Juggling Briefcase & Baby

by Jessica Hart

  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 c
ouldn’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, wh
ich 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?’