Assignment: Baby. Jessica Hart

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СКАЧАТЬ threw a harassed look at the clock on the wall. If only Gabriel would come back!

      It felt like two hours, but according to the clock it was only twenty minutes before Gabriel appeared. He walked into the office to be greeted by an unmistakable sigh of relief.

      ‘Thank God you’re back!’ said Tess, who would have scorned the very idea of being pleased to see him when he had left only a matter of hours ago.

      Gabriel stopped dead at the sight of her. He had left an icily efficient, immaculately groomed PA. He returned to find her clutching a snivelling baby, her pristine blouse crumpled by tears and tiny, clutching hands, and the honey-coloured hair escaping in wisps from its usually demure style.

      The black brows contracted. ‘What’s going on?’

      He might enjoy the sight of Tess less than her normal, coolly composed self, but the meeting with the insurers hadn’t gone well. There was a good deal of work to be done to get the bid ready for the next day, and the very last thing he needed right now was a bawling infant cluttering up the office.

      Gabriel eyed it askance. ‘Whose is that baby?’ he demanded, without even giving her a chance to reply to his first question.

      By this stage Tess was too harassed to think of a way to break the news diplomatically. ‘It’s yours.’

      ‘What?’ he roared so loudly that Harry flinched and began to cry again.

      ‘Don’t shout! Now look what you’ve done!’ she accused him. ‘I’d just got him to stop, too.’ She joggled the baby in her arms until his sobs subsided. ‘There, that’s better,’ she murmured. ‘The nasty man’s not going to shout any more.’

      Gabriel controlled his temper with an effort. ‘Tess, will you please explain to me what you are doing with that baby?’ he said ominously, laying his attaché case on her desk.

      Over the sound of Harry’s snuffling cries, Tess told him what she could remember. ‘But it all happened so quickly,’ she finished. ‘One minute I was putting the letters on your desk, the next I was left holding the baby!’

      ‘Let me get this right,’ said Gabriel, a muscle beating dangerously in his jaw. ‘A woman turns up out of the blue, tells you she’s going on holiday and deposits a baby with you…and you let her walk away without even finding out her name?’

      When he put it like that, it didn’t sound as if she had handled the situation very well, Tess had to admit. ‘She said you were Harry’s father,’ she said lamely.

      ‘And you believed her?’

      ‘I didn’t know what to believe,’ she said, forced onto the defensive. ‘You haven’t exactly been forthcoming about your private life. For all I know, you’ve got a dozen sons!’

      Gabriel glared at her. ‘I can assure you,’ he said in glacial tones, ‘that I not only have no son, I’ve never even been on a cruise, and I certainly haven’t seduced any stray croupiers without being aware of it.’

      Biting her lip, Tess looked worriedly down at the baby in her arms. ‘What are we going to do?’ she asked.

      ‘We?’ He lifted his brows in a way that made her long to haul out and hit him.

      ‘It’s not my baby,’ she pointed out tightly.

      ‘It’s not mine either,’ he retorted, ignoring the danger signals snapping in Tess’s brown eyes. ‘You’re the one who took responsibility for him. You deal with it.’

      The dismissive note in his voice caught Tess on the raw. For a moment, she could only gape at him, torn between astonishment at the colossal nerve of the man and inarticulate fury at his callous lack of support.

      ‘Now, just a minute—’ she began furiously, but before she could tell Gabriel exactly what she thought of him, the phone on her desk began to ring, a loud, jarring sound that ripped through the tense atmosphere in the office. Involuntarily, they both turned to look at it.

      Gabriel cursed under his breath at the interruption. ‘You’d better answer it,’ he said snidely. ‘It might be someone else who wants a place to dump a child or a dog while they go on holiday! Why not tell them all to come along? Tell them we’ll take care of their pot plants too!’

      Tess glared at his sarcasm. ‘How do you suggest I answer it?’ she said through her teeth. ‘In case it’s escaped your notice, I’ve only got two hands and both are full at the moment! Or am I expected to pick up the phone with my teeth?’

      The phone continued to ring insistently, impossible to ignore. ‘Oh, all right, I’ll get it,’ snapped Gabriel.

      He leant over the desk and picked up the phone. ‘Yes?’ he snarled. ‘Oh…Greg…yes, I did get your message…no, there’s nothing you can do,’ he said brusquely, adding as an afterthought, ‘unless you happen to know where I can find a croupier called Leanne?’

      Tess couldn’t hear what Greg was saying, but it was obviously not what Gabriel was expecting. She saw his face change, and he shot her a quick glance. ‘Hold on a second,’ he interrupted his brother, ‘I think I’d better call you back. Give me two minutes.’

      ‘That was my brother,’ he said unnecessarily as he put down the phone. For once he seemed at a loss.

      ‘Your brother? What’s he got to do with Harry’s mother?’ asked Tess, bewildered by the unexpected turn of events.

      ‘That’s what I’m going to find out.’ Gabriel sounded terse. Shrugging off his coat, he headed for his office.

      There was something going on, thought Tess, aggrieved, and he clearly had no intention of telling her what it was! ‘What am I supposed to do in the meantime?’ she said crossly.

      ‘Just…’ he gestured vaguely ‘…keep the baby quiet.’

      ‘Great, thanks a lot!’ she muttered as the door shut firmly behind him.

      She shifted Harry onto her other arm. He might be small, but he was surprisingly heavy, and she flexed the arm that had been supporting him with a grimace. He was grizzling into her neck, small, sniffling little sobs as if he wanted to cry but was too tired to make the effort.

      Tess knew just how he felt. She looked at the clock again, and was amazed to find that it was less than an hour since she had looked up to see the pram being pushed into the office.

      Not knowing what else to do with him, Tess walked around the office, patting Harry awkwardly on the back, the way she had seen her friends do with their babies. She wished Gabriel would hurry up. It was all very well for him to tell her to keep Harry quiet, but she couldn’t walk up and down like this all night.

      The sound of the door opening made her swing round, and Gabriel emerged in his shirt sleeves, looking grimmer than ever.

      ‘Well?’ she demanded.

      Gabriel loosened his tie as if it felt too tight. ‘Greg was on a Caribbean cruise last year,’ he told her after a moment. ‘He told me that he met a croupier called Leanne, and they had an affair while he was on the ship but, typically of Greg, he can’t remember her surname, so we can’t track down her mother СКАЧАТЬ