Juggling Briefcase & Baby. Jessica Hart

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ

      ‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Romy, ‘but you can’t have me without her. What do you want me to do, leave her on the tarmac?’

      Lex scowled. ‘Haven’t you got…I don’t know…childcare or something? What do you do when you’re at work? Or is Acquisitions doubling as a nursery these days?’

      Romy set her teeth at the sardonic note in his voice. ‘She goes to the crèche at the office.’

      ‘There’s a crèche?’

      ‘Yes, there’s a crèche,’ she said, holding onto her temper with difficulty.

      ‘One of Phin’s projects, I suppose.’ Lex looked disapproving. His brother had reluctantly joined the company after their father’s stroke, and Lex had put him in charge of staff development. It was meant to be a token position, but he was always coming across initiatives in unlikely places nowadays.

      ‘I believe so,’ said Romy in a cool voice. ‘It’s one of the reasons Gibson & Grieve is such a popular place to work.’

      ‘Well, then, why can’t the baby go there?’

      ‘Because we’re going to be away overnight, and the crèche closes at six. I don’t know anyone else I can leave her with, especially not at this short notice. Tim only rang a couple of hours ago. I explained all this.’

      Freya was getting heavy, and Romy shifted her to the other hip as she glared at Lex in frustration. Part of her was almost glad to find Lex so unreasonable. It made it easier to pretend that he was just a difficult boss.

      Easier to forget how warm his hands had been, how sure his lips. How a rare smile would illuminate that austere face and warm the cool grey eyes.

      ‘I don’t think you quite realise how difficult it has been for me to get here this morning,’ she went on crisply. ‘I’m here because Tim seemed to think that it was important, but if you’d rather go on your own, that’s fine by me.’

      A muscle was working in Lex’s cheek. ‘It is important. I need someone who’s up to speed on the details of the acquisition.’

      ‘Then perhaps you would prefer to rearrange?’ she suggested, and Lex made an irritable gesture.

      ‘No, we’re going today. I understand from Tim that Grant’s not that keen on the deal, and it’s taken long enough to get him to see me. If we start messing around and changing dates, it could jeopardise the whole deal and I don’t want to do that. We’ve been working on this too long to throw it away now.’

      Romy said nothing.

      Lex glared at her. There was only one choice, and they both knew it.

      ‘Oh, for God’s sake, bring all that stuff back,’ he snapped at Phil, who exchanged a look with Nicola and went back down the steps into the rain to collect everything that he’d just stashed back in the boot of the car. ‘Tell the pilot we’re ready to go as soon as you’re clear. We’ve wasted enough time this morning.’

      Annoyed, he smacked the lid of his computer down and directed another irritable look at Romy. ‘You’d better sit down,’ he said, pointing at the seat opposite him. ‘And the baby.’

      ‘Freya,’ said Romy, not moving.

      ‘What?’

      ‘Her name’s Freya.’

      Her chin was up, and the dark eyes looked directly back into his.

      And Lex felt the world shift around him, just as it had done all those years ago. She was closer now, close enough for him to see the fine lines starring her eyes, and he struggled to hold onto his conviction that she was just tired and untidy and nothing special.

      But his gaze kept catching on the lovely curve of her mouth, and when he looked back at her he had the horribly familiar sensation of falling into those eyes. Lex had never understood how so rich and dark a brown could be so luminous. He wasn’t a fanciful man, but it had always seemed to him as if light glowed in their depths, warming and beckoning.

      How could he have thought for a moment that she wasn’t as beautiful as ever?

      Twelve years ago, he had fallen into those eyes, heedless of the consequences. He had lowered his guard and made himself vulnerable, and there was no way he was going through that again.

      Lex willed himself not to look away, but he had himself back under control. He could do this. All he had to do was think about the deal. That was all that mattered now, and the fact was that he needed Romy. Without Tim Banks, she was his connection to Willie Grant, and he wouldn’t put it past her to take the wretched baby and walk off the plane. She always had been stubborn.

      ‘Very well,’ he said tightly. ‘You and Freya had better sit down.’

      ‘Thank you,’ said Romy, and sat down opposite him, calmly buckling her seat belt and settling the baby—Freya—on her lap.

      Lex’s jaw worked as he regarded her with a kind of baffled resentment. She was mighty cool considering that he was Chief Executive and she was just a temporary employee, and a far from senior one at that.

      This was all Phin’s fault.

      Twelve years. That was how long he had spent trying to forget Romy, and the moment he laid eyes on her again he knew he had been wasting his time. He’d known she was back in the country. He’d known she had a baby. His mother had heard it from Romy’s mother and had sucked in her breath disapprovingly at the thought of her god-daughter as a single mother.

      ‘Well, that’ll bring Romy home,’ she had said.

      And it had.

      He had even known Romy would be at Phin’s wedding. He’d thought he had braced himself to meet her again, but when the organ had struck up and he had turned with Phin to watch Summer walking up the aisle, all he had seen was Romy, sitting several rows behind, and his heart had crumpled at the sight of her. Romy, with her dark, beautiful eyes and the mouth that had haunted his memory for so many years. Romy, who had loved another man and had a baby to show for it.

      Lex had avoided her at the reception, and despised himself for it. He was Chief Executive of the fastest-growing supermarket chain in England and Wales. He didn’t care about anything but the success of Gibson & Grieve. He had no trouble finding a woman if he wanted one. So he should have been able to greet Romy casually and show her that he realised her decision had been the right one.

      Because of course it was. She had been far too young to marry. He was eight years older than her, much too serious to manage all that passion and spirit. He would have crushed her, or she would have crushed him, and left him anyway. The only sensible part of the whole affair was their pact to tell no one else.

      So there should have been no problem about meeting her again. But every time he told himself he would go over and say hello there had been someone with her and she had been laughing and waving her arms around so that the collection of bangles she always wore chinked against each other. Or she had been lifting her hand to push the hair away from her neck and he had been gripped by the memory of how soft and silky it had felt twined around his fingers.

      And with СКАЧАТЬ