Kitabı oku: «Office Scandals»

CHAPTER ONE

IZZY hurried up the aisle, her heels clicking on the marble floor as she went. She pretended to be unaware of the scattering of nudges and not so discreet whispered comments that followed her progress. She pretended extremely well—she’d had practice.

It would have been nice to think people were riveted by her stunning fashion sense, but the reality was that, while the misty blue silk chiffon dress did bring out the blue in her blue-grey eyes and made her rich chestnut hair look more auburn than brown, it was a little too snug across her post-baby bust. And besides, the church was filled with a lot of women who were better dressed and, in her opinion, better looking—short and skinny with freckles was an acquired taste.

But the attention she garnered had nothing to do with the way she looked and everything to do with her being there at all, because everyone there knew that Izzy was not a real Fitzgerald!

Two years ago when Izzy had first arrived in the small Cumbrian market town, her appearance had attracted much more attention, but happily she was yesterday’s news. The pregnant illegitimate daughter that Michael Fitzgerald had not known he had was a scandal still, but no longer one that was likely to steal the show. And things were improving.

Izzy’s expression softened as her thoughts caused her glance to drift to where her father sat talking to his brother, the father of the bride. The two men with their leonine heads of grey-streaked strawberry-blond hair were alike enough to have passed for twins, though Jake Fitzgerald was older by three years.

As if feeling her gaze Michael turned his head and winked at her and Izzy grinned back. Her father was a remarkable man. How many men receiving a letter telling them that they had a daughter from an affair twenty years ago would have reacted the way he had?

Not many, she suspected. But Michael hadn’t even wanted the DNA test! In fact the entire family had been great and instead of treating her like a cuckoo in the nest they had opened their collective arms and drawn her into the protective inner family circle.

She had been a stranger to these people, yet when she had been at her most vulnerable they had been there for her. After a lifetime of believing it was a weakness to rely on other people Izzy had initially found it difficult to accept their help, but their warmth had thawed her natural diffidence. Asking for help was still not her first instinct, in fact she hated it, but she was learning that sometimes there was no choice but to grit your teeth and swallow your pride. A lot of things changed when you had a baby.

Izzy’s attention suddenly turned to her auburn-headed young half-brother, handsome in his morning suit and deep in conversation with someone sitting next to the aisle in the row behind. He really needed to take his seat. ‘Rory, come on. She’s here.’

Rory straightened up with a grin. ‘Chill, Izzy. Anyone would think you were the one getting married.’

‘Cold day in hell,’ Izzy murmured without heat. Good luck to Rachel and her Ben, but, though having a baby had changed her view on some things, her certainty that marriage was not for her remained unshakeable. She had read the statistics and in her view you’d have to be a gambler or a hopeless romantic to take those sorts of risks and she wasn’t either.

It wasn’t that she didn’t believe in soul mates, but in her view if two people were meant to be together they shouldn’t need a piece of paper to keep them that way.

‘Don’t worry, your Prince Charming is out there somewhere, Izzy—always supposing you don’t take the treat-them-mean-keep-them-keen thing too far.’

‘I don’t!’

Unable to defend herself further because an expectant hush had fallen, Izzy slid into her own seat and waited as the other seated occupants passed her daughter along the row, like a smiling parcel. Lily landed in her lap happy and smiling.

Izzy glowed with pride as she received a gummy grin. Her daughter really was the most perfect baby.

Beside her, Rory’s mother, Michelle Fitzgerald, looked amused as Lily made a bid for the blue feather fascinator it had taken Izzy half an hour to attach attractively in the chestnut brown hair she had pinned up in a simple twist. But even with a dozen hairpins the artistic loose tendrils had been joined by numerous wispy strands despite a double dose of hairspray. Her hair just had a mind of its own.

‘Rory!’ Michelle snapped, turning her attention to her son, who had still not taken his seat.

‘All right, Ma,’ he soothed with an eye roll as he dropped down into the pew next to Izzy.

‘Rory, perhaps we should swap?’ Izzy suggested as she abandoned her attempt to secure her headgear to the slippery surface of her shiny hair. Instead she shoved it in her pocket and offered a toy duck to Lily to distract her. ‘In case Lily kicks off and I have to make a quick exit.’

She would have hated her small daughter to ruin the bride’s big moment and, though she was for the most part a sunny baby, Lily was capable of some seismic meltdowns when thwarted.

According to Michelle it was just a phase all babies went through, and as much as Izzy respected the older woman’s knowledge of all things baby she privately wondered if it was possible her daughter had inherited her volatile temperament from her father.

But that was one thing Izzy would never know, because although she knew every angle and shadow, every curve and plane of his face, as page after page in her sketchbooks filled with his likeness attested, Izzy didn’t know the name of the man who had fathered her child.

She had not thought seriously about the day when Lily asked about her father—nothing beyond its inevitability. Maybe she would get her sketchbooks out on that day and show her daughter. Would she say, ‘This is how he looked. He was possibly the most handsome man ever to draw breath … oh, and he smelt good too …’ Who knew? Since Lily’s birth Izzy had adopted a one-day-at-a-time approach to life.

In the meantime she viewed the sketches as a cathartic coping mechanism. Her sketches were her therapy and one day presumably she would draw him out of her system.

‘Sure, if you like.’ Rory stood up, ducking his head in an attempt to appear inconspicuous, hard when you were a lanky six four. ‘You two haven’t met, have you?’ he added, turning as he spoke to let Izzy shuffle along the wooden pew. ‘Izzy, this is Roman Petrelli. He’s here to buy some horses … Dad hopes. Do you remember Gianni arranged for that placement for me with Roman’s Paris office last summer? Roman, this is my sister Izzy.’

Last summer she had been knee deep in nappies and night feeds and pretty much everything else had passed her by, but she did find it easy to place the handsome half-Italian Gianni among the plethora of Fitzgerald cousins. And there were a lot of cousins—her father was one of nine siblings.

‘Hello.’ A distracted smile curving her lips, she turned her head, following the direction of Rory’s introductory nod, and her eyes connected, her smile wobbled and vanished.

She had walked right past him. How did that happen?

He was not the sort of man that under normal circumstances would be overlooked—Izzy hadn’t the first time she had seen him.

Now he was here the breath left her lungs in a silent hiss of shock.

‘Hello.’

The voice awoke dormant memories and sent a flash of heat through her body. Incapable of speech, she nodded and thought, He really does have the longest eyelashes I have ever seen. And there was no discernible recognition in the pitch-dark eyes those lashes framed.

This wasn’t happening.

But it was! It was him—the man she had spent that night with.

Two years later and Izzy had rationalised the reckless impulse that had made her act so totally out of character. There was probably some psychological term for what she’d done when she’d been half out of her head with grief, exhaustion and shock, but Izzy had not continued to analyse it, she had simply drawn a line under it.

You could only beat yourself up so much and, as she had felt no desire since that night to rip off any man’s clothes and ravish him, there had been no lasting consequences to her actions—except one, which she could never regret.

How could she regret something that had given her not just her much-loved daughter but a new and wonderfully supportive family? There was a strong possibility that, if she hadn’t found herself alone, pregnant and very aware how fragile life was, the letter sent by the father she had never met might have stayed where she had initially thrown it—in the bin.

Tapping into reserves of self-control she didn’t even know she possessed, the silly smile still pasted on her face, Izzy broke free of the pitch-black mesmerising stare and turned away. Outwardly calm, at least to the casual observer, her body was gripped by a succession of deep internal tremors as she hugged her daughter.

Her shoulder blades ached with tension as she buried her face in Lily’s soft dusky curls. People often remarked on her vibrant colouring, marvelling at the peachy glow of her skin and her liquid dark eyes. The less tactful asked outright if she looked like her father.

Izzy never reacted to the question and her silence had given rise to a great deal of speculation. There were currently several theories in circulation about Lily’s father, which ranged from him being a dead war hero to him being a married politician. But whatever people thought, the generally held opinion was that Izzy was the innocent party, the girl who had been abandoned, because apparently she came across as a nice girl.

The irony was not lost on her and Izzy detested the undeserved victim status that had been thrust on her, but, short of publicly announcing that she was actually a shameless trollop, what choice did she have?

It was actually a relief when someone chose to take her to task about her single-parent status. Just the previous evening Michael’s great-aunt Maeve had exclaimed, ‘A child needs two parents, young lady.’

‘In a perfect world, yes, but the world isn’t perfect and neither am I.’

Izzy’s quietly dignified response had taken the wind out of the old lady’s sails, but she had made a quick recovery. ‘In my day a girl like you wouldn’t be wandering around as bold as brass like she has nothing to be ashamed of.’

‘She doesn’t have anything to be ashamed of, Aunt Maeve.’ It was her father who came to Izzy’s rescue, putting an arm around her and drawing her in close.

‘Don’t you go looking at me like that, Michael. One of the few good things about being old is being as rude as I like—would you deprive me of one of my last pleasures?’ She held out her empty glass and glanced at the whisky bottle on the dresser. ‘So, girl, who is the father?’

Izzy had not satisfied the old lady’s curiosity. She hadn’t told anyone the identity of the father—how could she?

Izzy’s blue eyes were shadowed with shamed anguish as she responded to Lily’s cry of protest and loosened her grip just as the organist pulled out all the stops. Izzy knew better than most what it was like to grow up without a father and it was something she had always vowed not to do to a child of hers should she ever have one.

With the rest of the congregation Izzy rose to her feet. Were his eyes trained on the exposed nape of her neck or was it her guilty conscience that made her skin prickle and tingle? Tingle the way his long fingers had once made her—she pushed the thought away and took a deep breath. With Lily on one hip, she stared blankly at the service sheet clutched in her free hand, knowing she was a whisper away from tipping over into outright gibbering panic.

She had to stay calm.

She had to think.

The father of her baby was sitting behind her. What was she meant to do now?

Take a leaf out of her mother’s book and write him a letter?

Casually drop into the conversation, Oh, by the way, this is your daughter? Now that would be a real ice breaker, but could it be listed under small talk?

She choked on a bubble of hysterical laughter, the sound drowned out by the hymn being sung.

Realistically Izzy knew, always had known, that should this unlikely event occur she had to accept the real possibility that he might not even remember that night two years ago. So maybe doing nothing was a possibility? Just wait and if he said nothing leave it …?

She reluctantly discarded the tempting idea. This was Lily’s father. What had Rory called him … Roman? At least she had a name now and knew that he was Italian, although she’d already had an idea about his nationality. During their night together he had whispered wonderful things to her in throes of passion; she might not have understood the things he had said, but she had recognised the language.

She remembered everything.

She tried to push away the hot, erotic images crowding in—she had to focus.

On what, Izzy—your impending public humiliation?

Her chin lifted. She would take what was coming, but not Lily. She would protect Lily.

Lily, who looked so like her father, which was good news for her because she’d grow up to be the female version of him—stunning—but bad news because surely everyone seeing them together would know.

And he’d seen Lily.

He had to know!

Was he sitting there in shock?

No point speculating; she just had to stay calm and play this by ear. A wedding was hardly the place to introduce a man to his daughter.

Was there a good place?

He might be here with his girlfriend or wife even …! Feeling sick now, Izzy closed her eyes and tried to remember who had been sitting next to him, but couldn’t.

Could things get any worse? She’d slept with a stranger and got pregnant—please let him not have been married!