Книга - Her Boss’s Baby Plan

Her Boss's Baby Plan
Jessica Hart


Single mom Martha Shaw has a gorgeous new boss–Lewis Mansfield. She's nanny to his niece and is about to spend six months on a tropical island with him and the babies! Martha quickly falls deeply in love with her sexy boss. But he seems happy being a carefree bachelor with no plans to settle down…Will Martha risk all by telling Lewis how she really feels?







“Do you want to take her?” Martha asked, and Lewis instantly looked alarmed.

“Don’t panic, there’s no nappy changing required! Just give her a bit of a cuddle.”

Lewis did his best, but the fact was that Viola wasn’t the slightest bit interested. It was more fun to explore her uncle’s face with inquisitive little fingers, sticking them in his mouth, patting his nose, tugging at his lips and pulling at his hair until he winced.

“Why won’t she sit quietly like him?” Lewis complained, casting an envious glance to where Noah was sitting angelically on his mother’s lap.

“Just wait until she’s old enough to answer back!”

“That’ll be her parents’ problem,” said Lewis, removing Viola’s finger from his ear. “It’s nothing to do with me.”

Even to himself that had the ring of famous last words.


What happens when you suddenly discover your happy twosome is about to be turned into a…family?

Do you panic?

Do you laugh?

Do you cry?

Or…do you get married?

The answer is all of the above—and plenty more!

Share the laughter and the tears as these unsuspecting couples are plunged into parenthood! Whether it’s a baby on the way or the creation of a brand-new instant family, these men and women have no choice but to be






When parenthood takes you by surprise!

Ready for Baby miniseries, The Pregnant Tycoon by Caroline Anderson

If you’d like to find out more about Jessica Hart, you can visit her Web site www.jessicahart.co.uk




Her Boss’s Baby Plan

Jessica Hart












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


For Dora, with love




CONTENTS


CHAPTER ONE (#uf7b8b2ab-4b96-5bf1-8373-df9ca6ad991a)

CHAPTER TWO (#u4d329d6a-c3b5-5c8c-8f38-82478c5be8f9)

CHAPTER THREE (#u7abbc468-1970-57d3-a361-ffaa0875a5a4)

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


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Good luck,’ was all she said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And she wasn’t just holding herself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He was so adorable. How could anyone resist him?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘What?’ Lewis sounded distracted.

‘She looks about the same age as Noah.’

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

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

‘Oh, then she is the same as Noah.’

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

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

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

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

‘Er…May ninth, I think.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘I understand,’ said Martha.

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

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

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

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

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

‘What are you looking for, then?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Then why go at all?’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Martha looked down at Noah and smoothed his dark, downy hair. Just the thought of how close she had come to never having him made her shudder now.

‘So Rory went back to St Bonaventure,’ she finished, glancing back at Lewis. ‘And I…changed my mind.’

Of course she had changed her mind, thought Lewis with a jaundiced expression. Changing their minds was what women did, and to hell with the consequences for anyone else involved!

‘Don’t tell me,’ he said dourly. ‘Your body clock was ticking, everyone else was having babies and playing at being perfect mothers and you wanted to play too?’

Martha was taken aback by the edge of bitterness in his voice. What was his problem? Don’t let him wind you up, she reminded yourself. He’s your ticket to St Bonaventure.

‘You might be right about the body clock,’ she admitted honestly. ‘I’m thirty-four, and with no sign of another serious relationship on the horizon I had to face the fact that might not have another chance to have a child. It hadn’t been an issue before. I had a boyfriend for eight years and we were both thinking about our careers, not about babies. I thought I was fine with that, but once I was pregnant…it’s hard to explain, but everything changed after Rory had gone. I just knew I couldn’t go through with it and that I wanted to keep the baby.’

Lewis was looking profoundly unmoved by her story. ‘Why didn’t you tell him that you’d changed your mind?’

‘I knew that he wasn’t going to be in a position to help, and anyway I felt that it was my decision in any case. I didn’t want Rory to feel responsible.’

‘And now you’ve changed your mind about that too?’

Martha eyed him warily. There was a current of hostility in his voice that she didn’t understand. She wasn’t sure if it was women generally that he disliked or just single mothers, but there was certainly something about her that was rubbing him up the wrong way.

It was a pity, she thought. She had warmed to him while he was telling her about the project. Striding about the office, the austere face lit with enthusiasm, he had seemed warmer and more accessible somehow. More…well, attractive. She had even begun to think that spending six months with him wouldn’t be so bad after all.

Now she wasn’t so sure.




CHAPTER TWO


MARTHA set her chin. It didn’t matter what Lewis Mansfield was like, or whether he liked her or not. The important thing was to convince him to give her the job. She needed to get out to St Bonaventure, and somehow he had to realise how important it was to her.

She glanced down at her small son. He was why she was here now. ‘When Noah was born…’ she began slowly, only to pause and rethink what she was trying to say. ‘Well, it’s hard to explain to someone who hasn’t had a baby, but my life changed completely. It was as if everything had turned round and the things that had been important before suddenly didn’t matter that much any more. The only thing that really mattered was Noah.

‘I want to give him the things every child needs,’ she went on, picking her words with care. ‘Love, security, support…I can do all of that as a mother, but I can’t be his father. The bigger Noah gets, the more I’ve come to realise that he needs a father as well as me. At the very least, he needs to know who his father is.’

She looked back at Lewis, her gaze very direct. ‘I don’t want Rory to feel that he has to provide any financial support, but I do want to give him the chance to be part of his son’s life, even if it’s only occasional contact.

‘Of course I’m hoping that he’ll want more than that, that he’ll want to see Noah grow up and share his life as part of the family,’ she said, ‘but I’m not setting my heart on that because it might not be right for any of us. But I can’t know any of that until I can find Rory himself and introduce him to Noah and that’s why I need to get to St Bonaventure as soon as I can,’ she finished breathlessly.

Lewis didn’t respond immediately. Instead he came back to sit opposite her and regard her with an indecipherable expression.

‘If it’s so important to you, why don’t you just buy a ticket, go out there and find this guy?’ he asked at last. ‘St Bonaventure is a tiny place. It’s not going to be too hard to track him down. Why complicate matters by getting involved as a nanny?’

‘Because I can’t afford to get there any other way,’ said Martha frankly. ‘You said yourself that St Bonaventure is not a mass market destination for tourists. That means that there are no package deals, and all the flights I’ve looked into are phenomenally expensive, especially when I don’t know how long it would take me to find Rory. I just don’t have that kind of money at the moment.’

She had never met anyone who could use his eyebrows to the effect that Lewis did. One was lifting now, expressing disbelief and disdain in a way no words ever could. ‘I’m no expert,’ he said—and looking at his conventional suit and tie Martha could believe that!—‘but those look like pretty expensive clothes to me.’

His slate-coloured gaze encompassed her soft suede trousers, the beautifully cut shirt and the stylish boots. There was nothing obvious about the way she dressed, but she still managed to ooze glamour. ‘If you can afford to dress like that I’d have thought you could afford a plane ticket.’

‘I bought this outfit a long time before I had Noah,’ said Martha, acknowledging the point. ‘I couldn’t afford any of it now and, to be honest, I wouldn’t buy it even if I could.’ She looked ruefully down at the stains and creases that Lewis obviously couldn’t see from where he was sitting. ‘It’s totally impracticable for looking after a baby!’

‘Presumably when you talked about the great career you had, you didn’t mean being a nanny then?’ he asked sardonically.

‘No. I was a fashion editor for Glitz. You won’t know it,’ she told him before he could say anything, ‘but it’s a glossy magazine for women, and very high profile. I loved my job and I had a good salary, but unfortunately I had a very expensive lifestyle as well.’

Martha sighed a little, remembering how carelessly she had bought shoes and clothes and the latest must-have accessories. The money she had spent on cabs alone would easily have kept her in St Bonaventure for a year.

‘I used to eat out a lot, and had wonderful holidays…I suppose I wasn’t very sensible,’ she admitted, ‘but I never thought about saving. It was just the kind of world where you live for the moment and let the future take care of itself.’

‘Which is all very well until you get to the future.’

‘Exactly,’ she said ruefully.

‘Couldn’t you go back to work if money’s that tight?’

‘I tried after Noah was born, but it was just too difficult. I was so tired that I couldn’t think straight for the first few weeks, and when I missed one meeting too many the editor said that she was sorry but she had to let me go. Which was a nice way of saying that she was sacking me.’

Martha shrugged slightly. ‘I could see her point. I was wandering around like a zombie, and fashion shoots cost a lot of money. You can’t afford to have models like the ones Glitz uses sitting around waiting for the fashion editor to remember what day of the week it is.’

‘Perhaps you should have thought of that before you had a baby,’ said Lewis astringently.

‘I did think about it,’ said Martha, keeping her voice even with an effort. ‘That’s why I didn’t have a baby before, but I don’t regret having Noah for a moment. I don’t want a demanding job that means I have to leave him all day with someone else. I want to be with him while he’s small. I’ve done various bits of freelancing, but it’s not very reliable, and it doesn’t help that I’d saddled myself with a huge mortgage just before I met Rory.’

Martha winced just thinking about the money she owed the bank. ‘It’s a fabulous flat—a loft conversion overlooking the river—but I just can’t afford to live in it now and, anyway, it’s totally unsuitable for a baby. I’ve got in tenants and they’re just covering the mortgage payments, so Noah and I are living in a little studio, but frankly it’s a struggle even to pay the rent on that at the moment.’

‘You could sell the flat that you own. If it’s as smart as you say it is, it ought to realise you some capital.’ Lewis was obviously of a practical turn of mind. Not that surprising in an engineer, now Martha came to think of it.

‘I probably will,’ she said, ‘but I don’t want to make any decision until I’ve seen Rory. I can’t really think about what to do until I’ve done that. I just have the feeling that once I know how he’s going to react everything else will fall into place, so getting to St Bonaventure is a priority for me.’

She met Lewis’s cool gaze steadily. ‘That’s why, when Gill told me that you were going there and needed a nanny, it seemed so perfect.’

‘For you maybe,’ he said with a cynical look. ‘I’m not sure what’s in it for me if you’re going to slope off in search of marine biologists the moment you arrive.’

‘There’d be no question of sloping off, as you call it.’ Martha took a deep breath and forced herself to stay calm. ‘I assume that you would provide a proper contract for six months, and I would certainly abide by it. That would give me plenty of time to find Rory, introduce him to Noah and get him used to the idea of having a son, and he wouldn’t feel rushed into making a decision. If at the end of that time he wanted us to stay, fine. If not, we would just come back with you and Viola. At least I would have done everything I could to make contact between Noah and his father.’

Viola was getting bored. She started to squirm and Martha lifted her on to her knee, distracting her with another toy from her bag. Satisfied, Viola dropped the rabbit that she had been sucking and grabbed the rubber ring instead.

This left the rabbit free to be handed quickly to Noah, whose little mouth was turning ominously down as he watched his mother giving his rival all the attention. He accepted the rabbit, but very much with the air of one who was prepared to be diverted for now, but would be returning to the main point at issue before long.

Lewis watched Martha juggling the two babies and his brows drew together. ‘It’s just not practicable for you to be a nanny,’ he said brusquely. ‘You can’t manage two at once.’

‘Why not? Neither of them are crying, are they?’ asked Martha, praying that Viola and Noah would stay quiet a little while longer.

‘Not yet,’ said Lewis. ‘Jiggling them on your knee and giving them toys is all very well for five minutes, but what happens when both of them are screaming and need to be fed?’

‘Mothers with twins manage.’

‘Maybe they’re used to it.’

‘I’d get used to it too,’ she said defiantly, but Lewis only scowled.

‘Look at you,’ he said, feeling cross and disgruntled without being sure why. It was something to do with the way she sat there and looked at him with those dark eyes. Something to do with the straightness of her back and the determined tilt of her chin.

‘You look as if you haven’t slept for a year,’ he said roughly. ‘I’m surprised you can cope with one baby, let alone think about looking after two.’

She looked as if she could do with six months in the sun, fattening herself up and catching up on sleep, he thought, and then caught himself. Martha Shaw wasn’t his responsibility. It wasn’t his fault she was tired. She had chosen to have a baby on her own, and it was too late to complain that it was tiring now.

Although she hadn’t actually complained at all, had she? Lewis pushed the thought brusquely away. No, it was out of the question.

‘I don’t want to find myself looking after you and Noah as well as Viola,’ he told her.

Martha wasn’t ready to give up yet. ‘I’m tougher than I look,’ she said. ‘I’ve been looking after a baby for the past eight months and I think I’ve probably got a better idea than you of what’s involved,’ she added, with just a squeeze of acid in her voice. ‘I’m sure I would be able to cope.’

It went against the grain to plead with Lewis Mansfield, but if she had to she would. ‘Please take me with you. I’d love Viola and look after her as if she really was Noah’s twin.’ She hesitated. How could she make him see how perfectly their needs matched? ‘I think we’re made for each other,’ she said.

Wrong thing to say. One of Lewis’s eyebrows shot up and, hearing her own words, Martha could have bitten her tongue out. And then she had to go and make matters worse by actually blushing!

‘You know what I mean,’ she muttered.

‘I know what you mean,’ Lewis agreed dryly as he got to his feet again. Really, the man was as restless as a cat. He took another turn around the room, his shoulders hunched in a way that was already oddly familiar.

‘I should tell you that I only agreed to see you as a favour to Gill,’ he said brusquely at last. ‘Oddly enough, she was very insistent that you were just what I needed too.’

‘I think I could be,’ said Martha, determined not to repeat her mistake and forcing herself to sound suitably cool, as if the idea that they might be made for each other as lovers had never even crossed her mind.

Lewis wasn’t so sure. He couldn’t help thinking about what it would be like to share a house with her, to spend the next six months with those dark eyes and that mouth. It would be too distracting, too unsettling, too…too everything.

And she was totally unsuitable as a nanny anyway, he reminded himself. There was no way he was going to risk it.

‘Perhaps I should have told Gill that I was seeing someone else as well,’ he said, pushing away the thought of living with Martha for six months. ‘The agency that supplied Viola’s current nanny sent along someone this morning and I have to say that she seemed very suitable. Eve is a trained nanny, and she is obviously very…’

Dull was the word that leapt to mind. Lewis forced it down.

‘…very efficient,’ he said instead.

‘Babies don’t need efficiency,’ said Martha before she could help herself. ‘They need love and warmth and routine.’

‘Eve comes with very good references so I’m sure she understands exactly what babies need,’ said Lewis austerely. ‘She’s…’

Dull, insisted that wayward voice inside him.

‘…a sensible girl…’

Dull.

‘…and she doesn’t have any other commitments…’

Dull.

‘…so she can concentrate on Viola in a way that you wouldn’t be able to,’ he went on with an edge of desperation.

Yes, but she’s dull.

‘I need to bear in mind too that I’ll be sharing a house with Viola’s nanny for six months, so it’s important to give the job to someone compatible. Eve seems a quiet, level-headed…’

Dull.

‘…reliable person, and I’m sure she’ll adapt to the routine out there very quickly.’

Yes, and she’ll be very, very dull.

But she wouldn’t have dark, disturbing eyes and she wouldn’t put him on edge just by sitting there the way Martha did. It would be much better that way.

Dull, but better.

‘I see.’ Martha got to her feet and handed Lewis his niece, who glared at him.

I’m with you, Viola, thought Martha wryly.

‘In that case, there doesn’t seem much more to say.’

Determined not to let him see how desperately disappointed she was, she bent to retrieve the toys, stuffed them in her bag, and scooped up Noah. ‘Thank you for taking the time to see me,’ she said in a cool voice.

Lewis held Viola warily. He could feel her small body revving up to protest as Martha turned to go and she realised that she was going to be abandoned.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said abruptly, as if the words had been forced out of him against his will. ‘I just don’t think it would have worked out.’

Dispiritedly, Martha scraped up another spoonful of purée and offered it to Noah, who pressed his lips together and shook his head from side to side in a very determined manner.

Rather like Lewis Mansfield, in fact.

‘Why,’ asked Martha severely, ‘are you men all being so difficult at the moment?’

Noah didn’t reply, but he didn’t open his mouth either. He could be very stubborn when he wanted.

Also like Lewis Mansfield.

With a sigh, Martha put the spoon in her own mouth and returned to her perusal of the small ads. She had reluctantly decided that she was going to have to put St Bonaventure on the back boiler for a while and find herself another job. The trouble with most part-time jobs was that they didn’t pay enough to cover the costs of child care, but she was seriously considering going for a post as a housekeeper or a nanny, where she could take Noah with her and save herself the huge cost of renting even this tiny little flat.

Here was a job in Yorkshire…maybe she could apply for that?

Or maybe not, she decided, as she read to the end of the advertisement. That enticing heading should have read: ‘Wanted, any idiot to be overworked and underpaid.’

Martha sucked the spoon glumly and was just turning the page when the phone rang. This would be Liz with her daily phone call to cheer her up.

‘Hi,’ she said, wedging the phone between her shoulder and her ear and not bothering to take the spoon out of her mouth.

‘Is that Martha Shaw?’

Martha nearly choked on the spoon, and the phone slipped from her ear. She had no problem identifying that austere voice, although she was damned if she would give Lewis Mansfield the satisfaction of admitting it.

Hastily rescuing the phone before it fell on the floor, she removed the spoon and cleared her throat.

‘Yes?’ It came out a little croaky, but she didn’t think she sounded too bad.

‘This is Lewis Mansfield.’

‘Yes?’ That was much better. Positively cool.

‘I was wondering if you were still interested in coming out to St Bonaventure to look after Viola,’ he said, and Martha was delighted to hear the reluctance in his voice.

It was obvious that Lewis Mansfield would rather be doing anything than ringing her up, so something must have gone wrong with his oh-so-sensible plans. He must be desperate, in which case there would be no harm in making him grovel a little!

‘I thought you already had the perfect candidate…what was her name again?’

‘Eve,’ said Lewis a little tightly.

‘Ah, yes, Eve. Didn’t she want the job?’

‘She said she did, and I made all the arrangements, but she’s just rung me to say that she doesn’t want to go after all.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Martha, enjoying herself. ‘That doesn’t sound very reliable of her.’

‘The point is,’ said Lewis through gritted teeth, ‘that we were booked to fly out this weekend and I haven’t got the time to re-advertise. If you can be ready to leave then, I’ll get a ticket for you and your baby.’

Martha settled back into her chair and took another spoonful of Noah’s purée. ‘But what about how incompatible you think we are?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You implied it.’

‘Well, we’ll both just have to make an effort.’ Lewis was beginning to sound impatient. ‘I’ve got a job to do, and I won’t be around very much in any case.’

There was a tiny pause. ‘You know, the right answer there was, “Don’t be silly, Martha, I don’t think we’re incompatible at all, I think you’re very nice”,’ said Martha tartly.

Lewis sighed. ‘If you come to St Bonaventure we’re just going to have to get on,’ he said.

‘You make it sound as if it’s going to be a real chore!’ Martha was obscurely hurt. ‘What a pity I can be sensible and reliable and…what was it now?…oh, yes, efficient, like Eve!’

‘The point about Eve was that she didn’t have any other commitments,’ said Lewis, exasperated. ‘I hope that you will be sensible and reliable and efficient—and tougher than you look! You’re going to need to be.’

‘I’m all those things,’ she said sniffily. Shame he hadn’t given her the chance to prove it when he saw her!

‘And, frankly, I’m desperate,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to grovel or pretend that it was you I wanted all along. I haven’t got time to play games. You said you wanted to get out to St Bonaventure,’ he went on crisply, ‘and now I’m offering you the chance. If you take the job I’ll courier round details and tickets to you tomorrow. If you don’t want it, just say so and I’ll make other arrangements.’

He would too. Martha wasn’t prepared to risk it.

‘I’ll take it,’ she said.

Martha sipped her champagne and tried not to be too aware of Lewis sitting at the other end of the row. They had been given the front row in the cabin so that the two babies could sleep in the special cots provided and the other passengers had understandably given them a wide berth, leaving Lewis and Martha with four seats between them.

By tacit consent they had sat at either end of the row, leaving a yawning gap between them. There had been no chance to have a conversation at Heathrow, with all the palaver of checking in double quantities of high chairs and buggies and car seats. Even with most of it in the hold they still had masses of stuff to carry on board and, as both babies were wide awake at the time, they had both been occupied with keeping them happy until it was time to board.

But now Noah and Viola were asleep, the plane was cruising high above the clouds, and there was a low murmur of voices around them as the passengers settled down with a drink and speculated about the meal to come. And Martha was very conscious of the silence pooling between her and Lewis.

She was beginning to feel a bit ridiculous, stuck at one end of the row. They couldn’t have a conversation like this, and it was going to be a long flight.

Making up her mind, she shifted one seat along, although it involved so much balancing of her glass and flipping out and putting away of trays in the arm of the seat, not to mention shifting all the baby paraphernalia from one seat to another, that by the time she was halfway through Martha was already regretting her decision and she felt positively hot and bothered by the time she finally collapsed into the seat.

Lewis was looking at her curiously. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I just thought I should be sociable,’ she said, pushing her hair crossly away from her face. ‘We can hardly shout at each other all the way to Nairobi.’

‘I thought you might appreciate the extra room if you wanted to sleep,’ said Lewis, effectively taking the wind out of Martha’s sails. She hadn’t expected him to have a considerate motive for putting himself as far away from her as possible!

‘We haven’t even had our meal,’ she pointed out. ‘I don’t want to sleep yet.’

Uncomfortably aware that she sounded defensive, if not downright sulky, she forced a smile. ‘This just seems like a good opportunity to get to know each other. We’re going to be spending six months together, after all. Besides, it sounds as if the flight from Nairobi is going to be in a much smaller plane than this, so we’re probably going to have to sit right next to each other on that. We might as well get used to the idea of being in close proximity!’

‘We’re certainly not going to get any closer than that,’ said Lewis grumpily.

My, he was a charmer, wasn’t he? Martha sighed inwardly.

‘Look, I’ll move back if you feel I’m invading your personal space,’ she said huffily, putting her glass down and making to unfasten her seat belt.

‘For God’s sake, stay where you are,’ he said irritably, and then he sighed.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said in a different voice, pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘I’ve been very…preoccupied recently. Things are hectic in the office, half our projects seem to be in crisis, the negotiations for the St Bonaventure port have stalled, nothing’s getting done. And then there’s all this business with Savannah…’ He blew out his cheeks wearily.

Martha couldn’t help but sympathise. She had read in the gossip columns about the tempestuous scenes his sister had been throwing, the latest of which had resulted in the police being called to her house. In the end, Lewis had taken her to the clinic himself, running the gauntlet of the reporters at the gates who’d banged on the car windows and shouted questions about the most intimate details of his sister’s life.

No wonder he was tired.

‘My temper’s short at the best of times,’ he admitted, ‘and I know I’ve probably been taking it out on everyone else. My PA couldn’t wait to get rid of me yesterday!’

His mouth twisted ironically and he glanced at Martha. ‘You’re right, we should probably get to know each other better. I should have made more of an effort earlier.’

‘You’ve had a lot on your mind,’ said Martha a little uncomfortably.

Damn, just when she had got used to him being grumpy and disagreeable he had to go and throw her off balance by suddenly acting human! How difficult of him.

‘Do you think we could start again?’ he asked, making things even worse.

What could she say? ‘Of course,’ said Martha and held out her hand across the empty seat between them. ‘I’m Martha Shaw. How do you do?’

The corner of Lewis’s mouth quirked. ‘Nice to meet you, Martha Shaw,’ he said gravely, and reached across to shake her hand.

Martha wished he hadn’t done that. The fingers wrapped around hers were warm and comfortingly strong, and the press of his palm sent a disquieting shiver down her spine.

Pulling her hand away, she took a steadying gulp of her champagne. It was too sweet, and she hadn’t really wanted it anyway. She had written enough articles about the dehydrating effects of long haul flights and how the best thing to do was just to drink plenty of water, but when Lewis had tersely asked for a bottle of water himself something perverse in her had made her turn to the flight attendant on her side of the plane and accept a glass of free champagne with a brilliant smile.

It had been silly, and it felt even sillier now that Lewis was turning out to be so unexpectedly approachable. Really, he was being quite nice.

So there was no reason why she shouldn’t be able to think of something to say, was there?

No reason other than the tingle of her palm. And the fact that, even though she was staring desperately at the tiny plane heading steadily south across the map of the world on the screen above the travel cots, all she could see was his mouth, with its corner turned up in amusement, and its hint of warmth and humour.

No reason at all, then.

‘So, what…’ Mortified by the squeakiness of her voice, Martha cleared her throat and started again. ‘What happened to Eve?’

‘Eve?’

‘The nanny who fitted your job description so perfectly,’ she reminded him. ‘You know, the one who was so reliable and sensible and efficient and lacking in commitments?’

‘Oh. Yes.’ Lewis had forgotten about Eve for a minute there.

He felt a little light-headed for some reason, which wasn’t like him. It definitely wasn’t anything to do with Martha’s smile, or the depth of her eyes, or the sooty sweep of those lashes against her cheek. Obviously not.

Lewis looked at the glass of water in his hand. He couldn’t even blame the feeling on alcohol. Must be the cabin pressure, he decided.

‘Apparently Eve fell in love,’ he said.

Martha shifted round in her seat to stare at him in surprise. ‘In love?’

‘So she said.’ There was a tinge of distaste in Lewis’s voice. ‘I interviewed her on Monday, she accepted the job on Tuesday, on Wednesday night she met some man in a club and she rang me on Thursday morning to say that she was going to spend the rest of her life with him so she didn’t want to come to St Bonaventure after all, thank you very much.’

‘Really?’ Martha laughed. ‘So she turned out to be not so sensible after all?’

‘You could say that. Turning down a perfectly good job to invest everything in a man you’ve only known for a matter of hours…it’s a ridiculous thing to do!’

‘It won’t seem like that if she fell in love with him.’

‘How can she be in love with him?’ demanded Lewis with a return to his old acerbic tone. ‘She doesn’t know anything about this man.’

A flight attendant was hovering, offering Martha more champagne, but she shook her head. She wasn’t going to compound her mistake. ‘Could I have some water?’ she asked as she put her empty glass back on the tray. Now who was the sensible one? she thought wryly.

‘Ah, so you’re not a believer in love at first sight,’ she said with an ironic look. ‘Now, why does that not surprise me?’

‘Are you?’

Martha thanked the flight attendant for her water before turning back to him. ‘I used to be,’ she told him.

He hadn’t expected her to say that. ‘What changed your mind?’ he asked curiously.

‘Falling in love at first sight and discovering that it didn’t last,’ she said with a sad little smile. Her eyes took on a faraway look as she remembered how it had been. ‘When I met Paul it was like every cliché you ever heard. Our eyes met across a crowded room, and I knew—or thought I knew—that he was the only man for me. We were soul mates. I spent the rest of the night with him, and we moved in together a week later. At least we didn’t go as far as getting married,’ she joked.

Her description of how she had fallen madly in love coincided with a twinge that made Lewis shift a little irritably in his seat. Maybe it wasn’t cabin pressure? Maybe he was coming down with something after all?

‘So what happened?’

Martha sighed. ‘Oh, the usual…day to day living, routine, stressful careers. It’s hard to keep up the magic against all that. Paul and I did our best, but the enchantment wore off eventually and, when it did, there was nothing left,’ she said sadly.

‘We carried on for a while, but it wasn’t the same. Splitting up was awful. Somehow the fact that we’d started with such high expectations made the squabbling even worse, and everything ended up feeling much more bitter than if we’d never had those dreams at all.’

For a moment her shoulders slumped as she relived the misery of those last horrible months with Paul, and then she straightened and made a determined effort to push the memories away. ‘I decided then that I wasn’t going to go through that again. A successful relationship needs to be based on more than infatuation.’

Lewis lifted an eyebrow. ‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning that I think it’s better to be pragmatic than romantic when it comes to sharing your life with someone. I’m looking for friendship and respect and a shared attitude to the practicalities of life now. They’re going to lead to a happier and more lasting relationship than any amount of physical attraction—although that always helps, of course!’

‘So is that what you had with Noah’s father…what was his name again?…Rory?’ Lewis was horrified to hear the faintest tinge of jealousy in his voice.

Fortunately, Martha didn’t seem to have noticed. She was shaking her head.

‘No.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘To be honest, I think it was more a case of lust at first sight! I met Rory at a party. It wasn’t long after I’d broken up with Paul and my confidence had taken a knock. I was feeling my age too. Suddenly I seemed to be hurtling into middle age with nothing to look forward to.

‘And then I saw Rory,’ she said, remembering. ‘He’s quite a bit younger than me and incredibly good-looking. We were all pale and pasty after a London winter and he’d just breezed in from the Indian Ocean, all blond and tanned and gorgeous! When he walked into that party I swear every woman in the room sucked in her breath and her stomach! Rory could have had his pick. There were lots of really pretty girls there, even a few models, but he spent the entire evening with me. I suppose I was flattered.’

Lewis heard the undercurrent of secret amazement and pleasure she had felt that night in her voice, and wondered if she really didn’t know how attractive she was. Personally, he wasn’t surprised that Rory had singled her out. The intelligence and character in her face more than compensated for the fine lines round her eyes, and that lush mouth was much more tantalising than the perfect body or smooth, untried expression of a twenty-year-old.

‘Rory was just what I needed after Paul,’ Martha was saying. ‘He made me feel desirable again. It wasn’t love at first sight, no, but we did get on really well in spite of the difference in our ages. If we’d had longer together, who knows? Maybe we could have built a good long-term relationship but, as it was, he had to go back to St Bonaventure. We both knew that it was never going to be a permanent thing, so we just enjoyed it for what it was—a lot of fun.’

Lewis was getting a bit tired of hearing about Rory, who was so attractive and such fun and no doubt a real stud in bed, too, he thought sourly. ‘Did the fun include getting pregnant?’ he asked disapprovingly.

‘No, that was an accident,’ said Martha. ‘We’d been to Paris for the weekend—Rory had never been and I used to go to all the fashion shows—so we thought we’d treat ourselves to a great meal on our last night, and I had oysters. Big mistake! I was on the pill, but those oysters definitely disagreed with me. I had an upset stomach for a couple of days after we got back and…well, it happens.’

She shrugged. ‘A touch of food poisoning isn’t the best of reasons to start a family, I know, but I wouldn’t change Noah for the world now. Anyway,’ she went on with a sideways glance at Lewis, ‘you don’t need to worry that I’ll do an Eve and throw out all your arrangements by deciding I have met the man of my dreams on St Bonaventure. I’m too much of a realist about love now for that, and even if I wasn’t quite frankly I’m too tired to fall in love at the moment!’




CHAPTER THREE


LEWIS’S hard gaze encompassed her pale face and the circles under her eyes. ‘You look it,’ he said roughly.

‘Well, I certainly wouldn’t recommend being a single mother to anyone who relies on her sleep,’ said Martha with a wry smile.

‘You must have known it would be hard work.’

She nodded. ‘Yes, I did, but it’s like everyone always says…you can say that you know looking after a baby will be tiring, but until you’re actually doing it you have no conception of what sleep deprivation does to you or of just what “tired” can mean!’

Lewis hunched a shoulder. ‘If it’s that bad why do women go on and on about how they want to have babies?’

‘Because the joy you get from your child is worth every sleepless night,’ said Martha, leaning forward to stroke Noah’s cheek. ‘It’s worth every day you get through like a zombie, every hour you spend worrying about whether he’s healthy or happy or how you’re going to afford to give him everything he needs.’

Lewis’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘That sounds all very fine, but in my experience it’s a lot more basic than that. I think a lot of women have children to fulfil their own needs. They think about how much they want to be loved or valued, not about how the child will feel.

‘Half the time they have a baby just because it’s fashionable,’ he said contemptuously. ‘A baby is the latest designer accessory. You can dress it up in rinky-dinky little outfits and show it off, which is fine until the fashion changes and you’ve got to keep up, and then it’s Oh, dear, now what am I going to do with the baby?’

‘Give it to my brother to look after?’ suggested Martha, unsurprised at the bitterness in his voice if that was what had happened with Savannah.

‘Or a nanny or a mother-in-law or anyone else you can find to deal with all that messy, boring stuff as long as it doesn’t stop you doing whatever you want to do!’

There was a little silence. Martha had the feeling that she was treading on dangerous ground. ‘Why did you agree to look after Viola if you feel that way?’ she asked cautiously after a moment.

‘What could I do?’ Lewis replied, hunching a shoulder. ‘I had my sister in hysterics, the baby crying…’

He shuddered, remembering the scene. ‘Savannah’s out of control at the moment. She’s behaving very badly, but she’s still in no state to look after a baby properly. Viola’s father is in the States at the moment—or he was last time I heard. Half the time he’s too out of it to remember that he’s got a daughter, let alone to look after her, and Viola certainly can’t look after herself.’ He sighed. ‘I’m the only one who can be responsible for her at the moment. She’s just a baby. I couldn’t just say that she wasn’t my problem.’

Martha studied his profile, oddly moved by his matter-of-fact attitude. He seemed so hard when you first met him, she thought, remembering how off-putting she had found that austere, unsmiling face and the uncompromising air of toughness and self-sufficiency, but underneath it all he was obviously a kind man, and a decent one.

Kindness and decency weren’t qualities she had valued much when she was caught up in the frenetic whirl of activity at work and a hectic social life, but it didn’t take long to learn how important they were when life became more difficult.

Knowing that Lewis had them made him seem a much nicer man.

And a much more attractive one.

The thought slid unbidden into Martha’s mind and she jerked her eyes away from his face.

Don’t even think about it, she told herself. It’s one thing to realise that Lewis might not be quite as unpleasant as you thought, quite another to start thinking of him as attractive. He’s your employer and you’re going out to find Rory. Don’t complicate the issue.

She took a sip of her water. Maybe she should have stuck to the champagne after all.

‘You must be very close to your sister if you’re the one she turns to for help,’ she said after a while.

Lewis grimaced. ‘It’s partly my own fault Savannah is the way she is,’ he said. ‘Her mother left when she was only four, so she never had an example of good parenting. Michaela—her mother—was an heiress. She was very pretty and very spoilt, just like Savannah. After she divorced my father she went off to the States, but she was killed in a road accident a couple of years later. All her money was put in a trust fund for when Savannah was eighteen, and Savannah has been running through her inheritance ever since.’

‘I didn’t realise that she was your half-sister,’ said Martha, wriggling round in her seat so that it was easier to talk.

‘She’s fourteen years younger than me, so I wasn’t around all that much after I went to university. Poor kid, she didn’t have much of a childhood, looked after by a succession of nannies and then packed off to boarding school. My father was never much of a hands-on parent at the best of times,’ he added dryly, ‘and once his business started going downhill he withdrew into himself even more. I think he forgot about Savannah’s existence most of the time.

‘I tried to do what I could for Savannah in the holidays, and when our father died she made her base with me, but she was sixteen by then and had got in with a crowd of wild friends.’ Lewis sighed. ‘I was always bailing her out of trouble. I blame myself sometimes. Maybe if I’d been firmer with her she’d be less spoilt now.’

‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Martha stoutly. ‘It’s hard enough for perfect, supportive parents to deal with ordinary adolescents, let alone troubled ones. You can only have been a young man. I don’t see how you could have possibly done more than you did.’

Lewis looked a little taken aback by her support. ‘Helen was always telling me I should be stricter with Savannah.’

A few tiny bristles went up on the back of Martha’s neck. ‘Helen?’ she asked in a carefully casual voice.

‘My girlfriend.’

Girlfriend? Martha was alarmed by the sinking feeling in her stomach. Why should she be so disappointed…? No, no, scrub disappointed, she told herself. That wasn’t the right word at all.

Surprised, that was better. Why should she be so surprised that Lewis had a girlfriend? She guessed he was in his late thirties. He was intelligent, competent, solvent, and even not bad-looking—if you liked the dour, steely type, that was. Apparently straight, and nothing obviously kinky about him. Of course he had a girlfriend.

‘We were together for years,’ Lewis was saying, ‘but she used to get very fed up when Savannah turned up drunk when we had friends round, or rang me in the middle of the night.’

Past tense. Phew! Martha relaxed, only to remember that if she hadn’t been disappointed there was no reason to feel relieved, was there?

Unaware of Martha’s convoluted mental exertions, Lewis was brooding about his sister. ‘I’m sure Helen’s right,’ he said. ‘I probably do encourage Savannah to depend on me too much, but in spite of all that money she hasn’t had an easy time of things. Yes, she’s been spoilt, but she’s very insecure and I can’t just turn her away when she needs help, can I? She can behave appallingly sometimes, but when it comes down to it she’s still my little sister—’

He broke off suddenly. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he demanded.

‘I’m just thinking that it’s a shame that you don’t have any children,’ said Martha, appalled to find herself blushing slightly. She hadn’t meant to stare at him like that. ‘Not many men have such a strong sense of family. Don’t you want a family of your own?’

‘No,’ he said, his face hardening. ‘Savannah’s been quite enough family to deal with, thank you.’

‘It would be different if you had your own children.’

He shook his head. ‘I wouldn’t risk it. There’s too much grief when things go wrong.’

‘And so much happiness when they go right,’ countered Martha.

‘You said yourself that having a baby is hard work and you spend most of your time exhausted.’

‘Yes, but I also said that it was worth it. And I’ve been trying to manage on my own. It wouldn’t be like that for you.’

‘That’s what Helen used to say. “It won’t be like that for us.”’ Lewis shook his head. ‘I didn’t see why it should be different for us.’

‘You’re…um…not together any more, then?’ asked Martha.

‘No.’ He glanced at her and then away. ‘Helen and I had what I thought was an ideal relationship. She’s a beautiful, smart, very talented lady.’

Oh, good, thought Martha. The ex from hell.

Although what was it to her, after all? Martha scowled down into her glass of water. Water! What was wrong with her? She had been the ultimate party girl once, the queen of champagne sippers.

‘We were together a long time,’ Lewis was saying. ‘I travel a lot, and she was busy training as a barrister.’

Excellent, a barrister! So Helen was not just beautiful and smart but a serious person. Not the kind of woman who stood around sipping champagne, then.

Oblivious to Martha’s mental running commentary, Lewis was still telling her about his relationship. ‘We both had our own lives, but we enjoyed the time we spent together and everything was perfect until one day she woke up with her hormones in overdrive.’

His mouth turned down at the edges, remembering. ‘That’s when she started lobbying for a baby. It wasn’t about getting married for Helen. She just wanted a child. “This is the right time,” she kept saying.’

‘Well, maybe it was for her,’ said Martha, beginning to feel a twinge of sympathy for Helen. She might have been intimidatingly clever and beautiful, but she obviously hadn’t got very far with Lewis.

‘It wasn’t the right time for her career,’ he said astringently. ‘She’d worked incredibly hard and had just qualified. She should have been thinking about getting experience, not babies. I couldn’t believe that she would even consider chucking it all in.’





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