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Parents Of Convenience
Jennie Adams
HlS NEWFOUND FAMILY…Max Saunders receives the shock of his life when he discovers he's the father of twin sons he'd had no idea existed–and now they are entirely under his care! How will Max cope with instant single fatherhood? By getting a nanny….Phoebe Gilbert doesn't relish the thought of living with Max, but she can't say no when little children need her! Phoebe soon realizes she's becoming more like a mom to the twins than a nanny. And it seems that Max has got another role lined up for her…as his convenient wife!Will she marry Max for the sake of the twins…?
“Max, I’m not sure I understand where you’re heading with this.”
“Marriage. The two of us. It would solve everything,” he stated bluntly.
“What?” Phoebe stared at him and wondered if she was dreaming.
“I’m suggesting we marry,” he repeated. “I think it’s a good idea.”
For a second, Phoebe’s heart hoped. She would belong. With Max and Jake and Josh, here in this house, the four of them together. A family. Oh, wow. Max was asking her to form a family with him. He thought she was worthy of that. He’d seen something in her that made him believe….
Then Max started talking and he sounded so businesslike. “I’d have permanent care for my sons and you’d be able to get your credentials eventually, without worrying about money.”
Is that it? Is that all you think marriage means? Phoebe’s excitement sagged and she clamped her lower lip between her teeth, wishing she could clap her hands over her ears and refuse to hear another word. Life never let you off the hook that way though, so she sat there and tried to look as though he hadn’t just offered her the moon and stars, then made her wonder if they were real….
From an early age, Australian author Jennie Adams was most at home perched on a gatepost on the family farm, with her nose in a book. Her love of reading expanded into writing at age eleven, when she began a four-year tenure as a very bad poet.
A gap followed while Jennie pursued a number of careers—bank officer, piano teacher and legal secretary, to name a few. She met and married the love of her life, and had two children who soon became teenagers who knew everything and who are now the two most treasured young adults in her life. She soon realized she wanted to write the romance novels she loved to read. The pursuit of that dream eventually led to the sale of her first Harlequin Romance® novel.
This is Jennie’s debut novel!
Parents of Convenience
Jennie Adams
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
CONTENTS
CHAPTER ONE (#uf39ceb72-6982-5873-b4d9-ab3d88bb0a6e)
CHAPTER TWO (#ub9bf2d2c-d119-572d-9418-794638666c56)
CHAPTER THREE (#u55eb2640-4b88-56f3-b973-0c792eb6b3d6)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u2a5c3630-4e7e-5729-951e-efd7520a86f9)
CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE
‘HELLO. One rescue party, delivered to your door and ready to get started.’ Phoebe Gilbert examined the two smaller occupants of the room and her heart took a sentimental dive. Max Saunders’s sons were gorgeous. She registered that much while one screamed at top volume with his hands clamped over his ears and the other did his utmost to kick the side out of the best recliner chair in the room.
It looked as though Max really needed that helping hand. The man in question had his back turned while he did his best to remove his kicking child from the vicinity of the chair. He didn’t hear Phoebe’s announcement.
Given the noise level, Phoebe wasn’t particularly surprised. She stepped around an upended box of crushed breakfast cereal and a denuded potted plant and moved further into the room.
As she took in the familiar if unusually messy surroundings, a sense of homecoming crashed over her. It was immediately followed by a painful jolt to the solar plexus, because the feeling was false. She had never belonged anywhere in her life, Mountain Gem included. Not that she cared one way or the other.
You’re over it, remember? That whole ‘wish I had a family’ thing is done with.
Phoebe had a creed. Don’t wish for what you can’t have. And who would want to make a family with a woman whose mother hadn’t wanted her, whose father hadn’t wanted her, and who was barren into the bargain? Some bargain.
She gave a defiant shrug. Those days in the orphanage were long since gone. The one decent thing her father had done was to buy her way into boarding school when she’d been eleven.
Nowadays, she had her daycare children. A never-ending stream of little ones to enjoy as she moved from job to job. As long as she didn’t get too attached, she survived. Beyond that, she was self-sufficient and proud of it. She didn’t need anything more than she already had.
Perhaps coming back to Mountain Gem today had got to her because this visit was so different. In the past, she had felt like the interloper in Max Saunders’s home. Not a charity case—she couldn’t have stood that—but a visitor. Katherine Saunders’s kooky friend. Tolerated by Kath’s big brother, but barely. It had been easy to keep her own emotional distance that way, too.
Today, she was here at Max’s request. To rescue him. It tipped the scales. Yeah. That must be why these feelings had risen to the surface after she had buried them so well. With a determined sniff she focused her thoughts on the here and now. It was much more interesting, anyway.
‘Hello, Max.’ She pitched her voice louder. ‘I knocked but nobody heard me, so I just came in.’
Even from behind, Max was a commanding presence. Tall. Dark-haired. Broad-shouldered, slim about the hips and with those long, long legs. When he faced her she knew that grey eyes would look directly into hers from beneath winged brows.
Her mouth watered suddenly, and she blinked. This was Max, for heaven’s sake. The long-time antagonist of her life. The man who drove her crazy every time they met. So what was with the isn’t he gorgeous? reaction? That had never happened to her before!
Enough of this, she decided. She primed her lungs and gave it her best bellow across five paddocks effort over the screeching. ‘I see the Saunders men are doing their utmost to show the Blue Mountains a good time. Just fancy, two four-year-old boys making more combined racket than an entire Sydney daycare group put together.’
That did the trick. The boys paused momentarily in their noise. And Max whipped around so fast she barely saw the movement. She reacted, though. Her heart paused for a long moment, then restarted at double time.
A sense of panic washed through her and she told herself to wake up. This wasn’t attraction. It couldn’t be. Her system was just girding up for battle. Yes, that was much more acceptable. ‘Hello, Max. I’m here. I’ll bet you’re pleased I’ve arrived.’
Max didn’t look at all happy to see her, even though he should have been. Instead he stiffened. ‘Phoebe.’
The single word, spoken in gravelly accents, managed to convey his deep displeasure at the sight of her.
What was with him, anyway? Didn’t he remember this had been his idea? It was not as if she would have dropped everything and cadged a lift out of Sydney to get to him if he hadn’t made his need crystal clear. Through Katherine, admittedly, but even so…
She supposed she couldn’t expect Max to go too crazy admitting he needed help. It was, after all, the first time he had ever done so, to her knowledge.
And, from her viewpoint, this was about helping the boys, not about Max. When Katherine had phoned Phoebe from America she hadn’t only mentioned that Max wasn’t coping very well. She had hinted that Max seemed solely focused on getting the boys tidied into some small pocket of his life as quickly as possible.
That worried Phoebe.
Meanwhile, Max was staring at her with that unwelcoming expression still stamped all over him.
‘Yes, it’s me,’ she said. ‘In the flesh.’ She offered him a view of the point of her chin. ‘Given the circumstances, I thought I might have received a warmer welcome.’
She was here to turn this chaos around for him, after all. It may have been pure fantasy to believe he would fall down in abject relief at the sight of her, but she had at least expected civility, not an immediate return to their old hostility.
In other words, you got your hopes up and got them whacked back down to size quick smart. Surely you know better than that? Life didn’t dish out lollipops, Phoebe had found. You made your own joy, or you did without. She chose to make her own, and usually she did quite well at it.
‘You’ve caught me at a bad moment.’ Max ran a hand through dark, already ruffled hair.
Familiar, slightly wavy hair that had always given her itchy fingers, not that it meant anything. She had an appreciation of fine things, that was all. She really couldn’t be held accountable for the fact that she found Max aesthetically pleasing. Nor for the fact that her artistic interpretation of Max seemed to be creating more of a problem than usual this visit.
The din was back in full force again. She pitched her voice to rise above it. ‘I’d guess you’ve had a few of those today. Bad moments, that is.’ She gestured to a congealed glob of green stuff which was stuck to his shirt and resisted the urge to smirk. Max never got in a mess, in any sense of the word. ‘Rough lunch?’
‘There was a slight problem with the meal plans, yes.’ His eyes narrowed to warning slits and his strong jaw clamped into an uncompromising line.
She had goaded him slightly, she admitted, but just the tiniest bit. In the past he had taken far more from her without letting it get to him. He really must be feeling his difficulties.
‘If you’ve come to visit Katherine,’ he said, ‘I’m afraid you’ve picked the wrong time. She’s not here.’
‘Well, yes, I know that.’ She pursed her lower lip over her upper. A habit she had when she needed to work out a particular complexity. Why was he pretending that he hadn’t expected her?
He waved a hand at the mêlée, which was continuing behind him. ‘As you can see, I have my hands full. I don’t have time to entertain.’
‘What do you mean, entertain?’ It was Phoebe’s turn to frown. After all, Katherine’s request, or rather Max’s request made through his sister, had brought Phoebe here. She knew as well as anyone that Katherine was snowbound in Montana and not likely to appear back in Oz any time soon. Yet Max acted as though he hadn’t known Phoebe was coming. A sinking feeling started up inside her and quickly took hold.
‘Katherine didn’t tell you it was me.’ It was the only explanation. At the continued incomprehension on Max’s face, Phoebe knew she was right. No wonder Katherine had been so cagey on the phone. ‘The nanny. Katherine didn’t tell you that I was to be the nanny for your boys.’
His face darkened beneath his tan. ‘You schemed with Katherine to play nanny to my sons?’
Of all the arrogant nerve! She blinked several times while righteous anger roared through her. ‘I answered a plea for help,’ she articulated very slowly, as if that would help her to calm down at all. ‘Quite a different thing, Max.’
Schemed, indeed! For two pins Phoebe would leave him to his pride, and his problems. Except his boys deserved better than that. They deserved to have proper care, and that field of care just happened to be her speciality.
Any fool could see they were feeling scared and uneasy. Phoebe could fix that and, now that she thought about it, she wasn’t going to let the small matter of a short-sighted, incompetent new parent get in her way. Even if that parent was Max Saunders. ‘It was your plea, as it happens.’
‘In the first place,’ Max growled, ‘I don’t plead. I certainly never gave out any such plea for help from you.’
She had already figured that out. Phoebe sucked her lungs full of air and got ready to blast him. ‘That’s not the impression Katherine gave me. She said—’
‘Never mind what she said. I can guess.’ His face darkened even further. ‘I’ll kill her.’
‘Whatever.’ Phoebe wasn’t thirteen years old any more. Nor fifteen, nor sixteen, nor even eighteen and, yes, they had fought it out all through those formative years of hers. Had fought over her right to be in charge of herself, even though Max had had nothing to do with the keeping of her. Had fought about politics and economics and dyeing her hair black and orange. And had fought about pretty much everything else as well.
Max was thirteen years her senior. For a while, that had given him an advantage, but eventually she had caught up. Had learned to hold her own ground and started winning her share of the skirmishes.
Now she was a mature twenty-two. An experienced child-care worker and, although he had no idea of it yet, in this case, Max’s salvation. She had no intention of allowing him to browbeat her into defeat before she even gave things a try.
Besides, she loved these mountains and this vast sheep and apple farm that had belonged to Saunders family members for generations.
Phoebe refused to acknowledge, even to herself, that she needed to come here sometimes. Just to soak up that oh-so-false feeling of belonging.
Hmph. If she owned Mountain Gem she would involve herself hands-on, not leave it to a manager who didn’t even live on the same property. It seemed as good a thing as any to get aggressive about right now.
‘How’s the rare and precious stone business coming?’ she sniped. ‘Made any more millions lately?’ Max had clinched a deal with the elusive Danvers Corporation recently to sell Saunders original jewellery creations through Danvers’s Australian stores. Phoebe knew that much because Katherine had told her how pleased Max had been.
Katherine had also mentioned that Max had dated Cameron Danvers’s daughter Felicity once or twice in recent months. Phoebe wondered if Max mixed business and pleasure often, then pushed the thought aside. Why should she be interested in the long line of women who paraded through Max’s life, be they past or present?
‘I’ll set up the video link and have my managerial team give you a report,’ Max sniped back over the noise of his boisterous and not at all happy sons. ‘Since I’ve been stuck working from home, that’s as close as I ever get to the business. Where would you like to hear from first? Greece? France? Germany?’
He made it sound as though watching over his sons was a real chore. Something he’d had foisted on him and didn’t want.
Phoebe paused. Perhaps that was exactly how he felt. If that was the case, it simply underlined how important it was that the boys had someone here who would stand firmly in their corner. ‘Actually, Max, I’m not that interested in your business.’
‘Trying to goad me, Phoebe?’ He offered a smile that was one hundred per cent gleaming irritation. ‘If so, you’ll have to do better than that.’
‘No offence meant.’ She gave him the benefit of an unblinking and unrepentant stare. ‘I was just expressing my thoughts.’
‘Always a dangerous pastime where you’re concerned.’
The dart barely made an impact. For one thing, she was used to his barbs. And, for another, he was avoiding the real issue. ‘There are other commitments in life that are even more important than making money.’
He glared at her. ‘Is there a point to this?’
Phoebe pulled a face. Not willing to admit a thing, are you, Max?
‘Well, you still look like you need help.’ She glanced at the howling and kicking boys. No way would she desert them to Max’s ministrations, or lack thereof. ‘A lot of it, I’d say. Whatever Katherine may have led us to believe, and I might add she’s hoaxed both of us not just you, that fact remains.’
She waved a hand in his direction, determined to take hold of this conversation and steer it the way she wanted.
Enough of this nonsense of him criticising her personality. She already knew she was different—the sort that broke the mould and scared most people off in the process. She didn’t need Max to emphasise the point. ‘You look as though you haven’t slept in days—your hair’s all ruffled, you have beard shadow, which is not like you at all, and you’re covered in goop.’
Even so, he still managed to look gorgeous. Was it any wonder she needed to let off steam by criticising him? These mixed reactions to Max were enough to drive her crazy. At least he wasn’t the reason she felt at home here.
Mountain Gem’s bush setting, with its gum trees and low scrub, and the sense of stability inside the walls of the old homestead—those were the things that called to her, that could tangle her up, if she didn’t watch herself. ‘Even I didn’t get that grotty when I was working with my daycare kids. Whether you want to admit it or not, you need me right now.’
Oh, it felt good to say those words. He would hate having to agree with her.
‘What I need,’ Max ground out through strong white teeth, ‘is a competent, mature nanny. Someone who can help me accustom my sons to life here. They need to settle in, and soon.’
‘All nicely compartmentalised? It won’t work, you know.’ She paused to consider the rest of what he had said. ‘And, for your information, I am competent. You should see my employer references. I’ve worked at any number of childcare facilities, and all bar one of them—’
