Jealousy & a Jewelled Proposition Read online

  Matt fielded her pointed glare. “How long?”

  “What?”

  “How long is your mother going to be in Wanganui?”

  “We don’t know yet. Aunty Jane is quite a bit older than Mum, and rather frail. Hopefully we’ll get a better idea in a few days.”

  “A few days.” Matt repeated the words flatly. He could cope with a few days.

  “Well, we’ll know in a few days. It could be longer.” She put up one hand to stifle a yawn. “Before I go, there’s something else I need to talk to you about.”

  “Can’t it wait?”

  “Not this, no.” She fidgeted slightly, pulling her bottle-green sweatshirt down over her hips and smoothing the fabric.

  The movement drew his attention to the tiny span of her waist and the generous flare of her hips. She was dynamite in a tiny package, all right. A forbidden package, he reminded himself sternly. As forbidden now as she’d been the night of her high school graduation ball. But that hadn’t stopped you then, a cold, sly voice reminded him.

  “What is it?” he snapped, irritated by his own inability to tamp down the curl of desire that snaked through his body at her mere presence.

  “I’m worried about Blake.” She hesitated, chewing slightly on her lower lip, clearly reluctant to continue.

  “Worried? In what way exactly? Is he ill?” His hand clenched around the baby monitor; the plastic casing squeaked in protest.

  “No, he’s fine. He’s over that cold from last week. Look, I really don’t know how to put this any other way so I’ll just come straight out with it. You have to make more of an effort to spend more time at home with him.”

  “I’m doing what I can,” Matt ground out.

  “It’s not enough. He’s become too attached to me of late. Surely you’ve noticed.”

  He had noticed, and it had hurt that when Blake had taken a tumble off his little bike on the back patio the other day, he’d run straight past Matt and into Rachel’s comforting arms.

  “It’s only to be expected. He’s lost his mother and I’ve had to be away a lot lately. He’ll come right.” They all would, in time.

  “Matt, he’s started to call me Mummy.”

  The words sank in with the weight of a sinking destroyer.

  “He what? And you’re letting him?”

  “Of course not! I correct him all the time but he’s a stubborn tyke, you know that. He’s just like you in that respect.”

  In that respect, yes, but in others? Blake’s colouring was nothing like Matt’s own sandy-blond hair and grey eyes. Blake’s hair was dark, almost black, his eyes green. He looks like a Blackstone. Matt pushed the errant thought from his mind before it could take a stronger hold.

  “It’ll just be a phase he’s going through,” he managed to say.

  “I think it’s more than that. He needs some stability in his life. With Marise gone and you overseas so often, he’s almost afraid to trust an adult. Next to Mum, who doesn’t cover all his day-to-day care, I’m his only constant.” She sighed. “Look, I know it’s been hard on you, losing Marise and all the hideous media intrusion, but you have to think of Blake. He’s your son. You have to be there for him.”

  Matt took a step back. She may have grown up here but she’d been gone for ten years. She had no idea how hard things had been and had no right to comment on them. And now she was his employee. A fact it would do to remind her of.

  “Matt, I’m sorry, but you’re going to have to do something. I can’t stay here forever. You know when I took this job on it was supposed to be temporary—only through December until Marise returned from Australia. My agency in London is pressuring me to take up a new permanent assignment. With Blake being so attached to me the way he is right now, it will destroy him when I have to go.”

  Go? She couldn’t leave. Not now. Not when he was juggling so many metaphorical balls right now. Aside from being on the verge of taking control of Blackstone Diamonds, he had the signature range launch coming up, and then there was the matter of tracking down the last of the missing Blackstone Rose diamonds. His plans weighed on his unstinting concentration. Concentration he couldn’t afford to have broken by any further disruption to Blake’s routine. As much as it tormented him to have her there—a constant reminder of the one time he’d overstepped the mark between chivalry and temptation—she had to stay.

  Rachel watched as Matt absorbed her news. Short of battering him over the head with an encyclopaedia on paediatric psychiatry, she had no idea of how to get through to him. Blake needed his daddy now more than ever before, yet Matt remained so distant. It was crucifying to watch them and be helpless to do anything about it. When Blake had called her Mummy as she’d picked him up from his exclusive private preschool earlier that afternoon, she knew it was past time to swallow her fears and stand up to Matt Hammond. He’d been through the wringer these past few months with Marise’s death and the subsequent media circus that still refused to end, but the man had to take responsibility for his little boy. Only he could provide the stability Blake so desperately craved.

  “You can’t go. I need you.” His voice was hard, flat, as if he was holding on to his temper by a thread.

  “We both know that’s not true.” She managed to keep her voice level, belying the tightly coiled tension in her body, even as his words scored a line across her heart. He couldn’t even bear to be in the same room with her for five minutes longer than absolutely necessary. Matt Hammond and his unstinting sense of honour would go to hell and back before he needed her in the way she’d always dreamed of. She’d waited what felt like a lifetime to hear those words from him, but now that he’d actually given them voice they sounded painfully hollow. “If anything, having me here for Blake has made you distance yourself from him even more.”

  His eyebrows drew together ever so slightly at her words. She’d managed to score a definite hit. Ever since the night of her graduation dance he’d been totally and utterly aloof with her, hiding behind some cloak of misplaced honour. As if he’d taken advantage of her that night, instead of the other way around. In her youthful foolishness she’d thought their lovemaking would have brought them closer, not driven them eternally apart. That distance between them had made their current situation increasingly difficult, at a time when his son needed all the stability he could get.

  “I have a business to run. I can’t be home all day every day. Correct me if I’m wrong but you are a nanny, aren’t you? That is why I hired you when Marise went to Australia.” His grey eyes resembled cold, dark slate, the only visible indicator that she was getting under his skin.

  “As a last resort only. Be honest with yourself, even if you can’t be honest with me. If I hadn’t been the only person you’d been able to get hold of at Christmas, you would never have hired me. I told you at the time it was a stopgap only. I have my own commitments in the UK that I need to meet.”

  Rachel shoved her hands in her jeans pockets to hide the trembling that would give away how upset she was. For Blake’s sake, she couldn’t afford to give an inch on this issue.

  “Commitments? A boyfriend who’s getting tired of waiting for you to come back perhaps?”

  “Not that it’s your business, but no.”

  “I’ll double what I’m paying you to make up for the inconvenience. I need you to put your plans on hold, at least until your mother returns.”

  “Matt, you can’t throw money at this problem and hope it will go away!” Rachel wanted to stamp her feet in frustration. “He needs you.”

  “I know exactly what my son needs and I’ll make sure he gets it. Do I have your agreement to stay on?”

  He had her in a corner. She wouldn’t leave in the lurch the beautiful child sleeping upstairs. Despite how she’d grown to love him in his own right, he was Matt Hammond’s son, and for that reason alone she’d walk over broken glass to protect him.

  “Yes. I’ll stay. But I’m giving you fair notice. When Mum gets back from Wanganui I’ll be returning
to the UK.”

  He gave a sharp nod in acknowledgement. “If there’s nothing else to discuss, I’ll see you in the morning.”

  Rachel nodded and turned to leave, determined to put some distance between them before her anger and frustration found a new vent. His hand on her shoulder halted her in her tracks, the heat and strength of his fingers imprinting her skin beneath the thickness of her fleecy sweatshirt. Instantly her body leaped to life, her senses attuned to his touch, her heart craving more.

  “Rachel?”

  “What?”

  “Thank you.”

  Her eyes were drawn to his sensuously full lower lip as he said the words. A faint shadow of dark-blond bristles marked his jawline, throwing his skin into relief and accentuating how pale and drawn his features were. It occurred to Rachel with renewed understanding how hard he must be fighting to keep his life together—both on a family level and on a business one. She knew only too well what he’d been struggling with.

  Lost for words, she could only nod, and pulled from his grasp and his overwhelming presence before she did anything stupid. Like try to offer him comfort. To offer him herself.

  Two

  The next morning dawned with one of those impossibly clear blue sky days that you only get in winter. A vapour trail from a passing aircraft streaked a straight line of white across the azure background as Rachel loaded her car with a small suitcase packed with her limited winter wardrobe. Most of the summer clothing she’d brought with her to New Zealand she’d left behind in the wardrobe. After all, she’d only come to New Zealand at Christmas to spend a few weeks with her mother. She hadn’t expected to stay on beyond the warm, sticky Auckland summer, nor had she expected to end up working for Matt Hammond.

  When Matt had initially approached her and asked if she could help with Blake when Marise had gone to Melbourne to attend her dying mother, Rachel hadn’t spared a thought. Her answer was an instant and irrevocable yes born of sympathy. As much as she’d never warmed to Marise, she couldn’t refuse to help under such sad circumstances. But when Marise had continued to stay away after her mother’s death, and her name had subsequently been linked in the press with Howard Blackstone’s, Rachel’s sympathy had been firmly quashed.

  She couldn’t understand why the woman chose to stay away from her husband and little boy at Christmas. Even if she had been having an affair with Howard Blackstone, as the media seemed intent on proving, how could she have rejected her son like that? Especially when he was old enough to understand the holiday and all it entailed.

  Marise had never been right for Matt. From what Rachel had seen on her infrequent and brief visits home, she was nothing but a controlling and calculating woman who cared for little but lifestyle and money. Lots of it. There’d always been something inherently unsettled in Marise’s nature, as if she wanted more, felt as if she was due more somehow. For the life of her, Rachel couldn’t understand why Marise couldn’t have tried to be happy with Matt. The Hammond wealth wasn’t, quite possibly, on a par with the Blackstones’, but it wasn’t far off it.

  And then, of course, there was Matt himself. Rachel felt the familiar tug of longing from deep within. Marise had been a fool, and she certainly hadn’t deserved a man like Matt.

  Rachel slammed shut the hatch of her mother’s car with a satisfying bang and climbed into the driver’s seat. As she drove from the apartment complex in Takapuna towards the historic township of Devonport, she mulled over her discussion with Matt last night.

  It hadn’t exactly gone as planned. For a start, she hadn’t expected to fall asleep while waiting for him, but then he’d been a lot later than she’d anticipated and her day with Blake had been trying on many levels. The boy had been overexcited at the prospect of his daddy coming home from yet another trip. When his bedtime had passed and there’d still been no sign of Matt, he’d thrown a tantrum of epic proportions, with behaviour quite unlike his usual bright and biddable nature. The gradual change in Blake over the past couple of months had begun to give Rachel cause for genuine concern, and she knew she was right to have brought her fears to Matt’s attention. How he handled it was another matter.

  The trip to Devonport was always a pleasure. Rachel had loved growing up in this bustling and interesting suburb. Her dad was a naval officer at the nearby base, and with his long periods away, her mum’s job with the Hammonds had meant she’d spent a lot of time in their spacious and elegant family home nestled on the side of North Head, facing across the harbour towards Auckland city itself.

  As she let herself into the house her ears were assaulted by Blake’s excited squeal as he tore through the downstairs wearing nothing but a towel. He launched himself straight at Rachel, forcing her to drop her handbag and suitcase at her feet to catch him midair.

  “Hey, you! Stop! Come back here.”

  Matt followed down the hallway, his longer legs eating up the distance before he came to an abrupt halt within a metre of her. Rachel clutched her giggling charge a little tighter, anything to hide the sudden flare of desire that swept through her body at Matt’s appearance.

  His dark-blond hair was in disarray, as if he’d just towelled himself dry, but that wasn’t all that was in disarray. The towel he’d knotted at his waist had started to slip, exposing the hard, lean lines of his hip and the tapering ‘V’ of his groin. With a monumental effort Rachel dragged her eyes up towards his face, skimming ever so swiftly over his tanned, ridged abdomen and muscled chest.

  Her heart skittered against her ribs. This man was nothing like the coldly formal businessman who’d arrived home so late last night. No, the guy standing before her was as different as a diamond from an emerald, and she wanted him just as much.

  “Come here, you,” Matt mock-growled, reaching for his son. “You have to shower before preschool. We made a deal, remember?”

  Blake shrieked again and turned his face into the curve of Rachel’s neck, his little body shivering with delight at the game.

  “I’ll get him ready if you like,” she offered, doing her best to maintain eye contact with the man she’d willingly given her innocence to eleven years ago. The man who stood at dire risk of losing the only covering on his delectable body.

  “I’ll do it.”

  There was an edge to his voice that gave her no recourse. Instead she stood there as his strong arms reached out and he plucked his giggling, wriggling son from her arms.

  “You might like to—” Rachel started. Too late, the towel at Matt’s hips slid away. She caught a glimpse of untanned flesh, a thatch of dark hair, before she tilted her gaze towards the ceiling. “Grab your towel,” she finished lamely, her cheeks flaming hot.

  Blake was in total paroxysms.

  “You little stinker, look what you’ve done.” Matt was clearly trying to hold back his own laughter.

  In her peripheral vision Rachel saw him bend at the knee and scoop up the towel, before spinning around to go back the way he and Blake had come. It said a lot for his self-possession that he slung the towel across his shoulder, letting it drape down his back to almost cover his taut backside, instead of putting Blake down and re-affixing it to his waist.

  The view of the ceiling was no contest against the long, strong muscles of his legs and his now semibare back as he marched down the hall. Rachel drank her fill of the vision, letting her eyes caress the length of his frame. A tug of longing struck deep inside. The whole exchange had taken little more than two minutes but it had left her shaking. Her fingers itched to trace those strong, lean muscles and intriguing indentations that made his masculine frame so incredibly beautiful.

  She shook her head slightly to clear the mental image of doing just that. People like Matt Hammond didn’t dally with the staff—he’d made that patently clear eleven years ago. Once had been a mistake. A mistake he had no intention of repeating.

  She was his son’s nanny. No more, no less.

  As much as it hurt her to admit it, that would never change. And aside from what her lengt
h of stay was doing to Blake, it was also slowly killing her inside. You couldn’t love a man for most of your life and not be affected when he refused to acknowledge you existed as a desirable woman.

  Rachel collected her belongings and trudged upstairs, choosing the guest room closest to Blake’s. She dropped her bags on the bed, deciding to unpack later, and went back down to the kitchen to put on a carafe of coffee, then started to make French toast, Blake’s favourite. As she went through the motions, she realised she’d better start making some notes for her replacement as to Blake’s likes and dislikes. For the most part he was easy to please and ate his vegetables with little coercion, but he had his favourite meals. With the first slices of bread sizzling in the pan she got Blake’s backpack ready for preschool.

  The phone rang just as she was putting the second batch into the pan.

  “Hammond residence,” she answered.

  “This is Quinn Everard.” The slightly accented male voice had a smooth, soft tone. “Could I speak to Matt Hammond?”

  “I’m sorry, Mr Hammond can’t come to the phone at present. Can I get him to call you back?”

  Everard rattled off an Australian-based phone number before thanking her and hanging up with “Please get him to call me as soon as possible.”

  By the time she’d sprinkled cinnamon sugar over the French toast and put two servings onto plates in the oven, Matt and Blake had come through.

  “Something smells great,” Matt said.

  “Yay, French toast!” Blake clambered onto the booster seat on his kitchen chair and waited expectantly for his plate.

  Rachel slid the plate onto the place mat in front of him. “Be careful. It’s hot,” she admonished as the little boy snatched up the first slice in his little fingers. She took the second plate from the oven and laid it at the second place setting at the table.

  “Here, this is for you,” she said to Matt. “Take a seat and I’ll get your coffee.”

  “You don’t need to wait on me, Rachel. Blake’s your charge. Not me.”