Книга - Assignment: Baby

Assignment: Baby
Jessica Hart


Gabriel Stearne might be a brilliant businessman–but there's nothing on his illustrious resume about children! So the unexpected delivery to the office of a baby leaves him only one place to turn–his personal assistant, Tess Gordon….Gabriel and Tess have been hiding their fiery attraction for each other behind strictly professional behavior. Now Tess has to stay in Gabriel's apartment to help him care for little Harry. And between late-night feeds and early wake-up calls, anything could happen!







What was she doing in bed with Gabriel? What was she doing kissing her boss?

She hadn’t actually kissed him, Tess told herself, grasping desperately at any straw that might somehow make the situation less than excruciatingly, appallingly, embarrassing.

“I’m sorry about that. I don’t know what happened there,” Gabriel said with effort.

“I don’t know either,” she said huskily. “One minute I was dreaming, and the next…” She trailed off as the memory flamed between them.

“I’d forgotten about what happened last night,” Gabriel went on.

Clutching the duvet to her chest, Tess eyed him uneasily. “What did happen?” she asked.

“You invited me to share the bed.”







From boardroom…to bride and groom!

A secret romance, a forbidden affair, a thrilling attraction?

Working side by side, nine to five—and beyond…. No matter how hard these couples try to keep their relationships strictly professional, romance is definitely on the agenda!

But will a date in the office diary lead to an appointment at the altar?

Find out in this exciting new miniseries from Harlequin Romance®.

Readers are invited to visit Jessica Hart’s Web site at www.jessicahart.co.uk

His Secretary’s Secret (#3698)

by Barbara McMahon

Readers are invited to visit Jessica Hart’s

Web site at www.jessicahart.co.uk




Assignment: Baby

Jessica Hart












www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)




CONTENTS


CHAPTER ONE (#u2e11f77f-0caa-5367-b9dd-7845d3c7e558)

CHAPTER TWO (#u8c0aae02-f143-55a1-8cbe-f4325f4234d2)

CHAPTER THREE (#u8e623f7f-959e-5dee-b68f-577f98f122a3)

CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)




CHAPTER ONE


Fresh from her success in last Friday’s award ceremony, Britain’s favourite redhead, TV presenter Fionnula Jenkins, arrives at London’s hottest restaurant, Cupiditas, with Gabriel Stearne, founder of US construction giant Contraxa (above). The couple met in New York, where Fionnula attended a charity ball sponsored by Contraxa. Entrepreneur Gabriel’s activities are more usually reported in the financial pages, but since arriving in London he has been seen out several times with Fionnula, who refused to confirm speculation that he had moved to England to be with her. ‘We just enjoy each other’s company,’ she said.

TESS had barely finished reading the caption when the door to the inner office opened, and she shoved the paper hurriedly out of sight in the wastepaper bin beneath her desk.

By the time Gabriel appeared, shrugging himself into an overcoat, she was innocently absorbed in typing up the letters he had dictated earlier.

‘I’m going to a meeting with our insurers,’ he said, brusquely buttoning his coat. ‘Have those letters ready by the time I get back. I want a copy of the design report and the architects’ files on my desk. All of them. In date order.’

‘Yes, Mr Stearne,’ said Tess.

Her voice was cool, with just a hint of a Scottish accent. Gabriel eyed her sardonically. She was watching him over the spectacles she wore when she was working, pen poised to note his instructions, the very model of a perfect PA.

In the four weeks she had worked for him he had learned only three things about Tess Gordon. She was exceptionally efficient. She was always immaculately groomed.

And she didn’t like him one little bit.

Too bad, thought Gabriel indifferently. He wasn’t here to be liked. He was here to drag this company into the twenty-first century and give himself the toe-hold he needed into Europe, and worrying about what the icy Ms Gordon thought about him was very low down his priority list.

‘When you’ve done that, you can send an e-mail reminding all staff that the phones are not for their personal use,’ he went on in a hard voice. ‘That goes for e-mail as well. A monitoring system is going to be introduced shortly, so they’d better start getting used to it now.’

An order like that would no doubt cause a furore, but Tess didn’t react. She just made a note on her pad and kept her inevitable reflections to herself.

‘Any messages?’ Gabriel asked curtly.

‘Your brother rang. He asked if you could ring him back.’

Gabriel grunted, and privately Tess marvelled that he could be related to the irreverent American with the voice like warm treacle who had rung while his brother was closeted in his office. ‘No calls,’ Gabriel had said, and after a month Tess knew better than to try and interrupt him, no matter how important the caller might be.

Greg, as he had introduced himself, was evidently an incorrigible flirt. Tess, braced to dislike anyone even remotely associated with Gabriel, had found him charming. He had been warm, funny, sympathetic…everything his brother was not!

Unaware—or, more likely, uncaring—of the unflattering comparisons she had drawn, Gabriel was checking that he had all the relevant papers for his meeting in his attaché case. ‘Anything else?’

‘No,’ said Tess, but she hesitated and Gabriel looked up from the case. He had very light, very keen grey eyes that were a startling contrast to his strong, black brows, and she still hadn’t got used to the way they seemed to look right through her.

‘What?’ he demanded.

‘I wondered what time you would be back, that was all.’

‘About six-thirty. Why?’

‘I was hoping to have a word with you.’ Tess’s calm expression gave no hint of her inner trepidation.

Gabriel frowned. ‘What about?’

Nobody could ever accuse him of beating about the bush, thought Tess with an inward sigh. She had to ask him for a rise, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you could blurt out just like that.

‘I’d rather explain when you’re in less of a hurry,’ she said.

‘Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’

‘We’ll be busy putting the Emery bid together tomorrow,’ Tess pointed out. And then it would be the weekend, which would mean two more days to worry about Andrew. She set her teeth. It went against the grain to beg, but she had to try. ‘If you could spare me five minutes when you get back, I would appreciate it.’

Gabriel looked at her. She had one of those faces that made it almost impossible to tell what she was thinking. It wasn’t that she was unattractive. She had a fine-boned face with clear skin and beautiful eyebrows, and her hair, always pulled neatly back, was an unusual golden-brown colour. She might even be pretty, he thought dispassionately—if she ever lightened up and got rid of that snooty expression of hers.

It occurred to him suddenly that she might be going to hand in her notice, and his black brows drew together. He didn’t have the time to find a new PA with this crucial contract coming up. He had inherited Tess when he’d taken over SpaceWorks, and her knowledge of the company was invaluable. He couldn’t afford to lose her just yet. It was worth putting up with the frosty atmosphere until he got things under control.

‘Very well,’ he said, irritable at the thought of wasting precious time trying to cajole her into staying. ‘If you wait until I get back, I’ll see you then.’

‘Thank you.’

That was typical Tess. No gush or fuss, just a cool thank you. Gabriel had never seen her anything but crisp, composed, competent. In many ways she was the ultimate personal assistant. She never flapped. When he shouted, she didn’t get upset or muddled. She was intelligent and discreet. Gabriel knew that she was ideal.

It was just that he would like her more if she made the occasional mistake.

Or smiled.

Annoyed to realise that he’d allowed himself to be diverted, Gabriel shut his attaché case with snap and headed for the door. ‘Oh, and book a table at Cupiditas,’ he remembered at the last moment. ‘Tonight, nine o’clock.’

Why could he never use the word ‘please’? Tess wondered. It wasn’t that hard to say. ‘For two?’

‘Yes, for two,’ he barked, irritated anew by her composure. Most people either fawned or trembled in his presence, but not Tess. No, she just sat there in her sensible grey suit and looked down her nose at him.

‘Certainly, Mr Stearne,’ she said.

Gabriel scowled. ‘I’ll be back later,’ he said, and strode out.

The moment he had gone, Tess retrieved the paper from the bin and smoothed out the crumpled page as she read the caption again, shaking her head in disbelief. Gabriel Stearne and Fionnula Jenkins! Who would have thought it?

All day, e-mails had been flying around the office about their unpopular new boss’s appearance in the gossip columns. Tess had seen them, and had assumed that it was all some kind of joke until one of the other secretaries had brought along a copy of yesterday’s paper to show her.

Now she studied the photograph, half expecting to spot that it was all a mistake, but no, it was definitely Gabriel. No one else had brows like that! Some of the girls in the office claimed to find him attractive, and were always dropping by in the hope of catching a glimpse of him, but Tess couldn’t see what the fuss was about. To her, Gabriel wasn’t broodingly handsome. He was just surly.

And there he was in the paper, looking as grimly formidable as ever, with Fionnula Jenkins clinging girlishly to his arm and smiling that famous Fionnula smile. Tess had never seen a more mismatched pair. Fionnula had all the gloss and glitz of a star. Gabriel was a workaholic, abrupt, impatient and, in Tess’s opinion at least, downright rude.

What did a celebrity like Fionnula see in him? Tess wondered as she tossed the paper back in the bin and dialled the restaurant’s number. Fionnula was beautiful and successful. She could have anybody she wanted, so why pick on Gabriel? It couldn’t be money, as Fionnula had plenty of her own, and it certainly wasn’t charm.

Perhaps, mused Tess, Fionnula was the kind of girl who liked a challenge. Gabriel’s reputation had preceded him from the States. He was known to be utterly ruthless and unsentimental. If Fionnula thought she could find a heart beating somewhere beneath that steely exterior, good luck to her, thought Tess wryly. She was welcome to him.

By six, she had everything ready for Gabriel’s return. His table was booked, and the letters, files and reports lay neatly arranged on his desk. Tess checked them automatically. She knew Gabriel was waiting to catch her out, but so far she hadn’t made so much as a typing error for him to complain about. It had become an unacknowledged battle of wills between them and, in a perverse kind of way, Tess almost enjoyed the challenge of keeping up with the punishing pace he set.

Now, she squared up the last paper and mentally congratulated herself. Gabriel would have to try a bit harder if he wanted her to be unable to cope.

Back at her desk, she sent Andrew a quick e-mail to tell him a cheque was on its way, and that she hoped to be able to send him more next week, and was just rehearsing the arguments she would make to Gabriel for a rise when the phone rang.

‘I’ve got a visitor here for Mr Stearne,’ said the receptionist. ‘She won’t give her name, but she says it’s personal.’

Tess looked at her watch. Gabriel hadn’t said anything about a visitor. She hoped this didn’t mean he wouldn’t have time to listen to her request for a rise after all. ‘You’d better send her up,’ she said, suppressing a sigh.

She wasn’t quite sure what she had expected Gabriel’s visitor to be like, but it certainly wasn’t the woman of about sixty who pushed a pram into the office a few minutes later.

Trying not to show her surprise, Tess took off her glasses and stood up with a polite smile. ‘Can I help you?’

The woman looked around her as if she couldn’t decide whether to be daunted or impressed. ‘I’m looking for Gabriel Stearne,’ she told Tess with a belligerent air.

‘I’m afraid he’s not here at the moment. I’m his assistant,’ Tess explained. ‘Perhaps I can help you?’

‘I don’t know if you can.’ Digging around under the pram, the visitor pulled out a copy of yesterday evening’s paper. It was folded open at the picture of Gabriel and Fionnula, and she tapped the photo. ‘This is your Gabriel Stearne?’ she asked doubtfully.

Tess looked down at the stern mouth, the dark, striking brows and the unsmiling face next to the sparkling Fionnula. ‘Yes, that’s Mr Stearne,’ she said.

‘He’s not what I expected,’ the woman confessed, frowning down at the picture with Tess. ‘Leanne said he was gorgeous. The most handsome man she’d ever met, she said.’ Her mouth turned down disparagingly. ‘I wouldn’t call him handsome, myself, would you?’

‘Not personally, no,’ said Tess. It wasn’t a very loyal answer, but it was hard enough putting up with his bad temper without having to rave about his looks as well.

‘Ah, well, that’s love for you.’

There was a tiny pause. ‘Love?’ she echoed cautiously.

‘That’s what Leanne called it. Leanne’s my daughter,’ the woman explained, seeing that Tess was still looking mystified. ‘She met Gabriel on a cruise last year. She’s a croupier,’ she added proudly, ‘and he was one of the first-class passengers. She said he was a lot of fun.’

A puzzled look came over her face as she looked around the plush office. ‘Somehow I didn’t imagine him somewhere like this. Leanne always said he was a free spirit.’

She wasn’t the only one who was puzzled. Tess was still trying to come to terms with the idea of Gabriel hanging around in a casino and being a lot of fun, let alone a free spirit! She would love to know what the unknown Leanne was like.

‘Well, I’m sorry he’s not here,’ she said after a moment. ‘He won’t be back until later. Can I give him a message?’

‘You can do better than that,’ said the woman, appearing to make up her mind abruptly. ‘You can give him his son.’

For once Tess was shaken out of her composure. ‘His son?’ she repeated stupidly.

‘That’s right.’ She nodded towards the pram. ‘Harry, his name is.’

Tess stared at the pram as well. Gabriel, a father? It seemed very unlikely. ‘Um…does he know about Harry?’ she asked delicately.

‘No.’ The woman’s mouth closed like a trap. ‘Leanne would have it that he wasn’t the kind of man you could tie down. I wanted her to tell him about Harry when he was born, but she wouldn’t. She was determined to look after him herself. That’s all very well, I said, but what about the money side of things? She was going to get a job at home, but then they offered her another contract on the ship. It was just for six weeks, and such good money that she couldn’t turn it down.’

Tess was getting confused. She didn’t quite understand what her unexpected visitor was trying to say, but one thing she was sure of: the last thing Gabriel would want was to come back to the office and find himself presented with a baby. She would have to stick to essentials.

‘I think it’s up to your daughter to discuss any paternity issues with him,’ she said firmly. ‘Mr Stearne keeps his private life quite separate from the office.’

‘Leanne’s not here to discuss anything,’ the woman pointed out. ‘That’s just the point. The thing is,’ she confided, ‘I said I’d look after Harry for her while she was away, but a few days ago I heard that I’d won a trip to California. Me! It’s the first time I’ve won anything!

‘I’ve always wanted to go to the States,’ she went on wistfully, ‘but it means flying out straight away, and I thought I was going to have to turn it down until I saw in the paper last night that Gabriel Stearne was over here. I don’t see why I should give up my holiday when Harry’s father can look after him just as well.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Tess, alarmed. ‘He’s extremely busy.’

‘Not so busy he can’t swank around with that Fionnula Jenkins,’ said Harry’s grandmother, brandishing the paper as proof. ‘If he’s got time to do that, I reckon he’s got time to look after his own son. If you ask me, it’s high time he took some responsibility for him. Why should Leanne have to cope all by herself? She didn’t get pregnant by herself, did she?’

‘Well, no, obviously not, but—’

‘It’s not as if I’m leaving him for ever. I’m only going for a fortnight. He’s a good baby—he won’t be any trouble.’

Tess came hurriedly round the desk as she realised just what the other woman was saying. ‘You’re not seriously thinking of leaving the baby here?’ she said, appalled.

‘Why not? From everything Leanne ever said, your precious Gabriel isn’t short of a bob or two. I’m sure he’ll manage.’

‘But you can’t just abandon him!’

The woman’s chin set stubbornly. ‘I’m not abandoning him. I’m leaving him with his father.’ She leant over the pram and kissed the baby. ‘You be a good boy, love. Your gran’ll be back for you in a couple of weeks.’

She glanced at Tess and pointed at the rack underneath the pram. ‘He’s got everything he needs for a couple of days, but you’ll need to buy some more formula and nappies after that.’

‘Nappies?’ Tess was aghast. ‘You can’t just go,’ she cried, but the baby’s grandmother was already heading for the lifts. ‘Look, wait!’ she called, hurrying after her. ‘Wait!’

But her cry had woken the baby, who promptly began to yell. Distracted, Tess hesitated in the doorway. She couldn’t believe his grandmother wouldn’t come back to the crying child, but when she ran out into the corridor she was in time to see the lift doors closing and the other woman had gone.

Frantically, Tess pressed the button to call the lift back, only to see its lights descending inexorably. She looked around for help, but the entire floor seemed to be deserted. Everyone else had obviously gone home at five-thirty, like sensible people. Tess wished fervently that she had done the same.

Behind her, Harry had redoubled his cries, and she took her finger off the button. There was no way she was going to catch his grandmother. By the time the lift came back she would be long gone.

Now what was she going to do?

In the office, she could hear the baby at full throttle. Hurrying back, she was alarmed to see that his face was red and contorted. What if he was having some kind of fit? She joggled the pram ineffectually for a while and, when that didn’t work, picked him up and cuddled him gingerly against her shoulder the way she had seen her friend, Bella, do with her new baby.

‘Shh, it’s all right,’ she told him, wishing that she believed it herself. Wryly, she remembered the smug way she had laid out the papers on Gabriel’s desk and congratulated herself on being able to cope with whatever he threw at her! Her famous unflappability didn’t extend to babies, which she found alarming at the best of times.

Tess threw a harassed look at the clock on the wall. If only Gabriel would come back!

It felt like two hours, but according to the clock it was only twenty minutes before Gabriel appeared. He walked into the office to be greeted by an unmistakable sigh of relief.

‘Thank God you’re back!’ said Tess, who would have scorned the very idea of being pleased to see him when he had left only a matter of hours ago.

Gabriel stopped dead at the sight of her. He had left an icily efficient, immaculately groomed PA. He returned to find her clutching a snivelling baby, her pristine blouse crumpled by tears and tiny, clutching hands, and the honey-coloured hair escaping in wisps from its usually demure style.

The black brows contracted. ‘What’s going on?’

He might enjoy the sight of Tess less than her normal, coolly composed self, but the meeting with the insurers hadn’t gone well. There was a good deal of work to be done to get the bid ready for the next day, and the very last thing he needed right now was a bawling infant cluttering up the office.

Gabriel eyed it askance. ‘Whose is that baby?’ he demanded, without even giving her a chance to reply to his first question.

By this stage Tess was too harassed to think of a way to break the news diplomatically. ‘It’s yours.’

‘What?’ he roared so loudly that Harry flinched and began to cry again.

‘Don’t shout! Now look what you’ve done!’ she accused him. ‘I’d just got him to stop, too.’ She joggled the baby in her arms until his sobs subsided. ‘There, that’s better,’ she murmured. ‘The nasty man’s not going to shout any more.’

Gabriel controlled his temper with an effort. ‘Tess, will you please explain to me what you are doing with that baby?’ he said ominously, laying his attaché case on her desk.

Over the sound of Harry’s snuffling cries, Tess told him what she could remember. ‘But it all happened so quickly,’ she finished. ‘One minute I was putting the letters on your desk, the next I was left holding the baby!’

‘Let me get this right,’ said Gabriel, a muscle beating dangerously in his jaw. ‘A woman turns up out of the blue, tells you she’s going on holiday and deposits a baby with you…and you let her walk away without even finding out her name?’

When he put it like that, it didn’t sound as if she had handled the situation very well, Tess had to admit. ‘She said you were Harry’s father,’ she said lamely.

‘And you believed her?’

‘I didn’t know what to believe,’ she said, forced onto the defensive. ‘You haven’t exactly been forthcoming about your private life. For all I know, you’ve got a dozen sons!’

Gabriel glared at her. ‘I can assure you,’ he said in glacial tones, ‘that I not only have no son, I’ve never even been on a cruise, and I certainly haven’t seduced any stray croupiers without being aware of it.’

Biting her lip, Tess looked worriedly down at the baby in her arms. ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.

‘We?’ He lifted his brows in a way that made her long to haul out and hit him.

‘It’s not my baby,’ she pointed out tightly.

‘It’s not mine either,’ he retorted, ignoring the danger signals snapping in Tess’s brown eyes. ‘You’re the one who took responsibility for him. You deal with it.’

The dismissive note in his voice caught Tess on the raw. For a moment, she could only gape at him, torn between astonishment at the colossal nerve of the man and inarticulate fury at his callous lack of support.

‘Now, just a minute—’ she began furiously, but before she could tell Gabriel exactly what she thought of him, the phone on her desk began to ring, a loud, jarring sound that ripped through the tense atmosphere in the office. Involuntarily, they both turned to look at it.

Gabriel cursed under his breath at the interruption. ‘You’d better answer it,’ he said snidely. ‘It might be someone else who wants a place to dump a child or a dog while they go on holiday! Why not tell them all to come along? Tell them we’ll take care of their pot plants too!’

Tess glared at his sarcasm. ‘How do you suggest I answer it?’ she said through her teeth. ‘In case it’s escaped your notice, I’ve only got two hands and both are full at the moment! Or am I expected to pick up the phone with my teeth?’

The phone continued to ring insistently, impossible to ignore. ‘Oh, all right, I’ll get it,’ snapped Gabriel.

He leant over the desk and picked up the phone. ‘Yes?’ he snarled. ‘Oh…Greg…yes, I did get your message…no, there’s nothing you can do,’ he said brusquely, adding as an afterthought, ‘unless you happen to know where I can find a croupier called Leanne?’

Tess couldn’t hear what Greg was saying, but it was obviously not what Gabriel was expecting. She saw his face change, and he shot her a quick glance. ‘Hold on a second,’ he interrupted his brother, ‘I think I’d better call you back. Give me two minutes.’

‘That was my brother,’ he said unnecessarily as he put down the phone. For once he seemed at a loss.

‘Your brother? What’s he got to do with Harry’s mother?’ asked Tess, bewildered by the unexpected turn of events.

‘That’s what I’m going to find out.’ Gabriel sounded terse. Shrugging off his coat, he headed for his office.

There was something going on, thought Tess, aggrieved, and he clearly had no intention of telling her what it was! ‘What am I supposed to do in the meantime?’ she said crossly.

‘Just…’ he gestured vaguely ‘…keep the baby quiet.’

‘Great, thanks a lot!’ she muttered as the door shut firmly behind him.

She shifted Harry onto her other arm. He might be small, but he was surprisingly heavy, and she flexed the arm that had been supporting him with a grimace. He was grizzling into her neck, small, sniffling little sobs as if he wanted to cry but was too tired to make the effort.

Tess knew just how he felt. She looked at the clock again, and was amazed to find that it was less than an hour since she had looked up to see the pram being pushed into the office.

Not knowing what else to do with him, Tess walked around the office, patting Harry awkwardly on the back, the way she had seen her friends do with their babies. She wished Gabriel would hurry up. It was all very well for him to tell her to keep Harry quiet, but she couldn’t walk up and down like this all night.

The sound of the door opening made her swing round, and Gabriel emerged in his shirt sleeves, looking grimmer than ever.

‘Well?’ she demanded.

Gabriel loosened his tie as if it felt too tight. ‘Greg was on a Caribbean cruise last year,’ he told her after a moment. ‘He told me that he met a croupier called Leanne, and they had an affair while he was on the ship but, typically of Greg, he can’t remember her surname, so we can’t track down her mother that way. That doesn’t mean that Greg is Harry’s father,’ he added quickly, ‘but at least we know why your visitor picked on me.’

‘She definitely said Gabriel Stearne,’ objected Tess. ‘It’s not that easy to muddle up Gabriel and Greg.’

The suspicion in her voice made Gabriel grit his teeth. ‘Look, you wanted to know what the situation was, and I’m telling you,’ he said tautly. He didn’t really want to tell Tess about Greg, and give her yet another reason to look down her snooty little nose at him, but she was obviously going to go on asking questions until she had some satisfactory answers. Briefly, Gabriel let himself think longingly of Janette, his PA back in the States, who accepted everything he said unquestioningly.

But Janette wasn’t here, and Tess was.

‘It turns out that Greg sometimes uses my name when it suits him to let people believe that the G in his name stands for Gabriel and not Gregory,’ he told her, resigned. ‘He says it gets him better tables in restaurants and seats on overbooked planes and, in the case of the cruise, he upgraded his cabin on the strength of my reputation. Having booked as Gabriel Stearne, he carried on using my name, and it was too late to change it when he met Leanne. Anyway, Greg didn’t think it would matter. He knew I would never go on a cruise and it was very unlikely that Leanne would ever read the business pages and see my picture.’

‘So it might not just be Leanne who thinks that she has had an affair with you? There could be girls all round the world who believe that you’re incredibly handsome, a fantastic lover and great fun to be with?’

Gabriel shot Tess a suspicious look. Her face was quite straight, but there was glint in her eyes and a distinct undercurrent of sarcasm in her voice. Why didn’t she come right out and say that the idea of anyone associating him with fun or believing him to be a wonderful lover was absolutely hilarious?

He scowled. ‘Right now, we’re only concerned with Leanne,’ he said quellingly. Not that Tess seemed very quelled.

‘And Leanne thinks that Greg is Harry’s father?’

‘Yes.’

‘That would make Harry your nephew,’ she said slowly, looking from one to the other as if looking for a resemblance.

‘It’s a possibility,’ Gabriel admitted grudgingly, evidently less than thrilled at the prospect of a new addition to the family.

‘Did Greg think that he might be Harry’s father?’

Gabriel sat on the edge of her desk and rubbed the back of his neck a little wearily. ‘I didn’t tell him about Harry,’ he said after a moment.

Tess was taken aback. Surely that had been the point of ringing Greg? ‘Why not?’

‘Because for once in his life, Greg is where he ought to be,’ said Gabriel flatly. ‘He’s in Florida, with my mother. His father—my stepfather—is having open-heart surgery and my mother can’t cope on her own. She’s not strong at the best of times, and I’d rather he stayed and supported her than came haring over here. It’s not as if he knows anything about babies.’

‘Oh, unlike us?’ said Tess, not even bothering to hide her sarcasm this time.

Gabriel ignored her. Straightening from the desk, he began to pace around the office. ‘This is the last thing we need tonight,’ he said, muttering under his breath. ‘All the figures in our proposal are going to have to be checked, and I want to rewrite the section on our design policy. I haven’t got time to run around London looking for an unnamed grandmother who’s just dumped a baby here.’

‘Why don’t you ring the police?’

‘I can’t risk the story getting into the papers. If Greg does turn out to be the father, and my mother got to hear of it, she’d be devastated. She dotes on Greg and she’s got enough to deal with at the moment with Ray so ill.’

Tess’s arm was aching and she decided to try putting Harry back in his pram. How odd, she thought, as she rocked the pram tentatively, terrified that the baby would start crying again. She wouldn’t have had Gabriel Stearne down as a devoted son, but he seemed to be making a lot of effort to spare his mother any trouble. Perhaps deep down he was human, after all? He certainly did a good job of hiding it most of the time!

Oblivious to her thoughts, Gabriel was contemplating his options. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he hunched his shoulders and continued his pacing, up and down, up and down, until Tess longed to stick out a foot and trip him up.

‘I could hire private investigators to track down the baby’s mother,’ he decided after a little while, frowning at the floor. ‘There can’t be that many croupiers called Leanne. Make a note to get onto them first thing tomorrow morning,’ he added in an aside.

Tess refrained from leaping for her notebook. ‘Even if they can find Leanne, she’s still got to get back to this country,’ she pointed out unhelpfully. ‘What are you going to do with him until then?’

‘That’s what nannies are for.’ Having made up his mind what needed to be done, Gabriel was already moving onto thinking about the proposal they had to submit the next day. His shoulders straightened. ‘You’d better get hold of an agency now. Say I’ll need a nanny for a week initially. With any luck, we’ll have been able to track down his mother by then.’

Ready to dismiss the matter from his mind, he turned back towards his office. Tess looked at him in disbelief. ‘It’s almost seven o’clock,’ she said, speaking very slowly and clearly so that he would be sure to understand. ‘All the agencies will be closed. I won’t be able to contact anyone until tomorrow morning at the earliest.’

Exasperated, Gabriel glowered at her, his jaw working in frustration. Logically, he knew that it wasn’t Tess’s fault, but her objections seemed designed to prevent him from getting on with more important things. He simply didn’t have the time to deal with all this.

‘What do you suggest, in that case?’ he asked her through gritted teeth.

Tess smiled sweetly at him. ‘You’ll have to look after him yourself.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you!’ she said, savouring the expression on his face. He looked so aghast that she nearly laughed. ‘It seems that Harry is your responsibility, after all.’

‘But I don’t know one end of a baby from another!’

‘It’s only for a night,’ she told him briskly. ‘I’m sure it’s just a matter of common sense.’

Gabriel eyed her with acute dislike. A matter of common sense, was it? She hadn’t looked quite so confident when she’d been holding the baby, had she? He set his jaw.

‘I can’t do it on my own,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to help me.’

‘Sorry,’ said Tess, not sounding the slightest bit apologetic. ‘I’m going out tonight.’

‘On a date?’

He stared at her with unflattering surprise. It had obviously never occurred to him before that she might actually have a life outside the office, let alone be attractive enough to have a date.

‘Yes, a date,’ she said, peeved, although it wasn’t strictly true. She was only meeting some friends, but she didn’t feel like telling him that. She was tired of being treated like a cardboard cut-out who got propped in the corner of the office every night!

‘Couldn’t you break it?’

Silently, Gabriel cursed his absent brother. It went against the grain to beg a favour from anyone, let alone from Tess Gordon with her frosty Scottish voice and her disapproving expression, but he was desperate. There was no way he was going to be left alone with that baby.

‘Look, I know it’s a lot to ask,’ he went on, forcing the words out, ‘but I need help. I can’t manage Harry on my own. I’ve never even held a baby before.’

The edge of desperation in his voice couldn’t help but strike a chord with Tess, but she hardened her heart, remembering how quick he had been to disclaim any responsibility for Harry at first. He hadn’t exactly been supportive then, had he?

‘You must have friends who could help you,’ she said.

‘I don’t know anyone else in London,’ said Gabriel. ‘I’ve only been here a month.’

‘Oh?’ Tess thought of the newspaper in the bin under her desk. ‘I did hear somewhere that you knew Fionnula Jenkins,’ she said pointedly.

‘Not well enough to ask her to give up her evening and a whole night to take care of a strange baby.’

‘You don’t know me very well, but you’re asking me to do it.’

‘That’s different.’ Gabriel glowered at her lack of logic. ‘You work for me.’

‘I’m your personal assistant, not a nanny!’

‘Yes, and it would assist me personally if you helped me look after this baby tonight.’

Tess put up her chin. She wasn’t going to be bullied into this! ‘I’m sorry,’ she said firmly, ‘but I—’

‘I’ll pay you overtime, of course,’ Gabriel interrupted her, switching tactics. ‘Double the usual rate,’ he added cunningly.

It was a masterly stroke. Fatally, Tess hesitated. She had been wondering how she was going to find the money to help Andrew out of his difficulties, and now here was an opportunity to earn some extra cash, without the need to grovel to Gabriel for a pay rise that he would almost certainly refuse.

Could she really afford to turn it down?

‘I don’t know any more about babies than you do,’ she said, but Gabriel could tell she was weakening and he pressed home his advantage.

‘You can’t know less,’ he said. ‘Come on, Tess, you can’t leave me on my own with him.’

When she thought about how prepared he had been to leave her on her own with Harry, Tess longed to be able to tell him that she most certainly could, but then she made the mistake of looking down at the baby. His face was puckering with misery, and she bent instinctively to pick him up. The poor wee mite had already been abandoned once today. She couldn’t walk away and abandon him again.




CHAPTER TWO


SHE sighed. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll help you—but help is the operative word.’ Lifting her chin, she met Gabriel’s gaze with a challenging expression in her clear brown eyes. ‘I’m not looking after him all by myself. You’re going to have to do your share.’

‘Fair enough,’ said Gabriel, too relieved to object to any conditions. Anything was better than being left on his own with the baby. ‘We’ll take him to my apartment,’ he went on quickly, before she had a chance to change her mind. ‘I can drive you home to get whatever you need for the night, and then we can go straight on.’

He was all set to hustle her off there and then, but things were happening a bit too quickly for Tess’s liking. ‘We could do with some advice first,’ she prevaricated, not sure she was ready to be swept off to Gabriel’s apartment just yet. She might have agreed to help him, but there seemed to be a lot of things they hadn’t discussed yet, and she wanted to be clear just what it was she had agreed to do.

‘I thought you said all the agencies would be closed?’ said Gabriel, frowning.

‘I’m not talking about ringing an agency. I’ve got a friend who had a baby earlier this year. Since neither of us know what we’re doing, I think it would be worth giving her a ring—if that’s OK with you, of course,’ she couldn’t resist adding with an innocent look that didn’t fool Gabriel for a moment. ‘I know you don’t like us making personal phone calls,’ she reminded him virtuously.

‘Yes, yes, get on with it!’ snapped Gabriel, thinking that staff phone calls were the least of his problems right now.

To his horror, he found the baby thrust into his arms as Tess reached across the desk to twist the phone round to face her. She had Bella’s number on the phone’s memory, but since she had just reminded Gabriel about his threatened crack-down on personal calls, she decided it would be wiser not to draw attention to it. That meant looking it up in her diary, which was something she rarely had to do with all the technology at her fingertips, and laboriously dialling the number in full.

Not that Gabriel was likely to have noticed. He had followed her to the desk, clearly in case he had to hand Harry quickly back, and was holding him awkwardly at arm’s length, eyeing him with a mixture of trepidation and appalled fascination. Tess wouldn’t have believed that anyone could look more uncomfortable with a baby than her, but Gabriel managed it easily.

The ruthless arrogance had been wiped from his face now he’d been presented with a baby, she noticed with some amusement. In his shirt sleeves, with his tie askew where he had been tugging at it in frustration, he seemed younger and much more approachable all of a sudden.

That had to be an illusion, thought Tess sourly. She had never met anyone less approachable than Gabriel Stearne. He was cold, unscrupulous, and completely out of touch with the people who worked for him, whom he treated with a blend of indifference and contempt.

And this was the man she was going to spend the evening with, she reminded herself with a sinking heart.

Oh, well, she thought, she would just have to keep thinking of the money.

Perching on the front of her desk, she listened to the busy beeping in her ear as the phone connected and watched Gabriel jiggle the baby nervously up and down. For a moment, Harry looked unsure whether he liked it or not and, as his face screwed up, Tess held her breath, waiting for the outraged wail that she was sure would follow.

But Harry didn’t cry. He dissolved without warning into a gummy and quite irresistible smile which left Gabriel completely nonplussed. Tess saw astonishment, relief and perplexity chasing themselves across his face, swiftly succeeded by a kind of baffled pride at the baby’s unexpected reaction to his handling, before he smiled instinctively back at Harry.

Tess nearly fell off the desk. It was like running up to someone you thought you knew and finding yourself face to face with a perfect stranger. She had never seen Gabriel smile before—she had never even imagined him smiling—and she was caught off guard by the way the cold eyes lit with humour and the stern mouth relaxed, creasing his cheeks and revealing teeth that were strong and very white against his dark features.

Her heart jerked suddenly in her chest. If Gabriel had been taken aback by Harry’s smile, it was nothing to her own reaction to his, and she hoped her own expression wasn’t as easy to read. She felt jarred and breathless, and it was some moments before she realised that a puzzled voice was speaking in her ear.

‘Hello…? Hello? Who is this?’

‘Bella!’ Tess jerked her gaze away from Gabriel and recollected herself with an effort. ‘It’s Tess.’

‘Tess!’ cried Bella in carrying tones. ‘I haven’t heard from you for ages! How’s the boss from hell?’

‘Standing right beside me,’ said Tess thinly. She didn’t dare look at Gabriel. Had he heard Bella or not?

As succinctly as she could, she explained the situation to her friend, but it wasn’t easy with Bella exclaiming and interposing irrelevant questions, and it took Tess some time to get her to the point. Once, she risked a glance at Gabriel, who raised a sardonic eyebrow. He had heard all right.

‘Just tell us what to do, Bella,’ she said hastily. ‘Harry’s grandmother said that we would have everything we needed under the pram, but I might as well be looking under the bonnet of a car. There’s a whole lot of stuff there, but I’ve got no idea how any of it works.’

Responding to her frantic gesture, Gabriel pushed the pram nearer, so Tess could describe the various packets and bits of equipment that had been packed onto the lower rack.

‘Hmm.’ Bella considered. ‘How old is this baby?’

Tess covered the receiver with her hand, although since Gabriel had clearly already heard both sides of the conversation it seemed a little late for discretion. ‘How old is Harry?’ she asked him.

‘How do I know?’ he replied unhelpfully.

The ‘boss from hell’ jibe was still rankling, and he was annoyed to find that he had been distracted by the way Tess was leaning against her desk. She was wearing the same discreetly elegant grey suit she always wore, the same sensible court shoes, but she looked somehow different. Had she always had legs like that? Gabriel wondered. And, if so, how was it that he had never noticed them before?

‘A baby is a baby, isn’t it?’ he added crossly, hoping that Tess hadn’t noticed him staring.

‘Apparently not,’ she said, holding onto her own temper with an effort. It wasn’t easy to concentrate on what Bella was saying when she could feel him frowning at her. Obviously Bella’s comment hadn’t gone down well.

Tough. Tess tried to convince herself that she didn’t care. It wouldn’t do Gabriel any harm to realise what they all thought of him, although the timing was less than ideal, she had to admit. If he had to learn how much she disliked him, it might have been better if it hadn’t been just before they had to spend the entire night together!

Pushing the prospect to the back of her mind, Tess turned back to the problem of Harry’s age. ‘Did your brother mention when he was on this famous cruise?’ she tried again.

‘Some time last summer…August, I think he said.’ Gabriel calculated quickly. ‘That would make Harry about five months now.’

Tess, still trying to add nine months onto August, abandoned her attempts at mental arithmetic and uncovered the receiver once more. ‘Five months, we think,’ she told Bella.

‘Hmm…And where exactly are you proposing to take this baby?’

‘To Mr Stearne’s apartment.’

‘Oh?’ Bella managed to invest two letters with at least sixteen syllables. ‘You mean you’re going to spend the night with him?’

Tess hadn’t wanted to think about that aspect of the situation. Of course, she and Gabriel weren’t going to be spending the night together in the way Bella meant, but still, there was something uncomfortably intimate about the thought of being alone with him in his flat.

Involuntarily, she glanced at Gabriel, who had heard both the words and the intonation. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t need to. The faint lift of his brows spoke volumes. A man who went out with the likes of Fionnula Jenkins was hardly likely to have any problems keeping his hands off her.

Suddenly acutely aware of the wet patch on her blouse where Harry had pressed his face miserably into her shoulder, and of the wisps of hair escaping around her face, Tess turned her back on him and told Bella crisply not to be silly. ‘It’s simply a matter of looking after the baby until we can get hold of a nanny tomorrow. If you could just explain what we give him to eat, Bella…’

It took some time, but eventually Tess managed to extract instructions about sterilising bottles, heating milk, washing, winding and sleeping positions, all of which she scribbled down frantically, wishing that Bella wouldn’t be quite so vague about exactly what to do and when.

When Bella had finished, Tess cast an eye over her notes and discovered that there was one thing missing.

‘What about changing his nappy?’ she asked at last, bracing herself.

‘What about it?’

‘Well, you know…how do we know when to do it?’

Bella laughed. ‘Have you tried smelling him?’

Without being told, Gabriel lifted Harry nearer and sniffed cautiously. He wrinkled his nose and the downward turn of his mouth told Tess all she needed to know.

‘Ah,’ she said, her heart sinking. ‘It looks as if we might have to tackle that now. What should we do?’

‘Tess, I cannot believe that you’ve got to thirty-four without changing a nappy!’ Bella scolded. ‘If you took a more hands-on interest in your goddaughter, you’d know all this by now. And what’s all this “we” business?’ she went on before Tess had a chance to object. ‘Since when did you get quite so cosy with Gabriel Stearne?’

Tess avoided looking at Gabriel, although she could feel him listening. ‘Bella,’ she said through gritted teeth, ‘could we just stick to the nappy changing?’

‘Oh, all right, but you’d better ring me tomorrow and tell me everything!’

Noting down Bella’s sarcastically simplistic instructions, Tess had the feeling she wasn’t going to enjoy the next few minutes very much. ‘Thanks, Bella,’ she said dryly. ‘I can’t wait.’

‘Good luck,’ said Bella, and then raised her voice wickedly to make sure that Gabriel would hear her. ‘And tell that boss of yours that I’ve always thought he sounded very sexy, whatever you say!’

Tess put the phone down hastily. She would kill Bella next time she saw her! Faint colour tinged her cheeks as she pretended to read over the instructions that Bella had given her.

What exactly did she say? Gabriel wondered darkly. Nothing very flattering, that was for sure!

‘I didn’t realise that you were in the habit of discussing me with your friends,’ he said with a cold look.

‘I didn’t realise that you were in the habit of listening in to private conversations!’ Tess snapped back, provoked, and they glared at each other.

Tired of being dangled from outstretched arms, Harry had begun to grizzle. Remembering just in time that he needed Tess’s help that evening, Gabriel swallowed the savage retort on the tip of his tongue with an effort.

‘Look, let’s get this nappy changing over and done with,’ he growled. ‘We’ll do it together, since it’s obviously not going to be a very pleasant job.’

‘All right.’ Tess took the opportunity to back down too. The presence of Harry seemed to have a dangerously dis-inhibiting effect on both of them, and if she wasn’t careful she would find herself out of a job altogether.

The extra money she would earn on overtime tonight might be useful, but her salary was essential, Tess reminded herself guiltily. She had been looking for another job ever since Gabriel had arrived at SpaceWorks, but all those she could have applied for would have meant taking a drop in salary that she simply couldn’t afford at the moment. Standing up to Gabriel was one thing, provoking him into sacking her was another. It might be an idea to keep her mouth shut and keep her job, she reflected ruefully.

Still holding Harry at arm’s length, Gabriel carried him through to the sleekly modern bathroom that was attached to his private office. There, after some discussion, they spread out a towel on the black marble surface by the basin and laid Harry on top of it.

‘Well, here goes!’ Tess took a deep breath and resolutely unbuttoned Harry’s little body suit.

By now, Harry was crying in earnest and wriggling alarmingly, and it took two of them to stop him squirming off the marble onto the floor while they worked out how to unfasten the nappy.

Both grimaced when it finally fell apart, and they looked at each other for a pregnant moment. Gabriel found himself staring into Tess’s eyes and noticing with an odd, detached part of his mind that they were a beautiful shade of brown, the colour of clear honey, shot through with gold. He had never really seen her eyes before, he realised. Usually they were hidden behind the spectacles she wore when she was working at the computer or taking dictation, and looking into them now for the first time he felt as if he had received a tiny electric shock.

It was an odd feeling. Even odder was the strange tightening of the air between them as they looked at each other. Afterwards, Gabriel would think it could only have lasted a second or two, but at the time it seemed as if their eyes held for an eternity, and when Tess turned back to the protesting baby he felt unaccountably jarred, even dislocated.

Brushing the sensation from his mind, Gabriel set his jaw and forced his attention back to the messy business of changing Harry’s nappy.

To Tess, it all seemed unbelievably complicated. She couldn’t understand how the mothers she had seen deftly changing babies in washrooms managed on their own. She and Gabriel had to keep stopping to refer to Bella’s instructions, and running backwards and forwards to the pram to find the various wipes and creams and spare nappies that seemed to be required.

Although she would have died rather than admit it, Tess was glad that Gabriel was there. It was a relief to discover that he was even more squeamish than she was, and by the time they had finished he was looking positively green about the gills, but his hands were very steady as he held Harry still. There was something oddly reassuring about them, Tess thought inconsequentially. They were big and square and competent, with very clean nails, and for some reason she was very conscious whenever her fingers brushed against his.

At last it was over. Harry, buttoned up again, was obviously more comfortable, and he stopped grizzling when Tess picked him up and cuddled him carefully against her shoulder. She must be getting the hang of it, she congratulated herself.

‘Thank God that’s over!’ said Gabriel, disposing of the dirty nappy with distaste, and Tess found herself nodding in sympathy as their eyes met again. There was that same puzzling charge to the air, the same sense that a smile was lurking, waiting for the slightest excuse to shimmer between them, before Tess looked quickly away, more disturbed than she wanted to admit. It wouldn’t do to start thinking that she and Gabriel had anything in common, even if it was only a squeamishness about nappies!

Fortunately, that uncomfortable sense of complicity didn’t survive the trip down to the underground car park to Gabriel’s car. Tess had frequently wondered why it took so long for friends with babies to do anything, but that evening she discovered that with a baby in tow you couldn’t simply put on your coat, pick up your bag and go.

Harry refused to be put down in his pram, so they had to take it in turns to hold him while they repacked all his stuff, switched off lights and computers, and gathered up their own things. It all took forever, and then they had to negotiate the lift with the pram. They were halfway down before Gabriel remembered the papers he needed to check that night, so they had to go back up again.

His temper was not improved when they got to the car at last and had to work out how to collapse the pram. Cursing fluently under his breath, Gabriel wrestled with knobs and levers.

‘It can’t be that difficult,’ said Tess unwisely. ‘You see mothers with these prams the whole time. They can’t all have degrees in mechanical engineering.’

‘No, and they don’t all have people hanging around making pointless remarks, either!’ Gabriel snarled, and Tess bridled.

‘There’s no need to bite my head off just because you can’t do it,’ she said coldly, forgetting her earlier resolution to keep her tongue between her teeth. ‘It’s not my fault you’re in a bad mood.’

Gabriel thought that was a matter of opinion. If she had dealt properly with Harry’s grandmother, the evening wouldn’t have turned into the unmitigated disaster it was already shaping up to be. As it was, he had been forced to beg for her help, had endured a revolting session with the baby’s nappy, and was now making an idiot of himself struggling with this cursed pram.

And all he had to look forward to was an evening spent in the company of his PA, who had made no secret of the fact that she disliked him intensely. Gabriel reckoned that Tess had plenty to do with his bad mood, but he had to content himself with casting her a filthy look as he turned back to the pram. He vented his temper instead on a lever that he had already tried more than once, jerking it savagely towards him, and the pram collapsed in one smooth motion that smacked uncannily of reproach for his excessive use of brute force.

At last they were on the way, but almost immediately found themselves in heavy traffic heading south of the river to where Tess lived. Gabriel drummed his fingers impatiently on the steering wheel as they edged forward, annoyed to find himself very aware of Tess sitting beside him.

He wished he hadn’t noticed her eyes. He wished he hadn’t noticed her legs. He wished he hadn’t noticed anything different about her, because now that he had started noticing, it was somehow difficult to stop.

There was no reason to notice her. She hadn’t done anything to attract him—quite the opposite, in fact—but Gabriel couldn’t stop his gaze sliding sideways to where she sat staring haughtily out of the window. That exasperatingly crisp competence had deserted her for once, he noted with a kind of perverse satisfaction. If nothing else, this evening so far had demonstrated that she had a healthy temper of her own beneath the poised and unflappable mask she usually wore.

It was dark outside, and in the dull light of the dashboard Gabriel could just see the fine curve of her jaw, and the corner of her mouth, compressed into a cross line. By rights, she should have had frosty blue eyes to match her manner, he thought, but Tess’s eyes hadn’t looked like that at all. They were clear and brown and dappled with gold, the eyes of someone warm and alluring, and not those of the PA who treated him with such icy civility. Gabriel was unnerved by how vividly he could picture them still.

Irritably, he flexed his shoulders. He had only looked into Tess’s eyes for a matter of seconds. Nothing had changed. She was just sitting there with her nose stuck in the air, so why should he suddenly find her so distracting?

He didn’t have time to be distracted, he reminded himself roughly. Taking over SpaceWorks had been a risky strategy, and if they didn’t get the Emery contract, he would have lost his gamble, not to mention a lot of money. Gabriel didn’t like losing. He wasn’t going to jeopardise the whole bid by letting himself get diverted by a baby, and certainly not because his secretary had taken her glasses off!

Harry was asleep by the time they drew up outside Tess’s house almost an hour later, so Gabriel waited in the car with him while she ran inside and threw a few things for the night into a bag. Then they had to turn round and crawl back through the traffic to the City where Gabriel lived in a recently converted warehouse near the river.

Tess was fed up of sitting in the car by the time they got there and, when she saw his flat, she wished that she had suggested they simply stay at her house, which might be shabby but which at least had the advantage of being comfortable. She had thought about making the offer when she’d been packing her bag, but her home was her haven, and she wasn’t sure she wanted Gabriel there.

His apartment was aggressively modern, all gleaming steel and glass and neutral fabrics. Cosy, it was not. Open-plan throughout, the various living areas were cleverly suggested by the arrangement of furniture or lighting. It was chic, stylish and completely soulless. Tess couldn’t imagine anyone actually living in it. As it was, Harry’s pram with its bright, plastic colours struck a jarring note amongst all that restrained taste.

Perhaps it was just as well she hadn’t invited Gabriel to stay with her, she decided. If this was his style, he would have hated her house.

‘It’s very…new,’ she said.

‘You don’t like it.’ Too late, Gabriel heard the accusing note in his voice, which made him sound almost as if he cared what she thought.

‘It’s not that. It’s just doesn’t have much character, I suppose.’

‘I don’t want character,’ he said tersely. ‘I want convenience. These apartments have been snapped up. They all come fully equipped with sheets, towels, crockery, even a selection of wine in the wine rack. They’re ideal for successful people who don’t have time to waste finding somewhere to buy a corkscrew.’

Tess was unimpressed. ‘I don’t think I’d want to be successful if it meant I didn’t have time to make a home,’ she said.

‘Home is just somewhere to sleep.’

Nettled by her lack of enthusiasm, Gabriel went to draw the vertical blinds over the expanse of glass that stretched almost the entire length of the apartment. He hadn’t noticed it until now, but when it was dark outside and the rain was splattering against the window like now, the apartment didn’t look very welcoming. Perhaps she would appreciate it more if he shut out the blackness.

‘I only moved in two days ago,’ he said, looking for some way to pull the blinds. He liked the view at night, so he hadn’t had to work out how to close them before. ‘I was living in a hotel until then,’ he went on as his hand moved up and down the edge of the blind in search of a cord or some kind of mechanism, ‘but this is much better. It’s serviced in the same way as a hotel, but it’s private and, because it’s new, everything works.’

‘Not quite everything,’ said Tess, observing his increasingly frustrated efforts to deal with the blinds. He was muttering under his breath, and looked ready to rip the blinds bodily from the window as she moved him aside. ‘Here, let me try.’

To Gabriel’s intense irritation, she located the high-tech controls straight away that had been cleverly concealed in the wall, and with one touch of a button the blinds swished smoothly across the vast window.

‘Very convenient,’ she murmured.

Gabriel glared at the irony in her voice, but Harry was making little mewling noises from the pram.

‘He’s waking up,’ said Tess nervously.

Drawn together insensibly by their shared apprehension, they peered into the pram, where the baby was squirming and knuckling his eyes.

‘Now what do we do?’ asked Gabriel, keeping a cautious distance.

Tess pulled Bella’s instructions out of her bag. ‘I think we need to feed him,’ she said, squinting in an attempt to decipher a squiggle in the margin. ‘We’ve got to make up some formula,’ she added, hoping that she sounded more confident than she felt. Crouching down, she searched through the equipment that Gabriel had carried up from the car. ‘There should be a tin…ah, that must be it.’

‘Are you sure you know what you’re doing?’ said Gabriel suspiciously as he followed her into the kitchen area.

‘No.’ She held out her scribbled notes with a challenging look. ‘If you can read my shorthand, you’re welcome to try and work it out for yourself.’

‘No, no,’ he said, recoiling. ‘You’d better do it.’

Tess was reading the instructions on the back of the tin. ‘Can you find me a saucepan?’

‘I expect I could manage that,’ said Gabriel with dignity, still smarting over his defeat with the blinds. He began opening cupboards, having ignored the kitchen, like the windows, until now. Eventually he found a pan and gave it to Tess, who sent him back to keep an eye on Harry.

‘This is complicated,’ she told him frankly. ‘I can’t concentrate with you standing over me.’

Harry grew increasingly restless as Gabriel hovered by the pram, watching anxiously as the little face contorted itself into a variety of plaintive expressions, each of which looked alarmingly as if he was on the point of wailing miserably.

When he did finally utter a spluttering cry, Gabriel threw a glance of appeal at Tess, who was carefully measuring powder into a jug. ‘Is his milk ready yet?’

‘No, I’ve still got to warm it,’ she said, throwing Harry a harassed glance. ‘You’ll have to distract him.’

‘How?’

‘I don’t know…give him a cuddle or something.’

With a sigh, Gabriel hoisted Harry awkwardly against his shoulder and joggled him about a bit. ‘It’s not working,’ he complained when the baby’s cries only increased in volume.

‘I’m not surprised.’ Tess looked up from the hob where she was puzzling over a control panel that wouldn’t have looked out of place at NASA. ‘Is that your idea of a cuddle?’

‘What’s wrong with it?’ he said stiffly.

‘Nothing, if you think cuddling means holding someone at arm’s length and shaking them up and down.’

‘I didn’t realise you were such an expert,’ he said with a snide look.

‘I’m not,’ she said, ‘but I know how I like to be held.’

She didn’t have to say that it wouldn’t be the way he would hold her. ‘Perhaps you should give lessons,’ snapped Gabriel, unaccountably provoked. He could imagine her doing it, too, with the same cold efficiency she did everything else. No doubt she would allot special cuddling windows in her diary and keep one eye firmly on the clock to make sure they didn’t run over schedule.

‘Lessons would be extra,’ Tess snapped back, ‘and I’m already on double overtime this evening.’

‘Don’t worry, I hadn’t forgotten,’ said Gabriel sourly.

Grudgingly, he held Harry a little closer and walked up and down in what he hoped was a soothing manner. Not that it made the slightest difference to the volume of the baby’s crying. So much for Tess and her advice on cuddling.

‘What’s taking so long?’ he demanded at last, breaking the hostile silence. ‘It’s only milk, isn’t it? Anyone would think you were preparing a five-course meal.’

Tess gritted her teeth. ‘I’m being as quick as I can. I’ve got to check the temperature before I can give it to him.’

Craning her neck to refer to her scribbled notes, she shook the bottle and upended it to squeeze a few drops of milk onto the inside of her wrist. It felt just warm, but not hot, just as Bella had said it should.

Relieved, Tess looked around for somewhere to sit, but it wasn’t the kind of kitchen designed to be cluttered up with tables where you could read the paper, drink coffee, let things pile up and generally gather mess. The chairs set perfectly around the glass dining table looked downright uncomfortable, and in the end she sat down a little dubiously on one of the cream sofas.

‘OK, let’s try him with this.’

Gabriel handed a bawling Harry over with relief. Tess pretended not to notice when their hands brushed, and concentrated on presenting the baby with the bottle. Fortunately, Harry knew more about bottle-feeding than she did and, once he recognised the teat, he soon settled into sucking.

Their sniping momentarily forgotten, Tess and Gabriel watched warily, and were just allowing themselves to relax when he coughed and choked milk down the front of his Babygro. Too late, Tess remembered the bibs that had been tucked in a bag with the nappies.

‘What’s happening?’ said Gabriel.

‘I don’t know, do I?’ Tess sat Harry upright and patted his back, which seemed to be the right thing to do, for he stopped spluttering. Cautiously, she let him have the bottle again. ‘I’d no idea what a tense business it was looking after a baby.’ She sighed.

‘Me neither,’ Gabriel agreed with feeling. He had taken off his jacket and was standing at the glass table, loosening his tie with one hand and pulling papers from his briefcase with the other. ‘Give me executive stress any day!’

‘I wouldn’t have thought that was something you suffered from,’ said Tess and Gabriel glanced up at her with a frown.

‘What do you mean?’

‘No one could call your management style relaxed,’ she pointed out, thinking of the last frantic weeks putting the Emery bid together. ‘You only seem to operate under high pressure.’ She bent her head back over the peacefully suckling baby. ‘I’m surprised you even know what executive stress is!’

‘Of course I know what it is,’ said Gabriel irritably. ‘I hear my executives whining about it often enough! It’s not something I’ve got a lot of time for, I admit.’

‘Not everyone thrives under pressure the way you do,’ said Tess. ‘You have no idea what it’s like to work in an office where the pace is relentless, where the boss storms around making unreasonable demands of his staff and everything always has to be done yesterday.’

Gabriel’s fearsome brows twitched together. Looking up from his papers again, he found his gaze resting on her bent head, the brown hair caught the light and gleaming with gold, reminding him of her eyes. He could see the pure line of her cheek, the downward sweep of lashes, that small but stubborn chin.

He wrenched his eyes away. ‘It doesn’t seem to bother you.’

Tess glanced up briefly and then away. ‘I cope with it,’ she said. ‘That doesn’t mean I like it.’

‘You don’t have to like it,’ said Gabriel, reverting to his brusque manner to disguise the sensation that had stirred so strangely inside him as he watched her cradling the baby in her arms. ‘You just have to do the job you’re paid to do, and that’s helping me put the Emery bid together. Once we get that in, you can start worrying about stress! Until then, we’ve got better things to do.’

He glanced at his watch. ‘We ought to be able to get quite a bit done tonight. I’ve got to redraft the introduction, and I want you to cross-check every single figure we put forward. There’s going to be some stiff competition for this contract, and we can’t afford to look sloppy.’

‘You want me to check figures tonight?’ said Tess incredulously.

‘I am paying you overtime,’ Gabriel reminded her.

‘For helping you with Harry!’

He brushed that aside. ‘Since you’re here, you might as well help me with the bid, too. There’s no TV, no books. There’s just you, me, and a whole heap of paperwork. What else is there for us to do this evening, after all?’

The sardonic note in his voice brought a flush to Tess’s cheeks. Most men and women could find something better to do with an evening alone together, but she and Gabriel didn’t have that kind of relationship, did they? They might be alone in his apartment with the whole night ahead of them, but he was still her boss and she was still his PA.

‘In the circumstances, nothing,’ she agreed stiffly.

‘You don’t have to help,’ said Gabriel with an indifferent shrug. ‘It’s up to you if you want to lose your job.’

Tess’s head jerked up and she stared icily at him. ‘Is that a threat?’

‘No, it’s not a threat.’ Gabriel’s voice was flat and hard and as cold as her own. ‘It’s reality. We need this contract. If we don’t get it, I’m going to have to reconsider my investment in SpaceWorks. In that case, the company will fold, and your job with it. It’s as simple as that. Contraxa is a leader in its field, and our reputation depends on consistent quality and success. We can’t afford to be associated with failures, even in a minor division.’

Tess knew that what he said was true, but she couldn’t help bridling at his casual dismissal of the company where she had worked so loyally for over ten years. SpaceWorks was more than a minor division! ‘I wonder you bothered with us at all if we’re that unimportant!’ she said tightly.

‘Because I believe in taking risks to get what you want,’ said Gabriel. He dropped the last of the papers from his briefcase onto the table where they landed with a dull slap. ‘SpaceWorks isn’t important now, but it’s got the potential to be very important indeed. If my gamble pays off, it will give me the toe-hold I need to expand into Europe. It’s a global market now, Tess. You’ve got to stay ahead of the game, and you don’t do that by playing safe.’

‘Sometimes playing safe is the only option.’ Tess sighed a little, thinking of Andrew with still another year to go before he finished his education. ‘Some of us have got commitments. We can’t all afford to take risks.’

‘That’s why I avoid making commitments,’ said Gabriel dismissively. ‘You can’t succeed if you’re always looking over your shoulder, worrying about your responsibilities.’

It was all very well for him, thought Tess crossly, removing the empty bottle from Harry’s tenacious grasp. Some commitments were there whether chosen or not.

She put the bottle on the floor and stood up with Harry. ‘Well, here’s one responsibility you can worry about right now,’ she said, deliberately brisk. ‘You can take your nephew for a while.’




CHAPTER THREE


GABRIEL eyed the baby Tess was holding out to him. ‘What shall I do with him?’ he asked uneasily, his highhanded indifference abruptly deserting him.

‘According to Bella, he needs to be winded. I’ve seen her husband do this,’ Tess said, relenting in the face of his panic-stricken expression. ‘It’s easy. All you have to do is walk up and down, patting his back until he burps.’

Gabriel felt that he had already done quite enough walking up and down with Harry but, since Tess had fed him, he couldn’t really refuse. Stretching out his arms reluctantly, he let her put the baby into them.

‘Got him?’ she asked sharply to disguise the inexplicable frisson of awareness as her hands brushed against his again.

‘Yes,’ he admitted, although without much enthusiasm.

‘Now, hold him against your shoulder, and pat his back—gently.’

Gabriel patted gingerly. ‘Like this?’

‘Well, Roger sings while he’s at it,’ said Tess as she went into the kitchen to rinse the bottle, ‘but I think that’s optional.’

She watched Gabriel under her lashes as she dragged the steriliser out from under the pram and unpacked it from its box. Face intent, he was walking dutifully around the apartment with Harry. If only the others at SpaceWorks could see him now, the ruthless arrogance and uncompromising confidence demolished by one small baby.

Sometimes, thought Tess, life could be sweet.

Completing another circuit, Gabriel arrived back in the kitchen. ‘I think I’m beginning to get the hang of it,’ he confided, and ventured a hum to demonstrate his new-found confidence.

Harry was promptly sick over his extremely expensive shirt.

Yes, definitely sweet, decided Tess, hiding a smile. Even perfect.

‘You were a bit out of tune,’ she reproached him.

Gabriel shot her a look as he craned his neck over his shoulder to assess the damage. ‘That’s all I need,’ he said sourly. ‘A critic.’

Tess hunted through the pristine cupboards for a cloth, eventually locating an unopened packet which she ripped open. ‘That must be why Roger always wears a cloth over his shoulder when he winds Rosy,’ she said, extracting one and wetting it under the tap.

‘I’m so pleased you remembered that now,’ he grumbled.

Ignoring him, Tess wrung out the cloth and put a hand on his arm. ‘Stand still,’ she instructed. She wiped away the mess on his shoulder, but she had barely finished before Harry obligingly gugged up a little more milk.

Gabriel screwed up his nose. ‘Yeuch!’

‘Oh, don’t make such a fuss.’ she said, half-exasperated, half-indulgent. ‘It’s only a bit of milk.’ She rubbed his shirt vigorously. ‘There…all gone.’

He peered suspiciously at the unpleasantly damp patch behind his shoulder before raising his gaze to meet Tess’s. The honey-coloured eyes were dancing with amusement, and Gabriel felt as if his stomach had disappeared without warning, leaving him with a strange, hollow feeling inside. All at once he was acutely conscious of Tess standing close beside him, of her hand burning through the fine material of his shirt, of her hair, glimmering in the glare of the overhead light, of her perfume, elusive, beguiling, faintly spicy.

At almost exactly the same moment, Tess became aware of the solid strength of the shoulder she was dabbing in such a casual manner. The arm she had taken hold of so intimately was warm, and she had a sudden, shocking sense of him as a man. A man with steely muscles and sleek, bare flesh beneath his clothes. Unaccountably flustered, she jerked her hand away and stepped back.

‘I’ll…er…I’ll see what we have to do next,’ she muttered.

Her fingers were not quite steady as she smoothed out Bella’s instructions on the kitchen worktop. Really, she had to get a grip. She had never found Gabriel remotely attractive before, and she wasn’t about to start now.

Tess concentrated on the notes. ‘There’s something here about a bath,’ she said after a moment, glad to hear that her voice sounded almost normal again. ‘I wonder if we should have done that before feeding him? It’s a bit hard to tell from this.’

In the end, they decided that it wouldn’t hurt Harry to miss a bath for one night. The nanny would be able to wash him the next day and in the meantime wiping him with a flannel, changing his nappy and buttoning him into a clean Babygro presented enough of a challenge for them.

‘Let’s put him in here.’ Gabriel snapped on a light by a low, wide bed set against the far wall of the apartment. To one side, a wall of glass gave a spectacular view over the city lights, while a range of wardrobes curved round like a protective arm, providing privacy from the rest of the apartment.

Tess looked around her, noting the gleaming bathroom to one side. It, at least, had a door. Apart from the front door, it appeared to be the only one in the apartment.

‘Is this where you sleep?’

‘Yes.’ Now that he knew how they worked, Gabriel went over to pull the blinds over the window, but something in the quality of Tess’s silence made him turn. ‘Not tonight, however. You needn’t worry,’ he went on in a dry voice. ‘You’ll have the bed to yourself. I’ll sleep on the couch.’

Tess flushed a little. ‘I wasn’t worrying,’ she said, lifting her chin in a familiar gesture. ‘I was simply thinking that you wouldn’t be very comfortable.’ The sofas were luxuriously wide, but he was well over six foot with a massive strength that she couldn’t imagine fitting very easily onto the cream cushions.

He shrugged. ‘It’s not a problem.’

‘I don’t mind sleeping on the sofa,’ she offered hesitantly. ‘I’m shorter than you.’

Gabriel had been opening and closing wardrobe doors, but he paused at that and looked over his shoulder at her. ‘I realise you have a very low opinion of me, Tess,’ he said with some asperity, ‘but I didn’t know it was quite that low. Do you really think I would let you sleep on the couch while I was warm and comfortable in bed?’





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