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Thankfully, Sophie solved the problem. She launched herself from her father's steadying hands and toddled precariously across the few yards of carpet that separated them. Amber eyes widening with anxiety, Caroline leant forward and scooped the baby up before she could fall flat on her face. She plopped her down on her knees and, to counteract the feeling of being hot and bothered, said in what she hoped was a kindly yet authoritative nanny voice, 'Baby's walking very well for her age,' and hoped the pronouncement wasn't completely asinine.
No comment. A slight twitch of the mobile mouth. Caroline cuddled the baby defensively. The little body was warm and solid, a comforting shield against the clever, assessing eyes of the callous father.
'There is one thing—' Finn Helliar had unfolded his long, lean body from the armchair opposite the one she was using, walking with loping grace to lean against the sill of one of the tall windows. 'I would insist that Sophie's nanny wears mufti. Something pretty, feminine—' He gestured with one languid hand. 'I'm sure you get the picture. For a small child a starchy uniform could be off-putting.'
For a grown man, too, Caroline sniped to herself with a flash of cynicism. A man who could seduce someone as gullible as her sister Katie while getting another pregnant at the same time would want the females around him to look pretty.
And available?
That thought, coming out of nowhere, was repugnant. It was all she could do to keep quiet, to swallow what she wanted to say to him, to bide her time. And bide her time she must, if she were to find the very best way, the perfect way to force him to eat dirt and acknowledge the great, irreparable damage he had done.
* * *
'Well, you've done it now!' Mary Greaves said heavily.
Two years ago, Mary hadn't been wildly enthusiastic at accepting the then twenty-three-year-old Caro as a partner. But her nanny agency had been going downhill and she'd needed new capital, new ideas.
She'd fully expected her new young partner to be like her mother. She'd been at school with the mother but had lost touch until just recently. Emma Fair was a darling, sweet-natured and gentle, she recalled. But timid. A dreamer, not a doer.
But Caro, the elder of Emma's two girls, had proved to be just the opposite. Decisive, intelligent, a degree in business studies firmly in her pocket, she had turned the agency around, discarding the old name of Mommy's Helpers with the tilt of a finely arched brow, the stroke of a pen, re-naming it Grandes Families and making it so, going straight for the wealthy, aristocratic French families because as far as they were concerned a British nanny was de rigueur. And the partnership had worked; her own child-care experience, her ability to interview clients, discover exactly what they wanted, coupled with
Caro's business brain, was proving a winner.
Now only dedicated, professional nannies were on heir books, those with the very highest qualifications, and only those who could afford to pay to acquire the services of the very best approached the agency. It ad all happened without her, Mary, having to do any-ling. Sometimes she felt positively over-awed by the much younger woman's sharpness of mind, her dedication to her work and breathtaking drive. But now the high-flyer seemed to have flipped!
'Mr Helliar phoned through as soon as you left him. You're hired,' she stated even more heavily as she watched the lovely face before her turn white, then pink. 'For eight weeks. Starting tomorrow. He said, and I quote, "Though eight minutes in my daughter's company would be enough to make anyone love her to bits, so she's on a loser there." I can't imagine what you've been saying to him—and for the sake of my blood pressure I'd rather not know.'
'Not a lot,' Caroline said truthfully, feeling behind her for her office chair and sinking down on it, feeling as if the stuffing had been knocked out of her.
There was much she could have said to the louse, none of it fit to be voiced in front of his delightful little daughter. So she should be congratulating herself for landing the job, thus giving herself the time she needed to discover the perfect way to pay him back for what he had done to Katie, instead of feeling suddenly way out of her depth.
'He asked for references but I thought I could stall him on that. Besides, I give you a week before you're begging me to find a replacement. By then you'll have had as much hands-on experience as you can take!' Mary said, perching on the edge of the desk, crossing her arms over her bolster-like bosom. 'I'll go through the files and find someone to step in and do a bit of damage limitation when you decide you've had enough.'
'I'm not a quitter; you know I'm not. And I won't do any damage.' Or only to his conscience.
She smiled warmly at her mother's old school-friend. Widowed young, childless, the agency was her raison d'etre, and she wouldn't let her down. She was back firmly in control of herself again and knew she could handle the situation with Finn Helliar and emerge unscathed. The agency's reputation would be unmarred because the louse wouldn't dare say a word about having been landed with a nanny who knew nothing about the job, not after being made to understand exactly what a low-life he was.
She could understand Mary's alarm. Had the situation been reversed she would have strenuously vetoed the idea. 'Please don't worry,' she offered gently.
'Now why would I do that?' the older woman countered dryly. 'But seriously, though, you must understand that the position of a nanny is subservient. You are used to being the boss, or one of them, and for the next two months you will have to do as you are told, spend practically all of your time with a demanding child. I hope, for both our sakes, that you can handle it. And another thing; had I been able to place the nanny of my choice with Mr Helliar, I would have looked for someone far less young and beautiful—someone middle-aged and preferably plain.'
'Don't be silly!' Caroline pulled a sheet of paper towards her and began to make hurried notes of what she wanted Honor to attend to during her absence.
Mary grunted, 'Don't pretend to be stupid. Finn Helliar's a staggeringly attractive man. Living under the same roof, a beautiful young woman in a subservient position to—'
'I get the picture,' Caroline inserted tightly. She'd got more than that—the information that Mary had instinctively known that Helliar was the type of man who'd make a play for any presentable woman, the little matter of having a wife no deterrent at all.
* * *
Finn settled Sophie down for her afternoon nap, his gaze lingering lovingly on her cherubic face, the huge brown eyes closed in sleep. 'A nanny to play with tomorrow, my pet,' he whispered softly, more to himself than to the child. 'Won't that be fun?'
He walked quietly from the room, leaving the door ajar so he could hear her when she woke. And fun it would be—intriguing to find out exactly why Caroline Fair had decided to work as a nanny, out of her own agency.
At one point he had considered asking her, had fully intended to. But after she'd given him that spiel about knitting and fairy cakes he'd known he wouldn't get a straight answer.
It had quickly become obvious that she was unaware that he knew who she was—the go-getting half of the Grandes Families partnership.
Her grandmother, Elinor Farr, had never tired of boasting of her favourite grandchild's intelligence, determination and spirit. She had even, on one of the rare occasions when he'd visited Farr Place—that almost laughably Gothic pile in one of the most secluded parts of Hertfordshire—brought out the family photograph album and pointed out the woman he was already beginning to regard as a pain in the neck.
