Office Scandals: The Petrelli Heir / Gilded Secrets / An Inconvenient Affair

‘Hello, Gennaro, and thank you,’ she added as he tossed the heavier of her suitcases into the boot space beside the buggy with impressive ease. Those shoulders were not just for show, it seemed.

He flashed her what she presumed passed as a smile in his world, but might have been a grimace. The man had a face that made a granite rock face look expressive.

‘Is it far?’ Izzy asked as she settled herself in the back seat. Lily was strapped securely into a baby seat beside her, her lavishly lashed eyes already closing.

The driver glanced at her in the rear-view mirror. His shades were back in place. ‘No.’

Izzy didn’t press him for more information, partly because he was negotiating rush-hour traffic through a busy market town and partly because he did not look a man who wanted to chat. She leaned back in her seat and decided to enjoy the journey.

Once they had left the town behind the countryside in this area proved pretty. As she gazed at the passing scenery her thoughts began to wander into territory she had been avoiding.

Would Roman have fulfilled his threat of ‘I’ll be back’—expecting her to give ground? What would he do when he discovered she was gone?

The thoughts going through her mind made Izzy frown. She chewed her lip and tried to summon some of the defiant certainty that she had begun the journey with.

Relax, she told herself. This is the right thing to do. Annoyed that she felt the need to justify her actions, she shook her head and with a spurt of defiance said out loud, ‘What could he do?’

Embarrassed, she looked around. Lily was still sleeping, her face flushed, and the driver gave no hint of having heard her, concentrating hard on the road ahead.

Izzy lowered her rigid body back into the leather seat, not realising until that moment how knotted the muscles in her neck and spine were.

Your trouble, Izzy, she told herself, is that you worry too much and have a tendency to overanalyse.

She had taken a job, not made a life-changing decision! True, she would feel better about it if her father and Michelle had not expressed their concerns over her decision to take the job, or at least the timing.

They had reluctantly agreed to her request not to give Roman any information about her whereabouts if he asked. In retrospect she could see that it was unfair of her to put them in that position. This was her problem, not theirs.

As her mum would have said, Your mess, Izzy, you clean it up. And she’d have been right.

Izzy exhaled a long gusty sigh, finally acknowledging the voice in the back of her mind she’d been trying very hard not to hear all day. When she rang the farm this evening to give them the address as promised, Izzy decided she would tell them they didn’t have to lie for her. She leaned back in her seat, feeling some of the tension leave her shoulder blades. She felt a lot better having made that decision.

She would contact Roman herself and explain the situation. She recognised the real risk he’d come rushing down here throwing around his ultimatums and trying to take over her life, but it was one she felt she had to take. He did have a right to know where his daughter was.

She chewed her lip, fretfully gnawing at the soft flesh. Running away from her problems was just so not her. It made her seem … spineless, but the timing of the perfect job offer when she had been feeling so cornered by Roman had been too much of a temptation.

Well, the job was still perfect and on the plus side it might make Roman see her in a different light. This was an opportunity to show him she could have a career and be a good mother, that the two were not mutually exclusive. She needed to establish from the outset that she wasn’t someone he could push around.

Izzy spent the next fifteen minutes of the journey working out what she would say to him, mentally rewriting and editing the conversation in her head, anticipating all his comments and coming up with some killer comebacks. By the time the car pulled off the highway and onto a long straight driveway lined with copper beeches she was confident that she had made her argument forcibly but in a calm, reasonable way.

And she would not make the mistake of apologising. Roman was the sort of man who equated apology with weakness. She had a perfect right to take a job without consulting him and she would make that quite clear.

As they reached the rise in the drive she leaned forward, looking through the windscreen anticipating seeing a house, but the drive just stretched on bounded either side by parkland grazed by sheep and a few cattle. ‘Are we here?’

‘Next bend you’ll see it.’

Izzy sat up straighter in her seat, holding on to the door as the four-wheel drive negotiated a wooden bridge. ‘Does all this land belong to the house? Oh, my goodness!’

‘Sì, it is a bit of a dump,’ came the dour response to her amazed gasp.

Izzy couldn’t decide from his expression if he was joking or not because the dump he spoke of was an enormous golden-stoned mansion.

Izzy took a deep breath. ‘It’s beautiful.’ Actually beautiful did not do the building justice; it was stunning, with mullioned windows and mellow golden stone—totally breathtaking!

Gennaro brought the car to a halt on the gravelled area in front of the house. ‘The boss said—’

‘Where is …?’ Gennaro pulled open his door and she raised her voice, adding, ‘When will I be meeting him and his wife?’

It was fine by her if the elusive clients did not want to be hands-on, but, as she had told Layla, it was essential that she at least meet them. Her job was not about ticking off a list of requirements or filling a place with the current fashionable must haves; a home had to reflect a person’s personality.

‘The boss isn’t married—’

Izzy frowned as the man crunched around to her side. ‘But I thought …’ She accepted the hand he offered as she jumped down.

‘And I’d say you’re about to meet him.’ In response to Izzy’s questioning frown, he nodded his head to a point behind her. ‘Here he is now. Don’t worry about the baby. I’ll get her out.’

Izzy turned around to face the direction the burly Italian indicated in time to see a tall, lithe figure vaulting over the six-bar gate that kept the sheep from straying into the garden.

‘Oh, my God!’ Izzy felt as if a giant hand had pushed into her chest and for several heart-thudding moments she literally couldn’t breathe. How do I get out of here?

Roman, seemingly oblivious to her state of near collapse, walked straight up to the older man, who nodded and removed his shades. ‘Any problems, Gennaro?’

‘No, boss, the train was actually on time.’ Gennaro unfastened the baby seat complete with baby and lifted it out.

‘I’ll take that.’

Izzy watched, too stunned to protest, as Roman took hold of the baby carrier.

‘Should I take the bags up?’

‘If you would. Oh, and could you ask Mrs Saunders to send some coffee through to the library, and maybe some sandwiches? Then I won’t be needing either of you until tomorrow.’

Gennaro nodded his thanks at Roman and tacked something on the end of his conversation in Italian that made Roman laugh.

Izzy wasn’t laughing.

She wasn’t even capable of acknowledging Gennaro’s nod as, with a case under each arm, he walked up the shallow flight of steps towards the open front door.

‘Good trip, Isabel?’

He spoke as though this was a prearranged meeting, which of course it was—only she hadn’t been kept in the loop. She had stepped right into the trap he’d so cleverly baited. He knew exactly what her weakness was; she’d told him about her guilt at being a stay-at-home mum even if she could afford it financially. And he had sown the seeds of doubt when he had suggested that it might not be so easy to step back into the job market after a lengthy break. This was the set-up to end all set-ups!

Why hadn’t she seen it coming? The too-good-to-be-true offer … why hadn’t she smelt a rat?

Possibly because she wasn’t twisted and sneaky. She wanted to laugh or throw something at him or both. Instead she stood like a rabbit caught in the headlights, thinking, Any moment now I’ll wake up and realise this was all a dream—a nightmare.

‘So what do you think?’ he asked, gesturing towards the building behind them, but looking at Izzy.

She shivered at his voice. The dictionary would sound like an indecent proposal when read in that deep, husky, dangerously seductive timbre.