Office Scandals: The Petrelli Heir / Gilded Secrets / An Inconvenient Affair. Maureen Child

in better condition than I thought it would be.’

      ‘I’m really not interested in your …’ She stopped and directed an incredulous look at his face. ‘You make it sound like you’ve never seen it before.’

      ‘I haven’t.’

      ‘You bought it without seeing it?’ The idea seemed utterly preposterous to Izzy, who felt herself sinking back into a numb state of disbelief.

      ‘It’s what I do. It was a speculative purchase—the price was good.’

      In other words, she thought scornfully, he had profited from the misfortunes of others.

      ‘And I could afford to sit on it until the market—’

      She cut across him, her voice flat as she asked, ‘Why?’

      ‘The place was bought at the height of the property boom by a—’

      ‘I mean, why am I here?’ Not that she would be for long. If it weren’t for Lily being asleep, she would already have been trotting down that winding driveway, but if it weren’t for Lily she wouldn’t be here anyway.

      She glanced towards her sleeping daughter cocooned in the baby carrier and experienced the familiar, almost suffocating swell of love, so intense that she felt light-headed. Although the light-headed feeling might have something to do with the fact that she hadn’t been able to force down more than a couple of bites of the unappetising sandwiches she had bought on the train, and breakfast—God, that seemed like a lifetime ago—had been a slice of toast. She lifted a hand to her head and tried to remember if she had actually swallowed any of the toast.

      ‘You look as if you’re about to fall down.’

      Izzy read the concern in his rough tone as criticism and her chin came up. She might look awful but it was damned rude of him to point it out.

      And to add insult to injury he looked incredible, as always. He didn’t seem capable of looking bad, no matter what the situation.

      A deep visceral longing she refused to acknowledge twisted itself like a vine around her resentment as she made the journey from his booted feet to his glossy head … Somewhere around his taut middle her fingertips began to tingle.

      By the time she reached his face other parts tingled too, her cheeks were flagged with rosy heat and she was having a problem regulating her breathing. Long, lean and hard, he was more male than any man she had ever encountered.

      She had always been dubious of the theory that in some throwback to a time of hunter-gatherers women chose an alpha male to father their children, but maybe …? Not that she had been looking for a father, just a lover, someone who could make her forget. Her blue eyes glazed as her thoughts drifted back.

      And he had.

      He had made her forget her name. She had taken pleasure from his body, revelling in a sensuality that she had not known she possessed. As the buried memories surfaced the past and present collided and for a moment she was looking at Roman and hearing, not the words coming from his lips, but a deep animal moan of pleasure that had been wrenched from his throat when she had curled her fingers around his silky, throbbing shaft …

       CHAPTER SEVEN

      ‘I SAID are you all right?’

      Izzy blinked. This time there were no extenuating circumstances; this was simply unvarnished lust. She dodged Roman’s gaze, denying the feelings, ignoring them in order to stay sane, stay safe.

      ‘Fine.’ Other than the ripples of hot sensation spreading outwards from a core that lay low in her belly. ‘Will you stop looking at me like I’m some sort of specimen you want to dissect and pick apart?’

      ‘If you’ll stop undressing me with your eyes.’

      Shame washed through her like icy water. Instead of remembering the sex between them, she should be remembering the awful hollow feeling she had felt the morning after. She was never, ever going to feel like that again; she had learnt the hard way.

      ‘I was not!’

      He arched a brow and grinned. ‘My mistake.’

      Only it wasn’t; he knew it and so did she.

      ‘You wouldn’t look so hot either if you’d just travelled on public transport with a small child. I suppose you think it’s easy?’ She slung him a belligerent glare just in case he thought she was canvassing the sympathy vote.

      ‘I hadn’t thought about it.’ But he was now.

      ‘You have no idea, do you?’

      The mild contempt in her superior little smile would have irritated him had he not realised she was right. He glanced down at the sleeping child. Izzy was the one who had spent the sleepless nights with Lily, which made it doubly frustrating because she was resisting his attempts to make up for that now.

      He put the carrier carefully down on the ground. ‘Then tell me,’ he suggested. ‘I want to know.’

      His focus had been totally on what he had missed out on, and not how different her life must be as a single mother from how it had been as a single girl. She had once been able to walk into a bar late at night and see someone she liked and now she could not just act on impulse. Maybe this was not such a bad thing. He had always considered himself pretty broad-minded and not a possessive man, but the idea of the mother of his child spending a night with a man, any man, filled him with a violent revulsion.

      So far he had been preoccupied with resenting the time he had missed with his daughter and planning for the future; now for the first time he was realising how much her unplanned pregnancy must have changed her life too.

      ‘I should have sent a car for you. Whoa, easy, let me …’

      ‘What are you doing?’ she snarled, backing away, dragging the handle of the folded buggy with her as the wheels gouged grooves in the thick gravel before it was removed from her grip.

      ‘I thought you were going to faint.’ He remained ready to step in because she had definitely swayed.

      She narrowed her eyes. ‘I don’t faint.’

      Roman controlled his growing irritation with her belligerent independence with difficulty. ‘Fine, you don’t faint,’ he said, sounding bored. ‘But wouldn’t you be more comfortable continuing this conversation indoors, in the warm?’

      ‘I’m not a child. You don’t have to humour me.’ Her eyes slid from his. She had no idea what it was about this man that brought out the very worst in her. She took a deep breath. ‘All right.’

      It was the practical response because she would not be comfortable continuing this conversation anywhere, but the wind had picked up while they were standing there and the chill would soon start to penetrate Lily’s cosy padded jacket. She bent forward to pick up the baby carrier.

      ‘Let me.’ He paused, his hand above her own.

      Izzy’s fingers tightened over the carrier handle. After a brief internal struggle she stepped back, tucking her hands into her pockets. After all, it was only the carrier she was relinquishing to him. To make a fuss would only serve to highlight the insecurities she was struggling to hide. Roman’s next comment suggested she wasn’t doing this very well.

      ‘I’m not trying to steal her, just helping.’

      She knew he was looking at her but with her jaw set she stomped up the steps, her eyes trained on her feet. ‘Steal her over my dead body.’ She paused as she entered the hallway, unable to repress a startled admiring intake of breath.

      ‘This place must have quite a history. Is the panelling original?’

      ‘I wouldn’t know.’ His taste ran to the modern, and convenient. If they had been talking