Cara Colter - His to Command - the Nanny - A Nanny for Keeps

Liz Fielding

Cara Colter

Jennie Adams

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Liz Fielding

LIZ FIELDINGstarted writing at the age of twelve, when she won a writing competition at school. After that early success there was quite a gap—during which she was busy working in Africa and the Middle East, getting married and having children—before her first book was published in 1992. now readers worldwide fall in love with her irresistible heroes, adore her independent-minded heroines. Visit Liz’s website for news and extracts of new books at www.lizfielding.com

JACQUI MOORE peered through the low, swirling cloud, intent on keeping her precious car on the lane snaking between dry-stone walls that were much too close for comfort, and wished, not for the first time that day, that she was better at saying no.

‘It’s just a flying nanny job, Jacqui. A piece of cake for someone as experienced as you.’

‘I’m not a nanny, flying or otherwise. Not any more.’

‘A couple of hours, max,’ Vickie Campbell continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. ‘I wouldn’t ask but this is an emergency and Selina Talbot is a very special client.’

‘Selina Talbot?’

‘Now I have your attention,’ Vickie said, with satisfaction. ‘You know she adopted an orphaned refugee child?’

‘Yes, I’ve seen her photograph in Celebrity…’

‘We supply all her staff.’

‘Do you?’ Jacqui jerked herself back from the brink of temptation. ‘So why doesn’t she have one of your wonderful nannies to take care of her little girl?’

‘She does. At least she will have. I’ve got someone lined up, but she’s on holiday—’

‘Holiday! Now, there’s a coincidence. You do recall that you asked me to drop by on my way to the airport…’ she laid heavy emphasis on the word airport ‘…since I was passing the door anyway. You had something for me, you said,’ she prompted.

‘Oh, yes.’ Vickie opened her desk drawer and handed her a padded envelope. ‘The Gilchrists sent it.’

Jacqui took the envelope with its Hong Kong postmark and, heart beating like a drum as she tore it open, tipped out the contents. The supple silver links of the bracelet curled into her palm. A card fluttered to the ground.

With a feeling of dread she picked it up, turned it over and read the message.

‘Jacqui?’

She shook her head, blinking furiously as she bent over her bag, pushing it out of sight. Unable for a moment to speak.

‘What is it? Did the Gilchrists send you a keepsake?’

Unable to tell her exactly what the Gilchrists had done, she said, ‘Something like that.’

Vickie took it from her. ‘Oh, it’s a charm bracelet and they’ve started your collection with a little heart. How sweet.’ Then, ‘It seems to be engraved,’ she said, holding it closer to the light and squinting to read the tiny words. ‘I really must get my eyes tested, but I think it says…“…forget and smile…”.’ She frowned. ‘What does that mean?’

‘It’s a quotation from Christina Rossetti,’ Jacqui said, numbly. “‘Better by far you should forget and smile, Than that you should remember and be sad.”’

‘Oh. Yes…Well. I see.’ Then, gently, ‘Maybe that’s good advice.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘I know how much it hurt to lose her, Jacqui. She’ll never forget you. Everything you did for her.’

Jacqui knew exactly what she’d done. That was why she could never take the risk again.

‘Do you want me to fasten it for you?’

And because it would have looked odd if she’d stuffed it away out of sight with the card that had come with it, she allowed Vickie to fasten the chain about her wrist. Then, because she had to get out of there, she cleared her throat and said, ‘Right, well, if that’s all, I’d better be getting on my way.’

‘Don’t rush off. Your plane doesn’t leave for hours.’ Vickie smiled. One of those full-blooded, come on, I understand that you were upset, but it’s time to move on, smiles. ‘And, since you’re flying by a no-frills airline from some airport in the back of beyond, you undoubtedly need the money. You haven’t worked for months.’

‘I haven’t worked for you for months,’ she corrected. ‘Which was quite intentional. But I have been working as a temp in a jolly nice office. Regular hours, no weekends and the money isn’t bad, either.’

Vickie rolled her eyes in a give-me-strength look, not fooled for a minute.

OK, ‘jolly’ probably overstated it.

‘They’ve asked me to stay on,’ she said. ‘Permanently.’

‘It’s not even as if you’ll have to put yourself out,’ Vickie continued, treating this statement with the contempt it probably deserved and completely ignoring it.

Jacqui had done a very good job for her temporary employers, doing all the dull, repetitive jobs that no one else wanted and doing them well. She’d hated every minute of it, but it was her penance and for six months she’d punished herself. But it hadn’t helped. She was going to have to try something different and maybe her family were right, a couple of weeks on her own, with no pressures, would give her time to decide what she was going to do with the rest of her life.

‘You practically pass the house,’ Vickie persisted, crashing into her thoughts and forcing her to concentrate on the immediate problem. But then she hadn’t attracted all those crème-de-la-crème clients by allowing herself to be put off at the first obstacle.

‘Is that so? The motorway runs right through Little Hinton, does it?’

‘Not exactly through it,’ she admitted, ‘but it’s a very minor diversion. The village is no more than five miles from the nearest exit.’

‘Five? Would that be as the crow flies?’

‘Six at the most. I can show you on the map.’

‘Thanks, but I’ll pass.’

‘OK, OK, I’ll be totally honest with you—’

‘That would make a nice change.’

‘I’m counting on you.’ Oh, help…‘Selina Talbot will be arriving at any moment and it could be hours before I can find someone else to do this for me.’

‘If you go in for Machiavellian subterfuge, Vickie, you should always have a back-up plan.’

‘Please. It’s only a little job and you wouldn’t want to leave a small child here, in my office, bored to tears, would you?’

She pressed her hand over the chain on her wrist until it dug in painfully. ‘I could live with it,’ she said. ‘Whether you could is another matter.’

‘Please, Jacqui. I’ve got meetings, interviews—’

‘And an office full of your own staff—’

‘Who are all fully occupied on vital work. Just drop Maisie off at her grandmother’s house and then you can head for the sun and spend the next two weeks without a thought for the rest of us slaving away in the cold and rain.’

‘You think you can make me feel guilty?’ she enquired, with every appearance of carelessness.

The holiday hadn’t been her idea. It was her family who kept insisting that she needed a break. Not that she needed telling. She had to face herself in the mirror every morning. Vickie, she suspected, thought she knew better and had manufactured this ‘crisis’ purely for her benefit. It was about as blatant a piece of in-at-the-deep-end amateur psychology as she’d ever witnessed and it would serve her right if she walked out and left her lumbered with a spoilt brat causing chaos in her well-run office.