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She was beginning to feel a bit ridiculous, stuck at one end of the row. They couldn’t have a conversation like this, and it was going to be a long flight.
Making up her mind, she shifted one seat along, although it involved so much balancing of her glass and flipping out and putting away of trays in the arm of the seat, not to mention shifting all the baby paraphernalia from one seat to another, that by the time she was halfway through Martha was already regretting her decision and she felt positively hot and bothered by the time she finally collapsed into the seat.
Lewis was looking at her curiously. ‘What are you doing?’
‘I just thought I should be sociable,’ she said, pushing her hair crossly away from her face. ‘We can hardly shout at each other all the way to Nairobi.’
‘I thought you might appreciate the extra room if you wanted to sleep,’ said Lewis, effectively taking the wind out of Martha’s sails. She hadn’t expected him to have a considerate motive for putting himself as far away from her as possible!
‘We haven’t even had our meal,’ she pointed out. ‘I don’t want to sleep yet.’
Uncomfortably aware that she sounded defensive, if not downright sulky, she forced a smile. ‘This just seems like a good opportunity to get to know each other. We’re going to be spending six months together, after all. Besides, it sounds as if the flight from Nairobi is going to be in a much smaller plane than this, so we’re probably going to have to sit right next to each other on that. We might as well get used to the idea of being in close proximity!’
‘We’re certainly not going to get any closer than that,’ said Lewis grumpily.
My, he was a charmer, wasn’t he? Martha sighed inwardly.
‘Look, I’ll move back if you feel I’m invading your personal space,’ she said huffily, putting her glass down and making to unfasten her seat belt.
‘For God’s sake, stay where you are,’ he said irritably, and then he sighed.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said in a different voice, pinching the bridge of his nose. ‘I’ve been very…preoccupied recently. Things are hectic in the office, half our projects seem to be in crisis, the negotiations for the St Bonaventure port have stalled, nothing’s getting done. And then there’s all this business with Savannah…’ He blew out his cheeks wearily.
Martha couldn’t help but sympathise. She had read in the gossip columns about the tempestuous scenes his sister had been throwing, the latest of which had resulted in the police being called to her house. In the end, Lewis had taken her to the clinic himself, running the gauntlet of the reporters at the gates who’d banged on the car windows and shouted questions about the most intimate details of his sister’s life.
No wonder he was tired.
‘My temper’s short at the best of times,’ he admitted, ‘and I know I’ve probably been taking it out on everyone else. My PA couldn’t wait to get rid of me yesterday!’
His mouth twisted ironically and he glanced at Martha. ‘You’re right, we should probably get to know each other better. I should have made more of an effort earlier.’
‘You’ve had a lot on your mind,’ said Martha a little uncomfortably.
Damn, just when she had got used to him being grumpy and disagreeable he had to go and throw her off balance by suddenly acting human! How difficult of him.
‘Do you think we could start again?’ he asked, making things even worse.
What could she say? ‘Of course,’ said Martha and held out her hand across the empty seat between them. ‘I’m Martha Shaw. How do you do?’
The corner of Lewis’s mouth quirked. ‘Nice to meet you, Martha Shaw,’ he said gravely, and reached across to shake her hand.
Martha wished he hadn’t done that. The fingers wrapped around hers were warm and comfortingly strong, and the press of his palm sent a disquieting shiver down her spine.
Pulling her hand away, she took a steadying gulp of her champagne. It was too sweet, and she hadn’t really wanted it anyway. She had written enough articles about the dehydrating effects of long haul flights and how the best thing to do was just to drink plenty of water, but when Lewis had tersely asked for a bottle of water himself something perverse in her had made her turn to the flight attendant on her side of the plane and accept a glass of free champagne with a brilliant smile.
It had been silly, and it felt even sillier now that Lewis was turning out to be so unexpectedly approachable. Really, he was being quite nice.
So there was no reason why she shouldn’t be able to think of something to say, was there?
No reason other than the tingle of her palm. And the fact that, even though she was staring desperately at the tiny plane heading steadily south across the map of the world on the screen above the travel cots, all she could see was his mouth, with its corner turned up in amusement, and its hint of warmth and humour.
No reason at all, then.
‘So, what…’ Mortified by the squeakiness of her voice, Martha cleared her throat and started again. ‘What happened to Eve?’
‘Eve?’
‘The nanny who fitted your job description so perfectly,’ she reminded him. ‘You know, the one who was so reliable and sensible and efficient and lacking in commitments?’
‘Oh. Yes.’ Lewis had forgotten about Eve for a minute there.
He felt a little light-headed for some reason, which wasn’t like him. It definitely wasn’t anything to do with Martha’s smile, or the depth of her eyes, or the sooty sweep of those lashes against her cheek. Obviously not.
Lewis looked at the glass of water in his hand. He couldn’t even blame the feeling on alcohol. Must be the cabin pressure, he decided.
‘Apparently Eve fell in love,’ he said.
Martha shifted round in her seat to stare at him in surprise. ‘In love?’
‘So she said.’ There was a tinge of distaste in Lewis’s voice. ‘I interviewed her on Monday, she accepted the job on Tuesday, on Wednesday night she met some man in a club and she rang me on Thursday morning to say that she was going to spend the rest of her life with him so she didn’t want to come to St Bonaventure after all, thank you very much.’
‘Really?’ Martha laughed. ‘So she turned out to be not so sensible after all?’
‘You could say that. Turning down a perfectly good job to invest everything in a man you’ve only known for a matter of hours…it’s a ridiculous thing to do!’
‘It won’t seem like that if she fell in love with him.’
‘How can she be in love with him?’ demanded Lewis with a return to his old acerbic tone. ‘She doesn’t know anything about this man.’
A flight attendant was hovering, offering Martha more champagne, but she shook her head. She wasn’t going to compound her mistake. ‘Could I have some water?’ she asked as she put her empty glass back on the tray. Now who was the sensible one? she thought wryly.
‘Ah, so you’re not a believer in love at first sight,’ she said with an ironic look. ‘Now, why does that not surprise me?’
‘Are you?’
Martha thanked the flight attendant for her water before turning back to him. ‘I used to be,’ she told him.
He hadn’t expected her to say that. ‘What changed your mind?’ he asked curiously.
‘Falling in love at first sight and discovering that it didn’t last,’ she said with a sad little smile. Her eyes took on a faraway look as she remembered how it had been. ‘When I met Paul it was like every cliché you ever heard. Our eyes met across a crowded room, and I knew—or thought I knew—that he was the only man for me. We were soul mates. I spent the rest of the night with him, and we moved in together a week later. At least we didn’t go as far as getting married,’ she joked.
Her description of how she had fallen madly in love coincided with a twinge that made Lewis shift a little irritably in his seat. Maybe it wasn’t cabin pressure? Maybe he was coming down with something after all?
‘So what happened?’
Martha sighed. ‘Oh, the usual…day to day living, routine, stressful careers. It’s hard to keep up the magic against all that. Paul and I did our best, but the enchantment wore off eventually and, when it did, there was nothing left,’ she said sadly.
‘We carried on for a while, but it wasn’t the same. Splitting up was awful. Somehow the fact that we’d started with such high expectations made the squabbling even worse, and everything ended up feeling much more bitter than if we’d never had those dreams at all.’
For a moment her shoulders slumped as she relived the misery of those last horrible months with Paul, and then she straightened and made a determined effort to push the memories away. ‘I decided then that I wasn’t going to go through that again. A successful relationship needs to be based on more than infatuation.’
Lewis lifted an eyebrow. ‘Meaning what?’
‘Meaning that I think it’s better to be pragmatic than romantic when it comes to sharing your life with someone. I’m looking for friendship and respect and a shared attitude to the practicalities of life now. They’re going to lead to a happier and more lasting relationship than any amount of physical attraction—although that always helps, of course!’
‘So is that what you had with Noah’s father…what was his name again?…Rory?’ Lewis was horrified to hear the faintest tinge of jealousy in his voice.
Fortunately, Martha didn’t seem to have noticed. She was shaking her head.
‘No.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘To be honest, I think it was more a case of lust at first sight! I met Rory at a party. It wasn’t long after I’d broken up with Paul and my confidence had taken a knock. I was feeling my age too. Suddenly I seemed to be hurtling into middle age with nothing to look forward to.
‘And then I saw Rory,’ she said, remembering. ‘He’s quite a bit younger than me and incredibly good-looking. We were all pale and pasty after a London winter and he’d just breezed in from the Indian Ocean, all blond and tanned and gorgeous! When he walked into that party I swear every woman in the room sucked in her breath and her stomach! Rory could have had his pick. There were lots of really pretty girls there, even a few models, but he spent the entire evening with me. I suppose I was flattered.’
Lewis heard the undercurrent of secret amazement and pleasure she had felt that night in her voice, and wondered if she really didn’t know how attractive she was. Personally, he wasn’t surprised that Rory had singled her out. The intelligence and character in her face more than compensated for the fine lines round her eyes, and that lush mouth was much more tantalising than the perfect body or smooth, untried expression of a twenty-year-old.
‘Rory was just what I needed after Paul,’ Martha was saying. ‘He made me feel desirable again. It wasn’t love at first sight, no, but we did get on really well in spite of the difference in our ages. If we’d had longer together, who knows? Maybe we could have built a good long-term relationship but, as it was, he had to go back to St Bonaventure. We both knew that it was never going to be a permanent thing, so we just enjoyed it for what it was—a lot of fun.’
Lewis was getting a bit tired of hearing about Rory, who was so attractive and such fun and no doubt a real stud in bed, too, he thought sourly. ‘Did the fun include getting pregnant?’ he asked disapprovingly.
‘No, that was an accident,’ said Martha. ‘We’d been to Paris for the weekend—Rory had never been and I used to go to all the fashion shows—so we thought we’d treat ourselves to a great meal on our last night, and I had oysters. Big mistake! I was on the pill, but those oysters definitely disagreed with me. I had an upset stomach for a couple of days after we got back and…well, it happens.’
She shrugged. ‘A touch of food poisoning isn’t the best of reasons to start a family, I know, but I wouldn’t change Noah for the world now. Anyway,’ she went on with a sideways glance at Lewis, ‘you don’t need to worry that I’ll do an Eve and throw out all your arrangements by deciding I have met the man of my dreams on St Bonaventure. I’m too much of a realist about love now for that, and even if I wasn’t quite frankly I’m too tired to fall in love at the moment!’
CHAPTER THREE
LEWIS’S hard gaze encompassed her pale face and the circles under her eyes. ‘You look it,’ he said roughly.
‘Well, I certainly wouldn’t recommend being a single mother to anyone who relies on her sleep,’ said Martha with a wry smile.
‘You must have known it would be hard work.’
She nodded. ‘Yes, I did, but it’s like everyone always says…you can say that you know looking after a baby will be tiring, but until you’re actually doing it you have no conception of what sleep deprivation does to you or of just what “tired” can mean!’
Lewis hunched a shoulder. ‘If it’s that bad why do women go on and on about how they want to have babies?’
‘Because the joy you get from your child is worth every sleepless night,’ said Martha, leaning forward to stroke Noah’s cheek. ‘It’s worth every day you get through like a zombie, every hour you spend worrying about whether he’s healthy or happy or how you’re going to afford to give him everything he needs.’
Lewis’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘That sounds all very fine, but in my experience it’s a lot more basic than that. I think a lot of women have children to fulfil their own needs. They think about how much they want to be loved or valued, not about how the child will feel.
‘Half the time they have a baby just because it’s fashionable,’ he said contemptuously. ‘A baby is the latest designer accessory. You can dress it up in rinky-dinky little outfits and show it off, which is fine until the fashion changes and you’ve got to keep up, and then it’s Oh, dear, now what am I going to do with the baby?’
‘Give it to my brother to look after?’ suggested Martha, unsurprised at the bitterness in his voice if that was what had happened with Savannah.
‘Or a nanny or a mother-in-law or anyone else you can find to deal with all that messy, boring stuff as long as it doesn’t stop you doing whatever you want to do!’
There was a little silence. Martha had the feeling that she was treading on dangerous ground. ‘Why did you agree to look after Viola if you feel that way?’ she asked cautiously after a moment.
‘What could I do?’ Lewis replied, hunching a shoulder. ‘I had my sister in hysterics, the baby crying…’
He shuddered, remembering the scene. ‘Savannah’s out of control at the moment. She’s behaving very badly, but she’s still in no state to look after a baby properly. Viola’s father is in the States at the moment—or he was last time I heard. Half the time he’s too out of it to remember that he’s got a daughter, let alone to look after her, and Viola certainly can’t look after herself.’ He sighed. ‘I’m the only one who can be responsible for her at the moment. She’s just a baby. I couldn’t just say that she wasn’t my problem.’
Martha studied his profile, oddly moved by his matter-of-fact attitude. He seemed so hard when you first met him, she thought, remembering how off-putting she had found that austere, unsmiling face and the uncompromising air of toughness and self-sufficiency, but underneath it all he was obviously a kind man, and a decent one.
Kindness and decency weren’t qualities she had valued much when she was caught up in the frenetic whirl of activity at work and a hectic social life, but it didn’t take long to learn how important they were when life became more difficult.
Knowing that Lewis had them made him seem a much nicer man.
And a much more attractive one.
The thought slid unbidden into Martha’s mind and she jerked her eyes away from his face.
Don’t even think about it, she told herself. It’s one thing to realise that Lewis might not be quite as unpleasant as you thought, quite another to start thinking of him as attractive. He’s your employer and you’re going out to find Rory. Don’t complicate the issue.
She took a sip of her water. Maybe she should have stuck to the champagne after all.
‘You must be very close to your sister if you’re the one she turns to for help,’ she said after a while.
Lewis grimaced. ‘It’s partly my own fault Savannah is the way she is,’ he said. ‘Her mother left when she was only four, so she never had an example of good parenting. Michaela—her mother—was an heiress. She was very pretty and very spoilt, just like Savannah. After she divorced my father she went off to the States, but she was killed in a road accident a couple of years later. All her money was put in a trust fund for when Savannah was eighteen, and Savannah has been running through her inheritance ever since.’
‘I didn’t realise that she was your half-sister,’ said Martha, wriggling round in her seat so that it was easier to talk.
‘She’s fourteen years younger than me, so I wasn’t around all that much after I went to university. Poor kid, she didn’t have much of a childhood, looked after by a succession of nannies and then packed off to boarding school. My father was never much of a hands-on parent at the best of times,’ he added dryly, ‘and once his business started going downhill he withdrew into himself even more. I think he forgot about Savannah’s existence most of the time.
‘I tried to do what I could for Savannah in the holidays, and when our father died she made her base with me, but she was sixteen by then and had got in with a crowd of wild friends.’ Lewis sighed. ‘I was always bailing her out of trouble. I blame myself sometimes. Maybe if I’d been firmer with her she’d be less spoilt now.’
‘It wasn’t your fault,’ said Martha stoutly. ‘It’s hard enough for perfect, supportive parents to deal with ordinary adolescents, let alone troubled ones. You can only have been a young man. I don’t see how you could have possibly done more than you did.’
Lewis looked a little taken aback by her support. ‘Helen was always telling me I should be stricter with Savannah.’
A few tiny bristles went up on the back of Martha’s neck. ‘Helen?’ she asked in a carefully casual voice.
‘My girlfriend.’
Girlfriend? Martha was alarmed by the sinking feeling in her stomach. Why should she be so disappointed…? No, no, scrub disappointed, she told herself. That wasn’t the right word at all.
Surprised, that was better. Why should she be so surprised that Lewis had a girlfriend? She guessed he was in his late thirties. He was intelligent, competent, solvent, and even not bad-looking—if you liked the dour, steely type, that was. Apparently straight, and nothing obviously kinky about him. Of course he had a girlfriend.
‘We were together for years,’ Lewis was saying, ‘but she used to get very fed up when Savannah turned up drunk when we had friends round, or rang me in the middle of the night.’
Past tense. Phew! Martha relaxed, only to remember that if she hadn’t been disappointed there was no reason to feel relieved, was there?
Unaware of Martha’s convoluted mental exertions, Lewis was brooding about his sister. ‘I’m sure Helen’s right,’ he said. ‘I probably do encourage Savannah to depend on me too much, but in spite of all that money she hasn’t had an easy time of things. Yes, she’s been spoilt, but she’s very insecure and I can’t just turn her away when she needs help, can I? She can behave appallingly sometimes, but when it comes down to it she’s still my little sister—’
He broke off suddenly. ‘Why are you looking at me like that?’ he demanded.
‘I’m just thinking that it’s a shame that you don’t have any children,’ said Martha, appalled to find herself blushing slightly. She hadn’t meant to stare at him like that. ‘Not many men have such a strong sense of family. Don’t you want a family of your own?’
‘No,’ he said, his face hardening. ‘Savannah’s been quite enough family to deal with, thank you.’
