Caroline Anderson - With This Baby...

‘You do that. I’ll give you a week, and then I’m taking action—starting with sending the photographs to the press.’ She delved into the blue bag that seemed to contain her entire life’s resources, and produced a slightly dog-eared card that she thrust at him.

‘Here. If you don’t contact me by next Monday morning, you’ll be hearing from my solicitor and the tabloids, probably simultaneously. Now perhaps you’ll be good enough to call me a taxi. I’ll arrange to have my other things collected in the next few days.’

On the point of telling her to take a hike, he caught sight of the sleeping baby and his irritation evaporated.

Poor little scrap. She didn’t deserve this, and it was a long way to—he glanced down at the card.

Suffolk. Ms Claire Franklin, Lower Valley Farm, Strugglers Lane, Tuddingfield, Suffolk. Nice address, but she didn’t look like a farmer. A farm worker? Lodger? Nanny? Nothing too highly paid, judging by the car and her remarks about money.

Claire. He savoured it on his tongue. Interesting, how an ordinary name had suddenly become somehow musical.

‘How are you going to get home?’ he asked her, refocusing. ‘Have you got enough money for the train?’

The confidence in her eyes faltered for a moment, then firmed again. ‘I’ll manage.’

He sighed, opened his wallet and pulled out several notes. ‘Here—that should be enough to get you and your things home in a minicab.’

She eyed the cash and her eyebrows arched eloquently. ‘You must have a hell of a guilty conscience, Mr Cameron.’

He hung onto his temper with difficulty. ‘On the contrary, Miss Franklin, I have a perfectly clean conscience—and I want it to stay that way. Now, are you going to take the money, or are you going to be stubborn and independent and make the baby suffer all the way home on the tube and the train?’

For a moment she hesitated, then she took it with a curt nod and tucked it into the bottomless blue bag. ‘I’ll pay you back,’ she said, and something in her voice made him believe her against all the odds.

Drawing her dignity around her like a cloak, she picked up the carrier with the baby in it, slung the blue bag over her shoulder and stood patiently waiting.

‘I’ll call the cab,’ he said, a trifle curtly because he didn’t want to admire her for anything. Picking up the phone, he asked Kate to order a minicab. ‘On second thoughts,’ he added to his beleaguered receptionist, ‘get George if he’s free. Usual arrangement.’

He cradled the phone, then escorted his visitor and her now sleeping charge to the lift. ‘I’ve ordered a minicab. He’ll take your things, as well, so you won’t have to get them picked up.’ He stuck out his hand. ‘Goodbye, Miss Franklin.’

She took it almost graciously, her palm cool, her grip firm and capable, and inclined her head. ‘Goodbye,’ she murmured, but he had a feeling she wasn’t finished, and he was right. She carried the baby into the lift, turned and met his eyes with a steady look that held the promise of another skirmish to come. ‘I mean it,’ she said before the doors sighed shut. ‘One week, and then all hell breaks loose.’

He didn’t doubt it for a moment.

He held that clear grey gaze until the doors interrupted it, and then turned away with a shrug. Let her do her worst. There was no way the child was his, cute though she might have been, regardless of some bogus photographic evidence.

Of course, if Will had still been alive he would have blamed him. It wouldn’t have been the first time his brother had got him in a scrape, by a country mile, and it was just the sort of damn fool thing he might have done, Patrick thought with a fondness touched with irony.

He could just imagine him now, pretending to be his richer and more successful twin, capitalising on his brother’s success without bothering to earn the right to it. Had he entertained women here, told them his name was Patrick?

Surely he would have outgrown that kind of prank? They’d often pretended to be each other, with no thought of the consequences, driving their teachers and then later on their girlfriends mad, but then they’d grown up.

Or he had.

Will, on the other hand, had never considered the consequences of his actions—like getting the dog, for instance. It was just like Will to take pity on the poor, scruffy little black bundle he’d been and then all but abandon him when the responsibility for looking after a lively puppy got too irksome.

If it hadn’t been for Patrick, Dog would have ended up being rehomed. Instead, he’d found a master who struggled in the midst of the city to find time to exercise his intelligent mind and his restless body, and who took his care seriously.

Even if he hadn’t ever given him a proper name!

He summoned the lift, and as the doors opened he saw a small pink rabbit lying on the floor.

The baby’s. It must have fallen out of the little baby seat. Damn. He’d get Sally, his long-suffering PA, to send it—or, better still, Kate. She seemed to have a soft spot for the child and Sally would ask him endless questions.

He went into his office, the pink rabbit in his hand, and dropped it in his desk drawer just as Sally came in.

‘Everything OK?’

She tried hard to keep the curiosity out of her voice, but failed dismally. Dog, on the other hand, greeted him with cheerful and unquestioning enthusiasm, and seemed a much safer bet. He wasn’t going to ask awkward questions about his visitor!

‘Fine,’ he lied. ‘I’m going to take Dog in the park,’ he added hastily as she started to open her mouth again, and picked up the dog lead. ‘Hold my calls.’

‘Still?’ Sally said, but he pretended not to hear her. He went down to the now tidy foyer, Dog bouncing excitedly at his heels, and ignored Kate’s frantic gestures as she dealt with a phone call that was obviously for him.

The park beckoned—the park, and peace and quiet, time to think, because a troubling thought was beginning to take shape in the back of his mind.

It was early April—and Will had been dead a little over a year. If that baby was more than four months old, it could have been his.

And—because they were identical twins—the DNA would match.

‘No charge,’ the minicab driver said. ‘It’s on Mr Cameron.’

‘Oh.’ Claire blinked, puzzled. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Quite sure. That’s what Kate said when she called me. Anyway, I’m on a retainer. I’ll just bill them.’

‘But he gave me money.’

George laughed, not unkindly. ‘Of course, if I was a real rogue, I’d take that off you, love, but I’m not, so don’t argue, there’s a good girl. Just say “Thank you very much,” and be grateful. He can afford it.’

She opened her mouth, shut it again, then opened it and said, ‘Thank you very much.’

Eyes twinkling, he carried her miscellaneous possessions into the cottage, wiggled his fingers at the baby and left her to her confusion.

She could feel the cash burning a hole in the side of the blue bag. She’d give it back to Cameron, of course, and repay the cost of the minicab—once she’d earned it, and the money to get her car out of the pound.

Huh! That was the rub, she thought as she fed the grizzly, hungry baby and bathed her ready for bed. How on earth was she going to earn it? She couldn’t afford to pay the phone bill, and without a phone she couldn’t get work, at least not the sort of freelance stuff she did.

The irony of it was that Patrick Cameron was an architect, and there was probably room in his organisation for another draughtsperson, doing some of the donkey-work on the less important contracts. Maybe that was it. Maybe she should ask him for work, so she could support the baby and herself and be independent?