The Baby Surprise. Barbara McMahon

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      JESSICA HART was born in West Africa, and has suffered from itchy feet ever since, travelling and working around the world in a wide variety of interesting but very lowly jobs, all of which have provided inspiration on which to draw when it comes to the settings and plots of her stories. Now she lives a rather more settled existence in York, where she has been able to pursue her interest in history, although she still yearns sometimes for wider horizons. If you’d like to know more about Jessica, visit her website: www.jessicahart.co.uk.

      CHAPTER ONE

      LEX drummed his fingers on the table and tried to tell himself that the uneasy churning in his gut was due to one too many cups of coffee that morning. He was Alexander Gibson, Chief Executive of Gibson & Grieve, one of the most popular and prestigious supermarket chains in the country, and a man renowned for his cool detachment.

      A man like him didn’t get nervous.

      He wasn’t nervous, Lex insisted to himself. He had been sitting on this damned plane for over an hour now, and if he had to commit himself to flying at thirty thousand feet in little more than a tin can he’d just as soon get it over with, that was all.

      See, he wasn’t nervous, he was impatient.

      Lex scowled at the sleety rain streaking the cabin windows, and then stiffened as he caught sight of a limousine speeding across the tarmac towards the plane. His drumming fingers stilled and the churning that wasn’t nerves jerked his entrails into a knot so tight that it was suddenly hard to breathe.

      She was here.

      Very carefully, Lex flexed his fingers and set them flat on the table in front of him while he steadied his breathing.

      He wasn’t nervous.

      Lex Gibson was never nervous.

      It was just that the steel band that had been locked around his chest for the past twelve years had been steadily tightening ever since he had heard that Romy was back in the country.

      It had notched tighter when Phin had casually announced that he had offered her a job in Acquisitions.

      And tighter still when Tim Banks, Director of Acquisitions, had rung that morning to explain that a family crisis meant that he would have to miss accompanying Lex on the most important deal of his life.

      ‘But I’ve arranged for Romy Morrison to go with you instead,’ Tim had said. ‘She’s been working with me on the negotiations, and has built up an excellent rapport with Willie Grant himself. I know how important this meeting is, Lex, and I wouldn’t suggest her unless I was sure she was the best. I’ve sent a car to pick her up, and she’ll be with you as soon as possible.’

      And now here she was, and the steel band was clamped so painfully around his lungs that it hurt to breathe. Lex forced his attention back to the email he had been reading, but the screen kept blurring in front of his eyes. It would be fine. Romy was an employee, nothing more.

      He wanted this deal with Grant more than he had ever wanted anything else and if Romy could help him persuade Grant to sign, that was all that mattered. The sooner she got on this plane, the sooner they could get the deal done.

      He was impatient. That was all.

      The car had barely stopped by the steps of the executive jet before Phil, the driver, was out and holding open the door for Romy.

      ‘Mr Gibson doesn’t like to be kept waiting,’ he had said anxiously, watching Romy run around the flat, frantically ticking off items on a mental list.

      ‘Nappies…travelling cot…high chair… oh, God, the car seat! Yes, I know he’s been waiting an hour already…I’m coming, I’m coming…’

      Travelling with Freya was nerve-racking at the best of times, and Romy had been so flustered by the thought of coming face to face with Lex again that she had forgotten first the pushchair and then the changing mat, until Phil, forced to turn round and drive back to the flat twice, was beside himself.

      He was clearly terrified of Lex. Almost everyone who worked for Gibson & Grieve found their chief executive intimidating, to say the least.

      Romy wasn’t terrified, or even intimidated. But she was very nervous about coming face to face with him all the same. Sitting alone in the back of the limousine as they crawled through the rush-hour traffic, she had swung wildly between wondering what else she had left behind, and wondering what she would say when she saw Lex again.

      What she would feel.

      Best not to feel anything, Romy had decided. Lex clearly wanted nothing to do with her. He had made no effort to talk to her at Phin’s wedding, and not once in the six months she had been working for Gibson & Grieve had he found an excuse to speak to her.

      Perhaps she could have found an excuse to talk to him, Romy acknowledged, but what could she have said?

       I’ve never forgotten you.

      Sometimes I think about your mouth, and it feels as if you’ve laid a warm hand on my back, making me clench and shiver.

       Have you ever thought about me?

      No, she definitely couldn’t have asked that.

      It was all so long ago now. Twelve years ago. Romy looked out of the window and sighed. She was thirty now, and a mother, and Lex was her boss, not her lover. You didn’t worry about how you felt about your boss. You just did your job.

      So that was what she would do.

      Romy glanced doubtfully down at her daughter. It wasn’t going to be easy to be coolly professional with Freya in tow, but she would manage it.

      Somehow.

      Phil already had the boot open and was starting to unload all Freya’s stuff, while the pilot, spotting their arrival, set the engines whining impatiently. The message was clear: Alexander Gibson was waiting to go.

      Cravenly, Romy wished she could stay in the car, but then she remembered the desperation in Tim’s voice.

      ‘Please, Romy,’ he had begged. ‘Sam needs me, but Lex has got to have someone from the team with him when he meets Grant, too. If we let him down on this one, I don’t know what he’ll do, but it won’t be pleasant.’