‘Please. It’s only a little job and you wouldn’t want to leave a small child here, in my office, bored to tears, would you?’
She pressed her hand over the chain on her wrist until it dug in painfully. ‘I could live with it,’ she said. ‘Whether you could is another matter.’
‘Please, Jacqui. I’ve got meetings, interviews—’
‘And an office full of your own staff—’
‘Who are all fully occupied on vital work. Just drop Maisie off at her grandmother’s house and then you can head for the sun and spend the next two weeks without a thought for the rest of us slaving away in the cold and rain.’
‘You think you can make me feel guilty?’ she enquired, with every appearance of carelessness.
The holiday hadn’t been her idea. It was her family who kept insisting that she needed a break. Not that she needed telling. She had to face herself in the mirror every morning. Vickie, she suspected, thought she knew better and had manufactured this ‘crisis’ purely for her benefit. It was about as blatant a piece of in-at-the-deep-end amateur psychology as she’d ever witnessed and it would serve her right if she walked out and left her lumbered with a spoilt brat causing chaos in her well-run office.
‘I’ll pay you double—’
‘That is desperate.’
‘—and when you come back,’ Vickie continued, as if she hadn’t spoken, ‘we can have a little chat about your future.’
‘I don’t have a future,’ she declared forcefully, cutting her off before this whole thing got completely out of hand.
She’d only agreed to come into the office on her way to the airport because it gave her the perfect chance to tell Vickie face-to-face that she must remove her from her books once and for all. Finally. Irrevocably. Put a stop to the tempting little job offers that she kept leaving on her answering machine.
At least in Spain she’d be safe from these sneaky little raids on her determination.
‘Not as a nanny,’ she said as she headed for the door. ‘I’ll send you a postcard—’
Vickie leapt to her feet but before she could fling herself between Jacqui and freedom, Selina Talbot swept in; tall, golden and clearly worth every cent of the millions of dollars she earned as a supermodel. The fortune she was paid as the face of a famous cosmetic company.
Maisie, her six-year-old adopted daughter—familiar from endless full-colour ‘happy family’ spreads in lifestyle magazines and the object of Vickie’s unsubtle strategic planning—was at her side.
The little girl was not wearing the wash-and-wear clothes any sensible nanny would have dressed her in for travelling. Instead she was togged out in the full fairy-princess kit: a white, full-skirted voile dress with a mauve satin sash, opaque white tights and satin Mary Janes, the perfect foil for her beautiful chocolate-dark skin. A sparkly tiara perched on top of her jet curls completed the picture. Only the wings were missing.
One of her hands was in fingertip contact with her mother. From the other dangled a small white linen tote bag on which the words ‘Maisie’s Stuff’ had been appliquéd in the same mauve satin as her sash.
The designer’s logo embroidered in the same colour suggested that the outfit was a one-off creation for his favourite model’s little girl.
Most small girls of her acquaintance—and she’d known enough to be certain of this—would have been crumpled and grubby within five minutes of being dressed in such an outfit.
Not Maisie Talbot. She looked like an exquisite doll. One of those collector’s editions that was kept in a glass case so it wouldn’t get spoiled by sticky fingers.
Most children faced with the prospect of being left in the care of complete strangers—and once again Jacqui had plenty of experience as a flying nanny to back up her theory—would have been clinging tearfully to their mother at this point.
Maisie remained still, silent and composed as Selina Talbot air-kissed her daughter from about three feet above her head and—having acknowledged Vickie’s introduction to ‘Jacqui Moore, the very experienced nanny I told you about’ by the simple expedient of handing over the matching white holdall that contained her daughter’s belongings—departed with an unnerving lack of maternal fuss.
A tug of something very like compassion for this doll-child slipped beneath Jacqui’s defences; a dangerous urge to pick her up and give her a cuddle. The impulse was stillborn as Maisie’s dark eyes met hers and, with all the poised hauteur of her mother on a Paris catwalk, warned her not to think of doing any such thing.
Then, having firmly established a cordon sanitaire about her person, Maisie said, ‘I’d like to go now, Jacqui.’ And headed for the door, where she waited for someone to open it for her.
Vickie Campbell mouthed the words ‘please’ as Maisie tapped her foot impatiently and Jacqui was sorely tempted to walk away, leaving Vickie to deal with the fallout. It wasn’t Vickie’s mute appeal that made the difference. She just couldn’t bring herself to reject a child who, despite her cool, in-charge exterior, seemed very much alone.
And she was practically passing the door.
‘You owe me, Vickie,’ she said, surrendering, helpless in the face of this two-pronged attack.
‘Big time,’ Vickie replied, with a grin that had better be of relief. ‘Come and see me when you get back and I’ll have the kind of job waiting for you that will make you drool.’
Aaah… She’d nearly fallen into the carefully set trap. Once money had exchanged hands…
‘On second thoughts, have this one on me,’ she replied. Then, giving her full attention to her unexpected charge, she said, ‘OK, Maisie, let’s go before my car gets clamped.’
‘Is this it?’ the child demanded, unimpressed, as they reached the street and she was confronted by a much cherished, but admittedly past its best, VW Beetle.
‘This is my car,’ Jacqui agreed, opening the door.
‘I never travel in anything but a Mercedes.’
At which point she began to understand Vickie’s anxiety not to be left alone with Miss Maisie Talbot for any length of time.
‘This is a Mercedes,’ she said, briskly.
‘It doesn’t look like one.’
‘No? Well, it’s a dress-down-at-work day.’
Maisie’s little forehead wrinkled as she considered this outrageous statement. Then she asked, ‘What’s a dress-down-at-work day?’
It was too late to wish she’d kept her mouth shut. Something to bear in mind, though, next time she thought of being smart with a six-year-old.
‘It’s a day when you’re allowed to go into work wearing jeans instead of a suit,’ she explained.
‘Why would anyone want to do that?’
‘For fun?’ she offered. Then, because Maisie’s idea of fun was dressing up, not down, ‘OK, well, sometimes, to raise money for charity, grown-ups pay for the pleasure of wearing whatever they want to work. Wouldn’t you like to wear your princess outfit to school instead of your uniform and raise some money for a good cause at the same time?’
‘I don’t go to school.’
‘You don’t?’
‘I have a home tutor.’ Then, ‘Is that why you’re not wearing a proper uniform? Because you’re dressing down for charity?’
Jacqui, who had never worn a uniform, proper or otherwise, pretended she hadn’t heard as she busied herself brushing down the back seat, retrieving a couple of toffee papers