Grace Green - The Nanny's Secret

He’d have liked a Scotch; she offered tea.

While the kettle was boiling, she’d left the room. When she came back, her face was scrubbed clean and she’d put on a gray cotton shortie robe and a pair of thongs.

So here they were, sitting at her kitchen table, drinking tea that tasted like cranberries.

And still she hadn’t said a word.

She looked down at the table as she sipped her tea, so he had an opportunity to scrutinize her further. She didn’t resemble her brother. She was fair, he’d been dark. She was slim as a reed, he’d been ruggedly built…and had looked mature. But he’d been anything but. He’d been irresponsible and wild and spendthrift. Just like Marla.

They had been a pair.

He felt anger rise inside him as it did so readily these days. But he controlled it.

“I’m here about Mandy.” He shoved aside his half-empty mug. “I want to ask—” He broke off as his glance moved beyond her to another room. A utility room. He could see packing boxes there, all neatly taped up. At the same time, he belatedly realized the kitchen had an echoing feel to it. And the walls were bare, many of the shelves empty.

“Are you moving?” He stared at her.

“Yes. I’m going home.”

“Where’s home?”

“The island.”

It was the last thing he’d expected. Oh, he’d known she might turn down his proposal outright and that even if she’d accepted it, she might haggle about salary, hours, any number of other things. What he hadn’t once anticipated was that she might be leaving the Lower Mainland and going to live on Vancouver Island. “You’ve made your plans?”

“Everything’s settled. I’m going to stay with my mother till I find a place of my own.” She finished her tea, put down her mug. “Now…it’s very late…and you still haven’t told me why you’re here.”

“It doesn’t matter. Not now.” He rose from the table, put his mug on the counter. “I’ll be on my way.”

He was at the door, opening it, before she said, “Wait.”

He turned. She was standing still, her face very pale.

“You owe me an explanation,” she said. “You can’t come here in the middle of the night and not tell me why.”

He shrugged. “You won’t be here, so…what I wanted to ask you…doesn’t matter.”

“It was something about Mandy, wasn’t it? If there’s anything I can help with, please let me know. I realize it must be difficult for you to look after her—she has her own little ways, and if it’ll make it any easier for you, I’d be happy to sit down and go over them with you. For example, her hair gets tangled after it’s washed, and to keep her from fussing when you brush it, you have to…”

Her voice trailed away when she saw him drag a weary hand over his nape.

“What is it?” She took an urgent step toward him. “What’s wrong? You must tell me!”

“Mandy’s miserable. I’ve never seen a kid so unhappy.” Jordan wanted to go down on his knees and plead with her to stay but his pride wouldn’t let him. Instead, he gave another shrug—a deliberately careless shrug. “I just thought—at least, my sister Lacey suggested it, I was dead against the idea—Lacey suggested it might help if I were to offer you your old job back. For Mandy’s sake.”

Her lips parted in a round, soundless. “Oh.”

“But since you’re leaving, I’ll have to find someone else. It’s no big deal.” He turned his back on her and opened the door. “I shouldn’t have bothered you.”

He went out into the night and as he walked in the moonlight to his car, he felt as if the world and all its worries were pressing down on him from every side.

What the hell was he going to do now! He’d told Ms. Fairfax he’d find someone else.

There was no one else.

He kicked at a stone, and hissed out a word that would have made Lacey’s hair stand on end.

Wrenching open the car door, he was about to throw himself inside, when from behind him he heard someone call, “Mr. Maxwell! Wait!”

And when he turned around, Felicity Fairfax was running breathlessly toward him.

FELICITY thought her heart was going to burst.

What Jordan had said had stunned her. And then joy had exploded inside her, lending wings to her feet as she raced out of the apartment.

Now, catching up to him, she gasped, “Do you really mean it? You want me to look after Mandy again?”

“I don’t recall using exactly those words…but yes, that’s what I came here to ask.”

“In the middle of the night?”

“I was hoping you could start tomorrow. I’d planned—if you were available—to bring Mandy over here on my way to the office. But since you’re moving out of the area—”

“But I don’t have to move—I don’t want to move! If you could only wait till I find another place, there’s nothing in the world that I’d like more than to look after Mandy again.”

A car stopped, farther along the street. Its headlights illuminated Jordan’s face, and there was no mistaking his expression of relief. Then the vehicle turned into a driveway and once again his face was shadowed.

“I can’t wait,” he said. “I need you to start tomorrow.”

“But I have the movers coming on Tuesday. And I’ll have to find another place to live—”

“You’ll stay at Deerhaven.”

“At your house?”

“Right.” Impatience snapped in his voice. “You’ll come home with me now, and tomorrow you can change all your moving arrangements.”

Felicity felt her initial exultation give way to indignation. If he thought he could ride rough-shod over her, he had another think coming.

“I have not,” she snapped back, “even finished packing yet!”

“You can do that tomorrow night after I get home from work.” Restlessly, he shoved his hands in his pockets, to a jangling of keys or coins. “Now, if that’s all settled, I’ll give you a couple of minutes to pack a case with your immediate needs, and then we can—”

“I have a cat.”

“Ah, yes.” His tone was mocking. “The handsome beast. I’m not a cat lover myself. I don’t suppose you’d consider giving him up for adoption?”

“I most certainly would not!”

“Then he’ll be part of the package. Just keep him out of my way, or I won’t answer for the consequences.” He leaned back against the car. “Right, I’ll wait here.” He made a big play of looking at his watch. “I’ll give you twenty minutes to get ready.”

Felicity took thirty.

Oh, she was ready in twenty, but she sat in her darkened bedroom for an extra ten, letting her new employer cool his elegant heels outside.

Jordan was well aware that Felicity Fairfax had saved his job for him. And he knew he should be grateful to her. But as he drove his car up the narrow drive leading to his house, all he could feel was resentment—resentment that Fate had put him in the position of being beholden to her.

It made his blood boil.

Had Fate not dealt him a bad enough hand already, throwing his wife and Denny Fairfax together at that charity “do” last Christmas? His wife had always been an outrageous flirt, but at least she’d known which side her very expensive bread was buttered on and so she’d never become involved with anyone outside of their marriage…until she’d met Denny Fairfax—

“Who’s looking after Mandy just now?” Felicity asked.

He pulled to a halt in front of the house. “My sister. I believe you’ve met her.”

“Lacey. Yes, she came to pick up Mandy several times. Couldn’t she look after Mandy tomorrow?”

“No.” He could have told her Lacey was flying off to California in the morning; he chose not to. Felicity Fairfax was going to be his employee and he wanted to keep their relationship as impersonal as possible. “Now let’s get inside.”

He carried her case in from the car, she carried a hold-all in one hand and the cat in a wire cage in the other.

As he opened the front door, Lacey came across the hall from the sitting room. Before she realized he wasn’t alone, she said, eagerly, “How did it go?”

He stood aside to let Felicity step past him, and she walked into the hallway, swinging the cage in front of her.

“Oh, Felicity!” Lacey beamed at her. “I’m so pleased!”

“Hi, Lacey.” Felicity returned the friendly smile. “It’s lovely to see you again.”

“And is that your case? You’re going to stay here? Oh, I guess so,” she chuckled, looking at the cat. “You’ve moved your family with you.” She crouched down and said, “Psst! RJ!” The cat pulled back, pushing its rear end against the cage. Lacey laughed, and straightened. “It’s so good of you to come, Felicity.”

Jordan cleared his throat. “Is Mandy still asleep?”

“Yes. She’s been a bit unsettled but she hasn’t wakened since you left.” Lacey gave Felicity another friendly smile. “I’m leaving now—I have an early start tomorrow, I’m off to California on a shoot.” She swept up her scarlet linen jacket from the deacon’s bench at the door, and swung it over her shoulders. “I’ll be able to leave with an easy mind, knowing Mandy’s in your hands.”

“Thank you, Lacey.”

“’Bye, Jordan.” Lacey gave him her usual hug. “I’ll be in touch when I get back. Probably Friday.”

As the front door clicked shut behind her, Jordan said, “I’ll put you in the room next to Mandy’s so you’ll be able to hear her at night.”

They walked up the stairs and as they did, he saw her looking around.

“I can’t think why,” she said, slowly, “But I feel as if I’ve been here before. It all looks so familiar to me—those Mandori oil paintings, the cream marble floor in the hall, this lapis-blue carpet on the stairs and…this.” She ran a hand lightly over the Benducci grandfather clock in the curve of the stairwell. “Where have I seen this before? I know it’s one of a kind, made for some Italian count…”

“Do you read architectural magazines?”

“My friend Joanne sometimes passes her copy on to me.”

He ushered her on, up to the landing. “Then that is where you may have seen the interior of Deerhaven. There was a spread in—”

He paused as they reached the door to Mandy’s room. They’d spoken quietly, but they must have disturbed her because she’d started to fret. She sounded as if she might be waking up, though her mumbles and whimpers were drowsy.

Felicity had paused beside him. He heard her breathing quicken. “May I see her?” she asked.

“Best not go in. She’ll drop off again.”

But she wasn’t about to drop off again. He heard the creak of her mattress, and pictured her scrambling to her feet. He almost groaned aloud. Another sleepless night lay ahead, not that there was much of the night left.

Now she was crying, the cries becoming louder, more demanding, by the moment. This time, he did groan aloud. He loved his daughter more than anything on this earth, but so help him, if she didn’t let him get some sleep, he was liable to go take a very long walk off a very short pier—

Felicity touched his forearm lightly. “Why don’t you show me where I’m to sleep, and then get yourself off to bed. I’ll take care of Mandy.”

“No, I’ll need to show you the lie of the land. Downstairs, too, because I’ll be out of here before you’re up in the morning. I need to give you a tour—”

“I’ll find my own way around.” She swung the cat cage forward. “Is my room along this way?”

She was bossing him. Taking charge.

Well, okay, but just for tonight. And just because he was bushed. Tomorrow, he’d show her who was head honcho around here.