Office Scandals: The Petrelli Heir / Gilded Secrets / An Inconvenient Affair
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She coloured angrily at his sarcasm. ‘I’m not trying to deny responsibility.’ In response to a faint whimper from the baby carrier she took hold of the handle and, on autopilot, began to rock it back and forth rhythmically. ‘But I had just buried my mother, and I’d never actually done it before. What’s your excuse, Roman?’ Izzy froze and thought, ‘God, did I say that out loud?’
‘Yes.’
Izzy’s eyes widened with shock before she pressed a hand to her mouth—a classic case of too little too late. In the stretching silence the sleeping child’s regular breathing drew Roman’s attention. He was still staring at his daughter when he finally spoke.
‘Buried your mother?’ His research had of course told him the woman was dead, he might even have read the date, but he had not made any connection.
Roman turned his head in time to see Izzy biting her lip. She met his eyes and tilted her head in acknowledgement. ‘Cremated, actually.’
An image of her face that night floated into his head. He had been unable to take his eyes off her from the moment she had walked into the room, him and half the men in there. Amazingly she had seemed utterly oblivious to the lustful stares that had followed her.
He could still recall exactly what Isabel had been wearing when she’d walked into that bar. He could close his eyes and see the smooth oval of her face, her incredible skin, her startling sapphire eyes. So why hadn’t he recognised something wasn’t right?
When she’d kissed him, she’d been trying to forget. He should have seen it. Hadn’t he been trying to achieve the same thing himself with the aid of a bottle and failing miserably?
‘That day?’
She nodded.
Roman ground his teeth together and pressed the fingertips of one brown-fingered hand to the pulse spot throbbing in his temple before spearing both hands deep into his short sable hair.
She had used him!
And you didn’t use her?
He closed his eyes and expelled a sharp sigh through clenched teeth. The truth was he had used her, sought to escape the total mess that was his life for a few stolen moments and find hot oblivion inside her. She’d been tight as a glove and they had shared a night of raw sex; her response had been uninhibited, elemental.
‘How is it possible?’ His dark brows flattened into an accusing line above his deep-set eyes. ‘On such a day you should … Why were you alone? Someone should …’ He stopped, a nerve in his lean cheek clenching.
‘There wasn’t anyone.’ She seemed oblivious to how heart-rending that statement sounded as she related, ‘That was the way she wanted it. She didn’t want anyone, no sentiment, no ceremony, no service or wake.’
‘And no closure for the loved ones left behind,’ he rasped hoarsely. ‘Though why am I surprised? Such a request is typical of a woman who never thought of anyone’s needs but her own.’
The blighting condemnation of her dead parent drew a shocked gasp from Izzy. She let go of the handle and took a step towards him, her hands on her hips.
‘Have you got a problem with strong women, Roman? Is that it?’
‘You think your mother is a person to be admired?’ Roman was bewildered by how protective Isabel was of the memory of someone who had lied to her all her life, deprived her of a father and, as far as he could see, been a friend, not a mother. ‘You put your career on hold to spend time with your daughter. Did your mother ever put your needs above her own?’
‘That wasn’t a sacrifice,’ she said quietly. ‘I wanted to spend time with Lily. I didn’t want to miss out on these early months. You have no idea how—’
‘Precious they are? I think I have.’
Her eyes fell from his steady stare. ‘She would probably have been equally happy and contented with a nanny.’
‘I doubt that. You’re a good mother.’
Izzy, conscious of a warm glow that shouldn’t have been there—his approval meant nothing to her—took refuge in antagonism. ‘And the point is I could do that, spend this time with Lily because the book you despised gave me financial independence. I appreciate you feel responsible,’ she said stiffly. ‘But I don’t need your money and Lily and I are fine …’
‘So what do you expect me to do? Walk away and say ring me? What happens when Lily gets ill or hates school? Do you really want to face those things alone?’
‘If I need it the Fitzgeralds give me all the support I could want.’
‘The Fitzgeralds? Do you think of yourself as one of them? Don’t you feel an outsider?’
Alarmed by his perception, she lowered her gaze, allowing her dark lashes to screen her eyes from him.
‘My independence means a lot to me and they respect that.’ Which was more than he did. His constant prodding and prying were making her feel under siege and what was it about? All she’d been was a cheap one-night stand; the fact she’d had his child did not alter that.
‘You must have been terrified when you found yourself pregnant and alone.’ Roman struggled under the weight of unaccustomed guilt he felt when he thought of what she must have gone through. He saw her sitting there alone and afraid … His jaw clenched.
‘I wasn’t alone. Michael contacted me the same week I discovered I was pregnant.’
And what a week! In the space of two days she’d discovered that her wild night of passion with the handsome stranger had left her pregnant and received the letter from the man who was her father, inviting her to meet her new family.
‘If I hadn’t been pregnant …’ She stopped as a sudden stab of emotion made her eyes fill. She blinked hard before adding with a hint of defiance, ‘And, yes, feeling alone, I might not have agreed to meet him, but I did so my story had a happy ending.’ She took out a tissue and blew her nose. The prosaic action touched Roman more than any tears would have.
‘This story is not ended, Isabel. Our story is not ended.’
She shook her head, knowing he was right but still fighting it. Life had been simpler without him but here he was and he showed no signs of going away. For Lily’s sake she knew she should make an effort, but they had nothing in common. He didn’t even live in the same world as she did, but she could try at least not to be enemies.
‘We don’t have a story. It was just sex.’ Staring at her clasped hands, she didn’t see anger that flashed in his eyes. ‘If I hadn’t walked into that bar …’ A shadow of confusion moved across her face like a cloud. ‘I still don’t know why I did that—I just saw the bar and …’
‘Maybe it was fate?’
Her feathery brows lifted in surprise. He was the last person that she had expected to hear talk about fate. ‘I don’t believe in fate. I slept with an incredibly sexy man. That wasn’t fate—it was hormones!’ And given the opportunity she suspected nine out of ten unattached females would have done the same. She would have thought that she was the one who wouldn’t have been attracted to him, but apparently she was no different. But he was, she thought as her glance drifted across the carved, perfectly symmetrical lines of his bronzed face, a dreaminess drifting into her expression. He made her think of some warrior with a poet’s soul—his mouth was definitely poetry. The dreaminess was swallowed up by a stab of hungry longing as she studied the sensual outline.
‘Incredibly sexy …?’
She jumped guiltily and dodged the wicked gleam in his eyes and found herself staring again at his mouth. Once she had started it was hard to stop. She cleared her throat and forced the words past the achy occlusion that made speaking difficult. It felt like wading through syrup.
‘Like I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.’
He grinned but didn’t deny it, she noticed. The wicked grin made him look years younger and even more wildly attractive.
‘She must have been very young, your mother, when she died. It was unexpected?’
She nodded. Her mother had been a very young sixty-four.
‘She was in her forties when she had me. She’d been ill for a while.’ The onset of the illness that had struck her mother down had been insidious, although not immediately life-threatening. But she had been living with the effects of the degenerative disease that would eventually kill her. ‘I was angry.’
‘Yes.’ He knew about anger.
During his stays on the oncology ward Roman had seen that reaction to death, seen enough people suffering the effects of shock and grief that it seemed to him that it was sometimes worse for the healthy ones who had to stand by helpless as their loved ones suffered and sometimes lost their battles for life.
The point was he should have seen the signs. He could recognise now with the wisdom of hindsight that she had been displaying all of them that night in the bar.
Roman closed his eyes and groaned.
Izzy looked at him uncertainly and he looked very pale when he looked at her again. A moment later he swore in his native tongue.
‘You were in shock.’ And he’d been too busy wallowing in self-pity to notice. He suddenly froze, his dark eyes swivelling her way. ‘You just said you’d never done it before.’
Izzy expelled a choky sigh. Hell, just when she thought she was safe.
‘Well, I don’t make a habit of picking up strange men in bars. One-night stands are not really my style.’
He studied her down-bent head with a frown before moving his head slowly from side to side in a firm negative motion. ‘No, that wasn’t what you meant.’
Shifting uneasily under his severe gaze, she walked across to the sofa and sat down. ‘I wish you wouldn’t tell me what I mean. I am quite capable of saying what I mean.’
Roman refused to be distracted. ‘And capable of lying, it would seem.’
‘So you think one-night stands are my style …’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Thanks a lot.’
‘It was your first time.’ Even as he said it he rejected the statement; he had not actively avoided taking a virgin to bed, but then neither did he avoid meteorites. They both existed but the chances of encountering one were pretty remote.
She was not laughing or at the very least looking amused by such a preposterous notion. Instead she refused to meet his gaze and gave a defensive shrug.
CHAPTER EIGHT
‘IT WAS a figure of speech.’
‘A figure of speech as in you were a virgin.’
Roman’s sarcasm made her flush and for a moment Izzy considered lying. But did it really matter if he knew the truth now? She thought not, so decided to come clean.
‘My only time, actually.’ She flashed him a warning glance and added fiercely, ‘And don’t ask me why because, to be honest, I don’t know.’
She did have her suspicions, though, the most likely that being a twenty-year-old virgin had been a form of rebellion for her—not against parental control but against a total lack of parental control.
While other girls’ parents gave them curfews and warned them of the dangers of teenage sex, her liberal mother had been telling her it was fine if she wanted to have boyfriends stay the night.
Izzy had always found such conversations excruciatingly embarrassing, but her mother had favoured what she called a frank and open exchange of views.
‘You didn’t act like a virgin.’
‘How is a virgin meant to act, Roman?’ She adopted an expression of fake interest as she started to feel angry. ‘In the strange world you live in.’
‘I live in the real world. You’re the one who …’ He stopped and pinned her with an intense, almost accusing stare. ‘You must have had boyfriends?’ he persisted, remembering how incredibly tight she’d been and her sharp gasp of shock as he had thrust deeply into her …
‘For a semester I was in love with one of my mother’s research assistants,’ she recalled with a reminiscent grin. ‘Happy now?’
He swallowed … happy? Happy that he had taken her innocence and not even noticed!
‘So you had a relationship with this—?’ A relationship that stopped short of sex. As he remembered her cool hands on his body and her hot, sweet tongue … that did not seem likely at all.
‘Simon. No, it turned out he was gay.’ She could smile now at the memory of her big moment when she had finally worked up the courage to ask him out. He had been nice about it and quite kind, but eventually the story had reached her mother, who had found it extremely amusing.
Unable to maintain contact with his intense stare, Izzy looked away.
Roman tried to think past the static buzz in his head. He felt numb. A virgin! It seemed impossible. The innate sensuality she projected had been one of the things that had drawn him to her. She was the most passionate creature he had ever held; the need to possess her had been all-consuming and she had matched his hunger and desire every step of the way.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
He still couldn’t get his head around it, but it had to be true. There was no reason for her to lie. She had seemed totally at ease with her body, completely uninhibited and endlessly fascinated by his body. The question of her virginity had not even crossed his mind—why would it? She had seemed almost to know what he wanted before he had himself.
Face it, Roman, she was the best sex you ever had and she was a virgin. The staggering thought kept hitting him and the shock was not getting any less with each successive impact.
She turned her head, recognised the anger in his tense stance and shook her head. That was a reaction she had not anticipated. ‘Why didn’t you notice?’ she countered.
At the time Izzy had presumed that he would.
She’d thought her sheer cluelessness would alert him and had desperately hoped it would not be a deal breaker.
But amazingly she hadn’t felt awkward at all, or embarrassed or shy, which was insane because previously the idea of even being naked with a man had been something she didn’t feel comfortable with. The entire intimacy thing had always been a problem for her, not because she was prudish but because she was choosy.
She had thought about it afterwards a lot and wondered if perhaps the fact that it had been anonymous sex, that he hadn’t known her or had any preconceptions about her, had allowed her to let go. For once she didn’t have to be the person everyone thought she was—nice, calm, sensible Izzy—she could be who she wanted to be. It had been the most liberating experience of her life.
Why hadn’t he noticed? Good question, Roman. ‘You were hardly shy.’
Did he expect her to apologise?
Her steady blue stare brought a dull flush of colour to his high cheekbones. ‘Obviously if I’d known I’d have—’ He stopped and thought, Would I really have run a mile? Would I really have resisted the temptation to be her first lover?
She’d given him a gift and he’d not noticed.
She acted as though it had been nothing and for some reason that made him angrier than anything else.
‘I could have hurt you.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘And you have never slept with any man since Lily was born?’
She gave a laugh. ‘You really think that I’ve had the spare time or energy to have an affair? Besides it’s a small place, everyone knows everyone and you can’t sneeze without it being in the public domain.’ That was one aspect of living in a small community that she hadn’t come to terms with yet.
‘So until you do have the time I’m the only man you’ve ever slept with.’
And Roman had never forgotten the night.
He ran a hand across his face and shook his head, unable to believe his total lack of control. He had never surrendered himself so totally to passion before or since that night; the searing fire of lust had totally devoured him. He had literally torn off his clothes like a fumbling boy who couldn’t wait.
Izzy looked past him, trying not to see the image of his sculpted bronzed body in her head as she banded her arm around her midriff in an unconsciously protective gesture. It did not protect her from the memory of the warm silken feel of his skin against hers at the first shocking intimacy of his touch.
‘There’s no need to make such a big thing of it. We had sex,’ she said, struggling to sound amused. ‘That doesn’t give us some magical bond.’
‘Maybe not magic, but we have a bond—we have Lily.’
As if in response to her name the sleeping baby stirred, raising her voice in a fretful whimper. Izzy was up in a bound and beside the carrier.
‘Per l’amor di Dio!’ he rasped under his breath as he watched her bend forward, providing him with a perfect view of her pert round bottom.
Izzy, who was unfastening Lily, who was wriggling like an eel to escape, lifted her head at the sound of his soft curse and, misinterpreting its cause, cautioned, ‘Babies don’t time their demands to suit you, Roman.’
The man needed a reality check. Maybe he would be less eager to be involved with Lily when he realised the demands that went with a small baby. ‘For the first three months I was rarely dressed before midday.’
From where he was standing that did not seem a bad thing to Roman.
She shook her head to toss back a strand of hair that was tickling her nose as she lifted up Lily. ‘I can’t remember the last time I visited the hairdresser’s.’ When she got back home, Izzy decided, she would take up Michelle’s suggestion they let Grandad babysit while they went for a spa day treat.
‘You have beautiful hair.’ He remembered it soft and lustrous spread out on the pillow as she had reached up for him and pulled him down.
Her eyes flew to his face where the raw hunger stamped on his bronzed features made her heart thud. It was Lily’s small foot landing a lucky and painful kick in her stomach that broke the sexual thrall that had rapidly sucked her into its sensual vortex.
Her laughter was tinged with a good dollop of breathless relief as she kissed the sole of the bare foot that had pulled her away from the brink of making a total fool of herself.
‘Now, what have you done with that sock … eaten it?’
‘It’s there.’ Roman bent to pick up the lost item.
‘Thank you.’ She held her hand palm up rather than risk touching his long brown fingers. He probably knew but by this point Izzy was past caring. ‘She’s always losing socks,’ she said, tucking it in the pocket of her cardigan. As if picking up on the tension in the air, Lily began to squall irritably.
Roman regarded her red face with a concerned frown. ‘Is she ill?’
‘No, she’s hungry.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It’s generally a matter of elimination. Is there somewhere I could heat up her food? Where did I put the bag?’ She looked around for the holdall.
‘I’ve got it.’ Roman’s brows shot up as he picked up the bag with the pink handle and cheerful teddy-bear characters. ‘Dio, what have you got in here?’
Izzy gave a rundown. ‘Food, drink, nappies, a change of clothes and some toys.’ She reeled off the items that she rarely travelled anywhere without. ‘Somewhere I can heat up …?’
‘Yes, of course, I’ll show you.’ He held open the door for her to pass through in front of him. ‘The kitchen is this way, I think.’ He led the way through a door into a stone-flagged inner hall. ‘And there are rooms prepared upstairs if you want to change her.’
Before Izzy could protest he added, ‘It’s too late now to make the journey back to Cumbria. I can’t promise luxury but the place is perfectly habitable, just a little tired décor wise. I’m not sure if you’ll want to do any structural remodelling but—’
Trotting a little to keep up with his long stride, Izzy stared up at him. ‘Why do you persist in acting as though it’s a done deal? Don’t you understand the meaning of no?’
He pushed open a heavy door and nodded for her to go through before him. ‘Depends on the context. So what do you think? Could you do something with it?’
She might hate cooking.
She might be a domestic goddess.
It seemed impossible that they could know so little about one another and yet they had made a child.
He stood back and watched her look around the room.
‘A bit small?’ he suggested. ‘The original kitchen is on the lower ground floor used for storage now. It could be reinstated. I’d thought possibly knocking through, incorporating the smaller rooms and knocking out the wall replacing it with glass and putting in a south-facing terrace …?’
The ambitious suggestion drew a laugh from Izzy.
‘This house has got to be listed?’
He nodded.
‘Listed means you can’t just knock down walls. Besides, this is a lovely room. Not that it’s any of my business,’ she tacked on quickly. ‘Will you stop looking so smug? I’m not staying. And if you want to make yourself useful, watch Lily while I organise her food.’ She placed the baby on the floor and held out her hand for the bag.
Roman took a wooden tractor from the top of the bag, then handed it to her. ‘Are you always so bossy?’
‘Does that mean the wedding’s off?’
The tentative rapport immediately vanished in a big black hole of heavy tension.
‘This isn’t about scoring points.’ His expression remained stern as he bent down and pushed the wooden toy across the ground to the baby, who immediately grabbed it and pushed it in her mouth.
‘Is that safe?’
Izzy, still stinging from his reproach, glanced over. ‘Fine. She’s teething—everything goes in her mouth.’
Roman straightened up, leaned back against a counter and stood watching while Izzy moved around the room until, in the act of pulling a lid off a jar, she was unable to bear his silent scrutiny another second. She stopped and expelled a sigh through clenched teeth.
Straightening her slender shoulders, she put down the jar and turned to face him. ‘So, all right, it’s not a joke or about scoring points. What is it about?’
Her eyes were incredible, the deepest, purest blue he had ever seen.
She arched a delicate brow. ‘Well?’
‘This is about damage limitation.’ And controlling his desire to touch her. He cleared his throat. ‘It’s about you admitting you can’t do it all yourself. It’s about me being allowed to take my share of the responsibilities. You don’t like this house? Fine. I … we can find something you do like.’
‘I like where I live.’ He just kept missing the point.
‘That cottage, there’s not enough room to swing a cat there.’
‘My cottage!’ she exclaimed. ‘You have never seen my cottage. You don’t even know where I live!’
‘I may not have had an invite but be real, Isabel. Of course I know where you live, and I’m assuming your house is not dissimilar in size to your neighbour’s, who kindly did ask me in after I admired her dahlias.’
‘You … you … how dare you? You wouldn’t know a dahlia from a daisy.’
‘Now there you go again, making snap judgements based on what?’
‘I don’t care if you have green fingers.’ Actually his fingers were brown and long and sensitive. Hand pressed to her fluttering stomach, Izzy dragged her gaze upwards and finished angrily, ‘I won’t tolerate being spied on and manipulated.’
His languid air vanished. ‘And I will not tolerate my child living in a house paid for by Michael Fitzgerald.’ Michael Fitzgerald was the least of Roman’s concerns. There was no man in Isabel’s life right now, but how long would that situation continue? How long before some man wanted to move in and bring up his daughter?
Izzy was taken aback by the underlying venom in his tone. ‘What have you got against Michael?’
‘Nothing. I barely know the man,’ Roman cut back, looking impatient. ‘Other than the fact he has an excellent reputation as a horse breeder.’
‘For the record, I rent the cottage, not Michael. He offered to help financially, but I refused.’ She lifted her chin. ‘I can pay my own way.’ She bent and scooped up the baby.
‘Did Michael ask who the father was?’ If the roles had been reversed he would have tracked down the man responsible and … But he was the reckless bastard responsible and it was his job to protect his own daughter.