The Petrelli Heir (11 page)

‘But don’t worry, it doesn’t have to go any farther. They won’t tell anyone else.’ She gave a sudden laugh, her glance moving from Lily to Roman. ‘They won’t have to if anyone sees you together.’

‘People are going to know, Isabel.’

She swallowed. ‘I suppose so.’

He studied her face and felt his anger grow without knowing why. ‘You look delighted by the prospect.’

‘Are you telling me you are? That you don’t care about people talking and speculating?’ She curled up inside at the idea of being the butt of gossip again.

‘I do not care about what people say about me.’

Exasperated, she rolled her eyes. ‘I get the message, but could you lower it a bit? The testosterone levels are giving me a headache … and before you come over all huffy,’ she said wagging her finger at him, ‘remember you don’t care what people think about you.’

His taut expression faded to one of reluctant amused admiration. ‘Huffy? Is that even a word?’

‘And here was me thinking your English was better than mine.’

‘And I said think not say, smart little witch.’

‘Oh, I’m sure people only say what you want to hear,’ she observed, thinking that it would take a brave person to cross swords verbally or otherwise with this man.

‘Not all people. Tell me, if our paths had not crossed what did you plan to tell Lily when she asked about her father?’

Izzy’s narrow shoulders lifted. ‘Truthfully I don’t know.’ Her eyes drifted to his mouth.

‘You’re blushing!’ he accused suddenly.

Izzy wasn’t about to tell him that her own thoughts were making her blush—thoughts about his mouth.

‘It’s warm in here.’

‘You think?’ he drawled, wondering why she was lying.

Izzy ignored the scepticism in his smile. ‘I don’t want to lie to her.’

He arched a brow. ‘But you would.’

‘Truth?’ She gave a helpless shrug and paused, seemingly lost in her own thoughts until he prompted.

‘Truth?’

Her blue eyes connected with his. ‘I don’t know. I mean, at what age do you say to your child, I don’t actually know your father’s name—he was a one-night stand who picked me up in a bar?’

‘Actually, if we’re being totally accurate, you picked me up.’

She flashed him an insincere smile. ‘Well, thanks for that.’

He tipped his head. ‘Any time.’

‘But a child wants to feel they were conceived with …’ She stopped and lowered her gaze, unable to say love and invite his cynical retort. ‘Well, that they at least knew each other’s name and it wasn’t some quickie …’

The coarse description brought a flash of anger to his eyes. ‘The point is that parents do not discuss their conception with the children, unless your mother was the exception. Did she feel the need to share the gory details?’

‘She told me my dad was a test tube.’

This casual revelation caused his winged ebony brows to hit his hairline. ‘What?’

Izzy, who was wiping a stray blob of banana from her daughter’s curls, turned to face him. She held the box of wet wipes in one hand, the used wipe in the other hand as she tried to sweep the stray strands of hair from her face with her forearm. One stubborn culprit remained, tickling her nose.

‘Let me.’

His eyes were dark and intense as he looked down into her upturned features. Izzy stood very still, not even breathing as he took the silky hank of hair in his long brown fingers, brushing her cheek and jaw as he tucked it carefully behind her ear.

He took for ever and every second was torture. Her insides were quivering, her outsides were burning and her skin was so sensitive that every light touch of his fingers felt like a burning brand.

Torture was not an exaggeration for the effort it took for her not to react to either the impulse to slap his hand away or the contrasting and equally strong impulse to grab it and rub her cheek into his palm.

She started breathing again as he retook his place propping up the counter. Tall, elegant and not even slightly affected, but why would he be? Only crazed women got turned on by someone tidying them up.
If he’d wiped the banana out of my hair I’d probably moan and scream, ‘Take me!’
she thought with a grimace of self-disgust.

Dropping the soiled wipe in a waste bin, Izzy grunted a thanks and picked up the threads of her narrative.

‘She told me my dad … well, that I didn’t have one. I always believed that I was the product of artificial insemination.’

‘Madre di Dios!’
he exclaimed.

‘It seemed normal to me.’ Until she had mentioned it to her friends in school.

‘So when did she tell you the truth?’

‘She didn’t. She left a letter for me to read after she died. She left one for Michael too.’

‘And you had read that letter on the day we …’ He inhaled and closed his eyes, breathing through clenched teeth. ‘Of course you did.’ He bit out a savage-sounding curse that drew Izzy’s attention to his face.

His mouth was taut and his narrowed eyes were almost black. ‘Are you mad with me?’ she asked, her voice rising to an indignant squeak. ‘Because I don’t see why.’

‘No, I am not mad with you.’ He framed the words from between clenched teeth. ‘I am mad with me.’ He took a deep breath, making a visible effort to put a lid on his emotions before continuing, his voice a careful monotone as he delivered his opinion.

‘I think that how Lily was conceived is irrelevant. It is how she is brought up that is important. Do you agree?’

She nodded warily. Where was he going with this? ‘Of course.’ What else could she say?

‘She deserves to be brought up to know she is wanted, cared for emotionally and physically.’

When you said it that way it sounded so simple, but it wasn’t and he knew it. Roman sketched a small self-mocking smile. An ultra-confident person, he had never been plagued with self-doubt, he thrived on challenges, but this fatherhood thing scared him.

‘I don’t know what kind of father I’ll be,’ he admitted.

Would he be a good father …? He found the idea of being responsible for another person incredibly daunting.

‘But I know I won’t neglect her or leave her alone. I won’t let her get on the wrong train when she is ten and have to find her way from Brighton in the dark to—’ He stopped abruptly, adding in a hard voice, ‘The point is, the things parents do impact on a child … I don’t want my child to pay the price for my mistakes.’

‘Roman, were you that little boy?’

‘M
Y PARENTS
were in love.’ Roman would not personally call their obsessive, symbiotic relationship love or even healthy, but his was not the generally held opinion. ‘Their love did not stretch to a child. So, yes, I was that child.’

Izzy didn’t know what to say. ‘I’m sorry.’

She could tell from his body language that he was regretting giving even this meagre amount of personal information.

‘I am going to be part of Lily’s life and you can deal with it like an adult or …’

‘Or?’

‘I’m not the bad guy, Isabel. Don’t make me one,’ he said quietly. ‘Look, maybe I shouldn’t have tricked you into coming here, but you wouldn’t talk to me, and the marriage thing—I scared you. I get that, but sometimes I say things without thinking them through.’

‘You were rushing me, pushing. You wouldn’t give me time to think.’

He dragged a hand through his hair and levered himself away from the counter. ‘I’m not good at waiting.’

‘You mean you’re impatient?’

An expression she struggled to read flickered in his deep-set eyes before he shrugged his shoulders.

‘I like to live in the here and now, not waiting for some tomorrow that might …’ He stopped, leaving the sentence unfinished.

She understood the significance of that look now.

‘But there is for you?’ she said, suddenly needing reassurance on this point. Well, he was Lily’s father. ‘A tomorrow, you mean … a lot of tomorrows?’ He looked the picture of lusty health but who knew?

At the time he had not discussed his illness with her because from his experience the moment anyone heard the word cancer they saw
it
and not him. It remained a subject that he avoided.

‘Who knows? But I have every intention of being around to see Lily grow up.’

The knot of anxiety in her stomach relaxed as she released a tiny sigh of relief.

He stepped away from the door he’d opened and Izzy saw the interior of a pantry that was filled with baby equipment. ‘I asked Gennaro to pick up a few things,’ he said, pulling out a wooden high chair and setting it beside the large wooden table that was set in the centre of the room. ‘Is this any good?’

‘A few things!’ she exclaimed, staring at the stacked shelves and noticing that the piles of nappies were in every size available. ‘It looks like he bought the shop. Yes, that’s great,’ she admitted, depositing Lily in the chair.

She fastened the bib around Lily’s neck and took the spoon from the bowl of baby food, handing it to Roman.

‘You got to start somewhere.’
Please do not make
me regret this
. ‘It’s just a spoon, so don’t start with the smug smile,’ she warned.

Roman saw the blue plastic spoon for what it was: an olive branch and the first thawing in her attitude. Careful to keep his expression clear of the smugness she accused him of, he took it.

Fifteen minutes later the tension in the atmosphere had diminished considerably and the food in the bowl seemed to be evenly distributed between the baby, Roman and the floor.

‘That is not as easy as it looks. Did she actually swallow any?’

‘Enough,’ Izzy murmured, taking the empty bowl and spoon and dropping them in the deep old-fashioned stone sink. She looked at him surreptitiously through her lashes as he rolled down his sleeves. Would any of his boardroom colleagues have recognised their elegant designer-suit-wearing boss?

She hardly recognised him herself.

Could she talk to this man without feeling overpowered?

Perhaps she should try?

‘You do know that I was always perfectly willing to give you access to Lily … It never even entered my head not to, but when a man you don’t know proposes …’

‘I did not propose. Dio, if I had gone down on one knee and said you made me complete I could understand your reaction.’

The mockery in his tone stung. ‘Maybe I want the one-knee approach …’ She saw his expression and added hastily, ‘But not from you, obviously.’

His ebony brows hit his hairline. ‘Now that I didn’t see coming … You’re a romantic.’

He made it sound as if she had some embarrassing disease. ‘I don’t have a romantic bone in my body.’

‘Good, then let’s discuss this like two rational people.’

Presumably rational and romantic were two things that did not coexist in his eyes.

‘I’m listening.’

‘You said to me that this is not about me or how I feel, but about Lily, and you are right, but are you not willing to concede that Lily would be better off with two parents?’

‘She has two parents. They don’t have to have the same address. I am willing to discuss a plan so long as you don’t stray into la-la land again. We have Lily in common and nothing else …’

If she did ever consider marriage he was everything the man she married wouldn’t be. She knew that there were women who found controlling behaviour a turn-on, but she had never wanted to be dominated by a man and Roman Petrelli was the ultimate in male chauvinism.

‘We have lust … a chemical reaction in common.’

She was unprepared for the comment and the breath left Izzy’s lungs in one sibilant gasp, but before she could contest the statement, before she could stop the hot, lurid images playing in her head, he added drily, ‘And there is a lot of historic precedent for basing marriage on just that, though the days when the only way a nice girl could get any was with a ring on her finger are long gone.’

‘Lust?’ The scorn she tried to inject into her voice just didn’t come off.

He lifted a sardonic brow and laughed. ‘Come off
it,
cara
. You’re not suggesting that you don’t want to rip my clothes off …’ His heavy-lidded gaze slid down her body before he added, ‘I can feel the heat coming off you from here.’

His husky rasp stroked her nerve endings into painful tingling life. ‘You carry on thinking that if it makes you happy,’ she recommended. ‘But it doesn’t matter what situation you manufacture where we can play happy families, I’m not playing along.’

‘Tell me who had the best upbringing—your siblings or you?’

The comparison was unfair and he had to know it. ‘I wasn’t a deprived child. Ruth was a good friend. Look, marriage isn’t for me but I accept that for some people who are in love … I suppose you don’t believe in love?’ she charged, annoyed by the sneer curving his lips as he listened.

‘Oh, but I do. My own parents were as deeply in love from the moment they met until the day they died.’

‘You make that sound like a bad thing,’ she accused. ‘I know you didn’t have a happy childhood,’ she said, recalling his earlier comments.

‘I think that love, the all-consuming variety, can be selfish and destructive, but more relevantly does not make the people in love good people or, for that matter, good parents.’

Izzy fought off a stab of sympathy. ‘Didn’t you get on with your parents?’ Her mother might not have been the warm, fluffy, hands-on type of parent, but Izzy had always known she was loved and valued.

‘I barely knew them.’

It was his offhand tone as much as the statement that made Izzy blink in confusion before comprehension
struck. For a moment empathy dampened her antagonism.

‘Oh, I thought …’ She half lifted her hand to clasp his arm, the physical gesture instinctive, but thought better of it, instead threading her thumbs in the belt loops of her jeans. ‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know they died when you were young.’

‘My parents died six years ago when I was twenty-five, but I was always on the periphery of their lives.’ It had seemed appropriate that they had died together when the cruise ship they were on struck a smaller vessel. The damage to the ship had been minor but in the subsequent confusion and hysteria several people had gone overboard, including his parents.

‘The reason couples like your father and Michelle have a successful marriage is because they are both intelligent people who work at it. They create a stable environment in which to bring up their children.’

‘They’re in love.’

‘In love?’ His scorn was overt. ‘What does that mean exactly? People fall in and out of love every day of the week. How many times have you seen some celebrity being interviewed waxing lyrical about their soul mate?’

‘Is the sneer for celebrities or love?’

Nostrils flared in distaste, he spoke over her sarcastic interruption. ‘The next week their acrimonious breakup is being reported everywhere.’

‘We’re not celebrities.’ Although, she mused, her glance drifting from the strong symmetry of his bronzed features to his body, there were a lot of Hollywood stars who worked hard to get what Roman had and never
reached that elevated level of jaw-dropping, sexy perfection. It was hard to believe that she had …

‘But we are parents.’

Izzy started, her guilty eyes flying back to his face. ‘I know that,’ she gritted out. ‘What I don’t know is why you have this weird fixation with getting married. It’s not rational.’

‘And the idea that you fall in love with someone at twenty and still love them thirty years later is? Being in love does not make a good marriage or good parents.’

‘So what are you saying exactly?’

‘I’m saying that we can be married and be good parents, and not be in love. No!’ he said, lifting a hand to still the protest that trembled on her tongue. ‘I know your instinct is to shoot down my arguments in flames, but think for one moment. We have a child—’

‘You keep saying that like it might have slipped my mind!’

‘Do we not owe it to her to explore all possibilities? I am not suggesting we rush up the aisle—living in close proximity might reveal that we are totally incompatible—but I am suggesting living here for a period of time, long enough for me to get to know my daughter and for us to see how such an arrangement would work.’

‘You’re suggesting a trial … what …?’ She couldn’t bring herself to ask if he was expecting her to sleep with him.

He gave a smile as though he could read her mind. ‘There are many rooms in this house. We can be as close or as far apart as we wish.’

‘It’s a mad idea.’

‘And you can flex your creative muscles, tackle a
room at a time, make it as you would wish it if you lived here. Money no object.’

‘Is that the carrot?’

‘For some women the chance to spend some quality time with me would be the carrot, which brings us back to lust. That night we spent together still feels very much unfinished business to me.’

‘No, it’s totally finished for me … completely!’ She illustrated how completely with a sharp sweeping motion of her hand.

He greeted her hot denial with a look of polite disbelief, which set Izzy’s teeth on edge.

‘As you wish. If you agree to give this a go, I will agree not to propose to you again until we have established we can live together without wanting to kill one another. For the record there is a dower house on the estate that, if the worst comes to the worst, I can sleep in. Such an arrangement, though not ideal, would be acceptable to me in the future. I know someone who has bought the house next door to his ex-wife so that he can see his children every day.’

‘You would live in the dower house here?’ She was startled by the offer.

‘We can live wherever you choose.’

She was impressed; how could she not be? He was prepared to totally turn his life upside down, relocate—anything, it seemed, for his daughter. Considering this, what he was suggesting no longer seemed such a big ask.

‘All right, I’ll give it a go.’

Roman greeted her choice with a nod of his head, but inside he was punching the air in triumph.