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Shifting uneasily under his severe gaze, she walked across to the sofa and sat down. ‘I wish you wouldn’t tell me what I mean. I am quite capable of saying what I mean.’
Roman refused to be distracted. ‘And capable of lying, it would seem.’
‘So you think one-night stands are my style …’ She gave a little laugh. ‘Thanks a lot.’
‘It was your first time.’ Even as he said it he rejected the statement; he had not actively avoided taking a virgin to bed, but then neither did he avoid meteorites. They both existed but the chances of encountering one were pretty remote.
She was not laughing or at the very least looking amused by such a preposterous notion. Instead she refused to meet his gaze and gave a defensive shrug.
CHAPTER EIGHT (#ulink_ab6c6c91-8ff1-5365-8f4a-19bd5d85e013)
‘IT WAS a figure of speech.’
‘A figure of speech as in you were a virgin.’
Roman’s sarcasm made her flush and for a moment Izzy considered lying. But did it really matter if he knew the truth now? She thought not, so decided to come clean.
‘My only time, actually.’ She flashed him a warning glance and added fiercely, ‘And don’t ask me why because, to be honest, I don’t know.’
She did have her suspicions, though, the most likely that being a twenty-year-old virgin had been a form of rebellion for her—not against parental control but against a total lack of parental control.
While other girls’ parents gave them curfews and warned them of the dangers of teenage sex, her liberal mother had been telling her it was fine if she wanted to have boyfriends stay the night.
Izzy had always found such conversations excruciatingly embarrassing, but her mother had favoured what she called a frank and open exchange of views.
‘You didn’t act like a virgin.’
‘How is a virgin meant to act, Roman?’ She adopted an expression of fake interest as she started to feel angry. ‘In the strange world you live in.’
‘I live in the real world. You’re the one who …’ He stopped and pinned her with an intense, almost accusing stare. ‘You must have had boyfriends?’ he persisted, remembering how incredibly tight she’d been and her sharp gasp of shock as he had thrust deeply into her …
‘For a semester I was in love with one of my mother’s research assistants,’ she recalled with a reminiscent grin. ‘Happy now?’
He swallowed … happy? Happy that he had taken her innocence and not even noticed!
‘So you had a relationship with this—?’ A relationship that stopped short of sex. As he remembered her cool hands on his body and her hot, sweet tongue … that did not seem likely at all.
‘Simon. No, it turned out he was gay.’ She could smile now at the memory of her big moment when she had finally worked up the courage to ask him out. He had been nice about it and quite kind, but eventually the story had reached her mother, who had found it extremely amusing.
Unable to maintain contact with his intense stare, Izzy looked away.
Roman tried to think past the static buzz in his head. He felt numb. A virgin! It seemed impossible. The innate sensuality she projected had been one of the things that had drawn him to her. She was the most passionate creature he had ever held; the need to possess her had been all-consuming and she had matched his hunger and desire every step of the way.
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’
He still couldn’t get his head around it, but it had to be true. There was no reason for her to lie. She had seemed totally at ease with her body, completely uninhibited and endlessly fascinated by his body. The question of her virginity had not even crossed his mind—why would it? She had seemed almost to know what he wanted before he had himself.
Face it, Roman, she was the best sex you ever had and she was a virgin. The staggering thought kept hitting him and the shock was not getting any less with each successive impact.
She turned her head, recognised the anger in his tense stance and shook her head. That was a reaction she had not anticipated. ‘Why didn’t you notice?’ she countered.
At the time Izzy had presumed that he would.
She’d thought her sheer cluelessness would alert him and had desperately hoped it would not be a deal breaker.
But amazingly she hadn’t felt awkward at all, or embarrassed or shy, which was insane because previously the idea of even being naked with a man had been something she didn’t feel comfortable with. The entire intimacy thing had always been a problem for her, not because she was prudish but because she was choosy.
She had thought about it afterwards a lot and wondered if perhaps the fact that it had been anonymous sex, that he hadn’t known her or had any preconceptions about her, had allowed her to let go. For once she didn’t have to be the person everyone thought she was—nice, calm, sensible Izzy—she could be who she wanted to be. It had been the most liberating experience of her life.
Why hadn’t he noticed? Good question, Roman. ‘You were hardly shy.’
Did he expect her to apologise?
Her steady blue stare brought a dull flush of colour to his high cheekbones. ‘Obviously if I’d known I’d have—’ He stopped and thought, Would I really have run a mile? Would I really have resisted the temptation to be her first lover?
She’d given him a gift and he’d not noticed.
She acted as though it had been nothing and for some reason that made him angrier than anything else.
‘I could have hurt you.’
‘You didn’t.’
‘And you have never slept with any man since Lily was born?’
She gave a laugh. ‘You really think that I’ve had the spare time or energy to have an affair? Besides it’s a small place, everyone knows everyone and you can’t sneeze without it being in the public domain.’ That was one aspect of living in a small community that she hadn’t come to terms with yet.
‘So until you do have the time I’m the only man you’ve ever slept with.’
And Roman had never forgotten the night.
He ran a hand across his face and shook his head, unable to believe his total lack of control. He had never surrendered himself so totally to passion before or since that night; the searing fire of lust had totally devoured him. He had literally torn off his clothes like a fumbling boy who couldn’t wait.
Izzy looked past him, trying not to see the image of his sculpted bronzed body in her head as she banded her arm around her midriff in an unconsciously protective gesture. It did not protect her from the memory of the warm silken feel of his skin against hers at the first shocking intimacy of his touch.
‘There’s no need to make such a big thing of it. We had sex,’ she said, struggling to sound amused. ‘That doesn’t give us some magical bond.’
‘Maybe not magic, but we have a bond—we have Lily.’
As if in response to her name the sleeping baby stirred, raising her voice in a fretful whimper. Izzy was up in a bound and beside the carrier.
‘Per l’amor di Dio!’ he rasped under his breath as he watched her bend forward, providing him with a perfect view of her pert round bottom.
Izzy, who was unfastening Lily, who was wriggling like an eel to escape, lifted her head at the sound of his soft curse and, misinterpreting its cause, cautioned, ‘Babies don’t time their demands to suit you, Roman.’
The man needed a reality check. Maybe he would be less eager to be involved with Lily when he realised the demands that went with a small baby. ‘For the first three months I was rarely dressed before midday.’
From where he was standing that did not seem a bad thing to Roman.
She shook her head to toss back a strand of hair that was tickling her nose as she lifted up Lily. ‘I can’t remember the last time I visited the hairdresser’s.’ When she got back home, Izzy decided, she would take up Michelle’s suggestion they let Grandad babysit while they went for a spa day treat.
‘You have beautiful hair.’ He remembered it soft and lustrous spread out on the pillow as she had reached up for him and pulled him down.
Her eyes flew to his face where the raw hunger stamped on his bronzed features made her heart thud. It was Lily’s small foot landing a lucky and painful kick in her stomach that broke the sexual thrall that had rapidly sucked her into its sensual vortex.
Her laughter was tinged with a good dollop of breathless relief as she kissed the sole of the bare foot that had pulled her away from the brink of making a total fool of herself.
‘Now, what have you done with that sock … eaten it?’
‘It’s there.’ Roman bent to pick up the lost item.
‘Thank you.’ She held her hand palm up rather than risk touching his long brown fingers. He probably knew but by this point Izzy was past caring. ‘She’s always losing socks,’ she said, tucking it in the pocket of her cardigan. As if picking up on the tension in the air, Lily began to squall irritably.
Roman regarded her red face with a concerned frown. ‘Is she ill?’
‘No, she’s hungry.’
‘How do you know?’
‘It’s generally a matter of elimination. Is there somewhere I could heat up her food? Where did I put the bag?’ She looked around for the holdall.
‘I’ve got it.’ Roman’s brows shot up as he picked up the bag with the pink handle and cheerful teddy-bear characters. ‘Dio, what have you got in here?’
Izzy gave a rundown. ‘Food, drink, nappies, a change of clothes and some toys.’ She reeled off the items that she rarely travelled anywhere without. ‘Somewhere I can heat up …?’
‘Yes, of course, I’ll show you.’ He held open the door for her to pass through in front of him. ‘The kitchen is this way, I think.’ He led the way through a door into a stone-flagged inner hall. ‘And there are rooms prepared upstairs if you want to change her.’
Before Izzy could protest he added, ‘It’s too late now to make the journey back to Cumbria. I can’t promise luxury but the place is perfectly habitable, just a little tired décor wise. I’m not sure if you’ll want to do any structural remodelling but—’
Trotting a little to keep up with his long stride, Izzy stared up at him. ‘Why do you persist in acting as though it’s a done deal? Don’t you understand the meaning of no?’
He pushed open a heavy door and nodded for her to go through before him. ‘Depends on the context. So what do you think? Could you do something with it?’
She might hate cooking.
She might be a domestic goddess.
It seemed impossible that they could know so little about one another and yet they had made a child.
He stood back and watched her look around the room.
‘A bit small?’ he suggested. ‘The original kitchen is on the lower ground floor used for storage now. It could be reinstated. I’d thought possibly knocking through, incorporating the smaller rooms and knocking out the wall replacing it with glass and putting in a south-facing terrace …?’
The ambitious suggestion drew a laugh from Izzy.
‘This house has got to be listed?’
He nodded.
‘Listed means you can’t just knock down walls. Besides, this is a lovely room. Not that it’s any of my business,’ she tacked on quickly. ‘Will you stop looking so smug? I’m not staying. And if you want to make yourself useful, watch Lily while I organise her food.’ She placed the baby on the floor and held out her hand for the bag.
Roman took a wooden tractor from the top of the bag, then handed it to her. ‘Are you always so bossy?’
‘Does that mean the wedding’s off?’
The tentative rapport immediately vanished in a big black hole of heavy tension.
‘This isn’t about scoring points.’ His expression remained stern as he bent down and pushed the wooden toy across the ground to the baby, who immediately grabbed it and pushed it in her mouth.
‘Is that safe?’
Izzy, still stinging from his reproach, glanced over. ‘Fine. She’s teething—everything goes in her mouth.’
Roman straightened up, leaned back against a counter and stood watching while Izzy moved around the room until, in the act of pulling a lid off a jar, she was unable to bear his silent scrutiny another second. She stopped and expelled a sigh through clenched teeth.
Straightening her slender shoulders, she put down the jar and turned to face him. ‘So, all right, it’s not a joke or about scoring points. What is it about?’
Her eyes were incredible, the deepest, purest blue he had ever seen.
She arched a delicate brow. ‘Well?’
‘This is about damage limitation.’ And controlling his desire to touch her. He cleared his throat. ‘It’s about you admitting you can’t do it all yourself. It’s about me being allowed to take my share of the responsibilities. You don’t like this house? Fine. I … we can find something you do like.’
‘I like where I live.’ He just kept missing the point.
‘That cottage, there’s not enough room to swing a cat there.’
‘My cottage!’ she exclaimed. ‘You have never seen my cottage. You don’t even know where I live!’
‘I may not have had an invite but be real, Isabel. Of course I know where you live, and I’m assuming your house is not dissimilar in size to your neighbour’s, who kindly did ask me in after I admired her dahlias.’
‘You … you … how dare you? You wouldn’t know a dahlia from a daisy.’
‘Now there you go again, making snap judgements based on what?’
‘I don’t care if you have green fingers.’ Actually his fingers were brown and long and sensitive. Hand pressed to her fluttering stomach, Izzy dragged her gaze upwards and finished angrily, ‘I won’t tolerate being spied on and manipulated.’
His languid air vanished. ‘And I will not tolerate my child living in a house paid for by Michael Fitzgerald.’ Michael Fitzgerald was the least of Roman’s concerns. There was no man in Isabel’s life right now, but how long would that situation continue? How long before some man wanted to move in and bring up his daughter?
Izzy was taken aback by the underlying venom in his tone. ‘What have you got against Michael?’
‘Nothing. I barely know the man,’ Roman cut back, looking impatient. ‘Other than the fact he has an excellent reputation as a horse breeder.’
‘For the record, I rent the cottage, not Michael. He offered to help financially, but I refused.’ She lifted her chin. ‘I can pay my own way.’ She bent and scooped up the baby.
‘Did Michael ask who the father was?’ If the roles had been reversed he would have tracked down the man responsible and … But he was the reckless bastard responsible and it was his job to protect his own daughter.
Izzy shook her head. ‘No.’ She suspected that Michelle had a lot to do with this restraint.
