Jessica Steele - A Paper Marriage

Jonah eyed her steadily. “Anything?” he questioned. “You said anything?”

Of course, anything. He had saved her parents from having to move out from Beamhurst Court. “Anything,” she agreed. But added quickly, “Anything legal, that is.”

His mouth picked up at the corners, involuntarily, she rather thought. But he sobered, and asked, “How old are you?”

She was sure he knew how old she was, but answered, “Twenty-three. Why?”

He shrugged. “Just making sure that anything I propose is quite legal—amongst consenting adults.”

Jessica Steele’s latest novel is part of a brand-new miniseries from Harlequin Romance®

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CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

LYDIE was in worried mood as she drove her car in the direction of Buckinghamshire to her family home. Something was wrong, very wrong. She had known it the moment she had heard her mother’s voice over the telephone.

Her mother never rang her. It was always she who rang her mother. Lydie had held back from asking what was wrong—her mother would tell her soon enough. ‘I want you to come home straight away,’ Hilary Pearson had said almost before their greeting was over.

‘I’m coming next Tuesday for Oliver’s wedding on Saturday,’ Lydie reminded her.

‘I want you here before then,’ her mother stated sharply.

‘You need my help in some way?’

‘Yes, I do!’

‘Oliver…’ Lydie began.

‘It has nothing to do with your brother or his wedding!’ her mother snapped sharply. ‘The Ward-Watsons are more than capable of seeing to it that their only daughter gets married in style.’

‘Dad!’ Lydie cried in alarm. ‘He’s not ill?’ She thought the world of her father. She occasionally felt that fate had dealt him a raw deal when it had selected her sometimes acid-tongued mother for the mild-mannered man.

‘Physically he’s as fit as he always has been.’

‘You’re saying he has a mental health problem?’ Lydie asked in alarm.

‘Good heavens, no! He’s just worried, not sleeping well, he’s…’

‘What’s he worried about?’

There was a moment or two of silence. ‘I’ll tell you that when you get here,’ her mother eventually replied.

‘Why can’t you tell me now?’ Lydie pressed.

‘When you get here.’

‘You can’t leave it there!’ Lydie protested.

‘I’m certainly not going to discuss it over the phone.’

Oh, for heaven’s sake! Who did her mother think was listening in? ‘I’ll ring Dad at his office,’ Lydie decided.

‘Don’t you dare! He’s not to know I’ve been in touch with you.’

‘But…’

‘And anyway, your father no longer has an office.’

‘He…’ What the Dickens was going on?

‘Come home,’ her mother demanded crisply—and put down the phone.

Lydie’s initial reaction was to dial her mother straight back. A second later, though, and she accepted that to ring her would be a waste of time. If her mother had made up her mind to tell her nothing, Lydie knew from experience that she would get nothing more from her until her mother was ready.

Despite her mother’s ‘Don’t you dare’ Lydie dialled her father’s business number. She need not tell him anything of her mother’s call, just say she’d called to say hello prior to seeing him again when she arrived at her lovely old home next week.

A few minutes later and Lydie began to feel seriously worried herself. There was no ringing out tone from her father’s firm; his number was a ceased number. ‘…your father no longer has an office’ her mother had said.

At that point Lydie put down the phone and went in search of the woman whose employ she was due to leave next week. Though Donna was more like the sister she had never had than an employer. She found her in the sitting room with one-year-old Sofia and three-year-old Thomas. They looked such a contented family and Lydie knew she was going to feel quite a pang when she left the family she had been nanny to for the past three years.

Donna looked up. ‘Did I hear the phone?’ she asked with a smile.

‘My mother rang.’

‘Everything all right at home?’

‘How would you feel if I left a week earlier than we said?’

‘Today?’ Donna queried, her smile disappearing. ‘I’d hate it.’

‘You’ll be fine on your own; I know you will,’ Lydie assured her bracingly.

That had been some hours ago. Lydie drove into her home village and realised she had been an infrequent visitor just lately to the home she so loved. Beamhurst Court was in her blood, and it had been a dreadful wrench to leave Beamhurst five years ago when at the age of eighteen she had gone to begin her career as a nanny.

Her first job had not worked out when the husband had started to get ideas about his children’s nanny that had not been in her terms of employment. She had left to go and look after Thomas, Donna and Nick Cooper’s first child, while they followed their careers.

Donna had suffered a quite terrible bout of the baby-blues following the birth of her second child, Sofia. While she was surfacing from that she had started to get very depressed at the thought of returning to work. It had been her husband Nick who had suggested that unless she desperately wanted to keep on with her career, given that they would not be able to afford a nanny and would have to let Lydie go, they could otherwise manage quite adequately without her income.

‘What do you think?’ Donna had asked Lydie.

‘Which would make you happier?’

Donna thought, but not for very long. ‘I’ve always felt a bit of a pang at missing out on Thomas’s first couple of years,’ she answered. That, simply, decided the matter.

Lydie had been due to leave next Tuesday, when she went home for her brother’s wedding the following Saturday. She knew it would not be long before she found another job but, having been so happy with the Coopers, and on edge most of the time with her previous employers, she was in no rush to accept the first job offered.