Juggling Briefcase & Baby

trust.

At one level, she trusted Lex completely. He would never betray her with another woman. He wasn’t like her father, who had revelled in his double life. Lex had an almost old-fashioned sense of integrity. He might be short on the social skills in which his brother excelled but he was completely trustworthy in that sense.

No, Romy wasn’t afraid he would leave her for another woman. What she feared was his inability to compromise. He would hate the mess and unpredictability of family life. He would hate not being able to control life with a baby, with a child, even with a woman.

And if he couldn’t compromise, they couldn’t live together, and they would split up. Romy wouldn’t- couldn’t-face being abandoned again. She couldn’t trust that it wouldn’t all go wrong and end in exactly the pain and mess that she was so determined Freya shouldn’t suffer. She couldn’t bear Freya to feel what she had felt when her father left.

No, better to keep her distance, Romy decided, and carry on as they were, but it was difficult to stay distant with Lex when they were living together. They walked into the office together in the morning, but after that first time he never again kissed her in Reception. Once there, they went their separate ways. Lex was far too senior for Romy to have any professional dealings with him. Rather to her surprise, her colleagues seemed to have accepted the idea of her being in a relationship with their chief executive.

‘He’s a behind-closed-doors kind of guy,’ Romy had said to explain why Lex ignored her in the office. She wasn’t sure whether the others believed her or not, but if they were baffled they kept any speculation to themselves.

It was surprising, too, how quickly she and Freya had adjusted to a completely new routine. Romy collected Freya from the creche when it closed at five thirty and took her home. No, not home, she corrected herself and rewound her thoughts. She took Freya back to Lex’s flat, gave her supper and a bath, and by then Lex was usually home.

Freya loved to sit on his lap at the piano while Romy tidied up the worst of the mess. Lex was stiff with her at first, but Freya was irresistible when she put her mind to it. Romy wondered if Lex realised how much he had changed. She liked to listen to him talking to Freya. He made no concessions to the fact that she was a baby, but talked to her as if she were an adult.

‘That’s F sharp,’ he would say, pressing a key. ‘And this one here is E. Now listen to this chord… And then if I do this, see what happens…’

Conversation wasn’t a problem when Freya was around, but there was always a pool of silence once she was in bed. Occasionally Lex had some function to go to, but, if not, Romy usually prepared a meal for them to share.

‘You don’t need to cook for me,’ Lex had protested, but Romy didn’t like the prepared meals he was happy to cook straight from the freezer.

‘I’m cooking for Freya anyway,’ she said. ‘Besides, I enjoy it.’

It was true, and it gave her something to do in the evenings. Something that wasn’t remembering how sure, how warm, his hands had been. That wasn’t reliving that night at Duncardie. Something that wasn’t wishing that she had said yes instead of no, so that she could stand behind him and massage the tension from his neck and shoulders. If she could do that, she could press her mouth to his throat, trail kisses along his jaw until he turned his head to meet her lips with his own, let him pull her down onto his lap…

No, cooking was a much safer option.

CHAPTER NINE

AFTERWARDS she would pretend to read while Lex worked, but what Romy liked best was when he sat at the piano and forgot that she was there at all. During the day, he held himself rigid and guarded, shutting out the rest of the world, but at a piano his whole body seemed to relax and he swayed instinctively with the music while his fingers drew magic from the keys.

Her book would fall unheeded into her lap, and she would tip her head back and close her eyes. Romy had never had much of a feeling for music before, but when Lex played it felt as if he were strumming a chord deep inside her, and an intense feeling swelled in her chest and closed her throat.

‘You should play professionally,’ she said to him one night when he paused.

‘I don’t want to,’ said Lex. ‘And I don’t have time. In case you haven’t noticed, I’ve got a company to run.’

On the sofa, Romy tipped her head right back on the cushions until she could see him behind her. ‘You could let Phin run the company.’

‘Phin?’ He gave a bark of laughter. ‘Phin would give away all our assets and spend all our profits on staff development!’ He was only half joking. ‘Gibson & Grieve would never recover!’

‘He’s not as irresponsible as you think he is,’ said Romy, leaping to the defence of her old friend. She and Phin had been close long before she had thought of Lex as anything more than Phin’s intimidating older brother. ‘Everyone I know thinks very highly of him.’

‘Of course they do. Everyone likes Phin.’ Resentment he hadn’t even known he felt splintered Lex’s voice. ‘He’s one of the most successful people I know. He goes his own sweet way, and because he makes people laugh, he gets away with it.

‘Our father wanted him to join Gibson & Grieve when he left university, but you didn’t catch Phin knuckling down and doing what he was supposed to do. Oh, no, Phin was off, drifting around the world, doing exactly what he wanted to do! He never cared about responsibility or the family or putting something back into the company that had paid for everything he had.’

Romy twisted right round so that she could look at him over the back of the sofa. ‘Is that what you’ve been doing all these years?’

‘Someone had to.’ Lex closed the piano lid. ‘I was the eldest. I suppose it was inevitable that I was expected to be the sensible one. Phin just clapped me on the shoulder, told me not to let it get me down, and took off.’ His mouth twisted in a humourless smile at the memory. ‘My parents were beside themselves, but Phin didn’t care.’

‘He came back when your father had a stroke.’

‘Yes, he did. He’s the golden boy now that he’s married Summer and settled down. Talk about the prodigal son!’

‘You sound like you resent him,’ said Romy carefully.

‘I do, don’t I?’ Lex got to his feet and prowled over to the long, glass wall. He could see the lights along the Embankment and the dull gleam of the river.

‘I think I envy him more than resent him,’ he said at length. Everything seems to come easily to Phin. He’s never cared half as much about our father’s opinion as I do, but he’s got his approval by doing exactly what he wanted.’

He turned back to face Romy. ‘And I’ll admit, he hasn’t been quite such a disaster as a director as I feared he would be. Mind you, I think that’s mostly down to Summer. Marrying her was the most sensible thing Phin ever did. But he hasn’t got the dedication to run Gibson & Grieve, even if he wanted to.’

‘There must be other directors who could take over as Chief Executive,’ Romy pointed out. ‘It’s not as if you need the money.’

‘It’s not about money,’ he said curtly.

‘Then what is it about?’

Lex hunched a shoulder, wishing Romy would stop asking awkward questions. ‘It’s about my career. It’s what I do. What I’ve always done. What I am. If you think I’ve spent my life wishing I could have been a musician instead of going into the family firm, forget it. Music is just…an escape.’

Romy looked up at him with her great dark eyes. ‘Escape from what?’ she asked softly.

Lex didn’t answer immediately. He went back to the piano, laid his hand on the smooth mahogany. Even silent, he could feeling the piano’s power strumming through the wood, calling to something inside him.

‘We all make choices,’ he said finally. ‘I made mine, and I don’t regret it. Do you regret any of the choices you’ve made?’

Romy thought about hot wind soughing through palm trees. About desert skies and coral reefs and drinking beer at a roadside warung while the tropical rain thundered down. And then she thought