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Liv hung up from her twin and tucked her phone back into her handbag. She stared again at the sleeping baby and bit her lip. It was usual for babies to sleep a lot, right? She touched her fingers to the baby’s forehead, but the baby didn’t feel hot or feverish.
What on earth was the poor little mite going to think when she woke up and found her mother gone? ‘Poor little chick.’
Right.
She planted herself in her office chair and pulled the phone towards her, punching in the contact number that Sebastian Tyrell had left...along with the instruction Only to be used in the direst of emergencies.
The phone rang three times before it was answered. ‘Ms Gilmour.’
‘Yes.’
‘I trust this is an emergency?’
The cold, clipped tones told her it had better be or there’d be hell to pay. She took an immediate dislike to the man. ‘Yes, I’m afraid it is.’
‘My parents...?’
His tone didn’t change and she disliked him even more. ‘To the best of my knowledge they’re in excellent health. This has nothing to do with your parents. It’s to do with—’
Baby Jemima chose that moment to let loose with a loud wail.
Heavens! Who knew something so small could produce a sound so fierce? She stood up to peer into the carrier—still perched on her desk where it’d been left—but the sight of Liv seemed to startle the baby further. Baby Jemima’s face turned red as she started crying in earnest.
Oh, heck!
Sebastian Tyrell’s voice boomed down the line at her. ‘Is there a baby in my office?’
Technically, it was her office.
Actually, it was Liz’s office.
‘Hey, there, little one, hush.’ She ran her hand across the baby blanket—over the baby’s tummy—in an effort to impart some comfort. ‘Shh, it’s OK.’ She spied the dummy pinned to the blanket and popped it into the baby’s mouth. Baby Jemima immediately stopped crying and sucked on it greedily. Oh! She must be hungry.
‘What is a baby doing in my office?’
She hated that voice—the cutting ice of it. ‘That, Se—sir...’ She quickly caught herself. Liz had told her that first names weren’t used in the office. Ever.
She closed her eyes and pulled in a breath. She had to keep her wits about her. Slip-ups were not allowed. She couldn’t let Liz down. It was Sebastian Tyrell’s reserve, his distance—both physical and emotional—that had made them believe they could pull this deception off. They could still pull it off. She and Liz were identical twins—at least on the outside. He’d never be able to tell them apart. She could do this.
‘Continue, Ms Gilmour. Stopping partway through a sentence is not only unprofessional, but irritating.’
Her chin shot up and her nostrils flared. ‘I was hoping you could shed light on this particular emergency, sir. You see, the baby is the emergency. It was left on my desk during my lunch hour...along with a letter for you.’
‘What?’
She held the phone a little further away from her ear and refrained from pointing out that deafening one’s office manager wasn’t particularly professional either. Or that having her eardrums blasted was seriously irritating.
‘You’ll have to excuse me for having read your letter, but I deemed the situation warranted it.’ She feared, though, that her tone told him she didn’t give a flying fig what he thought about her having read his letter.
Air hissed down the line at her. ‘Read it out loud.’
She did. Word for word. As few as they were.
Without being asked, she read the letter again, allowing him time to process it. She waited for him to respond. When he continued to remain silent she asked, ‘What would you like me to do?’
‘I’m thinking.’
She wanted to tell him to think faster. ‘Do you know baby Jemima?’
‘No.’
‘Do you know who her mother might be?’
‘Ms Gilmour, I’d appreciate it if you’d stop peppering me with questions.’
Jemima spat her pacifier out and set up a toothache-inducing wail. ‘Mr Tyrell, there’s a baby on my desk that is evidently hungry and probably in need of changing—a baby that has obviously been abandoned by its mother. You’ll have to excuse my impatience, I’m afraid.’ She pulled in a breath. ‘If you don’t know who this baby is or who she belongs to, then the sensible thing to do would be to contact the police and hand her over to Social Services.’
‘No!’
She blinked. So...maybe he did have a clue?
‘This child’s mother obviously thinks there’s some connection between us, between the baby and me.’
‘Or someone could be trying to take advantage of your aristocratic heritage,’ she felt honour-bound to point out. Sebastian was Lord Tyrell’s only son. The Tyrell family had that enormous estate in Lincolnshire. Not to mention a London house and a holiday villa somewhere on the Riviera.
She rubbed Jemima’s tummy again, and tried to entice her to take her dummy—unsuccessfully. If anything the volume of her cries only increased.
‘Going to the police has the potential to cause a scandal. The tabloids would have a field day.’
She rolled her eyes. What on earth was a scandal when a baby’s welfare was at stake?
‘And a scandal will affect the Tyrell Foundation. It’s on a knife-edge already. I don’t want to risk scaring away the benefactors I’ve been in negotiations with for the last few months. We’ve worked too hard for that.’
Sebastian’s charity wasn’t one of the glamorous ones featuring children or animals on their flyers. His charity assisted the recently unemployed in the over-fifties age bracket to find work.
From all that Liz had said, it was gruelling work too, and apparently Sebastian toiled like a Trojan. It wasn’t something she’d have expected from an aristocrat’s son.
We all have our peccadilloes, she reminded herself. She’d have never expected to be particularly fluent in office work, and yet here she was.
She tossed her head and gritted her teeth. She was glad she’d become skilled enough to help her sister out of a tight spot.
Baby Jemima’s continual crying scratched through her brain, making her temples throb. ‘Where on earth are you anyway?’
A heavy sigh came down the line. ‘Australia.’
‘Australia!’ She said a rude word.
‘Ms Gilmour, did you just swear?’ There was no censure in his voice, just astonishment.
‘I can’t stand this crying another second. I need to change and feed the baby. I’ll call you back.’
Without further ado, she hung up on him.
Don’t lose me my job, Livvy.
She grimaced before pouncing on the bag the absent mother had evidently packed for the baby. She’d searched it for clues earlier. It contained clothes, toys, nappies, formula and bottles, and, most importantly of all, a set of instructions. A quick glance at them told her that Jemima’s next feed had been due fifteen minutes ago.
She crooned nonsense at the baby as she changed and then fed her. ‘Don’t you worry, little snuggly-wuggly Jemima. We’ll have you fed and dry in no time. Would you like to hear a bit about me—my qualifications and what have you? Well, I’ll have you know that I was the go-to babysitter when I was in high school. And believe me there were plenty of tots in Sevenoaks, Kent. And since then I’ve been made a godmother—twice! Once to baby Bobby and once to baby Matilda. So you see, I do have credentials. You’re in safe hands.’
Jemima drank her bottle with an avid greed that made Liv laugh. ‘You’re simply lovely, little Jemima.’
The baby puked up on the sleeve of Liv’s blouse when Liv burped her, and then promptly fell asleep again.
‘Easy-peasy, nothing to it,’ Liv murmured, gently placing her in the carrier again. ‘If only I could curl up and go to sleep too. But no, not I. I now have to ring my sister’s boss and apologise for hanging up on him. Grovel if I have to so he won’t fire Liz. Wish me luck, little one.’
Without wasting any more time, she grabbed the phone and hit redial. It was picked up on the first ring. ‘I’m sorry I hung up so abruptly, but I had to—’
‘There’s no need to apologise, Ms Gilmour. The noise was driving me to distraction as well and I’m not even in the same country, let alone the same room. It all sounds quiet now, though.’
‘Baby Jemima has been changed and fed and, having thrown up on my blouse, is now blissfully asleep. All’s well in Baby Land.’
‘I’ll replace your blouse.’
She blinked. ‘That won’t be necessary. It’ll wash out.’ She stared down at the sleeping baby and something inside her chest clenched. ‘She really is the sweetest little thing. Would you like me to send you a photo?’
‘Why?’
She shook herself. What was she thinking? Sebastian Tyrell didn’t sound like the kind of man who oohed and aahed over cute baby pictures. ‘Maybe...maybe she looks like her mother and that’ll give you a clue to the baby’s identity.’
‘I...uh... OK.’
She was grasping at straws and they both knew it. Nevertheless she took a picture on her phone and sent it through to him.
A long silence ensued. ‘Babies all look the same to me.’
She bit her lip. ‘You don’t have much experience with babies, do you?’
‘No.’
She drummed her fingers against her desk. He’d ruled out the police, so... ‘Do you want me to organise a nanny or some kind of babysitting service?’
‘I may not know much about babies but I know business. Questions will be asked and the answers recorded. The baby’s full details will need to be provided—a birth certificate may need to be produced.’
She doubted an actual birth certificate would be required, but she caught the gist of his concerns. They didn’t know Jemima’s full details. They barely knew any details at all! And if he was the baby’s father...
Another long silence ensued—a silence that started to burn and chafe through her. ‘Look, I don’t know if you’ll consider this any kind of solution, but Jemima can stay with me until you get back to London. How does that sound?’
‘It sounds perfect.’
His relief was evident and it occurred to her now that those long silences of his had been strategic devices to lead her to the point of making this precise offer. She didn’t know whether to be outraged or not.
‘I understand this is a great imposition on you, Ms Gilmour, and you have my sincere gratitude.’
She chose not to be outraged.
‘I also understand that you can’t be expected to perform both nanny duties and office duties at the same time. Please organise a temp to take over in your absence. Judith performs her duties ably, but...’ He trailed off. ‘The woman you arranged to come in while you were on holiday was very good.’
‘I’ll check with the agency and see if she’s available.’ Playing nanny would be far more fun than playing office manager. And she couldn’t help thinking that the further away from the office she was, the less the likelihood of her and Liz’s deception being detected.
Win-win.
She glanced at the sleeping baby. Except what was baby Jemima winning? Nothing. She faced upheaval and an uncertain future. She bit back a sigh. Thankfully the baby was blissfully unaware of that fact.
‘I hope your mother is all right,’ she murmured.
‘I beg your pardon?’
Oops! ‘Oh... I was talking to the baby, but... Her mother must’ve felt in the direst of straits to leave her baby like this.’
And she’d left her baby in the care of Sebastian Tyrell. What did that show?
That she trusted him?
She swallowed. That he was the father?
‘I’d prefer it, Ms Gilmour, if you refrained from enacting a Cheltenham tragedy.’
Her chin shot up. ‘To be perfectly frank with you, sir, I’m not sure it much matters what you’d prefer. I’d have preferred not to have come back from lunch to find an anonymous baby abandoned on my desk. There’s not only a mystery to solve—’ who was the child’s mother ‘—but a couple of serious issues to be dealt with too. I can’t help feeling time is of the essence.’
Don’t lose me my job, Livvy.
She grimaced and waited for him to take her to task for her insolence. He didn’t. Instead there was that darn silence again. She suddenly laughed. ‘You don’t feel that you can reprimand me at the moment because you’re in my debt.’
‘I have no wish to reprimand you. You’re worried, understandably so, and I share your concerns. I will own, however, to a little...surprise over your fieriness.’
She winced. She needed to tread carefully—channel her more level-headed sibling. ‘Babies bring it out in me,’ she offered weakly.
‘I see.’
‘I should go and let you make your travel arrangements.’ She blinked. ‘I mean...you are planning to return immediately, aren’t you?’ She’d simply taken that for granted.
‘Absolutely.’
‘Or perhaps you’d like me to organise your travel arrangements?’ She gave a silent scream. Were they part of her job description? She had no idea.
‘The arrangements are already underway.’
The tap-tapping noises in the background suddenly made sense. She wondered how many devices he had open in front of him besides his phone—his tablet and laptop perhaps? Those strategic silences suddenly took on a different complexion.
