Margaret Way - Cattle Baron - Nanny Needed

“It’s that dreadful Amber Wyatt!” Rosemary hissed, her formidable face working tightly. Not a pleasant sight. This was a woman who was known to make people’s hair stand on end.

Well, fancy that! Cal had to wrench himself away from imagining what it would be like to have a woman like the vision in front of him. Despite his multiple defensive shields he felt a lunge of desire; swiftly killed it. Euphoria only lasted the proverbial fifteen minutes anyway.

“Hell, Cal!” A relative standing just behind him came to Rosemary’s aid. “ Everyone knows who she is. She’s—”

“Okay, okay, I’ve got it!”

So this seriously stunning young woman with what had to be the best pair of legs in the country was the woman Sean Sinclair, the bridegroom, had thrown over for Georgette. Would wonders never cease? It had fortune-hunting stamped all over it. Ms Amber Wyatt had been jilted . One had only to be jilted once, never to get it out of the system, he reflected grimly, his mind going off on a tangent. His ex-fiancée, Brooke Rowlands, had played as dirty as a woman could get. Like some knight of old, he had let her get away with it. The betrayal had happened while he’d been in Japan, part of a trade delegation. Brooke had taken a little holiday at the swank Oriental Hotel in Bangkok with one of his polo buddies. Ex-buddy. Ex-fiancée. He might have shaken off what black thoughts remained over that fiasco, but he had no illusions left about women.

No illusions about Sinclair either. He was a fortune-hunter. As fond as he was of Georgie, for her to believe she had utterly bewitched a man into abandoning a woman as beautiful as Amber Wyatt was as probable as her knocking back a previous proposal from George Clooney.

Cal had heard mentioned at last night’s family dinner that Ms Wyatt had won an award for a story about street kids, wringing admissions and follow-up promises from the Government. She should feel good about that. Nevertheless, in coming here today she had flagrantly disregarded the rules of wedding etiquette. How rash was that? And Rosemary had chosen him to be the Enforcer. This totally unexpected appearance was giving quite a few of his relatives a bad case of the jitters. Just when they’d thought the whole thing had been sorted out:

Enter the ex-fiancée.

How could he do this to me? Amber was experiencing a brief moment of wanting to turn tail and run. The malicious gods up there, the ones who toyed with human lives, would be expecting it, but that wasn’t going to happen. She was determined on keeping a lid on her emotions, even if this was possibly the most foolish and, let’s face it, the most unacceptable thing she’d ever done. Gatecrashing weddings was a serious breach of the rules, even for a fiancée cruelly dumped. She put it down to post traumatic stress. PTS was big these days. Even the courts listened.

Giving no outward sign of her nerves, she kept moving in line up the stone flight of steps. This was the very church where they had planned their own wedding. It was unbelievably callous. Sean couldn’t be allowed to get off scot-free. For every crime, one had to expect punishment. The bride had experienced no sense of guilt either at stealing another woman’s man. That put her on the hit list as well.

There was a shake in her now ringless hands. Of course she had sent the damned thing back by courier. Probably if she’d had the stone checked out she would have found it was a zircon. To counteract her tremulousness, she clasped the chain of her pink Chanel shoulder bag for support. She needed to be as cool as a cucumber to pull this off. There would be some satisfaction in making him cringe. Plenty of women, so cruelly jilted, had been known to run over their ex in a car, then try it in Reverse. She had an idea of herself that precluded violence. But, given the despicable behaviour of Sean and his bride, a frisson of fright was well within her parameters of revenge.

Payback time .

She had just the moment picked out. The symbolic moment when the Bishop, revelling in a role he was famous for, began to intone…. “I am required to ask anyone present who knows a reason why these persons may not lawfully marry, to declare it now.”

That was her cue to rise. At near six feet in her stilettos it would be difficult not to spot her. Then, when all necks were craned and unbelieving eyes were focused on her, she would calmly turn and walk out of the church, leaving the guests either bitterly disappointed that there hadn’t been more drama or aghast at such an assault on wedding etiquette.

All she had to do now was get past the ushers and inside the church. Though she kept her eyes trained ahead, she was aware that her presence was causing a stir. Little whispers wafted to her on the rose-scented breeze.

“Oh, goodness, it’s Amber Wyatt!”

“Has she got some guts, or hasn’t she?” Admiration there from a sister-at-arms.

“If I were her I’d kill myself, poor thing!”

Come on, why should I kill myself? Amber reasoned. I haven’t done a thing wrong. Wrong has been done to me, just when life was going so great . God, she felt ill. Buck up, Amber. It won’t be much longer. She was the sort of person who regularly gave herself pep talks. Hundreds of them of late. She was dressed to kill. Confidence in how one looked always helped. One couldn’t pity her and gape open-mouthed in admiration simultaneously. Her suit was the exact shade of pink that complemented her hair—neither red nor gold nor copper but a combination of all three.

“ We just have to call this little angel Amber! ”

That had been her darling dad, holding his brand-new daughter in his adoring arms.

So Amber she was, though her bright, eye-catching hair was all but hidden by her masterpiece of a hat. It offered a modicum of camouflage. Her accessories were colour co-ordinated, perfect. The whole outfit had cost her way too much money, but her pride demanded she look staggeringly glamorous. She wouldn’t have been content with anything less. Her friend Jono, gay man about town who lived in the penthouse apartment above her and charged unheard of prices for writing other people’s software programs, a man who could be counted on to deliver a totally reliable verdict when it came to fashion, had given her the thumbs up and a spontaneous, “Wow!”

Ironically, it was her friend, the society columnist Zara Fraser, who had first broken the news to her…

* * *

She sat up in bed, bracing herself on one elbow as she made a grab for the phone. She nearly rapped, Who the blazes is this? but stopped just in time. There was a remote possibility it could be her boss. The digital clock on her bedside table read: A.M. 5.35. To make it worse, it was Sunday—her morning to sleep in. It couldn’t be Sean, although she hadn’t spoken to him for a few days. He wouldn’t ring at this time. Sean was safely in London on business, or as safe as one could be in the great cities of the world these scary days. Immediately the thought crossed her mind, she started to panic.

“Hi Amby?”

“Who else do you suppose? Is that you, Zee?”

“Jeez, love, I know it’s early. But you have to hear this.’

“If you’re ringing to tell me you’ve found Mr Right again, don’t dare put him on. I’m not in the mood.”

None of the usual infectious giggles from Zara. “Amby, love, you’ve got to listen. This is serious !”

Amber groaned. “They all are. Just remember, men aren’t to be trusted.”

“Ain’t that the truth!” Zara sounded very down-mouthed. “This isn’t about me, Amby. It’s about you . Are you still lying down?”

“No, I’m not !” Amber swung her feet to the floor. “Spit it out, Zee. There’s a good girl.”