Kitabı oku: «Parents Of Convenience»

CHAPTER ONE

‘HELLO. One rescue party, delivered to your door and ready to get started.’ Phoebe Gilbert examined the two smaller occupants of the room and her heart took a sentimental dive. Max Saunders’s sons were gorgeous. She registered that much while one screamed at top volume with his hands clamped over his ears and the other did his utmost to kick the side out of the best recliner chair in the room.

It looked as though Max really needed that helping hand. The man in question had his back turned while he did his best to remove his kicking child from the vicinity of the chair. He didn’t hear Phoebe’s announcement.

Given the noise level, Phoebe wasn’t particularly surprised. She stepped around an upended box of crushed breakfast cereal and a denuded potted plant and moved further into the room.

As she took in the familiar if unusually messy surroundings, a sense of homecoming crashed over her. It was immediately followed by a painful jolt to the solar plexus, because the feeling was false. She had never belonged anywhere in her life, Mountain Gem included. Not that she cared one way or the other.

You’re over it, remember? That whole ‘wish I had a family’ thing is done with.

Phoebe had a creed. Don’t wish for what you can’t have. And who would want to make a family with a woman whose mother hadn’t wanted her, whose father hadn’t wanted her, and who was barren into the bargain? Some bargain.

She gave a defiant shrug. Those days in the orphanage were long since gone. The one decent thing her father had done was to buy her way into boarding school when she’d been eleven.

Nowadays, she had her daycare children. A never-ending stream of little ones to enjoy as she moved from job to job. As long as she didn’t get too attached, she survived. Beyond that, she was self-sufficient and proud of it. She didn’t need anything more than she already had.

Perhaps coming back to Mountain Gem today had got to her because this visit was so different. In the past, she had felt like the interloper in Max Saunders’s home. Not a charity case—she couldn’t have stood that—but a visitor. Katherine Saunders’s kooky friend. Tolerated by Kath’s big brother, but barely. It had been easy to keep her own emotional distance that way, too.

Today, she was here at Max’s request. To rescue him. It tipped the scales. Yeah. That must be why these feelings had risen to the surface after she had buried them so well. With a determined sniff she focused her thoughts on the here and now. It was much more interesting, anyway.

‘Hello, Max.’ She pitched her voice louder. ‘I knocked but nobody heard me, so I just came in.’

Even from behind, Max was a commanding presence. Tall. Dark-haired. Broad-shouldered, slim about the hips and with those long, long legs. When he faced her she knew that grey eyes would look directly into hers from beneath winged brows.

Her mouth watered suddenly, and she blinked. This was Max, for heaven’s sake. The long-time antagonist of her life. The man who drove her crazy every time they met. So what was with the isn’t he gorgeous? reaction? That had never happened to her before!

Enough of this, she decided. She primed her lungs and gave it her best bellow across five paddocks effort over the screeching. ‘I see the Saunders men are doing their utmost to show the Blue Mountains a good time. Just fancy, two four-year-old boys making more combined racket than an entire Sydney daycare group put together.’

That did the trick. The boys paused momentarily in their noise. And Max whipped around so fast she barely saw the movement. She reacted, though. Her heart paused for a long moment, then restarted at double time.

A sense of panic washed through her and she told herself to wake up. This wasn’t attraction. It couldn’t be. Her system was just girding up for battle. Yes, that was much more acceptable. ‘Hello, Max. I’m here. I’ll bet you’re pleased I’ve arrived.’

Max didn’t look at all happy to see her, even though he should have been. Instead he stiffened. ‘Phoebe.’

The single word, spoken in gravelly accents, managed to convey his deep displeasure at the sight of her.

What was with him, anyway? Didn’t he remember this had been his idea? It was not as if she would have dropped everything and cadged a lift out of Sydney to get to him if he hadn’t made his need crystal clear. Through Katherine, admittedly, but even so…

She supposed she couldn’t expect Max to go too crazy admitting he needed help. It was, after all, the first time he had ever done so, to her knowledge.

And, from her viewpoint, this was about helping the boys, not about Max. When Katherine had phoned Phoebe from America she hadn’t only mentioned that Max wasn’t coping very well. She had hinted that Max seemed solely focused on getting the boys tidied into some small pocket of his life as quickly as possible.

That worried Phoebe.

Meanwhile, Max was staring at her with that unwelcoming expression still stamped all over him.

‘Yes, it’s me,’ she said. ‘In the flesh.’ She offered him a view of the point of her chin. ‘Given the circumstances, I thought I might have received a warmer welcome.’

She was here to turn this chaos around for him, after all. It may have been pure fantasy to believe he would fall down in abject relief at the sight of her, but she had at least expected civility, not an immediate return to their old hostility.

In other words, you got your hopes up and got them whacked back down to size quick smart. Surely you know better than that? Life didn’t dish out lollipops, Phoebe had found. You made your own joy, or you did without. She chose to make her own, and usually she did quite well at it.

‘You’ve caught me at a bad moment.’ Max ran a hand through dark, already ruffled hair.

Familiar, slightly wavy hair that had always given her itchy fingers, not that it meant anything. She had an appreciation of fine things, that was all. She really couldn’t be held accountable for the fact that she found Max aesthetically pleasing. Nor for the fact that her artistic interpretation of Max seemed to be creating more of a problem than usual this visit.

The din was back in full force again. She pitched her voice to rise above it. ‘I’d guess you’ve had a few of those today. Bad moments, that is.’ She gestured to a congealed glob of green stuff which was stuck to his shirt and resisted the urge to smirk. Max never got in a mess, in any sense of the word. ‘Rough lunch?’

‘There was a slight problem with the meal plans, yes.’ His eyes narrowed to warning slits and his strong jaw clamped into an uncompromising line.

She had goaded him slightly, she admitted, but just the tiniest bit. In the past he had taken far more from her without letting it get to him. He really must be feeling his difficulties.

‘If you’ve come to visit Katherine,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid you’ve picked the wrong time. She’s not here.’

‘Well, yes, I know that.’ She pursed her lower lip over her upper. A habit she had when she needed to work out a particular complexity. Why was he pretending that he hadn’t expected her?

He waved a hand at the mêlée, which was continuing behind him. ‘As you can see, I have my hands full. I don’t have time to entertain.’

‘What do you mean, entertain?’ It was Phoebe’s turn to frown. After all, Katherine’s request, or rather Max’s request made through his sister, had brought Phoebe here. She knew as well as anyone that Katherine was snowbound in Montana and not likely to appear back in Oz any time soon. Yet Max acted as though he hadn’t known Phoebe was coming. A sinking feeling started up inside her and quickly took hold.

‘Katherine didn’t tell you it was me.’ It was the only explanation. At the continued incomprehension on Max’s face, Phoebe knew she was right. No wonder Katherine had been so cagey on the phone. ‘The nanny. Katherine didn’t tell you that I was to be the nanny for your boys.’

His face darkened beneath his tan. ‘You schemed with Katherine to play nanny to my sons?’

Of all the arrogant nerve! She blinked several times while righteous anger roared through her. ‘I answered a plea for help,’ she articulated very slowly, as if that would help her to calm down at all. ‘Quite a different thing, Max.’

Schemed, indeed! For two pins Phoebe would leave him to his pride, and his problems. Except his boys deserved better than that. They deserved to have proper care, and that field of care just happened to be her speciality.

Any fool could see they were feeling scared and uneasy. Phoebe could fix that and, now that she thought about it, she wasn’t going to let the small matter of a short-sighted, incompetent new parent get in her way. Even if that parent was Max Saunders. ‘It was your plea, as it happens.’

‘In the first place,’ Max growled, ‘I don’t plead. I certainly never gave out any such plea for help from you.’

She had already figured that out. Phoebe sucked her lungs full of air and got ready to blast him. ‘That’s not the impression Katherine gave me. She said—’

‘Never mind what she said. I can guess.’ His face darkened even further. ‘I’ll kill her.’

‘Whatever.’ Phoebe wasn’t thirteen years old any more. Nor fifteen, nor sixteen, nor even eighteen and, yes, they had fought it out all through those formative years of hers. Had fought over her right to be in charge of herself, even though Max had had nothing to do with the keeping of her. Had fought about politics and economics and dyeing her hair black and orange. And had fought about pretty much everything else as well.

Max was thirteen years her senior. For a while, that had given him an advantage, but eventually she had caught up. Had learned to hold her own ground and started winning her share of the skirmishes.

Now she was a mature twenty-two. An experienced child-care worker and, although he had no idea of it yet, in this case, Max’s salvation. She had no intention of allowing him to browbeat her into defeat before she even gave things a try.

Besides, she loved these mountains and this vast sheep and apple farm that had belonged to Saunders family members for generations.

Phoebe refused to acknowledge, even to herself, that she needed to come here sometimes. Just to soak up that oh-so-false feeling of belonging.

Hmph. If she owned Mountain Gem she would involve herself hands-on, not leave it to a manager who didn’t even live on the same property. It seemed as good a thing as any to get aggressive about right now.

‘How’s the rare and precious stone business coming?’ she sniped. ‘Made any more millions lately?’ Max had clinched a deal with the elusive Danvers Corporation recently to sell Saunders original jewellery creations through Danvers’s Australian stores. Phoebe knew that much because Katherine had told her how pleased Max had been.

Katherine had also mentioned that Max had dated Cameron Danvers’s daughter Felicity once or twice in recent months. Phoebe wondered if Max mixed business and pleasure often, then pushed the thought aside. Why should she be interested in the long line of women who paraded through Max’s life, be they past or present?

‘I’ll set up the video link and have my managerial team give you a report,’ Max sniped back over the noise of his boisterous and not at all happy sons. ‘Since I’ve been stuck working from home, that’s as close as I ever get to the business. Where would you like to hear from first? Greece? France? Germany?’

He made it sound as though watching over his sons was a real chore. Something he’d had foisted on him and didn’t want.

Phoebe paused. Perhaps that was exactly how he felt. If that was the case, it simply underlined how important it was that the boys had someone here who would stand firmly in their corner. ‘Actually, Max, I’m not that interested in your business.’

‘Trying to goad me, Phoebe?’ He offered a smile that was one hundred per cent gleaming irritation. ‘If so, you’ll have to do better than that.’

‘No offence meant.’ She gave him the benefit of an unblinking and unrepentant stare. ‘I was just expressing my thoughts.’

‘Always a dangerous pastime where you’re concerned.’

The dart barely made an impact. For one thing, she was used to his barbs. And, for another, he was avoiding the real issue. ‘There are other commitments in life that are even more important than making money.’

He glared at her. ‘Is there a point to this?’

Phoebe pulled a face. Not willing to admit a thing, are you, Max?

‘Well, you still look like you need help.’ She glanced at the howling and kicking boys. No way would she desert them to Max’s ministrations, or lack thereof. ‘A lot of it, I’d say. Whatever Katherine may have led us to believe, and I might add she’s hoaxed both of us not just you, that fact remains.’

She waved a hand in his direction, determined to take hold of this conversation and steer it the way she wanted.

Enough of this nonsense of him criticising her personality. She already knew she was different—the sort that broke the mould and scared most people off in the process. She didn’t need Max to emphasise the point. ‘You look as though you haven’t slept in days—your hair’s all ruffled, you have beard shadow, which is not like you at all, and you’re covered in goop.’

Even so, he still managed to look gorgeous. Was it any wonder she needed to let off steam by criticising him? These mixed reactions to Max were enough to drive her crazy. At least he wasn’t the reason she felt at home here.

Mountain Gem’s bush setting, with its gum trees and low scrub, and the sense of stability inside the walls of the old homestead—those were the things that called to her, that could tangle her up, if she didn’t watch herself. ‘Even I didn’t get that grotty when I was working with my daycare kids. Whether you want to admit it or not, you need me right now.’

Oh, it felt good to say those words. He would hate having to agree with her.

‘What I need,’ Max ground out through strong white teeth, ‘is a competent, mature nanny. Someone who can help me accustom my sons to life here. They need to settle in, and soon.’

‘All nicely compartmentalised? It won’t work, you know.’ She paused to consider the rest of what he had said. ‘And, for your information, I am competent. You should see my employer references. I’ve worked at any number of childcare facilities, and all bar one of them—’

‘I admit I’ve lost three nannies in swift succession.’ He interrupted her as though he hadn’t even been listening. Probably he hadn’t, since he never took any notice when she tried to prove a point. ‘The boys have been ratty. None of the nannies had a lot of experience. Frankly, I don’t think you would last any longer with them than the others have.’

‘So you’d like me to simply get out of the way?’

Instead of answering straight away, Max glanced down at his shirt, grimaced, tugged it off and wadded it into a ball in one tanned fist. Only then did he meet her gaze, his own unflinching and uncompromising. There wasn’t a shred of warmth in it. ‘I’m glad you understand. Now that we have that sorted out, I’ll see you to the door.’

Suiting action to words he stepped forward, intent, apparently, on manoeuvring her outside with as much haste as possible. The gall of the man left her speechless. So, unfortunately, did the sight of so much of his bare skin.

Phoebe made a concerted effort to pull herself together. ‘You’re not throwing me out. I won’t go.’

She slapped a hand against the centre of his chest, intent on stopping his motion towards the door. Heated, hard male flesh met the pads of her fingers, the palm of her hand.

Big mistake. She drew back, flustered and rather appalled because her body was telling her in a very clear tone that this was a man. One worthy of her feminine interest. On a personal level.

This was no sense of homecoming bothering her now. It was attraction to Max. She may have tried to deny it, but the proof was in her tingling fingers. She was on completely alien territory and had no idea how to cope with the change.

She decided to ignore it, and hope it went away. It had to be some sort of aberration, anyway. So yes, she would just shrug it off and, before she knew it, it would be forgotten. A faded memory, never to be repeated.

‘I’m staying, Max, and I’m going to help your sons.’ If she focused on the purpose of her presence here she would be just fine. She squared her shoulders and stepped around him.

‘I’ve worked at Sydney Platypus Daycare.’ Until they tossed me out on my ear for having too much of an opinion about everything, but that was the only bad ending I’ve had in a job so far. ‘Trust me, four-year-old kicking screamers don’t frighten me in the least, and nor does their father. You wanted a seasoned childcare worker, and that’s what you’ve got.’

‘What I’ve got is more trouble than I want.’ Max muttered the opinion beneath his breath.

Phoebe still heard it and, typically, was goaded into retaliation. ‘Don’t tell me the famous Maximilian can’t balance two small boys and a nanny? Doesn’t sound like much of a challenge to me.’

His mouth tightened.

She told herself it served him right. He had asked for it, after all.

Stand aside, Max, and let me show you how things are done.

Besides, she had been having just the slightest bit of trouble finding a new job. When Katherine had told her about Max needing help, Phoebe had been somewhat out of funds, and she had given up her tiny bedsit in Sydney to come here. Not a good time to try to move on elsewhere just now.

Oh, bother Max anyway. This wasn’t about him. She deliberately raised her voice without looking at his sons. ‘I am so hungry. You won’t mind if I go to the kitchen and make a big, ugly, sloppy sandwich with heaps of really gooey stuff dripping out the sides and drooling over the floor, will you, Max?’

This question elicited an appalled expression from Max, and startled but definitely interested expressions from both boys. Phoebe breezed past the lot of them to the large kitchen and hauled the fridge door open.

Secretly, she was horrified by the sight of the long, rectangular kitchen. Max prided himself on keeping that room spick and span, but at the moment it rivalled a garbage dump, with mess from floor to ceiling.

She made the best of riffling through the slim pickings inside the fridge, tossing anything edible she could find on to the one bit of service counter that wasn’t already cluttered with dirty dishes. All the while she raved about her appetite and how good it would feel to stuff this sandwich down.

‘I’ll probably even burp loudly at the end, just like a pig,’ she added with a fiendish wiggle of her brows.

Max’s sons, wide-eyed and encouragingly silent, sidled inside the door, shoulder to shoulder, their gazes locked on the monster sandwich tower Phoebe was assembling with deft hands.

She hoped Max had more supplies stashed in the cupboards than he did in the fridge but, for now, she focused on her sandwich and on getting the two little boys fed so they could give in to their exhaustion and conk out for the night.

Beneath the identical sets of hazel eyes—they must have got those from their late mother—both boys sported dark, weary smudges and overly pale skins. Poor things.

‘Mmm hmm. I haven’t had a monster sandwich for ten thousand years.’ She cut the sandwich into four enormous pieces and crammed as much as she could of the first piece into her mouth, chewing in feigned ecstasy. Actually, it wasn’t too bad, given the raw materials. ‘All this needs is some milk to wash it down.’

A half bottle of the stuff being the only thing of note now left in the fridge, she helped herself to a plastic mug, which was miraculously still clean and secure in the cupboard, and swilled some down.

‘Brilliant. My tummy is starting to feel better already.’ She rubbed it appreciatively. ‘But then, not just anybody can eat a big monster sandwich like this. Only really brave people can, and people who drink milk as well to wash it down properly in the monster-honoured tradition.’

She glanced at Max and almost laughed at the expression of pure outrage on his face. Didn’t he know what she was doing?

Given that he hadn’t said anything, she assumed he was so appalled he was speechless. ‘Thanks for the food, Max. I’m sure you didn’t mind that I helped myself like this.’ She grinned at him through her milk moustache.

Inside, she silently warned him not to blow it. The boys were close to capitulating. She could feel it. But if Max went off at her now, goodness knew what would happen.

She wished he would put a shirt on, too, drat it. How could the man be so comfortable in his own skin, and so oblivious to the effect of the sight of that skin on others? Her, for example.

She stuffed more sandwich in before the thought could tumble out of her foolhardy mouth, and rolled her eyes at the boys as she slurped more milk from her mug.

Any moment now they would drop their guards fully and let her start to help them.

And any moment now Phoebe would get past wanting to run her hands all over Max Saunders’s bare chest. Sandwiches she could handle. But that other kind of craving was pure trouble.