Equal Opportunities

This couldn’t be him, deliberately holding back on beginning his campaign to win Michael away from her, simply because he had looked into her eyes and seen the lonely, proud child she must once have been, fighting desperately to pretend that nothing was wrong…that her world hadn’t been destroyed…that she wasn’t….

He shook his head, wanting to dispel the unwanted images. What was happening to him? What was wrong with him? He must be going soft in the head.

‘What’s wrong?’ Kate demanded suspiciously, her tension increasing as she sensed his hesitancy and knew instinctively that it had something to do with her.

‘I was just thinking how very hard it must have been for you as a child,’ he said quietly. ‘And how much Michael must mean to you.’

Later he would ask himself what on earth had come over him, what on earth he had thought he was doing, but in the moment he said the words he saw the fury and panic fight for supremacy in Kate’s eyes, and he reacted instinctively to them, reaching out his hand to touch her in an age-old gesture of comfort.

Even before he touched her, Kate froze, and immediately Garrick realised what he was doing and cursed himself under his breath. What the hell was happening to him? He must be going soft in the head, feeling sorry for her.

A nanny…God, he could just imagine what the press would do to him if they ever found out!

CHAPTER THREE

SEVERAL miles away, Camilla listened anxiously to the telephone call between her husband and his mother.

‘Dad’s been rushed into hospital with a suspected heart attack,’ he told her as he hung up. ‘Mum wants us to go down.’

‘I’ll pack a couple of overnight bags and we can leave straight away.’

Camilla loved her mother-in-law, but knew that she was quite incapable of dealing with an emergency.

It wouldn’t be for several hours that she remembered that she had never told Kate that Sue had rung to say Peter Ericson had already accepted a post with someone else. She would do her best to find a suitable alternative, she had promised, but men willing to take charge of small children were not easy to find.

Kate, meanwhile, in blissful ignorance, watched as Garrick bathed Michael. It was true that he was less skilled than the other nannies she had employed, but his lack of expertise was more than made up for in the way that Michael responded to him.

Perhaps she had been wrong, she reflected, watching them, perhaps it was possible, after all, for even such a small baby to miss a male influence in his life. Michael, normally wary with strangers, was laughing and clapping his hands as Garrick bathed him, dunking his toys, and generally behaving as though there was nothing he wanted more than to keep on playing with this man who had come to take care of him.

The bath had its own stand, but Kate preferred to put it on the floor, for reasons of safety. She also normally armed herself with protective clothing, knowing Michael’s propensity for soaking everything and everyone around him with water.

By the time Garrick had managed to fish Michael’s wriggling wet body out of the bath, he was almost as wet as the small child.

As he handed Michael over to Kate, after swaddling him in a warm towel, he asked directly. ‘First question. Do I get the job?’

He had removed his watch while he bathed Michael, and observing him strapping it on, Kate noticed that it was an expensive gold model that she knew must have cost several thousand pounds. Rather a luxury for a man who was prepared to work for less than a hundred pounds per week, all found. But then, perhaps he had bought it in better times, when he worked abroad.

She hesitated, and he gave her a frowning look. At that moment Michael managed to free his arms from the towel and stretched out towards him. Kate made up her mind, praying that she wouldn’t regret it.

‘Yes. Yes…you do,’ she agreed firmly, adding, ‘What was your next question?’

‘Do you have a dryer so that I can dry my shirt, and will it be OK if I bring my computer terminal with me?’