The Heart of Deception

Chapter 2

The baby was crying when Lauren stepped into the house. Diane had told her she had a housekeeper and a live-in nanny, so she tried to ignore it as she followed the mental mud-map of the house Diane had made her study.

Thankfully, she didn’t get lost and easily found her room. It wasn’t quite what she thought Diane would have chosen. In fact, it was rather the kind of room she would have preferred herself.

“I think I’m going to like it here,” she found herself singing, as she gazed at the heavy teak four-poster bed, with its carved headboard and cream mosquito nets draped from ceiling to floor. The bedding matched the heavy curtains that hung the full length of the large glass sliding doors leading out onto the veranda. They were emblazoned with an Aztec design in rust, gold, wine-red, brown and a rich purple, with contrasting flashes of rich cream and black.

The en-suite bathroom was brightly illuminated and fully tiled in the same colour scheme, with a similar Aztec finish adorning the spa bath, shower, vanity unit, and mirror. The floor had cool, textured tiles of distinct cream and black, while the taps and shower recess, in fact, all the bathroom accessories were a magnificent gold.

Oh hell! This is Kurt’s room! It has to be! This décor’s definitely not up Diane’s alley. Lauren hurriedly flung open the walk-in wardrobe. Relief washed over her when she found only her sister's clothing hanging there.

Down the passage the baby was still crying. Only now, she sounded quite desperate. Lauren couldn’t stand to hear any child in distress and followed the noise, until she found herself in a very clinical looking mint green and white nursery. In a large cot at the far end of the room she found a screaming bundle of blankets. The screwed up little red face was all she could see of her niece.

“What kind of idiot wraps a child up like this when it’s so warm?” muttered Lauren irritably.

She deftly removed the layers of blankets to reveal a small sweaty body, clothed in an all-in-one towelling suit which soon joined the pile that had served as a cocoon. Now dressed only in a singlet and nappy, Jessica stopped crying. The baby looked up with huge brown eyes that made Lauren’s heart skip a beat.

She’d cared for many babies and children over the last few years, but she'd never before experienced the uncanny sensation of irrational affection now rushing through her. She picked the infant up and held her close until they were staring into each other's eyes.

“You look like something I’d produce, Sweetheart,” Lauren told her laughingly, with tears in her eyes, kissing the familiar looking baby on her forehead. “If only your Granddad could see you. He would love you to bits.”

Diane was right, she thought with a sigh. Loving this little bundle is going to be very easy. But just how easy will it be to give her up after pretending to be her mother for three months?

Lauren gazed down with fascination at the baby while her fingers played with the damp auburn curls resting in the crook of her arm. She rocked Jessica to sleep, singing a lullaby her father sang for her when she was small. The big brown eyes blinked a few times more before finally closing. Long, dark eyelashes lay against her now pale cheeks as she turned her head to snuggle closer to her aunt’s breast. Lauren sighed as a pleasurable maternal rush invaded every corner of her being.

She was suddenly glad she’d not reneged on her promise to Diane.

“Mrs. Palmer!” a hard female voice, with a neutral English accent, broke through her dream-like state.

Turning around, Lauren found herself facing a stout, middle-aged woman who had about as much appeal as a piranha.

“When you hired me, it was on the understanding that the child’s routine would be as I dictate it. After all I am the one experienced in child care. It does a child no good at all if it is picked up and carried about out of its routine.”