Her Boss's Baby Plan
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.’