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Hewouldn’t want someone like him to date a sister-in-law of his either.
‘Fair enough. So what do you want me to do?’
‘I want to know if she isgenuine, that her character is... It just so happens that you are actually in the perfect position toobserveher, Zac.’
Zac smiled a little to himself at the‘observe’that carried the heavy message:Look, don’t touch.Marco need not have worried. There were enough women out there without pursuing one who came with complications. ‘I don’t quite see how.’
‘She works for you.’
The pen that Zac had been rotating through his long fingers during the conversation slipped to the car’s carpeted floor. ‘You sure about that?’ Redheads did stand out, so if they were identical he would have remembered a twin of Kate Zanetti.
‘Yes, she’s a nursery nurse in one of your staff crèches. I just thought perhaps you couldobserve? Put some feelers out, see what her reputation in the workplace is. Is she reliable? You know the sort of thing—could she make Kate—’
‘Unhappy?’The interruption seemed a safe bet. These days his wife’s happiness seemed to be Marco’s main priority. Was she his? For his friend’s sake, Zac hoped so.
‘Exactly, be inventive.’
‘I can be inventive, certainly—nursery nurse...like a nanny, right...?’ Zac said slowly.
‘I suppose so.’
‘Leave it to me.’
‘Thanks, Zac.’
‘No problem. Give my love to Kate.’
Zac ended the call, a smile on his lips as he started up the almost silent engine. Kill two birds with one stone—so long as there was no sex involved he doubted Marco would care much about his methods.
He needed childcare and Marco needed a character assessment. The two needs meshed nicely.
CHAPTER TWO
‘ROSE!’
Rose, who was shrugging an oversized denim jacket on as she walked along the corridor, was tempted to pretend she hadn’t heard...but her conscience refused to take a day off.
‘Hi, Jac,’ she said as her immediate superior in the nursery, seven months pregnant, waddled towards her. If this was about an extra shift, she’d say no, though the dark shadows under Jac’s eyes did make her determination waver.
The fact was, of course, that in the end she wouldn’t. Rose recognised this inability to say no as one of her character flaws, she simply couldn’t, and when it came to resisting a hard-luck story she was toast.
On the plus side, extra hours meant a bigger pay packet and there was no pretending that wouldn’t be useful, because she no longer had the security of her small nest egg for emergencies.
Not since Dad had turned up out of the blue saying he owed some people money and they wereseriouspeople.
Again, even though the story was probably fiction, she couldn’t take the risk. He was her dad. When had she realised that with her dad the line between fiction and fact was blurred?
Looking into his eyes before he’d buried his face in his hands in an attitude of despair, she’d seen only utter sincerity, which meant little. He was so good at rearranging the truth that she suspected he believed his own lies most of the time—but he was her dad so she could never say no.
She’d nursed her mug of tea, he’d refused to join her, and opted for the dregs of her cooking brandy while telling her she was a good girl. She had handed over her savings knowing that, despite his promise to pay her back, she wouldn’t be seeing the money again.
He might have lost a little hair, but he’d not lostit, she had realised, watching sadly from her window as her still handsome dad had crossed the street, his slumped shoulders squaring the farther away he got and the swagger in his step getting more pronounced.
She hadn’t known whether to laugh or cry as he’d morphed into a dapper, stylishly dressed figure with a spring in his step and a cheque in his pocket. Ever the prince charming when there was someone to impress—in this instance the smartly dressed woman with long legs exiting a convertible—he gallantly offered an elderly lady his arm to cross the busy road.
The tableau had stayed with her. It encapsulated her dad—he was never going to change, which left the option ofherchanging... It sounded so simple but changing the habit of a lifetime was not easy.
Her dad was the reason that she was never taken in by charismatic men. The more good-looking or charming they appeared, the wider the berth she gave them. It gave her an advantage over the women who had their hearts broken or their bank accounts emptied by good-looking charmers—for that she had her dad to thank.
