Office Scandals. Maureen Child

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?