‘Bobbie, what is it? Are you feeling all right?’ Olivia asked her anxiously. ‘You weren’t upset by what we were saying about Americans, were you? It was thoughtless of me to bring it up. It’s just that you’re almost bound to meet Gramps and, well, depending on what kind of mood he’s in and how much his hip is paining him, he can be rather...tactless. He’s rather behind the times, I’m afraid, and his outlook is very blinkered. You’d never believe that he and Ruth are brother and sister. She’s so modern and so forward-thinking. I know that Gramps is older than her but sometimes you’d think he’s got stuck in some kind of time warp, whereas Ruth—’
‘You obviously think very highly of her,’ Bobbie commented abruptly.
Olivia gave her a thoughtful look.
‘Yes ... yes ... I do,’ she agreed gravely. ‘You see... Well, let’s just say that if it wasn’t for Ruth, I doubt very much that Caspar and I would be together today and I certainly wouldn’t have you, would I, my wonderful, precious, naughty little one?’ She smiled, hugging her gurgling daughter.
‘In many ways, Ruth and Jon’s wife, Jenny, have been the true mother figures in my life, the people I’ve turned to for help and advice and, yes, for the definition of myself as a woman. My own mother...’ She gave Bobbie a sad look. ‘It’s no secret and you’re bound to hear about it sooner or later, so I may as well tell you myself. My mother, Tania, suffered very badly from...from an eating disorder. So badly, in fact, that even now, although she’s in recovery, she still needs help.’
‘Oh, I’m so sorry,’ Bobbie commiserated, genuinely moved to compassion, not just for Olivia but for her unknown mother, as well.
‘Yes, so am I,’ Olivia agreed, ‘which is just one of the reasons why I’m so determined that this tittle madam gets a very different kind of mothering.’
‘And your father?’ Bobbie asked hesitantly.
‘Who knows?’ Olivia returned dryly. ‘He ... he disappeared shortly after my mother became ilt—he’d been recovering from a heart attack in a nursing home and he just walked out. We’ve tried to find him but...’
‘And you’ve heard nothing from him?’ Bobbie asked her, shocked.
‘Two postcards, one from Italy and the other from South America, but we still haven’t been able to trace him.’ Olivia gave a small shrug.
‘As Amelia grows up, Jenny and Jon will be her maternal grandparents and Ruth... Ruth, I hope, will always be Amelia’s special person and be there for her as she was for me when I was a child and as she is now for Joss. She’s convinced that, of all of us, he’s the one who will fulfil all of Gramps’s ambitions, and she’s probably right. Mind you, Joss is going to have a long way to go before he matches Luke’s awesome courtroom manner,’ Olivia noted, smiling.
‘Yes. I can imagine,’ Bobbie agreed grimly. ‘He must be a ruthless prosecutor.’
‘Prosecutor!’ Olivia stared at her. ‘Oh, but Luke specialises in defence, didn’t he tell you? That’s his forte.’
‘Whom does he defend?’ Bobbie muttered cynically, trying not to betray her discomfort. ‘Murderers and rapists?’
She could see from Olivia’s expression that she had gone too far and inwardly cursed her runaway tongue’s impulsiveness.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised guiltily. ‘It’s just...’
‘It’s all right,’ Olivia assured her. ‘You don’t have to explain to me. Caspar and I had some pretty horrendous fights in our time.’
Whilst Bobbie stared at her, she added illuminatingly, ‘I’m afraid that Fenella wasn’t too discreet in giving vent to her feelings about discovering the pair of you together. I don’t intend to pry,’ she declared firmly. ‘But, well, let’s just say that it’s pretty obvious that there’s a certain something smouldering away between you, and my experience is that when something smoulders, sparks can fly,’ Olivia finished more light-heartedly.
Bobbie didn’t say a word. How could she? She was too busy trying to grapple with the latest complication in her life. She doubted that Luke would be too pleased at discovering that at least one member of his extended family and possibly others appeared to think that they were something of an ‘item’. Well, he only had himself to blame, and unpleasant though she might find the thought of being linked romantically to him, she at least would soon be walking away from the situation—and from him.
For now, though, she was caught in something of a cleft stick. She either allowed Olivia to continue thinking that there was some kind of romance going on between herself and Luke or she told her that there wasn’t and left her believing that she had simply spent the night with him. Of the two, the second option was certainly the more unpalatable, Bobbie acknowledged, and besides, she rather suspected that Luke would find it much more difficult to explain his way out of a supposed romance than to dismiss a mere one-night stand, and if he was busy doing that, he would surely have far less time to indulge his suspicions of her. In fact, the more Bobbie thought about it, the more advantages she could see in allowing the fiction that she and Luke were attracted to one another to continue.
For a start, it would allow her to be far more openly curious about Luke’s family background than she could allow herself to be as a mere substitute nanny and for another thing... Well, she admitted that she wouldn’t have been human if she wasn’t enjoying the prospect of seeing Luke wrong-footed and discomforted and she certainly knew exactly how he would feel at the idea of having her for a ‘girlfriend’.
And then another thought struck her.
‘I hope you didn’t offer me this job because...because of me and Luke,’ she asked Olivia uncomfortably.
‘Certainly not,’ Olivia reassured her immediately. ‘No, Caspar and I had already talked about approaching you on the night of the party. Which reminds me, could you hold Amelia for a moment, please, while I go and ring Caspar and find out what time he’s coming home?’
Left alone with her new charge, Bobbie smilingly returned the baby’s curious, round-eyed stare, enjoying the soft, warm feel of her in her arms, and instinctively started to talk to her.
When Olivia returned, Amelia was smiling hugely in Bobbie’s arms whilst Bobbie herself...
Some women just had a natural mothering instinct, Olivia believed, and Bobbie, whether she knew it yet or not, was definitely one of them.
Twenty-four hours later, even Bobbie herself was surprised at how easily she had fitted into the household. Caspar and Olivia treated her more as a friend than an employee, and as for Amelia...
She was delicious, Bobbie had happily and wholeheartedly told a grinning Caspar. Yummy, delicious, delectable and definitely the most intelligent and aware eight-month-old who had ever existed.
‘You’re almost as bad as Luke,’ Olivia teasingly scolded her later that evening. ‘He’s the most besotted godfather that ever was.’
‘And a far better choice than Saul would have been,’ Caspar chipped in, adding dryly, ‘He would have been more interested in making eyes at Amelia’s mother than at Amelia.’
‘Caspar!’ Olivia warned him.
‘Saul’s my father’s cousin,’ she explained to Bobbie. ‘You may have met him at the birthday party.’
‘He was the one Louise was desperately trying to impress,’ Caspar supplied helpfully, ‘but she’s wasting her time because Saul—’
‘Caspar...’ Olivia warned a little more firmly this time. ‘Saul’s much too old for Louise,’ she explained. ‘He’s well into his thirties now and Louise is only eighteen.’
‘He’s