The Fiancée Charade. Fiona Brand

took extra care transferring the bone china from the trolley to the table. Even so, an exquisitely delicate cup overturned on its saucer and a silver teaspoon that had been balanced on the saucer skidded off and hit a pretty bread and butter plate with a sharp ping.

      She could feel the subtle tension and displeasure at the noise she was making. Her jaw set a fraction tighter. She had worked for the Atraeus Group for some years and normally didn’t mind in the least helping out with any task that needed doing. The Atraeus family had given her a job when she desperately needed one, and they had treated her very well, but suddenly she was acutely aware of her role as a servant.

      She dumped a glistening silver milk jug and sugar bowl down next to the teapot and swiped at an errant droplet of milk that marred the once pristine tablecloth.

      Not that she had an issue with doing a good job, but it was a fact that she wasn’t waitstaff. Just like she was no longer the gardener’s daughter on the Messena estate.

      She was a highly organized and well-qualified PA with a degree in performing arts on the side, and she was still trying to come to grips with the fact that by some errant trick of fate, she had ended up once more in the role of employee to a Messena.

      Serene and perfectly groomed, Luisa looked exactly as she had when Gemma had last seen her in Dolphin Bay, New Zealand. The friend accompanying her, though casually dressed, looked just as wealthy and well-groomed; her dark hair smooth, nails perfect. Unlike Gemma’s hair, which she’d been too tired after a near-sleepless night on the phone to New Zealand to do anything with except to coil the heavy waves into a knot.

      As she placed the crowning glory of the afternoon tea setting, an exquisite three-tiered plate of tiny cakes, scones, pastries and mini sandwiches, in the center of the table, she caught a glimpse of herself in a wall mirror.

      She wasn’t surprised that Luisa hadn’t recognized her. The housemaid’s smock she was wearing was at least a size too large and an unflattering pale blue, which leached all the color from her skin. With her hair pulled back into a severe knot, she didn’t look either pretty or stylish.

      Definitely not the gorgeous hothouse flower who by all accounts had been reserved for marriage to Gabriel, despite the fact that Gemma had borne his child.

      The thought was overdramatic and innapropriate, and she regretted it the moment it was out.

      She had cut her losses years ago, and from the snatches of conversation, Gabriel was practically engaged. If that was the case, then she was certain the manner in which he had selected his future bride had been as considered and measured as the way he managed the multibillion-dollar family business.

      What had happened between her and Gabriel had been crazy and completely wrong for them both, a combination of moonlight and champagne, and a moment of chivalry when Gabriel had saved her from the groping of a too-amorous date.

      By the time she had realized three months later, despite a couple of skimpy periods, that she was in fact pregnant, the decision to not tell Gabriel had been a no-brainer.

      From the brief conversation that had taken place when Gabriel had told her he wasn’t interested in a relationship, she had known that while he had been prepared to look after her and a baby if she had gotten pregnant, all he would have been doing was fulfilling an obligation. On that basis alone, she had chosen to take full responsibility for Sanchia. But there had been another driving force to staying silent about the baby.

      Bearing a Messena child would have entailed links from which she would never have been free. She would have remained a beneficiary of Gabriel’s family for the rest of her life, forever aware that she was the employee Gabriel Messena had made the mistake of getting pregnant but who hadn’t been good enough to marry.

      In the quiet solitude of her pregnancy, with the hurt of Gabriel’s defection fading, Gemma had made the decision that in order to avoid more heartache, Sanchia would be hers and hers alone. Keeping her daughter’s existence a secret had just seemed easier and simpler.

      She straightened a cake fork. She guessed the part that made her hot under the collar about Gabriel’s pending engagement was the idea that he had been waiting for his bride to become available. If that was the case, it meant that Gemma had never been anything more than a diversion, a fill-in, while he waited for the kind of wife he really wanted.

      More memories cascaded, distracting her completely from her final check of the table setting.

       The pressure of Gabriel’s mouth on hers, the way his fingers had threaded in her hair …

      Another pang of annoyance that Gabriel had given up on them so easily, that he was shallow and superficial enough to select a wife rather than fall passionately in love, started a sharp little throb at her temples. She wheeled the trolley with a little more force than was necessary to the door, clipping the side of a sofa in the process.

      Luisa Messena, who was just walking in off the terrace, threw her a puzzled look, a frown pleating her brow, as if she was trying to remember where she had seen her last.

      Bleakly, Gemma parked the trolley by the door and hoped Luisa didn’t recall that it was the summer six years ago when she had thrown caution and every rule she’d lived by for years to the winds, and slept with Luisa’s extremely wealthy son.

      Jaw taut, in a blatant disregard for etiquette, Gemma didn’t offer to pour the tea. Smiling blankly in the general direction of Luisa, she opened the door and pushed the trolley out into the hall.

      Closing the door behind her, she drew a deep breath and wheeled the trolley toward the service elevator at the other end of the corridor, stopping short when her cell chimed.

      Worry at the recognizable ringtone clutched at Gemma.

      Checking that she wouldn’t be overheard, she lifted the phone to her ear. Instantly, the too-serious voice of her five-year-old daughter filled her ears.

      The conversation was punctuated by a regular squeak-squeak sound, which instantly translated an image of Sanchia clutching an old bedtime toy, a fluffy puppy with a squeezy sound in its tummy.

      Gemma frowned, hating the distance between them when all she wanted to do was hug her close. Sanchia had clung to the toy as a baby, but these days she only ever picked it up if she was overtired or stressed.

      Always precocious and older than her years, Sanchia had a familiar list of demands. She wanted to know where Gemma was and what she was doing, when she was coming to get her, exactly, and if she was bringing her a present.

      There was a brief pause, then Sanchia’s voice firmed as if she had finally reached the whole point of the conversation.

       “And when are you bringing home the dad?”

      Two

      Gemma’s heart sank. She had suspected that her daughter had overheard the discussion she’d had with Gemma’s younger sister, Lauren, which had been half frivolous, half desperate. Now she had her proof.

      The reference to “the dad” was heart-rending enough, as if obtaining a husband, and father for Sanchia, was as straightforward as shopping for shoes or a handbag.

      Needing privacy even more now, Gemma walked down a short side hall while she tried to figure out what to say next.

      Normally, she was composed, focused and highly organized. As a working single mother she’d had to be.

      Although, lately, ever since disaster had struck in the form of a nanny who had left her daughter locked in the car while she gambled at a Sydney casino, Gemma’s focus had undergone a quantum shift. A passerby had seen Sanchia and had called the police. Gemma had managed to explain her way out of the situation, but it hadn’t helped that in the same week Gemma had also gotten caught up in a media scandal, courtesy of her connection with her ex-boss, Zane Atraeus.

      To add insult to injury, when Gemma had dismissed the nanny, the woman had then turned around and sold a story to the papers claiming that Gemma was an unfit mother. The story,