by Unknown
Max shrugged. ‘Girl,’ he said. ‘Older than one and younger than school age. Other than that I’m not quite sure. Why don’t you take a look and see what you think?’
The woman’s eyes almost popped out of her head. ‘She’s here?’
Max nodded. Where the hell else did the woman think she’d be?
‘And you left her outside? Alone?’
He frowned. He hadn’t thought about that for one second. Which was exactly why he needed to hire someone who would. Anyway, he hadn’t left Sofia completely alone. There had been the flappy woman...
Ms Benson sprang from the desk, threw the door open and rushed into the waiting area beyond her office. There, colouring in with the tip of her tongue caught at one side of her mouth, was Sofia. Max suddenly noticed something: the noise had stopped. That horrible wailing, like an air-raid siren. It had driven him to distraction all day.
‘Here...try purple for the flower,’ a young woman, kneeling next to Sofia, was saying. Sofia, instead of acting like a child possessed with the spirit of a banshee, just calmly accepted the crayon from the woman and carried on scribbling. After a few moments, both woman and child stopped what they were doing and lifted their heads to look at the two adults towering over them. The identical expression of mild curiosity they both wore was rather disconcerting.
Max turned to the agency owner. ‘I want her,’ he said, nodding at the kneeling woman who, he was just starting to notice, had odd-coloured bits in her hair.
Benson gave out a nervous laugh. ‘I’m afraid she doesn’t work here.’
Max raised his eyebrows.
‘Not yet,’ she added quickly. ‘But I’m sure you’d be better off with one of our other nannies who—’
He turned away and looked at the strange pixie-like woman and the little girl again. For the first time in what seemed like weeks, although it had probably only been hours, Sofia was quiet and calm and acting like the normal child he vaguely remembered. ‘No. I want her.’
Something deep down in his gut told him this woman had what he needed. To be honest, he really didn’t care what it was. It was twenty-five to four and he had to get going. ‘What do you say?’ he asked the her directly.
The woman finished colouring in a pink rose on the sheet of paper she and Sofia were sharing before she answered. She flicked a glance at the agency owner. ‘She’s right. I don’t even work here.’
‘I don’t care about that,’ he told her. ‘You have all the skills I want. It’s you I need.’
She blinked and looked at him hard, as if she was trying to work out whether he was serious or not. Normally people didn’t have to think about that.
‘What if the job isn’t what I need?’ she asked. ‘I don’t think I should accept without hearing the terms.’
Max checked his watch again. ‘Fine, fine,’ he said wearily. ‘Have it your way. We’ll interview in the car. But hurry up! We’ve got a plane to catch.’ And then he marched from the offices of the Benson Agency leaving its proprietor standing open-mouthed behind him.
CHAPTER TWO
IT TOOK RUBY all of two seconds to drop the crayon she was holding, scoop up the child next to her and run after him into the bright sunshine of a May afternoon. God did indeed move in mysterious ways!
And so did Mr...whatever his name was.
Those long legs had carried him down the stairs to street level very fast. When she burst from the agency’s understated door onto one of the back roads behind Oxford Street, she had to look in both directions before she spotted him heading towards a sleek black car parked on a double yellow.
She was about to run after him when she had a what’s-wrong-with-this-picture? moment. Hang on. Why was she holding his child while he waltzed off with barely a backward glance? It was as if, in his rush to conquer the next obstacle, he’d totally forgotten his daughter even existed. She looked down at the little girl, who was quite happy hitched onto her hip, watching a big red double-decker bus rumbling past the end of the road. She might not realise just how insensitive her father was being at the moment, just how much it hurt when one understood how extraneous they were to a parent’s life, but one day she’d be old enough to notice. Ruby clamped her lips together and marched towards the car. No child deserved that.
She walked up to him, peeled the child off her hip and handed her over. ‘Here,’ she said breezily. ‘I think you forgot this.’
The look of utter bewilderment on his face would have been funny if she hadn’t been so angry. He took the girl from Ruby and held her out at arm’s length so her legs dangled above the chewing-gum-splattered pavement. Now it was free of toddler, Ruby put her hand on her hip and raised her eyebrows.
He was saved from answering by the most horrendous howling. It took her a few moments to realise it was the child making the sound. The ear-splitting noise bounced off the tall buildings and echoed round the narrow street.
‘Take it back!’ he said. ‘You’re the only one who can make it stop!’
Ruby took her hands off her hips and folded her arms. ‘It has a name, I should think.’
He offered the screaming bundle of arms and legs over, but Ruby stepped back. He patted the little girl’s back, trying to soothe her, but it just made her cry all the harder. The look of sheer panic on his face was actually quite endearing, she decided, especially as it went some way to softening that ‘ruler of the universe’ thing he had going on. He was just as out of his depth as she was, wasn’t he?
His eyes pleaded with her. ‘Sofia. Her name is Sofia.’
Ruby gave him a sweet smile and unfolded her arms to accept the little girl. She still didn’t know whether following this through was a good idea, but the only other option was working for her dad. He’d flipped when he’d found out she’d given in her notice at the vintage fashion shop in Covent Garden.
Considering that her father didn’t pay an awful lot of interest the rest of the time, Ruby had been shocked he’d noticed, let alone cared. He was usually always too busy off saving the planet to worry about what his only child got up to, but this had lit his fuse for some reason.
According to him, Ruby needed a job. Ruby needed to grow up. Ruby needed to stop flitting around and settle to something.
He’d laid down a very clear ultimatum before he’d left for the South Pacific—get a proper job by the time he returned, or he’d create a position for her in his production company. Once there, she’d never escape. She’d never get promoted. She’d be doomed to being What’s her name? You know, Patrick Lange’s daughter...for ever.
Sofia grabbed for Ruby as her father handed her back over, clinging to her like the baby lemurs Ruby had got used to seeing in the Madagascan bush. A rush of protective warmth flooded up from her feet and landed in her chest.
She looked up at the man towering above her. ‘And, before I get in that car, we might as well continue with the information gathering. I’d offer to shake your hand but, as you can see—’ she nodded to Sofia, who’d burrowed her head in the crook of her neck ‘—it’s in use at the moment. I’m Ruby Lange. With an e.’
He looked at her blankly, recognising neither her name nor the need for a response. ‘And you are?’ she prompted.
He blinked and seemed to recover himself. ‘Max Martin.’
Ruby shifted Sofia to a more comfortable position on her hip. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Martin.’ She looked inside the dark interior of the limo. ‘Now, are we going to start this interview or what?’
* * *
Max sat frowning in the back of the limo. He wasn’t quite sure what had just happened. One minute he’d been fully in charge of the situation, and the next he’d been ushered into his own car by a woman who looked as if she’d had a fight with a jumble sale—and lost.
She turned to face him, her eyes large and enquiring as she looked at
him over the top of Sofia’s car seat, which was strapped between them. ‘Fire away,’ she said, then waited.
He looked back at her.
‘I thought this was supposed to be an interview.’
She was right. He had agreed to that, but the truth of the matter was that, unless she declared herself to be a drug-addicted mass murderer, the job was hers. He didn’t have time to find anyone else.
He studied his new employee carefully. The women he interacted with on a daily basis definitely didn’t dress like this. It was all colour and jarring patterns. Somehow it made her look very young. And, right there, he had his first question.
‘How old are you?’
She blinked but held his gaze. ‘Twenty-four.’
Old enough, then. If he’d had to guess, he’d have put her at a couple of years younger. Didn’t matter, though. If she could do the job, she could do the job, and the fact that the small bundle of arms and legs strapped into the car seat was finally silent was all the evidence he needed.
He checked his watch. He really didn’t have time to chit-chat, so if she wanted to answer questions, he’d dispense with the pleasantries and get on with the pertinent ones. ‘How far away do you live?’
For the first time since he’d set eyes on her, she looked surprised.
‘Can we get there in under half an hour?’
She frowned. ‘Pimlico. So, yes... But why—?’
‘Can you pack a bag in under ten minutes?’
She raised her eyebrows.
‘In my experience, most women can’t,’ he said. ‘I don’t actually understand why, though.’ It seemed a simple enough task, after all. ‘I believe it may have something to do with shoes.’
‘My parents dragged me round the globe—twice—in my formative years,’ she replied crisply. ‘I can pack a bag in under five if I have to.’
Max smiled. And not just the distant but polite variety he rolled out at business meetings. This was the real deal. The nanny stopped looking quite so confrontational and her eyes widened. Max leaned forward and instructed the driver to head for Pimlico.
He felt a tapping on his shoulder, a neatly trimmed fingernail made its presence known through the fabric of his suit sleeve. He sat back in his seat and found her looking at him. ‘I haven’t agreed to take the job yet.’
She wasn’t one to beat about the bush, was she? But, then again, neither was he.
‘Will you?’
She folded her arms. ‘I need to ask you a few questions first.’
For some reason Max found himself smiling again. It felt odd, he realised. Not stiff or forced, just unfamiliar. As if he’d forgotten how and had suddenly remembered. But he hadn’t had a lot to smile about this year, had he?
‘Fire away,’ he said.
Was that a flicker of a smile he saw behind those eyes? If it was, it was swiftly contradicted by a stubborn lift of her chin. ‘Well, Mr Martin, you seem to have skipped over some of the details.’
‘Such as?’
‘Such as: how long will you be requiring my services?’
Oh, those kinds of details. ‘A week, hopefully. Possibly two.’
She made a funny little you-win-some-you-lose-some kind of expression.
A nasty cold feeling shot through him. She wasn’t going to back out already, was she? ‘Too long?’
She shook her head. ‘I’d have been happy for it to be longer, but it’ll do.’
They looked at each other for a couple of seconds. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she delivered her next question. ‘So why do you need a nanny for your daughter in such a hurry? I think I’d like to know why the previous one left.’
Max sat bolt upright in his seat. ‘My daughter? Sofia’s not my daughter!’
The nanny—or almost nanny, he reminded himself—gave him a wry look. ‘See? This is what I’m talking about...details.’
Max ignored the comment. He was great with details. But nowadays he paid other people to concentrate on the trivial nit-picky things so he could do the important stuff. It worked—most of the time—because he had assistants and deputies to spring into action whenever he required them to, but when it came to his personal life he had no such army of willing helpers. Probably because he didn’t have much of a personal life. It irritated him that this mismatched young woman had highlighted a failing he hadn’t realised he had. Still, he could manage details, sketchy or otherwise, if he tried.
‘Sofia is my niece.’
‘Oh...’
Max usually found the vagaries of the female mind something of a mystery. He was always managing to put his foot in it with the women in his life—when he had time for any—but he found this one unusually easy to read. The expression that accompanied her breathy sigh of realisation clearly said, Well, that explains a lot.
‘Let’s just say that I had not planned to be child-minding today.’
She pressed her lips together, as if to stop herself from laughing. ‘You mean you were left holding the baby.... Literally.’
He nodded. ‘My sister is an...actress.’
At least, she’d been trying to be the last five years.
‘Oh! Has she been in anything I’ve heard of?’
Max let out a sigh. ‘Probably not. But she got a call from her agent this morning about an audition for a “smallish part in a biggish film”. Something with...’ what was the name? ‘...Jared Fisher in it.’
The nanny’s eyes widened. ‘Wow! He’s really h—’ She shut her mouth abruptly and nibbled her top lip with her teeth. ‘What I meant to say was, what a fabulous opportunity for her.’
‘Apparently so. She got the job, but they wanted her in L.A. right away. The actress who was supposed to be playing the part came down with appendicitis and it was now or never.’
Secretly he wondered if it would have been better if his little sister had sloped despondently into his office later that afternoon, collected her daughter and had gone home. She’d always had a bit of a bohemian lifestyle, and they’d lost touch while she’d travelled the world, working her way from one restaurant to another as she waited for her ‘big break’. But then Sofia had come along and she’d settled down in London. He really didn’t know if this was a good idea.
Maybe things might have been different if they’d grown up in the same house after their parents had split, but, while he’d benefited from the steadying influence of their English father, Gia had stayed with their mother, a woman who had turned fickle and inconsistent into an art form.
They had grown apart as teenagers, living in different countries, with totally different goals, values and personalities, but he was trying to make up for it now they were more a part of each other’s lives.
Gia always accused him of butting his nose in where it wasn’t wanted and trying to run her life for her, but she always said it with a smile and she was annoyingly difficult to argue with. Perhaps that was why, when she’d turned up at his office that morning with Sofia and had begged him to help her, her eyes full of hope and longing, he hadn’t been able to say no.
‘And what about you?’ he asked. ‘Why do you need a job in such a hurry?’
She rolled her eyes. ‘It was either this, or my father was threatening to make me work for him.’
‘You don’t want to work for the family firm?’
She pulled a face. ‘I’d rather jump off the top of The Shard! Wouldn’t you?’
Max stiffened. ‘I now head up the business my father built from nothing.’
An unexpected stab of pain hit him in his ribcage, and then came the roll of dark emotion that always followed. Life had been much simpler when he’d been able to bury it all so deep it had been as if it hadn’t existed. ‘There’s something to be said for family loyalty,’ he added gruffly. ‘For loyalty full stop, actually.’
She looked a little uncomfortable, but waltzed her way out of the awkward moment with a quip. ‘Well, I’m quite prepared to be loyal to your family. Just as long as you don’t ask me to get entangled with mine. Parents are fine and all that, but I’d rather keep them at a safe distance.’
Max couldn’t help but think of his mother, and he decided not to quiz Ruby any further on her motives. It wasn’t going to alter whether he hired her or not for a couple of weeks. If this had been for a more permanent fixture in his life, it might have been a different matter.
‘So, why do you need a travelling nanny?’ Her face lit up. ‘Are we going to Hollywood?’
She sounded just like Gia. Max resisted the urge to close his eyes and wish this were all a bad dream, that he’d wake up in bed, his nice, ordered life back.
‘I’m taking Sofia to stay with her grandmother,’ he said. It was the only possible solution. All he had to do now was convince his mother of that. ‘I can’t possibly babysit a toddler for the next fortnight, even if I knew how to. I have three weeks to turn around an important work situation and I can’t take any time off.’
The shock of realising he’d have to cope with Sofia on his own while Gia was away had been bad enough, but then his biggest client had phoned, slinging a spanner in the works. Now he couldn’t afford even an hour off work, let alone a fortnight. He needed time to think. Space. Peace and quiet. And Sofia brought none of those things with her in her tiny, howling package.
Hopefully he’d get Sofia installed at his mother’s, then he’d be able to fly back and be at his desk first thing Monday, only half a day lost. It had been Gia’s idea, and, while he didn’t relish having to take time out to deliver Sofia, at least his sister’s moment of destiny had come on a Friday morning. He’d stay overnight to make sure they all settled in and leave the nanny with his mother. He’d thought of everything.
