Dr Mathieson's Daughter. Maggie Kingsley

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СКАЧАТЬ was good with kids. Actually, she was quite amazing with kids. He’d seen her get a response from even the most traumatised of children simply by sitting with them, holding them, murmuring all kinds of nonsense.

      And suddenly it hit him. He had the answer to all his problems sitting right in front of him. Jane. Jane would be perfect for Nicole, just perfect.

      But would she do it? Would she be prepared to move into his flat to help him out until he could get a nanny or a housekeeper in a month’s time?

      Of course she would. Jane helped everybody, and it wasn’t as though he was asking a lot. Not much, he observed sourly. Just for her to take over your responsibilities, that’s all. Nonsense, he wasn’t asking her to do that. He wasn’t even thinking about himself at all. He was simply thinking about Nicole.

      And Jane clearly thought he was, too, when he whisked her into his office and explained what had happened after the police had collected the three abandoned children and taken them off to Social Services.

      ‘Oh, the poor little girl!’ she exclaimed, her eyes full of compassion. ‘Why on earth didn’t Donna tell you about her before?’

      He’d wondered about that, too, but all he could think was that she must have been so angry with him when they’d parted that this had been her way of punishing him.

      ‘You’re going to have to go very carefully with her,’ Jane continued, her forehead creased in thought. ‘Not only has she lost her mother, but coming to a strange country, to a man she doesn’t know…She’s going to need lots of love and attention.’

      ‘But that’s the trouble,’ he declared. ‘How can I give her lots of love and attention when I’m hardly ever going to be there? Janey, you know what our hours are like—’

      ‘We’ll all help out,’ she said quickly. ‘It’s a nuisance Mr Mackay being away, but when he gets back I’m sure he’ll agree to letting you work days for a while. In the meantime, we could ask Charlie if he’d mind doing most of your night shifts—’

      ‘I don’t want Charlie to do my night shifts!’ he snapped, then flushed as Jane’s eyebrows rose. ‘Janey, I’ve got to be honest with you…’

      He paused. How to explain? How to say that it wasn’t just a question of the day-to-day complications of taking care of a child that was worrying him, but that he didn’t want this girl because she would remind him of a time in his life he preferred to forget. Jane would ask why. She’d ask questions. Questions he didn’t want to answer.

      Better by far for her to think he was selfish, he decided. Better for her to believe he was the biggest heel of all time than for him to have to reveal the sorry details of his failed marriage.

      He took a deep breath. ‘Janey, the thing is, kids…they’re not really me. I never wanted any—never planned on having any. I’m a loner at heart, you see, always have been.’

      Oh, he was something all right, she decided as she stared up at him in utter disbelief. How could he be so unfeeling about a child? And not simply any child. His child. His daughter.

      ‘So you’re getting your mother to look after her, I presume?’ she said tightly.

      ‘I can’t. She flew out to Canada last Saturday to stay with my sister for the next three months. Annie’s been having a really rotten time with her first pregnancy—’

      ‘Then you’re hiring a nanny?’ Jane asked, her heart going out to his poor little motherless, unwanted child. ‘Or are you too damn mean to fork out the money?’

      ‘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.

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