Kitabı oku: «Assignment: Baby»

CHAPTER ONE

Fresh from her success in last Friday’s award ceremony, Britain’s favourite redhead, TV presenter Fionnula Jenkins, arrives at London’s hottest restaurant, Cupiditas, with Gabriel Stearne, founder of US construction giant Contraxa (above). The couple met in New York, where Fionnula attended a charity ball sponsored by Contraxa. Entrepreneur Gabriel’s activities are more usually reported in the financial pages, but since arriving in London he has been seen out several times with Fionnula, who refused to confirm speculation that he had moved to England to be with her. ‘We just enjoy each other’s company,’ she said.

TESS had barely finished reading the caption when the door to the inner office opened, and she shoved the paper hurriedly out of sight in the wastepaper bin beneath her desk.

By the time Gabriel appeared, shrugging himself into an overcoat, she was innocently absorbed in typing up the letters he had dictated earlier.

‘I’m going to a meeting with our insurers,’ he said, brusquely buttoning his coat. ‘Have those letters ready by the time I get back. I want a copy of the design report and the architects’ files on my desk. All of them. In date order.’

‘Yes, Mr Stearne,’ said Tess.

Her voice was cool, with just a hint of a Scottish accent. Gabriel eyed her sardonically. She was watching him over the spectacles she wore when she was working, pen poised to note his instructions, the very model of a perfect PA.

In the four weeks she had worked for him he had learned only three things about Tess Gordon. She was exceptionally efficient. She was always immaculately groomed.

And she didn’t like him one little bit.

Too bad, thought Gabriel indifferently. He wasn’t here to be liked. He was here to drag this company into the twenty-first century and give himself the toe-hold he needed into Europe, and worrying about what the icy Ms Gordon thought about him was very low down his priority list.

‘When you’ve done that, you can send an e-mail reminding all staff that the phones are not for their personal use,’ he went on in a hard voice. ‘That goes for e-mail as well. A monitoring system is going to be introduced shortly, so they’d better start getting used to it now.’

An order like that would no doubt cause a furore, but Tess didn’t react. She just made a note on her pad and kept her inevitable reflections to herself.

‘Any messages?’ Gabriel asked curtly.

‘Your brother rang. He asked if you could ring him back.’

Gabriel grunted, and privately Tess marvelled that he could be related to the irreverent American with the voice like warm treacle who had rung while his brother was closeted in his office. ‘No calls,’ Gabriel had said, and after a month Tess knew better than to try and interrupt him, no matter how important the caller might be.

Greg, as he had introduced himself, was evidently an incorrigible flirt. Tess, braced to dislike anyone even remotely associated with Gabriel, had found him charming. He had been warm, funny, sympathetic…everything his brother was not!

Unaware—or, more likely, uncaring—of the unflattering comparisons she had drawn, Gabriel was checking that he had all the relevant papers for his meeting in his attaché case. ‘Anything else?’

‘No,’ said Tess, but she hesitated and Gabriel looked up from the case. He had very light, very keen grey eyes that were a startling contrast to his strong, black brows, and she still hadn’t got used to the way they seemed to look right through her.

‘What?’ he demanded.

‘I wondered what time you would be back, that was all.’

‘About six-thirty. Why?’

‘I was hoping to have a word with you.’ Tess’s calm expression gave no hint of her inner trepidation.

Gabriel frowned. ‘What about?’

Nobody could ever accuse him of beating about the bush, thought Tess with an inward sigh. She had to ask him for a rise, but it wasn’t the kind of thing you could blurt out just like that.

‘I’d rather explain when you’re in less of a hurry,’ she said.

‘Can’t it wait until tomorrow?’

‘We’ll be busy putting the Emery bid together tomorrow,’ Tess pointed out. And then it would be the weekend, which would mean two more days to worry about Andrew. She set her teeth. It went against the grain to beg, but she had to try. ‘If you could spare me five minutes when you get back, I would appreciate it.’

Gabriel looked at her. She had one of those faces that made it almost impossible to tell what she was thinking. It wasn’t that she was unattractive. She had a fine-boned face with clear skin and beautiful eyebrows, and her hair, always pulled neatly back, was an unusual golden-brown colour. She might even be pretty, he thought dispassionately—if she ever lightened up and got rid of that snooty expression of hers.

It occurred to him suddenly that she might be going to hand in her notice, and his black brows drew together. He didn’t have the time to find a new PA with this crucial contract coming up. He had inherited Tess when he’d taken over SpaceWorks, and her knowledge of the company was invaluable. He couldn’t afford to lose her just yet. It was worth putting up with the frosty atmosphere until he got things under control.

‘Very well,’ he said, irritable at the thought of wasting precious time trying to cajole her into staying. ‘If you wait until I get back, I’ll see you then.’

‘Thank you.’

That was typical Tess. No gush or fuss, just a cool thank you. Gabriel had never seen her anything but crisp, composed, competent. In many ways she was the ultimate personal assistant. She never flapped. When he shouted, she didn’t get upset or muddled. She was intelligent and discreet. Gabriel knew that she was ideal.

It was just that he would like her more if she made the occasional mistake.

Or smiled.

Annoyed to realise that he’d allowed himself to be diverted, Gabriel shut his attaché case with snap and headed for the door. ‘Oh, and book a table at Cupiditas,’ he remembered at the last moment. ‘Tonight, nine o’clock.’

Why could he never use the word ‘please’? Tess wondered. It wasn’t that hard to say. ‘For two?’

‘Yes, for two,’ he barked, irritated anew by her composure. Most people either fawned or trembled in his presence, but not Tess. No, she just sat there in her sensible grey suit and looked down her nose at him.

‘Certainly, Mr Stearne,’ she said.

Gabriel scowled. ‘I’ll be back later,’ he said, and strode out.

The moment he had gone, Tess retrieved the paper from the bin and smoothed out the crumpled page as she read the caption again, shaking her head in disbelief. Gabriel Stearne and Fionnula Jenkins! Who would have thought it?

All day, e-mails had been flying around the office about their unpopular new boss’s appearance in the gossip columns. Tess had seen them, and had assumed that it was all some kind of joke until one of the other secretaries had brought along a copy of yesterday’s paper to show her.

Now she studied the photograph, half expecting to spot that it was all a mistake, but no, it was definitely Gabriel. No one else had brows like that! Some of the girls in the office claimed to find him attractive, and were always dropping by in the hope of catching a glimpse of him, but Tess couldn’t see what the fuss was about. To her, Gabriel wasn’t broodingly handsome. He was just surly.

And there he was in the paper, looking as grimly formidable as ever, with Fionnula Jenkins clinging girlishly to his arm and smiling that famous Fionnula smile. Tess had never seen a more mismatched pair. Fionnula had all the gloss and glitz of a star. Gabriel was a workaholic, abrupt, impatient and, in Tess’s opinion at least, downright rude.

What did a celebrity like Fionnula see in him? Tess wondered as she tossed the paper back in the bin and dialled the restaurant’s number. Fionnula was beautiful and successful. She could have anybody she wanted, so why pick on Gabriel? It couldn’t be money, as Fionnula had plenty of her own, and it certainly wasn’t charm.

Perhaps, mused Tess, Fionnula was the kind of girl who liked a challenge. Gabriel’s reputation had preceded him from the States. He was known to be utterly ruthless and unsentimental. If Fionnula thought she could find a heart beating somewhere beneath that steely exterior, good luck to her, thought Tess wryly. She was welcome to him.

By six, she had everything ready for Gabriel’s return. His table was booked, and the letters, files and reports lay neatly arranged on his desk. Tess checked them automatically. She knew Gabriel was waiting to catch her out, but so far she hadn’t made so much as a typing error for him to complain about. It had become an unacknowledged battle of wills between them and, in a perverse kind of way, Tess almost enjoyed the challenge of keeping up with the punishing pace he set.

Now, she squared up the last paper and mentally congratulated herself. Gabriel would have to try a bit harder if he wanted her to be unable to cope.

Back at her desk, she sent Andrew a quick e-mail to tell him a cheque was on its way, and that she hoped to be able to send him more next week, and was just rehearsing the arguments she would make to Gabriel for a rise when the phone rang.

‘I’ve got a visitor here for Mr Stearne,’ said the receptionist. ‘She won’t give her name, but she says it’s personal.’

Tess looked at her watch. Gabriel hadn’t said anything about a visitor. She hoped this didn’t mean he wouldn’t have time to listen to her request for a rise after all. ‘You’d better send her up,’ she said, suppressing a sigh.

She wasn’t quite sure what she had expected Gabriel’s visitor to be like, but it certainly wasn’t the woman of about sixty who pushed a pram into the office a few minutes later.

Trying not to show her surprise, Tess took off her glasses and stood up with a polite smile. ‘Can I help you?’

The woman looked around her as if she couldn’t decide whether to be daunted or impressed. ‘I’m looking for Gabriel Stearne,’ she told Tess with a belligerent air.

‘I’m afraid he’s not here at the moment. I’m his assistant,’ Tess explained. ‘Perhaps I can help you?’

‘I don’t know if you can.’ Digging around under the pram, the visitor pulled out a copy of yesterday evening’s paper. It was folded open at the picture of Gabriel and Fionnula, and she tapped the photo. ‘This is your Gabriel Stearne?’ she asked doubtfully.

Tess looked down at the stern mouth, the dark, striking brows and the unsmiling face next to the sparkling Fionnula. ‘Yes, that’s Mr Stearne,’ she said.

‘He’s not what I expected,’ the woman confessed, frowning down at the picture with Tess. ‘Leanne said he was gorgeous. The most handsome man she’d ever met, she said.’ Her mouth turned down disparagingly. ‘I wouldn’t call him handsome, myself, would you?’

‘Not personally, no,’ said Tess. It wasn’t a very loyal answer, but it was hard enough putting up with his bad temper without having to rave about his looks as well.

‘Ah, well, that’s love for you.’

There was a tiny pause. ‘Love?’ she echoed cautiously.

‘That’s what Leanne called it. Leanne’s my daughter,’ the woman explained, seeing that Tess was still looking mystified. ‘She met Gabriel on a cruise last year. She’s a croupier,’ she added proudly, ‘and he was one of the first-class passengers. She said he was a lot of fun.’

A puzzled look came over her face as she looked around the plush office. ‘Somehow I didn’t imagine him somewhere like this. Leanne always said he was a free spirit.’

She wasn’t the only one who was puzzled. Tess was still trying to come to terms with the idea of Gabriel hanging around in a casino and being a lot of fun, let alone a free spirit! She would love to know what the unknown Leanne was like.

‘Well, I’m sorry he’s not here,’ she said after a moment. ‘He won’t be back until later. Can I give him a message?’

‘You can do better than that,’ said the woman, appearing to make up her mind abruptly. ‘You can give him his son.’

For once Tess was shaken out of her composure. ‘His son?’ she repeated stupidly.

‘That’s right.’ She nodded towards the pram. ‘Harry, his name is.’

Tess stared at the pram as well. Gabriel, a father? It seemed very unlikely. ‘Um…does he know about Harry?’ she asked delicately.

‘No.’ The woman’s mouth closed like a trap. ‘Leanne would have it that he wasn’t the kind of man you could tie down. I wanted her to tell him about Harry when he was born, but she wouldn’t. She was determined to look after him herself. That’s all very well, I said, but what about the money side of things? She was going to get a job at home, but then they offered her another contract on the ship. It was just for six weeks, and such good money that she couldn’t turn it down.’

Tess was getting confused. She didn’t quite understand what her unexpected visitor was trying to say, but one thing she was sure of: the last thing Gabriel would want was to come back to the office and find himself presented with a baby. She would have to stick to essentials.

‘I think it’s up to your daughter to discuss any paternity issues with him,’ she said firmly. ‘Mr Stearne keeps his private life quite separate from the office.’

‘Leanne’s not here to discuss anything,’ the woman pointed out. ‘That’s just the point. The thing is,’ she confided, ‘I said I’d look after Harry for her while she was away, but a few days ago I heard that I’d won a trip to California. Me! It’s the first time I’ve won anything!

‘I’ve always wanted to go to the States,’ she went on wistfully, ‘but it means flying out straight away, and I thought I was going to have to turn it down until I saw in the paper last night that Gabriel Stearne was over here. I don’t see why I should give up my holiday when Harry’s father can look after him just as well.’

‘I don’t know about that,’ said Tess, alarmed. ‘He’s extremely busy.’

‘Not so busy he can’t swank around with that Fionnula Jenkins,’ said Harry’s grandmother, brandishing the paper as proof. ‘If he’s got time to do that, I reckon he’s got time to look after his own son. If you ask me, it’s high time he took some responsibility for him. Why should Leanne have to cope all by herself? She didn’t get pregnant by herself, did she?’

‘Well, no, obviously not, but—’

‘It’s not as if I’m leaving him for ever. I’m only going for a fortnight. He’s a good baby—he won’t be any trouble.’

Tess came hurriedly round the desk as she realised just what the other woman was saying. ‘You’re not seriously thinking of leaving the baby here?’ she said, appalled.

‘Why not? From everything Leanne ever said, your precious Gabriel isn’t short of a bob or two. I’m sure he’ll manage.’

‘But you can’t just abandon him!’

The woman’s chin set stubbornly. ‘I’m not abandoning him. I’m leaving him with his father.’ She leant over the pram and kissed the baby. ‘You be a good boy, love. Your gran’ll be back for you in a couple of weeks.’

She glanced at Tess and pointed at the rack underneath the pram. ‘He’s got everything he needs for a couple of days, but you’ll need to buy some more formula and nappies after that.’

‘Nappies?’ Tess was aghast. ‘You can’t just go,’ she cried, but the baby’s grandmother was already heading for the lifts. ‘Look, wait!’ she called, hurrying after her. ‘Wait!’

But her cry had woken the baby, who promptly began to yell. Distracted, Tess hesitated in the doorway. She couldn’t believe his grandmother wouldn’t come back to the crying child, but when she ran out into the corridor she was in time to see the lift doors closing and the other woman had gone.

Frantically, Tess pressed the button to call the lift back, only to see its lights descending inexorably. She looked around for help, but the entire floor seemed to be deserted. Everyone else had obviously gone home at five-thirty, like sensible people. Tess wished fervently that she had done the same.

Behind her, Harry had redoubled his cries, and she took her finger off the button. There was no way she was going to catch his grandmother. By the time the lift came back she would be long gone.

Now what was she going to do?

In the office, she could hear the baby at full throttle. Hurrying back, she was alarmed to see that his face was red and contorted. What if he was having some kind of fit? She joggled the pram ineffectually for a while and, when that didn’t work, picked him up and cuddled him gingerly against her shoulder the way she had seen her friend, Bella, do with her new baby.

‘Shh, it’s all right,’ she told him, wishing that she believed it herself. Wryly, she remembered the smug way she had laid out the papers on Gabriel’s desk and congratulated herself on being able to cope with whatever he threw at her! Her famous unflappability didn’t extend to babies, which she found alarming at the best of times.

Tess threw a harassed look at the clock on the wall. If only Gabriel would come back!

It felt like two hours, but according to the clock it was only twenty minutes before Gabriel appeared. He walked into the office to be greeted by an unmistakable sigh of relief.

‘Thank God you’re back!’ said Tess, who would have scorned the very idea of being pleased to see him when he had left only a matter of hours ago.

Gabriel stopped dead at the sight of her. He had left an icily efficient, immaculately groomed PA. He returned to find her clutching a snivelling baby, her pristine blouse crumpled by tears and tiny, clutching hands, and the honey-coloured hair escaping in wisps from its usually demure style.

The black brows contracted. ‘What’s going on?’

He might enjoy the sight of Tess less than her normal, coolly composed self, but the meeting with the insurers hadn’t gone well. There was a good deal of work to be done to get the bid ready for the next day, and the very last thing he needed right now was a bawling infant cluttering up the office.

Gabriel eyed it askance. ‘Whose is that baby?’ he demanded, without even giving her a chance to reply to his first question.

By this stage Tess was too harassed to think of a way to break the news diplomatically. ‘It’s yours.’

‘What?’ he roared so loudly that Harry flinched and began to cry again.

‘Don’t shout! Now look what you’ve done!’ she accused him. ‘I’d just got him to stop, too.’ She joggled the baby in her arms until his sobs subsided. ‘There, that’s better,’ she murmured. ‘The nasty man’s not going to shout any more.’

Gabriel controlled his temper with an effort. ‘Tess, will you please explain to me what you are doing with that baby?’ he said ominously, laying his attaché case on her desk.

Over the sound of Harry’s snuffling cries, Tess told him what she could remember. ‘But it all happened so quickly,’ she finished. ‘One minute I was putting the letters on your desk, the next I was left holding the baby!’

‘Let me get this right,’ said Gabriel, a muscle beating dangerously in his jaw. ‘A woman turns up out of the blue, tells you she’s going on holiday and deposits a baby with you…and you let her walk away without even finding out her name?’

When he put it like that, it didn’t sound as if she had handled the situation very well, Tess had to admit. ‘She said you were Harry’s father,’ she said lamely.

‘And you believed her?’

‘I didn’t know what to believe,’ she said, forced onto the defensive. ‘You haven’t exactly been forthcoming about your private life. For all I know, you’ve got a dozen sons!’

Gabriel glared at her. ‘I can assure you,’ he said in glacial tones, ‘that I not only have no son, I’ve never even been on a cruise, and I certainly haven’t seduced any stray croupiers without being aware of it.’

Biting her lip, Tess looked worriedly down at the baby in her arms. ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.

‘We?’ He lifted his brows in a way that made her long to haul out and hit him.

‘It’s not my baby,’ she pointed out tightly.

‘It’s not mine either,’ he retorted, ignoring the danger signals snapping in Tess’s brown eyes. ‘You’re the one who took responsibility for him. You deal with it.’

The dismissive note in his voice caught Tess on the raw. For a moment, she could only gape at him, torn between astonishment at the colossal nerve of the man and inarticulate fury at his callous lack of support.

‘Now, just a minute—’ she began furiously, but before she could tell Gabriel exactly what she thought of him, the phone on her desk began to ring, a loud, jarring sound that ripped through the tense atmosphere in the office. Involuntarily, they both turned to look at it.

Gabriel cursed under his breath at the interruption. ‘You’d better answer it,’ he said snidely. ‘It might be someone else who wants a place to dump a child or a dog while they go on holiday! Why not tell them all to come along? Tell them we’ll take care of their pot plants too!’

Tess glared at his sarcasm. ‘How do you suggest I answer it?’ she said through her teeth. ‘In case it’s escaped your notice, I’ve only got two hands and both are full at the moment! Or am I expected to pick up the phone with my teeth?’

The phone continued to ring insistently, impossible to ignore. ‘Oh, all right, I’ll get it,’ snapped Gabriel.

He leant over the desk and picked up the phone. ‘Yes?’ he snarled. ‘Oh…Greg…yes, I did get your message…no, there’s nothing you can do,’ he said brusquely, adding as an afterthought, ‘unless you happen to know where I can find a croupier called Leanne?’

Tess couldn’t hear what Greg was saying, but it was obviously not what Gabriel was expecting. She saw his face change, and he shot her a quick glance. ‘Hold on a second,’ he interrupted his brother, ‘I think I’d better call you back. Give me two minutes.’

‘That was my brother,’ he said unnecessarily as he put down the phone. For once he seemed at a loss.

‘Your brother? What’s he got to do with Harry’s mother?’ asked Tess, bewildered by the unexpected turn of events.

‘That’s what I’m going to find out.’ Gabriel sounded terse. Shrugging off his coat, he headed for his office.

There was something going on, thought Tess, aggrieved, and he clearly had no intention of telling her what it was! ‘What am I supposed to do in the meantime?’ she said crossly.

‘Just…’ he gestured vaguely ‘…keep the baby quiet.’

‘Great, thanks a lot!’ she muttered as the door shut firmly behind him.

She shifted Harry onto her other arm. He might be small, but he was surprisingly heavy, and she flexed the arm that had been supporting him with a grimace. He was grizzling into her neck, small, sniffling little sobs as if he wanted to cry but was too tired to make the effort.

Tess knew just how he felt. She looked at the clock again, and was amazed to find that it was less than an hour since she had looked up to see the pram being pushed into the office.

Not knowing what else to do with him, Tess walked around the office, patting Harry awkwardly on the back, the way she had seen her friends do with their babies. She wished Gabriel would hurry up. It was all very well for him to tell her to keep Harry quiet, but she couldn’t walk up and down like this all night.

The sound of the door opening made her swing round, and Gabriel emerged in his shirt sleeves, looking grimmer than ever.

‘Well?’ she demanded.

Gabriel loosened his tie as if it felt too tight. ‘Greg was on a Caribbean cruise last year,’ he told her after a moment. ‘He told me that he met a croupier called Leanne, and they had an affair while he was on the ship but, typically of Greg, he can’t remember her surname, so we can’t track down her mother that way. That doesn’t mean that Greg is Harry’s father,’ he added quickly, ‘but at least we know why your visitor picked on me.’

‘She definitely said Gabriel Stearne,’ objected Tess. ‘It’s not that easy to muddle up Gabriel and Greg.’

The suspicion in her voice made Gabriel grit his teeth. ‘Look, you wanted to know what the situation was, and I’m telling you,’ he said tautly. He didn’t really want to tell Tess about Greg, and give her yet another reason to look down her snooty little nose at him, but she was obviously going to go on asking questions until she had some satisfactory answers. Briefly, Gabriel let himself think longingly of Janette, his PA back in the States, who accepted everything he said unquestioningly.

But Janette wasn’t here, and Tess was.

‘It turns out that Greg sometimes uses my name when it suits him to let people believe that the G in his name stands for Gabriel and not Gregory,’ he told her, resigned. ‘He says it gets him better tables in restaurants and seats on overbooked planes and, in the case of the cruise, he upgraded his cabin on the strength of my reputation. Having booked as Gabriel Stearne, he carried on using my name, and it was too late to change it when he met Leanne. Anyway, Greg didn’t think it would matter. He knew I would never go on a cruise and it was very unlikely that Leanne would ever read the business pages and see my picture.’

‘So it might not just be Leanne who thinks that she has had an affair with you? There could be girls all round the world who believe that you’re incredibly handsome, a fantastic lover and great fun to be with?’

Gabriel shot Tess a suspicious look. Her face was quite straight, but there was glint in her eyes and a distinct undercurrent of sarcasm in her voice. Why didn’t she come right out and say that the idea of anyone associating him with fun or believing him to be a wonderful lover was absolutely hilarious?

He scowled. ‘Right now, we’re only concerned with Leanne,’ he said quellingly. Not that Tess seemed very quelled.

‘And Leanne thinks that Greg is Harry’s father?’

‘Yes.’

‘That would make Harry your nephew,’ she said slowly, looking from one to the other as if looking for a resemblance.

‘It’s a possibility,’ Gabriel admitted grudgingly, evidently less than thrilled at the prospect of a new addition to the family.

‘Did Greg think that he might be Harry’s father?’

Gabriel sat on the edge of her desk and rubbed the back of his neck a little wearily. ‘I didn’t tell him about Harry,’ he said after a moment.

Tess was taken aback. Surely that had been the point of ringing Greg? ‘Why not?’

‘Because for once in his life, Greg is where he ought to be,’ said Gabriel flatly. ‘He’s in Florida, with my mother. His father—my stepfather—is having open-heart surgery and my mother can’t cope on her own. She’s not strong at the best of times, and I’d rather he stayed and supported her than came haring over here. It’s not as if he knows anything about babies.’

‘Oh, unlike us?’ said Tess, not even bothering to hide her sarcasm this time.

Gabriel ignored her. Straightening from the desk, he began to pace around the office. ‘This is the last thing we need tonight,’ he said, muttering under his breath. ‘All the figures in our proposal are going to have to be checked, and I want to rewrite the section on our design policy. I haven’t got time to run around London looking for an unnamed grandmother who’s just dumped a baby here.’

‘Why don’t you ring the police?’

‘I can’t risk the story getting into the papers. If Greg does turn out to be the father, and my mother got to hear of it, she’d be devastated. She dotes on Greg and she’s got enough to deal with at the moment with Ray so ill.’

Tess’s arm was aching and she decided to try putting Harry back in his pram. How odd, she thought, as she rocked the pram tentatively, terrified that the baby would start crying again. She wouldn’t have had Gabriel Stearne down as a devoted son, but he seemed to be making a lot of effort to spare his mother any trouble. Perhaps deep down he was human, after all? He certainly did a good job of hiding it most of the time!