Diana Hamilton - The Millionaire's Baby

So why wasn’t he taking the opportunity? Because he wasn’t as black as her second-hand knowledge had painted him or because—and this seemed far more likely—he didn’t want to leave her alone with his baby daughter?

That was logical. She was comfortable with logic. For all he was a callous, heartless brute where women were concerned, no one could deny he adored his child. And the new nanny had been here for less than twenty-four hours and had shown herself to be largely incompetent.

She gave him a good attempt at a reassuring smile and said calmly, ‘Sophie will be fine with me, if that’s what’s troubling you. I’m perfectly capable of attending to her should she wake. Didn’t your secretary—’ she invested that word with heavy emphasis, quite deliberately ‘—say you could now get yourself a life? So why don’t you? I’m sure she’d be more than happy to help you get back in the swing of things.’

Gross impertinence, given her subordinate position; she knew that and didn’t give a fig. She wanted to draw him out, hear him add to the list of his sins with his own far too sexy mouth.

And he did. In a way he did. He said, looking at her with enigmatic silver eyes, ‘Oh, yes, I’m quite sure she would. But not tonight.’

Tonight he had plans. Tonight he meant to delve and dig and discover why she was here. He found he had a sudden urgency to get to know her a great deal better, find out what made this woman tick. This oddly prickly, supremely lovely, breath-catchingly graceful woman.

Then, as a discreet tap on the door heralded the arrival of the room-service waiter with his trolley, he added, ‘Neither am I troubled. Once she’s asleep Sophie never wakes. But as we’re going to be practically living in each other’s pockets for the next few months I thought we should spend an hour or so getting to know each other better. Hitting the town can wait.’

Caro, watching the waiter set out the covers on the table in the window, felt her stomach lurch, twist and contract. He meant to quiz her about her credentials; a little late in the day of course, but doubtless brought on by her obvious and total lack of experience.

She’d fudge her way through that somehow; she could have done without it but the prospect didn’t bother her too much. What was really churning her up was the way he’d as good as admitted he had something going with that secretary of his.

‘Not tonight’, he’d said, implying that there were plenty of other nights when he’d take the opportunity to play away from home. What kind of normal married man would have made such an admission to the newly hired nanny?

But he wasn’t a normal married man. He’d made his wedding vows but he didn’t mean to keep them. The type of man who could treat Katie the way he had was capable of anything.

‘Shall we eat?’ His warm, dark voice made her spine prickle in none too subtle warning. Inadvertently, she glanced up and met his eyes. If his mouth was sexy, his eyes were more so. They pulled her into the softly gleaming silver depths with an invitation that was hard to resist.

‘I’m not really hungry.’ She found her voice; it was strangely husky. That intimate, come-to-bed look was carefully cultivated, part of his stock-in-trade, guaranteed to set female hearts fluttering.

But not this female’s heart. Sweet, naive Katie with her fragile self-esteem had been a pushover. Two years ago, at barely eighteen, her little sister had met this man and been blown away like a leaf in a hurricane, had believed every rotten lie he’d told her and suffered the shattering consequences.

‘It’s the heat,’ he sympathised. ‘But you must try to eat something.’

His words penetrated the dark fog of her rage, pushed her into getting a grip on herself.

‘I’ll do my best.’ Her voice was empty, her movements brisk and businesslike as she walked to the table, seated herself and glanced at what was on offer.

Cold poached salmon, slices of chicken breast in a lemon sauce, a multiplicity of salads. She barely listened to his idle comments about the heatwave, the noise and air pollution of the never-sleeping capital, the undesirability of bringing up a child in a city. She kept her eyes on her plate or on the tree-lined street beyond the window, the dusty leaves at eye-level.

Only when he put in, ‘How’s the agency doing? From what I was told, Grandes Families was an overnight success,’ did she allow herself to look at him.

There was a subtle challenge there somewhere. He didn’t strike her as the type of man who would be interested in idle gossip and she knew that his father had helped her gran set up those convoluted trust funds after her grandpa had died.

Would he be aware that capital from one of the funds had been used by the agency? Hardly likely. Such small beer would be beneath the notice of the powerful chief executive; the release would have been dealt with at a much lower level.

And he wouldn’t connect her surname with the name of the barely ex-schoolgirl he had seduced and abandoned two years ago. Farr was a fairly common name. He probably couldn’t remember Katie’s name in any case.

In any case, had he leaped to the conclusion that because her surname was Farr she had to be connected to Katie, then surely he would have mentioned it by now? She was, she assured herself staunchly, getting away with it!

So it was just idle conversation and her cover wasn’t blown. She picked up her as yet untouched glass of wine and twirled it slowly round by the stern.

‘How should I know? It gets a good press. I only signed on with them recently.’ It was a blessing she wasn’t Pinocchio or by now her nose would have reached right over the table, probably poking holes in the crisp white shirt that covered those mightily impressive shoulders.

‘I see. How long have you been working as a nanny?’ Finn leant back in his chair, watching the film of colour rise beneath her skin. He didn’t need that, or the way she suddenly buried her nose in her wine glass, to tell him she was hiding something. Telling lies to cover the truth.

Which was? His narrowed eyes lingered on the attenuated line of her throat as she tipped her glass, drinking deeply. That she had no idea he knew who she was and had already guessed she’d turned her hand to nannying to bring in desperately needed extra funds.

She and her partner, the pleasant, capable-seeming middle-aged woman who’d interviewed him initially, wouldn’t want it known that their high-flying agency had taken a nose-dive.

‘Not long.’ She answered his question when her glass was empty and she could no longer find an excuse to keep silent. But at least it was the truth. Less than twenty-four hours, in fact. A sudden urge to giggle had her wondering if swallowing that wine had been one of the best ideas she’d ever had.

So she wasn’t going to come clean. He could wait. Finn refilled her glass from the bottle of Moselle he’d ordered. She barely knew him, after all. She would hardly take him into her confidence so soon, and he was reluctant to force it out of her by telling her he knew she was the other half—the driving half—of the partnership.

He wanted her to trust him enough to share her problems with him, and so allow him to help her get to grips with them. He wanted those problems, and the subterfuge, out of the way. And he knew the perfect way to hasten that happy event. He had already made up his mind. To gain her trust he needed a more intimate atmosphere than an impersonal hotel suite could provide.

‘I’d like you to pack for you and Sophie first thing in the morning.’ Her attention was back on him again, her eyes wide and golden, completely without artifice, mildly questioning. Beautiful. He held them, his voice soft as he told her, ‘We’re moving to the country. A cottage just big enough for the three of us. Secluded, peaceful, a good place to draw breath.’ His eyes were drawn without his say-so to her mouth. A soft mouth, the colour of crushed strawberries and probably just as sweet.