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He swallowed when she turned back around to face him.
‘Did the big, bad man scare you, pretty girl? Did he sneak up on you and frighten you?’
He watched in amazement as baby Jemima snuggled into her rescuer, her crying ceasing as if a switch had been flicked. Ms Gilmour then blew a raspberry and the baby gave her a big smile and waved her arms about in evident delight.
‘How...?’ He stared at the baby and then his office manager. ‘How did you do that? You took her from crying to laughing in seconds!’
She blew on her nails and polished them against her shoulder. ‘Just call me Poppins, Mary Poppins.’
She said it in the same tones James Bond always used when introducing himself, Bond, James Bond, and he couldn’t help but laugh.
She hitched the baby a little higher in her arms. ‘Jemima, meet...’ She frowned. ‘What would you like her to call you?’
He had no idea. Did she have to call him anything? He frowned. Hold on, she couldn’t call him anything. She was too young and—
One look at his extraordinary office manager told him that wouldn’t wash. ‘What does she call you?’
‘Auntie...uh... Liz.’
Her gaze slid away, and he understood why. He knew her Christian name was Eliza, but he didn’t want to call her that. He wanted things to remain on as formal a footing as possible.
He let out a long, slow breath. ‘Uncle Sebastian,’ he clipped out.
‘Right. Baby Jemima, meet Uncle Sebastian.’
She said his name impersonally and yet something inside of him stretched and unwound as she uttered it.
He did his best to ignore it.
‘Well, say hello,’ she ordered him. ‘Talk to her.’
He shuffled a step closer.
‘Don’t frown or you’ll make her cry again.’
He smoothed out his face and tried to find a smile. ‘Hello, Jemima, it’s nice to meet you.’ He fell silent. The baby frowned at him. ‘What do I say?’
‘Say something nice. Tell her she’s pretty. Tell her you’ve been on a big plane...recite a poem. It doesn’t matter. She just needs to know you’re friendly.’
A poem? He used to love poetry. Once upon a time. It felt like a hundred years ago now. He pulled in a deep lungful of air. ‘“The Assyrian came down like a wolf on—”’
‘Good God, not Byron!’
Both woman and child swayed away from him.
‘You’ll scar her for life.’
Behind those honey-brown eyes he had a feeling she was laughing at him.
‘Can’t you think of something more...cheerful?’
Cheerful? Inspiration struck. ‘The Jabberwocky!’
He recited the entire poem and both woman and child stared at him as if mesmerised.
‘Give her your finger.’
He did as bidden. Jemima stared at it for a moment or two, swaying in her protector’s arms, before reaching out and clasping it in one tiny fist. Something inside of him felt as if it were falling.
She pulled it closer and then up towards her mouth, but he gently detached himself from her grip. ‘You might want to wait until I’ve washed my hands first. You’ve no idea where these have been.’
Jemima stared at him and then gave a big toothless grin before letting forth with a sound partway between ‘Gah!’ and a gurgle.
He could feel his entire body straighten—his chin came up and his shoulders went back—and he couldn’t help smiling back. ‘She smiled at me. She...she smiled.’
He glanced at his office manager to find her staring at him as if she’d never seen him before. Something arced in the air between them, and colour flooded her cheeks. She shook herself and sent him a smile that didn’t hide the consternation in her eyes. ‘You’ve just been given the official seal of approval.’ She laughed and suddenly seemed more natural again. ‘Hold tight to the memory. You might just need it at two o’clock in the morning, and at three...and four.’
It hit him then that she’d been right. He couldn’t just walk out of here with Jemima. He was going to need help.
Her help?
Something inside him chafed at the idea. He had a feeling it’d be best for him and Ms Gilmour to get back on a professional footing asap. He could hire someone else. He’d have to come up with a cover story for Jemima of course, but...
‘Mr Tyrell?’
But first he had to stop staring at her! ‘I’ll, uh, just go have that shower.’
When he emerged from the shower, he found Jemima asleep and his hostess making sandwiches.
‘Egg and lettuce,’ she said, setting two in front of him.
They ate in silence. She kept glancing across at him and he knew he should initiate the conversation, but he didn’t know where to start.
‘Do you have any idea who her mother might be?’ she finally asked.
‘None whatsoever.’
She pulled in a breath. ‘I know we’re straying into dangerously personal territory, but...can you recall all of the women you’ve been...intimate with in the last twelve to fifteen months?’
He choked on his sandwich. ‘I’m not Jemima’s father!’
One eyebrow kinked upwards. ‘How do you know that for sure?’ Her lips twisted. ‘Contraception isn’t always a hundred per cent effective.’
He knew that, but... Something in her tone caught at him. He frowned. ‘You sound as if you’re speaking from experience.’
Her gaze dropped to her plate. ‘Second-hand experience. A, um...girlfriend.’
‘I’m not Jemima’s father.’
She glanced back up at him. ‘How can you be so certain?’
Because he’d not slept with anyone in two years! But he had no intention of confessing that to this woman. It made him sound priestly, saintly, celibate, and he was none of those things.
‘Have you kept in contact with them all?’
He grabbed the branch she’d unknowingly handed him. ‘Yes.’
She leant back and folded her arms, staring at him in outright disbelief. It rankled.
‘I don’t know what kind of man you think I am, Ms Gilmour, but there haven’t been an endless parade of women in and out of my bed. I know every woman I’ve slept with in the past two years, and I’ve kept in contact with all of them. I can assure you that none of them have become pregnant—not with me and not with anyone else.’
She unfolded her arms, but he didn’t know if she believed him or not. He didn’t know why it should matter so much to him either way. She was his office manager, not his moral guardian.
‘Jemima and I can get DNA tests done if it’ll put your mind at rest,’ he snapped out. ‘A paternity test.’
Luscious lips—lips he’d never realised were luscious until this moment—pursed. ‘Could you, though? You’ve not been made Jemima’s legal guardian. You don’t have the authority to give legal consent for such a test.’
He opened his mouth. He closed it again. She had a point.
‘Which is why,’ she continued, ‘I’m not going to let you leave here with Jemima.’
He blinked. Had she just said...? ‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’m not letting you take the baby.’
He stared at her. ‘You can’t stop me.’
Their gazes locked and clashed. ‘Do you mean to take Jemima by force?’
His hands clenched to fists. Of course he wasn’t going to take the baby by force! Was she threatening him with the police? He pulled in a measured breath. ‘Jemima’s mother entrusted her to my care,’ he reminded her.
‘You’ll have to excuse me for not putting much faith in Jemima’s mother’s reasoning.’ She’d leapt up and now proceeded to pace—back and forth in agitated circles. ‘She left Jemima in my office during my lunch break. What if I’d decided to take a half-day—to skive off because the boss was away?’
His head rocked back. ‘You’d never do such a thing.’
‘I know that and you know that, but she doesn’t know me from Adam. So she couldn’t know that.’
She had a point.
‘She left the baby in your care but you were out of the country. What was she thinking? I mean, you live in Lincolnshire, not in London. Had she put any thought into this at all? Hadn’t she done any research?’
He couldn’t fault her reasoning.
She planted herself back in her chair. ‘Look, this is all beside the point. I wish I wasn’t involved. I don’t want to be involved. But I am, and ethically and morally I can’t just hand that baby over to you and walk away. Not when you aren’t her father. Not when you know nothing about babies.’
He dragged both hands back through his hair. If their positions were reversed he knew he’d feel the same.
‘Why do you want to take her anyway? Why do you feel so responsible for her?’
Finally they came to the crux of the matter. Exhaustion, disgust...and a still searing sense of betrayal momentarily overtook him. He dropped his head to his folded arms. Eventually he lifted it and met her gaze. ‘I suspect Jemima and I are related.’
‘Related?’
He forced himself to maintain eye contact. ‘A niece perhaps.’
‘But...you don’t have any siblings.’
He had to swallow before he could speak. ‘I have no siblings that I know about.’
‘Ah.’ She slumped back as if all the air had gone out of her.
‘Or...’ worse yet ‘...she could be my half-sister.’
‘But—’ she frowned and leaned towards him ‘—your father must be...’
‘Sixty-eight—old enough to be her grandfather, yes.’
* * *
Liv ran a hand across her brow in an effort to shift the tightness that gripped it like a vice. The poor man looked exhausted. Not physically exhausted the way he had when she’d opened her door to him earlier, but deep-down-in-his-soul exhausted. ‘I guess that explains the scandal you want to avoid.’
His head swung up to meet her gaze again. ‘I’ve given up trying to quash scandal where my parents are concerned.’
Given how often they appeared in the pages of the tabloids, that was probably just as well. It might also explain why Sebastian wanted to present such a squeaky-clean image himself.
She wanted to see him smile again, the way he had when Jemima had smiled at him. It was probably crazy, but... ‘I don’t believe half of what the papers say. They inflate everything.’
His lips twisted—not into a smile. ‘Where Hector and Marjorie Tyrell are concerned, you can believe pretty much everything that you read.’
She winced.
‘My parents are selfish people, Ms Gilmour, and have been all their lives. Chasing their own pleasure is more important to them than anyone’s welfare.’
Including their son’s? A weight pressed down on her chest.
‘I’ve no interest in protecting their reputations—they don’t have reputations worth protecting. However, if Hector has taken advantage of some young woman and left her feeling desperate, then she does deserve protecting. And until I can discover who she is, I mean to shield her from the spotlight.’
Liv lifted her chin. ‘Good. Good for you!’
This time he did give a smile, though it was only a small one...and tinged with disillusion. ‘In the meantime we—’ he gestured first to her and then to himself ‘—have this problem to sort out.’
‘No problem,’ she assured him. ‘You go off and find Jemima’s mother. In the meantime Jemima can stay here with me. Ms Brady is doing a fine job holding the fort at the office. I’ve been checking in with her every afternoon.’
‘No.’
No? What did he mean, no?
‘Just as you’re not comfortable letting me take the baby, I’m not comfortable leaving the baby with you.’
