Her Boss's Baby Plan. Jessica Hart
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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