Juggling Briefcase & Baby

by Jessica Hart

  ‘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.’

  ‘We may be different, but we’re the same in one way,’ said Romy. ‘We’re both afraid of getting too involved. Me because I’m afraid of being hurt, and you because you’re afraid of the mess that comes along with any kind of relationship. You could say that we’re made for each other,’ she added with a crooked smile.

  ‘Neither of us is prepared to commit to a relationship that we’re not sure will last, but, apart from that, what have we got in common?’ Romy went on, still hugging her arms together as she paced restlessly around the immaculate room.

  ‘This apartment is so you, Lex. It’s cool and it’s calm and it’s perfectly ordered. I can see why you like it like this, but it’s no place for Freya, and if it’s no place for her, it’s no place for me. So we’ll be leaving as soon as Willie has signed that contract. And the more nights we have like last one, the harder it will be to say goodbye.’

  She was terribly afraid of falling in love with him. She was afraid of needing him. Surely Lex could see that?

  ‘You’re right,’ said Lex again. He straightened his shoulders. ‘It would be a big mistake. Madness. What was I thinking?’

  He looked across the room into Romy’s dark eyes and knew exactly what he had been thinking. He had been thinking about the satiny warmth of her skin. About the heat and the piercing sweetness and the aching sense of peace when he lay with his face buried in her throat.

  He hadn’t been thinking about reality. He hadn’t been thinking about business.

  Fool.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to Romy. ‘Really sorry. Forget I suggested it. Let’s make it easy on ourselves, and stick to business from now on.’

  Over the years, Romy had slept in bus stations and on beaches. She had spent nights cold and muddy and soaking wet, huddled under rocks on a hillside, or swiping at mosquitoes in the rainforest. Every single one of those long, uncomfortable nights had been easier than the ones she spent in Lex’s apartment, trying to sleep in the room next to his and thinking about how close he was.

  Thinking about how easy it would be to slip into bed beside him, and whisper that she had changed her mind, that nothing could be harder than never touching him again.

  But Romy only had to think about Freya to remember that of course there could be something harder. There could be seeing her daughter hurt and lost, looking for someone who wasn’t there, just as she had once looked for her father after he had left.

  It was the strangest month of Romy’s life. During the day, she went to the office, just as she had done before, and collected Freya from the crèche at half past five. But instead of squeezing onto the tube with all the other commuters to get back to the poky rented flat that was all she had been able to afford, she put Freya in the pushchair and walked back to Lex’s luxury apartment.

  They decided not to make an announcement about their supposed relationship, but wait for speculation and gossip to start circulating around the office. Romy assumed this would happen very quickly, but it took a surprisingly long time for her colleagues to suspect that anything might have occurred between her and Lex on the trip to Scotland.

  This might have had something to do with the fact that Lex ignored her completely at the office. Romy returned to a heroine’s welcome the day after their return. Her fellow members of the acquisitions team were full of admiration.

  ‘How brave of you to spend all that time with Lex Gibson,’ was the typical reaction. ‘I’d have been terrified!’ And then, leaning closer, ‘What was he like?’

  Romy thought about Lex in the snow, grinning as he held the snowball over her. She thought about him struggling to change Freya’s nappy, his hair on end and his tie askew. She thought about the way his hand had skimmed lovingly over her hip, his slow smile as he drew her to him again, and her throat closed.

  ‘He was fine.’

  ‘I hear he’s coming to the meeting this morning. He must be pleased with us. He never leaves his office!’

  There was much shuffling and straightening of ties when Lex appeared at the departmental meeting. He had a formidable presence, Romy thought, trying to see him through her colleagues’ eyes. He wasn’t particularly tall or particularly handsome, but he had an air of cool authority that meant he dominated a room just by walking into it.

  To the others, their chief executive must look austere and remote. His manner was brusque, and with that severe expression, the inflexible mouth, and those unnervingly pale eyes, it was easy to see how he had gained a reputation as an unfeeling tyrant. Lex might be respected, even admired, by his staff, but he wasn’t liked. He lacked his brother Phin’s easy charm.

  But when Romy’s eyes rested on his stern mouth, her heart crumbled. When she watched his hands, a flood of warmth dissolved her bones. She shifted uneasily in her chair, convinced that everyone must be able to see her glowing, humming with awareness of him, but no one was looking at her. Their attention was focused on Lex, who outlined the discussions at Duncardie and congratulated Tim and the team on their hard work setting up the deal.

  ‘Perhaps we should make a special mention of Romy?’ said Tim, who had thanked Romy effusively earlier. ‘I’m certainly very grateful to her for stepping in at the last moment.’

  Then, of course, they did all look at her. There were some smiles and even winks from those in no danger of being seen by Lex.

  ‘Indeed.’ Lex’s eyes rested indifferently on Romy’s burning face. ‘She was very helpful.’

  Helpful! Romy’s lips tightened with annoyance. Couldn’t he have found something a little less chilly to say? What was wrong with, I couldn’t have done it without her, for instance? Nobody was ever going to guess they were having an affair if he carried on like that!

  It was clear that the others thought he could have been more effusive, too. There was a slightly awkward pause.

  ‘Well…well done, everybody!’ Tim brought the meeting to a close. ‘I think a team outing is called for.’ He raised a hand to quell the stir of anticipation before it got out of hand. ‘Keep next Friday free and we’ll celebrate in style.’

  Lex got to his feet. ‘Good work,’ he said to everyone and that cool gaze didn’t even pause on Romy as it swept impersonally round the room. ‘Enjoy yourselves next Friday. You’ve deserved it.�
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  Correctly interpreting this to mean that, (a) he wasn’t planning on spoiling their fun by turning up, and, (b) the celebratory bash would be covered by the company, everyone relaxed and a buzz of conversation and laughter broke out the moment Lex had left the room.

  Romy forced herself to join in, but it was an effort. Reluctant as she was to admit it, she was miffed. Lex shouldn’t have been able to look at her with that expression of utter indifference, not when she had been sitting there positively throbbing with awareness!

  She was still feeling cross that evening when Lex came home. She had just finished bathing Freya and the sound of the door opening made her heart jerk, which did nothing to improve her temper.

  Well, she wasn’t going to rush out and welcome him home, Romy decided. If he thought she was going to have his pipe and slippers ready for him, he had another think coming! Trying to ignore the knotting of her entrails, she finished tidying the bathroom before she picked up Freya and made her way out to the open plan living area.

  Lex was in the kitchen at the black granite worktop that divided the cooking from the living area. Romy had cooked Freya macaroni cheese for her supper earlier, and the counter behind him was still cluttered with open packets of butter and flour, with milk and cheese and apple cores. Wisely, Lex had turned his back on the mess and was reading his post, but he looked up when Romy appeared.

  ‘Oh. Hello,’ she said, deliberately cool.

  Unfortunately, Freya was sending out a very different message by beaming at him in a way that disconcerted Lex quite as much as it annoyed Romy.

  Freya had only just learnt to flirt, and had spent most of the flight home the day before practising on him. There had been a lot of smiling and peeping glances under her lashes. Quite why her daughter had picked Lex as a favourite, Romy wasn’t sure. He certainly did nothing to encourage her. It was clear, in fact, that all the attention made him uneasy, but Freya was undeterred by his lack of response.

  Now here she was, looking delighted to see that he was home, while he just stood there looking dour! Quickly, Romy put her on the floor with all her toys, where she was soon diverted.