CHAPTER THREE
‘I SUPPOSE so.’ For some reason, the thought made Lex uneasy. He felt ridiculously thrown. He wanted to rush after the couple and ask them how they could possibly have thought that he was Freya’s father. What did he need to do? Have never in a million years tattooed across his forehead?
Romy’s smile still curved her mouth as she picked up her knife and fork once more. ‘I don’t think they were very impressed by your hands-off approach, though. I could see them watching you while I was trying to entertain Freya. They obviously thought you should have been helping me instead of making phone calls. I suspect that was why she thought she should remind you how lucky you are to have us.’
‘Dear God.’ Lex glanced at Freya, who had gone back to smearing lunch over her face, and shuddered. ‘I’m glad to have amused you,’ he added austerely when Romy started to giggle again.
‘Oh, you have. It was worth the rush this morning just to see you!’
Freya was clearly a baby who enjoyed her food. There was a lot of gurgling and squealing and squeaking, with much smacking of lips together and banging of spoons. And the mess…indescribable! Lex decided, eyeing Freya askance as he put his knife and fork together.
‘I just hope she’s not going to be eating in front of Willie Grant!’
‘Don’t worry,’ Romy soothed. ‘I’ll make sure he knows you’re not responsible for her in any way.’
Lex pushed his plate aside. ‘Who is responsible for her, Romy?’
‘I am,’ she said instantly.
It was none of his business, Lex knew, but he couldn’t help asking. ‘What about her father?’
The last amusement faded from Romy’s face. ‘I thought we were sticking to business?’ she said, disliking the defensive note in her voice. She busied herself filling the spoon and offering it, without much hope, to Freya, who took it and wiped it on her nose.
He shrugged. ‘I’m just interested in why you’re having to do everything yourself.’
‘Because I want to.’
Edgy now, Romy picked up her mat. It showed an unlikely hunting scene, with red-coated riders hallooing and urging their horses over a hedge, while the hounds bounded alongside. In spite of herself, Romy shrank a little at the sight of their lolling tongues and great paws. No one would think of putting spiders or snakes on a mat, would they? So why were dogs different? If she had noticed the dogs before, she wouldn’t have enjoyed her pie nearly so much.
She twisted the mat around so that they faced Lex instead.
‘Doesn’t he get a say?’
‘He doesn’t know.’ Romy balanced the mat between her hands, turned it so that it sat on the shorter edge. ‘I haven’t told him yet.’
‘He doesn’t know?’ said Lex, incredulous.
‘Look, it was just a fling,’ she said, not looking at him. ‘A holiday romance. I was running a dive centre in Sulawesi, Michael was travelling… He’s an artist, very laid-back, very charming.’
Very everything Lex wasn’t.
Round went the mat. ‘We had a good time. Neither of us wanted any more than that. Michael was on the rebound. He’d been dumped by his girlfriend a couple of months earlier, and I…well, you know how I feel about commitment.’
Romy looked up then, and looked straight at Lex. The pale eyes were shuttered, his expression indecipherable.
‘It wasn’t just you, Lex,’ she said, since they seemed to have abandoned the pretence of sticking to business. ‘I don’t want to marry anyone. I certainly didn’t want to marry Michael. It was never a big deal for either of us. I liked him—he was great—but there was never any question of anything more than that.’
‘So how did Freya happen?’ asked Lex.
‘The usual way,’ said Romy with a touch of her old tartness. Then, when he just met her gaze, she bit her lip and went on. ‘We took precautions of course, but…well, sometimes it happens. By the time I realised that I was pregnant, Michael had already left.
‘He sent an email when he got home, just to say hello, but I knew that he wasn’t interested in me beyond a fling. I had another message a couple of months later, telling me that he was back with his girlfriend, so an email from me saying that he was going to be a father would have been the last thing he wanted.’
Lex frowned. ‘Wouldn’t he want to know anyway?’
‘I don’t know…’ Romy sighed. ‘Sometimes I thought he would, and that it was wrong not to tell him, but then I thought of him being with his girlfriend, and I didn’t want to spoil that for him. It’s not as if he made any promises. Michael talked about Kate a lot when we were together, so I know how much he wanted to be with her. When he emailed, he sounded so happy—’
She broke off, flashing Lex a look. ‘Would you have wanted to know?’ she asked abruptly.
‘Yes.’
‘Just like that? No thought about how having a child would turn your life upside down?’
‘I’d still want to know,’ said Lex. ‘If, after Paris…’ He didn’t finish the sentence, but she knew what he was thinking. ‘I’d have wanted to know,’ he said. ‘I’d have thought I had the right to know.’
Romy eyed him in dismay. Of all the people she would have expected to understand, she had thought it would be Lex! Lex, who hated chaos and was clearly appalled by Freya.
‘Maybe I was wrong,’ she said, chewing her lip. ‘It just seemed to me that learning that you’re a father is such a big thing. Having a child…it changes everything. Everything. I imagined how I would feel if I was Kate, finding out that it wasn’t just Michael any more, but Michael and a baby. It would have changed things for her too… Oh, I’ve been round and round about this so many times since I found out I was pregnant!’
Tiring of the mat, Romy let it drop to the table and started fiddling with a spoon instead, spinning it slowly between her finger and thumb. ‘Should I tell Michael? Should I not? What if he didn’t want anything to do with Freya? What would that do to her, to know that her father never wanted her? Would that be better or worse than not having a father at all?’
‘That’s not really the point,’ said Lex severely. ‘The point is that this Michael is partly responsible for her, and that means he should help support her.’
‘I don’t want help,’ said Romy stubbornly. ‘I don’t need it.’
She caught the echo of her own words about Freya, and grimaced a little. ‘I don’t want to rely on anyone,’ she tried to explain. ‘It was my choice to have a child, my choice to bring her up on my own. Telling Michael wouldn’t be about the money.’
She had begun to irritate herself with her fiddling and she made herself stop and put her hands in her lap. ‘I expect he would want to support Freya if he knew,’ she said. ‘Michael’s a decent man. He wouldn’t run away from the responsibility.
‘I’m the one that has done the running away,’ she admitted. ‘I didn’t want to upset things between him and Kate, but the truth is that I used that as an excuse. I was afraid that if I told Michael he might want to be involved in Freya’s life. He might want to see her, and she…she might love him.’
Romy’s eyes rested on Freya, who was absently wiping a spoon in her hair and wearing a pensive expression. ‘Children do love their fathers.’
Her voice was very sad, and Lex’s expression changed. ‘There’s no reason to think that he would be like your father, Romy.’
‘No, but what if he was? What if he disappointed her? What if he didn’t love her the way she deserves to be loved?’
She had been such a daddy’s girl. Her whole world had revolved around her father. She couldn’t wait for him to come home at night and drove her mother mad, jiggling up and down with excitement. There was no joy to compare with that of seeing him appear, of running into his arms, of being swept up into a hug and swung round and round until she was giddy and giggling.
‘Who’s my best girl?’ he would ask.
Romy would shriek, ‘Me! Me!’
‘And who do I love best in the world?’
‘Me!’
Romy could still remember it, the blinding happiness, the utter, utter security of wrapping her skinny arms around his neck and knowing that her father was home and that nothing could go wrong when he was there.
And then one day he sat her down and told her that he would never be coming home again. That he was going to live with someone who was not her mother and have a new family. She was going to have a new brother or sister, he told her.
‘But I still love you,’ he said.
Romy didn’t believe him. If he loved her, he wouldn’t leave her. She was six, and she never felt quite safe again. Even now, the memory of that morning had the power to rip at her heart and bring back the black slap of disbelief. How could he have done that to her? How could he have left his best girl?
Twenty-four years ago, and it still made her feel sick with misery and incomprehension.
The thought that Freya might be hurt in the same way was unbearable. However hard it might be to struggle on her own, Romy knew it was better than letting herself rely on someone who might leave them both.
‘It wasn’t an easy decision, Lex,’ she said slowly. ‘I thought about it every day. I still think about it. I don’t know if I did the right thing not telling Michael when I was first pregnant. It felt right, that’s all I can say. It felt as if it would be better for Freya if it was just two of us.
‘Recently though…I suppose it’s partly seeing Tim and realising that there are great fathers out there, but I’ve been thinking that I should tell Michael about Freya after all. Not for the money, but because Freya needs a father as well as me. And because Michael deserves to know that he has a daughter.
‘But first I want to be sure I’m truly independent. This deal with Grant’s Supersavers is important to you, I know,’ she told Lex, ‘but it’s just as important to me. It’s my chance to really make my mark, something really impressive to put on my CV for when I have to look for my next job. In the past, I’ve just drifted from country to country and picked up work when I needed it, but it’s different now. I need a proper job, and I can’t rely on anyone but myself for that.’
‘You’re not exactly alone in the world,’ Lex pointed out.
‘No,’ she acknowledged. ‘Mum and Keith were great when I came home to have Freya, but they’ve done enough. They’re too old to live with a baby. I moved out as soon as I could, but I was getting desperate about finding anything when Phin offered me this job at Gibson & Grieve.’
Romy looked across the table at Lex. ‘I never thanked you for that.’
‘Thank Phin,’ he said with a dismissive gesture. ‘He fixed it all.’
‘You’re Chief Executive. You could have said no.’
‘I wouldn’t have done that,’ said Lex, but he avoided her eyes, remembering how dismayed he had been when Phin had told him what he had done. If he thought he could have persuaded his brother to change his mind, he would have done.
‘Well, thank you anyway.’
‘You can thank me by making sure this deal goes through,’ said Lex roughly, and Romy nodded.
‘I’ll do whatever I can to make it happen,’ she said. ‘For both of us. And when it’s done, and I’ve got the experience I need to get a permanent job, then I’ll tell Michael that he has a daughter.’
The snow was little more than a light powder when they left the pub, but the further they drove, the heavier it got, until great, fat flakes were swirling around the car and splattering onto the windscreen.
The short winter afternoon was drawing in, too, and Romy began to feel as if they were trapped in one of the snow scenes she had loved to shake as a child, except in this one the snow didn’t settle after a minute or two. It just kept on coming. Soon, Romy couldn’t see the country they were driving through, but it felt dark and empty and wild, and it was miles since they had passed a vehicle going the other way.
‘Do you think we should turn back?’ she ventured at last.
‘Turn back? What for?’
‘The snow’s very heavy. What if we get stuck?’
‘We’re not going to get stuck,’ said Lex. ‘We’re certainly not turning round and going back on the off chance that we do. We’re almost there. This meeting is too important to miss because of “what if”.’
‘We might break down,’ said Romy, who had been checking her mobile. ‘And I’m not getting a signal on my phone. How would we get help?’
Lex sucked in a breath. ‘Romy, there is nothing wrong with the car,’ he said, keeping his voice even with an effort. ‘Anyway, I thought you were the one who wanted adventure? When did you turn into a worrier?’
‘When I became a mother,’ said Romy, glancing over her shoulder to where Freya was, thankfully, sound asleep. ‘I used to pack up and go without a thought. It never occurred to me that anything could go wrong, but now…’
She sat back in the seat, turning the useless phone between her hands, her eyes fixed on the swirling snow but her mind on the day her life had changed for ever.
‘I didn’t know what terror was until Freya was born,’ she said slowly after a moment. ‘Until I held her in my arms and looked into her face, and realised that it was up to me to keep her safe and well and happy. What if I can’t do it? What if I get it all wrong? I’m terrified that I’ll be a bad mother.’
Where had that come from? Romy wondered, startled. She spent a lot of time assuring her mother and her friends that she was fine on her own, that she was managing perfectly well. She spent a lot of time telling herself that too.
And she was fine. She was managing. She just didn’t tell anyone how hard it was. How scared she was.
Now, unaccountably, she had told Lex, of all people. The one person who would least understand.
‘I worry about everything now,’ she confessed. ‘I worry about what will happen if Freya is sick or if she struggles at school. How will I pay for her university fees? What if she has a boyfriend who hurts her?’
Lex shot her a disbelieving look. ‘It’s a bit early to worry about that, isn’t it?’ he said. ‘She’s only a baby.’
‘Thirteen months,’ Romy told him, ‘and growing every day. I know it’s stupid, but I can’t help myself. I’m afraid I won’t be a good enough mother, that I won’t be able to give her what she needs. I’m afraid I won’t be able to support her by myself, and that I’ll have to rely on other people, that her happiness will be in someone else’s hands. I’m afraid her father will want to be part of her life and afraid that he won’t. Oh, yes,’ she said with a lopsided smile, ‘I’m a real scaredy cat now!’
‘Then you’ve changed more than I thought you had.’
‘You should be glad. An irresponsible eighteen-year-old with itchy feet isn’t much good to you.’ Romy paused. ‘She never was.’
‘No,’ Lex agreed, and his voice was tinder dry.
Romy blew out a long breath. ‘I miss being that girl sometimes,’ she said. ‘I miss how fearless I was. I had such a good time. I can’t believe I did all those things now, now that I’m scared and sensible and the kind of person who puts on a suit to go into work every day. It feels like remembering a different person altogether.’
‘So if you hadn’t got pregnant, would you still be drifting?’
‘Probably. I’d been in Indonesia a couple of years. I was thinking of moving on. Thailand, maybe. Or Vietnam. Instead I’m a single mother living in the suburbs and struggling into work on the tube every day.’
Lex glanced at her, and then away. ‘No regrets?’
Romy looked over her shoulder again. Freya’s head was lolling to one side. Ridiculously long lashes fanned her cheeks and her lips were parted over a bubble of dribble. Her baby. Her daughter. Her best girl.
‘No,’ she said. ‘No regrets.’
They drove on through the dark in silence. In spite of her earlier anxiety about the snow, deep down Romy wasn’t really worried. There was something infinitely reassuring about Lex’s coolly competent presence. He drove the way he did everything else, like a man utterly sure of himself. The only time he lost that sense of assurance was in the air, but now he was on the ground and firmly back in control
Romy eyed him under her lashes. His hands were big and capable on the steering wheel, and the muted light from the dashboard threw the cool planes and austere angles of his face into relief.
That was the point she should have looked away, but her gaze came to rest on his mouth instead, and without warning the memory of how it felt against hers set something dangerous strumming deep inside her.
Alarmed, she forced her eyes away, but instead of doing something sensible like fixing on the satellite navigation screen, they skittered back to his hands, which only made the strumming worse as the memories she had kept repressed for so long clamoured for release.
Lex’s hands. The feel of them was imprinted on her skin. He had long dextrous fingers that had sent heat flooding through her. They had been warm skimming over the curve of her hip, sliding over her thigh, gentle up her spine, hungry at her breast… He had played her body like an instrument, coaxing the wild, wondrous excitement with those possessive hands, that mouth, exploring her, loving her, unwrapping her, unlocking her as if she were some magical gift.
Desperately, Romy made herself stare out at the snow until the swirling flakes made her giddy. Or perhaps it was the memories doing that. Why had she let herself remember? She should have kept them firmly locked away, the way Lex had clearly done.
Now she was hot and prickly all over, and even the backs of her knees were tingling as if he had just kissed her there again.
He had been such an unexpected lover, so cool on the surface, so passionate below. Afterwards, Romy had realised that it shouldn’t have been such a surprise. As a child, she had once seen Lex play the piano, had watched astounded as he drew the most incredible music from the keys.
Her mother had claimed that he was good enough to play professionally. There had been a flaming row with his father when Gerald Gibson had dismissed Lex’s talent.
‘He can play the piano if he wants, but what’s the point of him studying music?’ he had demanded. ‘Lex will be joining Gibson & Grieve. Economics makes much more sense.’
What Lex thought about the piano, Romy had never known. Only once more had she ever heard him play, in a dimly lit café in some Paris back street, which they had found quite by accident. They had sat late into the night, listening to the band.
Occasionally one of the musicians had drifted off for a drink, and someone from the audience would get up and play in their place. Lex had taken a turn at the piano at last, improvising with a guy on the saxophone, his body moving in time to the music, utterly absorbed, and Romy had listened, her throat aching with inexplicable tears. This was not the dutiful son, the boy who had joined the family firm and set out to please his father. This was her lover and a man she suspected Gerald Gibson didn’t even know existed.
‘Romy?’
Lex’s voice startled Romy out of her thoughts and she jerked upright. ‘What?’
‘I wondered if you’d fallen asleep.’
‘No. I was…thinking.’
‘What about?’
For a moment, a very brief moment, Romy considered telling him the truth. She could turn to him in the darkness and confess that she had been thinking about him, about how he made music and how he made love and how he had made her feel.
But the thought had barely crossed her mind before she remembered how his face had closed on the plane. ‘It was a long time ago,’ he had said. ‘We’ve both moved on.’
As they had. Lex was right. It was pointless to bring it all up again.
He wanted to draw a line under the whole episode and stick to business. And let’s remember, Romy, she reminded herself, this is your boss, and you need this job. If he wants to stick to business, business it is.
‘Nothing,’ she said.
‘Well, start thinking about how you’re going to explain Freya’s presence to Grant.’ Lex tapped the sat nav. ‘According to this, we’re nearly there.’
Sure enough, a few minutes later they were bumping along a track and over a bridge, and then quite suddenly there were lights glimmering through the snow and the dark bulk of Duncardie was looming above them.
Concealing his relief at having arrived at last, Lex drove into a courtyard, and parked as close as he could to the massive front door.
‘Only three and a half hours late,’ he said grimly.
He switched off the engine, and there was a sudden, crushing silence, broken only by the sound of Freya burbling to herself in the back seat. She had woken half an hour before, and Romy had been on tenterhooks in case she started to cry again, but her daughter seemed perfectly content to play with her toes and chat away in her own incomprehensible language.
‘OK,’ said Lex. ‘Now remember, the whole deal is riding on this meeting, so we’ve got to get it right.’
‘Right,’ said Romy.
‘If we want Grant to take us seriously, we’ll have to be professional, and that means making a good impression right from the start. We’re going to have to work hard to make up for turning up late with the entire contents of a Mothercare catalogue.’
‘Professional,’ Romy agreed. ‘Absolutely.’
The moment the wipers had stilled, the snow had started to build up on the windscreen, and already they could barely see through it.
Lex was calculating how quickly he could unload the car. ‘You take Freya,’ he told Romy. ‘I’ll bring the stuff.’
Romy thought doubtfully of everything she had brought with her. ‘It’ll take ages if you do it on your own. Why don’t we do it together?’
‘There’s no point in two of us blundering around in the snow,’ he said gruffly. ‘Take Freya into the warm. Hopefully we’ll have a chance to change and get rid of all this clobber before we meet Grant himself.’
‘All right.’ Romy drew a breath and looked at Lex. ‘I’m ready.’
He nodded and reached for the door handle. ‘Then let’s go and get this deal.’
It wasn’t far to the door, but it was bitterly cold and to Lex, labouring backwards and forwards in the dark through the snow, it felt as if he were trapped in an endless blizzard. Head down, he dumped stuff in the stone porch as quickly as he could before running back for the next load. At least someone was transferring it all inside, he saw, but he was very glad indeed to make the last trip, skidding and sliding over the snow.
Brushing the worst of the snow off himself in the porch, Lex shook out his sodden trousers with an irritable grimace. His feet were frozen, his hands numb, and melting snow was trickling down his neck, and he was cursing Willie Grant’s refusal to go to London and meet in a warm, dry office, where all sensible deals were made.
But this was the deal he wanted, Lex reminded himself. He bent to retrieve the last of Freya’s luggage and stepped through the door.
He found himself in a vast, baronial hall, complete with antlers on the wall, some sad, glassy-eyed creatures stuffed and mounted long ago, and even the requisite suit of armour standing to attention at the foot of a magnificent staircase.
Lex didn’t see any of them. He registered three things simultaneously. One, a small, portly man with a halo of white hair, holding Freya. Willie Grant himself, in fact, who turned to watch Lex’s approach.
Two, the fact that he, Lex, far from presenting a crisply professional appearance, was dripping snow everywhere and had a bright yellow bag decorated with teddy bears wearing bow ties in one hand and a huge pack of nappies and a pushchair in the other.
And three, Romy, terrified and trying not to show it, standing rigidly beside Willie Grant while an Irish Wolfhound, easily the biggest dog Lex had ever seen, sniffed interestedly at Freya’s feet.
Forgetting his humiliating appearance, Lex dropped the teddy bear bag and snapped his fingers. ‘Come,’ he said to the dog, who trotted obediently over to greet him.
‘Sit.’
The great rump sank to the floor.
‘Good dog,’ said Lex, and rubbed the huge head that came up to his chest, while Romy sent him a speaking look of gratitude.
Willie Grant’s expression was harder to decipher.
‘That’s Magnus,’ he said. ‘He doesn’t usually go to strangers.’
‘I like dogs,’ said Lex, giving Magnus a final pat.
It was too late to hide the pushchair and nappies. He set them down, tried to pretend that he wasn’t dripping everywhere, and stepped forward to offer his hand.
‘Lex Gibson,’ he introduced himself.
‘Willie Grant.’ Willie’s grip was firm and he studied Lex with interest, not unmixed with surprise.
‘I’m very sorry we’re so late.’
‘Oh, not to worry about that,’ said Willie. ‘Your secretary rang, so we got the message that you would be delayed and that you were bringing the wee lassie with you.’ He beamed at Freya and tweaked her nose. ‘She’s a bonny one, isn’t she?’
‘Yes, I’m sorry about that—’ Lex began, and then stopped short as Freya, clearly recognising him, broke into a gummy smile and reached out her arms towards him.
Instinctively, Lex took a step back, but Willie was watching Freya and didn’t notice. ‘Ah, I see who you want!’ he chuckled. ‘Old Willie’s not good enough for you, is he?’
And before Lex could react, he had handed Freya over and turned to take Romy by the arm.
‘Now come away in and have some tea in the library,’ he said and bore her off up the magnificent stone staircase, leaving Lex, aghast, holding Freya at rigid arm’s length.
It wasn’t often that Lex was at a loss for words.
‘Er…’ was the best he could manage.
‘Perhaps I should take Freya,’ Romy said quickly, trying to hang back. ‘Lex is rather wet.’
But Willie wasn’t to be deflected. ‘Oh, bring the wee one too, of course,’ he tossed over his shoulder at Lex. ‘You’ll soon dry off by a good fire. Ewan’s around here somewhere. He’ll take your stuff to your room while Elspeth’s bringing us some tea.’
That left Lex with little choice but to carry Freya gingerly after them, dangling between his hands. He was terrified that she was going to cry, but she just stared at him with those disconcertingly direct dark eyes.
The library was warm and cluttered, with heavy red velvet curtains closed against the night and a fire crackling behind a guard.
‘We put that up as soon as we heard you were bringing the baby,’ said Willie.
‘I was afraid she’d be a nuisance,’ Romy said, settling herself on the red leather sofa, and looking anxiously over her shoulder to see where Lex and Freya were.
To her dismay, the huge dog had followed them up the stairs and threw itself down on the rug in front of the fire with a great thud. Romy was convinced she could feel a tremor in the floor and wouldn’t have been in the least surprised if the ornaments had come crashing off the mantelpiece at the impact.
She had been terrified in the hall when Magnus appeared. On one level, Romy knew it was stupid. Just because one dog had bitten her when she was a child didn’t mean that every dog would bite. Perhaps it was knowing that they could that made her so nervous.
And this dog was a monster, the size of a small pony at least. When it had stuck its great muzzle towards her, she had frozen with terror. Unable to move, the breath clicking frantically in her throat, she had only been able to watch as it swung its head round to investigate Freya in Willie’s arms. Her daughter’s feet had been mere inches away from those huge teeth.
Willie didn’t seem to have noticed anything amiss. He’d been laughing with Freya, as if unaware that a mere nudge from the beast beside him could send them both crashing to the ground where it could savage them.
She should snatch Freya back, Romy had thought frantically, but that would mean pushing past the dog and panic had clogged her throat at the idea of touching it. What if it turned on her? What if its eyes went red and it went for her? What if—?
And then Lex had stepped into the hall, and the world had miraculously righted. He had taken in the situation at a glance. Romy had sagged with relief as he’d called the dog away. His effortless control of the animal had given her a queer thrill, she had to admit, even as she despised herself for feeling so safe with him. That smacked too much of neediness for one of Romy’s independent turn of mind.
Still, there was no denying that Lex was a formidable figure, even dripping snow and burdened with ridiculous bags. He must have hated meeting Willie like that, Romy thought, remembering how much he had wanted to present a professional image.
It was all her fault for bringing so much stuff with her. Well, she would make it up to him, Romy vowed. She would do everything she could to make sure Willie agreed to sell to Lex.
Wondering where Lex and Freya had got to, Romy made herself focus on Willie, who was assuring her that Freya would be no trouble. ‘I like to see the wee ones,’ he told her. ‘Moira and I dreamed of Duncardie full of children, but sadly it wasn’t to be.’
‘I’m sorry,’ said Romy gently.
Willie looked sad, but squared his shoulders. ‘At least we had each other,’ he remembered. ‘I never looked at another woman after I met Moira.’
‘You must miss her very much.’
‘I do. It’s been five years now, and I still miss her every day. And every day I remember how lucky I was to have found her. It’s a great thing to find a love like that,’ he told Romy.
‘It must be.’
Fleetingly, Romy found herself thinking about Lex, which was ridiculous, really, because although that week in Paris had been wonderful and intense, it hadn’t been about love, not the way Willie meant. It had been passion, it had been desire, it had been sheer, unadulterated lust, but it couldn’t have been love.
She hadn’t wanted it to be love. Even at eighteen, she had known that love meant making compromises. It meant putting your heart and your happiness into someone else’s hands, and Romy had done that once. She had loved her father absolutely, and she wasn’t prepared to risk her heart again.
Never again.
CHAPTER FOUR
WILLIE was bustling around the tea tray when Lex appeared at last. He was walking very gingerly and holding Freya as if she were a grenade with a very wobbly pin. He must have come up those stairs very, very slowly.
Evidently forgetting his new family-friendly image, Lex handed Freya over with such an anguished grimace that Romy had to tuck in the corners of her mouth quite firmly to stop herself laughing. Fortunately, Willie was busy with the teapot and didn’t notice.
‘You must be frozen,’ she said tactfully instead.
‘Yes, indeed.’ Willie looked up. ‘Come and dry yourself by the fire, Lex. Just push Magnus out of the way.’
Romy thought it would take a bulldozer to move a dog that size, but Lex just clicked his tongue and pointed and Magnus heaved himself to one side with a sigh.
‘I didn’t have you down as a dog man,’ said Willie, handing him a cup of tea.
Lex nodded his thanks. ‘It’s not the sort of thing that normally comes up in the business world.’
‘I think it should. It helps to know who you’re dealing with and so far, you’ve been something of an unknown entity. Oh, I know you’re a canny enough businessman,’ Willie went on as Lex opened his mouth to speak, ‘but beyond that, there’s not much information out there about what you’re like as a person.’
‘I don’t like to mix my personal life with business,’ said Lex stiffly.
‘Fair enough,’ Willie allowed, ‘but I like to get to know a man before I decide whether we can do business or not.’
‘I understand that.’ There was a suspicion of clenched teeth in Lex’s voice, and Romy could see a muscle jumping in his cheek.
She held her breath. Lex’s temper, never the longest, would be on a very short fuse after the day he had had. He hated being out of control, and things had gone from bad to worse, with Tim unable to make it, a long delay until she turned up, and Romy didn’t suppose he had been pleased to discover that he would be spending the following forty-eight hours with someone he had been comprehensively ignoring ever since she had started work. On top of all that, he’d been landed with a baby, forced to confront his fear of flying and had to drive through a blizzard. Small wonder if he was irritable now.
But in the end all he said was, ‘That’s why we’re here.’
‘Quite,’ said Willie comfortably as he took a seat in a wing chair. His eyes, bright blue, rested speculatively on Lex’s rigid face. ‘I suggest we talk about the deal over dinner tonight. Enjoy your tea for now.’
Romy suspected the chance of Lex enjoying his tea was slight. Willie’s personal approach to negotiations was not at all Lex’s style. He was much happier in the boardroom, talking figures with hard-headed men in suits. Gibson & Grieve’s Chief Executive had many strengths, but chatting sociably by a fire wasn’t one of them.
At least here she could help. Romy might not be sufficiently ruthless when it came to negotiating, but she had advanced social skills.
‘How old is the castle?’ she asked, drawing Willie’s attention away from Lex and setting out to charm him.
It wasn’t difficult. Willie had been closely involved in setting up the negotiations. Unlike Lex, he liked to deal with the details himself and had been perfectly happy to talk to Romy, who was far from being the most senior member of the acquisitions team. They had already established a rapport on the phone and by email, and she had been touched by the warmth of his welcome. He had seemed genuinely delighted to meet Freya, too.
How Willie felt about Lex was less clear. Chatting away to Romy, he was studying him without appearing to do so, the shrewd blue eyes faintly puzzled.
Lex himself was starting to steam by the fire, and he stepped away, conceding the prime space on the rug to Magnus, who immediately reclaimed it.
Before he could choose a seat, Willie, in mid history, waved him to the sofa next to Romy. It would have been churlish to have opted for the other chair, so Lex had little choice but to sit down next to her, Freya wriggling between them.
Over the baby’s head, his eyes met Romy’s briefly. Hers were gleaming with laughter at his reluctance, or perhaps at the absurdity of the whole situation, and in spite of himself Lex, who had been feeling distinctly irritable, felt an answering smile tug at his mouth.
Though, God knew, there was little enough to smile about. His feet were so cold, he had lost all feeling in his toes, and his trousers were still clammy and uncomfortable. He had sensed Willie’s reservation about him, too, and it didn’t bode well for the negotiations.
Romy, though, was doing a fantastic job of charming the old devil. Lex contributed little to the conversation. He couldn’t do small talk and, besides, how could he be expected to concentrate on lairds and battles and licences to crenellate when Freya was rolling around on the shiny leather, and beyond her Romy was leaning forward, listening to Willie. When her face was animated, when the firelight burnished the dark, silky hair and warmed the lovely curve of her mouth, of her throat.
Lex was still grappling with the fact that after twelve years of trying to forget her, she was actually there, warm and bright and as beautiful as ever, her vivid presence still with the power to send his senses tumbling around as if they were trapped in some invisible washing machine. The moment he managed to steady them by grasping onto a sensible fact, or remembering the deal and everything that rested upon it, Romy would smile or turn her head and off they would go again, looping and swirling until it was all he could do to string two words together.
It was most disconcerting, and the last thing Lex needed right then. He gripped his cup and saucer, holding them well out of Freya’s reach, and wished, not for the first time, that Tim’s son had chosen any day other than this to have his crisis.
Freya struggled towards him once more, preparing to clamber over him, and protested loudly when Romy scooped her away.
‘Why don’t you put her on the floor?’ Willie asked.
‘What about the dog?’
‘Oh, Magnus won’t mind.’
Lex could see that whether the dog minded or not was the least of Romy’s concerns. ‘I’ll keep an eye on her,’ he said gruffly.
Of course, the moment she was allowed down, Freya made a beeline for the dog, but Lex was there before her, catching her in one arm and making careful introductions between dog and baby. Freya squealed with excitement when Magnus sniffed her cautiously, and Lex showed her how to stroke the wiry head, but she soon lost interest and set off to explore the rest of the room while he sat in an armchair, relieved to have distanced himself from the heady sense of Romy’s nearness, but nervous about the baby. Willie and Romy were so deep in conversation that it was obviously up to him to keep an eye on her, and it was a nerve-racking business.
For a start, Freya could crawl with alarming speed, and she was never still. One minute she was all over the dog, the next patting Willie’s slippers. She tried to haul herself upright on an armchair, only to lose her balance and plump back down on her bottom. Undaunted, she tried again, and this time stayed upright long enough to take one or two wobbly steps while holding onto the cushion.
She would be walking soon, Lex guessed, and he was glad to think he wouldn’t be responsible for her then. You wouldn’t have a moment’s peace. Look how quick she was on all fours. Now she was crawling back to the chair where Lex sat and tugging at his damp trousers to pull herself up against his knees. The creases in them would never be the same again. Lex tried to edge his legs out of her reach, but Freya’s little fingers held tight, and, short of kicking her away from him, he was stuck and had to sit there while she treated him as another piece of furniture and manoeuvred unsteadily around him.
Meanwhile, Romy and Willie were getting on like fire in a match factory. Perhaps this visit wasn’t going to be such a disaster after all. Watching Willie Grant laughing with Romy, Lex found it hard to believe he was going to turn round and refuse the deal. One wary eye on Freya, Lex let himself relax slightly and imagine the moment when he could announce to his father that the deal was secured, and that Gibson & Grieve had a foothold in Scotland at last.
And then?
Uneasily, Lex pushed the question aside. He had been planning this deal for a year now. Once this deal was done, there would be others, hopefully not involving a baby. Romy would find a new job. Life would go back to normal.
It would be fine.
Lex had lost track of the conversation between Willie and Romy entirely when Willie hoisted himself to his feet.
‘You don’t mind if we abandon you for a few minutes, do you, Lex? We won’t be long.’
‘Of course not.’ Courteously Lex got to his feet, hoping he hadn’t missed out on some vital conversation. Willie clearly wasn’t expecting him to go with them, though, and Lex was delighted at the thought of a few minutes on his own. ‘I’ll be very happy to stay here and keep an eye on the fire.’
‘Excellent.’ Willie moved to the door. ‘Magnus will keep you company. He doesn’t like the stairs. Shall we go then, Romy? Oh, I don’t think you’ll want to take Freya, will you?’ he added as Romy bent to pick up her daughter. ‘It’s chilly up there, and you might find the spiral stairs a bit tricky with her.’
‘Oh.’ Already by the door with Freya in her arms, Romy hesitated.
Willie flicked Freya’s nose. ‘You’d rather stay with your daddy, wouldn’t you, precious?’
Daddy?
Lex opened his mouth, but Romy got in first. ‘Er, Lex isn’t actually Freya’s father,’ she said.
‘Isn’t he now?’ Willie’s brows shot up. He eyed Lex narrowly, and then gave a small approving nod, ‘Well, that makes me think the better of you.’
Mystified, Lex looked at Romy, who could only lift her brows with a tiny shrug to show that she was as puzzled as he was.
‘We won’t be long, Lex.’ Willie held the door open for Romy, who threw Lex an agonised glance. She could hardly insist on taking Freya with her against Willie’s advice, he realised.
Heart sinking, Lex went over and she handed the baby over with a speaking glance. ‘I won’t be long,’ she promised.
Freya watched the door close behind her mother and belatedly realised that she had been abandoned. Her eyes narrowed in outrage and she let out a bellow of outrage that startled Lex so much that he nearly dropped her.
‘She’ll be back as soon as she can,’ he said with desperation, but Freya only opened her mouth to wail in earnest.
‘Oh, God…oh, God…’ Frantically, he jiggled her up and down, and for a moment he thought it would work. Freya definitely paused in mid-wail, and Lex could practically see her considering whether she was distracted enough to stop crying altogether, but she evidently decided that she wasn’t ready to be consoled just yet because off she went again, at ear-splitting volume.
‘Shh…. Shh…’ Lex had a sudden vision of Romy walking Freya around the pub at lunchtime, so he set off around the room, jiggling the baby awkwardly as he went.
To his astonishment, this seemed to do the trick. Freya’s screams subsided to snuffly sobs, and then stopped altogether.
Perhaps there wasn’t so much to this baby business, after all? Obviously, the child just needed a firm hand.
Bored of circling the library, Lex stopped and put Freya on the carpet. She promptly started yelling again until he picked her up again, at which point the noise miraculously stopped.
A firm hand. Right.
Lex set off on another circuit of the library.
He was on his fifth when the door opened. He looked round, hoping it would be Romy, but instead it was Elspeth, the housekeeper, who had come to clear the tea tray.
‘The wee one must be tired,’ she said, noting the long lashes spiky with tears and the hectic flush in the baby’s cheeks. And Lex’s harassed expression. ‘Would you like me to show you to your room?’
At least it would make a change from the library, thought Lex as he followed Elspeth up more stairs and along a labyrinth of corridors.
‘I feel as if I should be leaving a trail of breadcrumbs,’ he said, and Elspeth smiled as she opened a door at last.
‘It’s not as complicated as it seems the first time,’ she promised as she left.
Lex was dismayed to see her go. He had considered asking her to look after Freya, but that would have meant admitting that he couldn’t cope, and that wasn’t something Lex could do. He wasn’t the kind of person who admitted failure or asked for help.
It would have been different if Elspeth had offered to take Freya. Then he could have legitimately handed her over. But as it was, she simply smiled and assured him that she would make sure Romy knew where they were, and Lex was left to grit his teeth and get on with it.
He found himself in a magnificent guest room, dominated by a four-poster bed, and with swagged curtains at the windows. The cot, pushchair, high chair and assorted baby bags were neatly stacked in the corner, together with his own briefcase and overnight bag, which had clearly been put in here by mistake.
It was all boding very well for the deal, he thought. If Romy, as a very junior member of the negotiating team, had been allocated a room like this, Willie Grant must be doing more than considering their offer.
Feeling more confident, Lex tried putting Freya down again, but she was having none of it. She insisted on being picked up again, and amused herself for the next few minutes by pulling at his hair, batting his nose and trying to twist his lips with surprisingly strong little fingers.
‘Ouch!’ Lex began to get quite ruffled. Where was Romy? It felt as if he had been walking around with Freya for hours now, but when he looked at his watch he was astounded to see that barely thirty minutes had passed since Romy had handed him her daughter and left. Surely she had to be here soon?
Worse was to come.
Wincing as he pulled her fingers from his nose, Lex was alarmed to see that Freya’s face had gone bright red and screwed up with effort.
‘What’s the—?’
He stopped as an unmistakable smell wafted up from her nappy.
‘Oh, God. Oh, no…’
Dangled abruptly at arm’s length, Freya started to cry again.
‘No, no, don’t cry…your mother will be here soon…just hold on…’
But Freya didn’t want to hold on. She was miserable and uncomfortable and missing the reassuring solidity of his body. She cried and cried until Lex, who had been pretending to himself that he didn’t know what needed to be done, was driven to investigating the bag he had seen Romy take to the Ladies with Freya in the pub, what seemed like a lifetime ago.
He did know what had to be done. He just didn’t want to face it.
‘Where are you, Romy?’ he muttered.
The bag contained fresh nappies and a pack of something called baby wipes. Lex made a face, but took the bag and the baby into the bathroom and looked around for a towel. He had a nasty feeling things were going to get messy.
Cursing fluently under his breath, he spread the towel as best he could one-handed, and laid Freya, still screaming, on top of it.
‘Please stop crying,’ he begged her, wrenching at his tie in dismay at the task ahead of him.
In response, Freya redoubled her cries.
‘OK, OK.’ Lex dragged his hands through his hair and took a deep breath. ‘You can do this,’ he told himself.
He rolled up his sleeves and studied the fastenings on Freya’s dungarees. So far, so good. Gingerly, he pulled them off her and then, averting his face, managed to unfasten the nappy.
‘Ugh.’
Grimacing horribly, he tugged the dirty nappy free, holding it out as far away from him as humanly possible, and put it in a waste-paper basket. Then he braced himself for the next stage of the process.
‘God, what am I doing?’ Lex muttered as he pulled off some sheets of loo paper. ‘I’m Chief Executive of Gibson & Grieve. I make deals and I make money. I negotiate. I direct. I don’t wipe bottoms. How did I come to this?’
And then—at last!—came the sound of the door opening. ‘Lex?’ Romy called.
‘In here.’
When Romy crossed to the bathroom door, she saw Lex crouched on the floor, a fistful of loo paper in his hand and Freya kicking and grizzling on a towel in front of him. Both of them looked up at Romy as she appeared in the doorway, with almost identical expressions of relief.
‘Oh, thank God!’ said Lex in heartfelt tones. ‘Where have you been?’
‘With Willie, then I went to the kitchen to find Freya some supper.’
Romy looked from her daughter to Lex. She had never seen him less than immaculate before, but now his hair was standing on end, his tie askew and his sleeves rolled up above his wrists.
He looked so harried that she wanted to laugh, but it seemed less than tactful when he had clearly been doing his best.
‘She was crying,’ Lex said defensively, as if she had demanded to know what he thought he was doing. ‘I thought she needed her nappy changing but I’m not really sure what I’m doing…’
Romy could only guess what that admission had cost him. ‘It was very brave of you to have a go at all,’ she told him. ‘Shall I take over now?’
‘She’s all yours.’
Lex couldn’t get up quickly enough. He watched as Romy cleaned the baby and put on a clean nappy with the minimum of fuss.
‘You make it look so simple,’ he said almost resentfully, and she glanced up at him with a smile.
‘Practice,’ she said.
Freya was wreathed in smiles once more. Romy lifted her up and kissed her, and the tenderness in her expression closed a fist around Lex’s heart and squeezed.
Turning abruptly on his heel, he went back into the bedroom, where a plate of bread and butter with some ham and a banana was sitting on a side table. Freya’s supper, presumably. Lex dreaded to imagine what she would do with that banana.
Not his problem, he reminded himself. Thank God.
‘I’ll leave you to it,’ he called back to Romy as he retrieved his bag and briefcase. ‘What time are we expected for dinner?’
Romy appeared in the doorway with Freya. ‘Drinks at seven thirty.’
‘Fine. I’ll have time for a shower and can change these trousers.’ Lex shook each leg in turn. Between Freya and the snow, he didn’t think they would ever be the same again. ‘I don’t suppose you know which is my room?’
Romy settled Freya into the plastic chair that she had fixed to the table. She handed her the plate of bread and ham and turned to face Lex, drawing a breath.
‘This one,’ she said.
‘All your stuff is in here,’ said Lex. ‘You might as well stay here, and I’ll take your room.’
‘This is our room.’
Halfway to the door, Lex stopped. Frowned as he realised what she was saying. ‘You mean…?’
‘I’m afraid so.’ Faint colour touched Romy’s cheeks. She hadn’t been looking forward to breaking this to Lex. ‘There seems to have been some kind of misunderstanding when Summer rang up,’ she said carefully. ‘They thought that because we were bringing a baby, we were all together.’
‘Didn’t you tell them that’s not the case?’
She hesitated. ‘Not yet.’
‘Why on earth not?’
‘I wasn’t sure what to do.’
Edgily, Romy walked over to the window and pulled back the curtain. Outside, the snow was still swirling in the darkness while great, fat flakes piled up on the window sill. If they weren’t careful, they would be snowed in here, and then what would happen?
Lex eyed her back in baffled frustration. ‘What do you mean, you weren’t sure? You could just tell the truth!’
‘The thing is, Willie was so pleased.’ Romy turned from the window, trying to make Lex understand what it had been like. ‘He was supposed to be showing me some charter, but he really just wanted to talk about you, and how happy he was to discover you weren’t at all like your reputation. There he was, expecting some soulless businessman, and you turn up with a baby and start bonding with his beastly dog…Willie was absolutely delighted to discover that you were a family man after all!’
‘But I’m not Freya’s father,’ Lex objected, pacing back from the door. ‘We told him that.’
‘I know, but that only makes it better from his point of view. Apparently his mother was a single mother who struggled without any support from her family or his father or anyone, and helping single mothers is a big issue with him.’
Romy fiddled with her bracelets. ‘He just assumed that you and I were…’ Somehow she just couldn’t bring herself to say ‘lovers’. It was too close to the truth. And too far.
‘Together,’ she said in the end. ‘So the fact that you’re prepared to be in a relationship with me and be a hands-on father figure to Freya…well, that clinched it for Willie.’
Hands-on? Lex raked a hand through his hair. This was getting worse and worse!
‘Why didn’t you put him right straight away?’
‘Because you told me you wanted this deal signed at all costs!’ said Romy defensively. ‘This is important, you said.’
‘Good God, Romy, you can’t have thought I meant you to lie to the man!’
‘I didn’t lie. I just…didn’t tell him he’d got it all wrong. I could barely get a word in edgeways as it was.’
Romy was starting to get cross. ‘Willie was going on and on about how pleased he was to discover that you weren’t at all like your reputation, and how much happier he felt knowing that Grant’s was going to be part of a chain run by a man with the right priorities. At what point was I supposed to interrupt and say that actually you weren’t like that at all, and that actually you didn’t want anything to do with me at all and that you’d rather stick pins in your eyes than deal with a baby?’
‘There must have been something you could do!’ Lex took another turn around the room, watched round-eyed by Freya, who was intrigued by his agitation. ‘Eat your supper!’ he said to her irritably as he went past, and obligingly she stuffed another finger of bread in her mouth.
‘Leave Freya out of it!’ snapped Romy, moving to stand protectively over her daughter.
Picking up the banana, she began to peel it as she made herself calm down. There was no point in getting into an argument with Lex. She didn’t for a moment think he would sack her out of spite, but, when all was said and done, he was still her boss.
‘Look,’ she said after a moment, ‘I know it seems awkward, and I’m sorry, but I just didn’t know what to do. It seemed so important to Willie.’
She sliced up the banana and put it on Freya’s plate, while Lex continued to prowl around the room. ‘I got the sense that he’d almost decided that he didn’t want to sell to you, but, between Freya and the dog, you’ve changed his mind. He told me in the tower that he’s really keen for the deal to go ahead as soon as possible now.’
Lex sucked in his breath at the news. This was the moment he had been waiting for. He wanted to punch the air and shout ‘Yes!’ but it didn’t seem appropriate now that everything was muddled with this misunderstanding about his relationship with Romy.
He paced some more. He wanted this deal—oh, how he wanted it!—but did he really want it under false pretences?
Romy was watching him warily. ‘I was afraid that if I told Willie the truth, he would be so disappointed that he’d change his mind back again,’ she said.
‘I wasn’t just thinking about you,’ she added as Lex pinched the bridge of his nose between finger and thumb. ‘I was thinking about all the work Tim and the rest of the team have put in on this deal. We all want it as much as you do. So rather than throw up my hands in horror when I realised what Willie was thinking, I thought I should talk to you first. You’re the boss,’ she said. ‘I think you should decide whether you tell him the truth or not.’
Lex had ended up at the window. He stood, exactly where Romy had done, looking broodingly out at the snow that spiralled silently past, catching the light from the room in a brief blur of white before drifting down into the darkness. His hands were thrust into his trouser pockets, his shoulders stiff with exasperation.
‘God, what a mess!’ he said with a short, humourless laugh.
Romy said nothing. It seemed to her that there was little more that she could say now. It was up to Lex.
Freya, quite oblivious to the tension in the room, was stuffing banana into her mouth. Romy sat down next to her and turned her bracelets while her eyes rested on the back of Lex’s head. How was it that it could still look so familiar after all this time?
Unaware of her gaze, Lex tried to roll the tension from his shoulders and she sucked in a breath at the stab of memory. He was such a guarded man, such a cool and careful man, and he held himself so tautly that it was easy to forget that beneath the suit, beneath the tie and the immaculate shirt, was a man of bone and muscle, of firm flesh and sinew, a man hard and smooth and strong.
Romy remembered running her hands over those shoulders, feeling the flex of responsive muscles beneath her touch. His back was broad and solid and warm, his skin sleek and underlaid with steel.
She couldn’t see his face, but she knew that it would be set in harsh lines, and that a nerve would be jumping in his jaw. She could go to him, put her arms around him from behind, and lay her cheek against his back. She could hold onto his hardness and his strength, and offer in return the comfort of her warmth and her softness. She could tell him that she would be there for him, whatever happened.
She could, but she wouldn’t.
It was just a fantasy. A stupid fantasy, Romy knew. A dangerous fantasy.
The trouble with Lex was that he made her feel things she didn’t want to feel. Something about him bypassed all her rational processes and tugged at a chord deep inside her. Romy didn’t want it to be love. Love, she knew, laid you open. It made you vulnerable, made you blind. It was a trap that could spring shut at any moment, and she had no intention of blundering into it. She couldn’t afford to get tangled up in loving anyone, least of all a man who had made it plain that he had no interest in Freya.
I do want you, he had said. I just don’t want a baby.
And that wasn’t a problem, because she didn’t want him, Romy reminded herself.
So, no fantasies. No remembering, no thinking about how he had felt or the clean, male smell of his skin. She was here on business, and she had better not forget it.
The silence lengthened, broken only by Freya loudly enjoying the banana. Bath time next, Romy thought, and was about to get to her feet when Lex spoke at last.
‘I went to see my father last week,’ he said suddenly, without looking round.
Thrown by the apparent change of subject, Romy hesitated. ‘How is he?’ she asked at last.
‘A stroke is a terrible thing.’ Lex kept his eyes on the snow. ‘He’s trapped in a useless body, but his mind is as sharp as ever. He was such a powerful man, always in control, and now all he can do is lie there. He can’t bear the humiliation of it.’
‘He must be glad to see you,’ Romy said, not entirely sure where this was going.
‘Must he? I think he hates the fact that I can walk into the room on my own. He hates the fact that I can walk out. He hates the fact that I run Gibson & Grieve now. I don’t know which of us dreads my visits more,’ said Lex bleakly.
‘But still you go.’
‘My mother says he wants to know what’s going on at Gibson & Grieve now he’s not there any more. She says it’s all that keeps him going. It’s certainly all we’ve got to talk about.’
Lex’s mouth turned down at the corners. ‘You know what’s the worst thing about those visits? It’s that every time I hope that he’ll think the company is doing all right. You’d think I’d know by now that he’s never going to say, “Well done”,’ he added, unable to keep the bitterness from his voice. ‘I could tell him we’d quadrupled our profits, and he’d still say it wasn’t good enough!’
‘Is that why you feel you have to prove something with this deal?’
‘Damn right it is.’ Lex turned to face her at last. ‘When I told him about taking over Grant’s, my father said that Grant wouldn’t sell. He said he’d approached him before, and they couldn’t make it work, so I wouldn’t be able to pull it off either. Talking is a big effort for him nowadays, and his speech is slurred, but he made sure I got that message. It won’t work, he said.’
Lex’s jaw was clenched. ‘I’m going to go back and tell him that Grant will sell, that it will work. I want him to know that he was wrong, and that Gibson & Grieve is bigger and better without him.’
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