and into her bedroom, which opened off the landing. The child was still crying.

Jordan felt a sense of panic as he and Lacey crossed to the crib. The situation was escalating out of his control. If this continued, he’d lose his job and then how would he support himself and his daughter? He’d made a helluva lot of money over the years but Marla had spent it as fast as he could earn it—sometimes even faster.

“Poor little mite.” Lacey bent over the crib rail, but Mandy wasn’t aware of her because her eyes were tightly shut. She was lying on her back, her cheeks wet and flushed scarlet as she wailed at the pitch of her voice.

Lacey waited till her niece stopped to catch her breath, and then she said, “Hi, sweetie, what’s the matter?”

Mandy froze, and then gulping back a choking sob, opened her eyes. When she saw Lacey, she started crying again, harder than ever, and rolling over she pressed her face to the pillow, so that her cries were muffled.

Jordan leaned over and lifted her up into his arms. Holding her close, he murmured soft words, and in a while, she stopped crying and just clung to him, shaking and giving an occasional gulping sob, her arms clamped around his neck.

Lacey ran a hand down her niece’s back, lightly. “Sweetie—”

Mandy jerked away from her caress. And tightening her grip around her father’s neck, started to sob again.

“I thought,” Lacey whispered to Jordan, “that you’d have managed to get her to sleep in her bed again by this time. She won’t give up the crib?”

He shook his head. “No way. It’s a lost cause. Look, you may as well go. I shouldn’t have had you come over, wasting your time. There’s nothing you can do, nothing anyone can do. This is one problem that doesn’t have a solution.”

Lacey opened her mouth to speak. But thought better of it when she saw the forbidding frown that warned her not to bring up Felicity Fairfax’s name again.

“Thanks for coming over,” he said. “I do appreciate it, Lace.”

“You’re welcome, big brother.”

She gave him a hug and walked over to the door. But when she reached it she paused. And just before she disappeared around the corner, she said, in a rush, over her shoulder, “There is a solution to your problem, Jordan, and you know very well what it is!”

Felicity wrapped her lavender and pink floral-patterned china teapot in bubble wrap and tucked it carefully into the packing box. Then straightening, she smiled when she noticed RJ batting a wad of tissue with his paw.

Some people said cats sensed when a move was afoot and became twitchy and unsettled. Not RJ. Felicity had been cleaning out her apartment and packing her belongings ever since she’d recently sold the street-level property and RJ was exactly as he always had been: playful and inquisitive and supreme monarch of all he surveyed.

Felicity moved over to the kitchen sink and washed her hands. “We’ll be leaving here for good, on Monday, RJ. What do you think of that?”

He ignored her.

“We’re going over to Vancouver Island, to stay with Mom until I find a place of my own. I might even be able to afford a little rancher, one with a tree in the garden because I know you love to climb!”

Oblivious to the prospect, RJ leaped up into the air before pouncing down on the scrap of paper as if it were a mouse.

“Moving to the island will be for the best.” Felicity tried to smile, but catching sight of her pale taut features in the chrome surface of the kettle she gave up the attempt. She really had nothing to smile about anyway. But surely, once she was back on the island with her family for support, she would eventually find joy in her life again?

But no matter how hard she tried to convince herself, she knew in her heart she would never get over losing Mandy.

RJ had grown bored with his paper, and scampering over to Felicity, wound his fluffy silver-white body sinuously around her right ankle.

She dipped down and picked him up. As he clutched her knit top, she stroked him, wondering if she’d ever felt quite so desolate. “It’s not as if I’m likely to ever have a baby of my own, RJ,” she murmured. “I’m twenty-seven, time’s running out, and still no sign of Mr. Right.”

If RJ could have spoken, she mused, he might have reminded her she’d had no fewer than three serious proposals of marriage over the years, but she’d turned them all down.

“Because I wasn’t in love!” she protested. “I enjoyed their company, but not one of them made me feel the way I want to feel…”

RJ purred loudly, as if to ask, “And what way is that?”

“The way it is in romance novels.” Felicity’s voice was dreamy. “I want my heart to ache for him when we’re apart, I want it to sing when we’re together, I want to feel as if I’m on Cloud Nine when he takes me in his arms, I want to feel as if I’m drowning when he looks into my eyes. Wherever he is, that’s where I want to be—”

The shrill ringing of the wall phone made her jump—and RJ leaped from her arms. Stepping around the packing boxes, she lifted the receiver. “Hello?”

She sensed someone at the other end of the line, but no one spoke.

“Hello?” she repeated. “Who is this?”

Still no reply.

“Who are you trying to—”

At the other end, the phone crashed down.

“Well!” She took the receiver from her ear and stared at it indignantly, “you might at least have said, ‘Sorry, wrong number!”’

Jordan slumped back in his swivel chair and stared grimly at the phone on his desk. He’d been gearing up for days to make the call and when push came to shove, he couldn’t go through with it. He could not, he would not, have anything to do with Denny Fairfax’s sister—

“What happened? Did you make the call?”

He jerked up his head and saw his sister in the study doorway. “I thought you were upstairs with Mandy.”

“She’s asleep. Finally.” Lacey came into the room. “So…did you make the call?”

“Yeah.”

“You talked to Felicity?”

“No.”

“Did you leave a message on her answering machine?”

“No.”

“Why didn’t you? Why didn’t you just ask her to call you back when she gets home—”

“She’s home.”

“She’s screening her calls? How can you know that?”

“No, she’s not screening her calls. She picked up the phone.”

“I don’t underst—oh.” Lacey slid her hip onto the edge of the desk, and sent him a disappointed reproachful look. “You didn’t have the courage to—”

“It had nothing to do with courage, dammit.” He pushed to his feet and planting his fists on his hips he glowered at his sister. “It had to do with—”

“Bitterness.” Lacey gave a sympathetic nod. “Jordan, we’ve been over this ground before. OK, you feel bitter. But you’re letting your emotions get in the way of what’s best for your daughter. Mandy loved Felicity Fairfax, and it’s my belief that she’s missing her dreadfully and that’s why she’s so difficult to handle. She’s letting you—and everybody else!—know that she hates the way things are now and she wants to get back to her old routine, where she felt safe, and loved, and happy. Jordan—”

Lacey’s beeper went, and she exhaled a weary breath. “Honey, I have to go. I have a plane to catch tonight. Will you promise me you’ll phone again…and talk to her this time? I do realize there’s a possibility she may not even want to take on the job. She may blame Marla for what happened to her brother, and may feel as bitterly toward the Maxwell family as you do toward hers!”

“So what you’re saying now is that I should call and plead with her to look after Mandy again and risk having her spit the suggestion back in my face?”

“That’s a chance you’ll have to take.”

He walked Lacey to the front door. The night was clear and bright, and from this location high on the slopes of West Vancouver, he could see the city lights spread out ahead like an endless field of stars…

Heaven upside down.

Lacey put her arms around him and gave him an encouraging hug. “Do it, Jordan. For Mandy’s sake.”

Felicity continued packing till well after midnight then decided to call a halt. After dragging the boxes she’d packed through to the utility room next to the kitchen, she let RJ outside for a quick prowl and then got ready for bed.

She’d just put on a T-shirt nightie, braided her hair, and slathered her face with white cleansing cream, when through the bathroom window she heard RJ yowling to get in.

She hurried to open the back door before he disturbed the neighbours.

“Come in, you handsome beast—” Her breath froze in her throat. RJ shot past her while she stood rooted to the spot and stared, startled out of her wits, at sight of a man standing on her doorstep. With the moon at his back, his face was in shadow, but his hair was dark and his eyes glittered as they fixed on her.

“If that’s the way,” he drawled, “that you welcome strangers in the night, I’ve come to the wrong place.”

What did he mean?

Uh-oh. Come in, you handsome beast.

Feeling like a fool, she nevertheless felt her fright dissipate. If he’d meant to harm her, surely he’d have grabbed her by now. Still, she stepped quickly back and pulled the door till it was almost closed, and peered at him through the narrow gap left.

“What can I do for you?” she asked. “Are you lost?”

His chuckle had a harsh quality. “No, I’m not lost,” he said. “At least, not in the way you mean.”

“What do you want then?”

“I want to talk to you.”

Felicity frowned. “Who are you?”

Impatiently, he looked around, and as he did, his profile was outlined against the bright backdrop of the moonlit sky. A sharply cut profile, with a swathe of dark hair falling over his brow, a strong nose, an uncompromising chin.

Fantastic bone structure. The kind that artists would adore. And women, too…

Felicity blinked the thought away.

“I’m going to close the door right now,” she said, “If you don’t tell me who you are and why you’re here.”

He turned and faced her. Just then, the people upstairs put on their bedroom light, and the yellow rays shone down on this stranger, illuminating him.

He was a handsome beast, Felicity thought. Handsome—and hostile. Oh, yes, no doubt about it…hostile.

“I’m Jordan Maxwell.” The words came out as jarringly as a jackhammer on granite. “And what I want to talk to you about is not something I wish to discuss out here.” He shoved his hands into his pockets and lanced her with his glittering gaze. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”

He had expected someone who looked older. More solid. More mature.

Not this slip of a thing in an old T-shirt nightie, with her hair in a braid and her eyes filled with apprehension.

When she’d invited him in, it had been with an unsure gesture of her hand. The only words she’d spoken since had been to ask him if he wanted a drink.

He’d have liked a Scotch; she offered tea.

While the kettle was boiling, she’d left the room. When she came back, her face was scrubbed clean and she’d put on a gray cotton shortie robe and a pair of thongs.

So here they were, sitting at her kitchen table, drinking tea that tasted like cranberries.

And still she hadn’t said a word.

She looked down at the table as she sipped her tea, so he had an opportunity to scrutinize her further. She didn’t resemble her brother. She was fair, he’d been dark. She was slim as a reed, he’d been ruggedly built…and had looked mature. But he’d been anything but. He’d been irresponsible and wild and spendthrift. Just like Marla.

They had been a pair.

He felt anger rise inside him as it did so readily these days. But he controlled it.

“I’m here about Mandy.” He shoved aside his half-empty mug. “I want to ask—” He broke off as his glance moved beyond her to another room. A utility room. He could see packing boxes there, all neatly taped up. At the same time, he belatedly realized the kitchen had an echoing feel to it. And the walls were bare, many of the shelves empty.

“Are you moving?” He stared at her.

“Yes. I’m going home.”

“Where’s home?”

“The island.”

It was the last thing he’d expected. Oh, he’d known she might turn down his proposal outright and that even if she’d accepted it, she might haggle about salary, hours, any number of other things. What he hadn’t once anticipated was that she might be leaving the Lower Mainland and going to live on Vancouver Island. “You’ve made your plans?”

“Everything’s settled. I’m going to stay with my mother till I find a place of my own.” She finished her tea, put down her mug. “Now…it’s very late…and you still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

“It doesn’t matter. Not now.” He rose from the table, put his mug on the counter. “I’ll be on my way.”

He was at the door, opening it, before she said, “Wait.”

He turned. She was standing still, her face very pale.

“You owe me an explanation,” she said. “You can’t come here in the middle of the night and not tell me why.”

He shrugged. “You won’t be here, so…what I wanted to ask you…doesn’t matter.”

“It was something about Mandy, wasn’t it? If there’s anything I can help with, please let me know. I realize it must be difficult for you to look after her—she has her own little ways, and if it’ll make it any easier for you, I’d be happy to sit down and go over them with you. For example, her hair gets tangled after it’s washed, and to keep her from fussing when you brush it, you have to…”

Her voice trailed away when she saw him drag a weary hand over his nape.

“What is it?” She took an urgent step toward him. “What’s wrong? You must tell me!”

“Mandy’s miserable. I’ve never seen a kid so unhappy.” Jordan wanted to go down on his knees and plead with her to stay but his pride wouldn’t let him. Instead, he gave another shrug—a deliberately careless shrug. “I just thought—at least, my sister Lacey suggested it, I was dead against the idea—Lacey suggested it might help if I were to offer you your old job back. For Mandy’s sake.”

Her lips parted in a round, soundless. “Oh.”

“But since you’re leaving, I’ll have to find someone else. It’s no big deal.” He turned his back on her and opened the door. “I shouldn’t have bothered you.”

He went out into the night and as he walked in the moonlight to his car, he felt as if the world and all its worries were pressing down on him from every side.

What the hell was he going to do now! He’d told Ms. Fairfax he’d find someone else.

There was no one else.

He kicked at a stone, and hissed out a word that would have made Lacey’s hair stand on end.

Wrenching open the car door, he was about to throw himself inside, when from behind him he heard someone call, “Mr. Maxwell! Wait!”

And when he turned around, Felicity Fairfax was running breathlessly toward him.