Well, office and kitchen aside.’ She stood in one spot, circling slowly. ‘Sorry,’ she offered to no one in particular, ‘I know it’s rude to stare, but I can’t help myself.’ Her eyes were round like saucers, and for the first time in a long time he fully appreciated the privileges to which he had been born.
‘Most of the things in here have been handed down to me,’ he said, when she had eventually completed her visual tour and was looking at him. ‘In fact, I could trace the provenance of nearly everything here. How was the drive over?’
‘Brilliant. Thank you.’
‘And you’re ready to meet Samantha?’
‘I’m sorry I didn’t get to meet her last time,’ Tess said with a rush of sympathy.
Matt, eager to get the day under way, because he had back-to-back meetings, paused. ‘Like I said, she’s been through a very rough time. It can be difficult to get through to her sometimes.’
‘How awful for you. I would have thought that she would have clung to you after her mother’s death.’
‘Some situations are not always straightforward,’ Matt informed her stiffly. ‘I don’t see you with any books.’
‘Books?’ Tess was still trying to figure out what ‘not always straightforward’ might mean.
‘Schoolbooks,’ he said patiently. ‘I hope you haven’t forgotten that teaching is going to be part of your duties with Samantha?’
‘Not on day one, surely?’
‘I’m not a believer in putting off for tomorrow what can be done today.’
‘Yes, well…I thought that I would get to know her first, before I start trying to teach her the importance of fractions and decimals.’
‘Ah. I’m glad to see that you’ve dropped your defeatist approach and got with the programme!’
‘I don’t have a defeatist approach! Really I don’t.’ She had thought a lot about what he had said to her, about her waving a white flag, and decided that he had been way off target. She had always firmly believed herself capable of doing anything. Why else would she have attempted so many varied jobs in the past?
Matt held up his hand to silence her. ‘No matter. Samantha’s collection of tutors have left a number of books over the course of the past few months. You’ll find them in the study. Most are untouched,’ he added, his mouth tightening. ‘I’m hoping that you prove the exception to the rule.’
‘I did warn you that I’m not academic…’
‘I’ve tried the academics,’ Matt pointed out. ‘None of them worked out. Why do you keep running yourself down?’ ‘I don’t.’
‘If you insist on labelling yourself as stupid then don’t be surprised when the world decides to agree with you.’
‘Wait just a minute!’
He had spun around to lead the way, but now he turned slowly on his heels and looked at her with mild curiosity.
‘I’m not stupid.’ Tess had had time to realise that she couldn’t cave in to his much stronger, more dominant personality. It wasn’t in her nature to make a fuss, but she would have to stand firm on what she believed or let him ride roughshod over her. ‘I could have got very good grades, as it happens.’
‘Then why didn’t you? Was it easier to fail for lack of trying rather than risk trying to compete with your brilliant sisters and not do quite as well? Okay, I withdraw my remark about your being lazy, but if you want to prove your abilities to me then you’ve got to step up to the plate. Stop apologising for your lack of academic success and start realising the only thing I care about is that you drop the assumption that you can’t teach my daughter. She’s in the kitchen, by the way.’
Behind him, Tess quietly bristled. While he explained the working hours of his various housekeepers, who took it in turns to come in during the week to ensure that his apartment was never allowed to accumulate a speck of dust, Tess mulled over what he had said like a dog with a bone. She had blithely gone through life doing as she liked, only half listening to her parents’ urgings that she settle down and focus. Claire and Mary were focused. In her own good-natured way she had stubbornly refused to be pushed into a way of life which she thought she couldn’t handle. No one had ever bluntly said the things that Matt had said to her, or implied that she was a coward, scared of looking like a failure next to her sisters. She told herself that he knew nothing about her—but his words reverberated in her head like a nest of angry wasps.
She nearly bumped into him when he stopped at the kitchen door. She stepped past him to see her charge sitting at the kitchen table, hunched over a bowl of cereal which she was playing with—filling the spoon with milk, raising it high above the bowl and then slowly tilting the milk back in, unconcerned that half of it was splashing onto the fine grainy wood of the table.
Tess didn’t know what she had expected. One thing she really hadn’t expected was, glancing sideways, to see the shuttered look of pained confusion on Matt’s face, and for a few powerful seconds she was taken aback by the burst of sympathy she felt for him.
He was tough and uncompromising and, yes, judgemental of her in a way that left her trembling with anger—yet in the face of his daughter he literally didn’t know what to do.
Frankly, nor did she. Stubborn, sulky ten year olds had never featured even on her horizon.
‘Samantha. Look at me!’ He shoved his hands in his pockets and frowned. ‘This is Tess. I told you about her. She’s going to be your new nanny.’
Samantha greeted this by propping her chin in her hands and yawning widely. She was probably wearing the most expensive clothes money could buy, but Tess had never seen a child dressed with such old-fashioned lack of taste. Clumpy brown sandals and a flowered sleeveless frock. Silk, from the look of it. What ten-year-old ever wore silk? Her long hair was braided into two plaits with, of all things, ribbons neatly tied into bows at the ends. She was dark-haired, like her father, with the same stubborn, aristocratic set to her features. She would doubtless be a beauty in time, but just at the moment her face was sullen and set.
Tess cleared her throat and took a couple of steps forward. ‘Samantha! Hi! Okay, you really don’t have to look at me if you don’t want to…’ She giggled nervously, which earned her a sneaky glance, although the spoon and milk routine was still in full force. ‘But I’m new to this place so…’ She frantically thought of the one thing she and a ten-year-old girl might have in common. ‘Do you fancy exploring the shops with me? My sister doesn’t wear the same stuff that I do, and I’m far too scared to venture into some of those department stores without someone to hold my hand.’
‘Well, it went okay.’
This was the debriefing. When Matt had called her on her mobile, to tell her that he would expect daily reports of progress, she had been at a loss for words. But expect it he did. In his office. Six sharp, after she had handed over her charge to Betsy, the girl who came in to prepare the evening meal.
The very same car that had collected her in the morning had duly collected her from his apartment and delivered her, like a parcel, to his offices, which occupied some prime real estate in downtown Manhattan.
Having seen where he lived, Tess had been more blasé about where he worked. She’d been swept up twenty-eight storeys and hadn’t been surprised to find that his office occupied half of the entire floor, with its own sitting room, meeting room, and a massive outer office with chairs and plants, where a middle-aged woman had been busy packing up to go home.
‘Define okay.’ He leaned back into his leather chair and folded his hands behind his head. ‘Take a seat.’
He could hardly believe how easily and effortlessly she had managed to break the ice with Samantha. Compared to the other nannies he had hired, who had smiled stiffly and tried to shake hands and had thereby seemed