Her Boss's Baby Plan

‘This is Lewis Mansfield.’

‘Yes?’ That was much better. Positively cool.

‘I was wondering if you were still interested in coming out to St Bonaventure to look after Viola,’ he said, and Martha was delighted to hear the reluctance in his voice.

It was obvious that Lewis Mansfield would rather be doing anything than ringing her up, so something must have gone wrong with his oh-so-sensible plans. He must be desperate, in which case there would be no harm in making him grovel a little!

‘I thought you already had the perfect candidate…what was her name again?’

‘Eve,’ said Lewis a little tightly.

‘Ah, yes, Eve. Didn’t she want the job?’

‘She said she did, and I made all the arrangements, but she’s just rung me to say that she doesn’t want to go after all.’

‘Oh dear,’ said Martha, enjoying herself. ‘That doesn’t sound very reliable of her.’

‘The point is,’ said Lewis through gritted teeth, ‘that we were booked to fly out this weekend and I haven’t got the time to re-advertise. If you can be ready to leave then, I’ll get a ticket for you and your baby.’

Martha settled back into her chair and took another spoonful of Noah’s purée. ‘But what about how incompatible you think we are?’

‘I didn’t say that.’

‘You implied it.’

‘Well, we’ll both just have to make an effort.’ Lewis was beginning to sound impatient. ‘I’ve got a job to do, and I won’t be around very much in any case.’

There was a tiny pause. ‘You know, the right answer there was, “Don’t be silly, Martha, I don’t think we’re incompatible at all, I think you’re very nice”,’ said Martha tartly.

Lewis sighed. ‘If you come to St Bonaventure we’re just going to have to get on,’ he said.

‘You make it sound as if it’s going to be a real chore!’ Martha was obscurely hurt. ‘What a pity I can be sensible and reliable and…what was it now?…oh, yes, efficient, like Eve!’

‘The point about Eve was that she didn’t have any other commitments,’ said Lewis, exasperated. ‘I hope that you will be sensible and reliable and efficient—and tougher than you look! You’re going to need to be.’

‘I’m all those things,’ she said sniffily. Shame he hadn’t given her the chance to prove it when he saw her!

‘And, frankly, I’m desperate,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to grovel or pretend that it was you I wanted all along. I haven’t got time to play games. You said you wanted to get out to St Bonaventure,’ he went on crisply, ‘and now I’m offering you the chance. If you take the job I’ll courier round details and tickets to you tomorrow. If you don’t want it, just say so and I’ll make other arrangements.’

He would too. Martha wasn’t prepared to risk it.

‘I’ll take it,’ she said.

Martha sipped her champagne and tried not to be too aware of Lewis sitting at the other end of the row. They had been given the front row in the cabin so that the two babies could sleep in the special cots provided and the other passengers had understandably given them a wide berth, leaving Lewis and Martha with four seats between them.

By tacit consent they had sat at either end of the row, leaving a yawning gap between them. There had been no chance to have a conversation at Heathrow, with all the palaver of checking in double quantities of high chairs and buggies and car seats. Even with most of it in the hold they still had masses of stuff to carry on board and, as both babies were wide awake at the time, they had both been occupied with keeping them happy until it was time to board.

But now Noah and Viola were asleep, the plane was cruising high above the clouds, and there was a low murmur of voices around them as the passengers settled down with a drink and speculated about the meal to come. And Martha was very conscious of the silence pooling between her and Lewis.

She was beginning to feel a bit ridiculous, stuck at one end of the row. They couldn’t have a conversation like this, and it was going to be a long flight.

Making up her mind, she shifted one seat along, although it involved so much balancing of her glass and flipping out and putting away of trays in the arm of the seat, not to mention shifting all the baby paraphernalia from one seat to another, that by the time she was halfway through Martha was already regretting her decision and she felt positively hot and bothered by the time she finally collapsed into the seat.

Lewis was looking at her curiously. ‘What are you doing?’

‘I just thought I should be sociable,’ she said, pushing her hair crossly away from her face. ‘We can hardly shout at each other all the way to Nairobi.’

‘I thought you might appreciate the extra room if you wanted to sleep,’ said Lewis, effectively taking the wind out of Martha’s sails. She hadn’t expected him to have a considerate motive for putting himself as far away from her as possible!

‘We haven’t even had our meal,’ she pointed out. ‘I don’t want to sleep yet.’

Uncomfortably aware that she sounded defensive, if not downright sulky, she forced a smile. ‘This just seems like a good opportunity to get to know each other. We’re going to be spending six months together, after all. Besides, it sounds as if the flight from Nairobi is going to be in a much smaller plane than this, so we’re probably going to have to sit right next to each other on that. We might as well get used to the idea of being in close proximity!’

‘We’re certainly not going to get any closer than that,’ said Lewis grumpily.

My, he was a charmer, wasn’t he? Martha sighed inwardly.

‘Look, I’ll move back if you feel I’m invading your personal space,’ she said huffily, putting her glass down and making to unfasten her seat belt.

‘For God’s sake, stay where you are,’ he said irritably, and then he sighed.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said in a different voice, pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘I’ve been very…preoccupied recently. Things are hectic in the office, half our projects seem to be in crisis, the negotiations for the St Bonaventure port have stalled, nothing’s getting done. And then there’s all this business with Savannah…’ He blew out his cheeks wearily.

Martha couldn’t help but sympathise. She had read in the gossip columns about the tempestuous scenes his sister had been throwing, the latest of which had resulted in the police being called to her house. In the end, Lewis had taken her to the clinic himself, running the gauntlet of the reporters at the gates who’d banged on the car windows and shouted questions about the most intimate details of his sister’s life.

No wonder he was tired.

‘My temper’s short at the best of times,’ he admitted, ‘and I know I’ve probably been taking it out on everyone else. My PA couldn’t wait to get rid of me yesterday!’

His mouth twisted ironically and he glanced at Martha. ‘You’re right, we should probably get to know each other better. I should have made more of an effort earlier.’

‘You’ve had a lot on your mind,’ said Martha a little uncomfortably.

Damn, just when she had got used to him being grumpy and disagreeable he had to go and throw her off balance by suddenly acting human! How difficult of him.

‘Do you think we could start again?’ he asked, making things even worse.

What could she say? ‘Of course,’ said Martha and held out her hand across the empty seat between them. ‘I’m Martha Shaw. How do you do?’

The corner of Lewis’s mouth quirked. ‘Nice to meet you, Martha Shaw,’ he said gravely, and reached across to shake her hand.

Martha wished he hadn’t done that. The fingers wrapped around hers were warm and comfortingly strong, and the press of his palm sent a disquieting shiver down her spine.

Pulling her hand away, she took a steadying gulp of her champagne. It was too sweet, and she hadn’t really wanted it anyway. She had written enough articles about the dehydrating effects of long haul flights and how the best thing to do was just to drink plenty of water, but when Lewis had tersely asked for a bottle of water himself something perverse in her had made her turn to the flight attendant on her side of the plane and accept a glass of free champagne with a brilliant smile.

It had been silly, and it felt even sillier now that Lewis was turning out to be so unexpectedly approachable. Really, he was being quite nice.

So there was no reason why she shouldn’t be able to think of something to say, was there?

No reason other than the tingle of her palm. And the fact that, even though she was staring desperately at the tiny plane heading steadily south across the map of the world on the screen above the travel cots, all she could see was his mouth, with its corner turned up in amusement, and its hint of warmth and humour.

No reason at all, then.

‘So, what…’ Mortified by the squeakiness of her voice, Martha cleared her throat and started again. ‘What happened to Eve?’

‘Eve?’

‘The nanny who fitted your job description so perfectly,’ she reminded him. ‘You know, the one who was so reliable and sensible and efficient and lacking in commitments?’

‘Oh. Yes.’ Lewis had forgotten about Eve for a minute there.

He felt a little light-headed for some reason, which wasn’t like him. It definitely wasn’t anything to do with Martha’s smile, or the depth of her eyes, or the sooty sweep of those lashes against her cheek. Obviously not.

Lewis looked at the glass of water in his hand. He couldn’t even blame the feeling on alcohol. Must be the cabin pressure, he decided.

‘Apparently Eve fell in love,’ he said.

Martha shifted round in her seat to stare at him in surprise. ‘In love?’

‘So she said.’ There was a tinge of distaste in Lewis’s voice. ‘I interviewed her on Monday, she accepted the job on Tuesday, on Wednesday night she met some man in a club and she rang me on Thursday morning to say that she was going to spend the rest of her life with him so she didn’t want to come to St Bonaventure after all, thank you very much.’

‘Really?’ Martha laughed. ‘So she turned out to be not so sensible after all?’

‘You could say that. Turning down a perfectly good job to invest everything in a man you’ve only known for a matter of hours…it’s a ridiculous thing to do!’

‘It won’t seem like that if she fell in love with him.’

‘How can she be in love with him?’ demanded Lewis with a return to his old acerbic tone. ‘She doesn’t know anything about this man.’

A flight attendant was hovering, offering Martha more champagne, but she shook her head. She wasn’t going to compound her mistake. ‘Could I have some water?’ she asked as she put her empty glass back on the tray. Now who was the sensible one? she thought wryly.

‘Ah, so you’re not a believer in love at first sight,’ she said with an ironic look. ‘Now, why does that not surprise me?’

‘Are you?’

Martha thanked the flight attendant for her water before turning back to him. ‘I used to be,’ she told him.

He hadn’t expected her to say that. ‘What changed your mind?’ he asked curiously.

‘Falling in love at first sight and discovering that it didn’t last,’ she said with a sad little smile. Her eyes took on a faraway look as she remembered how it had been. ‘When I met Paul it was like every cliché you ever heard. Our eyes met across a crowded room, and I knew—or thought I knew—that he was the only man for me. We were soul mates. I spent the rest of the night with him, and we moved in together a week later. At least we didn’t go as far as getting married,’ she joked.

Her description of how she had fallen madly in love coincided with a twinge that made Lewis shift a little irritably in his seat. Maybe it wasn’t cabin pressure? Maybe he was coming down with something after all?

‘So what happened?’

Martha sighed. ‘Oh, the usual…day to day living, routine, stressful careers. It’s hard to keep up the magic against all that. Paul and I did our best, but the enchantment wore off eventually and, when it did, there was nothing left,’ she said sadly.

‘We carried on for a while, but it wasn’t the same. Splitting up was awful. Somehow the fact that we’d started with such high expectations made the squabbling even worse, and everything ended up feeling much more bitter than if we’d never had those dreams at all.’

For a moment her shoulders slumped as she relived the misery of those last horrible months with Paul, and then she straightened and made a determined effort to push the memories away. ‘I decided then that I wasn’t going to go through that again. A successful relationship needs to be based on more than infatuation.’

Lewis lifted an eyebrow. ‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning that I think it’s better to be pragmatic than romantic when it comes to sharing your life with someone. I’m looking for friendship and respect and a shared attitude to the practicalities of life now. They’re going to lead to a happier and more lasting relationship than any amount of physical attraction—although that always helps, of course!’

‘So is that what you had with Noah’s father…what was his name again?…Rory?’ Lewis was horrified to hear the faintest tinge of jealousy in his voice.

Fortunately, Martha didn’t seem to have noticed. She was shaking her head.

‘No.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘To be honest, I think it was more a case of lust at first sight! I met Rory at a party. It wasn’t long after I’d broken up with Paul and my confidence had taken a knock. I was feeling my age too. Suddenly I seemed to be hurtling into middle age with nothing to look forward to.

‘And then I saw Rory,’ she said, remembering. ‘He’s quite a bit younger than me and incredibly good-looking. We were all pale and pasty after a London winter and he’d just breezed in from the Indian Ocean, all blond and tanned and gorgeous! When he walked into that party I swear every woman in the room sucked in her breath and her stomach! Rory could have had his pick. There were lots of really pretty girls there, even a few models, but he spent the entire evening with me. I suppose I was flattered.’

Lewis heard the undercurrent of secret amazement and pleasure she had felt that night in her voice, and wondered if she really didn’t know how attractive she was. Personally, he wasn’t surprised that Rory had singled her out. The intelligence and character in her face more than compensated for the fine lines round her eyes, and that lush mouth was much more tantalising than the perfect body or smooth, untried expression of a twenty-year-old.

‘Rory was just what I needed after Paul,’ Martha was saying. ‘He made me feel desirable again. It wasn’t love at first sight, no, but we did get on really well in spite of the difference in our ages. If we’d had longer together, who knows? Maybe we could have built a good long-term relationship but, as it was, he had to go back to St Bonaventure. We both knew that it was never going to be a permanent thing, so we just enjoyed it for what it was—a lot of fun.’

Lewis was getting a bit tired of hearing about Rory, who was so attractive and such fun and no doubt a real stud in bed, too, he thought sourly. ‘Did the fun include getting pregnant?’ he asked disapprovingly.

‘No, that was an accident,’ said Martha. ‘We’d been to Paris for the weekend—Rory had never been and I used to go to all the fashion shows—so we thought we’d treat ourselves to a great meal on our last night, and I had oysters. Big mistake! I was on the pill, but those oysters definitely disagreed with me. I had an upset stomach for a couple of days after we got back and…well, it happens.’

She shrugged. ‘A touch of food poisoning isn’t the best of reasons to start a family, I know, but I wouldn’t change Noah for the world now. Anyway,’ she went on with a sideways glance at Lewis, ‘you don’t need to worry that I’ll do an Eve and throw out all your arrangements by deciding I have met the man of my dreams on St Bonaventure. I’m too much of a realist about love now for that, and even if I wasn’t quite frankly I’m too tired to fall in love at the moment!’

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