Juggling Briefcase & Baby

Romy laughed unsteadily. ‘I can’t believe it! I stroked that huge dog!’ She watched him running in wide, exuberant circles, a faint, puzzled frown between her brows. ‘I feel…liberated,’ she realised after a moment.

‘That’s because you confronted your fear,’ said Lex. ‘It’s a hard thing to do.’

‘I bet you’ve never had to do it.’

Romy set off again through the snow. She was remembering how she had clutched at him and wincing inwardly. For someone so determined to look after herself, it had only taken the sight of a big dog for her to throw herself into Lex’s arms, acting entirely on instinct. And the worst thing was how safe she had felt there. It wasn’t a comfortable thought.

‘I can’t imagine you ever being afraid of anything,’ she said.

There was a tiny pause. When she glanced at Lex, she found him watching her, but as their eyes met he looked away. ‘You’d be surprised,’ he said.

‘What are you afraid of?’ she asked, her expression rife with disbelief, but he shook his head.

‘I’m too scared to tell you.’

Romy laughed. She was suddenly very happy. She wasn’t sure if it was the snow, creaking and squeaking beneath their boots, the sunshine or the purity of the air.

Or the man beside her.

When she glanced at him under her lashes, his austere profile was etched in startling detail against the sky. She could see the texture of his skin, every hair in the dark brows, the touch of grey at his temples that made her feel oddly wistful. He had a big nose that suited his strong face, and something about the line of his jaw made Romy ache with longing and memory.

She could remember how it felt to trail her lips along that jaw. She remembered the smell of him, the taste of him, the roughness of his skin where a faint stubble pricked.

She wanted to do it again. Lex was so big, so solid. She wanted to throw her arms about him and hold onto all that hardness and all that strength, not because she was scared of the dog, but because she could.

Which was pathetic, she knew. And wrong. Because she didn’t need anyone else to be strong. She could be strong on her own. She had to be.

Anyway, it wasn’t his strength that appealed, Romy told herself as that sudden wash of happiness was sucked away like a wave and something darker and more primitive crashed through her in its place.

Lust, plain and simple. She wanted to run her hands over him and press her mouth to his throat. She wanted to push her fingers through his thick hair and lick his skin. To taste him, touch him, kiss his lashes, his mouth, his mouth, and, oh, God, in spite of the cold, Romy could feel heat flooding her, burning in her cheeks and pooling deep inside her.

Desperate to distract herself, she bent and grabbed a handful of snow. Packing it into a ball, she threw it at Lex, who was stamping along beside her, absorbed in his own thoughts. The snowball glanced off his arm, and he turned, startled to see Romy eyeing him with a mixture of guilt and wariness as she stooped to try again.

Something flared in Lex’s pale eyes. ‘Right, you asked for it!’ he said, scooping up his own snowball. His aim was much better than Romy’s and, although she turned quickly away, it hit her right on her hat.

Her attempt missed him completely, of course, but she was already backing away, laughing as she tried to collect more ammunition. Lex’s next snowball caught her on the shoulder and she fell back For the next few minutes, they hurled snow at each other like a couple of kids, until Romy stumbled in the deep snow. She would have fallen if Lex hadn’t grabbed her arm and held her up with one hand. In his other, he held a huge snowball that he lifted, ready to stuff it down her neck.

‘No, no, please!’ Romy was laughing and shrieking at the same time. She was covered in snow by then, but the thought of it down her neck… Ugh! She couldn’t remember the last time she’d had so much fun.

‘Do you give in?’

‘I give in! I give in! You win!’

‘All right, then.’ Lex let the snowball fall, but he didn’t let go of her arm. They had both been laughing, but all at once their smiles faded and their eyes locked with an almost audible click as the glittering landscape shrank to a bubble where there were just the two of them, staring at each other.

‘Do you think Willie is still watching?’ he asked softly.

‘I…don’t know,’ said Romy with difficulty.

‘If we were really engaged, I’d probably kiss you now, wouldn’t I?’

‘You might.’ Romy’s throat was so tight, it came out as an embarrassing squeak.

‘And would you kiss me back? If we were really engaged?’

‘Probably,’ she managed.

Lex brought his gloved hands up to cup her face, and Romy trembled with a terrible anticipation.

‘Then let’s show Willie just how in love we are,’ he said, and bent his mouth to hers.

His lips were warm, so warm in contrast to the stinging cold of the air, and so sure. They sent Romy plummeting through twelve long years, and she clutched at Lex’s jacket, gripped by a dizzying mixture of excitement and fear and utter peace. Her senses whirled as she swung wildly between extremes, between heat and cold, between then and now. Between stillness and rush. Between the sense of coming home and the sense of standing on the edge of a dizzying drop.

When Lex pulled her closer and deepened the kiss, Romy wrapped her arms around him and kissed him back harder, breathless at the rightness of it. It felt so good to taste him again, to hold him again. Every cell in her body was sighing-no, was singing-’ At last! At last!’ The sunlight glinting on the snow was inside her, sparkling and flickering and shimmering along her veins in a glittery rush.

They broke for breath, kissed again before they could realise just what they were doing. Or that was how it felt to Romy, who had abandoned any attempt to think and was desperate to hold onto this moment, pressed against Lex’s hard body, kissing him, being kissed, and the dazzling light all around them.

And then, out of nowhere, there was a huge bump, like a ship knocking into them, and they both lurched to one side.

‘What the-?’

Magnus, bored, was looking for attention, and was rubbing his great rump against Lex, who drew a long and not entirely steady breath and let Romy go.

‘I think maybe I needed that, Magnus,’ he said.

Romy swallowed. She felt jarred, as if she had been on a spinning roundabout that had suddenly stopped, and it was all she could do not to throw herself back into Lex’s arms.

But that would be a very, very bad idea, she remembered. Because they weren’t in Paris now. They were in Scotland, and it was twelve years later and very cold, and they were just pretending. It had just been a kiss for show, in case Willie was watching.

Hadn’t it?

She moistened her lips. ‘We’d better go in,’ she said, barely registering the dog gambolling beside them. ‘Freya might be awake.’

‘Yes,’ said Lex, ‘perhaps we better had.’

What chance had he had of working after that? Lex switched off the light and climbed into bed beside Romy. It had been madness to kiss her out there in the snow, but he hadn’t been able to stop himself. She had been so close, so perfect, and it had felt so right. The feel of her, the taste of her had set tremors going in his heart. He could almost hear it cracking.

It had been his own fault. He should have stayed inside and worked, the way he had intended to do. But when they came back to the house, and Romy went off to find Freya, instead of sitting down at his computer and emailing Summer, Lex had wandered around, eventually finding himself in a room that was empty of all but a few chairs and a piano.

And not just any piano. A Bosendorfer, no less. Lex had a grand in his penthouse apartment, but it wasn’t as big as this one. To Lex, it seemed to exert a pull that drew him across the room, to run his hand over its gleaming mahogany top and then lift the lid to press a key, then another and another. Without quite knowing how it had happened, Lex found himself sitting on the stool and letting his fingers run over the keys and then he was playing.

He played out the tumult of feeling inside him that had gripped him ever since Romy had ducked her head and