Juggling Briefcase & Baby

‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he called back to Romy as he retrieved his bag and briefcase. ‘What time are we expected for dinner?’

Romy appeared in the doorway with Freya. ‘Drinks at seven thirty.’

‘Fine. I’ll have time for a shower and can change these trousers.’ Lex shook each leg in turn. Between Freya and the snow, he didn’t think they would ever be the same again. ‘I don’t suppose you know which is my room?’

Romy settled Freya into the plastic chair that she had fixed to the table. She handed her the plate of bread and ham and turned to face Lex, drawing a breath.

‘This one,’ she said.

‘All your stuff is in here,’ said Lex. ‘You might as well stay here, and I’ll take your room.’

‘This is our room.’

Halfway to the door, Lex stopped. Frowned as he realised what she was saying. ‘You mean…?’

‘I’m afraid so.’ Faint colour touched Romy’s cheeks. She hadn’t been looking forward to breaking this to Lex. ‘There seems to have been some kind of misunderstanding when Summer rang up,’ she said carefully. ‘They thought that because we were bringing a baby, we were all together.’

‘Didn’t you tell them that’s not the case?’

She hesitated. ‘Not yet.’

‘Why on earth not?’

‘I wasn’t sure what to do.’

Edgily, Romy walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain. Outside, the snow was still swirling in the darkness while great, fat flakes piled up on the window sill. If they weren’t careful, they would be snowed in here, and then what would happen?

Lex eyed her back in baffled frustration. ‘What do you mean, you weren’t sure? You could just tell the truth!’

‘The thing is, Willie was so pleased.’ Romy turned from the window, trying to make Lex understand what it had been like. ‘He was supposed to be showing me some charter, but he really just wanted to talk about you, and how happy he was to discover you weren’t at all like your reputation. There he was, expecting some soulless businessman, and you turn up with a baby and start bonding with his beastly dog…Willie was absolutely delighted to discover that you were a family man after all!’

‘But I’m not Freya’s father,’ Lex objected, pacing back from the door. ‘We told him that.’

‘I know, but that only makes it better from his point of view. Apparently his mother was a single mother who struggled without any support from her family or his father or anyone, and helping single mothers is a big issue with him.’

Romy fiddled with her bracelets. ‘He just assumed that you and I were…’ Somehow she just couldn’t bring herself to say ‘lovers’. It was too close to the truth. And too far.

‘Together,’ she said in the end. ‘So the fact that you’re prepared to be in a relationship with me and be a hands-on father figure to Freya…well, that clinched it for Willie.’

Hands-on? Lex raked a hand through his hair. This was getting worse and worse!

‘Why didn’t you put him right straight away?’

‘Because you told me you wanted this deal signed at all costs!’ said Romy defensively. ‘This is important, you said.’

‘Good God, Romy, you can’t have thought I meant you to lie to the man!’

‘I didn’t lie. I just…didn’t tell him he’d got it all wrong. I could barely get a word in edgeways as it was.’

Romy was starting to get cross. ‘Willie was going on and on about how pleased he was to discover that you weren’t at all like your reputation, and how much happier he felt knowing that Grant’s was going to be part of a chain run by a man with the right priorities. At what point was I supposed to interrupt and say that actually you weren’t like that at all, and that actually you didn’t want anything to do with me at all and that you’d rather stick pins in your eyes than deal with a baby?’

‘There must have been something you could do!’ Lex took another turn around the room, watched round-eyed by Freya, who was intrigued by his agitation. ‘Eat your supper!’ he said to her irritably as he went past, and obligingly she stuffed another finger of bread in her mouth.

‘Leave Freya out of it!’ snapped Romy, moving to stand protectively over her daughter.

Picking up the banana, she began to peel it as she made herself calm down. There was no point in getting into an argument with Lex. She didn’t for a moment think he would sack her out of spite, but, when all was said and done, he was still her boss.

‘Look,’ she said after a moment, ‘I know it seems awkward, and I’m sorry, but I just didn’t know what to do. It seemed so important to Willie.’

She sliced up the banana and put it on Freya’s plate, while Lex continued to prowl around the room. ‘I got the sense that he’d almost decided that he didn’t want to sell to you, but, between Freya and the dog, you’ve changed his mind. He told me in the tower that he’s really keen for the deal to go ahead as soon as possible now.’

Lex sucked in his breath at the news. This was the moment he had been waiting for. He wanted to punch the air and shout ‘Yes!’ but it didn’t seem appropriate now that everything was muddled with this misunderstanding about his relationship with Romy.

He paced some more. He wanted this deal-oh, how he wanted it!-but did he really want it under false pretences?

Romy was watching him warily. ‘I was afraid that if I told Willie the truth, he would be so disappointed that he’d change his mind back again,’ she said.

‘I wasn’t just thinking about you,’ she added as Lex pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. ‘I was thinking about all the work Tim and the rest of the team have put in on this deal. We all want it as much as you do. So rather than throw up my hands in horror when I realised what Willie was thinking, I thought I should talk to you first. You’re the boss,’ she said. ‘I think you should decide whether you tell him the truth or not.’

Lex had ended up at the window. He stood, exactly where Romy had done, looking broodingly out at the snow that spiralled silently past, catching the light from the room in a brief blur of white before drifting down into the darkness. His hands were thrust into his trouser pockets, his shoulders stiff with exasperation.

‘God, what a mess!’ he said with a short, humourless laugh.

Romy said nothing. It seemed to her that there was little more that she could say now. It was up to Lex.

Freya, quite oblivious to the tension in the room, was stuffing banana into her mouth. Romy sat down next to her and turned her bracelets while her eyes rested on the back of Lex’s head. How was it that it could still look so familiar after all this time?

Unaware of her gaze, Lex tried to roll the tension from his shoulders and she sucked in a breath at the stab of memory. He was such a guarded man, such a cool and careful man, and he held himself so tautly that it was easy to forget that beneath the suit, beneath the tie and the immaculate shirt, was a man of bone and muscle, of firm flesh and sinew, a man hard and smooth and strong.

Romy remembered running her hands over those shoulders, feeling the flex of responsive muscles beneath her touch. His back was broad and solid and warm, his skin sleek and underlaid with steel.

She couldn’t see his face, but she knew that it would be set in harsh lines, and that a nerve would be jumping in his jaw. She could go to him, put her arms around him from behind, and lay her cheek against his back. She could hold onto his hardness and his strength, and offer in return the comfort of her warmth and her softness. She could tell him that she would be there for him, whatever happened.

She could, but she wouldn’t.

It was just a fantasy. A stupid fantasy, Romy knew. A dangerous fantasy.

The trouble with Lex was that he made her feel things she didn’t want to feel. Something about him bypassed all her rational processes and tugged at a chord deep inside her. Romy didn’t want it to be love. Love, she knew, laid you open. It made you vulnerable, made you blind. It was a trap that could spring shut at any moment, and she had no intention of blundering into it. She couldn’t afford to get tangled up in loving anyone, least of all a man who had made it plain that he had no interest in Freya.