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‘Genuine!’ She almost choked over the description. ‘But I wouldn’t have taken it if I’d known … known …’
‘That you’d be living with me?’
The helpful insertion drew a gasp of horror from Izzy. ‘Live with you?’ she echoed.
Roman laughed.
‘Or have you realised that this is too big a job for you?’
She struggled not to rise to the taunt and failed miserably. ‘I’m up to the job.’ It was her dream job and he knew it. She eyed him with seething dislike before squeezing her eyes closed as she made an attempt to regain some control of the situation and herself.
‘This is a totally preposterous idea.’ The tingling on her exposed nape made her open her eyes with a snap. Her radar had not misled her. He was close, too close, and crazily as she stared up into his deep-set, mesmerising eyes with those impossibly long lashes she wanted to step into his lean, hard body.
The effort not to made her shake, though she couldn’t be sure that was the only thing making her shake. The fact was, physically he was like a narcotic to her and she had a terrible suspicion that, like any addict, one taste and she’d need a regular fix.
She dragged her gaze from his mouth, where it had drifted. Don’t taste, or look.
‘I hoped I’d be able to like you because you’re Lily’s father, but—’
‘It is not necessary that you like your employer, and, speaking of Lily, it might be a good idea to keep your voice down if you don’t want to wake her.’ His sardonic mocking smile was briefly genuine as his glance touched the sleeping baby.
He was right, not that she’d admit it, but she did lower her voice as she snapped, ‘I’m not working for you, end of story. And as for live with you, I’d prefer to live with a snake …’ Izzy stopped. ‘You’re a cold, manipulative—’
‘That’s the façade. Deep down I’m soft and fluffy.’
She flung up her hands in a gesture of frustration and, fighting an urge to smile, sprang impetuously to her feet. She took a couple of steps towards the baby carrier before twisting back and facing him, her head thrown back, her eyes darkened to emotional navy as she glared at him.
‘Do you take anything seriously?’
As if a switch had been flicked his sardonic smile was gone. He said nothing while he watched her chestnut hair bounce and settle silkily around her shoulders, then took a deliberate step towards her.
Her feet wanted to shadow the action, but she forced herself to step forward, not back, determined not to allow herself to show … fear? No, that was the wrong word. What was she feeling? What were the emotions swirling through her bloodstream? Excitement, loathing … She lifted a hand to her head, the contradictory mix making her feel light-headed. It would serve him right if she fainted. But in reality the idea of showing any weakness in front of him was terrifying.
Izzy shook her head, tuning out the distracting internal dialogue to think past the buzz in her head.
‘I take being a father very seriously.’
His voice was low, almost soft, but the lack of emphasis only intensified the emotion behind the statement, causing Izzy to feel an irrational stab of guilt.
‘And I will not be sidelined or fobbed off.’
‘And I will not be pressured,’ she threw back. ‘This isn’t about you and what you want. It’s about what is best for Lily.’
‘And that’s you?’
‘I’m her mother.’
‘And that automatically makes you the best carer for her?’ He elevated a dark brow and, shaking his head slowly from side to side, clicked his tongue in mock disapproval. ‘Isn’t that a rather sexist attitude, Isabel?’
‘I’m not being sexist, I’m stating a fact—’ She stopped abruptly mid-flow, the colour draining from her face so dramatically that he thought she was about to pass out. ‘Are you suggesting …?’ Her voice faded as jumbled images of lawyers and court hearings flashed through her head.
‘Are you talking about contesting custody?’ Legal battles did not come cheap and Roman had a lot of money. In theory she had faith in the legal system, but the thought of losing Lily made her feel hollow and more afraid than she ever had been in her life.
He opened his mouth to say he’d do whatever it took to have his daughter, then met with her stark blue gaze. Suddenly emotion kicked him hard in the chest; she looked so damned vulnerable. This situation combined with a chronic lack of sleep might have made his temper short, but Roman had never been a bully.
‘No, I’m not.’
He had seen custody battles from a spectator’s viewpoint and found them petty and distasteful. To use a child as a bargaining chip had always struck him as being abhorrent and in his new role as father he found the practice even more disagreeable.
‘But I don’t want my daughter raised to think a man’s contribution to the bringing up of a child ends at the moment of insemination.’
Unable to shake the images of court battles, despite his denial, Izzy blinked up at him still feeling physically sick. ‘Neither do I.’ Her confusion was genuine.
He arched a satiric brow. ‘Really? I’d assumed that you’d be carrying on the family tradition. You’ve got to hand it to your mother—she did at least practise what she preached.’
‘If you want to know what I think, I suggest you ask me, not base your assumptions on the snatches of my mother’s books you read.’
‘Actually I read the entire book.’ And having done so he had been amazed that her daughter was as relatively normal as she seemed. The woman had been a total zealot.
From his expression she was assuming Roman was not a fan. ‘She wrote twenty.’
His lips tightened in a spasm of impatience. ‘I think we both know which book I’m talking about. Did she actually believe all that drivel she wrote or did she just have a mortgage to pay off?’
Izzy took a deep breath and calmed her breathing. While she did not agree with a lot of what her mother had preached, she was not about to stand there while he sneered. ‘My mother’s book is considered a modern classic. She sparked debate, which can only be a good thing.’ There was nothing her mother had liked more than a good argument.
‘Do you make a habit of rubbishing people who are no longer here to defend themselves?’
The contempt in her voice made him flush, the colour running up dark under his golden-toned skin. ‘So what did your mother teach you?’
She tilted her chin to a proud angle. ‘My mother brought me up to make my own decisions.’
‘Like having unprotected sex with a total stranger?’ He clenched his teeth, recognising the utter hypocrisy of his below-the-belt jibe the moment it left his lips. He still could not believe that he had been so criminally reckless; the only time in his life he had had unprotected sex had resulted in a child.
Izzy sucked in a breath. ‘If you’re trying to make me feel ashamed, don’t waste your breath.’ Her voice quivered and she bit her lip before husking, ‘I already do.’ She moved her head slowly from side to side in an attitude of bewilderment. ‘I can’t believe it was me that night.’
She had coped with the memory by treating it like some surreal, erotic, out-of-body experience. The wheel had fallen off that coping mechanism the moment Roman had appeared in her life. All the pent-up passion she had successfully denied had surfaced, no surreal dream any longer.
Roman’s expression hardened. She was talking as if she’d been some awkward adolescent instead of a sensual woman who had known exactly what she wanted and had not been afraid to ask. ‘Don’t tell me,’ he drawled. ‘You didn’t know what you were doing.’
She coloured angrily at his sarcasm. ‘I’m not trying to deny responsibility.’ In response to a faint whimper from the baby carrier she took hold of the handle and, on autopilot, began to rock it back and forth rhythmically. ‘But I had just buried my mother, and I’d never actually done it before. What’s your excuse, Roman?’ Izzy froze and thought, ‘God, did I say that out loud?’
‘Yes.’
Izzy’s eyes widened with shock before she pressed a hand to her mouth—a classic case of too little too late. In the stretching silence the sleeping child’s regular breathing drew Roman’s attention. He was still staring at his daughter when he finally spoke.
‘Buried your mother?’ His research had of course told him the woman was dead, he might even have read the date, but he had not made any connection.
Roman turned his head in time to see Izzy biting her lip. She met his eyes and tilted her head in acknowledgement. ‘Cremated, actually.’
An image of her face that night floated into his head. He had been unable to take his eyes off her from the moment she had walked into the room, him and half the men in there. Amazingly she had seemed utterly oblivious to the lustful stares that had followed her.
He could still recall exactly what Isabel had been wearing when she’d walked into that bar. He could close his eyes and see the smooth oval of her face, her incredible skin, her startling sapphire eyes. So why hadn’t he recognised something wasn’t right?
When she’d kissed him, she’d been trying to forget. He should have seen it. Hadn’t he been trying to achieve the same thing himself with the aid of a bottle and failing miserably?
‘That day?’
She nodded.
Roman ground his teeth together and pressed the fingertips of one brown-fingered hand to the pulse spot throbbing in his temple before spearing both hands deep into his short sable hair.
She had used him!
And you didn’t use her?
He closed his eyes and expelled a sharp sigh through clenched teeth. The truth was he had used her, sought to escape the total mess that was his life for a few stolen moments and find hot oblivion inside her. She’d been tight as a glove and they had shared a night of raw sex; her response had been uninhibited, elemental.
‘How is it possible?’ His dark brows flattened into an accusing line above his deep-set eyes. ‘On such a day you should … Why were you alone? Someone should …’ He stopped, a nerve in his lean cheek clenching.
‘There wasn’t anyone.’ She seemed oblivious to how heart-rending that statement sounded as she related, ‘That was the way she wanted it. She didn’t want anyone, no sentiment, no ceremony, no service or wake.’
‘And no closure for the loved ones left behind,’ he rasped hoarsely. ‘Though why am I surprised? Such a request is typical of a woman who never thought of anyone’s needs but her own.’
The blighting condemnation of her dead parent drew a shocked gasp from Izzy. She let go of the handle and took a step towards him, her hands on her hips.
‘Have you got a problem with strong women, Roman? Is that it?’
‘You think your mother is a person to be admired?’ Roman was bewildered by how protective Isabel was of the memory of someone who had lied to her all her life, deprived her of a father and, as far as he could see, been a friend, not a mother. ‘You put your career on hold to spend time with your daughter. Did your mother ever put your needs above her own?’
‘That wasn’t a sacrifice,’ she said quietly. ‘I wanted to spend time with Lily. I didn’t want to miss out on these early months. You have no idea how—’
‘Precious they are? I think I have.’
Her eyes fell from his steady stare. ‘She would probably have been equally happy and contented with a nanny.’
‘I doubt that. You’re a good mother.’
Izzy, conscious of a warm glow that shouldn’t have been there—his approval meant nothing to her—took refuge in antagonism. ‘And the point is I could do that, spend this time with Lily because the book you despised gave me financial independence. I appreciate you feel responsible,’ she said stiffly. ‘But I don’t need your money and Lily and I are fine …’
‘So what do you expect me to do? Walk away and say ring me? What happens when Lily gets ill or hates school? Do you really want to face those things alone?’
‘If I need it the Fitzgeralds give me all the support I could want.’
‘The Fitzgeralds? Do you think of yourself as one of them? Don’t you feel an outsider?’
Alarmed by his perception, she lowered her gaze, allowing her dark lashes to screen her eyes from him.
‘My independence means a lot to me and they respect that.’ Which was more than he did. His constant prodding and prying were making her feel under siege and what was it about? All she’d been was a cheap one-night stand; the fact she’d had his child did not alter that.
‘You must have been terrified when you found yourself pregnant and alone.’ Roman struggled under the weight of unaccustomed guilt he felt when he thought of what she must have gone through. He saw her sitting there alone and afraid … His jaw clenched.
‘I wasn’t alone. Michael contacted me the same week I discovered I was pregnant.’
And what a week! In the space of two days she’d discovered that her wild night of passion with the handsome stranger had left her pregnant and received the letter from the man who was her father, inviting her to meet her new family.
‘If I hadn’t been pregnant …’ She stopped as a sudden stab of emotion made her eyes fill. She blinked hard before adding with a hint of defiance, ‘And, yes, feeling alone, I might not have agreed to meet him, but I did so my story had a happy ending.’ She took out a tissue and blew her nose. The prosaic action touched Roman more than any tears would have.
‘This story is not ended, Isabel. Our story is not ended.’
She shook her head, knowing he was right but still fighting it. Life had been simpler without him but here he was and he showed no signs of going away. For Lily’s sake she knew she should make an effort, but they had nothing in common. He didn’t even live in the same world as she did, but she could try at least not to be enemies.
‘We don’t have a story. It was just sex.’ Staring at her clasped hands, she didn’t see anger that flashed in his eyes. ‘If I hadn’t walked into that bar …’ A shadow of confusion moved across her face like a cloud. ‘I still don’t know why I did that—I just saw the bar and …’
‘Maybe it was fate?’
Her feathery brows lifted in surprise. He was the last person that she had expected to hear talk about fate. ‘I don’t believe in fate. I slept with an incredibly sexy man. That wasn’t fate—it was hormones!’ And given the opportunity she suspected nine out of ten unattached females would have done the same. She would have thought that she was the one who wouldn’t have been attracted to him, but apparently she was no different. But he was, she thought as her glance drifted across the carved, perfectly symmetrical lines of his bronzed face, a dreaminess drifting into her expression. He made her think of some warrior with a poet’s soul—his mouth was definitely poetry. The dreaminess was swallowed up by a stab of hungry longing as she studied the sensual outline.
‘Incredibly sexy …?’
She jumped guiltily and dodged the wicked gleam in his eyes and found herself staring again at his mouth. Once she had started it was hard to stop. She cleared her throat and forced the words past the achy occlusion that made speaking difficult. It felt like wading through syrup.
‘Like I’m not telling you anything you don’t already know.’
He grinned but didn’t deny it, she noticed. The wicked grin made him look years younger and even more wildly attractive.
‘She must have been very young, your mother, when she died. It was unexpected?’
She nodded. Her mother had been a very young sixty-four.
‘She was in her forties when she had me. She’d been ill for a while.’ The onset of the illness that had struck her mother down had been insidious, although not immediately life-threatening. But she had been living with the effects of the degenerative disease that would eventually kill her. ‘I was angry.’
‘Yes.’ He knew about anger.
During his stays on the oncology ward Roman had seen that reaction to death, seen enough people suffering the effects of shock and grief that it seemed to him that it was sometimes worse for the healthy ones who had to stand by helpless as their loved ones suffered and sometimes lost their battles for life.
The point was he should have seen the signs. He could recognise now with the wisdom of hindsight that she had been displaying all of them that night in the bar.
Roman closed his eyes and groaned.
Izzy looked at him uncertainly and he looked very pale when he looked at her again. A moment later he swore in his native tongue.
‘You were in shock.’ And he’d been too busy wallowing in self-pity to notice. He suddenly froze, his dark eyes swivelling her way. ‘You just said you’d never done it before.’
Izzy expelled a choky sigh. Hell, just when she thought she was safe.
‘Well, I don’t make a habit of picking up strange men in bars. One-night stands are not really my style.’
He studied her down-bent head with a frown before moving his head slowly from side to side in a firm negative motion. ‘No, that wasn’t what you meant.’
