Loe raamatut: «The Petrelli Heir»
‘Did you try and find me?’
‘How could I? Where would I have started?’
Roman took a step closer, a tall and overpoweringly male presence that made her feel trapped. She lifted a hand to her throat to cover the pulse she could feel beating there.
‘Do I make you nervous, Isabel?’ He stepped in closer again, his nostrils flaring as the scent of her perfume brought back memories. His body responded hungrily, making him uncomfortably aware of the heaviness in his groin.
His husky voice sent a secret shiver down her spine. Her pale skin was dusted with a layer of perspiration with the effort of concealing her emotional turmoil and presenting a semblance of normality when all she wanted to do was run away. ‘Not Isobel—Izzy. People call me Izzy.’
‘I’m not “people”. I’m the father of your child.’
About the Author
KIM LAWRENCE lives on a farm in rural Anglesey. She runs two miles daily, and finds this an excellent opportunity to unwind and seek inspiration for her writing! It also helps her keep up with her husband, two active sons, and the various stray animals which have adopted them. Always a fanatical consumer of fiction, she is now equally enthusiastic about writing. She loves a happy ending!
Recent titles by the same author:
SANTIAGO’S COMMAND
GIANNI’S PRIDE
IN A STORM OF SCANDAL
THE THORN IN HIS SIDE (21st Century Bosses)
Did you know these are also available as eBooks? Visit www.millsandboon.co.uk
The Petrelli Heir
Kim Lawrence
MILLS & BOON
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PROLOGUE
London
June 2010
IZZY let out a startled yelp as her heel caught in a hole in the pavement and brought her to an abrupt stumbling halt. Wincing, she flexed her narrow ankle experimentally. Fortunately it held her weight when she put it back down again.
No damage but her feet hurt.
Why?
It took her a few moments to connect the ache in her feet with the time she’d been walking. She glanced at her watch, scrunching her eyes to read the face concealed by the cuff of her thin jacket. What time had she started walking?
Her smooth brow furrowed as she tried to sort out the confused sequence of the day’s events in her head. It had been afternoon when she had shaken the hand of her mother’s solicitor and thanked the funeral director. There had been no one else to thank, no one else to exchange amusing anecdotes of the departed with.
Her mother, Dr Ruth Carter, famous in the academic world all her professional life and famous outside it since her one attempt at a populist book landed her with an international best-seller that had broken all previous records for a non-fiction book.
The royalty cheques still kept dropping on the doormat—Izzy’s doormat now. She was almost rich … Was that a bit like being nearly famous …? Izzy shook her head. For no reason at all she suddenly wanted to laugh or was that cry? No, not cry, she didn’t think she had any more tears available to shed. They were all frozen in the lead weight that lay hard and heavy pressing against her breastbone.
Dr Ruth Carter had enjoyed her fame as a celebrity psychologist, and had become a firm favourite on breakfast television shows. There were probably many people who would have liked to come and pay their last respects, but Ruth Carter had had firm views about funerals.
No religion.
No fuss or flowers.
No wake.
No fuss and no tears.
Her only child, actually her only living relative, Izzy had respected her wishes and she hadn’t cried. She hadn’t even cried when she had found her mother’s body and the neat handwritten note, written as she spoke in that distinctive bullet-point dogmatic style.
In the weeks that followed both the police and then coroner at the inquest had praised her composure and bravery, but Izzy hadn’t been brave. She had been numb, and now, today, she was … angry, she realised, identifying the emotion that was making her chest tight. She had kept walking because she was afraid that if she stopped all that anger would spill out and she had a mental image of herself enveloped in an angry toxic cloud.
She wasn’t angry with her mother for choosing the time and manner in which she died. The insidious terminal disease that had slowly been robbing her mother of her ability to function independently, keeping her locked in a helpless body, had been terrible. No, her mother had made her choice in her time, the note had said.
And to hell with everyone else!
Her mother hadn’t said that, but during the clinical goodbye today Izzy had thought it. So, yes, she was angry! The doctors had said her mother had at least another twelve months of relatively normal life, months when Izzy could have said all the things she would never say now.
Not even goodbye.
And now today her mother had reached out from the grave and … Izzy unfolded her stiff fingers from the typed letter that lay scrunched in her pocket and lifted a hand to her head. The dampness on her skin and her hair came as a surprise and she stared at the wet shiny pavement. She hadn’t even realised it had been raining.
She didn’t even know where she was! Or for that matter who she was …? She knew she wasn’t the product of a contribution by an anonymous sperm donor.
It turned out she had a real father, one who was right now receiving a similar letter to the one the solicitor had handed her this afternoon. Apparently, the poor man had been an eighteen-year-old student at the time, selected as a suitable genetic father and seduced by her forty-something mother, who had been reacting to her ticking body clock.
Why had her mother lied?
Why had she told her now?
Why had she left her alone?
Izzy straightened her slender shoulders and gave herself a strong talking to. Focus! You can’t fall apart, you’re capable—everyone says it, so surely it must be true.
Where are you, capable Izzy?
As she looked vaguely around a door opened to a nearby building and sounds of people talking and laughing spilled out, all so normal … how weird.
Without meaning to she followed the sound and found herself in a bar. She loosened the button on her jacket, aware that she was thirsty. It was warm and humid and crowded as she began to work her way through several groups of people standing; all the tables were full, except one.
Izzy’s restless gaze was drawn as if by some invisible magnet to that table or, more specifically, to the man who sat at it.
He was the most beautiful man she had ever seen!
The sheer awfulness of the day fell away and she stood stock still, oblivious to the curious stares she drew. As she stared at the man her heart hammered against her ribcage, her throat became dry and her knees were quite literally shaking, but not with exhaustion. She no longer felt weary but energised, her body taut and tingling with a squirmy, stomach-clenching excitement.
The man put down his drink and stared back, dragging his dark hair from his wide bronzed brow. Izzy shivered, as if the man had touched her, which was crazy, and she pressed a hand to her stomach where the fluid heat was spreading outwards.
On a purely aesthetic level he was someone people would always stare at. His face could have belonged to a classical statue and was a miracle of classical symmetry. He had incredible carved cheekbones, an aquiline nose and sculpted lips that were both sensual and cruel …?
Izzy shivered again. Just then a group of noisy, slightly the worse for wear young men bumped into her, the physical jolt wrenching her from the bold, overtly sexual scrutiny of those dark eyes. She turned her head sharply and thought, My God, I’m panting!
A man had never looked at her that way—as if he wanted her—or if one had Izzy hadn’t noticed. Not enough to do anything about it anyhow. Not a sexual creature, Izzy’s mother had proclaimed—her professional opinion—after first ruling out the possibility her daughter was actually gay, but in denial about her sexuality.
My mum, the big fan of plain speaking; my mum, who respected honesty; oh, yes, my painfully honest mum. Izzy felt the letter again—the bombshell honest Dr Carter had exploded when she was no longer around to answer for the biggest lie of them all—and felt her anger rise up once more. Well, maybe she could, just for once, prove her mother wrong?
Just because she’d never experienced blinding lust before didn’t mean Izzy didn’t recognise it when she felt it. She dabbed her tongue to the moisture that had broken out along her upper lip, still staring at the man even with a solid wall of people between her and those dark disturbing eyes.
The crowd of men jostled her again, moving in close and delivering a few good-natured comments that Izzy didn’t even register. As she approached the bar she was still seeing those dark hungry eyes. She focused on them—it wasn’t hard—and seeing them, feeling them, she didn’t have to think about anything else.
‘Are you eighteen?’ the barman asked for the third time, studying the young woman’s glazed blue eyes and wondering if she was on something.
‘No, yes … I mean, I’m twenty-one … almost.’
Izzy was not surprised when he asked, ‘You got some identity, miss?’
Flustered, she reached into her bag and found her driving licence, holding her thick wavy chestnut hair back from her face with her forearm when it flopped in her eyes.
The barman raised his brows as he scanned it before producing her drink and an apologetic, ‘We have to check.’
She jumped when a beefy, slightly clammy hand landed on top of her own, pressing it into the surface of the bar. ‘A beautiful woman should never pay for her own drink,’ the owner of the hand slurred.
Oh, God, and the hits just kept coming, she thought, her nostrils flaring in distaste as she inhaled the beerladen fumes of her admirer.
‘Thank you, but I’m meeting someone … excuse me.’
The man didn’t move. If anything, egged on by his mates, he moved in closer. Izzy hunched in on herself defensively.
Not a violent or angry person, diplomatic Izzy balled her hand into a fist in her head. She could hear her mother saying, When you have to shout, Izzy, you have lost an argument.
But her mum wasn’t here.
‘Go away, you creep!’
I just yelled, and it felt good.
‘Cara, I’m sorry I’m late but …’ The men crowding around her suddenly parted to reveal the unbelievably attractive lone wolf from the table. Lean and broad-shouldered, all hard muscle and sinew, he was a head taller than the drunk pestering her and he had the entire mean, brooding hungry look going on, boosted by the combustible gleam in his narrowed eyes.
Izzy couldn’t tear her gaze away from his face and she wanted to touch him so much it hurt, which was crazy. She was gazing with helpless admiration at the long curling ebony lashes that framed those spectacular eyes when with zero warning he fitted his mouth to hers as though he’d done it a hundred times before and kissed her hard, full on the mouth.
It was only when he lifted his mouth that he even appeared to notice the other men.
‘Is there a problem?’ No longer languid and warm, his deep voice was layered with icy hauteur.
Problem? she thought, swallowing a bubble of hysteria. Did standing there staring or not being able to breathe count? His kiss had tasted of whisky, she thought as she ran her tongue across the outline of her own trembling mouth. The younger men almost fell over themselves to assure the stranger that there was no problem at all as they vanished like mist.
‘You looked like you were about to deck him. You’re a feisty little thing, aren’t you?’
Izzy unclenched her fist. ‘That was very resourceful of you, but I didn’t need saving.’ I’m feisty!
This close, the raw maleness that had given her a hormone rush from across the room was a million times more intense.
‘No …?’ His shoulders lifted in an expressive shrug as he stared at her, dragging his hand back and forth across the dark stubble shadowing his square jaw. His eyes slid to the glass in her hand. ‘You were planning to drown your sorrows?’ His mouth curled into a self-derisive sneer as he added softly, ‘Stare into the bottom of a glass and feel sorry for yourself?’
Izzy looked at the glass in her hand … Was she?
‘I wish you more luck than me.’
Was he saying he was drunk? He didn’t look drunk. He didn’t sound drunk. In fact his rich, gravelly, slightly accented voice was delicious—he was delicious.
Her heart raced; the sexual tension between them was like a wall cutting them off from the rest of the room. The reckless exhilaration fizzing through her bloodstream made her feel dizzy.
‘I don’t want a drink any more,’ Izzy said breathlessly, at the same time wondering what she was doing.
Whatever it was it felt good.
His dark eyes didn’t leave hers for a moment. ‘You don’t? What do you want?’ His brow furrowed. ‘How remiss of me. I’m—’
‘No!’ Izzy reached up and pressed a warning finger to his lips. Once there she found herself tracing the firm outline, fascinated by the texture and warmth of his skin. ‘I don’t need to know your name. I need—’
He caught her hand and held it by his face and slurred throatily, ‘What do you need, cara?’ His thumb stroked a line down her cheek as he bent in close and whispered, ‘Tell me …’
His gravelly accented drawl made her insides dissolve.
‘I’ve had a very bad day and I don’t want to think about it. I need …’ She paused. Life-changing revelations or not, twenty years of sensible caution did not give up without a fight. The man could be a homicidal maniac … he could … he could … he could …
Izzy closed her eyes and opened them again. She needed not to think, she needed to feel … his skin. Desire washed over her like a flash fire, dragging the breath from her lungs and making her skin prickle.
‘I think I need you.’ Is this really me saying that?
‘Think?’
‘I need you.’
It was definitely her leaving a bar with an enigmatic, beautiful stranger.
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!
A question that might have been better asked before you ripped off his shirt.
Ignoring the sly insert of her conscience or what was left of it, Izzy touched a protective hand to her nape.
Nothing in his expression had suggested he even recognised her. Was it really possible he didn’t remember their night together? Or maybe he might have developed a convenient amnesia to avoid embarrassment. If so should she play along with it? Everything in Izzy rebelled against the idea.
Why was she torturing herself? He might feel even worse and as embarrassed about that night as she was, sitting there now wondering if she was a potential bunny boiler about to mess up his life.
If so he’d feel relieved when he realised she didn’t want anything from him. Rich men could be pretty protective of their wealth and she could recall now the word billionaire coming into the conversation when the family had discussed Rory’s good fortune at securing a placement within the Petrelli company.
Great, she couldn’t have had a one-night stand with a teacher or a plumber. No, she had to pick out a billionaire Italian!
At the end of the ceremony Izzy got to her feet when everyone else did, clutching her daughter to her chest. She slung a furtive look over her shoulders but chickened out at the last minute and tucked herself in between Rory and Emma in the slow-moving file of guests leaving the church, doing her best to be invisible. When she finally worked up the courage to look again Roman Petrelli was gone, the occupants of the pew behind having already vacated their seats.
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