Assignment: Baby. Jessica Hart

      ‘Why don’t you ring the police?’

      ‘I can’t risk the story getting into the papers. If Greg does turn out to be the father, and my mother got to hear of it, she’d be devastated. She dotes on Greg and she’s got enough to deal with at the moment with Ray so ill.’

      Tess’s arm was aching and she decided to try putting Harry back in his pram. How odd, she thought, as she rocked the pram tentatively, terrified that the baby would start crying again. She wouldn’t have had Gabriel Stearne down as a devoted son, but he seemed to be making a lot of effort to spare his mother any trouble. Perhaps deep down he was human, after all? He certainly did a good job of hiding it most of the time!

      Oblivious to her thoughts, Gabriel was contemplating his options. Thrusting his hands into his pockets, he hunched his shoulders and continued his pacing, up and down, up and down, until Tess longed to stick out a foot and trip him up.

      ‘I could hire private investigators to track down the baby’s mother,’ he decided after a little while, frowning at the floor. ‘There can’t be that many croupiers called Leanne. Make a note to get onto them first thing tomorrow morning,’ he added in an aside.

      Tess refrained from leaping for her notebook. ‘Even if they can find Leanne, she’s still got to get back to this country,’ she pointed out unhelpfully. ‘What are you going to do with him until then?’

      ‘That’s what nannies are for.’ Having made up his mind what needed to be done, Gabriel was already moving onto thinking about the proposal they had to submit the next day. His shoulders straightened. ‘You’d better get hold of an agency now. Say I’ll need a nanny for a week initially. With any luck, we’ll have been able to track down his mother by then.’

      Ready to dismiss the matter from his mind, he turned back towards his office. Tess looked at him in disbelief. ‘It’s almost seven o’clock,’ she said, speaking very slowly and clearly so that he would be sure to understand. ‘All the agencies will be closed. I won’t be able to contact anyone until tomorrow morning at the earliest.’

      Exasperated, Gabriel glowered at her, his jaw working in frustration. Logically, he knew that it wasn’t Tess’s fault, but her objections seemed designed to prevent him from getting on with more important things. He simply didn’t have the time to deal with all this.

      ‘What do you suggest, in that case?’ he asked her through gritted teeth.

      Tess smiled sweetly at him. ‘You’ll have to look after him yourself.’

      ‘Me?’

      ‘Yes, you!’ she said, savouring the expression on his face. He looked so aghast that she nearly laughed. ‘It seems that Harry is your responsibility, after all.’

      ‘But I don’t know one end of a baby from another!’

      ‘It’s only for a night,’ she told him briskly. ‘I’m sure it’s just a matter of common sense.’

      Gabriel eyed her with acute dislike. A matter of common sense, was it? She hadn’t looked quite so confident when she’d been holding the baby, had she? He set his jaw.

      ‘I can’t do it on my own,’ he said. ‘You’ll have to help me.’

      ‘Sorry,’ said Tess, not sounding the slightest bit apologetic. ‘I’m going out tonight.’

      ‘On a date?’

      He stared at her with unflattering surprise. It had obviously never occurred to him before that she might actually have a life outside the office, let alone be attractive enough to have a date.

      ‘Yes, a date,’ she said, peeved, although it wasn’t strictly true. She was only meeting some friends, but she didn’t feel like telling him that. She was tired of being treated like a cardboard cut-out who got propped in the corner of the office every night!

      ‘Couldn’t you break it?’

      Silently, Gabriel cursed his absent brother. It went against the grain to beg a favour from anyone, let alone from Tess Gordon with her frosty Scottish voice and her disapproving expression, but he was desperate. There was no way he was going to be left alone with that baby.

      ‘Look, I know it’s a lot to ask,’ he went on, forcing the words out, ‘but I need help. I can’t manage Harry on my own. I’ve never even held a baby before.’

      The edge of desperation in his voice couldn’t help but strike a chord with Tess, but she hardened her heart, remembering how quick he had been to disclaim any responsibility for Harry at first. He hadn’t exactly been supportive then, had he?

      ‘You must have friends who could help you,’ she said.

      ‘I don’t know anyone else in London,’ said Gabriel. ‘I’ve only been here a month.’

      ‘Oh?’ Tess thought of the newspaper in the bin under her desk. ‘I did hear somewhere that you knew Fionnula Jenkins,’ she said pointedly.

      ‘Not well enough to ask her to give up her evening and a whole night to take care of a strange baby.’

      ‘You don’t know me very well, but you’re asking me to do it.’

      ‘That’s different.’ Gabriel glowered at her lack of logic. ‘You work for me.’

      ‘I’m your personal assistant, not a nanny!’

      ‘Yes, and it would assist me personally if you helped me look after this baby tonight.’

      Tess put up her chin. She wasn’t going to be bullied into this! ‘I’m sorry,’ she said firmly, ‘but I—’

      ‘I’ll pay you overtime, of course,’ Gabriel interrupted her, switching tactics. ‘Double the usual rate,’ he added cunningly.

      It was a masterly stroke. Fatally, Tess hesitated. She had been wondering how she was going to find the money to help Andrew out of his difficulties, and now here was an opportunity to earn some extra cash, without the need to grovel to Gabriel for a pay rise that he would almost certainly refuse.

      Could she really afford to turn it down?

      ‘I don’t know any more about babies than you do,’ she said, but Gabriel could tell she was weakening and he pressed home his advantage.

      ‘You can’t know less,’ he said. ‘Come on, Tess, you can’t leave me on my own with him.’

      When she thought about how prepared he had been to leave her on her own with Harry, Tess longed to be able to tell him that she most certainly could, but then she made the mistake of looking down at the baby. His face was puckering with misery, and she bent instinctively to pick him up. The poor wee mite had already been abandoned once today. She couldn’t walk away and abandon him again.

      CHAPTER TWO

      SHE sighed. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘I’ll help you—but help is the operative word.’ Lifting her chin, she met Gabriel’s gaze with a challenging expression in her clear brown eyes. ‘I’m not looking after him all by myself. You’re going to have to do your share.’

      ‘Fair enough,’ said Gabriel, too relieved to object to any conditions. Anything was better than being left on his own with the baby. ‘We’ll take him to my apartment,’ he went on quickly, before she had a chance to change her mind. ‘I can drive you home to get whatever you need for the night, and then we can go straight on.’

      He was all set to hustle her off there and then, but things were happening a bit too quickly for Tess’s liking. ‘We could do with some advice first,’ she prevaricated, not sure she was ready to be swept off to Gabriel’s apartment just yet. She might have agreed to help him, but there seemed to be a lot of things they hadn’t discussed yet, and she wanted to be clear just what it was she had agreed to do.

      ‘I thought you