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He saw the confusion of sleep disappear, incredulity take its place. She pushed herself up on her elbow, making a futile effort to push her tumbling curls from her eyes. The baby slept on beside her, neatly swaddled, lying on her back, eyes blissfully closed.
‘You want an apology?’ she demanded and an anger that matched his was in her voice. ‘It’s not going to happen. I’m a cleaner, not a nanny.’
‘I’m paying you to care for her.’
‘Which I’m doing to the best of my ability. Sack me if you don’t like it. Look after your baby yourself.’
‘I might have to if you won’t.’
And the anger in her face turned to full scale fury. All traces of sleep were gone. ‘Might?’ she demanded. ‘Might? How much danger would she have to be in before you showed you care enough to do that?’ She rose to face him. She was wearing T-shirt and knickers but nothing else. Her legs were long and thin and her bare feet on the plush carpet made her seem strangely vulnerable. His impression of her age did another descent. ‘You want me to leave?’
‘I want you to do what you’re being paid for.’
‘Believe it or not, I am.’ She glared her fury. ‘Your sister’s sleeping on a firm settee that has no cracks in the cushioning and a sloping back that’s too firm to smother her. See the lovely soft settee cushions? They’re over there. See my pillows and my nice fluffy duvet? They’re over there too. So I’m sleeping on a rock-hard settee with no cushions and no duvet.’
‘Because...’
‘Because the moron who set up Phoebe’s pram filled it with a feather mattress, which is far more dangerous to a newborn than how I’ve arranged things. The mattress is stuck in the pram. Did you notice? Of course not. But I did when I checked her before I went to sleep. Some idiot’s screwed in an elephant mobile—for a newborn!—and they’ve caught the fabric of the mattress. I’d need to rip the mattress to get it out and feathers would go everywhere and you’d probably make me pay for it. Housekeeping’s up to their ears in work and it would’ve taken them an hour to get me a cot, even if there was one available, which I doubt. I didn’t fancy putting her to sleep on the floor and by the time I’d figured all that out I was tired and over it so she slept with me. She’s been as safe as I could make her. But take over, by all means. I’ve a crick in my arm like you wouldn’t believe. It’s been over four hours since she fed so she’s likely to wake up any minute but she has formula and the instructions are on the tin. Forget the money. I couldn’t give a toss. I’m leaving.’
There was a stunned silence. He stared at the settee, bereft of anything soft. He looked at the still miraculously sleeping Phoebe.
He looked at the furious, tired, overworked woman in front of him and he felt a sweep of shame.
He was way out of his comfort zone and he knew enough to realise he had to back off.
‘I apologise.’
‘Of course you do. You’ve given me a lecture. Now you’re expecting to go back to your nice comfy bed and leave me holding the baby. I don’t think so.’ She was a ball of fury, standing in her bare feet in the near-dark, venting her fury. Righteous fury.
‘I could double the chocolates,’ he said, feeling helpless.
‘You think you can buy me with chocolates?’
‘I thought I already had.’
‘Get stuffed,’ she told him and flicked on the table lamp and started searching among the discarded bedding for her uniform.
And, as if on cue, the baby woke.
Phoebe. His sister.
She didn’t cry but he was attuned to her, and the moment her eyes flickered open he noticed.
She was so tiny. So fragile. She was swaddled in a soft wrap, all white. Her hair was black. Her eyes were dark too.
She looked nothing like Isabelle.
She was all his father.
She was all...him?
Dear heaven...
‘The formula’s on the sink,’ Sunny said, sulkily now, as if she thought she was misbehaving. ‘Make sure the bottle’s clean and the water’s been boiled.’
‘I can’t.’
‘You don’t know what you can do until you have to. Believe me, I know.’ She snagged her uniform from the floor and headed for the bathroom. ‘She’s all yours.’
And, as if the idea terrified her, Phoebe opened her mouth and started to wail.
‘Well,’ Sunny said, over her shoulder. ‘Pick her up.’
‘I can’t.’
‘Don’t be ridiculous.’ She reached the bathroom and closed the door firmly behind her.
Help...
The baby’s wails escalated, from sad bleats to a full-throated roar in seconds. How could such a beautiful, perfect wee thing turn into an angry, red-faced ball of desperation?
Was it the thought of being left with him? He knew nothing of babies. Zip.
This was his sister. Half-sister, he reminded himself, but it didn’t help.
The bathroom door was still firmly closed.
Somehow he’d sacked his babysitter for no reason.
How could he have thought she’d been unsafe? Sunny had her as safe as she could make her. She’d checked her before she’d gone to sleep. She’d noticed the too-soft mattress.
He hadn’t.
Tentatively he lifted the wailing bundle into his arms. Even the movement seemed to soothe her, and her sobs eased. Did she sense then how close she was to being abandoned?
The bathroom door opened again. Sunny stood there, still rumpled by sleep, but back in her stained uniform, her sensible shoes, her workday gear.
‘Where will you go?’ he asked, because he couldn’t think of anything else to say.
‘Home.’
‘Where’s home?’
‘Out west. Because there’s no public transport at four a.m. it’s an hour’s bike ride but that’s none of your business. I have no idea why I’m telling you.’
‘Stay.’
‘In your dreams.’
‘Sunny, I’m sorry,’ he said and he was. Deeply sorry. He looked at her tilted chin, her weary pride, her humiliation, and he felt a shame so deep it threatened to overwhelm him. That she was tired and overworked he had no doubt. Hotel cleaners were a race apart from the likes of him. They were shadows in the background of his world.
This one was suddenly front and centre.
And then he had a thought. A bad one.
‘You know about babies.’ The words were suddenly hard to form. ‘Are you...? Do you...?’
She got it before he could find the words. ‘You mean do I have my own baby strapped to my bike, waiting for me to finish my shift? Or left in a kitchen drawer with a bottle of formula laced with gin?’ She gave a snort of mirthless laughter. ‘Hardly. But I’ve raised four, or maybe I should say I’ve been there for them while they raised themselves. They’re grown up now, almost independent, apart from Tom’s teeth. But that’s my problem and you have your own. Goodnight and good luck.’ She headed for the door.
But he was before her, striding forward with a speed born of desperation. Putting his body between her and the door. But her words were still hanging in the air even as he prevented her leaving.
Four? He thought of how old she was, and how young she must have started, and he thought of a world that was as removed from his as another planet.
And she got that too. She gave a sardonic grin. ‘Yep, I started mothering when I was five, with four babies by the time I was nine. Life got busy for a while, and I admit I even co-slept. Not just with one baby—sometimes all five of us were in the same bed. But, hey, they’re all healthy and your Phoebe’s still alive so maybe I’m not such a failure. Now, if you’d let me leave...’
He didn’t understand but now wasn’t the time to ask questions. ‘Please,’ he said, doing his best to sound humble. ‘Stay.’
‘You can cope.’
‘I probably can,’ he admitted. ‘If you refuse then I’ll pay for a taxi to take you home and to bring you back tomorrow.’ He hesitated. ‘But, to be honest, it’s Phoebe who needs you. She shouldn’t be left with someone so inept.’
She hesitated, obviously torn between sense and pride. It was four in the morning. Even in a taxi it’d take time for her to get home, he thought. She was weary and she had to be back here again in a few hours.
Logic should win, but he could also sense something else, an anger that didn’t stem from what had just happened.
He was replaying things she’d said. ‘How much danger would she have to be in before you showed you care?’ She thought he didn’t care and she was right. He had nothing invested in this baby. Tomorrow he’d see lawyers, come to some arrangement, pay whatever it took to reunite her with her mother.
Except...she looked like him. And this woman was looking at him with judgement.
‘I’ll do it on one condition,’ she said.
‘I’ve already said more chocolates. And I’ll double your pay.’
‘Gran’s got the appetite of a bird. One box is fine, and I’m not taking any more of your money.’
‘Then what?’
‘I’ll stay on condition you change her and feed her now,’ she told him. ‘I’ll watch but you do it.’
‘I need to write the eulogy for my father’s funeral.’ He said it harshly but he couldn’t hide the note of panic. ‘That’s why I’m awake.’
‘Oh, that’s hard,’ she said, her voice softening. ‘I’m sorry about your dad.’ But then her chin tilted again. ‘But your dad’s dead and this little one’s not, and it seems to me that someone’s got to go into bat for her. So you change her and feed her and then you can do what you like. I’ll go back to caring. My way. But it’s that or nothing, Mr Grayland.’
She met his gaze full-on, anger still brimming. She was flushed, indignant, defiant, and suddenly he thought... She’s beautiful.
Which was an entirely inappropriate thing to think and, as if she agreed with him, baby Phoebe opened her mouth and wailed again.
‘Fine,’ he said helplessly. ‘Show me how.’
‘It’d be my pleasure,’ she said and grinned and went to fetch a diaper.
* * *
She could have insisted that he take the baby back to his bedroom to feed her, but Max’s tension was tangible. She could almost reach out and touch it. According to the media, this man was one of the most powerful businessmen in the world, but right now he was simply a guy who’d been thrust a baby he didn’t know what to do with.
And didn’t she know what that felt like?
So she helped prepare the bottle, showed him the skin test for heat and agreed there should be some scientific way—there probably was but who had time to search for a thermometer at four in the morning? She watched as he did the diaper change, blessing herself that she’d asked the hotel shop to send up extras. It took him three tries to get it right without messing with the adhesive tapes.
Then she retreated to her settee and gave herself the luxury of leaning on pillows, while Max sat at the desk by the window and fed his little sister.
When she’d fed her last time it had been a desperate feed, a baby over-tired and over-hungry, relieved beyond measure that here was the milk she needed. She’d sucked with desperation.
This time, though, things had settled. Phoebe was warm and dry, and the bottle was being offered almost as soon as she’d let the world know she needed it. She seemed content to suck lazily, gazing upward at the world, at the man who was holding her.
They hadn’t turned on the main light. Sunny was watching by moonlight, seeing the tension slowly evaporate as Max realised he was doing things right. As Phoebe realised things were okay in her world.
It wouldn’t always be as easy as this, Sunny thought. What did this man have in store for him? Colic? Inexplicable crying jags? Teething? All the complications that went with babies. Would he cope with them?
Of course he wouldn’t. The thought was laughable. He’d been so desperate for help that he’d employed her, a cleaner. He’d employ someone more suitable the moment he could.
Still, she had to cut him some slack. He’d come to Australia for his father’s funeral. All the world knew that. Colin Grayland had been a colossus of the Australian mining scene. His son had taken over the less controversial part of a financial empire that was generations old. He must have kept his head down, because she knew little about him. He’d been an occasional guest in this hotel. There was always a buzz when he visited, but it was mostly among the female staff because a billionaire who looked so gorgeous...well, why wouldn’t there be a buzz? And there was also a buzz because his visits usually coincided with his father storming into the hotel, usually shouting.
Here in Australia, Colin Grayland had seemed to court controversy. He’d ripped into open cut mining, overriding environmental protections, refusing to restore land after it had been sucked of anything of any value. He had such power, such resources, that even legal channels seemed powerless to stop him.
His son, however, seemed to disagree with much of what the old man had done. The media gossip of clashes between the two was legion.
‘So what will you say about your father tomorrow?’ she asked into the silence and thought, Whoa, did I just ask that? Cleaner asking tycoon what his eulogy would be? But the man had said he’d woken to write the eulogy. Maybe she could be helpful.
She tucked her arms around her knees, looked interested and prepared to be helpful.
‘I don’t know,’ Max said shortly.
‘You don’t know.’ Phoebe was steadily sucking. The near dark lent a weird kind of intimacy to the setting. It was like a pyjama party, Sunny thought. But different. She watched him for a while, his big hands cradling his little sister, the bottle being slowly but steadily sucked. Okay, not a pyjama party, she conceded. Like...like...
Like two parents. Like the dad taking his share.
What did she know of either? Pyjama parties? Not in her world. And parents sharing?
Ha.
But now wasn’t the time for going there; indeed she hardly ever did. Now was the time to focus on the man before her and his immediate problems.
Actually, his immediate problem was sorted for now. But his dad... She’d read the newspapers. The funeral would be huge. Every cashed-up developer, every politician on the make, even the Honourables would be there, because even with the old man gone the Grayland influence was huge.
And this man was doing the eulogy. In less than seven hours.
‘I’d be so scared I’d be running a mile,’ she told him. ‘But then public speaking’s not my thing. Are you thinking you’ll wing it?’
‘What, decide what I’ll say in front of the microphone?’
‘The way you’re going, you’ll need to.’
‘Says the woman who won’t give me time to think, who won’t feed my baby.’
My baby. They were loaded words. She saw his shock when he realised he’d said them. She saw his horror.
‘Hey, I’m happy to help with the speech,’ she told him hurriedly. ‘How hard can it be?’
And she watched his face and saw...what? A determination to steer the conversation away from the baby he was holding? Because he couldn’t face what he was feeling? ‘To say my father and I didn’t get on is an understatement,’ he told her. ‘Look how little I knew of his personal life.’
‘Because?’ She said it tentatively. She had no right to ask, and no need, but he didn’t have to answer if he didn’t want to, and something told her that he wanted to talk. About anything but the baby.
‘My parents were pretty much absent all my life,’ he told her. ‘I was an only child, with nannies from the start. My parents divorced when I was two and went their separate ways. I lived with whoever’s current partner didn’t mind a kid and a nanny tagging along, or the nanny and I had separate quarters if it didn’t suit. But I was raised to take over the financial empire. It was only when I developed a mind of my own—and a social conscience—that I saw my father often. Our meetings have never been pretty. Maybe I should have walked away but I’ve been given enough autonomy to realise I can eventually make a difference. As he’s grown older and more frail I’ve been able to stop the worst of his excesses. But now...to give a eulogy...’
She heard his bleakness and something inside her twisted. She thought of her own childhood, itself bleak. But she’d always had her siblings. She’d always felt part of a family.
But this was a man in charge of his destiny, as well as the destiny of the thousands of people he employed. She refused to feel sorry for him.
‘Hey, reality doesn’t matter at funerals,’ she told him. ‘No one’s there for a bare-all exposé. You want my advice? Tell them a funny story to start with, a personal touch, like how he wouldn’t buy you an ice cream when you were six because you hadn’t saved up for it. There must have been something you can think of, something like that’ll make them all laugh and put them onside with you. Then give his achievement spiel. Look him up on Mr Google. That’ll list all his glories. Finally, choke up a little, say he’ll be sadly missed and walk off. Job done.’
He sent her a curious look. ‘You want to do it for me?’
‘I would,’ she told him agreeably. ‘But I’m working tomorrow. Eleven o’clock will see you at the lectern, and I’ll be scrubbing bathrooms.’
‘You can’t take the day off?’
‘To give your father’s eulogy? I don’t think so.’
He smiled. She sensed it rather than saw it. Nice, she thought, and hugged her knees a bit more.
It really was weirdly intimate, sitting in the moonlight in her almost-PJs, talking to this...stranger.
‘I’m guessing here,’ he ventured, sounding cautious. ‘But am I hearing the voice of experience? You’ve worked out a eulogy for someone you didn’t like?’
That was enough to destroy any hint of intimacy. She hugged her knees a bit tighter, needing the comfort.
‘I might have.’
‘These kids you looked after...were they your brothers and sisters?’
‘It’s none of your business.’
‘It’s not,’ he agreed. ‘But you know a lot about me now. It’s dark, we’re both tired and this is a weird space. I wouldn’t mind pretending I’m not alone in it.’
And she got it.
He was sitting in an impersonal hotel half a world away from where he lived. He was holding a baby he hadn’t known existed and later that morning he’d have to stand in a vast cathedral and speak about a father it sounded as if he’d loathed.
He felt alone? He felt as if he needed some sort of reassurance that he wasn’t the only one who’d ended up in a mess up to their neck?
After tomorrow she’d never see this man again. Why not give it to him?
‘I gave my mother’s eulogy when I was fourteen,’ she said and she felt rather than saw the shock her words caused.
‘At fourteen...’
‘There was no one else. Mum died of an overdose after she’d alienated everyone. I never knew my father. She had me a couple of years after she’d run away from home, and then there was a gap. Who knows why? Maybe she was responsible enough to use birth control for a while, but it didn’t last. The next four babies came in quick succession and for some reason she kept us. But kept is a loose description. We were raised...well, we weren’t raised. We lurched from one crisis to the next. Finally she died. The social worker said we didn’t need to go to the funeral, but they hadn’t found Gran and Pa then, so there was only us. And they’d already split us up. Daisy and Sam had gone to one set of foster parents, Chloe and Tom to another. It’s hard to find foster parents for a fourteen-year-old, so I was placed in a home for...troubled adolescents and I was going nuts, wanting to see them. So when the coroner released the body for burial I made a king-sized fuss and said we all had to be at the funeral. Our case worker said she had reservations but she arranged it anyway. Then I figured I had to say something the kids could remember.’
‘You did?’ he demanded, sounding awed.
‘I did,’ she said proudly. ‘I made them laugh by telling them about Mum’s awful cooking. I reminded them of the way she could never get her toenails perfect and the way she had funny names for all of us, even if sometimes she couldn’t quite remember which one of us she was talking to. They were sort of sad stories but I made them smile. Then, when we came out, the social worker had organised morning tea. I still remember the sausage rolls! And then she sat us down, very serious, and told us they’d found Gran and Pa. Apparently, they hadn’t even known we existed! Mum had robbed them blind when she was young and then, when she knew they had no more money, she cut off all contact. But they’re just...wonderful. I can’t tell you how wonderful. They had somewhere we could live and they loved us straight away. So then we all lived happily ever after. Isn’t that nice? So it’s worth thinking of something good, even if it kills you to say it.’
There was an appalled silence. It stretched on and on and she thought uh-oh, she shouldn’t have said. Kid of a drug addict? It was a wonder he even let her near his baby.
But it seemed he wasn’t thinking that. ‘You make me feel ashamed,’ he said at last.
‘There’s no need to feel ashamed,’ she said with asperity. ‘Unless you intend to let a fourteen-year-old girl beat you at the eulogy stakes. Let me have Phoebe. You can write your eulogy in peace.’ She unhugged her knees and headed over to take the baby from him.
But he held on, just for a moment.
‘Thank you,’ he said simply.
‘You’re paying me.’
‘Not enough for what you’re doing tonight.’
‘I don’t think you realise how big a deal Gran’s chocolates are,’ she told him. ‘For those alone I’d have written your eulogy for you. Now, off you go and write. The intro’s easy. Lords, Ladies, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen...there’s the thing half done.’ And she scooped the now sleeping baby into her arms and backed away.
She needed to back away, she thought. The look on this man’s face...
This was a night out of frame. The intimacy between them was something that couldn’t be replicated and could never exist in the light of day.
She needed to back off fast, and she did. And he let her.
‘I’ll write in the bedroom,’ he managed and she nodded.
‘You came out for something? Or to check on me.’
‘I came out for a whisky.’
‘It won’t help the jet lag. Or the eulogy.’
‘I know that,’ he told her. ‘And I don’t need it any more. You’ve given me all I need.’
‘Really?’
‘Really.’
She grinned. ‘Hooray. Advice by Auntie Sunny. Off you go then like a good boy and get it done.’
‘Yes, ma’am,’ he said and cast her a look she didn’t understand. A look full of questions she couldn’t hope to answer.
He rose and left.
She settled Phoebe again with care, and told herself to sleep.
Sleep didn’t come. For some reason the memory of that appalling time, her mother’s dreadful funeral, was suddenly all around her.
She was thinking too of the grand funeral waiting for Max tomorrow, and she was thinking there were similarities.
She hugged Phoebe because she suddenly needed the comfort and she thought again of the man through the bedroom door. Who did he hug?
It wasn’t any of her business, but the question stayed with her until finally sleep overcame her.
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