Sara Craven - A Nanny For Christmas

Who was now somewhere else, living his perfectly normal life, and who had probably never given the incident another thought. Whose biting mouth would twist sardonically in disbelief at the possibility that she could still be tormented by her memories.

It doesn’t matter any more, she told herself, drawing a deep breath. I can’t afford to let it.

‘Well, this is it,’ the taxi driver announced.

Leaning forward, Phoebe saw NORTH FTTTON HOUSE inscribed on the gate pillar, and, glancing up, the stone gryphon which crowned it. Quite unforgettably.

‘Yes,’ she said tonelessly. ‘This is the place. Could you drive up to the door, please, and wait for me?’

Tara was reluctant to leave the taxi. ‘They’re going to be so angry.’ Her voice caught on a sob.

‘But not with you,’ Phoebe said bracingly. ‘Or they’ll have me to deal with.’

She walked forward up the two shallow steps flanked by stone urns, bare now with the onset of winter. On her last visit they’d been a vibrant, sprawling mass of colour which had matched the light and warmth spilling out of the house and her own inner excitement about the party she’d been going to. The man she’d been going to see.

‘Sweet Phoebe.’ She could hear his voice whispering to her persuasively, overcoming her scruples. ‘Promise me you’ll be there.’

And I went, Phoebe thought as she rang the bell. Like a lamb to the slaughter.

After a pause, the door was opened by a stout, white-haired woman wearing a dark dress and a neat apron.

‘Good evening.’ She sounded surprised. ‘Can I help...?’ Her gaze fell on Tara, clinging to Phoebe’s hand, and her hand flew to her mouth.

‘Oh, my God, it’s the little one. You should have been home hours ago, you naughty girl. I was just going to take your supper up to the nursery. And where’s that Cindy, may I ask?’

‘You may indeed,’ Phoebe said quietly, leading Tara into the hall. ‘I’ve brought Tara home from the café where I work. There seems to have been some mistake over the arrangements to collect her.’

‘Mistake,’ the other woman repeated. ‘And what was Miss Tara doing in a café, I’d like to know? From school to her piano lesson, and then straight home. That’s her routine.’

‘Apparently not.’ Phoebe gave her a level look. ‘You mentioned supper, which is a splendid idea. Tara’s had rather a trying time, as you can imagine.’

‘Well, yes.’ The woman looked helplessly from one to the other. ‘I don’t know what to say, I’m sure.’

‘If you could take her upstairs, and see to her.’ Phoebe urged the child gently forward. ‘Go on, poppet, and I’ll come and say goodbye once I’ve spoken to your father.’ She turned to the other woman. ‘I presume he’s here.’

‘Yes, miss, but he’s working in his study.’ The woman glanced uneasily at a door on the right of the large hall. ‘Left strict instructions he wasn’t to be disturbed.’

‘I’m sure he did,’ Phoebe said with a lightness she was far from feeling. ‘But I think this is an emergency, don’t you?’

And she walked past them both, opened the study door and went in.

It was a room she remembered only vaguely, with its book-lined walls and the large desk standing in the centre of the room.

He was standing with his back to her, intent on a fax machine delivering a message on a side table.

When he spoke, his voice was clipped with impatience. ‘Carrie, I thought I said—’

‘It’s not Carrie, Mr Vane.’ The anger which had been seething in Phoebe came boiling to the surface. ‘I’ve just brought your daughter back from Westcombe, where she’d been abandoned, and I’d like to know whether you’re just totally selfish or criminally irresponsible.’

He turned slowly. The grey eyes travelled over her without haste. Like ice that burned. She had thought it then. She knew it now.

She gave a gasp, and stepped backwards.

‘I don’t know who the hell you are, bursting in and abusing me like this.’ Every word was like the slash of a whip. ‘But you’ve made a big mistake, young woman.’

He paused, taking in every detail from the top of the smooth brown head, down over her working uniform of white shirt and brief black skirt, to her slender feet in their sensible shoes. Registering it all, then dismissing it with the contempt that she remembered so vividly from six years before.

He said softly, ‘My name is Ashton. Dominic Ashton. Now, give me one good reason why I shouldn’t throw you out.’

CHAPTER TWO

PHOEBE wanted to run away, harder and faster than she’d ever done in her life. But for dazed seconds she wasn’t able to move, or think. She could only stare at him. At the nightmare made flesh, and standing in front of her.

He’d hardly changed at all. She was capable of recognising that, at least. The thick dark hair, untouched by grey, still waved untidily back from its widow’s peak. He would never be handsome. His nose was too beaky, his mouth and chin too firmly uncompromising, and the grey eyes under the cynically lifted eyebrows too piercing. But he was even more of a force to be reckoned with than at their last disastrous encounter.

She was the one who’d changed, she realised with a reviving jolt of the same anger which had driven her into this room. She wasn’t a naive, betrayed sixteen-year-old any longer.

The real vulnerable child was upstairs, and she was all that mattered in this situation.

She lifted her chin and prayed her voice wouldn’t let her down. She probably couldn’t equal his own level of contempt in the look she sent him, but, by God, she was going to try.

‘The reason—Mr Ashton—is called Tara, and for the past week she’s been spending a regular part of the day totally unsupervised in Westcombe.’

The dark brows snapped together. ‘What kind of dangerous nonsense is this?’

Phoebe shook her head steadily. ‘No nonsense at all. I only wish it were. The girl who looks after her has been allowing her to have tea on her own in the café where I work while she meets her boyfriend.’ She paused. ‘He has a motorcycle,’ she added without expression.

There was a heavy silence. Dominic Ashton was still staring at her, but Phoebe had the feeling that he wasn’t seeing her at all.

He said, half to himself, ‘I’m going to get to the bottom of this,’ and strode towards the door.

Phoebe put up a detaining hand. ‘If you’re going to look for Cindy, she’s not here. At least I don’t think she is. She didn’t turn up to collect Tara as arranged. And her car is still in the market car park.’

He stopped. Looked down at her. Aware and refocusing, his face suddenly haggard.

She had hated him for six years, for his lack of under-standing—and compassion. She had never in the whole of her life expected to feel sorry for him, yet, somehow, she did.

Here he was, in the middle of some business empire, with computers, modems and machinery as far as the eye could see, and just briefly he’d lost his power. He too was naked and bewildered, in a situation he couldn’t control.

His voice was quiet. ‘I accept what you say—everything you say. But I still think I should check—don’t you?’ He hesitated. ‘Please sit down, Miss—?’

‘Grant,’ she said. ‘Phoebe Grant.’

He nodded, as if storing it for future reference. ‘I’ll have my housekeeper bring you some coffee.’

‘I think she’s got her hands full giving Tara her supper.’ ‘Yes, of course,’ he said abruptly. ‘I wasn’t thinking.’ He looked at her again, frowning as if puzzled. ‘Where exactly did you say you’d met my daughter?’

‘In the Clover Tea Rooms. I’m a waitress there. She sits at one of my tables.’ She hesitated. ‘I followed her out one afternoon and saw Cindy meet her. That’s how I know about the boyfriend. Not through Tara.’