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The Baby Surprise: Juggling Briefcase & Baby
Barbara McMahon

Jackie Braun

Jessica Hart


JUGGLING BRIEFCASE & BABYSpending a weekend working with Romy, the only woman ever to reach behind his flawless façade, has Lex nervous. And Romy is coming with her baby! But despite everything, Lex may just be tempted to strike up a very personal business deal…ADOPTED: FAMILY IN A MILLIONZack Morgan needs to know his little boy is OK, so he tracks down the adoptive parents. But when he finds his son and single mum Susan, his life turns upside down. He’s finally found the family of his dreams – only they have no idea who he really is…CONFIDENTIAL: EXPECTING!Journalist Mallory Stevens’ instructions are clear: expose the secrets of elusive radio talk-show host Logan Bartholomew. Not fall in love with him! As their relationship goes off the record, Mallory is stunned to discover she’s carrying her own little secret!









The Baby Surprise

Juggling Briefcase & Baby

Jessica Hart

Adopted: Family In A Million

Barbara McMahon

Confidential: Expecting!

Jackie Braun







www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)



Juggling Briefcase & Baby


JESSICA HART was born in West Africa, and has suffered from itchy feet ever since, travelling and working around the world in a wide variety of interesting but very lowly jobs, all of which have provided inspiration on which to draw when it comes to the settings and plots of her stories. Now she lives a rather more settled existence in York, where she has been able to pursue her interest in history, although she still yearns sometimes for wider horizons. If you’d like to know more about Jessica, visit her website: www.jessicahart.co.uk (http://www.jessicahart.co.uk).




CHAPTER ONE


LEX drummed his fingers on the table and tried to tell himself that the uneasy churning in his gut was due to one too many cups of coffee that morning. He was Alexander Gibson, Chief Executive of Gibson & Grieve, one of the most popular and prestigious supermarket chains in the country, and a man renowned for his cool detachment.

A man like him didn’t get nervous.

He wasn’t nervous, Lex insisted to himself. He had been sitting on this damned plane for over an hour now, and if he had to commit himself to flying at thirty thousand feet in little more than a tin can he’d just as soon get it over with, that was all.

See, he wasn’t nervous, he was impatient.

Lex scowled at the sleety rain streaking the cabin windows, and then stiffened as he caught sight of a limousine speeding across the tarmac towards the plane. His drumming fingers stilled and the churning that wasn’t nerves jerked his entrails into a knot so tight that it was suddenly hard to breathe.

She was here.

Very carefully, Lex flexed his fingers and set them flat on the table in front of him while he steadied his breathing.

He wasn’t nervous.

Lex Gibson was never nervous.

It was just that the steel band that had been locked around his chest for the past twelve years had been steadily tightening ever since he had heard that Romy was back in the country.

It had notched tighter when Phin had casually announced that he had offered her a job in Acquisitions.

And tighter still when Tim Banks, Director of Acquisitions, had rung that morning to explain that a family crisis meant that he would have to miss accompanying Lex on the most important deal of his life.

‘But I’ve arranged for Romy Morrison to go with you instead,’ Tim had said. ‘She’s been working with me on the negotiations, and has built up an excellent rapport with Willie Grant himself. I know how important this meeting is, Lex, and I wouldn’t suggest her unless I was sure she was the best. I’ve sent a car to pick her up, and she’ll be with you as soon as possible.’

And now here she was, and the steel band was clamped so painfully around his lungs that it hurt to breathe. Lex forced his attention back to the email he had been reading, but the screen kept blurring in front of his eyes. It would be fine. Romy was an employee, nothing more.

He wanted this deal with Grant more than he had ever wanted anything else and if Romy could help him persuade Grant to sign, that was all that mattered. The sooner she got on this plane, the sooner they could get the deal done.

He was impatient. That was all.

The car had barely stopped by the steps of the executive jet before Phil, the driver, was out and holding open the door for Romy.

‘Mr Gibson doesn’t like to be kept waiting,’ he had said anxiously, watching Romy run around the flat, frantically ticking off items on a mental list.

‘Nappies…travelling cot…high chair… oh, God, the car seat! Yes, I know he’s been waiting an hour already…I’m coming, I’m coming…’

Travelling with Freya was nerve-racking at the best of times, and Romy had been so flustered by the thought of coming face to face with Lex again that she had forgotten first the pushchair and then the changing mat, until Phil, forced to turn round and drive back to the flat twice, was beside himself.

He was clearly terrified of Lex. Almost everyone who worked for Gibson & Grieve found their chief executive intimidating, to say the least.

Romy wasn’t terrified, or even intimidated. But she was very nervous about coming face to face with him all the same. Sitting alone in the back of the limousine as they crawled through the rush-hour traffic, she had swung wildly between wondering what else she had left behind, and wondering what she would say when she saw Lex again.

What she would feel.

Best not to feel anything, Romy had decided. Lex clearly wanted nothing to do with her. He had made no effort to talk to her at Phin’s wedding, and not once in the six months she had been working for Gibson & Grieve had he found an excuse to speak to her.

Perhaps she could have found an excuse to talk to him, Romy acknowledged, but what could she have said?

I’ve never forgotten you.

Sometimes I think about your mouth, and it feels as if you’ve laid a warm hand on my back, making me clench and shiver.

Have you ever thought about me?

No, she definitely couldn’t have asked that.

It was all so long ago now. Twelve years ago. Romy looked out of the window and sighed. She was thirty now, and a mother, and Lex was her boss, not her lover. You didn’t worry about how you felt about your boss. You just did your job.

So that was what she would do.

Romy glanced doubtfully down at her daughter. It wasn’t going to be easy to be coolly professional with Freya in tow, but she would manage it.

Somehow.

Phil already had the boot open and was starting to unload all Freya’s stuff, while the pilot, spotting their arrival, set the engines whining impatiently. The message was clear: Alexander Gibson was waiting to go.

Cravenly, Romy wished she could stay in the car, but then she remembered the desperation in Tim’s voice.

‘Please, Romy,’ he had begged. ‘Sam needs me, but Lex has got to have someone from the team with him when he meets Grant, too. If we let him down on this one, I don’t know what he’ll do, but it won’t be pleasant.’

No one else would do, Tim had said, and in the end Romy had given in. She owed Tim too much to let him down when he needed her most. So she scrambled awkwardly out of the car, Freya in one arm and her laptop in the other, and, putting her head down against the rain, she ran up the steps to the plane.

A flight attendant wearing a badge that read ‘Nicola’ was waiting to greet her at the cabin door, and, in the face of her perfectly groomed appearance, Romy found herself hesitating. It had been such a rush to get ready that she hadn’t had time to wash her hair, put on any make-up, or do more than throw on some clothes, and now she was going to have to face Lex looking a complete mess.

Too bad, she told herself, lifting her chin. He was lucky she was here at all.

Taking a deep breath, she smiled in response to Nicola’s greeting, hoisted Freya higher on her hip and ducked into the cabin.

The plane was narrow but luxuriously fitted-out. It had squashy leather seats, a plush carpet, glossy wooden trim everywhere. But Romy didn’t notice any of it.

Lex sat, halfway down the cabin, a laptop open on the table in front of him, looking up over his glasses, and as their eyes met it seemed to Romy that everything stilled. Behind her, Phil and Nicola had paused, while the sounds of the airport faded abruptly, until the whine of the engines, the rumble and scream of planes taking off and landing, the crackle of the radio as the pilot checked in with the control tower, were all strangely muted and there was only the warm weight of Freya in her arms and the man whose pale grey eyes set her heart thudding painfully in her throat.

‘Hello, Lex,’ she managed, hoping that he would blame her dash up the steps for the breathless note in her voice.

‘Romy.’

Lex didn’t even see the baby at first. His first reaction was one of relief, so sharp it was almost painful. She wasn’t as beautiful as he’d remembered. Oh, it was unmistakably Romy, with that tumble of dark hair and those huge dark eyes, but the enchanting, passionate girl he’d fallen so disastrously in love with had gone. The years had blurred the pure lines of her face and faded the once gorgeous bloom of youth and she was just a dishevelled young woman with a tired face and a baby in her arms.

Thank God, thought Lex, feeling the band around his heart ease very slightly.

There was a beat, and then his mind caught up with his eyes, in a double take so startled that it would have been comical if Lex had felt anything like laughing, which he didn’t.

With a what in her arms? A baby?

Romy’s baby. Another man’s baby. The steel band contracted once more.

His brows snapped together. ‘What,’ he demanded, ‘is that baby doing here?’

‘This is Freya.’ Romy put up her chin at his tone. Was that really all he had to say, after twelve years?

She was furious. With Lex, for daring to sit there, looking like that. Looking as if he had never kissed her, as if he had never made her senses snarl with the touch of his hand. As if he had never loved her.

With herself, for being so bitterly disappointed.

What had she expected, after all? That he would sweep her back into his arms? That the heat would still crackle between them, after twelve long years?

Fool.

‘I explained to Tim that I would have to bring her with me,’ she said in a voice quite as cold as Lex’s. She could do remote and chilly just as well as he could. ‘Didn’t he tell you?’

‘What?’

‘Tim said he would clear it with Willie Grant’s people.’

Lex wasn’t listening. Behind Romy, he could see the driver unloading pushchairs and carry cots and God only knew what else into the cabin. ‘What the hell is going on? You,’ he snapped at Phil, who froze guiltily. ‘Take all that stuff off right now!’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Just a minute,’ said Romy clearly, advancing down the cabin towards Lex. ‘Freya needs all that.’

Lex snatched off his glasses. ‘For God’s sake, Romy, you’re not seriously proposing to bring a baby along on a business trip?’

‘I don’t have a choice. I told Tim all this, and he assured me that it wouldn’t be a problem.’

‘No problem?’ he echoed in disbelief. ‘We’re on the verge of negotiating a major deal with a difficult client and you don’t think it’s a problem to turn up with a baby in tow? We’ll look totally unprofessional! It’s out of the question,’ he said with finality.

Romy was strongly tempted to turn on her heel and walk out, but if she did that, what would happen to Tim, and the deal the whole team had worked so hard on?

Drawing a breath, she struggled to keep her temper under control. ‘I was under the impression that you wanted someone from Acquisitions to accompany you?’

‘I do want you,’ said Lex, and for one horrible moment the words seemed to jangle in the air, a bitter parody of the ones he had once murmured against her skin.

I love you. I want you. I need you.

He folded the glasses he wore when working at a computer and put them in the breast pocket of his shirt. ‘I just don’t want a baby.’

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Romy, ‘but you can’t have me without her. What do you want me to do, leave her on the tarmac?’

Lex scowled. ‘Haven’t you got…I don’t know…childcare or something? What do you do when you’re at work? Or is Acquisitions doubling as a nursery these days?’

Romy set her teeth at the sardonic note in his voice. ‘She goes to the crèche at the office.’

‘There’s a crèche?’

‘Yes, there’s a crèche,’ she said, holding onto her temper with difficulty.

‘One of Phin’s projects, I suppose.’ Lex looked disapproving. His brother had reluctantly joined the company after their father’s stroke, and Lex had put him in charge of staff development. It was meant to be a token position, but he was always coming across initiatives in unlikely places nowadays.

‘I believe so,’ said Romy in a cool voice. ‘It’s one of the reasons Gibson & Grieve is such a popular place to work.’

‘Well, then, why can’t the baby go there?’

‘Because we’re going to be away overnight, and the crèche closes at six. I don’t know anyone else I can leave her with, especially not at this short notice. Tim only rang a couple of hours ago. I explained all this.’

Freya was getting heavy, and Romy shifted her to the other hip as she glared at Lex in frustration. Part of her was almost glad to find Lex so unreasonable. It made it easier to pretend that he was just a difficult boss.

Easier to forget how warm his hands had been, how sure his lips. How a rare smile would illuminate that austere face and warm the cool grey eyes.

‘I don’t think you quite realise how difficult it has been for me to get here this morning,’ she went on crisply. ‘I’m here because Tim seemed to think that it was important, but if you’d rather go on your own, that’s fine by me.’

A muscle was working in Lex’s cheek. ‘It is important. I need someone who’s up to speed on the details of the acquisition.’

‘Then perhaps you would prefer to rearrange?’ she suggested, and Lex made an irritable gesture.

‘No, we’re going today. I understand from Tim that Grant’s not that keen on the deal, and it’s taken long enough to get him to see me. If we start messing around and changing dates, it could jeopardise the whole deal and I don’t want to do that. We’ve been working on this too long to throw it away now.’

Romy said nothing.

Lex glared at her. There was only one choice, and they both knew it.

‘Oh, for God’s sake, bring all that stuff back,’ he snapped at Phil, who exchanged a look with Nicola and went back down the steps into the rain to collect everything that he’d just stashed back in the boot of the car. ‘Tell the pilot we’re ready to go as soon as you’re clear. We’ve wasted enough time this morning.’

Annoyed, he smacked the lid of his computer down and directed another irritable look at Romy. ‘You’d better sit down,’ he said, pointing at the seat opposite him. ‘And the baby.’

‘Freya,’ said Romy, not moving.

‘What?’

‘Her name’s Freya.’

Her chin was up, and the dark eyes looked directly back into his.

And Lex felt the world shift around him, just as it had done all those years ago. She was closer now, close enough for him to see the fine lines starring her eyes, and he struggled to hold onto his conviction that she was just tired and untidy and nothing special.

But his gaze kept catching on the lovely curve of her mouth, and when he looked back at her he had the horribly familiar sensation of falling into those eyes. Lex had never understood how so rich and dark a brown could be so luminous. He wasn’t a fanciful man, but it had always seemed to him as if light glowed in their depths, warming and beckoning.

How could he have thought for a moment that she wasn’t as beautiful as ever?

Twelve years ago, he had fallen into those eyes, heedless of the consequences. He had lowered his guard and made himself vulnerable, and there was no way he was going through that again.

Lex willed himself not to look away, but he had himself back under control. He could do this. All he had to do was think about the deal. That was all that mattered now, and the fact was that he needed Romy. Without Tim Banks, she was his connection to Willie Grant, and he wouldn’t put it past her to take the wretched baby and walk off the plane. She always had been stubborn.

‘Very well,’ he said tightly. ‘You and Freya had better sit down.’

‘Thank you,’ said Romy, and sat down opposite him, calmly buckling her seat belt and settling the baby—Freya—on her lap.

Lex’s jaw worked as he regarded her with a kind of baffled resentment. She was mighty cool considering that he was Chief Executive and she was just a temporary employee, and a far from senior one at that.

This was all Phin’s fault.

Twelve years. That was how long he had spent trying to forget Romy, and the moment he laid eyes on her again he knew he had been wasting his time. He’d known she was back in the country. He’d known she had a baby. His mother had heard it from Romy’s mother and had sucked in her breath disapprovingly at the thought of her god-daughter as a single mother.

‘Well, that’ll bring Romy home,’ she had said.

And it had.

He had even known Romy would be at Phin’s wedding. He’d thought he had braced himself to meet her again, but when the organ had struck up and he had turned with Phin to watch Summer walking up the aisle, all he had seen was Romy, sitting several rows behind, and his heart had crumpled at the sight of her. Romy, with her dark, beautiful eyes and the mouth that had haunted his memory for so many years. Romy, who had loved another man and had a baby to show for it.

Lex had avoided her at the reception, and despised himself for it. He was Chief Executive of the fastest-growing supermarket chain in England and Wales. He didn’t care about anything but the success of Gibson & Grieve. He had no trouble finding a woman if he wanted one. So he should have been able to greet Romy casually and show her that he realised her decision had been the right one.

Because of course it was. She had been far too young to marry. He was eight years older than her, much too serious to manage all that passion and spirit. He would have crushed her, or she would have crushed him, and left him anyway. The only sensible part of the whole affair was their pact to tell no one else.

So there should have been no problem about meeting her again. But every time he told himself he would go over and say hello there had been someone with her and she had been laughing and waving her arms around so that the collection of bangles she always wore chinked against each other. Or she had been lifting her hand to push the hair away from her neck and he had been gripped by the memory of how soft and silky it had felt twined around his fingers.

And with that memory had come a flood of others that he had failed to forget: the scent of her skin, the husky laugh, the curve of her shoulder and pulse that beat in the base of her throat. That stubborn tilt of her jaw. That smile, the way she had pulled him down to her and made the world go away.

And then Phin was there, clapping him on the shoulder, telling him, almost as an aside, that he had offered Romy a job in Acquisitions.

‘What? Why?’

‘Because she needs a job,’ his brother told him. ‘She’s got a baby to support, and she’s having trouble finding work. She’s been working overseas and it’s hard to get a job when you’ve got a CV that’s quite as varied as hers.’

Lex managed to part his lips and form a sentence. ‘She should have thought about that before she drifted around the world.’

‘You put me in charge of staff development,’ Phin reminded him unfairly. ‘I think Gibson & Grieve needs people with Romy’s kind of experience. She was telling me about a diving centre she’s been running in Indonesia: she’s got all sorts of skills that we can use.’

‘Phin, are you sure this is a good idea?’

‘Look, it’s just a temporary job, replacing Tim Banks’s assistant while she’s on maternity leave. I think Romy will be good at it, and it’ll give her the experience she needs to find a permanent job. It’s a win-win situation.’

Lex hadn’t been able to object any further, or Phin would have wondered why he was so reluctant to have Romy working for Gibson & Grieve. His brother might seem the most easygoing of men, but Lex was discovering that he was far more perceptive than he seemed.

‘Fine,’ he had said with shrug, as if he didn’t care one way or the other. ‘It’s your call.’

But Phin wasn’t the one who braced himself every day in case he saw her. Who looked up every time the door opened in case it was her. Who had to walk around with a fist squeezed around his heart, just knowing that she was near.

Everything had felt tight for six months now. His head, his eyes, his heart, his chest. Usually, work was a refuge, but not now, not when Romy could appear at any moment.

So he had seized on the chance of two days away in the Highlands, finalising the deal that would garner Gibson & Grieve a foothold in Scotland at long last. It was something his father had long tried to set up, and Lex, who had spent his life trying to prove that he could run Gibson & Grieve even better than his father, was determined to seal this one and take the company in a new direction that was all his own.

Lex had planned it to be just him and Tim. No entourage, no fuss. Willie Grant, of Grant’s Supersavers, was by all accounts a recluse and an eccentric. The last thing Lex wanted was to alienate him by arriving with a lot of unnecessary people. Tim had warned him that Willie was a straight talker, and he wanted to do this face to face. Lex was fine with that. He was a straight talker too.

But now Romy was sitting opposite him instead.

With her baby.

At the front of the cabin, Nicola was hurriedly stowing away the extraordinary amount of equipment Romy had seen fit to bring with her. The door had closed after the driver, who had escaped gratefully down the steps, and the pilot was already taxiing, anxious to make up for lost time.

Lex wrenched his mind back from the past and looked at his watch. Two and a half hours behind schedule, and they still had a fair drive after they got to Inverness. Willie Grant lived in a castle in the wilds of Sutherland, in the far north west of Scotland, and God only knew how long it would take to get there. Summer, his PA, would ring and explain the delay, but Lex hated being late.

He hated it when events were out of his control, like this morning. The way they always seemed to be whenever Romy was around.

His life was spent keeping a close guard on himself and his surroundings. Only once had he let it drop, in Paris twelve years ago, when he had lost his head and begged Romy to marry him. Lex had never made that mistake again.

The plane was turning at the end of the runway, and the engines revved until they were screaming with frustration. Then the pilot set them hurtling down the runway.

Lex resisted the temptation to close his eyes and grip the seat arms. He knew his fear was irrational, but he hated being dependent on a pilot. It wasn’t the speed that bothered him, or even the thought of crashing. It was putting himself completely in someone else’s control.

Romy loved take-off. He remembered how her eyes had shone as the seats pushed into their backs and the power and the speed lifted the plane into the air. Lex hadn’t said anything, but she had taken his hand and held it all the way to Paris.

Did she remember?

Lex’s face was set with the effort of keeping his gaze on the window, but it was as if his eyes had a will of their own. Like a compass needle being dragged to true north, they kept turning to Romy in spite of the stern message his brain was sending.

The baby, he saw, was looking as doubtful about the whole business as he felt. When the plane lifted off the tarmac and Lex’s stomach dropped, she opened her mouth to wail, but Romy bounced her on her lap, distracting her from the pressure in her ears until she was gurgling with laughter.

‘You’re a born traveller,’ Romy told her. ‘Just like your old mum.’

She smiled at her daughter and Lex could see the crooked tooth that was so typical of the way Romy just missed being perfect. It was only a tiny kink, only just noticeable, but the faint quirkiness of it gave her face character. He had always thought it made her more beautiful.

Then her eyes met Lex’s over the baby’s head, and the smile faded.

She was remembering that flight to Paris, too. He could see it in her eyes. The memory was so vivid that they might as well have been back on that plane, side by side, shoulders touching, their hands entwined, her perfume filling his senses as she leaned into him, distracting him with her smile, until it had felt to Lex as if he had left his real self behind and was soaring up with the plane into a different reality where he was a man who didn’t care about control or responsibility or being sensible, and could open himself to every pleasure that came his way.

And look where that had got him.

Obviously he might as well have spared himself the effort of looking unconcerned, though. Romy didn’t quite roll her eyes at his clenched jaw, but she might as well have done.

‘Why didn’t you take the train?’ she asked.

‘It’s too far,’ said Lex shortly. He hated her thinking that he might be afraid. He wasn’t afraid, and if he was, he would never admit it.

‘It’s going to take most of the day to get there as it is. I can’t afford to waste all that time sitting on a train. There’s too much else to do. I was hoping Grant would be prepared to come to London to discuss the deal.’

Romy shook her head. ‘Willie never leaves Duncardie now,’ she said. ‘His wife died five years ago, and since then he’s been a virtual recluse.’

‘So Tim explained. He told me that if I wanted to persuade Willie Grant to agree to the sale, I would have to go there myself.’

‘You must want it badly if you’re prepared to fly,’ said Romy with a faint smile.

‘I do.’ Lex’s face was set in grim lines. ‘My father never managed to get a foothold in Scotland, and it was his one big disappointment. If he hadn’t had his stroke last year, he’d still be on this plane now, on his way to see Willie Grant. He would never have trusted the negotiations to me.’

‘He must have trusted you,’ Romy protested. ‘You’re the one who’s carrying on his legacy.’

‘Yes, that’s what I’ve been doing,’ he agreed, a trace of bitterness in his voice. ‘And now I’m ready to move the company in new directions. It’s not about my father any more.’

For years he had been trying to prove himself to his father, and now, at last, he had a chance to show him just what he could do with the company.

‘This is my deal,’ he said. ‘The one I made, the one he never could.’

‘It’s not a competition,’ said Romy, but he looked back at her, unsmiling.

‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is. And it’s one I’m going to win. That’s why I really needed Tim with me today. If this deal doesn’t go through because of his family crisis…’

Romy leant forward at that and fixed him with a look. ‘I know you won’t take it out on Tim,’ she said crisply. ‘You’re a lot of things, Lex, but you’re never unfair, and that would be. Tim has to be with his son. His family has to come first. You know that.’

Lex did know that, but he didn’t have to like it. ‘I sometimes think it would be easier if we only employed people without families,’ he grumbled.

‘You wouldn’t have a very large workforce in that case.’

‘Without children, then. You can be sure that the moment an important deal comes up, the vital person has to go home because some child is ill or needs to be picked up from school or has to be taken to the dentist, and then everybody else has to run around rearranging things to cover for them, like you and Tim.’

‘I don’t mind,’ said Romy, not entirely truthfully. ‘I know Tim would do the same for me. It’s part of working in a good team.’

Lex grunted. Phin was always going on about teams, but he liked to work on his own. ‘That’s all very well, but if we’re going to make this work I need to know that you’re as committed to the success of this deal as Tim is.’

She met his eyes squarely as she settled Freya more comfortably on her lap. ‘I am,’ she said. ‘I owe Tim a lot, and I don’t want to let him down. I owe Gibson & Grieve a lot, too. I know Phin took a risk giving me the job, and I want to prove that I’m worth it. I’ll do whatever it takes.’

‘Except leave your baby behind,’ Lex commented sourly.

‘Except that,’ she agreed.




CHAPTER TWO


‘ACTUALLY, I think Freya could work to our advantage,’ Romy said, stroking her daughter’s head so that the beaten silver bracelets chittered softly together.

The baby was a funny-looking little thing, Lex thought. She had very fine dark hair that stuck up in an absurd quiff, and round, astounded eyes as dark as her mother’s.

‘How do you work that out?’ he asked, wishing Freya wouldn’t stare at him like that. It was disconcerting having that uncompromising gaze fixed so directly on his face.

‘Willie Grant is very family-orientated, in spite of the fact that he doesn’t have any children of his own. Grant’s Supersavers have always been targeted at the family market. It’s a big thing with him. To be honest,’ Romy said to Lex, ‘you’re likely to be more of a problem than Freya.’

‘Me?’

‘Willie lives in a very remote place, but he’s not isolated. He reads the papers and uses the Internet, and you,’ she said, pointing across the table, ‘have a reputation.’

‘Meaning what?’ asked Lex dangerously, and Romy swallowed, remembering, rather too late, that he was her boss. But if they were to secure this deal that meant so much to him, he would have to understand Willie Grant’s position.

‘Meaning that you’ve got an image as a loner, unsentimental, a workaholic, none of which makes you seem exactly family friendly.’

Lex narrowed his pale grey gaze. ‘So what are you saying, Romy?’

‘Just that it would be a mistake to underestimate how strongly Willie feels about family,’ she said. ‘We had to work very hard to get him to agree to meet you at all. He thinks that you’re more interested in profits than in families.’

‘Of course I am,’ he said with an abrasive look. ‘I’m a businessman. Being interested in profits is what I do. My shareholders are more interested in profits too. That doesn’t mean we don’t offer a service to families. God, we’ve got children’s parking spaces and special trolleys and even crèches in some of the bigger stores, I’m told—what more does Grant want?’

‘He wants to feel that he’s selling his company to one with the same ethos,’ said Romy evenly. ‘We’ve sold you to Willie on the grounds of your integrity. He’d rather you were a family man but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t respect your straightforwardness. On the other hand, if you make it obvious that you’ve got no time for policies that make it easy for your staff to work effectively and be effective family members, then I don’t think Willie will want to work with you.

‘We’re not the only retail chain with an interest in Grant’s Supersavers,’ she told Lex, who scowled. ‘He’s already had the big four supermarkets up here sniffing around, but he likes Gibson & Grieve’s reputation for quality, and he likes the fact that it still has a family connection with you and Phin. But if he doesn’t like your attitude,’ Romy warned, ‘he’ll sell to someone else. If you want this deal, Lex, you’re going to have to keep on Willie’s good side.’

Lex thought about what she had said as he looked out of the window. The plane had burst through the thick cloud layer into dazzling light, but Lex’s mind was less on the blueness of the sky up there than on Romy’s crisp analysis of his position.

He was more impressed by her than he had expected, he acknowledged to himself. He remembered Romy as a lovely, eager girl, passionate about everything. When she’d talked, she had leant forward with her face alight and her hands moving, encompassing him in her warmth. Now, she was cool and capable, and, in spite of those exotic, distracting bracelets and the distinctly distracting baby, she seemed surprisingly businesslike. Lex suspected that Tim would never have dared talk to him so directly, but if Romy was right, then he had needed to hear it.

Because this was all about the deal, and nothing about feelings, right?

Right.

‘All right.’ He turned back to Romy with a nod of acknowledgement. ‘If that’s what I have to do to get him to sign, that’s what I’ll do.’

Romy’s expression relaxed. ‘It shouldn’t be too hard. Just don’t tell him you tried to throw Freya off the plane!’ She tweaked Freya’s nose as she grinned down at her, and the baby chuckled.

Still smiling, Romy glanced up to find Lex watching her, and their eyes snagged for one jarring moment before he looked away.

At the front of the plane, Nicola was making coffee. The smell wafted down the cabin, reminding Romy that she hadn’t had time to do more than gulp at a mug of tea that morning.

She unbuckled her seat belt.

‘Would you excuse me?’ she said formally. ‘I didn’t even have time to brush my hair this morning, and I’d like to tidy myself up. I presume there’s a bathroom of some kind?’

‘At the back,’ said Lex, then watched in consternation as Romy set Freya on the floor and gathered up her bag. ‘Are you just going to leave her there?’

‘She can’t go anywhere.’

‘Well, no, but…shouldn’t she be strapped in, or something?’

‘Strapped in to what? She’s safer on the floor than on a seat she can fall off—unless you’d like to have her on your lap?’

Lex recoiled. ‘No!’

‘She’ll be fine,’ Romy soothed. ‘I won’t be long.’

Romy loved flying. She loved the way her body pressed back into the seat as the plane left the ground. She loved landing and walking across the tarmac with the aircraft fumes shimmering in the heat. She loved looking down onto a billowy carpet of clouds and knowing that she had left everyday life behind and was on her way to somewhere new and exciting.

The only thing she didn’t love about flying was using the bathroom. She was used to queuing along the aisle, getting in the flight attendants’ way, and manoeuvring awkwardly into narrow cubicles. Being on an executive jet was a whole new experience. Quite apart from the lack of queues, the bathroom here was almost as large as the one in her flat, and sumptuously decorated, with a mirror above a gleaming vanity unit.

Sadly, no amount of flattering lighting could disguise the fact that she looked awful. Romy regarded her reflection with dismay. Her hair was all over the place, there were dark circles under her eyes, and a stain on her blouse marked where Freya had gugged up her hurried breakfast that morning.

Romy rubbed at it with a damp towel, which only seemed to make it worse, so she abandoned that and washed her face instead. Brushing out her hair, she clipped it up in a careless twist and pulled out her make-up bag. By the time she had made up her eyes and put on some lipstick, she was feeling a lot better.

It was going to be OK, she assured her reflection as she brushed down her loose trousers and straightened her top. Now that they had got over the inevitable awkwardness of seeing each other again, everything should be fine.

Of course it was a little strange. Lex was remote, severe, the way he always seemed at work. Looking at him, sitting there in his immaculate suit and tie, you would never guess that he was a man capable of passion, but Romy knew.

Whenever she looked at his mouth, or his hands, she remembered that week in Paris. She remembered how sure his lips had been, how his touch had made her strum with excitement, how skilfully he had drawn her into a swirl of heat and pleasure. She had only been eighteen. How could she have known that there would never be anyone else who made her feel quite like that again?

The memory of that week curled voluptuously around the base of Romy’s spine and made her shiver.

‘Stop it,’ she told herself out loud. ‘Stop thinking about it.’

She had to put that week from her mind. It was over. Long over. There were more important things to think about. Freya was her priority now. Romy had been getting desperate before Phin offered her this job at Gibson & Grieve, and she couldn’t afford to make a mess of it.

It was only maternity cover, and Jo, whom she was replacing, would be returning to work soon. At that point, Romy was going to need a good reference. If she could help Lex close this deal, it would be fantastic experience for her when it came to finding another job. A job she needed if she was to maintain her independence.

That was what she should be thinking about, not Lex’s mouth and how it had once felt on hers.

Romy squared her shoulders. She could do this.

Meanwhile, Lex was left nervously eyeing the baby on the floor. Freya sat on her bottom for a while, looking around with wide-eyed interest, then to his alarm she crawled under the table.

Now what? He sat dead still, afraid to move his feet, but after a moment he bent his head very carefully to look under the table and see what she was doing.

Freya’s expression was intent as she patted his left shoe, apparently pleased by its shininess. Then the small hands discovered the lace, and pulled at it experimentally. Delighted to find that it came apart if she tugged at it, she looked up to find Lex watching her under the table, and she offered him a gummy smile.

The smile had an odd effect on Lex, and he jerked upright once more and snapped his computer open. Where was Romy? He was terrified to move his feet in case he kicked the baby by mistake, but if he was stuck here he could at least try and get some work done. He would pretend everything was normal and that there was no baby undoing his shoelaces under the table.

‘Where’s Freya? ‘ Romy asked when she came back at last.

For answer, Lex grimaced and pointed wordlessly under the table, and Romy peered beneath to see that her daughter had undone both his shoes, and was sucking one of the laces with a thoughtful expression.

‘I thought it was an unexploded bomb at least!’ she said as she scooped Freya up and straightened.

‘I would have been just as nervous,’ said Lex grouchily. ‘You were gone ages. What have you been doing?’

‘I didn’t even have time to brush my hair this morning,’ Romy pointed out, settling back into her seat. ‘I was still in bed when Tim rang. I had a real panic to get here, and I’m still worried I left something vital behind.’

‘How could you have left anything behind? It looked as if you brought the entire contents of the house with you!’

She sighed. ‘You should see what I left behind! It’s not easy to travel light with a baby.’

‘You’ve changed.’

It was a careless comment, but suddenly the air was fraught with memories. There had been a time when Romy would have packed everything she owned into a rucksack.

‘Yes,’ she said, trying to make her voice as firm and businesslike as possible. ‘Yes, I have.’ She eyed Lex under her lashes. ‘And you?’

‘Me?’

‘Have you changed?’

He looked away. ‘Of course. I’d hope we were both older and a lot wiser.’

Much too wise to run off to Paris for a wild affair, anyway. The unspoken thought hung in the silence that pooled between them until Nicola appeared to offer coffee and biscuits.

‘Thank you.’ Romy was grateful for the interruption, but even more for the sustenance. She hadn’t had time for breakfast that morning.

Freya’s eyes lit up when saw the biscuits and she set up a squawk that made Lex wince until Romy gave her a piece of shortbread to shut her up. This was promptly mangled into a soggy mess, watched in horror by Lex, and Romy rushed into speech in an effort to distract him.

‘You never got married.’ It was the first thing that came into her head, but as soon as the words came out of her mouth she wished she had stuck with the soggy biscuit.

Lex raised his brows.

‘The last time we talked, you said you were going to marry Suzy Stevens,’ Romy said with a shade of defiance.

Lex had almost forgotten Suzy. Romy’s mother, Molly, had remarried about a year after that week in Paris. As her godson, he had had little choice but to go to the wedding. Romy, of course, had been there too. She had just started her first year at university. After Paris, she had got herself a job in some bar in Avignon. Lex had heard it from his mother, who had heard it from Molly. Romy had had a great time, he had heard.

He had been determined to show Romy that he was over her. Suzy was everything Romy wasn’t. She was calm and cool, elegant where Romy was quirky, sophisticated where Romy was passionate. She was suitable in every way.

But she certainly hadn’t been stupid. She had seen how Lex looked at Romy, and broken off the relationship when they got back to London that night.

‘It didn’t work out,’ Lex said shortly.

No one had worked out.

‘I’m sorry,’ said Romy.

‘I’m not. It was all for the best.’

Lex’s pale grey eyes rested on Freya, still sucking happily on her shortbread. Her fingers were sticky, her face smeared and there were crumbs in her hair and dribbling down her chin.

‘I don’t want any family responsibilities,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen too many people—like Tim today—compromise their careers because of commitments at home. Children are a constant distraction, as far as I can make out. Even a wife expects attention. You can’t just stay at work until the job is done. You’ve got to ring up and explain and apologise and make up for it by taking yet more time off. Relationships are too messy and demanding,’ said Lex briskly. ‘I long ago came round to your point of view and decided that marriage wasn’t for me either.’

He looked at Romy. ‘It’s just as well you wouldn’t marry me. It would have been a disaster for both of us.’

A disaster. Yes. Romy turned her bangles, counting them like beads on a rosary. She had eleven, in a mixture of styles, and she wore them all together, liking the fact that they were so different and that each came with its own special memory. Beaten silver. Beaded. Clean and contemporary. Ethnic.

One came from the suq in Muscat, another from Mexico. One was a gift from an ex-boyfriend, another she had bought for herself in Bali.

And this one… Romy’s fingers lingered on the silver band. It was inlaid with gold and intricately carved. An antique.

This one Lex had bought for her at Les Puces, the famous flea market at the Porte de Clignancourt. They had spent the morning wandering around hand in hand, bedazzled by the passion that had caught them both unawares. Whenever Romy looked at the bracelet, she remembered how intensely aware of him she had been, as if every fibre of her being were attuned to the feel of his fingers around hers, to the hazy excitement of his male, solid body.

A disaster? Maybe. Probably.

She looked up from the bracelet to find Lex watching her, and their eyes met for a brief, jarring moment before she looked quickly away.

‘I’ve never forgotten that week,’ she said.

She wondered if Lex was going to tell her that he had, but instead he just said: ‘It was a long time ago.’

Well, she couldn’t argue with that. She nodded.

‘We’ve both moved on since then,’ he said.

Also true. Romy bit her lip. She wasn’t quite sure why she was persisting in this, but surely this was a conversation they needed to have?

‘I’ve wanted to talk to you since I’ve been back, but there never seemed to be an opportunity. I’d thought perhaps at Phin’s wedding, but…well, it didn’t seem appropriate. And since then, it’s been difficult. You’re my boss. I didn’t think I could just march into your office and demand to speak to you.’

‘There’s always the phone,’ he pointed out unhelpfully. ‘Or email.’

‘I know. The truth is that I didn’t have the nerve,’ she said. ‘I was really nervous about seeing you today. I know it’s stupid, but it seems even more stupid to pretend that there had never been anything between us.’

Romy drew a breath, daunted by Lex’s unresponsive expression. ‘I just thought that if we could acknowledge it, we would be able to get it out of the way and then stick to business.’

‘Fine, let’s acknowledge it, then,’ said Lex briskly. ‘We had a mad week when we were young, but we both know that it would never have lasted longer than that week. Neither of us has any regrets about it. Nobody else knows about it. We’ve both moved on. What’s the problem?’

‘No problem, when you put it like that.’ But Romy couldn’t help feeling a little miffed. Lex was saying everything she had wanted to say, but there was no need for him to sound quite that matter-of-fact about it, was there?

‘So now that we’ve agreed that, we can draw a line underneath the whole episode.’

‘Precisely,’ she said. ‘From now on, our relationship can be purely professional.’

‘In that case,’ said Lex, opening his computer once more, ‘let’s go over the main points of the agreement we’re offering Willie Grant.’

It was snowing when they landed in Inverness, dry, sleety flakes that spun in the air and did no more than dust the surface of the tarmac. Still, Romy was glad that Summer had arranged for them to hire a solid four wheel drive to take them the rest of the way.

She shivered as she carried Freya down the steps. She’d been living in the tropics for so long that a London winter was shock enough for her system, and she was unprepared for how much colder it would be up here in the north of Scotland. She wished she’d brought a warmer coat.

The vehicle was waiting as arranged just outside the terminal. It was black and substantial and equipped with all the latest technology.

Except a baby seat.

Lex was all ready to get in and drive away until Romy pointed out that Freya would have to travel in the seat, and that it would have to be installed properly.

‘It doesn’t take long. If you’ll just hold her a minute, I’ll do it.’

You would think she had asked him to hold a bucket of cold sick.

‘I’ll install the seat,’ he said.

So Romy had to stand there in the cold, while he grew crosser and crosser as he tried to work out how to do it. She tried offering instructions, but Lex ignored her, cursing and muttering under his breath as he searched around for the belt, and then managed to clip it into the wrong buckle, so that he had to start all over again.

He was in a thoroughly bad mood by the time Romy was finally able to buckle Freya in and climb into the passenger seat beside Lex, and matters were not improved when Freya, who had woken as she was laid in the seat, started to grizzle fretfully when they had barely left Inverness.

‘What’s the matter now?’ Lex demanded, glowering in the rear view mirror.

Romy looked over her shoulder at her unhappy daughter, then at her watch.

‘She’s hungry. I am too. Is there any chance we could stop for lunch?’

He sighed impatiently. ‘We’ll never get there at this rate,’ he grumbled, but, according to the sat nav, it would be another two and a half hours before they got to Duncardie, and Lex wasn’t sure he could stand the crying another two minutes, let alone two hours.

By the time he saw a hotel up ahead, he was only too happy to pull in. ‘But for God’s sake, let’s be quick about it,’ he said as they got out of the car.

To Lex, used to the most exclusive restaurants and the gleaming, high-tech efficiency of Gibson & Grieve’s head office, it was something of a surprise to realise that hotels like this still existed. There was a swirly carpet patterned in rich reds and blues, stippled walls painted an unappealing beige and sturdy wooden tables, their legs chipped and worn by generations of feet. Sepia prints were interspersed with the occasional horse brass or jokey tea towel about the joys of golf, and the faint but unmistakable smell of battered fish hung in the air.

On the plus side, it was warm and quiet. Lights flashed on the jukebox in the corner, but it was mercifully silent, and the only other guests were an elderly couple enjoying lunch in the corner. It had a welcoming fire and a friendly landlady who was unfazed by a request for a high chair and was soon deep in discussion with Romy about what Freya would like for her lunch.

Having taken a cursory glance at the menu, Lex ordered a steak and kidney pie and retired to a table by the fire while Romy bore a still-grizzling Freya off to change her nappy. Turning his back on the jolly décor on the wall beside him (“Why is a ship a she?”), Lex rang the office. He got twitchy if he was out of contact and it had been impossible to carry on a conversation on the car phone with Freya bawling in the background.

Not that it was much easier once Romy emerged from the Ladies. Seeing that he was talking to Summer, she carried Freya around the room, jiggling her up and down in her arms and showing her the pictures to distract her from her hunger. The trouble was, she was distracting Lex too. Every time she lifted a hand to point at a picture, her breasts lifted slightly, her back straightened and he seemed ever more unable to block out her shape from the edge of his vision.

It was as if all his senses were on high alert. Romy was wearing loose black trousers and a top in a peacock blue so vibrant that it lit up the entire room, and whenever she turned he was sure he could hear the whisper of the silky material sliding over her skin.

He was sure he could smell her perfume.

Romy was absorbed in her daughter, her face vivid as she chatted away, quite unaware of the fact that whenever she smiled Lex lost track of what Summer was saying.

‘Sorry…run that past me again,’ he had to ask, not for the first time.

There was a tiny pause. Lex could feel Summer’s surprise bouncing up to a satellite and down again. He was famous for the fact that he was always focused and alert. Now Summer would tell Phin that he wasn’t concentrating, and Phin would grin and come up with all sorts of ridiculous suggestions as to what might be distracting him.

None of which would be right.

Hunching an irritable shoulder, Lex turned in his chair so that he had his back to Romy.

‘I was just wondering how you were getting on with the baby,’ Summer said, her voice carefully incurious.

‘Fine,’ he said shortly. ‘Did you warn Grant’s people about that?’

‘I did. There’s absolutely no problem as far as they’re concerned.’

‘That’s something,’ he grunted.

The landlady appeared with their lunch at that point, and Romy came back to settle Freya into the high chair, where she started squealing with excitement at the sight of food and banging both her hands on the tray as she bounced up and down. Lex could only imagine how it sounded to Summer in her quiet, calm office as he rang off.

Romy tied a bib on Freya, no easy task when she wouldn’t keep still. ‘Everything OK at the office?’ she asked, mindful of the need to stick to business.

‘Yes. Summer has got everything under control.’

‘I imagine Summer always does. She’s terribly efficient, isn’t she?’

‘I wouldn’t keep her as my PA if she wasn’t.’

‘Isn’t it awkward having your sister-in-law as a PA?’ Romy couldn’t resist asking as she sat down opposite him and blew on Freya’s plate to cool it.

‘I’m just glad she wanted to keep on working,’ said Lex. ‘I don’t know how long it’ll last. No doubt it’ll be a baby next,’ he said morosely. ‘Then I’ll have to train yet another new PA. The wedding was disruptive enough.

‘That was my fault for sending her to work for Phin in the first place,’ he remembered, reaching for the mustard. ‘She was supposed to stop him doing anything stupid, and look what happened! God knows what she sees in him. They couldn’t be more different.’

Romy had been surprised when she had met Summer, too. Phin’s wife was as crisp as he was laid-back and charming.

‘It must be a case of opposites attract,’ she said, then wished she hadn’t. What else had it been between her and Lex? ‘They seem very happy together, anyway,’ she added quickly.

‘Yes.’

Why couldn’t he have fallen in love with Summer? Lex wondered. She was exactly what he needed. She was cool and capable, and hated mess and clutter as much as he did. God only knew how she coped with Phin’s slapdash ways. She was very pretty, too, although in all honesty Lex had to admit that he hadn’t noticed until Phin started stirring her up. The transformation had been quite remarkable.

At last Romy set Freya’s plate on the tray of the high chair and picked up her own knife and fork, which meant that Lex could start too.

To his relief, Freya stopped squawking instantly and applied herself to her lunch as well. She was waving a spoon around but her preferred method of eating seemed to be to squash her fingers into the food and then stick them in her mouth. Lex averted his eyes. He had thought her biscuit eating technique was bad enough. This process was utterly revolting.

Every now and then Romy would load up a second spoon and try to hurry the process along by feeding her, but Freya only pressed her lips together and turned her face stubbornly away.

Romy sighed and laid down the spoon. ‘She will insist on doing everything herself. I’m afraid it’s a slow business. She won’t be helped.’

‘Like her mother,’ said Lex without thinking and then cursed himself as she raised her brows.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Even as a very small child you refused to hold anyone’s hand. You always wanted to do everything by yourself. I remember listening to my mother commiserating with yours about how independent you were.’

‘I’d forgotten that.’ Romy pushed the spoon hopefully in Freya’s direction once more. ‘I’ve always assumed I only realised how important it was to be independent after my father left, but maybe I was born that way.’

‘Stubborn,’ Lex agreed.

‘You know, you’re not exactly Mr Malleable,’ she pointed out.

‘I always did what my parents expected me to,’ he said with a trace of bitterness. ‘I had to be the sensible, responsible one, unlike you and Phin, who gaily went your own way. I used to envy how adventurous you both were,’ he confessed, even as he marvelled at how easily he had strayed away from business. ‘Neither of you ever seemed to be afraid of anything.’

‘Dogs,’ Romy reminded him. She had been badly bitten by a collie when she was five and had been very nervous of dogs ever since.

‘All right, anything except dogs,’ Lex conceded. ‘And commitment, of course,’ he added smoothly. ‘Neither of you ever liked to be tied down to a plan either.’

‘And yet there’s Phin married,’ said Romy, ‘and here’s me with a baby. It’s funny the way life works out, isn’t it?’

‘Yes,’ said Lex, thinking about the twists and turns that had brought them both to this shabby pub. ‘Very funny.’

The elderly couple in the corner had finished their lunch, and stopped at the table on their way past.

‘What a lovely baby!’ The woman beamed and chucked Freya’s cheek. ‘Aren’t you the bonny one?’

Intent on her lunch, Freya paid little attention, but Lex felt his jaw sag.

Lovely? In disbelief, he looked at the baby in question, who was happily rubbing mashed potato into her hair. One ear appeared to be encrusted with carrot and he didn’t even want to think about what might be dribbling from her nose.

Romy avoided his eyes. ‘Thank you,’ she said with a smile.

‘I’ll bet she can twist you round her little finger, eh?’ The man actually nudged Lex. ‘Wait till she’s older. She won’t give you a moment’s peace!’

‘Make the most of it while she’s small.’ His wife nodded at Lex, who was too dumbfounded to do more than stare back at her. ‘You’ve got a lovely wee family,’ she told him. ‘You’re a lucky man!’

‘Enjoy your lunch.’ Her husband nodded farewell as he took her arm.

A gust of cold air swirled into the room as they opened the door, but the next moment it had swung to, and Lex and Romy were left alone in the dining room.

There was a moment of utter silence, and then Romy dissolved into helpless laughter. Diverted from her lunch, Freya stared at her mother, and started to chuckle as well, clearly puzzled by all the merriment, but perfectly happy to join in.

‘What’s so funny?’ demanded Lex, looking from one to the other.

‘Your expression,’ Romy managed at last, wiping her eyes and drawing a shuddery breath. ‘I wish you could have seen yourself! I’ve never seen anyone look so appalled at the thought of being associated with a lovely wee family!’

Her whole face was alight with humour. The dark eyes were sparkling with laughter, and her expression was so vivid that Lex’s heart tripped, and all at once he was back in that restaurant in Paris, drinking in the sight of her, dazzled by her warmth and her beauty.

He made himself look away. ‘I’ve never been taken for a father before,’ he said, his voice desert dry. ‘I’ve always assumed it would be obvious that I wasn’t.’

‘It’s an easy enough mistake to make,’ said Romy. ‘We must look like an ordinary family.’




CHAPTER THREE


‘I SUPPOSE so.’ For some reason, the thought made Lex uneasy. He felt ridiculously thrown. He wanted to rush after the couple and ask them how they could possibly have thought that he was Freya’s father. What did he need to do? Have never in a million years tattooed across his forehead?

Romy’s smile still curved her mouth as she picked up her knife and fork once more. ‘I don’t think they were very impressed by your hands-off approach, though. I could see them watching you while I was trying to entertain Freya. They obviously thought you should have been helping me instead of making phone calls. I suspect that was why she thought she should remind you how lucky you are to have us.’

‘Dear God.’ Lex glanced at Freya, who had gone back to smearing lunch over her face, and shuddered. ‘I’m glad to have amused you,’ he added austerely when Romy started to giggle again.

‘Oh, you have. It was worth the rush this morning just to see you!’

Freya was clearly a baby who enjoyed her food. There was a lot of gurgling and squealing and squeaking, with much smacking of lips together and banging of spoons. And the mess…indescribable! Lex decided, eyeing Freya askance as he put his knife and fork together.

‘I just hope she’s not going to be eating in front of Willie Grant!’

‘Don’t worry,’ Romy soothed. ‘I’ll make sure he knows you’re not responsible for her in any way.’

Lex pushed his plate aside. ‘Who is responsible for her, Romy?’

‘I am,’ she said instantly.

It was none of his business, Lex knew, but he couldn’t help asking. ‘What about her father?’

The last amusement faded from Romy’s face. ‘I thought we were sticking to business?’ she said, disliking the defensive note in her voice. She busied herself filling the spoon and offering it, without much hope, to Freya, who took it and wiped it on her nose.

He shrugged. ‘I’m just interested in why you’re having to do everything yourself.’

‘Because I want to.’

Edgy now, Romy picked up her mat. It showed an unlikely hunting scene, with red-coated riders hallooing and urging their horses over a hedge, while the hounds bounded alongside. In spite of herself, Romy shrank a little at the sight of their lolling tongues and great paws. No one would think of putting spiders or snakes on a mat, would they? So why were dogs different? If she had noticed the dogs before, she wouldn’t have enjoyed her pie nearly so much.

She twisted the mat around so that they faced Lex instead.

‘Doesn’t he get a say?’

‘He doesn’t know.’ Romy balanced the mat between her hands, turned it so that it sat on the shorter edge. ‘I haven’t told him yet.’

‘He doesn’t know?’ said Lex, incredulous.

‘Look, it was just a fling,’ she said, not looking at him. ‘A holiday romance. I was running a dive centre in Sulawesi, Michael was travelling… He’s an artist, very laid-back, very charming.’

Very everything Lex wasn’t.

Round went the mat. ‘We had a good time. Neither of us wanted any more than that. Michael was on the rebound. He’d been dumped by his girlfriend a couple of months earlier, and I…well, you know how I feel about commitment.’

Romy looked up then, and looked straight at Lex. The pale eyes were shuttered, his expression indecipherable.

‘It wasn’t just you, Lex,’ she said, since they seemed to have abandoned the pretence of sticking to business. ‘I don’t want to marry anyone. I certainly didn’t want to marry Michael. It was never a big deal for either of us. I liked him—he was great—but there was never any question of anything more than that.’

‘So how did Freya happen?’ asked Lex.

‘The usual way,’ said Romy with a touch of her old tartness. Then, when he just met her gaze, she bit her lip and went on. ‘We took precautions of course, but…well, sometimes it happens. By the time I realised that I was pregnant, Michael had already left.

‘He sent an email when he got home, just to say hello, but I knew that he wasn’t interested in me beyond a fling. I had another message a couple of months later, telling me that he was back with his girlfriend, so an email from me saying that he was going to be a father would have been the last thing he wanted.’

Lex frowned. ‘Wouldn’t he want to know anyway?’

‘I don’t know…’ Romy sighed. ‘Sometimes I thought he would, and that it was wrong not to tell him, but then I thought of him being with his girlfriend, and I didn’t want to spoil that for him. It’s not as if he made any promises. Michael talked about Kate a lot when we were together, so I know how much he wanted to be with her. When he emailed, he sounded so happy—’

She broke off, flashing Lex a look. ‘Would you have wanted to know?’ she asked abruptly.

‘Yes.’

‘Just like that? No thought about how having a child would turn your life upside down?’

‘I’d still want to know,’ said Lex. ‘If, after Paris…’ He didn’t finish the sentence, but she knew what he was thinking. ‘I’d have wanted to know,’ he said. ‘I’d have thought I had the right to know.’

Romy eyed him in dismay. Of all the people she would have expected to understand, she had thought it would be Lex! Lex, who hated chaos and was clearly appalled by Freya.

‘Maybe I was wrong,’ she said, chewing her lip. ‘It just seemed to me that learning that you’re a father is such a big thing. Having a child.it changes everything. Everything. I imagined how I would feel if I was Kate, finding out that it wasn’t just Michael any more, but Michael and a baby. It would have changed things for her too. Oh, I’ve been round and round about this so many times since I found out I was pregnant!’

Tiring of the mat, Romy let it drop to the table and started fiddling with a spoon instead, spinning it slowly between her finger and thumb. ‘Should I tell Michael? Should I not? What if he didn’t want anything to do with Freya? What would that do to her, to know that her father never wanted her? Would that be better or worse than not having a father at all?’

‘That’s not really the point,’ said Lex severely. ‘The point is that this Michael is partly responsible for her, and that means he should help support her.’

‘I don’t want help,’ said Romy stubbornly. ‘I don’t need it.’

She caught the echo of her own words about Freya, and grimaced a little. ‘I don’t want to rely on anyone,’ she tried to explain. ‘It was my choice to have a child, my choice to bring her up on my own. Telling Michael wouldn’t be about the money.’

She had begun to irritate herself with her fiddling and she made herself stop and put her hands in her lap. ‘I expect he would want to support Freya if he knew,’ she said. ‘Michael’s a decent man. He wouldn’t run away from the responsibility.

‘I’m the one that has done the running away,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t want to upset things between him and Kate, but the truth is that I used that as an excuse. I was afraid that if I told Michael he might want to be involved in Freya’s life. He might want to see her, and she…she might love him.’

Romy’s eyes rested on Freya, who was absently wiping a spoon in her hair and wearing a pensive expression. ‘Children do love their fathers.’

Her voice was very sad, and Lex’s expression changed. ‘There’s no reason to think that he would be like your father, Romy.’

‘No, but what if he was? What if he disappointed her? What if he didn’t love her the way she deserves to be loved?’

She had been such a daddy’s girl. Her whole world had revolved around her father. She couldn’t wait for him to come home at night and drove her mother mad, jiggling up and down with excitement. There was no joy to compare with that of seeing him appear, of running into his arms, of being swept up into a hug and swung round and round until she was giddy and giggling.

‘Who’s my best girl?’ he would ask.

Romy would shriek, ‘Me! Me!’

‘And who do I love best in the world?’

‘Me!’

Romy could still remember it, the blinding happiness, the utter, utter security of wrapping her skinny arms around his neck and knowing that her father was home and that nothing could go wrong when he was there.

And then one day he sat her down and told her that he would never be coming home again. That he was going to live with someone who was not her mother and have a new family. She was going to have a new brother or sister, he told her.

‘But I still love you,’ he said.

Romy didn’t believe him. If he loved her, he wouldn’t leave her. She was six, and she never felt quite safe again. Even now, the memory of that morning had the power to rip at her heart and bring back the black slap of disbelief. How could he have done that to her? How could he have left his best girl?

Twenty-four years ago, and it still made her feel sick with misery and incomprehension.

The thought that Freya might be hurt in the same way was unbearable. However hard it might be to struggle on her own, Romy knew it was better than letting herself rely on someone who might leave them both.

‘It wasn’t an easy decision, Lex,’ she said slowly. ‘I thought about it every day. I still think about it. I don’t know if I did the right thing not telling Michael when I was first pregnant. It felt right, that’s all I can say. It felt as if it would be better for Freya if it was just two of us.

‘Recently though…I suppose it’s partly seeing Tim and realising that there are great fathers out there, but I’ve been thinking that I should tell Michael about Freya after all. Not for the money, but because Freya needs a father as well as me. And because Michael deserves to know that he has a daughter.

‘But first I want to be sure I’m truly independent. This deal with Grant’s Supersavers is important to you, I know,’ she told Lex, ‘but it’s just as important to me. It’s my chance to really make my mark, something really impressive to put on my CV for when I have to look for my next job. In the past, I’ve just drifted from country to country and picked up work when I needed it, but it’s different now. I need a proper job, and I can’t rely on anyone but myself for that.’

‘You’re not exactly alone in the world,’ Lex pointed out.

‘No,’ she acknowledged. ‘Mum and Keith were great when I came home to have Freya, but they’ve done enough. They’re too old to live with a baby. I moved out as soon as I could, but I was getting desperate about finding anything when Phin offered me this job at Gibson & Grieve.’

Romy looked across the table at Lex. ‘I never thanked you for that.’

‘Thank Phin,’ he said with a dismissive gesture. ‘He fixed it all.’

‘You’re Chief Executive. You could have said no.’

‘I wouldn’t have done that,’ said Lex, but he avoided her eyes, remembering how dismayed he had been when Phin had told him what he had done. If he thought he could have persuaded his brother to change his mind, he would have done.

‘Well, thank you anyway.’

‘You can thank me by making sure this deal goes through,’ said Lex roughly, and Romy nodded.

‘I’ll do whatever I can to make it happen,’ she said. ‘For both of us. And when it’s done, and I’ve got the experience I need to get a permanent job, then I’ll tell Michael that he has a daughter.’

* * *

The snow was little more than a light powder when they left the pub, but the further they drove, the heavier it got, until great, fat flakes were swirling around the car and splattering onto the windscreen.

The short winter afternoon was drawing in, too, and Romy began to feel as if they were trapped in one of the snow scenes she had loved to shake as a child, except in this one the snow didn’t settle after a minute or two. It just kept on coming. Soon, Romy couldn’t see the country they were driving through, but it felt dark and empty and wild, and it was miles since they had passed a vehicle going the other way.

‘Do you think we should turn back? ‘ she ventured at last.

‘Turn back? What for?’

‘The snow’s very heavy. What if we get stuck?’

‘We’re not going to get stuck,’ said Lex. ‘We’re certainly not turning round and going back on the off chance that we do. We’re almost there. This meeting is too important to miss because of “what if”.’

‘We might break down,’ said Romy, who had been checking her mobile. ‘And I’m not getting a signal on my phone. How would we get help?’

Lex sucked in a breath. ‘Romy, there is nothing wrong with the car,’ he said, keeping his voice even with an effort. ‘Anyway, I thought you were the one who wanted adventure? When did you turn into a worrier?’

‘When I became a mother,’ said Romy, glancing over her shoulder to where Freya was, thankfully, sound asleep. ‘I used to pack up and go without a thought. It never occurred to me that anything could go wrong, but now…’

She sat back in the seat, turning the useless phone between her hands, her eyes fixed on the swirling snow but her mind on the day her life had changed for ever.

‘I didn’t know what terror was until Freya was born,’ she said slowly after a moment. ‘Until I held her in my arms and looked into her face, and realised that it was up to me to keep her safe and well and happy. What if I can’t do it? What if I get it all wrong? I’m terrified that I’ll be a bad mother.’

Where had that come from? Romy wondered, startled. She spent a lot of time assuring her mother and her friends that she was fine on her own, that she was managing perfectly well. She spent a lot of time telling herself that too.

And she was fine. She was managing. She just didn’t tell anyone how hard it was. How scared she was.

Now, unaccountably, she had told Lex, of all people. The one person who would least under stand.

‘I worry about everything now,’ she confessed. ‘I worry about what will happen if Freya is sick or if she struggles at school. How will I pay for her university fees? What if she has a boyfriend who hurts her?’

Lex shot her a disbelieving look. ‘It’s a bit early to worry about that, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘She’s only a baby.’

‘Thirteen months,’ Romy told him, ‘and growing every day. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t help myself. I’m afraid I won’t be a good enough mother, that I won’t be able to give her what she needs. I’m afraid I won’t be able to support her by myself, and that I’ll have to rely on other people, that her happiness will be in someone else’s hands. I’m afraid her father will want to be part of her life and afraid that he won’t. Oh, yes,’ she said with a lopsided smile, ‘I’m a real scaredy cat now!’

‘Then you’ve changed more than I thought you had.’

‘You should be glad. An irresponsible eighteen-year-old with itchy feet isn’t much good to you.’ Romy paused. ‘She never was.’

‘No,’ Lex agreed, and his voice was tinder dry.

Romy blew out a long breath. ‘I miss being that girl sometimes,’ she said. ‘I miss how fearless I was. I had such a good time. I can’t believe I did all those things now, now that I’m scared and sensible and the kind of person who puts on a suit to go into work every day. It feels like remembering a different person altogether.’

‘So if you hadn’t got pregnant, would you still be drifting?’

‘Probably. I’d been in Indonesia a couple of years. I was thinking of moving on. Thailand, maybe. Or Vietnam. Instead I’m a single mother living in the suburbs and struggling into work on the tube every day.’

Lex glanced at her, and then away. ‘No regrets?’

Romy looked over her shoulder again. Freya’s head was lolling to one side. Ridiculously long lashes fanned her cheeks and her lips were parted over a bubble of dribble. Her baby. Her daughter. Her best girl.

‘No,’ she said. ‘No regrets.’

They drove on through the dark in silence. In spite of her earlier anxiety about the snow, deep down Romy wasn’t really worried. There was something infinitely reassuring about Lex’s coolly competent presence. He drove the way he did everything else, like a man utterly sure of himself. The only time he lost that sense of assurance was in the air, but now he was on the ground and firmly back in control.

Romy eyed him under her lashes. His hands were big and capable on the steering wheel, and the muted light from the dashboard threw the cool planes and austere angles of his face into relief.

That was the point she should have looked away, but her gaze came to rest on his mouth instead, and without warning the memory of how it felt against hers set something dangerous strumming deep inside her.

Alarmed, she forced her eyes away, but instead of doing something sensible like fixing on the satellite navigation screen, they skittered back to his hands, which only made the strumming worse as the memories she had kept repressed for so long clamoured for release.

Lex’s hands. The feel of them was imprinted on her skin. He had long dextrous fingers that had sent heat flooding through her. They had been warm skimming over the curve of her hip, sliding over her thigh, gentle up her spine, hungry at her breast. He had played her body like an instrument, coaxing the wild, wondrous excitement with those possessive hands, that mouth, exploring her, loving her, unwrapping her, unlocking her as if she were some magical gift.

Desperately, Romy made herself stare out at the snow until the swirling flakes made her giddy. Or perhaps it was the memories doing that. Why had she let herself remember? She should have kept them firmly locked away, the way Lex had clearly done.

Now she was hot and prickly all over, and even the backs of her knees were tingling as if he had just kissed her there again.

He had been such an unexpected lover, so cool on the surface, so passionate below. Afterwards, Romy had realised that it shouldn’t have been such a surprise. As a child, she had once seen Lex play the piano, had watched astounded as he drew the most incredible music from the keys.

Her mother had claimed that he was good enough to play professionally. There had been a flaming row with his father when Gerald Gibson had dismissed Lex’s talent.

‘He can play the piano if he wants, but what’s the point of him studying music?’ he had demanded. ‘Lex will be joining Gibson & Grieve. Economics makes much more sense.’

What Lex thought about the piano, Romy had never known. Only once more had she ever heard him play, in a dimly lit café in some Paris back street, which they had found quite by accident. They had sat late into the night, listening to the band.

Occasionally one of the musicians had drifted off for a drink, and someone from the audience would get up and play in their place. Lex had taken a turn at the piano at last, improvising with a guy on the saxophone, his body moving in time to the music, utterly absorbed, and Romy had listened, her throat aching with inexplicable tears. This was not the dutiful son, the boy who had joined the family firm and set out to please his father. This was her lover and a man she suspected Gerald Gibson didn’t even know existed.

‘Romy?’

Lex’s voice startled Romy out of her thoughts and she jerked upright. ‘What?’

‘I wondered if you’d fallen asleep.’

‘No. I was…thinking.’

‘What about?’

For a moment, a very brief moment, Romy considered telling him the truth. She could turn to him in the darkness and confess that she had been thinking about him, about how he made music and how he made love and how he had made her feel.

But the thought had barely crossed her mind before she remembered how his face had closed on the plane. ‘It was a long time ago,’ he had said. ‘We’ve both moved on.’

As they had. Lex was right. It was pointless to bring it all up again.

He wanted to draw a line under the whole episode and stick to business. And let’s remember, Romy, she reminded herself, this is your boss, and you need this job. If he wants to stick to business, business it is.

‘Nothing,’ she said.

‘Well, start thinking about how you’re going to explain Freya’s presence to Grant.’ Lex tapped the sat nav. ‘According to this, we’re nearly there.’

Sure enough, a few minutes later they were bumping along a track and over a bridge, and then quite suddenly there were lights glimmering through the snow and the dark bulk of Duncardie was looming above them.

Concealing his relief at having arrived at last, Lex drove into a courtyard, and parked as close as he could to the massive front door.

‘Only three and a half hours late,’ he said grimly.

He switched off the engine, and there was a sudden, crushing silence, broken only by the sound of Freya burbling to herself in the back seat. She had woken half an hour before, and Romy had been on tenterhooks in case she started to cry again, but her daughter seemed perfectly content to play with her toes and chat away in her own incomprehensible language.

‘OK,’ said Lex. ‘Now remember, the whole deal is riding on this meeting, so we’ve got to get it right.’

‘Right,’ said Romy.

‘If we want Grant to take us seriously, we’ll have to be professional, and that means making a good impression right from the start. We’re going to have to work hard to make up for turning up late with the entire contents of a Mothercare catalogue.’

‘Professional,’ Romy agreed. ‘Absolutely.’

The moment the wipers had stilled, the snow had started to build up on the windscreen, and already they could barely see through it.

Lex was calculating how quickly he could unload the car. ‘You take Freya,’ he told Romy. ‘I’ll bring the stuff.’

Romy thought doubtfully of everything she had brought with her. ‘It’ll take ages if you do it on your own. Why don’t we do it together?’

‘There’s no point in two of us blundering around in the snow,’ he said gruffly. ‘Take Freya into the warm. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to change and get rid of all this clobber before we meet Grant himself.’

‘All right.’ Romy drew a breath and looked at Lex. ‘I’m ready.’

He nodded and reached for the door handle. ‘Then let’s go and get this deal.’

It wasn’t far to the door, but it was bitterly cold and to Lex, labouring backwards and forwards in the dark through the snow, it felt as if he were trapped in an endless blizzard. Head down, he dumped stuff in the stone porch as quickly as he could before running back for the next load. At least someone was transferring it all inside, he saw, but he was very glad indeed to make the last trip, skidding and sliding over the snow.

Brushing the worst of the snow off himself in the porch, Lex shook out his sodden trousers with an irritable grimace. His feet were frozen, his hands numb, and melting snow was trickling down his neck, and he was cursing Willie Grant’s refusal to go to London and meet in a warm, dry office, where all sensible deals were made.

But this was the deal he wanted, Lex reminded himself. He bent to retrieve the last of Freya’s luggage and stepped through the door.

He found himself in a vast, baronial hall, complete with antlers on the wall, some sad, glassy-eyed creatures stuffed and mounted long ago, and even the requisite suit of armour standing to attention at the foot of a magnificent staircase.

Lex didn’t see any of them. He registered three things simultaneously. One, a small, portly man with a halo of white hair, holding Freya. Willie Grant himself, in fact, who turned to watch Lex’s approach.

Two, the fact that he, Lex, far from presenting a crisply professional appearance, was dripping snow everywhere and had a bright yellow bag decorated with teddy bears wearing bow ties in one hand and a huge pack of nappies and a pushchair in the other.

And three, Romy, terrified and trying not to show it, standing rigidly beside Willie Grant while an Irish Wolfhound, easily the biggest dog Lex had ever seen, sniffed interestedly at Freya’s feet.

Forgetting his humiliating appearance, Lex dropped the teddy bear bag and snapped his fingers. ‘Come,’ he said to the dog, who trotted obediently over to greet him.

‘Sit.’

The great rump sank to the floor.

‘Good dog,’ said Lex, and rubbed the huge head that came up to his chest, while Romy sent him a speaking look of gratitude.

Willie Grant’s expression was harder to decipher.

‘That’s Magnus,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t usually go to strangers.’

‘I like dogs,’ said Lex, giving Magnus a final pat.

It was too late to hide the pushchair and nappies. He set them down, tried to pretend that he wasn’t dripping everywhere, and stepped forward to offer his hand.

‘Lex Gibson,’ he introduced himself.

‘Willie Grant.’ Willie’s grip was firm and he studied Lex with interest, not unmixed with surprise.

‘I’m very sorry we’re so late.’

‘Oh, not to worry about that,’ said Willie. ‘Your secretary rang, so we got the message that you would be delayed and that you were bringing the wee lassie with you.’ He beamed at Freya and tweaked her nose. ‘She’s a bonny one, isn’t she?’

‘Yes, I’m sorry about that—’ Lex began, and then stopped short as Freya, clearly recognising him, broke into a gummy smile and reached out her arms towards him.

Instinctively, Lex took a step back, but Willie was watching Freya and didn’t notice. ‘Ah, I see who you want!’ he chuckled. ‘Old Willie’s not good enough for you, is he?’

And before Lex could react, he had handed Freya over and turned to take Romy by the arm.

‘Now come away in and have some tea in the library,’ he said and bore her off up the magnificent stone staircase, leaving Lex, aghast, holding Freya at rigid arm’s length.

It wasn’t often that Lex was at a loss for words.

‘Er…’ was the best he could manage.

‘Perhaps I should take Freya,’ Romy said quickly, trying to hang back. ‘Lex is rather wet.’

But Willie wasn’t to be deflected. ‘Oh, bring the wee one too, of course,’ he tossed over his shoulder at Lex. ‘You’ll soon dry off by a good fire. Ewan’s around here somewhere. He’ll take your stuff to your room while Elspeth’s bringing us some tea.’

That left Lex with little choice but to carry Freya gingerly after them, dangling between his hands. He was terrified that she was going to cry, but she just stared at him with those disconcertingly direct dark eyes.

The library was warm and cluttered, with heavy red velvet curtains closed against the night and a fire crackling behind a guard.

‘We put that up as soon as we heard you were bringing the baby,’ said Willie.

‘I was afraid she’d be a nuisance,’ Romy said, settling herself on the red leather sofa, and looking anxiously over her shoulder to see where Lex and Freya were.

To her dismay, the huge dog had followed them up the stairs and threw itself down on the rug in front of the fire with a great thud. Romy was convinced she could feel a tremor in the floor and wouldn’t have been in the least surprised if the ornaments had come crashing off the mantelpiece at the impact.

She had been terrified in the hall when Magnus appeared. On one level, Romy knew it was stupid. Just because one dog had bitten her when she was a child didn’t mean that every dog would bite. Perhaps it was knowing that they could that made her so nervous.

And this dog was a monster, the size of a small pony at least. When it had stuck its great muzzle towards her, she had frozen with terror. Unable to move, the breath clicking frantically in her throat, she had only been able to watch as it swung its head round to investigate Freya in Willie’s arms. Her daughter’s feet had been mere inches away from those huge teeth.

Willie didn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss. He’d been laughing with Freya, as if unaware that a mere nudge from the beast beside him could send them both crashing to the ground where it could savage them.

She should snatch Freya back, Romy had thought frantically, but that would mean pushing past the dog and panic had clogged her throat at the idea of touching it. What if it turned on her? What if its eyes went red and it went for her? What if—?

And then Lex had stepped into the hall, and the world had miraculously righted. He had taken in the situation at a glance. Romy had sagged with relief as he’d called the dog away. His effortless control of the animal had given her a queer thrill, she had to admit, even as she despised herself for feeling so safe with him. That smacked too much of neediness for one of Romy’s independent turn of mind.

Still, there was no denying that Lex was a formidable figure, even dripping snow and burdened with ridiculous bags. He must have hated meeting Willie like that, Romy thought, remembering how much he had wanted to present a professional image.

It was all her fault for bringing so much stuff with her. Well, she would make it up to him, Romy vowed. She would do everything she could to make sure Willie agreed to sell to Lex.

Wondering where Lex and Freya had got to, Romy made herself focus on Willie, who was assuring her that Freya would be no trouble. ‘I like to see the wee ones,’ he told her. ‘Moira and I dreamed of Duncardie full of children, but sadly it wasn’t to be.’

‘I’m sorry,’ said Romy gently.

Willie looked sad, but squared his shoulders. ‘At least we had each other,’ he remembered. ‘I never looked at another woman after I met Moira.’

‘You must miss her very much.’

‘I do. It’s been five years now, and I still miss her every day. And every day I remember how lucky I was to have found her. It’s a great thing to find a love like that,’ he told Romy.

‘It must be.’

Fleetingly, Romy found herself thinking about Lex, which was ridiculous, really, because although that week in Paris had been wonderful and intense, it hadn’t been about love, not the way Willie meant. It had been passion, it had been desire, it had been sheer, unadulterated lust, but it couldn’t have been love.

She hadn’t wanted it to be love. Even at eighteen, she had known that love meant making compromises. It meant putting your heart and your happiness into someone else’s hands, and Romy had done that once. She had loved her father absolutely, and she wasn’t prepared to risk her heart again.

Never again.




CHAPTER FOUR


WILLIE was bustling around the tea tray when Lex appeared at last. He was walking very gingerly and holding Freya as if she were a grenade with a very wobbly pin. He must have come up those stairs very, very slowly.

Evidently forgetting his new family-friendly image, Lex handed Freya over with such an anguished grimace that Romy had to tuck in the corners of her mouth quite firmly to stop herself laughing. Fortunately, Willie was busy with the teapot and didn’t notice.

‘You must be frozen,’ she said tactfully instead.

‘Yes, indeed.’ Willie looked up. ‘Come and dry yourself by the fire, Lex. Just push Magnus out of the way.’

Romy thought it would take a bulldozer to move a dog that size, but Lex just clicked his tongue and pointed and Magnus heaved himself to one side with a sigh.

‘I didn’t have you down as a dog man,’ said Willie, handing him a cup of tea.

Lex nodded his thanks. ‘It’s not the sort of thing that normally comes up in the business world.’

‘I think it should. It helps to know who you’re dealing with and so far, you’ve been something of an unknown entity. Oh, I know you’re a canny enough businessman,’ Willie went on as Lex opened his mouth to speak, ‘but beyond that, there’s not much information out there about what you’re like as a person.’

‘I don’t like to mix my personal life with business,’ said Lex stiffly.

‘Fair enough,’ Willie allowed, ‘but I like to get to know a man before I decide whether we can do business or not.’

‘I understand that.’ There was a suspicion of clenched teeth in Lex’s voice, and Romy could see a muscle jumping in his cheek.

She held her breath. Lex’s temper, never the longest, would be on a very short fuse after the day he had had. He hated being out of control, and things had gone from bad to worse, with Tim unable to make it, a long delay until she turned up, and Romy didn’t suppose he had been pleased to discover that he would be spending the following forty-eight hours with someone he had been comprehensively ignoring ever since she had started work. On top of all that, he’d been landed with a baby, forced to confront his fear of flying and had to drive through a blizzard. Small wonder if he was irritable now.

But in the end all he said was, ‘That’s why we’re here.’

‘Quite,’ said Willie comfortably as he took a seat in a wing chair. His eyes, bright blue, rested speculatively on Lex’s rigid face. ‘I suggest we talk about the deal over dinner tonight. Enjoy your tea for now.’

Romy suspected the chance of Lex enjoying his tea was slight. Willie’s personal approach to negotiations was not at all Lex’s style. He was much happier in the boardroom, talking figures with hard-headed men in suits. Gibson & Grieve’s Chief Executive had many strengths, but chatting sociably by a fire wasn’t one of them.

At least here she could help. Romy might not be sufficiently ruthless when it came to negotiating, but she had advanced social skills.

‘How old is the castle?’ she asked, drawing Willie’s attention away from Lex and setting out to charm him.

It wasn’t difficult. Willie had been closely involved in setting up the negotiations. Unlike Lex, he liked to deal with the details himself and had been perfectly happy to talk to Romy, who was far from being the most senior member of the acquisitions team. They had already established a rapport on the phone and by email, and she had been touched by the warmth of his welcome. He had seemed genuinely delighted to meet Freya, too.

How Willie felt about Lex was less clear. Chatting away to Romy, he was studying him without appearing to do so, the shrewd blue eyes faintly puzzled.

Lex himself was starting to steam by the fire, and he stepped away, conceding the prime space on the rug to Magnus, who immediately re claimed it.

Before he could choose a seat, Willie, in mid history, waved him to the sofa next to Romy. It would have been churlish to have opted for the other chair, so Lex had little choice but to sit down next to her, Freya wriggling between them.

Over the baby’s head, his eyes met Romy’s briefly. Hers were gleaming with laughter at his reluctance, or perhaps at the absurdity of the whole situation, and in spite of himself Lex, who had been feeling distinctly irritable, felt an answering smile tug at his mouth.

Though, God knew, there was little enough to smile about. His feet were so cold, he had lost all feeling in his toes, and his trousers were still clammy and uncomfortable. He had sensed Willie’s reservation about him, too, and it didn’t bode well for the negotiations.

Romy, though, was doing a fantastic job of charming the old devil. Lex contributed little to the conversation. He couldn’t do small talk and, besides, how could he be expected to concentrate on lairds and battles and licences to crenellate when Freya was rolling around on the shiny leather, and beyond her Romy was leaning forward, listening to Willie. When her face was animated, when the firelight burnished the dark, silky hair and warmed the lovely curve of her mouth, of her throat.

Lex was still grappling with the fact that after twelve years of trying to forget her, she was actually there, warm and bright and as beautiful as ever, her vivid presence still with the power to send his senses tumbling around as if they were trapped in some invisible washing machine. The moment he managed to steady them by grasping onto a sensible fact, or remembering the deal and everything that rested upon it, Romy would smile or turn her head and off they would go again, looping and swirling until it was all he could do to string two words together.

It was most disconcerting, and the last thing Lex needed right then. He gripped his cup and saucer, holding them well out of Freya’s reach, and wished, not for the first time, that Tim’s son had chosen any day other than this to have his crisis.

Freya struggled towards him once more, preparing to clamber over him, and protested loudly when Romy scooped her away.

‘Why don’t you put her on the floor?’ Willie asked.

‘What about the dog?’

‘Oh, Magnus won’t mind.’

Lex could see that whether the dog minded or not was the least of Romy’s concerns. ‘I’ll keep an eye on her,’ he said gruffly.

Of course, the moment she was allowed down, Freya made a beeline for the dog, but Lex was there before her, catching her in one arm and making careful introductions between dog and baby. Freya squealed with excitement when Magnus sniffed her cautiously, and Lex showed her how to stroke the wiry head, but she soon lost interest and set off to explore the rest of the room while he sat in an armchair, relieved to have distanced himself from the heady sense of Romy’s nearness, but nervous about the baby. Willie and Romy were so deep in conversation that it was obviously up to him to keep an eye on her, and it was a nerve-racking business.

For a start, Freya could crawl with alarming speed, and she was never still. One minute she was all over the dog, the next patting Willie’s slippers. She tried to haul herself upright on an armchair, only to lose her balance and plump back down on her bottom. Undaunted, she tried again, and this time stayed upright long enough to take one or two wobbly steps while holding onto the cushion.

She would be walking soon, Lex guessed, and he was glad to think he wouldn’t be responsible for her then. You wouldn’t have a moment’s peace. Look how quick she was on all fours. Now she was crawling back to the chair where Lex sat and tugging at his damp trousers to pull herself up against his knees. The creases in them would never be the same again. Lex tried to edge his legs out of her reach, but Freya’s little fingers held tight, and, short of kicking her away from him, he was stuck and had to sit there while she treated him as another piece of furniture and manoeuvred unsteadily around him.

Meanwhile, Romy and Willie were getting on like fire in a match factory. Perhaps this visit wasn’t going to be such a disaster after all. Watching Willie Grant laughing with Romy, Lex found it hard to believe he was going to turn round and refuse the deal. One wary eye on Freya, Lex let himself relax slightly and imagine the moment when he could announce to his father that the deal was secured, and that Gibson & Grieve had a foothold in Scotland at last.

And then?

Uneasily, Lex pushed the question aside. He had been planning this deal for a year now. Once this deal was done, there would be others, hopefully not involving a baby. Romy would find a new job. Life would go back to normal.

It would be fine.

Lex had lost track of the conversation between Willie and Romy entirely when Willie hoisted himself to his feet.

‘You don’t mind if we abandon you for a few minutes, do you, Lex? We won’t be long.’

‘Of course not.’ Courteously Lex got to his feet, hoping he hadn’t missed out on some vital conversation. Willie clearly wasn’t expecting him to go with them, though, and Lex was delighted at the thought of a few minutes on his own. ‘I’ll be very happy to stay here and keep an eye on the fire.’

‘Excellent.’ Willie moved to the door. ‘Magnus will keep you company. He doesn’t like the stairs. Shall we go then, Romy? Oh, I don’t think you’ll want to take Freya, will you?’ he added as Romy bent to pick up her daughter. ‘It’s chilly up there, and you might find the spiral stairs a bit tricky with her.’

‘Oh.’ Already by the door with Freya in her arms, Romy hesitated.

Willie flicked Freya’s nose. ‘You’d rather stay with your daddy, wouldn’t you, precious?’

Daddy?

Lex opened his mouth, but Romy got in first. ‘Er, Lex isn’t actually Freya’s father,’ she said.

‘Isn’t he now?’ Willie’s brows shot up. He eyed Lex narrowly, and then gave a small approving nod, ‘Well, that makes me think the better of you.’

Mystified, Lex looked at Romy, who could only lift her brows with a tiny shrug to show that she was as puzzled as he was.

‘We won’t be long, Lex.’ Willie held the door open for Romy, who threw Lex an agonised glance. She could hardly insist on taking Freya with her against Willie’s advice, he realised.

Heart sinking, Lex went over and she handed the baby over with a speaking glance. ‘I won’t be long,’ she promised.

Freya watched the door close behind her mother and belatedly realised that she had been abandoned. Her eyes narrowed in outrage and she let out a bellow of outrage that startled Lex so much that he nearly dropped her.

‘She’ll be back as soon as she can,’ he said with desperation, but Freya only opened her mouth to wail in earnest.

‘Oh, God…oh, God…’ Frantically, he jiggled her up and down, and for a moment he thought it would work. Freya definitely paused in mid-wail, and Lex could practically see her considering whether she was distracted enough to stop crying altogether, but she evidently decided that she wasn’t ready to be consoled just yet because off she went again, at ear-splitting volume.

‘Shh…. Shh…’ Lex had a sudden vision of Romy walking Freya around the pub at lunchtime, so he set off around the room, jiggling the baby awkwardly as he went.

To his astonishment, this seemed to do the trick. Freya’s screams subsided to snuffly sobs, and then stopped altogether.

Perhaps there wasn’t so much to this baby business, after all? Obviously, the child just needed a firm hand.

Bored of circling the library, Lex stopped and put Freya on the carpet. She promptly started yelling again until he picked her up again, at which point the noise miraculously stopped.

A firm hand. Right.

Lex set off on another circuit of the library.

He was on his fifth when the door opened. He looked round, hoping it would be Romy, but instead it was Elspeth, the housekeeper, who had come to clear the tea tray.

‘The wee one must be tired,’ she said, noting the long lashes spiky with tears and the hectic flush in the baby’s cheeks. And Lex’s harassed expression. ‘Would you like me to show you to your room?’

At least it would make a change from the library, thought Lex as he followed Elspeth up more stairs and along a labyrinth of corridors.

‘I feel as if I should be leaving a trail of breadcrumbs,’ he said, and Elspeth smiled as she opened a door at last.

‘It’s not as complicated as it seems the first time,’ she promised as she left.

Lex was dismayed to see her go. He had considered asking her to look after Freya, but that would have meant admitting that he couldn’t cope, and that wasn’t something Lex could do. He wasn’t the kind of person who admitted failure or asked for help.

It would have been different if Elspeth had offered to take Freya. Then he could have legitimately handed her over. But as it was, she simply smiled and assured him that she would make sure Romy knew where they were, and Lex was left to grit his teeth and get on with it.

He found himself in a magnificent guest room, dominated by a four-poster bed, and with swagged curtains at the windows. The cot, pushchair, high chair and assorted baby bags were neatly stacked in the corner, together with his own briefcase and overnight bag, which had clearly been put in here by mistake.

It was all boding very well for the deal, he thought. If Romy, as a very junior member of the negotiating team, had been allocated a room like this, Willie Grant must be doing more than considering their offer.

Feeling more confident, Lex tried putting Freya down again, but she was having none of it. She insisted on being picked up again, and amused herself for the next few minutes by pulling at his hair, batting his nose and trying to twist his lips with surprisingly strong little fingers.

‘Ouch!’ Lex began to get quite ruffled. Where was Romy? It felt as if he had been walking around with Freya for hours now, but when he looked at his watch he was astounded to see that barely thirty minutes had passed since Romy had handed him her daughter and left. Surely she had to be here soon?

Worse was to come.

Wincing as he pulled her fingers from his nose, Lex was alarmed to see that Freya’s face had gone bright red and screwed up with effort.

‘What’s the—?’

He stopped as an unmistakable smell wafted up from her nappy.

‘Oh, God. Oh, no…’

Dangled abruptly at arm’s length, Freya started to cry again.

‘No, no, don’t cry…your mother will be here soon…just hold on…’

But Freya didn’t want to hold on. She was miserable and uncomfortable and missing the reassuring solidity of his body. She cried and cried until Lex, who had been pretending to himself that he didn’t know what needed to be done, was driven to investigating the bag he had seen Romy take to the Ladies with Freya in the pub, what seemed like a lifetime ago.

He did know what had to be done. He just didn’t want to face it.

‘Where are you, Romy?’ he muttered.

The bag contained fresh nappies and a pack of something called baby wipes. Lex made a face, but took the bag and the baby into the bathroom and looked around for a towel. He had a nasty feeling things were going to get messy.

Cursing fluently under his breath, he spread the towel as best he could one-handed, and laid Freya, still screaming, on top of it.

‘Please stop crying,’ he begged her, wrenching at his tie in dismay at the task ahead of him.

In response, Freya redoubled her cries.

‘OK, OK.’ Lex dragged his hands through his hair and took a deep breath. ‘You can do this,’ he told himself.

He rolled up his sleeves and studied the fastenings on Freya’s dungarees. So far, so good. Gingerly, he pulled them off her and then, averting his face, managed to unfasten the nappy.

‘Ugh.’

Grimacing horribly, he tugged the dirty nappy free, holding it out as far away from him as humanly possible, and put it in a waste-paper basket. Then he braced himself for the next stage of the process.

‘God, what am I doing?’ Lex muttered as he pulled off some sheets of l00 paper. ‘I’m Chief Executive of Gibson & Grieve. I make deals and I make money. I negotiate. I direct. I don’t wipe bottoms. How did I come to this?’

And then—at last!—came the sound of the door opening. ‘Lex?’ Romy called.

‘In here.’

When Romy crossed to the bathroom door, she saw Lex crouched on the floor, a fistful of l00 paper in his hand and Freya kicking and grizzling on a towel in front of him. Both of them looked up at Romy as she appeared in the doorway, with almost identical expressions of relief.

‘Oh, thank God!’ said Lex in heartfelt tones. ‘Where have you been?’

‘With Willie, then I went to the kitchen to find Freya some supper.’

Romy looked from her daughter to Lex. She had never seen him less than immaculate before, but now his hair was standing on end, his tie askew and his sleeves rolled up above his wrists.

He looked so harried that she wanted to laugh, but it seemed less than tactful when he had clearly been doing his best.

‘She was crying,’ Lex said defensively, as if she had demanded to know what he thought he was doing. ‘I thought she needed her nappy changing but I’m not really sure what I’m doing…’

Romy could only guess what that admission had cost him. ‘It was very brave of you to have a go at all,’ she told him. ‘Shall I take over now?’

‘She’s all yours.’

Lex couldn’t get up quickly enough. He watched as Romy cleaned the baby and put on a clean nappy with the minimum of fuss.

‘You make it look so simple,’ he said almost resentfully, and she glanced up at him with a smile.

‘Practice,’ she said.

Freya was wreathed in smiles once more. Romy lifted her up and kissed her, and the tenderness in her expression closed a fist around Lex’s heart and squeezed.

Turning abruptly on his heel, he went back into the bedroom, where a plate of bread and butter with some ham and a banana was sitting on a side table. Freya’s supper, presumably. Lex dreaded to imagine what she would do with that banana.

Not his problem, he reminded himself. Thank God.

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he called back to Romy as he retrieved his bag and briefcase. ‘What time are we expected for dinner?’

Romy appeared in the doorway with Freya. ‘Drinks at seven thirty.’

‘Fine. I’ll have time for a shower and can change these trousers.’ Lex shook each leg in turn. Between Freya and the snow, he didn’t think they would ever be the same again. ‘I don’t suppose you know which is my room?’

Romy settled Freya into the plastic chair that she had fixed to the table. She handed her the plate of bread and ham and turned to face Lex, drawing a breath.

‘This one,’ she said.

‘All your stuff is in here,’ said Lex. ‘You might as well stay here, and I’ll take your room.’

‘This is our room.’

Halfway to the door, Lex stopped. Frowned as he realised what she was saying. ‘You mean…?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ Faint colour touched Romy’s cheeks. She hadn’t been looking forward to breaking this to Lex. ‘There seems to have been some kind of misunderstanding when Summer rang up,’ she said carefully. ‘They thought that because we were bringing a baby, we were all together.’

‘Didn’t you tell them that’s not the case?’

She hesitated. ‘Not yet.’

‘Why on earth not?’

‘I wasn’t sure what to do.’

Edgily, Romy walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain. Outside, the snow was still swirling in the darkness while great, fat flakes piled up on the window sill. If they weren’t careful, they would be snowed in here, and then what would happen?

Lex eyed her back in baffled frustration. ‘What do you mean, you weren’t sure? You could just tell the truth!’

‘The thing is, Willie was so pleased.’ Romy turned from the window, trying to make Lex understand what it had been like. ‘He was supposed to be showing me some charter, but he really just wanted to talk about you, and how happy he was to discover you weren’t at all like your reputation. There he was, expecting some soulless businessman, and you

turn up with a baby and start bonding with his beastly dog… Willie was absolutely delighted to discover that you were a family man after all!’

‘But I’m not Freya’s father,’ Lex objected, pacing back from the door. ‘We told him that.’

‘I know, but that only makes it better from his point of view. Apparently his mother was a single mother who struggled without any support from her family or his father or anyone, and helping single mothers is a big issue with him.’

Romy fiddled with her bracelets. ‘He just assumed that you and I were.’ Somehow she just couldn’t bring herself to say ‘lovers’. It was too close to the truth. And too far.

‘Together,’ she said in the end. ‘So the fact that you’re prepared to be in a relationship with me and be a hands-on father figure to Freya…well, that clinched it for Willie.’

Hands-on? Lex raked a hand through his hair. This was getting worse and worse!

‘Why didn’t you put him right straight away?’

‘Because you told me you wanted this deal signed at all costs!’ said Romy defensively. ‘This is important, you said.’

‘Good God, Romy, you can’t have thought I meant you to lie to the man!’

‘I didn’t lie. I just…didn’t tell him he’d got it all wrong. I could barely get a word in edgeways as it was.’

Romy was starting to get cross. ‘Willie was going on and on about how pleased he was to discover that you weren’t at all like your reputation, and how much happier he felt knowing that Grant’s was going to be part of a chain run by a man with the right priorities. At what point was I supposed to interrupt and say that actually you weren’t like that at all, and that actually you didn’t want anything to do with me at all and that you’d rather stick pins in your eyes than deal with a baby?’

‘There must have been something you could do!’ Lex took another turn around the room, watched round-eyed by Freya, who was intrigued by his agitation. ‘Eat your supper!’ he said to her irritably as he went past, and obligingly she stuffed another finger of bread in her mouth.

‘Leave Freya out of it!’ snapped Romy, moving to stand protectively over her daughter.

Picking up the banana, she began to peel it as she made herself calm down. There was no point in getting into an argument with Lex. She didn’t for a moment think he would sack her out of spite, but, when all was said and done, he was still her boss.

‘Look,’ she said after a moment, ‘I know it seems awkward, and I’m sorry, but I just didn’t know what to do. It seemed so important to Willie.’

She sliced up the banana and put it on Freya’s plate, while Lex continued to prowl around the room. ‘I got the sense that he’d almost decided that he didn’t want to sell to you, but, between Freya and the dog, you’ve changed his mind. He told me in the tower that he’s really keen for the deal to go ahead as soon as possible now.’

Lex sucked in his breath at the news. This was the moment he had been waiting for. He wanted to punch the air and shout ‘Yes!’ but it didn’t seem appropriate now that everything was muddled with this misunderstanding about his relationship with Romy.

He paced some more. He wanted this deal—oh, how he wanted it!—but did he really want it under false pretences?

Romy was watching him warily. ‘I was afraid that if I told Willie the truth, he would be so disappointed that he’d change his mind back again,’ she said.

‘I wasn’t just thinking about you,’ she added as Lex pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. ‘I was thinking about all the work Tim and the rest of the team have put in on this deal. We all want it as much as you do. So rather than throw up my hands in horror when I realised what Willie was thinking, I thought I should talk to you first. You’re the boss,’ she said. ‘I think you should decide whether you tell him the truth or not.’

Lex had ended up at the window. He stood, exactly where Romy had done, looking broodingly out at the snow that spiralled silently past, catching the light from the room in a brief blur of white before drifting down into the darkness. His hands were thrust into his trouser pockets, his shoulders stiff with exasperation.

‘God, what a mess!’ he said with a short, humourless laugh.

Romy said nothing. It seemed to her that there was little more that she could say now. It was up to Lex.

Freya, quite oblivious to the tension in the room, was stuffing banana into her mouth. Romy sat down next to her and turned her bracelets while her eyes rested on the back of Lex’s head. How was it that it could still look so familiar after all this time?

Unaware of her gaze, Lex tried to roll the tension from his shoulders and she sucked in a breath at the stab of memory. He was such a guarded man, such a cool and careful man, and he held himself so tautly that it was easy to forget that beneath the suit, beneath the tie and the immaculate shirt, was a man of bone and muscle, of firm flesh and sinew, a man hard and smooth and strong.

Romy remembered running her hands over those shoulders, feeling the flex of responsive muscles beneath her touch. His back was broad and solid and warm, his skin sleek and underlaid with steel.

She couldn’t see his face, but she knew that it would be set in harsh lines, and that a nerve would be jumping in his jaw. She could go to him, put her arms around him from behind, and lay her cheek against his back. She could hold onto his hardness and his strength, and offer in return the comfort of her warmth and her softness. She could tell him that she would be there for him, whatever happened.

She could, but she wouldn’t.

It was just a fantasy. A stupid fantasy, Romy knew. A dangerous fantasy.

The trouble with Lex was that he made her feel things she didn’t want to feel. Something about him bypassed all her rational processes and tugged at a chord deep inside her. Romy didn’t want it to be love. Love, she knew, laid you open. It made you vulnerable, made you blind. It was a trap that could spring shut at any moment, and she had no intention of blundering into it. She couldn’t afford to get tangled up in loving anyone, least of all a man who had made it plain that he had no interest in Freya.

I do want you, he had said. I just don’t want a baby.

And that wasn’t a problem, because she didn’t want him, Romy reminded herself.

So, no fantasies. No remembering, no thinking about how he had felt or the clean, male smell of his skin. She was here on business, and she had better not forget it.

The silence lengthened, broken only by Freya loudly enjoying the banana. Bath time next, Romy thought, and was about to get to her feet when Lex spoke at last.

‘I went to see my father last week,’ he said suddenly, without looking round.

Thrown by the apparent change of subject, Romy hesitated. ‘How is he?’ she asked at last.

‘A stroke is a terrible thing.’ Lex kept his eyes on the snow. ‘He’s trapped in a useless body, but his mind is as sharp as ever. He was such a powerful man, always in control, and now all he can do is lie there. He can’t bear the humiliation of it.’

‘He must be glad to see you,’ Romy said, not entirely sure where this was going.

‘Must he? I think he hates the fact that I can walk into the room on my own. He hates the fact that I can walk out. He hates the fact that I run Gibson & Grieve now. I don’t know which of us dreads my visits more,’ said Lex bleakly.

‘But still you go.’

‘My mother says he wants to know what’s going on at Gibson & Grieve now he’s not there any more. She says it’s all that keeps him going. It’s certainly all we’ve got to talk about.’

Lex’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘You know what’s the worst thing about those visits? It’s that every time I hope that he’ll think the company is doing all right. You’d

think I’d know by now that he’s never going to say, “Well done”,’ he added, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘I could tell him we’d quadrupled our profits, and he’d still say it wasn’t good enough!’

‘Is that why you feel you have to prove something with this deal?’

‘Damn right it is.’ Lex turned to face her at last. ‘When I told him about taking over Grant’s, my father said that Grant wouldn’t sell. He said he’d approached him before, and they couldn’t make it work, so I wouldn’t be able to pull it off either. Talking is a big effort for him nowadays, and his speech is slurred, but he made sure I got that message. It won’t work, he said.’

Lex’s jaw was clenched. ‘I’m going to go back and tell him that Grant will sell, that it will work. I want him to know that he was wrong, and that Gibson & Grieve is bigger and better without him.’




CHAPTER FIVE


ROMY bit her lip. ‘Lex, he’s very ill. Making him admit that he was wrong won’t make you feel any better.’

‘It’s not about feeling, said Lex angrily. ‘It’s about doing what’s best for the company. And signing this deal with Grant is the best thing for Gibson & Grieve.’

‘So…?’ Romy’s dark eyes were wary.

‘So let’s not disillusion him.’ Lex made up his mind so abruptly that he couldn’t believe that he had been hesitating. Surely it had been obvious?

He pulled the curtain back across the window and came to join Romy and Freya at the table.

‘You’ve told me it makes a difference to Willie if we’re together or not, and if that’s the case I’m not prepared to risk him changing his mind. If we start bleating on about separate rooms and not really being a couple, it’ll just be embarrassing for everybody.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Romy.

‘What does it matter if Willie thinks we’re a couple?’ Lex, talking himself into the whole idea, made the mistake of looking at Freya, who smiled at him through a mouthful of banana. He averted his eyes quickly. ‘It’ll only be for a night. How hard can that be?’

‘As long as he doesn’t ask too many personal questions.’ Romy thought she should inject a note of caution, but Lex was committed now.

‘We’re going to talk business tonight,’ he said. ‘If Willie is really concerned about getting the best deal for Grant’s Supersavers, he’ll have more important questions to ask.’

How hard could it be? Lex had asked, and at the time it had seemed all quite straightforward. The deal was within his grasp. He and Romy would have dinner with Willie Grant. They would discuss the arrangements and come to a gentleman’s agreement, and the deal would be done. The next day, he and Romy would return to London. Romy would go back to Acquisitions, Freya would go to the crèche that he had had no idea existed, and he could tell his father that he had succeeded where he never could.

Simple.

Only he hadn’t counted on the intimacy of sharing a room with Romy. Lex flipped open his computer to check the markets, while Romy had a bath with Freya, but it was impossible to concentrate with the squeals and splashes and laughter coming out of the bathroom. Romy’s vividly coloured outfit hung on the wardrobe door, and her perfume lingered distractingly in the air, coiling around his mind and making the Dow Jones Index dance in front of his eyes.

Worse was to come. The door opened, and Romy came out, carrying Freya. ‘I found this behind the door,’ she said, gesturing down at the towelling robe. ‘I hope no one will mind if I use it.’

‘I’m sure they won’t.’ Lex’s voice came out as a humiliating rasp, and he cleared his throat and scowled at the screen. Much good it did him. There might as well have been a photo of Romy there instead, her skin glowing, her hair damp to her shoulders, her face alight with joy in her daughter….

Romy threw a towel on the floor and laid Freya on it. ‘There’s not much room in the bathroom,’ she explained over her shoulder, ‘so I thought it would be easier to dry her out here. It’s all yours.’

Of course, what he should have done was get up straight away and have a shower, but instead Lex sat on at the computer, pretending to himself that he was working, forcing his eyes back to the screen whenever they drifted over to where Romy was kissing Freya’s toes and blowing raspberries on her tummy while Freya shrieked with delighted laughter and clutched at her mother’s hair.

Lex knew exactly how silky it would feel in Freya’s fingers. He knew how it felt tickling his skin, and memory hit him like a blow to his diaphragm: the hitch in his chest at Romy’s pliant warmth in his arms, her soft laughter in his ear, her kisses drifting down his throat, down, down, down. All at once he lost track of his breathing. It got all muddled up with the twist of his guts and the vice around his chest and he had to force his lungs back to order.

Inflate, deflate. In, out. In, out. Slow, steady.

No problem. There was no need to panic. There was plenty of oxygen.

Lex switched off the computer. There was little point in sitting there staring at nothing.

‘I’ll go and have a shower then.’ Even to his own ears his voice sounded unfamiliar.

Romy looked up briefly. ‘Good idea. I’m going to take Freya down to the kitchen and warm some milk for her.’

She wasn’t bothered by the intimacy of the situation at all, Lex realised, chagrined. She was too absorbed in her baby to think about him.

To remember Paris.

To wonder about that four poster bed or where he would sleep.

Frankly, it was a relief when Romy and Freya had gone. Lex showered and shaved and reminded himself what they were doing there. This was business. The deal was what mattered, and it was almost within his grasp. This was not the time to get distracted by silky hair or bare feet or joyous laughter.

By the time Romy came back with a sleepy Freya, Lex had himself back under control. He was buttoning a dark blue shirt when she knocked lightly and opened the door.

‘Don’t worry, I’m decent,’ he said with a sardonic look. ‘Although I’m not sure there’d be much point in being shy even if I wasn’t. It’s not as if we haven’t seen each other’s bodies before.’

That was better, Lex told himself. He sounded indifferent, as if he hadn’t even noticed that she had been naked beneath that towelling robe earlier. As if it would never occur to him to think about touching her, tasting her.

Romy had set the cot up in a corner. She laid Freya down and switched off the lamps nearby, glad of the excuse to dim the light and hide the colour staining her cheeks.

‘That was a long time ago,’ she reminded him uncomfortably. ‘We’re different people now.’

She just wished she felt different. It had been bad enough when Lex was sitting there at his computer, but now he was tucking his shirt into his trousers, doing up his cuffs, slinging a tie around his neck, as if they were a real couple getting ready to go out for the evening.

But if they were a real couple, she could go over to Lex and slide her arms around his waist. She could kiss his newly shaved jaw and run her fingers through his damp hair.

She could tug the shirt out of his trousers once more and slide her hands over his bare chest.

Make him smile, feel his arms close around her.

Whisper that there was time before they had to leave. Time to hold each other. Time to touch. Time to make love.

Romy swallowed hard. There was no time now. That time was past.

‘I’d better change.’

Wincing at the huskiness in her voice, she took her outfit into the bathroom. She saw immediately that Lex had tidied up. The bath mat had been hung up, the towels neatly folded and drying on the rail. The top was back on the shampoo and the toothbrushes were standing to attention in a glass.

Romy sighed. She would have tidied the bathroom herself if he had left it. Growing up, she had often heard Phin mock Lex for his nit-picking ways, and the chief executive’s insistence on precision and neatness was something of a joke in the office, but it didn’t seem quite so funny now. It just underlined the fact that a man with Lex’s obsessive need for order would never be able to cope with the chaos of living with children.

And why would that be a problem? Romy asked her reflection.

It wouldn’t, because Lex would never have to live with a child. He would never want to. Tonight was the closest he would get to family life, and Romy was quite sure it would be enough for him.

And that wasn’t a problem for her, either.

Was it?

* * *

Freya was asleep. Romy left one of the bedside lamps on and closed the door softly behind her. ‘Let’s go,’ she said.

They made their way back to the library together. ‘This place is enormous,’ said Lex as they turned the corner to find themselves in yet another picture-lined corridor. ‘Why does Willie stay here on his own?’

‘Duncardie reminds him of his wife. She loved it here, apparently, so don’t go telling him he’d be better off back in the city.’

‘I’m not completely insensitive,’ Lex said huffily.

He was hummingly aware of Romy next to him. She had emerged from the bathroom wearing silk trousers and a camisole, with some kind of loose silk jacket. Lex wasn’t very good on fashion, but the colours and the print made him think of heat and spices and coconut palms swaying in the breeze.

He could hear the faint swish of the slippery fabric as she walked, could picture it slithering over her skin, and he swallowed painfully. Her hair was piled up in a way that managed to look elegant and messy at the same time, and, with her bracelets and dangly earrings, she came across as vivid, interesting, and all too touchable. Next to her, Lex knew, he seemed stiff and conventional in his suit.

Willie was waiting for them in the library. He was standing in front of the fire, Magnus at his feet, and in an expansive mood. ‘We’ll talk details over dinner,’ he said when he had welcomed them in and complimented Romy on her outfit, ‘but I’m happy to agree in principle to a merger of Grant’s Supersavers with Gibson & Grieve.’

‘Oh, that’s wonderful news!’ Getting into her role, Romy smiled and hugged Lex, whose arm went round her quite instinctively.

She was warm and soft and slender, and his hand rested on the curve of her hip. He breathed in the scent of her hair and felt silk slip a little under his palm, a sharp, erotic shock that made his heart clench.

Head reeling, incapable of saying anything, Lex gave himself up to the pleasure of holding her for the first time in twelve years, until Romy widened her eyes meaningfully at him. ‘Isn’t it, darling?’ she prompted him as she disengaged herself.

‘Wonderful,’ he managed.

It was barely more than a croak, but Willie wouldn’t notice. He was too busy being kissed by Romy. It was Willie’s turn to have that smooth cheek against his own, to feel that vibrant warmth pressed against him. To be enveloped in her glow.

Lex wanted to kill him.

Now Willie was returning Romy’s hug. Patting her shoulder. Smiling at her. Good God, why didn’t he stick a tongue down her throat and be done with it? Lex thought savagely, just as Willie looked over Romy’s shoulder. The expression on Lex’s face made the shaggy white brows lift in surprise, and then amused under standing.

‘I think we should celebrate, don’t you?’ he said as he let Romy go.

The deal of his career, and Lex had never felt less like celebrating. What was the matter with him? he thought, appalled at his own behaviour. This was the moment he had been waiting for, the deal within his grasp at last, and all he could do was think about how smooth and warm Romy’s skin would be beneath that silk top.

He rearranged his face into a stiff smile. ‘Excellent.’

‘I’ve got something really special to mark the occasion.’ Willie beamed at them both.

‘Champagne?’

‘Oh, much more special than that,’ he promised, turning away to a tray behind him. Reverently, he poured what looked like rich liquid gold into plain crystal tumblers.

Romy buried her nose in the glass when he handed one to her. ‘Whisky,’ she said, surprised, and Willie tutted as he passed a glass to Lex.

‘This is no ordinary whisky. This is a fifty year old single malt. A thousand pounds a bottle,’ he added just as Romy took her first sip.

‘What?’

She choked, coughing and spluttering while Lex patted her on the back. Well, what else could he do? Lex asked himself. He was supposed to be a concerned lover. Of course he would pat her on the back. It wasn’t just an excuse to touch her.

He was just playing his part. He wasn’t thinking about how little fabric there was between his hand and her skin or how easy it would be to let the jacket slither off her shoulders. He wasn’t thinking about how inviting the nape of her neck looked. How easy it would be to press his lips to it. To pull the clips from her hair and let it tumble down.

Without his being aware of it, his patting had turned into a slow rub. Romy, her eyes still watering, moved unobtrusively out of his reach.

‘Thanks,’ she managed, and Lex’s hand fell to his side where it hung, feeling hot and heavy and uncomfortable. Not sure what to do with it now, Lex stroked Magnus’s head instead.

‘Better?’ Willie smiled and lifted his glass when she nodded. ‘In that case… Slainthe!’

‘Slainthe!’ echoed Lex and took a sip.

‘Well?’ Willie eyed him expectantly. ‘What do you think?’

‘Unforgettable.’

It was true. Lex was gripped by a strange sense of unreality, shot through with an intense immediacy, as if he had shifted into a parallel universe where all his senses were on high alert. He was would never forget anything about this evening: the castle in the snow, the great dog beside him, the taste of this extraordinary whisky on his tongue.

The deal of his life.

And Romy, in the firelight.

Pleased with his response, Willie waved them to the leather sofa where they had sat before. ‘Sit down and tell me all about yourselves,’ he invited. Or perhaps it was a command.

So much for him not asking personal questions. Romy couldn’t resist a glance at Lex, who ran a finger around his collar and didn’t quite meet her eye.

‘What would you like to know?’ he asked Willie stiffly after a moment.

‘Call me a nosy old man, but I like to know who I’m doing business with,’ said Willie, settling himself comfortably into his chair. ‘I’m interested in how somebody with your reputation turns out be so different when you meet him face to face. I was expecting a soulless businessman, and I get a man capable of building a relationship with a beautiful woman, her baby and even my dog!’

His bright blue eyes fixed on Lex’s face. ‘Why do you keep Romy here a secret? I was so proud of Moira, I used to show her off whenever I could, so that everyone could see what a lucky man I was.’

Romy saw Lex’s jaw clench with frustrated irritation and she slid over the sofa and put her hand on his taut thigh before he could snap back that it was none of Willie’s business. Willie might have said that the deal would go ahead, but it wasn’t signed yet.

‘That’s not Lex’s fault,’ she said quickly. ‘I’m the one who wants to keep things a secret for now. It still feels very…new.’

That was true enough, Romy thought. By her reckoning they had been a ‘couple’ for all of two hours.

‘Lex is technically my boss,’ she went on. ‘I didn’t want my colleagues to think that I’d got the job because of him. I want to prove myself first.’

Willie chuckled. ‘So all this time we’ve been talking about the deal, you’ve known more about Lex than anyone?’

Also probably true. Faint colour tinged Romy’s cheeks.

‘We don’t normally work together,’ she said. ‘It’s just that Tim couldn’t come, and I couldn’t leave Freya…so we all came together.’

‘And I’m glad you did,’ said Willie. ‘I’m surprised to hear that this is a new thing. I got the impression that you’ve known each other a long time somehow.’

‘We have.’ To Romy’s relief, Lex managed to unlock his jaw, and she took her hand from his thigh before it started feeling too comfortable there. ‘Our mothers have been friends since they were at school,’ he said. ‘I’ve known Romy since she was born.’

That went down very well with Willie. ‘Ah… childhood sweethearts? Just like Moira and I.’

‘I wouldn’t say that exactly, would you, Lex?’ Romy decided it was better to stick to the truth as far as possible, or they would get hopelessly muddled. ‘Lex was older,’ she confided to Willie. ‘The truth is, he was hardly aware I existed before I was eighteen!’

‘Of course I knew you existed,’ said Lex with a touch of irritation, and he yanked at his tie as if it felt too tight. He looked cross and more than a little ruffled, Romy thought. Not at all like a man who was madly in love with her.

Funny, that.

She plastered on an adoring smile and leaned into his shoulder. Winsome wasn’t a look she did well, but it looked as if she was going to have to do the work for both of them.

‘It’s not as if it was love at first sight, though,’ she pointed out.

‘It felt like it.’

Much to Romy’s surprise, Lex appeared to have come to the same conclusion, or at least to have realised that he wasn’t giving a very good impression of a man who had found the love of his life.

‘I hadn’t seen Romy for three or four years.’ He turned to tell Willie the story. ‘You know what it’s like when you first leave home. I’d lost track of family occasions once I was at university. I remembered a gangly, unruly girl of fourteen or so, but then I called in to see my parents one weekend and Romy was there, and suddenly she was all grown up.’

And then before Romy realised quite what he was doing, he had taken her hand. His fingers closed around hers, warm and strong, and her heart began to bump against her ribs. She remembered that day so well.

‘I just stood and stared,’ Lex said, looking into Romy’s eyes, and it was almost as if he had forgotten Willie entirely. ‘Until then, I thought falling in love was just an expression,’ he said, his voice very deep. ‘But falling was just how it felt.’

He could still remember that moment, the lurch of his heart, the tumbling sensation as if he had slipped over the side of a cliff, the terror and exhilaration of falling, falling, out of control.

The pain of crashing into reality.

Lex took a gulp of his whisky. It burned down his throat, steadied him. Maybe thousand-pound bottles of whisky would have helped twelve years ago. Belatedly realising that he was still holding Romy’s hand, he let it go.

‘Eighteen?’ Willie was evidently doing some calculations in his head. ‘You’ve been together a long time, then.’

Romy glanced at Lex, and then away. ‘No. That time, the first time, we just had a week. We ran off to Paris together. It was very romantic. We had the most.’ She made a helpless gesture, unable to describe to Willie what that week had been like. ‘It was like stumbling into a different world, but we both knew then it couldn’t last.’

‘I thought it could,’ Lex contradicted her. ‘I asked her to marry me,’ he told Willie, ‘and she said no.’

‘I was only eighteen!’ Romy cried. ‘I was much too young to think about getting married. You agreed that it would have been crazy—’

She stopped, realising that Lex had agreed that morning. He hadn’t thought it was a crazy idea in Paris. But this wasn’t something they should be discussing in front of Willie. They were supposed to be in love, not two people still wrangling about the past.

She pinned on a smile. ‘Anyway, the upshot was that we went our separate ways,’ she told Willie. ‘I stayed in France for that year, and then I came home to go to university, but when I graduated I still had itchy feet. I spent the next few years working my way around the world. I ended up in Indonesia.’

Sensing Lex growing restless, Romy decided to speed the story up a bit. ‘That’s where I got pregnant. I came home to have the baby, but I didn’t see Lex again until his brother’s wedding last summer.’

No need to tell Willie that Lex hadn’t come near her all day.

‘Meanwhile, I’d been at Gibson & Grieve, doing what I’d always done,’ said Lex. ‘Then last summer, Phin got married, and Romy was there…’

‘And you fell in love with her all over again?’

Lex drew a breath, then let it out slowly. ‘Yes,’ he said.

When he looked at Romy, her eyes were dark and wary. ‘Yes,’ he said again. ‘I’d never forgotten her—how could I? I think I’d spent all those years just waiting for her to come home. I’d try going out with other women, but none of them made me feel the way Romy did. I was Phin’s best man. I remember standing by his side, and turning to watch the bride, and seeing Romy sitting a few pews behind.’

Willie seemed to be enjoying the story. ‘And that was that?’

‘That was that,’ agreed Lex.

There was a pause. Romy couldn’t believe how convincing he sounded. Beside him on the sofa, she studied him under her lashes. He was so lean and solid and restrained in his suit. What must it be costing him to come out with all this rubbish about being in love with her still? Only that morning, on the plane, he had reminded her that any feelings he’d once had were long dead.

We’ve both moved on, he had said.

He was a much better actor than she had expected him to be. Romy was sure he must be hating the need to pretend, to talk about feelings, but then, he had an incentive. He would do whatever it took to get Willie’s agreement.

‘Well, you’ve done a good job of keeping all this a secret,’ Willie was saying admiringly. ‘I’ve been trying to find out everything I can about you and there’s been no hint of it. I don’t mind telling you, it made all the difference to me that you were happy to get involved with a baby as well as Romy,’ he said to Lex. ‘That told me that you’re a man I can trust with Grant’s Supersavers, that you’re a man who understands what’s really important in life.’

‘I do,’ said Lex. He smiled at Romy, who did her best to conceal her amazement at how whole-heartedly he was entering into the pretence, and took her hand once more. ‘I thought I’d never find her again, and now that I have, I’m not going to let her go again. Freya’s part of the package.’

Romy’s eyes widened as he lifted her hand and kissed her knuckles. ‘I’ve waited a long time for Romy to agree to marry me, and now she has. Between that and a deal to secure Grant’s Supersavers, I’ve got everything I ever wanted.’

Willie was delighted. ‘That deserves another toast!’

He hauled himself out of his chair to find the malt, thus missing the look Romy was giving Lex, who looked blandly back at her. She tried to tug her hand away, but he kept a firm hold of it as Willie splashed more of the precious whisky into their glasses.

‘Congratulations,’ said Willie, lifting his glass towards them both. ‘Here’s to love lost and found!’

‘Here’s to love,’ Lex and Romy agreed, smiling hard, but not meeting each other’s eyes.

‘What on earth did you say that for?’ Romy demanded as the bedroom door closed behind them at the end of that memorable evening.

‘Say what?’ said Lex, tugging his tie loose.

‘You know what! About getting married!’

Romy would have liked to have shouted, but Freya was asleep in the corner, so she was restricted to a furious whisper, which didn’t improve her temper.

Lex just shrugged and pulled the tie from his neck, undoing the top button of his shirt with a sigh of relief. ‘If we’re going to pretend, we might as well do it properly. And you’ve got to admit, it did the trick. Willie was delighted.’

‘He was delighted before. You didn’t need to complicate it with marriage.’ Romy sat on the edge of the bed and kicked off her shoes bad-temperedly.

‘People of that generation feel more comfortable with marriage. How else could I convince him that I was going to do right by you and Freya?’

‘Everyone knows that I’m never going to get married,’ she said, unable to explain just how uneasy the very idea made her.

‘People change.’

‘Not me!’

‘No,’ Lex agreed with a sardonic look, ‘I know not you. Fortunately, Willie doesn’t have any idea how stubborn you are.’

‘It’s not about stubbornness,’ said Romy.

‘Isn’t it?’

‘No. It’s about being realistic, not stubborn.’

Lex shook his head. ‘No, it’s not. It’s about being afraid. You’re afraid of marriage because you think it might end up badly like your parents’ marriage did, and you’ll be hurt again. Fair enough. I understand that. But I don’t quite see what the problem is here. We’re not getting married. It’s just a pretence.’

‘I know.’ Romy sighed, and twisted her bracelets fretfully. ‘I know you’re right. I just wish Willie wasn’t quite so thrilled. I don’t like lying to him.’

‘It’s a bit late to worry about that now,’ said Lex, exasperated. ‘This was all your idea in the first place!’ His voice had risen, until Romy pointed at Freya’s cot and laid a finger over her lips. ‘And you were the one who started on the “darlings”,’ he added more quietly.

‘I thought it would make us look more convincing,’ she said. ‘Little did I know that, once you got going, you would turn in an Oscar-winning performance! You nearly had me convinced!’

‘Look, what’s the problem?’ Lex had started on his buttons now. ‘We’ve done it. Willie’s agreed to the sale.’

As promised, they had discussed it over an excellent dinner, and come to what Willie called a ‘gentleman’s agreement’. The lawyers would draw up a detailed contract. He and Willie would sign it and the deal would be done.

‘We’ve done exactly what we set out to do,’ he reminded Romy. ‘We can go home tomorrow, and no one else will ever know that you once pretended for five seconds that you would consider the possibility of marriage.’

Romy wished he would stop unbuttoning his shirt. It was distracting her. Averting her eyes, she began to pull off her bangles one by one.

‘What if Willie finds out that we’re not really engaged?’

‘You said yourself he never leaves Duncardie now,’ Lex pointed out. ‘And we’ve already told him why we’re keeping it a secret for now.’

‘I suppose so.’

Romy wasn’t sure why the whole question had made her so twitchy. It was something to do with sitting next to Lex all evening. With the feel of his fingers warm around hers, his palm strong and steady on her back, his thigh beneath her hand.

She had been desperately aware of him. Ever since she had walked into the bathroom and seen him looking harassed at the prospect of changing Freya’s nappy there had been a persistent thumping low in her belly. A jittery, fluttery, frantic feeling just beneath her skin that was part nervousness, part excitement.

How was it possible to be furious with someone and still want to wrap yourself round him? To kiss your way along his jaw and press against the lovely lean hardness of his body?

At least the argument about the stupid marriage thing had got them over the awkwardness of being alone. Having divested herself of bracelets and earrings, Romy stomped into the bathroom to get undressed. Lex might be happy to start stripping off in front of her, but she didn’t have his cool.

She didn’t possess a nightdress. She hadn’t been expecting to share a room, so all she had with her was an old sarong. Romy eyed it dubiously as she wrapped it tightly under her arms. It was hardly the most seductive of garments, but she couldn’t help wishing it were a little more substantial.

If she had had time to think about her packing, she might have considered that a castle in the Highlands in the middle of winter might not be the most appropriate place for a sarong, and then she would have been prepared with a sensible winceyette nightie that would have kept her warm and, more importantly under the current circumstances, covered. Not that Lex had shown any sign of preparing to pounce, but, still, it was unnerving to contemplate the prospect of sharing a bed with nothing but a skimpy strip of material for modesty.

Well, it would just have to do.

When Romy went back into the bedroom, holding her clothes protectively in front of her, Lex was peering in the wardrobe. He had stripped off his shirt, but still wore his trousers, to her relief. The sight of his broad, bare, smooth back was enough to dry her mouth and set her heart thudding against her ribs as it was. God only knew what state she’d be in if he’d taken off any more clothes!

‘What are you doing?’

‘Looking for an extra blanket,’ he said without turning round. ‘I’ll sleep on the floor.’

‘Lex, it’s snowing outside! You’ll freeze to death, even on the carpet.’ Romy dumped her clothes on top of her overnight case and checked that Freya was still sound asleep. Having been stomach-twistingly anxious about the prospect of sleeping with him, she was now perversely determined to prove to Lex that it didn’t bother her at all.

‘It’s an absolutely huge bed—and it’s not as if we’ve never shared a bed before, is it?’

‘No,’ he said, turning to face her, ‘but as you said before, that was twelve years ago and we’re different people now.’

‘We’re twelve years older and twelve years more grown up,’ said Romy firmly, hoping to convince herself as much as Lex. ‘We’ve got over all that.’ She saw Lex’s brows rise and flushed. ‘You know what I mean. And even if we hadn’t, how could I possibly sleep knowing that you were on the floor? There’s room for ten in there,’ she said, gesturing at the bed.

An exaggeration, perhaps, but it was certainly a very large bed. They would easily be able to avoid rolling into each other.

She hoped.




CHAPTER SIX


PULLING back the heavy cover, Romy climbed up into the bed and made a big show of making herself comfortable. ‘It’s up to you, of course,’ she said, ‘but if you’re worried about me making a fuss about sharing a bed, then don’t. I really don’t see why it needs to be a big deal.’

‘Well, if you’re sure…’

Lex splashed water over his face and brushed his teeth. He knew Romy was right. It was only sensible. The floor would be uncomfortable, not to mention cold, and there was no convenient sofa.

She clearly wasn’t bothered at the prospect, so he could hardly say that it bothered him. Romy might think that there was room for ten in the bed, but Lex was pretty sure that it wouldn’t feel like that when he was lying beside her. It wouldn’t take much to roll over and find himself next to her, and then what would happen? How would he be able to stop himself reaching for her?

No big deal, she thought.

Hah.

But there was nothing for it.

He didn’t even have any pyjamas with him. Normally he slept in the buff and he hadn’t expected tonight to be any different. He would definitely have to keep boxers on, Lex realised. It was going to be difficult enough without adding naked bodies into the equation, and he didn’t care what Romy said about being twelve years older. Some things didn’t change that much.

Remembering how cool Romy had been about the whole business, Lex took his time folding his trousers and hanging them up before he crossed over to bed. To his relief Romy had snuggled down under the cover so that only her nose and eyes were showing. That was good. It meant he couldn’t see her bare shoulders, or her bare arms, or her bare legs.

But he knew they were there. Oh, yes.

The dark eyes watched with a certain wariness as he pulled back the cover on his side of the bed, switched off the light and lay down.

They weren’t touching at all, but Lex was aware of her with every fibre of his being. His right side was tingling with her nearness. It would take so little to touch her.

Big enough for ten people? Lex didn’t think so.

He stared up at the canopy through the dark. He should be jubilant. The deal was done. Willie Grant had agreed to sell and Gibson & Grieve would have the foothold in Scotland they had wanted for so long. He could go back to his father and show him what he had been able to do. He had everything he’d wanted.

But all he could think about was Romy, lying beside him in the darkness. He’d been aware of her all evening, and it had been a struggle to concentrate on the conversation when his mind kept swooping between memories and noticing the pure line of her throat, how her hair gleamed in the candlelight. Her face had been bright as she leaned across the table to talk to Willie, and her earrings had swung whenever she threw back her head and laughed.

Lex’s throat had been so tight it was an effort to talk.

Twelve years, he had been trying to forget.

Her hair, dark and silky. The way it had swung forward as she leant over him, how soft it had felt twined around his fingers. Breathing in the scent of it as he lay with his face pressed into it, how it had made him think of long summer evenings.

Her eyes, those luminous eyes, so dark and rich and warm that brown was laughably inadequate to describe their colour. Looking into them was like falling into a different world, where nothing mattered but the feel of her, the taste of her, the need that squeezed his heart and left him dizzy and breathless.

Her mouth, too wide, too sweet. The way she turned her head and smiled sometimes.

The quicksilver feel of her, warm and vibrant and elusive. The harder he’d held onto her, the faster she’d slipped away.

The swell of his heart, the feel of it beating, when she lay quietly in his arms.

The aching emptiness when she had gone.

And now she was lying only inches away. It was a wide bed, as she had said, but it wouldn’t take much to slide across the gap between them. If he rolled over, if she did, they could meet.

But Romy wasn’t moving. Lex was fairly sure that she wasn’t sleeping either. She was too still, her breathing too shallow.

She wasn’t going to roll over, and neither was he. It was the last thing he should do, Lex knew. It had taken him a long time to gather up the wild emotions that had been flailing around inside him, but at last he had managed to press them together into a tight lump that had been settled, cold and hard, in the pit of his belly ever since. He couldn’t risk dislodging it and letting all that feeling loose again.

Besides, Romy had made it very clear that she wasn’t interested in resuming a relationship—look at the fuss she had made about even pretending to be engaged!—and, even if she had been, he didn’t have room in his life for a lover, let alone a baby. It was too late for that now.

Twelve years too late.

There was a muffled quality to the atmosphere when Romy woke the next morning, a strangeness about the light that was filtering through the heavy curtains on her right.

At first, puzzled by the musty fabric above her, she wondered if she was still dreaming, but a moment later memories from the day before came skidding and sliding in a rush through her mind.

Freya, sucking Lex’s shoelace.

The long drive through the snow.

Willie Grant’s monstrous dog.

Lex’s hand on her spine.

Lex. The sag of the bed as he climbed in beside her. Knowing that he was there, near enough for her to simply reach over and…

Romy jerked upright, realising belatedly that she was alone in the four-poster. From the cot in the corner came a cooing. Freya, it seemed, was also awake, but where was Lex?

The thought had barely crossed her mind before the door was shouldered open and Lex came in carrying two mugs. He was looking positively relaxed in his suit trousers with a shirt open at the collar and the sleeves rolled above his wrists, but he still managed to exude a forcefulness that seemed to suck some of the oxygen out of the room, and Romy found herself sucking in a breath.

‘Good morning,’ she said, feeling ridiculously shy.

‘Good morning.’ Lex offered her one of the mugs. ‘There doesn’t seem to be anyone around, so I helped myself to some tea. I thought you might like some.’

‘Thank you.’ Romy pulled herself further up the pillows and took a sip of the tea. It was black and sweet, just as she liked it. She lifted her eyes to Lex. ‘You remember how I take my tea!’

His gaze slid away from hers. ‘I’ve got a good memory.’

Romy wished her own memory weren’t quite so good. It might have made it easier to lie next to him all night.

But now it was morning, and Freya was singing happily to herself. Romy threw off the cover, only just remembering to secure her sarong in time, and went over to the cot.

‘Hello, my gorgeous girl. How are you this morning?’

It was impossible to feel awkward or cross or anything but joyful when Freya smiled like that. Romy picked her up and cuddled her, loving her warm, sweet smell and compact body, and Freya bumped her head into her mother’s neck and grabbed fistfuls of her hair as she babbled with pleasure.

Lex looked away from their glowing faces. ‘How did you sleep?’ he asked after a moment.

‘Fine,’ said Romy, and then wondered why she was lying. ‘Actually, if I hadn’t just woken up, I could have sworn I didn’t sleep a wink,’ she confessed.

She had been too conscious of Lex, of the lean, muscled length of his body on the other side of the bed.

After so long, it had been hard to believe that he was actually there, close enough to touch, but utterly untouchable. How many times over those years had she found herself remembering that week? Remembering the feel of his body, how solid and safe he had felt, remembering how sure his hands had been, how warm his mouth, marvelling at the passion he kept bottled up beneath the austere surface.

‘I didn’t sleep much either,’ Lex admitted.

‘Looks like we’ll both have to catch up tonight,’ said Romy lightly.

‘I’ve got a nasty feeling we’ll be spending another night here.’ He pulled back the curtains. ‘It’s stopped snowing, but I doubt we’ll be going anywhere today.’

She looked at him in dismay. ‘We’re snowed in?’

‘I’m afraid so.’

Carrying Freya, Romy went to join him by the window, and caught her breath at the scene.

Outside, it was a monochrome world. Bare black trees, rimed in white. A black loch. Over everything else, a blanket of white that blurred the features of the landscape, so that it all looked oddly blank and two dimensional. Above that, a sky washed of colour, except for the faintest hint of pink staining the horizon. It was going to be a beautiful day.

But not for travelling. There were no roads visible, not even a track.

‘Ah,’ said Romy.

‘Quite.’ Lex’s voice was as crisp as the snow piled high on the window sill.

Romy took Freya over to the bed and let her clamber around on the pillows while she drank her tea. ‘What shall we do?’

‘There’s not much we can do. It looks as if we’re stuck.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Summer should be in the office soon. I’ll ring her in a few minutes. She’ll have to reschedule tomorrow’s appointments, and she can let Acquisitions know why you’re not in.’

‘And meanwhile, we’ll have to be engaged another day?’ said Romy, who thought there were more important issues to be dealt with than Lex’s meetings.

‘Yes,’ said Lex after a beat. ‘One more day. Do you think you can manage that?’

She looked back at him over the rim of her mug, her eyes dark and cautious. ‘I’ll have to, won’t I?’

Lex fully intended to spend the day working as normal. He had the technology. Between his iPhone and his laptop, there was plenty he could do. But breakfast turned into an extended affair, with Romy chatting easily to Willie while Freya ate porridge with her fingers, and then, when Freya had a nap, Romy was determined to go outside and enjoy the snow.

‘There’s masses of old boots and coats in the utility room,’ said Willie when Lex pointed out that she had nothing suitable to wear. ‘Help yourself.’

Lex thought he might slope off to a quiet room and get on with some work then, but Romy was unimpressed. ‘You’re supposed to be madly in love with me,’ she said when he suggested it. ‘What’s Willie going to think if you let me wander off into the snow on my own while you huddle over your laptop?’

Which was how Lex came to be wearing a pair of old wellies and a faded oilskin jacket over a jumper he’d borrowed from Willie, who’d raised his brows when Lex had appeared at breakfast in a suit and tie.

Romy had never seen him in anything so shabby before, and she laughed that deep, husky laugh of hers at his expression. She was swathed in a similar jacket that had to be about six sizes too big for her, and the boots were nearly as big. A woolly hat was pulled down over her ears and a scarlet scarf wrapped jauntily around her throat. Her eyes were dark and bright. She looked, Lex thought, rather like a robin.

‘I don’t know what you think we’re going to do out there,’ he said grouchily as he pulled on a pair of gloves. ‘The snow’s far too deep to walk anywhere.’

‘It’ll be fun,’ said Romy, opening the door to a glittering world. ‘Just look how beautiful it is!’

Lex had been right about the snow making walking difficult. It came almost up to Romy’s knees, but she refused to give up and insisted on trudging down to the lochside.

It was so cold that her teeth ached with every breath, but she was conscious of exhilaration bubbling along her veins. The light was dazzling. Every twig, every leaf bending under the weight of a pristine mound of snow, seemed to jump out at her, and when they turned to look back at Duncardie it rose out of the snow like something out of a fairy tale, with its battlements and turrets and the backdrop of the mountains.

‘It looks like a stage set, doesn’t it?’ said Romy. ‘You could almost believe a princess was sleeping in one of those towers. Perhaps we’ve stumbled into a magical kingdom without realising it!’ She sniffed happily at the crystalline air. ‘There’s something unreal about today.’

‘That would certainly explain why we’re freezing our butts off out here when we could be warm and dry inside,’ said Lex, slapping the arms of his waxed jacket for warmth.

‘Come on, Lex, you’ve got to admit it’s beautiful.’ Romy turned and headed along the edge of the loch. It was hard going. She had to lift her feet high and stamp down through the snow, and she was soon puffing, but at least the exercise kept her warm.

‘It looked beautiful from inside,’ Lex grumbled, but he fell into step beside her.

‘Look, there’s Willie,’ Romy said, spotting the portly figure watching them from one of the windows. She waved, and Willie waved back.

‘I notice he’s staying tucked up nice and warm. He’s got more sense. Probably there shaking his head at crazy Sassenachs. ‘

Romy rolled her eyes and pushed him. ‘Oh, stop being such a crosspatch! I know you hate being unlashed from the office, but it’ll do you good to get outside like this. You’re getting some exercise, breathing in all this clean air…’

‘Getting frostbite,’ Lex put in.

‘Can you put a hand on your heart and tell me that no part of you finds this exciting?’

Lex stopped and, surprised, she stopped too. She was smiling. Her skin glowed, and her eyes were brilliant. The light was so crisp that he could see her in heart-stopping detail—the few strands of hair escaping from beneath the hat, her brows, the crooked front tooth—and he felt something shift and crumple inside him.

He hoped it wasn’t his heart.

He opened his mouth to answer. Afterwards, Lex often wondered what he would have said, and if it would have been the truth, but before he could decide Romy caught sight of something behind him and terror rinsed the smile from her face. Sucking in a sharp breath, she stumbled towards him, grabbed him by the waist and buried her head in his chest.

Instinctively, Lex closed his arms around her, and looked over his shoulder. Magnus, the Irish wolfhound, was bounding towards them, snapping at the snow with his great jaws. His muzzle was encrusted with white and as he got close he barked with exuberance and shook joyously, spraying snow everywhere.

Romy made a tiny sound deep in her throat and burrowed closer, as if she were trying to get inside his jacket.

‘He’s playing,’ said Lex calmly. ‘He won’t hurt you.’ Then, to the dog, ‘Magnus, sit!’

Surprised at the sudden command, Magnus skidded to a halt and sat, tongue lolling.

‘Let him sniff your hand.’

In response, Romy held tighter, but Lex was stronger and had already taken her hand in its glove and was stretching it towards the dog, who sniffed curiously.

‘Now stroke his head.’

‘I can’t,’ muttered Romy, shrinking as far from the dog as she could get without letting go of Lex.

‘You can.’ Lex moved her hand to the wiry head. Heart pounding, Romy let her glove rest there for a second before she whipped it back.

Lex clicked his tongue. ‘That’s not a stroke. Do it again.’

‘He’ll bite me.’

‘Romy, look into his eyes.’

Romy was stuck. She didn’t dare let go of Lex and walk away past the dog, but if she stayed where she was she would have to touch the dog again.

Resentfully, she turned her head against Lex’s chest and made herself look into the dog’s eyes. They weren’t a rabid red, as she had imagined, but a warm, liquid brown and their expression, she realised once she had got past the dog’s monstrous size and those fearsome teeth, was calm and alert and not in the least aggressive.

Very, very cautiously, Romy let go of Lex and laid her hand on the dog’s head once more. Her heart jerked as Magnus butted his nose upwards, and she would have snatched her hand away if she hadn’t been afraid that Lex would think her a coward or, worse, make her stroke him again.

‘See?’ said Lex. ‘He likes that.’

And Magnus didn’t bite her hand off. He just sat there, watching her with intelligent brown eyes as she patted him. Romy let out a shaky breath. She was stroking a dog! She felt quite giddy with it.

‘Well done,’ said Lex, and added to the dog, ‘Good dog. Go on, off you go now.’

With that, Magnus took off, scattering snow as he went.

Romy laughed unsteadily. ‘I can’t believe it! I stroked that huge dog!’ She watched him running in wide, exuberant circles, a faint, puzzled frown between her brows. ‘I feel… liberated,’ she realised after a moment.

‘That’s because you confronted your fear,’ said Lex. ‘It’s a hard thing to do.’

‘I bet you’ve never had to do it.’

Romy set off again through the snow. She was remembering how she had clutched at him and wincing inwardly. For someone so determined to look after herself, it had only taken the sight of a big dog for her to throw herself into Lex’s arms, acting entirely on instinct. And the worst thing was how safe she had felt there. It wasn’t a comfortable thought.

‘I can’t imagine you ever being afraid of anything,’ she said.

There was a tiny pause. When she glanced at Lex, she found him watching her, but as their eyes met he looked away. ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said.

‘What are you afraid of?’ she asked, her expression rife with disbelief, but he shook his head.

‘I’m too scared to tell you.’

Romy laughed. She was suddenly very happy. She wasn’t sure if it was the snow, creaking and squeaking beneath their boots, the sunshine or the purity of the air.

Or the man beside her.

When she glanced at him under her lashes, his austere profile was etched in startling detail against the sky. She could see the texture of his skin, every hair in the dark brows, the touch of grey at his temples that made her feel oddly wistful. He had a big nose that suited his strong face, and something about the line of his jaw made Romy ache with longing and memory.

She could remember how it felt to trail her lips along that jaw. She remembered the smell of him, the taste of him, the roughness of his skin where a faint stubble pricked.

She wanted to do it again. Lex was so big, so solid. She wanted to throw her arms about him and hold onto all that hardness and all that strength, not because she was scared of the dog, but because she could.

Which was pathetic, she knew. And wrong. Because she didn’t need anyone else to be strong. She could be strong on her own. She had to be.

Anyway, it wasn’t his strength that appealed, Romy told herself as that sudden wash of happiness was sucked away like a wave and something darker and more primitive crashed through her in its place.

Lust, plain and simple. She wanted to run her hands over him and press her mouth to his throat. She wanted to push her fingers through his thick hair and lick his skin. To taste him, touch him, kiss his lashes, his mouth, his mouth, and, oh, God, in spite of the cold, Romy could feel heat flooding her, burning in her cheeks and pooling deep inside her.

Desperate to distract herself, she bent and grabbed a handful of snow. Packing it into a ball, she threw it at Lex, who was stamping along beside her, absorbed in his own thoughts. The snowball glanced off his arm, and he turned, startled to see Romy eyeing him with a mixture of guilt and wariness as she stooped to try again.

Something flared in Lex’s pale eyes. ‘Right, you asked for it! ‘ he said, scooping up his own snowball. His aim was much better than Romy’s and, although she turned quickly away, it hit her right on her hat.

Her attempt missed him completely, of course, but she was already backing away, laughing as she tried to collect more ammunition. Lex’s next snowball caught her on the shoulder and she fell back For the next few minutes, they hurled snow at each other like a couple of kids, until Romy stumbled in the deep snow. She would have fallen if Lex hadn’t grabbed her arm and held her up with one hand. In his other, he held a huge snowball that he lifted, ready to stuff it down her neck.

‘No, no, please!’ Romy was laughing and shrieking at the same time. She was covered in snow by then, but the thought of it down her neck… Ugh! She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun.

‘Do you give in?’

‘I give in! I give in! You win!’

‘All right, then.’ Lex let the snowball fall, but he didn’t let go of her arm. They had both been laughing, but all at once their smiles faded and their eyes locked with an almost audible click as the glittering landscape shrank to a bubble where there were just the two of them, staring at each other.

‘Do you think Willie is still watching?’ he asked softly.

‘I…don’t know,’ said Romy with difficulty.

‘If we were really engaged, I’d probably kiss you now, wouldn’t I?’

‘You might.’ Romy’s throat was so tight, it came out as an embarrassing squeak.

‘And would you kiss me back? If we were really engaged?’

‘Probably,’ she managed.

Lex brought his gloved hands up to cup her face, and Romy trembled with a terrible anticipation.

‘Then let’s show Willie just how in love we are,’ he said, and bent his mouth to hers.

His lips were warm, so warm in contrast to the stinging cold of the air, and so sure. They sent Romy plummeting through twelve long years, and she clutched at Lex’s jacket, gripped by a dizzying mixture of excitement and fear and utter peace. Her senses whirled as she swung wildly between extremes, between heat and cold, between then and now. Between stillness and rush. Between the sense of coming home and the sense of standing on the edge of a dizzying drop.

When Lex pulled her closer and deepened the kiss, Romy wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back harder, breathless at the rightness of it. It felt so good to taste him again, to hold him again. Every cell in her body was sighing—no, was singing—‘At last! At last!’ The sunlight glinting on the snow was inside her, sparkling and flickering and shimmering along her veins in a glittery rush.

They broke for breath, kissed again before they could realise just what they were doing. Or that was how it felt to Romy, who had abandoned any attempt to think and was desperate to hold onto this moment, pressed against Lex’s hard body, kissing him, being kissed, and the dazzling light all around them.

And then, out of nowhere, there was a huge bump, like a ship knocking into them, and they both lurched to one side.

‘What the—?’

Magnus, bored, was looking for attention, and was rubbing his great rump against Lex, who drew a long and not entirely steady breath and let Romy go.

‘I think maybe I needed that, Magnus,’ he said.

Romy swallowed. She felt jarred, as if she had been on a spinning roundabout that had suddenly stopped, and it was all she could do not to throw herself back into Lex’s arms.

But that would be a very, very bad idea, she remembered. Because they weren’t in Paris now. They were in Scotland, and it was twelve years later and very cold, and they were just pretending. It had just been a kiss for show, in case Willie was watching.

Hadn’t it?

She moistened her lips. ‘We’d better go in,’ she said, barely registering the dog gambolling beside them. ‘Freya might be awake.’

‘Yes,’ said Lex, ‘perhaps we better had.’

What chance had he had of working after that? Lex switched off the light and climbed into bed beside Romy. It had been madness to kiss her out there in the snow, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. She had been so close, so perfect, and it had felt so right. The feel of her, the taste of her had set tremors going in his heart. He could almost hear it cracking.

It had been his own fault. He should have stayed inside and worked, the way he had intended to do. But when they came back to the house, and Romy went off to find Freya, instead of sitting down at his computer and emailing Summer, Lex had wandered around, eventually finding himself in a room that was empty of all but a few chairs and a piano.

And not just any piano. A Bösendorfer, no less. Lex had a grand in his penthouse apartment, but it wasn’t as big as this one. To Lex, it seemed to exert a pull that drew him across the room, to run his hand over its gleaming mahogany top and then lift the lid to press a key, then another and another. Without quite knowing how it had happened, Lex found himself sitting on the stool and letting his fingers run over the keys and then he was playing.

He played out the tumult of feeling inside him that had gripped him ever since Romy had ducked her head and stepped into the cabin. He played out the memory of her touch, the way she made him feel, and then, so gradually he hardly noticed that he was doing it, he started to play the strange feeling of liberation that morning, that sense of being dropped into a different world, isolated by the snow, where all the usual rules were suspended.

And after a while, the tune changed again, to echo old Scottish folk songs that he had once learnt, and to play out the glittering morning and the air and the hills and the water, and Romy, laughing in the snow.

Lex played on, absorbed in the music, unaware of anyone else until a movement from doorway made him look up. Willie was there, listening, and the grief in his eyes made Lex’s fingers still.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I should have asked if I could use the piano.’

Willie waved the apology aside. ‘I’m glad you did. I haven’t heard it since Moira died, but I can’t bring myself to get rid it.’

He asked if Lex would play again that evening, and Lex was glad to. He didn’t normally like performing for an audience, but playing was better than sitting next to Romy and feeling his hands itch with the need to touch her. Better than having to pretend to her that he didn’t want her, while pretending to Willie that he did.

He found some music in the piano stool, and played the most battered scores, which he guessed would have been Moira Grant’s favourites. Romy sat next to Willie and held his hand while the tears rolled down his face.

‘Thank you,’ he said simply when Lex had finished. ‘I’m glad you came. I’m glad my store’s going to be run by a man who can play like that.’

The thaw had set in already. By lunchtime, the glittering morning had vanished beneath the cloud cover, and the temperature had risen with remarkable speed. Tomorrow, it was clear, they would be able to leave. Lex lay in the dark and listened to the steady drip, drip, drip of melting snow outside the window.

Get through tonight, he told himself. That’s all you have to do.

Beside him, Romy was concentrating on breathing very quietly. The curtains hanging round the bed smelt musty, but the sheets were clean and faintly scented. The mattress was comfortable. It was dark. She had hardly slept the night before and now she was very tired.

There was no reason why she shouldn’t be able to sleep.

Except the memory of that kiss that had been thrumming beneath her skin all day. And then Lex’s playing had stirred up emotions Romy had rather left buried. She hadn’t been able to take her eyes off his hands while he was playing, hadn’t been able to stop remembering those long, dextrous fingers smoothing and stroking, exploring her, unlocking her.

Stop thinking about it, she told herself. Get through tonight. That’s all you have to do.




CHAPTER SEVEN


AFRAID to move in case she disturbed Lex, Romy stared into the darkness and told herself to be sensible while the silence lengthened, stretched, and at last grew so painful that she couldn’t bear it any more.

‘Lex?’ she asked quietly, just in case he was asleep after all.

There was a tiny pause, and then he let out a breath. ‘Yes?’

‘You’re not asleep?’

‘No.’

‘Neither am I.’

‘I gathered that.’ Lex sounded resigned. Or amused. Or exasperated. Or maybe all three.

Romy sighed and rolled onto her side to face him through the darkness. ‘I can’t sleep. I keep thinking about that kiss this morning.’

‘That was a mistake,’ he said after a moment.

‘Was it?’

She could just make out his profile. He

wasn’t looking at her. He was looking up at the ceiling. ‘I’ve spent twelve years trying to forget Paris,’ he said. ‘Trying to forget you. One kiss, and I might as well not have bothered.’

He sounded bitter, and Romy bit her lip.

‘I think about that time too,’ she said quietly. ‘I think the reason I can’t forget it is because we never ended it properly. You just…left. We never talked about it, never had a chance to say goodbye.’

‘What was the point of talking?’ asked Lex. ‘You didn’t want to be with me. You wanted to make a life on your own, and you were right. There was no point in me staying. It was over.’

‘It didn’t feel over,’ said Romy. ‘It didn’t feel over this morning when we kissed.’

There was a silence, loud with memories. Then Lex turned and lay on his side so that they faced each other at last. ‘Do you remember what you said out there in the snow? You said that I wasn’t afraid of anything.’

‘I remember,’ she said softly.

‘I’m afraid of how I felt about you. I’m afraid of feeling that way again.’ The words came out stiffly, forced through tight lips as if against his will. ‘I don’t want to fall in love with you again, Romy,’ he said.

Romy drew a breath, heart cracking at the suppressed pain in his voice. ‘I don’t want to fall in love with you either,’ she told him. ‘I don’t want to need you. I don’t want to need anybody.’ She swallowed. ‘I’m not suggesting we try again. It didn’t work twelve years ago, and it’s not going to work now. We both know that.’

She could feel Lex’s eyes on her face through the darkness, sense the tautness of his body. ‘What are you suggesting?’ he asked.

‘That we have one more night,’ said Romy. ‘One last time together and, this time, we’ll end it properly. Tomorrow, we’ll say goodbye and draw a line under everything we’ve had together. We can get on with our lives without wondering how it would have been.’

Hardly able to believe how calm she sounded when her pulse was booming and thumping, she edged towards the middle of the bed. ‘We could think of it as closure.’

Lex shifted over the mattress and laid his palm against her cheek in the darkness, feeling her quiver at his touch. ‘Closure,’ he repeated, as if trying out the word.

He liked the idea. One last night. No more wondering, no more regretting. Just accepting at long last that it was over.

‘It’s just been such a strange day,’ said Romy, lifting her hand to his wrist, unable to stop herself touching him in return. ‘I’ve felt unreal all day, as if I’ve stepped into a different world.’

‘I know what you mean.’ They were very close now. Lex let his fingers slide under her hair, curl around the soft nape of her neck, and her hand was drifting up to his shoulder. ‘As if the normal rules don’t apply today.’

‘Exactly,’ she said unevenly.

‘Tomorrow, we’re going back to the real world.’ Already he was unwinding her sarong, his hand warm and sure, curving now around her breast, dipping into her waist, over her hip and then slipping possessively to the base of her spine to pull her closer. ‘Tomorrow, we go back to normal.’

‘I know.’

Romy’s senses were reeling. She had a vague sense that they should be talking this through properly, but how could she talk when he was smoothing possessively down her thigh to the back of her knee and up again, gentling up her spine, making her gasp with the warmth of his hand? When he was rolling her onto her back, when she was pulling him over her? When he was pressing his mouth to the curve of her neck so that she sucked in a breath and arched beneath him.

‘It’s just tonight,’ she managed, barely aware of what she was saying, loving his warm, sleek weight on her, loving the feel of his back beneath her hands, the flex of response when she trailed her fingers up his flank. It felt so right to touch him again that her heart squeezed and she could hardly breathe with it.

‘Just tonight,’ Lex murmured agreement against her throat.

Beneath his hands, beneath the wicked pleasure of his lips, Romy felt all thought evaporate. There was only Lex and the heat and the rush and the wild joy, so she didn’t even hear when he said it again. ‘Tomorrow, it’ll be over.’

The car was packed. Freya, strapped firmly in, was kicking her heels petulantly against the car seat, her face screwed up in sullen protest. When Willie waved through the window, she refused to smile back at him.

The crispness of the day before had vanished under thick grey cloud. There was still snow, but it was slumped and saggy now. Great clumps kept slipping off the branches in a shower of white.

Romy kissed Willie affectionately as she said goodbye, and even managed a brief pat for Magnus.

Lex shook Willie’s hand. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you for everything. It’s been a pleasure doing business with you.’

‘Likewise,’ said Willie, wringing his hand in return. ‘I’m glad to know my stores will be in good hands.’

‘We’ll let the lawyers draw up the contract, then, when we’re both happy with it, we’ll arrange a formal signing.’ Lex was all business this morning. ‘I presume that you would like that to take place here?’

‘Well, I’ve been thinking about that,’ said Willie, ‘and I’ve decided that I should come to London.’

‘To London?’ Lex repeated, not quite succeeding in keeping the consternation from his voice. ‘I wouldn’t ask you to do that, Willie. I’m very happy to come back here, honestly.’

‘No, I’d like to,’ Willie said. He looked from Romy to Lex, who were carefully not looking at each other. ‘Seeing you two together, hearing you play piano. I’m not sure how to explain, but you’ve made me realise that it’s time to start living again,’ he told them.

‘Ever since Moira died, I’ve been hiding away here, but she wouldn’t have wanted that. She used to like to go to London. We always stayed at Claridges.’ He nodded firmly, mind made up. ‘I’ll stay there. I’ll sign the contract. I’ll see you both again, and Freya, I hope. It’ll be good for me.’

There was a pause. Afraid that Willie would hear the dismay in it, Romy rushed to fill the silence. ‘Well…that’s great, Willie. You must come to dinner. I don’t think Claridges is quite ready for Freya yet.’

Willie beamed. ‘That would be very nice.’

Lex was left with little choice. ‘We’ll look forward to it,’ he said.

There was silence in the car as they bumped carefully down the track. Willie was lost to sight and they were turning onto the single track road before Romy spoke.

‘Now what?’ she asked.

‘Now we go back to London.’

‘You know what I mean. Willie’s coming to London. He’s going to expect to see us together.’

‘He is,’ Lex agreed grimly. ‘Especially now you’ve invited him to dinner.’

‘I had to! It would have looked really odd if neither of us said anything, when we’ve been staying with him and drinking all his whisky.’

‘I suppose so.’ Lex’s mouth was pulled down at the corners, his brows drawn together in an irritable line. ‘But now we’re going to have to stay a couple until this bloody contract is signed, and who knows how long it will be before we can do that. Once the lawyers get their hands on it, it could be months!’

‘Months?’ Romy was dismayed.

‘Weeks, anyway.’

‘Whatever happened to “tomorrow it’ll be over”?’ She sighed.

It was the first time either of them had referred to the night before. When Romy stirred that morning, Lex had already showered and shaved. His face was set, his eyes shuttered, and she could see that it was over, just as they had agreed.

Romy told herself that she was glad that he was sticking to their agreement. Closure, wasn’t that what she had called it? Easy to say before his mouth was hot and wicked against her, before the heat and the wildness drove them into a different place where there was nothing but touching and feeling and the heart-stopping joy of now.

If Lex had woken her with a kiss, if he had touched her at all and suggested that they made love one more time… Romy wanted to think that she would have been strong enough and sensible enough to resist, but she wasn’t sure.

‘It is over,’ said Lex, without taking his eyes from the road. ‘Last night was about us. This is about business. We’ve started on a pretence and now we’re going to have to keep it going. It would have been fine if Willie had stayed at Duncardie like he was supposed to, but too many people in London will be able to tell him we’re nothing to do with each other.’

‘We told him we were keeping it a secret,’ Romy pointed out.

‘No relationship is that secret. Even Willie is going to wonder why no one at all has any inkling that we’ve even met, let alone are engaged. I’m not prepared to take that risk,’ said Lex. ‘If Willie even suspects that we’ve been pretending, it would be even worse than if we’d told him the truth about my lack of family man credentials in the first place.’

‘Oh, dear,’ Romy sighed again. ‘I wish now I’d been straight with him right at the start.’

‘It’s too late for wishing,’ Lex said. ‘We’re stuck with this pretence now, and we’ll have to see it through to the bitter end. It’s not as if I’m a monster. I may not be prepared to share my life with a kid, but that doesn’t mean I send little boys up chimneys. Gibson & Grieve have plenty of family-friendly policies, as you pointed out. It’s a good deal for Grant’s Supersavers as well as for us.’

Part of Romy marvelled that they were able to talk so dispassionately about the situation. It was bizarre to be having such a practical conversation when last night… But there was no point in thinking about last night, she caught herself up quickly. Much better to be talking about how they were going to handle the pretence than to sit here in silence, her body still thrumming, remembering, and reminding herself of all the reasons why it was sensible that they never made love again.

I don’t want to fall in love with you again, Lex had said. Until then, Romy hadn’t appreciated just how much she had hurt him. She couldn’t do that to him again.

And she couldn’t hurt herself. The need to protect herself was too deeply engrained for Romy to be able to contemplate loving Lex the way he deserved to be loved. To risk needing him. She would be too exposed when it ended, as end it would.

How could it last when they were so different, when they wanted such different things? Lex couldn’t have made it clearer. He wasn’t prepared to share his life with a child.

Romy glanced over her shoulder at Freya, who had fallen asleep before they got to the road. The sight of her daughter steadied her. Even if Lex changed his mind, even if she were brave enough to take the risk for herself, she still wouldn’t do it. If Freya spent too much time with Lex, she would learn to love him. That was what children did. And then, when he left, when he couldn’t bear the mess and the noise any longer, her heart would break. Romy knew what it felt like to be abandoned. She wouldn’t let that happen to her daughter.

She turned back to face the front, and glanced at Lex. ‘OK, we’re stuck with it,’ she said briskly. This is about business, he had said. Business it would be. ‘What do you suggest?’

‘I think you—and Freya—should move into my flat.’

‘I’m not sure that’s a good idea,’ said Romy.

‘Why not?’

‘People at work will realise. Someone’s bound to see us.’

‘That’s the whole point,’ he said irritably. ‘We want them to realise. Then when Willie turns up, nobody is going to act surprised if we’re together. And you and Freya are there when he comes to this dinner you’ve invited him to.’

Romy stuck out her bottom lip. ‘But that’s weeks away! Why can’t I stay in my flat, and just come and cook dinner that night?’

‘Because nobody is going to believe that we’re a real couple if you’re flogging back to your flat. When are we supposed to have this mad, passionate affair if you’re spending two hours every day on the Northern Line?’

‘Nobody needs to know where I’m going,’ she said stubbornly, and Lex threw her a disbelieving glance.

‘Want a bet?’

Romy folded her arms crossly. She could see it made sense, but living with Lex for weeks on end, trying not to think about touching him, trying not to remember… How was she going to bear it?

‘Are you sure you’ve thought this through?’ she said. ‘You think there’s a lot of Freya’s stuff in the back, but that’s what we needed for a night away. Imagine what we’ll need if we’re staying for weeks.’

‘I’m not expecting to enjoy the experience,’ said Lex, ‘but if it means the deal with Grant’s Supersavers goes through, then I’ll put up with it.’

‘And what about me?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘What do I get out of it?’

‘You get a fantastic reference, and the experience of working on a successful project,’ said Lex. ‘That’s worth a lot when you’re looking for a good job.’

Romy knew that it was true. She badly needed both. She had had a lovely time drifting around the world, but she was ill equipped when it came to supporting her daughter. Phin’s offer of a temporary job with Gibson & Grieve had been a godsend, but finding a well-paid permanent job would be more of a challenge.

And even if she hadn’t needed something impressive on her CV, there was Tim and the rest of the acquisitions team to think about. They had made her welcome, taught her all they knew. They needed the deal with Grant’s Supersavers to go through, too. She couldn’t let them down either.

‘All right,’ she said, turning her bracelets as she tried to think it through. ‘Freya and I move in with you. We let people think we’re living together. Fine. How long before our mothers get wind of it?’

‘Oh, God,’ said Lex. He hadn’t thought about his mother. Or Romy’s mother. The mothers together. ‘Oh, God,’ he said again.

‘We can’t tell them the truth.’

He actually blanched. ‘God, no!’

‘So that means they’re going to have to believe that we’re in love,’ Romy went on remorselessly.

‘Oh, no…’ He could see exactly where she was going with this.

‘And that will mean that there’ll be hell to pay when it turns out that we’re not getting married after all.’

Lex gripped the steering wheel, his knuckles white as he imagined the scene in appalling detail. ‘We’ll just have to say that it didn’t work out,’ he said. ‘We’ll say it was a mutual decision.’

‘I could say that I wanted to take Freya to be near her father,’ Romy offered. ‘I’ve been thinking that’s what I should do anyway.’

There was a tiny pause. ‘That would work,’ Lex agreed tonelessly.

‘But your mother will be furious with me.’

‘I’ll tell her I don’t care,’ he said. ‘I’ll say that I couldn’t cope with living with a baby. She’ll believe that.’

It was Romy’s turn to pause. ‘There you are then.’

Lex shot her a swift penetrating look, then fixed his eyes on the road once more. Neither of them said anything about the night before.

‘Problem solved,’ he said.

‘Where would you like to sleep?’

It had been a long day. The drive to Inverness, the flight back to London, and then, deciding to get all the upheaval over with in one fell swoop, the limousine that picked them up from the airport had detoured via Romy’s flat so that she could pack up everything she would need for the next few weeks.

Now they stood in Lex’s penthouse flat, surrounded by a sea of bags and toys and bumper packs of nappies. Freya’s things looked even more incongruous here than they had done at Duncardie. Holding Freya in her arms, Romy looked around her, impressed and chilled in equal measure.

The living area was a huge open space with a whole wall of glass looking out over the Thames. There was a grand piano in one corner, a sleek leather sofa, a black-granite-topped table with striking chairs. No clutter, no mess, no softness or colour. Hard edges wherever she looked. It was hard to imagine anywhere less suitable for a crawling baby.

‘What’s the choice?’ she asked.

‘There are two spare rooms,’ said Lex. ‘So you can sleep with Freya, sleep on your own.’ He hesitated. ‘Or sleep with me.’

Romy stilled. ‘I thought it was over.’

‘It was. It is.’ He moved restlessly. ‘It should be.’

All the way home he had been wrestling with memories of the night before. Closure? Hah! How could there be closure when Romy was sitting beside him, when the feel of her, the taste of her, was imprinted on his body and on his mind?

‘I just thought…if we’re going to be living together…’ He dragged his fingers through his hair, not really knowing what he was trying to say. At least, he knew what, but not how to say it. ‘It was good, wasn’t it?’

‘Yes.’ Romy set Freya on the floor, where she immediately set about unpacking toys from one of the bags, throwing them all over Lex’s pristine carpet. ‘It was too good,’ she said.

Hugging her arms together, she stepped over the bags and wandered over to the huge window. ‘It would be so easy to spend the next few weeks together, Lex. It would be good again—it would be wonderful, probably—but how would we stop then?’

‘Maybe we wouldn’t want to.’

‘Look at all this stuff!’ Romy swung round and gestured at the sea of bags and baby gear. ‘We’ve only been here five minutes and already your flat looks like a bomb has hit it. How are you going to cope with this level of mess for weeks on end?’

Her eyes rested on her daughter, who had discovered a much-loved floppy rabbit and was sucking its already battered ear. ‘Freya isn’t always as happy as this,’ she told Lex. ‘Sometimes she wakes in the nights, and the screaming will sound like a drill in your head. There’ll be dirty nappies and sticky fingers all over your furniture… You’ll hate it!’

She tried to smile. ‘Remember how you said you would tell your mother that you couldn’t cope with living with a baby? I don’t think you’ll have any difficulty sounding convincing about that.’

‘Perhaps you’re right.’ Lex rubbed a hand over his face in a gesture of weary resignation. ‘I know you’re right, in fact.’




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