Her Boss's Baby Plan

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!’