Office Scandals. Maureen Child

was she avoiding? She couldn’t run away; she had to face him—he was Lily’s father. The image of his expression when he had looked at Lily surfaced, the shock and disbelief etched in his strong-boned features still fresh in her mind. She doubted many things in this supremely confident man’s life had shaken him, but seeing Lily had.

      Izzy suddenly felt an unexpected stab of sympathy for Roman. She had been shocked too, but she had had nine months to get used to the idea of having a child. He’d just had the facts thrust live and kicking under his nose.

      God only knew what was going through his mind.

      She took a deep calming breath. It felt like the first time she’d really thought clearly since she’d felt herself sinking into those deep dark eyes on that night two years ago.

      That one night when she had been someone else, but a night she was reminded of every time she looked at her daughter. Sure, this had been a shock—massive understatement—but might it not also be a positive thing … a good thing? It was a massive disruption of the comfortable status quo she had been enjoying, but surely her daughter having a chance of something she had never had the opportunity to experience was worth some disruption?

      ‘Lily, no!’ Izzy raised her voice in warning above the soft piano music in the background.

      Her daughter’s head turned at the sound of her raised voice, but she did not halt her shuffling progress towards the tall cactus sporting scarlet blooms along its spiky stem that had caught her eye.

      Before Izzy or her daughter could reach the spiky cactus the pot was blocked by a tall figure. A frustrated Lily treated the tall figure to a glare and, thrusting out her lower lip, yelled, ‘No!’

      Izzy took a deep calming breath and scooped up her daughter, sweeping her wriggling and kicking off the floor. ‘Her favourite word.’

      ‘She’s determined, isn’t she?’ Roman observed, staring at the red-faced baby who was his daughter—how was it possible? He pushed away the question that had been running on a continual loop since the baby had looked at him.

      He had always acknowledged a comment that a baby looked like one parent or the other with a certain degree of polite scepticism. In his, admittedly limited, experience all babies looked much the same with their indistinct unformed features.

      He had never had reason to change his mind about this until half an hour ago, but he could have been wrong—he had to be wrong.

      Was it coincidental that the subject had been much on his mind since he had updated his will? He had no child to pass his wealth on to but there were good causes and not all of them were females with a taste for designer shoes.

      As he had left the lawyer’s office the older man had shaken his hand warmly and said with a smile, ‘No doubt the next time we see you will be when you marry or have your first child?’

      Roman prided himself on focusing his energy on things he could change, not lost causes. Anyone who got to be thirty and didn’t realise that life was not fair was either very stupid or very lucky. He was neither, so he had not wasted time bewailing the hand fate had dealt him. He got on with life—a life that would not contain a family. He’d thought he had come to terms with it, but now …?

      Had he only been seeing in Lily what he wanted to see? he wondered. Did he imagine the resemblance the child had to his family line? No, he dismissed the possibility almost immediately.

      After his parents’ deaths he had discovered a box of photographs and one among the dozens of images had been of him on his first birthday. The likeness between that image and Lily was not just striking, it was almost identical.

      He’d had sex with her mother and now two years later his mystery woman turned up with a baby who looked impossibly like him. It did not take a genius to do the maths …

      ‘Michelle said that Lily was fourteen months old, but she must be nearly fifteen months …?’

      ‘Fourteen, she was premature.’ The long labour had ended in an emergency Caesarean when the baby had become distressed.

      The silence stretched between them, broken finally by Roman’s hoarse voice. ‘Were you ever going to tell me?’ He could feel the vibration of a dull roar in his ears as his stunned gaze narrowed and swung her way. She’d had ample opportunity to come clean and she hadn’t.

      Izzy registered the accusation in his glare and let out a grunt of sheer disbelief. How dared he act like some innocent victim? Presumably he had conveniently absolved himself of all responsibility!

      ‘Telling you was never an option—I didn’t know your name.’ Hard not to say it out loud without feeling shame.

      ‘You were the one who insisted on anonymity,’ he reminded her grimly. She was not the one who had encouraged him to have unprotected sex, though, reminded the voice in his head. In his defence, in a brief moment of sanity he had made an attempt to ask her if she was protected, but it had been an attempt he’d abandoned when she had touched a finger to his lips, encouraging him to be silent. ‘And I meant today, or didn’t you recognise the father of your child?’

      Oh, yeah, because there was more than one man out there that looked like him.

      ‘Oh, so now it’s my child …’ She smiled and had the satisfaction of seeing his jaw clench. ‘Make your mind up, Roman.’ His flush suggested she had made her point.

      ‘And when was I meant to tell you about her? In the middle of the marriage service perhaps? Or during our delightful walk back here?’ she snapped. ‘It was kind of hard to get a word in edgewise while you were so charmingly propositioning me. Tell me, does the I need you line normally work for you? I want you, really?’

      ‘It worked with you. No, I take that back, you were the one that said that, weren’t you?’

      The seamless comeback sent a flush of shame to Izzy’s pale face. ‘Look, I know this was a shock for you and I’m trying to make allowances—’

      ‘That’s really good of you,’ he said in a voice like dry ice.

      ‘Well, one of us has to act like an adult!’ she snapped back.

      ‘I’m struggling here, but what exactly is adult about hiding from me?’ he drawled sarcastically.

      She cast a quick furtive glance over her shoulder. They were alone but for the pianist and the dozing guest, but that situation could not last. ‘Yes, I was avoiding you, because I didn’t want this sort of public scene. I just knew you’d react like this …’ She stopped, the anger fading from her face as she finished. ‘Actually I didn’t have a clue how you’d react. For all I knew you’d prefer to ignore Lily’s existence.’

      ‘And that would have suited you?’ He watched the way her expression changed as she glanced towards the happily playing tot, the slow smile that transformed her face.

      Izzy hesitated. This was a subject where her opinions were still lurching dramatically from one side of the argument to the other. She voiced the one thing she was sure of, though he might not agree. ‘It would have been your loss.’

      Roman could not argue with this assessment and quite suddenly he felt his anger towards her dissipate. He was blaming her for something that was not a curse, but a blessing.

      ‘I’m a father … Madre di Dio …!’ It shouldn’t be possible but it was. Roman felt a fresh explosion of wonder but it still didn’t fully sink in. ‘Did you try and find me?’

      ‘How could I? Where would I have started?’ He took a step closer, a tall and overpoweringly male presence that made her feel trapped. She lifted a hand to her throat to cover the pulse she could feel beating there.

      ‘Do I make you nervous, Isabel?’ He stepped closer again, his nostrils flaring as the scent of her perfume brought back memories his body responded to hungrily, making him uncomfortably aware of the heaviness in his groin. ‘Isabel. I like