Jessica Hart - Her Boss's Baby Plan

“Do you want to take her?” Martha asked, and Lewis instantly looked alarmed.

“Don’t panic, there’s no nappy changing required! Just give her a bit of a cuddle.”

Lewis did his best, but the fact was that Viola wasn’t the slightest bit interested. It was more fun to explore her uncle’s face with inquisitive little fingers, sticking them in his mouth, patting his nose, tugging at his lips and pulling at his hair until he winced.

“Why won’t she sit quietly like him?” Lewis complained, casting an envious glance to where Noah was sitting angelically on his mother’s lap.

“Just wait until she’s old enough to answer back!”

“That’ll be her parents’ problem,” said Lewis, removing Viola’s finger from his ear. “It’s nothing to do with me.”

Even to himself that had the ring of famous last words.

What happens when you suddenly discover your happy twosome is about to be turned into a…family?

Do you panic?

Do you laugh?

Do you cry?

Or…do you get married?

The answer is all of the above—and plenty more!

Share the laughter and the tears as these unsuspecting couples are plunged into parenthood! Whether it’s a baby on the way or the creation of a brand-new instant family, these men and women have no choice but to be

When parenthood takes you by surprise!

Ready for Baby miniseries, The Pregnant Tycoon by Caroline Anderson

If you’d like to find out more about Jessica Hart, you can visit her Web site www.jessicahart.co.uk

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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For Dora, with love

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

MARTHA looked at her watch. Twenty to four. How much longer was Lewis Mansfield going to keep her waiting?

His PA had apologised when she had turned up as instructed at three o’clock. Mr Mansfield, she said, was very busy. Which was fine. Martha knew about being busy, and she couldn’t afford to make a grand gesture and walk out in a huff. Lewis Mansfield was her best chance—OK, her only chance right now—of getting out to St Bonaventure, so she was just going to have to wait.

Only she wished that he would hurry up. Noah had woken up and was getting restless. Martha hoisted him out of his buggy and carried him over to look at the enlarged black and white photographs that lined the walls.

They were not very interesting. A road stretching out across a desert. A runway. A port. Another road, this one with a tunnel. A bridge. Dramatic in their own way, but personally Martha preferred a bit of life. Including a person in the shot would have given the structures some sense of scale and humanised the pictures. Now, if they had just had a model striding across the tarmac…

‘I’m thinking like a fashion editor,’ Martha told Noah. ‘I’d better stop it, hadn’t I? I’ve got a new career now.’

Could you call being a nanny for six months a career? It certainly wasn’t the one she had had in mind when she left university. Martha thought about her exciting job at Glitz, and sighed inwardly. Somehow, being a nanny didn’t have quite the same ring to it.

Noah, at eight months, was not yet up to much in the way of conversation, but he bumped his forehead affectionately against Martha’s jaw in reply and she hugged him back. He was worth more than any dazzling career.

The door to Lewis Mansfield’s office opened and Martha turned hopefully as his PA reappeared.

‘Lewis will see you now,’ she said. ‘Sorry you’ve had to wait so long.’ She looked a little doubtfully at Noah. ‘Do you want to leave him with me?’

‘Thanks, but now he’s awake I think I’d better take him with me,’ said Martha. ‘Could I leave the buggy here, though?’

‘Sure.’ The PA lowered her voice and nodded her head towards the closed door. ‘He’s not in the best of moods,’ she warned.

Oh, great, thought Martha, but it was too late to turn back now. ‘Maybe he’ll cheer up when he discovers that I’m the answer to his prayers?’ she suggested, but the PA’s answering smile was disturbingly sympathetic.

‘Good luck,’ was all she said.

Behind the closed door Lewis shuffled the papers morosely on his desk and waited for Martha Shaw to appear. To say that he was not in the best of moods was an understatement.

It had been a hellish day so far, kicked off bright and early by Savannah turning up on his doorstep in a terrible state, followed inevitably by reporters ringing the bell, eager to discover the sordid details of the last instalment in the long-running melodrama that was Savannah’s relationship with Van Valerian.

He had finally calmed his sister down, fought his way through the pack of paparazzi at the door, and champed in frustration at endless traffic delays, only to get to work and discover one crisis after another, all of which had to be dealt with urgently. Just to make things more interesting, the nanny had turned up at lunchtime saying that her mother had been taken into hospital and dumping Viola with him until the evening.

At least Viola was behaving herself, thought Lewis. So far, anyway. He eyed the carry-cot in the corner dubiously. She was sleeping peacefully, but the way today was going that wouldn’t last.

He would have to make the most of the time he had left today. He wished he hadn’t agreed to see Martha Shaw, but Gill had been so insistent that her friend was just the person he needed to look after Viola that in the end he had given in just to shut her up. ‘Martha will be absolutely perfect for you,’ she had insisted.

Lewis wasn’t so sure. Gill was a friend of Savannah’s and worked on some glossy, glittery magazine. He couldn’t imagine her being friends with a nanny at all, let alone the kind of calm, sensible, solid nanny that he wanted.

The door opened. ‘Martha Shaw,’ said his PA brightly, and ushered in exactly the kind of woman Lewis least wanted to see right then.

He should have known, he thought bitterly, taking in the slightly dishevelled glamour and the brittle smile. She was attractive enough, with a swing of dark straight hair and that generous mouth, but she was far too thin. Lewis preferred women who didn’t look as if they would snap in two the moment you touched them.

So much for a calm, solid nanny. Martha Shaw radiated nervous exhaustion. Her huge dark eyes were smudged with tiredness, and she held herself tensely.

And she wasn’t just holding herself.

‘That,’ said Lewis, ignoring her greeting and levelling an accusing stare at her hip, ‘is a baby.’