by Jessica Hart
‘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, ero
tic 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 understanding.
‘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.
