There was an odd little silence as he straightened and turned. ‘Hullo,’ he said, and there was a note in his voice that Clare couldn’t identify. ‘You look better.’
‘I feel better,’ she told him honestly, but for some reason she found she couldn’t look at him directly, and it was a relief to be able to turn her attention to Alice, who was holding up her arms and babbling a greeting. The words might not make any sense, but it was clear that she wanted Clare to pick her up now!
Swinging her up into her arms, Clare gave her a kiss. ‘Have you been good?’ she asked.
‘She’s been…fine,’ said Gray with a little reserve.
Clare glanced down at the objects scattered across the floor, and then at the desk, where an area out of the reach of baby arms had obviously been cleared. ‘How much paperwork did you get done?’ she asked innocently.
‘Not a lot,’ he admitted, and then, when Clare lifted her brows, he gave a reluctant smile. ‘All right, I didn’t get any done! I didn’t realise one small person could restrict your activities so much!’
‘Oh, Alice!’ said Clare, trying not to smile. ‘Have you been keeping him busy?’
‘She’s been busy,’ he told her. ‘I put her in the backpack and took her down to the yards, so she’s met the men and seen her first cattle.’
‘Wasn’t she frightened?’ Clare asked a little dubiously. Alice had never seen anything like a cow before, she realised, and she would have thought it would be quite alarming to be introduced to a thousand at once.
‘We didn’t get that close,’ Gray reassured her, ‘but she didn’t seem to be. She never stopped talking the whole time!’
Clare tickled Alice on the nose. ‘Yes, she’s chatty, isn’t she?’
‘Can you make any sense of it?’ he asked curiously.
She laughed. ‘No, it doesn’t mean anything. She’s just making sounds—but she can usually make herself understood when she wants something! It looks as if she managed to convince you that she didn’t want to sit quietly in her chair all afternoon, for instance,’ she added, amused.
‘Oh, yes, she got that message across all right,’ said Gray with feeling. ‘I tried doing some work with her sitting on my lap, but she kept throwing papers on the floor, and in any case it wasn’t that easy to concentrate on figures with her chatting away, so I gave up after a while. I wasn’t sure where you had packed her toys so I had to see what I could find around the homestead, but she didn’t seem to be interested in anything for more than two seconds.’
‘I only brought a couple of toys with me,’ said Clare. ‘She doesn’t really play with anything at the moment. Everyday objects are just as fascinating to her right now, but she was probably enjoying your attention more than anything else.’ She hesitated, then said almost shyly, ‘I’m sorry you had to give up your afternoon when you’re so busy, but I really am grateful. That was the best sleep I’ve had in a long time. Thank you so much for looking after her.’
‘That’s all right,’ he said gruffly. ‘It was quite an education. I’ve done a lot, but I’ve never had to change a baby’s nappy before.’
Clare stared at him. ‘You changed her nappy?’
‘With some help,’ he confessed, a little shame-faced. ‘I had to get Joe to show me how to do it. He’s got children, but they’re grown up now, and I don’t think he was much of a hands-on father anyway, so he wasn’t much help. In the end there were four of us standing around the bed, scratching our heads and looking from the baby to the nappy and back again. We worked it out in the end, though,’ he added. ‘Or we think we did! You might have to check.’
Clare couldn’t help laughing at the idea of four grown men puzzling over such a simple task. ‘You could have told them, couldn’t you, Alice?’ she smiled, swinging Alice up until she laughed too with glee.
Her laughter was so infectious that after a moment Gray gave in and laughed too. Clare’s smiling glance went from Alice’s merry face to his, and her heart seemed to stumble, and when her eyes met his she found her laugh faltering for some reason.
It was as if they had both realised at the same time that they were relaxed and laughing together like old friends, when they ought to be remembering that they were virtual strangers with conflicting interests and nothing in common but one small baby. Their smiles faded simultaneously, and Clare’s gaze slid away from his face.
‘You should have woken me,’ she said awkwardly, settling Alice on her hip.
‘I looked in on you after an hour, but you were sound asleep, and I thought it would be better to leave you,’ he said.
Clare didn’t know whether to be glad or sorry that the impersonal note was back in his voice. It was impossible to tell what he had thought as he’d looked down at her, sprawled in sleep in the middle of his own bed.
‘Well…thank you,’ she said, ‘and don’t worry, I won’t ask you to do it again!’
He shrugged slightly. ‘We managed.’
‘I know, but…well, the idea wasn’t that you would spend your time looking after Alice while I caught up on my sleep.’ She paused, choosing her words with care. ‘I do appreciate what you’ve done today, Gray. This isn’t an easy situation for you either. You’ve got no way of knowing whether Alice really is your niece or not, and I would have understood if you’d refused to let us come here at all, let alone give up an afternoon to entertain Alice.’
Clare took a breath and went on. ‘I just want you to know that I’m grateful, and that I won’t take anything for granted. You’ve been very kind to Alice—and to me—this afternoon, but I know it doesn’t mean that you’ve accepted Alice as your niece. From now on, we’ll try not to interfere with you.’ She wished she could gauge how Gray was reacting. He was just standing there, watching her with that unreadable expression, and she could feel herself babbling like Alice, and probably making just as much sense. ‘With any luck, you’ll forget we’re here,’ she finished with a bright smile.
Gray looked at her. ‘I don’t think that’s very likely, somehow,’ he said in his slow voice. ‘I’m not sure how much use you’ll be as a housekeeper if you spend your time keeping out of my way!’
‘I didn’t mean that.’ Clare pushed her hands through her hair in frustration. At home, she was a calm, articulate administrator, with a reputation for sorting out communication problems in the office, but there was something about Gray’s brown dispassionate gaze that turned her into a stammering idiot. ‘I just meant…well, that I won’t make any more demands on you.’
‘Fine.’
Gray was straight-faced, but there was an unsettling gleam of mockery in his brown eyes and Clare’s lips tightened. She was only trying to be polite and reassuring. He might at least make the effort to pretend that he took her seriously in return!
‘It’s getting late,’ she said coldly. She was obviously going to have to work a little harder to convince him of her coolness and competence. ‘I should give Alice some supper and then put her to bed. Is there a spare room we could have?’
‘This way.’
He led her down the corridor and opened the door of the room opposite his own.
‘But…it’s clean!’ said Clare stupidly as she looked around her.
‘Alice and I gave it a sweep while you were sleeping,’ said Gray. ‘I wasn’t sure what to do about Alice, but I made up the