SOS: Convenient Husband Required / Winning a Groom in 10 Dates

‘Maybe she needs changing. Or feeding.’ His only response was a helpless shrug. ‘Both happen on a regular basis, I understand,’ she said, turning to the wardrobe, hunting down one of her grandfather’s silk dressing gowns, holding it out to him. ‘You’d better put this on before you go and fetch your trousers.’ Then, as he took it from her, she realised her mistake. He couldn’t put it on while he was holding the baby.

Nancie came into her arms like a perfect fit. A soft, warm, gorgeous bundle of cuddle nestling against her shoulder. A slightly damp bundle of cuddle.

‘Changing,’ she said.

‘Yes,’ he said, tying the belt around his waist and looking more gorgeous than any man wearing a dressing gown that was too narrow across the shoulders, too big around the waist and too short by a country mile had any right to look.

‘You knew!’

‘It isn’t rocket science,’ he said, looking around him. ‘This was your grandfather’s room.’

It wasn’t a question and she didn’t bother to answer. She could have, probably should have, used the master bedroom to increase the numbers for the arts and crafts weekends she hosted, but hadn’t been able to bring herself to do that. While he was alive, it was his room and it still looked as if he’d just left it to go for a stroll in the park before dropping in at the Crown for lunch with old friends.

The centuries-old furniture gleamed. There were fresh sheets on the bed, his favourite Welsh quilt turned back as if ready for him. And a late rose that Robbie had placed on the dressing table glowed in the thin sunshine.

‘Impressive.’

‘As you said, Adam, he was an impressive man,’ she said, turning abruptly and, leaving him to follow or not as he chose, returned to her room.

He followed.

‘You’re going to have to learn how to do this,’ she warned as she fetched a clean towel from her bathroom and handed it to him.

He opened it without a word, lay it over the bed cover and May placed Nancie on it. She immediately began to whimper.

‘Watch her,’ she said, struggling against the instinct to pick her up again, comfort her. ‘I’ll get her bag.’

Ignoring his, ‘Yes, ma’am,’ which was on a par with the ironic ‘Mouse’, she unhooked Nancie’s bag from the buggy, opened it, found a little pink drawstring bag that contained a supply of disposable nappies and held one out to him.

‘Me?’ He looked at the nappy, the baby and then at her. ‘You’re not kidding, are you?’ She continued to hold out the nappy and he took it without further comment. ‘Okay. Talk me through it.’

‘What makes you think I know anything about changing a baby? And if you say that I’m a woman, you are on your own.’

Adam, on the point of saying exactly that, reconsidered. He’d thought that getting through the door would be the problem but that had been the easy part. Obviously, he was asking a lot but, considering Saffy’s confidence and her own inability to resist something helpless, he was meeting a lot more resistance from May than he’d anticipated.

‘You really know nothing about babies?’

‘Look around you, Adam. The last baby to occupy this nursery was me.’

‘This was your nursery?’ he said, taking in the lace-draped bed, the pale blue carpet, the lace and velvet draped window where she’d stood and watched his humiliation at the hands of her ‘impressive’ grandfather.

‘Actually, this was the nanny’s room,’ she said. ‘The nursery was out there.’

‘Lucky nanny.’ The room, with its bathroom, was almost as big as the flat he’d grown up in.

May saw the casual contempt with which he surveyed the room but didn’t bother to explain that her grandfather had had it decorated for her when she was fifteen. That it reflected the romantic teenager she’d been rather than the down-to-earth woman she’d become.

‘As I was saying,’ she said, doing her best to hold onto reality, ignore the fact that Adam Wavell was standing in her bedroom, ‘the last baby to occupy this nursery was me and only children of only children don’t have nieces and nephews to practise on.’ Then, having given him a moment for the reality of her ignorance to sink in, she said, ‘I believe you have to start with the poppers of her sleep suit.’

‘Right,’ he said, looking at the nappy, then at the infant and she could almost see the cogs in his brain turning as he decided on a change of plan. That his best move would be to demonstrate his incompetence and wait for her to take over.

He set about unfastening the poppers but Nancie, thinking it was a game, kicked and wriggled and flung her legs up in the air. Maybe she’d maligned him. Instead of getting flustered, he laughed, as if suddenly realising that she wasn’t just an annoying encumbrance but a tiny person.

‘Come on, Nancie,’ he begged. ‘I’m a man. This is new to me. Give me a break.’

Maybe it was the sound of his voice, but she lay still, watching him with her big dark eyes, her little forehead furrowed in concentration as if she was trying to work out who he was.

And, while his hands seemed far too big for the delicate task of removing the little pink sleep suit, if it had been his intention to look clumsy and incompetent, he was failing miserably.

The poppers were dealt with, the nappy removed in moments and his reward was a great big smile.

‘Thanks, gorgeous,’ he said softly. And then leaned down and kissed her dark curls.

The baby grabbed a handful of his hair and, as she watched the two of them looking at one another, May saw the exact moment when Adam Wavell fell in love with his baby niece. Saw how he’d be with his own child.

Swallowing down a lump the size of her fist, she said, ‘I’ll take that, shall I?’ And, relieving him of the nappy, she used it as an excuse to retreat to the bathroom to dispose of it in the pedal bin. Taking her time over washing her hands.

‘Do I need to use cream or powder or something?’ he called after her.

‘I’ve no idea,’ she said, gripping the edge of the basin.

‘Babies should come with a handbook. Have you got a computer up here?’

‘A what?’

‘I could look it up on the web.’

‘Oh, for goodness’ sake!’ She abandoned the safety of the bathroom and joined him beside the bed. ‘She’s perfectly dry,’ she said, after running her palm over the softest little bottom imaginable. ‘Just put on the nappy and…and get yourself a nanny, Adam.’

‘Easier said than done.’

‘It’s not difficult. I can give you the number of a reliable agency.’

‘Really? And why would you have their number?’

‘The Garland Agency provide domestic and nursing staff, too. I needed help. The last few months…’

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t think.’ He turned away, opened the nappy, examined it to see how it worked. ‘However, there are a couple of problems with the nanny scenario. My apartment is an open-plan loft. There’s nowhere to put either a baby or a nanny.’

‘What’s the other problem?’ He was concentrating on fastening the nappy and didn’t answer. ‘You said there were a couple of things.’ He shook his head and, suddenly suspicious, she said, ‘When was the last time you actually saw Saffy?’

‘I’ve been busy,’ he said, finally straightening. ‘And she’s been evasive,’ he added. ‘I bought a lease on a flat for her in Paris, but I’ve just learned that she’s moved out, presumably to move in with Nancie’s father. She’s sublet it and has been pocketing the rent for months.’

‘You’re not a regular visitor, then?’

‘You know what she’s like, May. I didn’t even know she was pregnant.’

‘And the baby’s father? Who is he?’

‘His name is Michel. That’s all I know.’

‘Poor Saffy,’ she said. And there was no doubt that she was pitying her her family.

‘She could have come to me,’ he protested. ‘Picked up the phone.’

‘And you’d have done what? Sent her a cheque?’

‘It’s what she usually wants. You don’t think she ever calls to find out how I am, do you?’

‘You are strong. She isn’t. How was she when she left the baby with you?’

‘I’d better wash my hands,’ he said.

Without thinking, she put out her hand and grabbed his arm to stop him. ‘What aren’t you telling me, Adam?’

He didn’t answer, but took a folded sheet of paper from his shirt pocket and gave it to her before retreating to the bathroom.

It looked as if it had been screwed up and tossed into a bin, then rescued as an afterthought.

She smoothed it out. Read it.

‘Saffy’s on the run from her baby’s father?’ she asked, looking up as he returned. ‘Where did she leave the baby?’

‘In my office. I found her there when I left a meeting to fetch some papers. Saffy had managed to slip in and out without anyone seeing her. She hasn’t lost the skills she learned as a juvenile shoplifter.’

‘She must have been absolutely desperate.’

‘Maybe she is,’ he said. ‘But not nearly as desperate as I am right at this minute. I know you haven’t got the time of day for me, but she said you’d help her.’

‘I would,’ she protested. ‘Of course I would…’

‘But?’

‘Where’s your mother?’ she asked.

‘She relocated to Spain after my father died.’

‘Moving everyone out of town, Adam? Out of sight, out of mind?’

A tightening around his mouth suggested that her barb had found its mark. And it was unfair. He’d turned his life around, risen above the nightmare of his family. Saffy hadn’t had his strength, but she still deserved better from him than a remittance life in a foreign country. All the bad things she’d done had been a cry for the attention, love she craved.

‘She won’t have gone far.’

‘That’s not the impression she gives in her note.’

‘She’ll want to know the baby is safe.’ Then, turning on him, ‘What about you?’

‘Me?’

‘Who else?’ she demanded fiercely because Adam was too close, because her arms were aching to pick up his precious niece. She busied herself instead, fastening Nancie into her suit. ‘Can’t you take paternity leave or something?’

‘I’m not the baby’s father.’

‘Time off, then. You do take holidays?’

‘When I can’t avoid it.’ He shook his head. ‘I told you. I’m leaving for South America tomorrow.’

‘Can’t you put it off?’

‘It’s not just a commercial trip, May. There are politics involved. Government agencies. I’m signing fair trade contracts with cooperatives. I’ve got a meeting with the President of Samindera that it’s taken months to set up.’

‘So the answer is no.’

‘The answer is no. It’s you,’ he said, ‘or I’m in trouble.’

‘In that case you’re in trouble.’ She picked up the baby and handed her to him, as clear a statement as she could make. ‘I’d help Saffy in a heartbeat if I could but—’

‘But you wouldn’t cross the road to help me.’

‘No!’

‘Just cross the road to avoid speaking to me. Would I have got anywhere at all if you hadn’t been stuck up a tree? Unable to escape?’

That was so unfair! He had no idea. No clue about all the things she’d done for him and it was on the tip of her tongue to say so.

‘I’m sorry. You must think I’ve got some kind of nerve even asking you.’

‘No…Of course I’d help you if I could. But I’ve got a few problems of my own.’

‘Tell me,’ he said, lifting his spare hand to wipe away the stupid tear that had leaked despite her determination not to break down, not to cry, his fingers cool against her hot cheek. ‘Tell me about the world of trouble you’re in.’

‘I didn’t think you’d heard.’

‘I heard but you asked where Saffy was…’ He shook his head. ‘I’m sorry, May, I’ve been banging on about my own problems instead of listening to yours.’ His hand opened to curve gently around her cheek. ‘It was something about the house. Tell me. Maybe I can help.’

She shook her head, struggling with the temptation to lean into his touch, to throw herself into his arms, spill out the whole sorry story. But there was no easy comfort.

All she had left was her dignity and she tore herself away, took a step back, then turned away to look out of the window.

‘Not this time, Adam,’ she said, her voice as crisp as new snow. ‘This isn’t anything as simple as getting stuck up a tree. The workshop ladies have returned to the stables. It’s safe for you to leave now.’

She’d been sure that would be enough to drive him away, but he’d followed her. She could feel the warmth of his body at her shoulder.

‘I’m pretty good at complicated, too,’ he said, his voice as gentle as the caress of his breath against her hair.

‘From what I’ve read, you’ve had a lot of practice,’ she said, digging her nails into her hands. ‘I’m sure you mean well, Adam, but there’s nothing you can do.’

‘Try me,’ he challenged.

‘Okay.’ She swung around to face him. ‘If you’ve got a job going for someone who can provide food and accommodation for a dozen or so people on a regular basis, run a production line for homemade toffee, is a dab hand with hospital corners, can milk a goat, keep bees and knows how to tame a temperamental lawnmower, that would be a start,’ she said in a rush.

‘You need a job?’ Adam replied, brows kinked up in a confident smile. As if he could make the world right for her by lunch time and still have time to add another company or two to his portfolio. ‘Nothing could be simpler. I need a baby minder. I’ll pay top rates if you can start right now.’

‘The one job for which I have no experience, no qualifications,’ she replied. ‘And, more to the point, no licence.’

‘Licence?’

‘I’m not related to Nancie. Without a childminding licence, it would be illegal.’

‘Who would know?’ he asked, without missing a beat.

‘You’re suggesting I don’t declare the income to the taxman? Or that the presence of a baby would go unnoticed?’ She shook her head. ‘People are in and out of here all the time and it would be around the coffee morning circuit faster than greased lightning. Someone from Social Services would be on the doorstep before I could say “knife”.’ She shrugged. ‘Of course, most of the old tabbies would assume Nancie was mine. “Just like her mother…”’ she said, using the disapproving tone she’d heard a hundred times. Although, until now, not in reference to her own behaviour.

‘You’re right,’ he said, conceding without another word. ‘Obviously your reputation is far too precious a commodity to be put at risk.’

‘I didn’t say that,’ she protested.

‘Forget it, May. I should have known better.’ He shrugged. ‘Actually, I did know better but I thought you and Saffy had some kind of a bond. But it doesn’t matter. I’ll call the authorities. I have no doubt that Nancie’s father has reported her missing by now and it’s probably for the best to leave it to the court to—’

‘You can’t do that!’ she protested. ‘Saffy is relying on you to get her out of this mess.’

‘Is she? Read her letter again, May.’

Chapter Four

THERE was the longest pause while he allowed that to sink in. Then he said, ‘Is there any chance of that coffee you promised me?’

May started. ‘What? Oh, yes, I’m sorry. It’s instant; will that do?’

‘Anything.’

The tiny kitchenette was in little more than a cupboard, but she had everything to hand and in a few minutes she returned with a couple of mugs.

‘I’ll get a blanket and you can put Nancie on the floor.’

‘Can you do that?’

She didn’t answer, just fetched a blanket from the linen cupboard, pausing on the landing to listen. The silence confirmed that the workshop coffee break was over but the thought of going downstairs, facing Robbie with her unlikely visitor, was too daunting.

Back in her sitting room, she laid the folded blanket on the floor, took Nancie from Adam and put her down on it. Then she went and fetched the teddy she’d spotted in her bag. Putting off for as long as possible the moment when she would have to tell Adam the truth.

‘I know you just think I’m trying to get you to take this on, dig me out of a hole,’ Adam said when she finally returned. Picking up her coffee, clutching it in front of her like a shield, she sat beside him on the sofa. ‘But you really are a natural.’

‘I think you’re just trying to avoid putting off telling me the whole truth.’

‘All I know is what’s in Saffy’s letter.’ He dragged long fingers through his dark hair, looking for once less than the assured man, but more like the boy she remembered. ‘I’ve called some of her friends but if she’s confided in them, then aren’t telling.’

‘What about her agent?’ she prompted.

‘It seems that they parted company months ago. Her modelling career was yet another fantasy, it seems.’

May picked up the letter and read it again. ‘She doesn’t sound exactly rational. She could be suffering from post-natal depression. Or maybe having Nancie has triggered a bipolar episode. She always did swing between highs and lows.’

‘And if she was? Would you help then?’ He shook his head before she could answer. ‘I’m sorry. That was unfair, but what I need right now, May, is someone I can trust. Someone who knows her. Who won’t judge. Or run to the press with this.’

‘The press?’

‘Something like this would damage me.’

‘You! Is that all you’re worried about?’ she demanded, absolutely furious with him. ‘Yourself. Not Saffy? Not Nancie?’

Nancie, startled, threw out a hand, lost her teddy and began to cry. Glad of the chance to put some distance between them, May scrambled to her knees to rescue the toy, give it back to the baby. Stayed with her on the floor to play with her.

‘The Garland Agency has a branch in Melchester,’ she said. ‘I suggest you call them. They’ve a world class reputation and I have no doubt that discretion comes with the price tag.’

‘As I said. There are a number of problems with that scenario. Apart from the fact that my apartment is completely unsuitable. You’ve read Saffy’s letter. They’ll want details. They’ll want to know where her mother is. Who she is. What right I have to make childcare arrangements. Saffy is on the run, May. There’s a court order in place.’

‘You must have some idea where she’d go? Isn’t there a friend?’

‘If anyone else had asked me that I’d have said that if she was in trouble, she’d come to you.’ He stared into the cup he was holding. ‘I did ring her a few months ago when there was a rumour in one of the gossip mags about her health. Probably someone heard her throwing up and was quick to suggest an eating disorder. But she was bright, bubbly, rushing off to a shoot. At least that’s what she said.’ He shrugged. ‘She was too eager to get me off the phone. And maybe I was too eager to be reassured. I should have known better.’

‘She sounds almost frightened.’

‘I know. I’m making discreet enquiries, but until I know who this man is I’m not going to hand over my niece. And I’m doing my best to find Saffy, too. But the last thing we need is a hue and cry.’

He put down the mug, knelt beside her.

‘This time I’m the one up the drainpipe, Mouse, and it’s raining a monsoon. Won’t you climb up and rescue me?’

‘I wish I could help—’

‘There is no one else,’ he said, cutting her off.

The unspoken, And you owe me… lay unsaid between them. But she knew that, like her, he was remembering the hideous scene when he’d come to the back door, white-faced, clutching his roses. It had remained closed to his knock but he hadn’t gone away. He’d stayed there, mulishly stubborn, for so long that her grandfather had chased him away with the hose.

It had been the week before Christmas and the water was freezing but, while he’d been driven from the doorstep, he’d stayed in the garden defiantly, silently staring up at her room, visibly shivering, until it was quite dark.

She’d stood in this window and watched him, unable to do or say anything without making it much, much worse. Torn between her grandfather and the boy she loved. She would have defied her grandpa, just as her mother had defied him, but there had been Saffy. And Adam. And she’d kept the promise that had been wrung from her even though her heart was breaking.

She didn’t owe him a thing. She’d paid and paid and paid…

‘I can’t,’ she said, getting up, putting distance between them. ‘I told you, I know no more than you do about looking after a baby.’

‘I think we both know that your experience as a rescuer of lame ducks puts you streets ahead of me.’

‘Nancie is not a duck,’ she said a touch desperately. Why wouldn’t he just take no for an answer? There must a dozen women who’d fall over themselves to help him out. Why pick on her? ‘And, even if she were,’ she added, ‘I still couldn’t help.’

She couldn’t help anyone. That was another problem she was going to have to face. Finding homes for her family of strays.

There wasn’t much call for a three-legged cat or a blind duck. And then there were the chickens, Jack and Dolly, the bees. She very much doubted if the Crown would consider a donkey and a superannuated nanny goat an asset to the nation’s coffers.

‘Why not, May?’ he insisted. He got to his feet too, but he’d kept his distance. She didn’t have to turn to know that his brows would be drawn down in that slightly perplexed look that was so familiar. ‘Tell me. Maybe I can help.’

‘Trust me,’ she said. Nancie had caught hold of her finger and she lifted the little hand to her lips, kissed it. ‘You can’t help me. No one can.’

Then, since it was obvious that, unless she explained the situation, Adam wasn’t going to give up, she told him why.

Why she couldn’t help him or Saffy.

Why he couldn’t help her.

For a moment he didn’t say anything and she knew he would be repeating her words over in his head, exactly as she had done this morning when Freddie had apologetically explained the situation in words of one syllable.

Adam had assumed financial worries to be the problem. Inheritance tax. Despite the downturn in the market, the house was worth a great deal of money and it was going to take a lot of cash to keep the Inland Revenue happy.

‘You have to be married by the end of the month or you’ll lose the house?’ he repeated, just to be certain that he’d understood.

She swallowed, nodded.

She would never have told him if he hadn’t been so persistent, he realised. She’d told him that she couldn’t help but, instead of asking her why, something he would have done if it had been a work-related problem, he’d been so tied up with his immediate problem that he hadn’t been listening.

He was listening now. And there was only one thought in his head. That fate had dropped her into his lap. That the boy who hadn’t been good enough to touch Coleridge flesh, who’d shivered as he’d waited for her to defy her grandfather, prove that her hot kisses had been true, now held her future in the palm of his hand.

That he would crack the ice in May Coleridge’s body between the fine linen sheets of her grandfather’s four-poster bed and listen to the old man spin in his grave as did it.

‘What’s so important about the end of the month?’ he asked. Quietly, calmly. He’d learned not to show his thoughts, or his feelings.

‘My birthday. It’s on the second of December.’

She’d kept her back to him while she’d told him her problems, but now she turned and looked up at him. She’d looked up at him before, her huge amber eyes making him burn, her soft lips quivering with uncertainty. The taste of them still haunted him.

He’d liked her. Really liked her. She had guts, grit and, despite the wide gulf in their lives, they had a lot in common. And he’d loved being in the quiet, ordered peace of the lovely gardens of Coleridge House, the stables where she’d kept her animals. Everything so clean and well organised.

He’d loved the fact that she had her own kettle to make coffee. That there was always homemade cake in a tin. The shared secrecy. That no one but she knew he was there. Not her grandfather, not his family. It had all been so different from the nightmare of his home life.