The Baby Surprise: Juggling Briefcase & Baby

‘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.

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 couldn’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.