Assignment: Baby. Jessica Hart

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 that way. That doesn’t mean that Greg is Harry’s father,’ he added quickly, ‘but at least we know why your visitor picked on me.’

      ‘She definitely said Gabriel Stearne,’ objected Tess. ‘It’s not that easy to muddle up Gabriel and Greg.’

      The suspicion in her voice made Gabriel grit his teeth. ‘Look, you wanted to know what the situation was, and I’m telling you,’ he said tautly. He didn’t really want to tell Tess about Greg, and give her yet another reason to look down her snooty little nose at him, but she was obviously going to go on asking questions until she had some satisfactory answers. Briefly, Gabriel let himself think longingly of Janette, his PA back in the States, who accepted everything he said unquestioningly.

      But Janette wasn’t here, and Tess was.

      ‘It turns out that Greg sometimes uses my name when it suits him to let people believe that the G in his name stands for Gabriel and not Gregory,’ he told her, resigned. ‘He says it gets him better tables in restaurants and seats on overbooked planes and, in the case of the cruise, he upgraded his cabin on the strength of my reputation. Having booked as Gabriel Stearne, he carried on using my name, and it was too late to change it when he met Leanne. Anyway, Greg didn’t think it would matter. He knew I would never go on a cruise and it was very unlikely that Leanne would ever read the business pages and see my picture.’

      ‘So it might not just be Leanne who thinks that she has had an affair with you? There could be girls all round the world who believe that you’re incredibly handsome, a fantastic lover and great fun to be with?’

      Gabriel shot Tess a suspicious look. Her face was quite straight, but there was glint in her eyes and a distinct undercurrent of sarcasm in her voice. Why didn’t she come right out and say that the idea of anyone associating him with fun or believing him to be a wonderful lover was absolutely hilarious?

      He scowled. ‘Right now, we’re only concerned with Leanne,’ he said quellingly. Not that Tess seemed very quelled.

      ‘And Leanne thinks that Greg is Harry’s father?’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘That would make Harry your nephew,’ she said slowly, looking from one to the other as if looking for a resemblance.

      ‘It’s a possibility,’ Gabriel admitted grudgingly, evidently less than thrilled at the prospect of a new addition to the family.

      ‘Did Greg think that he might be Harry’s father?’

      Gabriel sat on the edge of her desk and rubbed the back of his neck a little wearily. ‘I didn’t tell him about Harry,’ he said after a moment.

      Tess was taken aback. Surely that had been the point of ringing Greg? ‘Why not?’

      ‘Because for once in his life, Greg is where he ought to be,’ said Gabriel flatly. ‘He’s in Florida, with my mother. His father—my stepfather—is having open-heart surgery and my mother can’t cope on her own. She’s not strong at the best of times, and I’d rather he stayed and supported her than came haring over here. It’s not as if he knows anything about babies.’

      ‘Oh, unlike us?’ said Tess, not even bothering to hide her sarcasm this time.

      Gabriel ignored her. Straightening from the desk, he began to pace