The Baby Plan
‘Have you worked for Capitol Cars for long?’ she asked, distracting herself from the disturbing direction in which her thoughts were heading.
‘Twenty years.’
‘Really?’ His cheeks had moved so that she knew he was smiling, and even though he’d adjusted his mirror so that she could no longer see his mouth she remembered the lazy lift to one corner, the deep crease that had appeared like magic down his cheek as he had swept open the door for her. He was a heartbreaker and no mistake. And undoubtedly married; his kind always were. Forget it, Amanda, she told herself firmly. Stick to the plan. ‘You must enjoy the work, then.’
‘I suppose I must.’ She saw him glance at the mirror. Was he looking at her, or the traffic behind them? With his eyes hidden behind dark glasses it was impossible to tell. ‘The tips are good, too. I was given a couple of theatre tickets the other day.’ He mentioned the new musical that had opened to rave reviews a few weeks earlier.
‘That’s quite some tip. I’ve heard the tickets are like gold dust.’ Then she realised that he might think she was angling for an invitation. Maybe she was … ‘What was it like?’ she asked, quickly.
‘I’ve no idea.’
‘You don’t like the theatre?’ Or maybe his wife didn’t like the theatre. Not that he was wearing a ring. But then, these days it didn’t have to be marriage. A good-looking man in his late thirties, early forties was scarcely likely to be living alone. Not if he was straight. Oh, please let him be straight!
‘They’re for next week. What about you?’
‘What? Oh, the theatre.’ She swallowed. ‘Love it,’ she said, her heart leaping into overdrive as she anticipated his next question. He didn’t ask it. Definitely spoken for, she told herself as he mentioned a couple of plays he’d seen. Not that it mattered. Right now she needed to keep her life as simple as possible. Complications in the form of a sexy chauffeur were not in the plan. ‘I saw that,’ she interrupted. ‘It was incredible. Did you see …?’
Their tastes seemed to have a pleasant syncronicity. He might have been a dockland brat but he obviously appreciated good theatre. ‘I went to Pavarotti-in-the-Park, a couple of years ago,’ he said, after a while. ‘It rained all through, but it was worth it. Do you like that sort of stuff?’
Amanda had avoided mentioning opera, which would teach her to be such a damned snob, she thought. ‘Yes. I was there under my umbrella.’ Then, in for a penny, she thought. ‘I like the ballet, too.’
He wrinkled up his battered nose. ‘No. Sorry. There’s passion in opera. Ballet …’ He left her to fill in the blank.
‘Maybe you just haven’t seen the right ballet,’ she persisted.
‘Maybe.’ He sounded doubtful. ‘I like football, though.’
‘I think I’ll stick to ballet, thanks all the same.’
She saw his jaw lift in a smile. ‘Maybe you should try it before you judge.’
Touché. ‘What about your wife?’
Damn! She hadn’t meant to say that. Now he would know she was fishing.
‘My wife?’ He paused as they approached road-works, concentrated on dealing with a busy contra-flow of traffic.
‘Does she like football?’ Amanda held her breath. Her heart stopped beating.
‘I’ve never met a woman who does,’ he said. So? What did that mean? As if she didn’t know. ‘We’re almost there,’ he said, as they threaded through the cones and down the sliproad. ‘It looks like you’ll be on time after all.’
‘Wonderful.’ Fine. Perfect. Her head continued to churn out adjectives, none of which were wonderful, or fine, or perfect. In fact every one of them would have had Beth’s eyebrows glued to the ceiling.
For some minutes they sped through thickly wooded lanes, conversation at an end. Amanda, finding it essential to do something with her hands, reknotted the silk scarf at her throat, closed her laptop, gathered her case. By the time Daniel stopped in front of the portico of one of the most expensive hotels in England, she was ready to step out of the car and walk away. It was only determination to prove to herself that she was not desperate to escape that kept her in her seat, waiting for him to open the door for her.
Daniel slipped off the dark glasses, tucked them into his breast pocket, then walked around to open the door. High heels and gravel were a treacherous mix, and he offered his hand as she swung her legs out of the car. She placed her cool fingers on his without hesitation and straightened with all the poise of a model. All part of the ‘Garland Girls’ training, no doubt. ‘We’ve made it with two minutes to spare. You won’t get your wrist slapped by the dragon lady, after all,’ he said.
Only a man could be that patronising, Amanda decided, then amended the thought to a married man. A married man whose strong, work-hardened fingers were curled protectively about her own.
She very carefully removed her hand from his and glanced at her wristwatch to check the time. ‘Thank you, Daniel,’ she said, formally.
‘My pleasure, Miss Fleming.’ He moved to close the car door. ‘I’ll see you this evening.’
‘Will you?’ Her breath stilled in expectation.
‘At five.’
Of course. Why else would he see her? He had a wife. It was just as well. It wasn’t as if she needed him. Not for hard-to-get theatre tickets, not for anything. She could get her own tickets for any show in town, and all she had to do was click her fingers and half a dozen men would be fighting to lend her an arm, and anything else she wanted, for the evening.
Unfortunately she had never been able to work up much enthusiasm for any man who could be brought to heel like an eager puppy with his tongue hanging out, which was why she was making her own arrangements for the ‘anything else’.
But right now she was the one with her tongue dragging on the floor and it was definitely time to haul it back in.
‘I’ll try not to keep you waiting again,’ she said briskly, and walked into the hotel without a backward glance.
Daniel watched Mandy Fleming walk away from him. It wasn’t exactly a hardship. Those long legs moved her body along in the way a woman should be moved, slow and sexy. A woman’s walk said a lot about her. Mandy Fleming’s said confidence, style. But that straight back told him something else. She was feeling decidedly put out that he hadn’t asked her to go to the theatre with him. She’d have said no, but she’d expected to be asked. And he smiled to himself. How did that old saying go? Make ‘em laugh, make ‘em cry, make ‘em wait? He didn’t have much time for men who made women cry, but the other two … His smile broadened as he drove towards the gates of the hotel. Like riding a bicycle.
The morning dragged, endlessly. The afternoon was, if anything, worse, and Amanda had a hard time keeping herself focused as she gave her own presentation on the benefits of employing temporary staff. Just the slightest lapse in concentration and her mind was wandering off to dwell on smoky blue eyes and broad shoulders, good hands and a sexy smile, all carried on two well-muscled legs.
Two well-muscled, married legs.
CHAPTER TWO
DANIEL headed for the airport, picked up his passenger, delivered him to his hotel in Piccadilly and drove back to the garage. The traffic was a nightmare but he was working on automatic, his head full of Mandy Fleming.
How long had it been since a woman had stayed in his head for more than five minutes? How long had it been since he couldn’t wait to renew the acquaintance? But then Miss Fleming was one stylish lady. Those legs. That mouth.
His brows drew together as his thoughts strayed to the way she dressed. She had expensive tastes for a secretary. Even a top-of-the-range, seriously expensive Garland Agency secretary who merited a chauffeur-driven car.
Yet there had been something in her voice, something in her smile that had made his skin prickle with excitment. And the air had positively crackled with electricity when she’d put her hand on his for that briefest of touches. Oh, she’d been cool, her back ramrod-straight, but he knew she’d felt it too. The care with which she had removed her fingers from his had been too studied for anything else.
Then he pulled a face. Mandy Fleming wasn’t the kind of woman to be interested in a chauffeur. Well-educated, lovely to look at, she was the kind of secretary who would have her eyes firmly fixed on the boss rather than one of the bit-players. The thought brought an ironic smile to his lips, a smile that quickly faded.
Things had been so straightforward when he had been struggling to make a living with a one-car business. If a girl had smiled at him then he’d been sure that it wasn’t his money she was smiling at. All that had changed the day he’d bought a second car and taken on his first employee.
He pulled into the valeting area. ‘Any news from the hospital, Bob?’
‘It’s a girl, boss. Mother and baby doing well.’ There was nothing wrong with the words, just something about the way Bob said them that alerted him to trouble.
‘So what’s the problem?’ he asked.
Bob didn’t lift his gaze from the coach-built body-work he was stroking to an eye-dazzling shine; he simply jerked his grey head in the direction of the office. ‘Sadie arrived about half an hour ago. She’s in the office.’
Dan said something short and scatological.
‘It’s not half-term is it?’
‘No.’
The older man straightened, wadded his duster, squinted along the gleaming bonnet. ‘Thought not.’
No one was eager to meet his eye as he strode through the yard and into the office. As he set eyes on his daughter, he could see why.
She was sitting in his chair with her knee-high Doc Martens propped defiantly upon his desk. Her clothes, black to a stitch, could only have come from some charity shop, and her hair, shoulder-length and gleaming chestnut the last time he had seen her, had been cropped and dyed the kind of black from which no light escaped. Her face, in contrast, was dead white, her eyes rimmed with heavy black lines, her nails painted to match. She looked as if she was auditioning for the role of Morticia Addams but had forgotten the glamour, and it was all he could do to prevent himself from flinching. Since that was undoubtedly the effect she was striving to achieve, he made the effort.
He’d hoped that this was simply a day-trip, an excursion, a little French leave from the boarding school that charged a queen’s ransom to turn the daughters of those who could afford the fees into the very best they could be, academically and socially—and, in his daughter’s case, were fighting a losing battle. One look was all it had taken to quell any such notion.
‘Mercedes,’ he murmured, acknowledging her presence as he helped himself to coffee from the machine his secretary kept permanently on the go. Sadie hated being called that. She knew as well as he did that her name had been Vickie’s idea of a joke, a constant reminder that he’d had to cancel the Mercedes he’d had on order when he’d discovered that he was about to become a father. But right now he wasn’t in the mood to indulge his daughter with pet names. ‘I didn’t realise you had a holiday.’ He lifted her boot-clad feet from his desk and dropped them to the floor before turning his diary round to check the entries against the date. ‘No, you’re not here. It’s not like Karen to make a mistake—’
‘I didn’t think I had to make an appointment to see my own father.’ Sadie pushed the chair back and stood up. Dear God, she seemed to grow six inches each time he saw her. Guilt suggested that was because he didn’t see her often enough. But that was her choice. Apart from a grudging week at the cottage, she’d spent the entire summer with school-friends.
‘You don’t. Just lately it’s been the other way around.’
‘Yes, well, that’s all about to change. I’ve been suspended from school,’ she declared defiantly. ‘And you might as well know, I’ve no intention of going back.’ He made no comment. ‘You can’t make me.’
He was well aware of that fact. She was sixteen, and if she refused to go back to school there was precious little he could do about it except point out the pitfalls of cutting short her education.
‘You’ve re-sits in November,’ he reminded her calmly. The expletive that told him what he could with his re-sits would have earned him boxed ears from his mother at that age. But then Sadie didn’t have a mother, at least not one who cared to be reminded that she had a daughter rapidly approaching womanhood, so he ignored the bad language, as he had ignored her appearance. She was doing her level best to shock him, make him angry. He was both, but he knew better than to show it. ‘You won’t be able to do anything without English and maths.’
‘You didn’t bother about exams—’
‘Nobody cared what I did, Sadie. Does Mrs Warburton know where you are?’ He mentioned her headmistress before she could point out that her mother didn’t care much about her own firstborn, either.
‘No. I was sent to my room to wait until someone could spare the time to bring me home. They probably think I’m still there.’ She threw back her head and laughed. ‘They’ll be running around like headless chickens when they realise I’ve gone.’
He pressed the intercom. ‘Karen, call Mrs Warburton at Dower House and let her know that Sadie is with me.’
‘Yes, Dan.’
‘Then will you organise some flowers and fruit for Brian’s wife—’
‘I’ve already taken care of it. And Ned Gresham’s agreed to come in and cover for him.’ Karen might not have the glamour of a Garland Girl, but she was their equal in every other way. Dan recalled Mandy’s smile, slightly parted lips, the way her fingers had felt as they had rested briefly on his and the way his skin had tightened at the contact. Not quite every way, which was probably just as well. A sexy secretary combined with a garage full of impressionable drivers and mechanics was nothing short of a recipe for disaster. ‘Do you want me to write him in for the five o’clock pick-up from The Beeches?’ She didn’t say, Now that Sadie’s arrived. She didn’t need to.
With just a touch of regret, he surrendered the memory, the anticipated pleasure … But not to Ned Gresham. With his public school accent and chiselled good looks, the man thought he was God’s gift to women. A lot of women thought that too. The idea of him flirting with Mandy Fleming … ‘No. Ask Bob to do it.’ He kept his finger on the button for a moment. ‘Tell him he can take Miss Fleming home rather than back to the Garland offices if she prefers.’
Karen laughed. ‘Pretty, was she?’
‘Simple public relations, Karen. Please the secretary and you’ve got the boss.’
‘And if Miss Fleming lives on the other side of London?’
‘She’ll be even more impressed and Bob will enjoy the overtime.’
‘She was that pretty?’
‘I didn’t notice.’ His lie was rewarded with the disbelieving snort it merited before he flicked the switch. Dan straightened and looked at his daughter, remembering the pretty child she had been, seeing the lovely woman she would become once she stopped trying to hurt him, hurt herself—but only because her mother wasn’t around to take the abuse in person. ‘Come on,’ he said.
‘I’m not going back,’ she repeated stubbornly.
‘I heard you, Sadie. I’m not taking you back to school, but I’m not leaving you to run around London on your own. If you’re not going back to school you’re going to have to work for a living.’
‘Work?’ Sadie’s careless certainty, the belief that she was the one calling the shots, wavered. That gave Dan hope.
‘You leave school; you have three choices. If you’ve decided not to do re-sits, college is a non-starter. The alternative is work, and since you’re hardly likely to have employers lining up for the privilege of signing you up, you’ll have to work for me.’ He waited for her reaction. When none was forthcoming he added, ‘Of course you’re welcome to try the Job Centre if you think you can do better?’
‘You said three choices.’
‘You could telephone your mother and see if she’ll offer you a home.’ He had his fingers mentally crossed. The last thing he wanted for Sadie was a lotus-eating existence with her mother. ‘I don’t suppose she would expect you to work for your living.’
Her response left no room for doubt about Sadie’s feelings on the subject. Daniel hadn’t anticipated ever feeling sorry for his ex-wife, yet for a woman to have earned so much scorn from her own daughter would wring sympathy from a stone. ‘No? Well, it’s not too late to change your mind.’ His gaze rested momentarily on her hair. ‘Assuming the suspension is not as permanent as your hair colour.’
‘Read my lips, Dad.’ She pointed a black-painted fingernail at her mouth and said, very slowly and very carefully, ‘I am not going back to school.’
‘Are you going to tell me why? Or are you going to wait for Mrs Warburton’s letter to arrive? I imagine she will write to me.’
‘Yeah.’ Her voice was all careless indifference, but her gaze slid away from him as she stuffed a hand into the pocket of her black leather bomber jacket and tossed a crumpled envlope onto the desk. Not so tough as she would have him believe, his little girl, and his insides turned over; it was all he could do to stop himself from grabbing her and hugging her and telling her that it didn’t matter, that whatever she’d done it didn’t matter because he loved her.
By the time she had gathered herself sufficiently to fix him with a belligerent glare, he was looking out of the window, contemplating the yard as if he had nothing more on his mind than the price of engine oil. He ignored the letter. ‘I’d rather hear it from you.’ His tone was mild, but his heart was beating like a steam pump. ‘Was it drink?’ he prompted. ‘Boys?’ He turned to look at her, his mouth suddenly bonedry. ‘Drugs?’
‘What do you take me for?’
An average teenage girl with more money than was good for her and a desperate need to lash out, to hurt the people who loved her.
‘I’ve been suspended for a week, that’s all.’ Under the white make-up he could have sworn she blushed. ‘For dying my hair, if you must know.’
It had to be relief that made him want to laugh. ‘Just for dying your hair? Mrs Warburton isn’t usually that harsh.’ Surely living with the colour while it grew out would be punishment enough. ‘Is she?’ he demanded sharply, suddenly very sure that she wasn’t telling the whole truth.
Sadie lifted her shoulders in a couldn’t-care-less shrug. ‘Yes, well, when the Warthog had me in her office to haul me over the coals for ‘‘letting down the high standards of Dower House School’’…’ she affected a nasal twang that was a cruel caricature of Mrs Warburton’s aristocratic accent ‘… I suggested it was time she touched up her own roots because the grey was showing.’
He put down his cup, turned away, his lips curled hard against his teeth. ‘I can see how that might not have helped matters,’ he said, when he was sure he wouldn’t betray himself.
‘Hypocritical old cow.’
He was forced to cover his mouth, pretend to cough. ‘Maybe so, but that really wasn’t very kind.’
‘She shouldn’t have made such a big deal about it. Anyone would think I’d had my nose pierced, or something.’
‘That’s banned too, is it?’
‘Everything’s banned. Of course if I’m not going back, I suppose I could—’
‘Your mother had her nose pierced the last time I saw her,’ he said. ‘She was wearing a diamond stud.’
Sadie said nothing; she didn’t have to. Dan knew she wasn’t about to do anything that would make her look more like her mother than she already did. Or had done, until she’d dyed her hair. That was something to be grateful for.
‘So, when do I start this wonderful job, then?’
Her tone was as belligerent as her expression, but adolescent rebellion was something he knew all about; this wasn’t the moment to demand she apologise. Despite the ‘hard girl’ act, he was sure she didn’t need to be told what was required, whether she returned to school or not. He was also sure that she was more likely to get on with it if she wasn’t nagged.
‘No time like the present. Come on, I’ll get you an overall and then we’ll go and find Bob.’
‘I can’t wait.’ The heavy sarcasm suggested that this was going to be a long week. He just hoped, for both their sakes, that at the end of it Sadie would realise that school was a soft option compared with working for a living. And that Mrs Warburton was in a forgiving mood.
Should he have tried harder to persuade her to go back? What would her mother have done? Not much. Vickie was in the Bahamas with her latest lover and a new baby to drool over. He doubted if she would welcome a phone call reminding her that she had a daughter approaching an age at which she would become competition. Instinct suggested that his best bet was to set Sadie to work and hope that a week of mind-numbing drudgery would do the job for him.
‘What am I going to have to do?’
‘The options are limited since you can’t drive—’
‘I can drive,’ she declared fiercely. ‘Better than most people.’
That was true. He’d taught her to drive in the field behind the cottage he had bought a couple of years back, and she could handle a motorbike or a car with all the panache of a professional. ‘You can’t drive a car on the road until you’re seventeen, Sadie. You can’t even move one across the yard until you have your licence because you wouldn’t be insured.’ She didn’t answer, but it was obvious that calling her bluff was not going to have any immediate effect. ‘Perhaps you should try a bit of everything. Make yourself useful about the place.’
‘Be a dogsbody, you mean?’ She was not impressed. ‘Great.’
‘If you plan on running this outfit one day you might as well find out how everything works.’
‘Who said I was?’ she demanded.
‘If you don’t go to college you won’t have much choice. You can start in the garage with Bob. He’ll show you the ropes.’
‘Cleaning cars.’ Only an adolescent could endow two such inoffensive words with quite that level of scorn. ‘You didn’t start this business by cleaning cars.’
‘I started with one car, Sadie, and I promise you, it didn’t clean itself.’
‘Very funny.’
‘You think you’re such a catch? Come back when you’ve seen what the Job Centre has to offer and we’ll talk again.’
‘But you’re my father; you can’t expect me to skivvy for you …’ Something in his expression must have warned her that she was doing herself no favours, because she stopped. ‘Okay, okay, whatever you say.’
If only. ‘And one other thing, Sadie. During working hours you’re no different from anyone else around here, you’re an employee with the same privileges and the same responsibilities. That means you arrive on time—’
‘That won’t be difficult. Just give me a call five minutes before you leave.’
‘I don’t provide a wake-up service for my staff, Sadie. And I don’t give them a lift to work, either. The only place I’m prepared to drive you to is Dower House, next Monday morning.’
‘Don’t bother. I’m sure there’s a bus.’
‘There is.’ He was looking out of the window, contemplating the business that he had built from scratch. It had been hard. Twenty-four hours a day work, and worry that had left him with too little time to invest in his marriage, too distracted by his own big ideas to notice when his wife had gone looking for company elsewhere. Or perhaps he’d needed the big ideas and the twenty-four-hour work schedule to distract him from his marriage. He turned to his errant daughter. ‘And while you’re here,’ he instructed, ‘you’ll do anything Bob asks of you. In return you get as much tea and coffee as you can drink, a cooked lunch in the café next door and clean overalls every morning. I’m afraid you have to be eighteen before you can join the pension scheme.’
‘My dad, the comedian.’
‘Your boss, the comedian. At least while you’re at the garage.’
‘You’re kidding, right?’ He didn’t bother to reply. ‘Okay … boss. How much do I get paid for doing the dirty work around here?’