Office Scandals. Maureen Child

Michelle gave a rueful smile and admitted, ‘He was aiming for a first, but he thinks he messed up a paper.’

      ‘Well, exams are useful but I think enthusiasm and ambition are equally important.’ Struggling to maintain a level of appropriate interest, Roman fished a card out of his pocket. ‘My PA will be expecting his call.’

      Izzy was amazed that Michelle, normally a very moral person, saw nothing wrong in this piece of blatant bribery thinly disguised as generosity.

      The man clearly thought he could buy his way in or out of any situation. He probably heard no as a response once every ten years or so and then it was probably incorporated into, No, I don’t mind if you wipe your shiny handmade Italian shoes on me, Mr Petrelli. It would be an honour.

      Izzy endured this conversation with gritted teeth. Without asking someone to move out of her way she could not drift unobtrusively away without drawing unwanted attention to herself and, more importantly, Lily.

      She was cornered and couldn’t even access the glasses of champagne, she mused as another waiter drifted by, and she could really do with a drink. She had always known Lily looked like her father but until seeing them virtually side by side she had not realised how much. She couldn’t see how anyone would not be struck by the uncanny likeness.

      He had to notice … It was inevitable. She was amazed they weren’t already the focus of finger pointing.

      This was the last place in the world she wanted the big reveal, right here with a captive audience. It was going to happen; it was just a matter of when.

      It was Lily herself who eventually kick-started the event. Tired of being carried and ignored, she let out a yell, shouting loudly, ‘Want go down, play … now!’

      Roman winced in response to the sudden high-pitched ear-piercing squeal.

      Michelle saw his expression and said, ‘She does have a temper!’ as she gazed with a fondness he struggled to understand at the red-faced bundle who was struggling like a demented demon to escape her mother’s arms.

      His glance moved on to the small demon’s mother, who looked self-conscious, pink-cheeked and actually far too young to be a mother as she struggled to soothe the child, whose tantrum was causing a good deal of attention.

      Roman might have expected to feel a certain amount of satisfaction witnessing her discomfiture. He did not consider himself a vindictive man, but he was a man who believed strongly in the old adage of ‘what goes around comes around’, and she had left him feeling a different and extremely painful type of discomfort. Her hypocrisy was staggering. First she had responded to him in a way that had fanned his smouldering desire into a full-scale conflagration, but had then acted as if he had somehow insulted her by suggesting they get reacquainted in bed! She had somehow managed to offend his masculinity and his intelligence in the process!

      Double whammy!

      Roman knew the signs when a woman was interested in him, and she was, so why was she acting as though there was some sort of stigma attached? It was as if she had undergone some weird personality transplant. Maybe taking her out of this environment, where relatives lurked around every corner, would bring back the erotic, uninhibited, adventurous lover of that night? He had a private jet on standby … and the villa on Lake Como … He smiled, seeing the plan formulating in his head coming together.

      The opportune timing of the child’s sob meant he did not have time to consider why he felt such a strong need to construct an elaborate plan to get this woman into his bed, when he could achieve the same result without any effort on his part at all and with a woman who did not act as though he were a social liability!

      As he watched Izzy cope with the distressed child and display a level of patience that was staggering, Roman found himself experiencing a sudden and inexplicable desire to help her.

      He didn’t, of course. He didn’t have a clue about children, especially loud, screaming ones. His critical glance slid back to the child, who appeared to have been pacified slightly and was not so red in the face any more. He could see that she was not so … He stopped and looked closer. The child had dark hair, with blue-black curls, huge chocolate-brown eyes and skin the colour of rich honey. His eyes followed the suddenly very familiar shape of a jaw and eye … the mouth.

       ‘Dio!’

      Izzy was alerted to the impending scene by his raw gasp. Her glance flew to his face in time to witness the stunned recognition. Both shock and denial were written in the strong sculpted lines of his patrician face.

      ‘How is this possible?’

      Unaware that he had voiced the question out loud, Roman half expected to hear an answer in his head, but no reply was forthcoming. His brain, unable to cope with the shock, had closed down.

      ‘Were you off school the day they did the birds and bees?’ She regretted the comment the moment she said it, but flippancy was one of her coping mechanisms.

      Jolted back to reality by Izzy’s comment, Roman glared at her. What was she now … the mother of his child? It didn’t seem possible, but instantly he knew it was. He looked at her and then at the baby, then back at the mother, who looked away guiltily.

      ‘Isabel?’

      His voice made the fine downy hairs on her body tingle … ‘Izzy,’ she corrected, staring at his chest. Almost without thought she saw herself unbuttoning his shirt and peeling back the fabric to expose the smooth, golden tautly muscled flesh beneath. Taking a deep breath, she closed the door on the memory.

      His dark, heavy-lidded stare zeroed back in on her face. ‘I think we need to talk.’

      She gave a grudging nod, but was saved the need to respond by the appearance of a suited usher who had been sent to corral the stragglers and drive them into the wedding breakfast.

      He consulted a seating plan in his hand and said, ‘Come on, ladies, we need to get you in first. It’s a tight squeeze and once you’re at your table it’s kind of hard to get out without a lot of hassle.’

      The last sight Izzy had of Roman Petrelli’s dark head was in the distance as she joined the file of guests who were waiting to be greeted by the happy couple.

      He looked like the living, breathing incarnation of retribution.

      The wedding breakfast seemed to go on for ever, but when the opportunity arose during a gap in the speeches Izzy made her move for the fire door and escaped into the hallway.

      There was no one in sight.

      Then she spotted his tall distinctive dark head at the same time a waiter extended a tray of champagne her way.

      With a groan of, ‘Oh, God, no!’ that made the waiter withdraw his tray, she began to weave her way through the crowd, her aim nothing more complicated than to put as much space between herself and the tall Italian as was humanly possible. She walked through the first door she came to and found herself in an orangery that was for the moment blissfully empty except for an elderly man with a red nose and large moustache who was dozing in one sunny corner, and the pianist playing the baby grand in one corner of the room.

      The pianist smiled at Izzy and glanced towards the sleeping figure before miming an ironic hushing motion with his finger.

      Izzy smiled back and set her struggling daughter on the floor, rotating her neck muscles, which ached from a combination of extreme tension plus the extra pounds her growing daughter had gained.

      ‘Careful,’ she cautioned absently as Lily grabbed a chair leg and pulled herself to her feet.

      Izzy leaned back in the wrought-iron chair and sighed as her daughter eyed a plant several feet away and launched herself towards it, managing half a dozen steps before falling on her well-padded bottom. The startled expression on her face drew a laugh from Izzy.

      ‘Oops!’

      Her daughter’s lower lip stopped quivering and the tragedy vanished and a moment later she sent her mother a sunny