Juggling Briefcase & Baby

by Jessica Hart

  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 easy-going 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.