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SHE’D feared that Max had found out and had come to claim his rights as a father. Instead, he was asking her to look after his own son and a little baby! Perhaps he didn’t know about Perran after all!
‘I can’t. I have my job,’ she explained, proud to be as cool as a cucumber.
‘OK.’
To her surprise, he made no attempt to argue but headed straight for the door. She gaped at him. Was that it?
‘What are you going to do about the children?’ she cried in astonishment.
‘Me?’ Max half turned, presenting his clean-cut profile. ‘I saw that as your responsibility. If you’re not interested, well...there it is. I’ll let you know the phone number of the Home they’re in—’
‘Home? What do you mean “Home”?’ she yelled, jumping up.
‘It’s a place where orphans or children at risk go—’
‘I know what a Home is!’ she hurled. ‘You know what I meant—don’t be so obtuse! You couldn’t possibly contemplate the idea of putting your own nephew and niece into care.’
‘What other options are there?’ With infuriating rationality he ticked off the reasons for his conclusion on his long, lean fingers. ‘You won’t go, I can’t go, so they’ve got to be cared for by the State, since you’re not keen to let them live on the street and raid dustbins.’ Quite unconcerned, he put his hand out to open the door.
Laura was there before he made contact, sliding herself between him and the thin chipboard. He had no heart. Since he was his own boss, he could easily take time off to care for his son and niece. But he wouldn’t bother to put himself out, would he? Her face registered its disgust, and when a small smile played about his lips she gave him her fiercest scowl.
‘For once in your life,’ she said, the pitch and intensity of her voice showing the full force of her anger, ‘do something for someone else! For two little children—’
‘Ditto back.’
How could he be so unemotional about this? Almost amused! Laura knew she had to persuade him to take on his responsibilities as an uncle. And father.
‘I repeat. I have my job—’
‘I’m sure Huggy Bear will give you leave under the circumstances,’ he said, sublimely relaxed and watching her as though she was unwittingly entertaining him.
Laura glared. ‘I’ve got two twenty-first birthdays, an eightieth and a silver wedding cake to make this week! Plus a business conference with one hundred men demanding treacle sponges and bread puddings!’
‘Sounds delicious—’
‘Stop patronising me!’ she flared. ‘I’m not part of some huge operation where someone can go off and not be missed! Luke and I need each other—’
‘Yes. I saw.’
Impatient with his curt condemnation, she brushed his sarcasm aside. ‘You’ll have to cope with the situation. I can’t let Luke down.’
‘He’d have to manage if you were ill,’ Max pointed out, angling his dark head in a ‘Mr Reasonable’ attitude. ‘What would happen then?’
‘He’d work overtime or call his sister in to help,’ she admitted. ‘But I couldn’t possibly ask him.’
Then I will. I doubt he’d refuse. He’d look too churlish, wouldn’t he?’
She wondered if Max ever took no for an answer. ‘OK! I need the money!’ she claimed, abandoning her pride and any pretence that she’d made good. He’d seen the flat, hadn’t he? There was no way he’d believe she was madly successful.
‘I’ll pay you.’ Max beamed as though that solved everything.
‘I wouldn’t take money from you if I was homeless and living in a cardboard box in a multi-storey car park in sub-zero temperatures!’ she yelled.
Instead of being suitably offended, he appeared to be fighting down a grin. His eyes positively twinkled at her. ‘Stalemate, I think. Unless you have any bright ideas?’
‘Yes. You could go and play uncle!’ she insisted, feeling hot and bothered.
He shrugged off that idea as ludicrous. ‘I’d probably poison them. I don’t know anything about kids.’
‘Neither do I!’ she cried, her voice quavering with emotion.
‘No?’
He folded his arms. They brushed against her breasts—and she had nowhere to go except through the chipboard door. She made herself as thin as possible, conscious of the heat building up between them. Her eyes pleaded with his. He didn’t budge an inch.
‘No. What would I know?’ she muttered, trying not to breathe heavily.
The dark eyes kindled with warmth. ‘Some women are naturally maternal. You were always looking after the village kids. I called you the Pied Piper, remember?’
Incapable of speech, Laura kept on staring at him as misery gathered like a huge knotted blanket in her throat. Max’s voice gentled and his mouth became unfairly soft and tender.
‘They hung around you as if you were their idol—’
‘No!’ she jerked out in surprise, shaking her dark head emphatically.
‘Of course you were. Didn’t you tell them stories? Invent adventure games? Teach them about the plants and birds and generally mother them—?’
‘They were older! Not infants in nappies,’ she broke in, harshness masking her distress. ‘Seven...nine, ten... I wouldn’t know the first thing a-about...’
She felt treacherous tears welling up and got rid of them through sheer will-power, squashing the fact that she’d boned up on babies once by reading everything she could lay her hands on. She’d wiped all that from her mind. She couldn’t look after little Kerenza. She just couldn’t. It would break her heart.
‘It’d come to you, what to do. You’re a woman,’ Max said, transparently pleased with his logic.
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake!’ she spat, livid with fury.
He touched her rigid shoulder lightly and she jerked his hand off with unaccustomed violence, the calming, protective sensation quite unnerving her.
‘I’m not being chauvinistic,’ he murmured. ‘Your sister aside, women have instincts. They’re genetically programmed to be caring and tender, and they notice things that we men would miss—’
‘Then you’ll just have to try harder, dig down deep and search for some stray shred of love and tenderness and apply it to this situation, won’t you?’ she flung.
‘Meaning?’ he asked quietly, his eyes boring into hers.
It delighted her that he’d been offended at last. ‘I think I’m being as clear as crystal. Work at it. Find your heart, crank it up and use it. It’d do you good.’
‘Hmm.’ For a brief moment, she thought Max was contemplating the idea. Then he shook his head. ‘It wouldn’t work. I’ve got no yardstick. I wouldn’t know about bedtimes or what to feed them.’ He adopted an earnest, searching look. ‘When can babies eat chips and stuff?’
‘You’re not that ignorant!’ she scathed. ‘Ask the fed-up friend when you get there. Do your charming act and she’ll willingly clue you up. In fact she’ll probably stay to help.’
He gave a short laugh. ‘Thanks for your faith in my powers of persuasion.’
‘You don’t need any abilities. You’re just good-looking,’ she snapped. ‘You don’t have to do anything, just stand about in masculine poses and look gorgeous.’ Appalled at her bitchiness, shamed by his stony silence, she blamed her venom on her shredded nerves.
‘Isn’t that look-ist or something?’ he asked tautly.
‘Not when it’s true. You’ve always relied on your appearance to get what you want.’
He studied her with interest, a dangerous glint in his dark, almost luminous eyes. ‘Shall we explore that statement further?’ he suggested, with menace lurking in every word.
‘No. I want to get the children settled!’ she replied, two glowing splashes of colour on her cheeks. The last thing she wanted was a rerun of her helpless crush on him. ‘Max, give it a try,’ she pleaded. ‘You know you could persuade the friend to stay.’
‘Perhaps,’ he conceded. ‘Though I doubt it would be a good move. If she’s prepared to abandon the kids, then she’s the usual sort of person Fay and Daniel gather around them.’
‘You can’t generalise...’
‘I’m drawing a reasonable conclusion, given the facts,’ he drawled. ‘Fay attracts people like her. Fickle. Fey. It wouldn’t surprise me if this friend doesn’t have the first idea about looking after children. Laura, I know from what Daniel told me that you’ve never seen the kids—’
‘Have you?’ she shot back, so sensitive about that fact that she took his remark for a reproach.
‘No. I imagine we’ve missed out for the same reasons. Fay and Daniel have spent the whole of their married life travelling around the back lanes of Britain and picking up their welfare cheques. It’s been almost impossible to keep in touch. Laura, think about this again. Perran would be easily catered for. Treat him as if he’s older, like a seven-year-old without any sense. As for Kerenza, well, babies sleep and eat a lot...don’t they?’ he asked uncertainly. ‘If your sister can cope, anyone can. I’m sure it’s no big deal, looking after them.’
‘I have a better idea. Your best bet is to employ a nanny. Go down and make friends with the children then introduce the nanny—make sure she’s kind,’ she said anxiously, ‘and—’
‘A nanny! That’s a brilliant idea!’ he said, much to her surprise. ‘Only...there’s a flaw in it. I wouldn’t have the first idea about the qualities a nanny should have,’ Max admitted. He studied her anxious, uptight figure and suddenly seemed to be hit by inspiration. ‘Wait a minute!’ he cried, his face creasing into smiles.
Laura took the full force of his charisma and felt a sucking sensation in the pit of her stomach. ‘Why should I?’ she asked ungraciously.
‘I have a compromise solution.’ He extended the smile to one of his dazzling grins.
She frowned, knowing perfectly well that he believed he could get anything from anyone if he just put on that open-faced, beguiling expression.
‘What?’
‘We both go down to Cornwall—’
‘Both? You and me?’ she squeaked, aghast.
‘I wasn’t thinking of asking Luke!’ he replied, his eyes sparkling with humour.
‘The answer’s no.’
‘Laura, we can reassure the children and hand out sweets or whatever you do—’
‘No.’
‘And stay till we’ve found a nanny with your help—’
‘No!’ Would he never accept that as her answer?
‘That couldn’t possibly take more than a few days,’ he went on, unwittingly responding to her silent question. ‘I’ll then fly to Marrakesh and pull a few strings so Daniel and Fay are released.’ And, with what was plainly a carefully judged, coaxing smile, he added softly, ‘It’s either that or the children must go into care. I leave it to you to decide.’
‘Oh, thanks.’
He didn’t know what he was asking. He wanted her to look after his son. She might as well stick knives into herself and be done with it.
She stared gloomily at her feet. From his casualness about Perran’s welfare, it was obvious that Max didn’t know he was the boy’s father. Fay had kept her secret and that was a small consolation.
But...it would be a terrible strain to do what he suggested. She’d be cooped up in a tiny cottage with Max, his child, and a little baby. More worrying, she’d want to cuddle the children and love them—but if she did she’d get terribly hurt.
She’d be forced to watch Max taking his turn—because she’d insist—in rocking the children to sleep or reading them bedtime stories. Simulated parenthood. The reality she could never have. The situation would be too poignant and it would create too many new scars.
No. Impossible.
A few days of longing, heartache, loving. Then emptiness again. The ultimate in masochism.
‘What’s it to be? Your needs or theirs?’ drawled Max cruelly.
Her spiky black lashes flicked up and there was a mute appeal in her brimming Wedgwood-blue eyes.
‘I—I...can’t! I—’ Her voice cracked up and she jammed shut her trembling mouth.
Max’s superficially genial expression changed in an instant. Charm was replaced by tensile steel. ‘It’s Luke, isn’t it?’ he demanded roughly. ‘God! You’re faced with a choice between your sister’s kids and your boyfriend and you choose him? He means that much to you?’
‘Stop browbeating me! I have to think this through,’ she said shakily, abandoning her door-barring pose and walking with unnatural care to sit tensely on the arm of a chair.
‘How long do you need to decide?’ he demanded.
‘I don’t know!’
‘It’s at least a five-hour drive there,’ he pointed out in grim tones. ‘I’d like us to leave in a few minutes. The friend ought to introduce us to Perran before his bedtime. The kiddie would be bewildered and frightened if he woke to find two strangers in the house claiming to be his aunt and uncle.’
So he did have some human concern after all. And he was right. She had to make a snap decision. Her hand wove its way through her hair, mussing it up thoroughly. Her heart was leaping erratically at the prospect that she’d be playing mummies and daddies with Max.
Unable to cope, she slid sideways into the chair and landed with a thump. Untangling her legs and twitching her short skirt back in place, she said with a weird huskiness, ‘You’re asking too much.’
‘No.’ Max folded his arms. ‘Your sister is. She always does.’
‘You really dislike her, don’t you?’ she accused.
‘utterly.’
She glared at his uncompromising agreement. It had been Daniel who’d led Fay astray, Daniel who’d got them into the travelling scene and introduced Fay to drugs. Fay had told her everything.
‘What about your brother?’ she said, rounding on Max, determined not to let an injustice pass. ‘He could have stopped this jaunt if he’d wanted. He’s equally guilty of deserting his children for his own selfish needs—’
‘You’re evading the issue,’ Max reminded her. He pulled out an ultra-slim mobile phone from his inside breast pocket. ‘I’m not wasting any more valuable time. I can ring Directory Enquiries and get the children’s officer to go along and pick the kids up. They’ll be off our hands. An easy solution. What do you think?’
‘You brute!’
