The Secret Mother

His voice icy, he remarked, ‘Looking older doesn’t necessarily make you more suitable.’

Strain had set her head throbbing dully, and, convinced now that he would never give her the job, she felt bleak and hopeless.

Wanting only to escape before those pitiless eyes noted her despair, she half rose. ‘Well, if you’ve decided I’m unsuitable...’

‘Please sit down,’ he instructed curtly. ‘I haven’t decided anything of the kind.’

When, the whole of her body shaking, she had obeyed, he informed her, ‘While you were on your way here this morning I had quite a long conversation with your present employer...’

He paused, as though deliberately prolonging the suspense, while the seconds ticked away and Caroline fancied she could hear the roar of the traffic far below on Fifth Avenue.

‘She told me that you had been with her for over two years, and spoke very highly of you.’

Caroline was just drawing a shaky breath of relief when he asked, ‘Who was your previous employer?’

‘Previous employer?’

‘I mean before Mrs Amesbury.’

Realising too late that. having told him she’d been a nanny since leaving college, she was in deep water, Caroline floundered. ‘Well, I...’

‘Surely you remember?’ He was giving her no quarter.

She hated to lie but could see no help for it. ‘A Mr Nagel,’ she improvised wildly as she recalled the plot of a book she’d been reading. ‘I took care of his little boy when his wife left him...’

‘And?’

‘Eventually she came back and they were reconciled, so I was no longer needed.’

Becoming aware that he was watching her hands, moving restlessly in her lap, she clasped them together to keep them still.

‘Have you got Mr Nagel’s references?’

‘I—I’m afraid I don’t know what became of them.’

His sceptical look seemed to make it plain that he didn’t believe her.

She could feel the guilty colour rising in her cheeks when he said, ‘Presumably they must have been satisfactory, or the Amesburys wouldn’t have employed you...’

Picking up the pen he’d been using, he began to tap the desk, each little explosion of sound like a hammer-blow, stretching her already overstretched nerves and making her wince.

‘Very well, with the proviso that Caitlin likes you, the position is yours, if you want it, for a trial period of one month.’

As she stared at him, pale lips a little parted, he went on, ‘Now to practicalities. I’m prepared to allow you the same time off as your previous employer, and if you stay on alter the trial period, you will receive two weeks’ annual holiday. The post carries a salary of...’ he named an exceedingly generous sum ‘...and there is a self-contained suite next to the nursery, which I think you’ll find comfortable.’

When she continued to gaze at him in silence, he observed brusquely, ‘You look surprised. Have you changed your mind about wanting the job?’

‘No... No, of course not... I just hadn’t expected to be offered it.’

‘Why not?’

‘I...I got the impression you didn’t like me.’

Sardonically, he said, ‘It hadn’t occurred to me that it was necessary to like the nanny I engaged.’

As her face began to burn he added flatly, ‘If Caitlin takes to you, that’s all that matters. She’s a sunny, good-natured little thing, and very forward for her age. At the moment Mrs Monaghan, my housekeeper, is looking after her, and according to that good lady the child isn’t one scrap of trouble.

‘Even so, it’s a lot for the poor woman to take on, so if everything goes well, and you decide to accept my offer, I’d want you here, ready to start, by tomorrow morning.’

‘Wearing a uniform?’ In spite of Caroline’s efforts to speak smoothly, there was a ragged edge to the question.

After a moment’s deliberation, Matthew answered coolly, ‘I think not’

His tawny eyes on her face, he went on, ‘Now, before we go any further, maybe you’d like to ask me some questions?’

When, wits scattered, she failed to respond, he suggested trenchantly, ‘Or possibly you already know everything you need to?’

Taking a deep, steadying breath, she managed, ‘I just know what Mrs Amesbury told me.’

‘And what did Mrs Amesbury tell you?’ He sounded annoyed, as though he suspected they’d been gossiping about him.

‘Only that you are either widowed or divorced, and your daughter is about three years old.’

‘Not terribly accurate, I’m afraid. I’m neither widowed nor divorced...’

So he must be still married... Married to Sara...

Watching Caroline’s eyes widen behind the tinted glasses, he continued, ‘And Caitlin isn’t my daughter. My own mother died shortly after I was born, and when I was nine years old my father married again. His second wife already had a three-year-old son. Caitlin is my stepbrother’s child.’

Quietly, he added, ‘In point of fact I’ve never been married.’

‘Oh, but I thought—’ Cursing her unruly tongue, Caroline stopped speaking abruptly.

‘What did you think, Miss Smith?’

She shook her head. ‘Nothing... Really...’

His thickly lashed eyes glinted, and she feared he was going to pursue the matter, but he let it go and said briskly, ‘Well, if there isn’t anything you want to ask me, perhaps you’d like to take a look at the accommodation and say hello to Caitlin?’

Taking a deep, uneven breath, doing her best to control an almost feverish rush of excitement, Caroline rose to her feet as Matthew left his chair and walked round the desk.

At five feet seven inches she was fairly tall for a woman, but, at an inch or so above six feet, he seemed to tower over her.

Suddenly she found herself trembling with a new and different kind of excitement, and, looking up into his dark face, she was shaken to the core by the depth of her feelings for him.

After all this time she had hoped, prayed, that she would be able to look at him and see only a man she had once known and loved. A man who no longer meant that much to her.

But the instinctive knowledge that he was the other half of herself, the part that made her whole and complete, was still there, as certain and inevitable as it had ever been.