‘It’s not a question of money!’ he exclaimed, his cheeks reddening. ‘None of the agencies I contacted could get me anybody until next month, which is why…’ He quickly fixed what he hoped was his most appealing smile to his lips. ‘Janey, I need you to do me a huge favour. I want you to come and live with me, to help me look after Nicole.’
‘You want me to…’ Her mouth fell open, then she shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, but I think there must be something wrong with my hearing. I could have sworn you just said you wanted me to come and live with you to look after your daughter.’
‘I did—I do. Janey, listen, it makes perfect sense,’ he continued as she stared at him, stunned. ‘You’re a woman—’
‘I also like pasta but that doesn’t make me Italian,’ she protested. ‘If you’re so desperate for help, why don’t you ask Gussie Granton? She’s your current girlfriend, according to the hospital grapevine, and as a paediatric sister she’s bound to know more about children than I do.’ He had the grace at least to look uncomfortable and her grey eyes narrowed. ‘You’ve already asked her, haven’t you, and she said no.’
Gussie had. Oh, she’d been wonderfully understanding, her luscious lips curving into an expression of deepest sympathy, but, as she’d pointed out, the demands of her job simply didn’t give her the time to take care of a child.
‘Janey—’
‘So you decided that as your mother couldn’t do it, and Gussie wouldn’t, muggins here might fit the bill,’ she interrupted, her voice harder and colder than he’d ever heard it. ‘Well, you can forget it, Elliot. Forget it!’
‘But you’ve got to help me,’ he cried, coming after her as she made for his office door. ‘Surely you can see that I can’t do this on my own?’
‘You’re thirty-two years old, Elliot,’ she snapped. ‘Get off your butt and try!’
‘But you’re so good with kids—the very best,’ he said, his blue eyes fixed pleadingly on her. ‘And I’m not asking you to do it for ever—just for a month. Until I can get a nanny or a housekeeper. Please, Janey.’
She’d heard that wheedling tone in his voice before. It was the one he used on women when he wanted a favour, and it usually worked on her, too, but not today.
‘No, Elliot.’
‘Look, I’m not asking you to go into purdah for the next month,’ he said quickly. ‘I have a three-bedroom flat—you can have your friends round whenever you want, go out whenever you want. All I’m asking is for us to dovetail our shifts and personal commitments so at least one of us will be there when Nicole comes home from school.’
‘No, Elliot.’
‘Janey, please. I’m begging you. If you won’t do it for me, won’t you at least do it for Nicole?’
Blackmail. It was blackmail of the worst possible kind, and anyone who agreed to move in with him under those circumstances needed their head examined. Anyone who had secretly been in love with him for the last two years and agreed to do it needed that head certified.
Tell him it’s his problem, not yours, her mind insisted. Tell him to go fly a kite, preferably on the edge of a very high cliff in the middle of a howling gale. OK, so his little girl must be grief-stricken to have lost her mother, but it’s not your problem.
And she cleared her throat to tell him just that when an image suddenly came into her mind. An image of a little girl with big, frightened eyes. A little girl lost, and alone, and deeply unhappy.
‘Just for a month, you said?’ she murmured uncertainly.
He nodded, hope, desperation, plain in his eyes.
‘You’ll have to do your fair share, Elliot,’ she declared. ‘Nicole is your responsibility, not mine.’
‘Oh, absolutely—definitely,’ he replied, nodding vigorously.
Only an idiot would agree to this, she thought as she stared up into his handsome face. Only a fool would ever say yes. And yet, before she could stop herself, the words ‘All right, then, I’ll do it’ were out of her mouth.
And as a broad smile lit up his face, and her heart turned over in response, she knew that she wasn’t simply an idiot. She was completely and utterly out of her mind.
‘SHE’S arriving this evening, then, on the nine o’clock plane from Paris?’ Floella declared as she helped Jane carry a fresh supply of medical dressings out of their small dispensary into the treatment room. ‘Poor little soul. Losing her mother like that. My heart goes out to her, it really does.’
And I don’t know why MI5 doesn’t simply throw in the towel and hand over all its surveillance work to St Stephen’s in future, Jane thought ruefully.
How did they do it? She’d told nobody about Nicole, and she was pretty sure Elliot hadn’t told anybody either, and yet it had taken the staff less than twenty-four hours to discover not only that he had a daughter but what time her plane was arriving as well.
‘I bet Gussie’s spitting nails about you moving into Elliot’s place.’ Floella chuckled. ‘I hear she’s been itching to become his live-in girlfriend.’
‘I’m not exactly moving in with him, Flo,’ Jane said quickly. ‘Simply helping out until he can employ a housekeeper.’
‘Oh, I know that,’ the staff nurse said dismissively. ‘We all do.’
Which was another thing that was beginning to seriously annoy her, Jane thought, putting down the boxes of Steri-Strips she was carrying with a bang. The way everyone had instantly assumed there wasn’t anything personal about the arrangement.
OK, so there wasn’t, but that didn’t mean she had to like the idea that nobody thought there might be. She wasn’t that plain, and was it really so unlikely that she and Elliot could have become an item? Apparently it was.
‘Elliot, we were just talking about your little girl.’ Floella beamed as he strode down the treatment room towards them. ‘You must be really excited at the prospect of meeting her.’
Jane didn’t think he looked even remotely excited, but to his credit he managed to mumble something suitably enthusiastic in reply.
‘You must bring her into the hospital one day, so we can all meet her,’ the staff nurse continued. ‘And, don’t forget, if you ever need a babysitter, I’ll be only too happy to oblige.’
Elliot smiled and nodded but as Floella bustled away he shook his head wryly. ‘You know, this has got to be the worst-kept secret in the hospital.’
‘Do you mind everybody knowing about Nicole?’ Jane asked.
He shrugged. ‘She’s a fact of life. Whether I mind or not is immaterial.’
Which sounded very much as though he did mind. As though he’d far rather she didn’t exist.
She’d thought—hoped—that since last night he might have had time to see what a great gift he’d been given, how lucky he was, but nothing, it seemed, had changed. He still saw his daughter as a nuisance, an unwelcome intrusion into his life.
‘I’d better get back to work,’ she said abruptly, but before she could move he suddenly clasped her hands in his.
‘Jane, what you’re doing for Nicole—for me—I just want to thank you again. It’s really good of you to help me out like this, and I do appreciate it.’
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