Barbara McMahon - The Baby Surprise - Juggling Briefcase & Baby

‘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 that memory had come a flood of others that he had failed to forget: the scent of her skin, the husky laugh, the curve of her shoulder and pulse that beat in the base of her throat. That stubborn tilt of her jaw. That smile, the way she had pulled him down to her and made the world go away.

And then Phin was there, clapping him on the shoulder, telling him, almost as an aside, that he had offered Romy a job in Acquisitions.

‘What? Why?’

‘Because she needs a job,’ his brother told him. ‘She’s got a baby to support, and she’s having trouble finding work. She’s been working overseas and it’s hard to get a job when you’ve got a CV that’s quite as varied as hers.’

Lex managed to part his lips and form a sentence. ‘She should have thought about that before she drifted around the world.’

‘You put me in charge of staff development,’ Phin reminded him unfairly. ‘I think Gibson & Grieve needs people with Romy’s kind of experience. She was telling me about a diving centre she’s been running in Indonesia: she’s got all sorts of skills that we can use.’

‘Phin, are you sure this is a good idea?’

‘Look, it’s just a temporary job, replacing Tim Banks’s assistant while she’s on maternity leave. I think Romy will be good at it, and it’ll give her the experience she needs to find a permanent job. It’s a win-win situation.’

Lex hadn’t been able to object any further, or Phin would have wondered why he was so reluctant to have Romy working for Gibson & Grieve. His brother might seem the most easygoing of men, but Lex was discovering that he was far more perceptive than he seemed.

‘Fine,’ he had said with shrug, as if he didn’t care one way or the other. ‘It’s your call.’

But Phin wasn’t the one who braced himself every day in case he saw her. Who looked up every time the door opened in case it was her. Who had to walk around with a fist squeezed around his heart, just knowing that she was near.

Everything had felt tight for six months now. His head, his eyes, his heart, his chest. Usually, work was a refuge, but not now, not when Romy could appear at any moment.

So he had seized on the chance of two days away in the Highlands, finalising the deal that would garner Gibson & Grieve a foothold in Scotland at long last. It was something his father had long tried to set up, and Lex, who had spent his life trying to prove that he could run Gibson & Grieve even better than his father, was determined to seal this one and take the company in a new direction that was all his own.

Lex had planned it to be just him and Tim. No entourage, no fuss. Willie Grant, of Grant’s Supersavers, was by all accounts a recluse and an eccentric. The last thing Lex wanted was to alienate him by arriving with a lot of unnecessary people. Tim had warned him that Willie was a straight talker, and he wanted to do this face to face. Lex was fine with that. He was a straight talker too.

But now Romy was sitting opposite him instead.

With her baby.

At the front of the cabin, Nicola was hurriedly stowing away the extraordinary amount of equipment Romy had seen fit to bring with her. The door had closed after the driver, who had escaped gratefully down the steps, and the pilot was already taxiing, anxious to make up for lost time.

Lex wrenched his mind back from the past and looked at his watch. Two and a half hours behind schedule, and they still had a fair drive after they got to Inverness. Willie Grant lived in a castle in the wilds of Sutherland, in the far north west of Scotland, and God only knew how long it would take to get there. Summer, his PA, would ring and explain the delay, but Lex hated being late.

He hated it when events were out of his control, like this morning. The way they always seemed to be whenever Romy was around.

His life was spent keeping a close guard on himself and his surroundings. Only once had he let it drop, in Paris twelve years ago, when he had lost his head and begged Romy to marry him. Lex had never made that mistake again.

The plane was turning at the end of the runway, and the engines revved until they were screaming with frustration. Then the pilot set them hurtling down the runway.

Lex resisted the temptation to close his eyes and grip the seat arms. He knew his fear was irrational, but he hated being dependent on a pilot. It wasn’t the speed that bothered him, or even the thought of crashing. It was putting himself completely in someone else’s control.

Romy loved take-off. He remembered how her eyes had shone as the seats pushed into their backs and the power and the speed lifted the plane into the air. Lex hadn’t said anything, but she had taken his hand and held it all the way to Paris.

Did she remember?

Lex’s face was set with the effort of keeping his gaze on the window, but it was as if his eyes had a will of their own. Like a compass needle being dragged to true north, they kept turning to Romy in spite of the stern message his brain was sending.

The baby, he saw, was looking as doubtful about the whole business as he felt. When the plane lifted off the tarmac and Lex’s stomach dropped, she opened her mouth to wail, but Romy bounced her on her lap, distracting her from the pressure in her ears until she was gurgling with laughter.