The Petrelli Heir (14 page)

‘I knew that … and, yes, I am.’

He dragged a hand across his face and wrenched his eyes off the pouting invitation of her luscious lips. ‘Then let’s go see if this place lives up to its reputation.’

The meal was, if anything, too much of a success and a bubbling Izzy spent the entire journey back babbling about the famous faces she’d spotted there.

‘Why didn’t you tell me you were friendly with Rob Fullwood? He’s not as tall as he looks in films, but very good-looking. I think it’s the eyes. Thank you, Gennaro,’ she added, smiling at the burly Italian as he held the door wide for her to exit the four-wheel drive. She waited for Roman to walk around the car to meet her.

Roman gritted his teeth and glanced at his watch. He hoped this star-struck Izzy would vanish as quickly as she had appeared. One of the things he liked about
Izzy was that, unlike many women, she did not feel the need to fill every silence with words.

‘I am not friendly with him. We have met, that is all.’

‘You have more than met his girlfriend.’

The words she had been trying so hard not to say just slipped out, and there they were, impossible to take back.

Izzy veiled her gaze and began to walk quickly towards the front door. ‘I hope Lily has been good for Chloe.’

Halfway up the steps Roman caught her up. He caught her arm and pulled her back to face him.

Izzy stared at her hand, twisting the ring around her finger as she gave a theatrical shiver. ‘Goodness, it’s quite cold, isn’t it?’

‘No. Is that why you’ve been so weird?’

Her head came up. ‘Is what why …? I have not been weird.’

He arched a sardonic brow. ‘Yes, I have slept with Connie Brady.’

She felt the stab of jealousy like a sword thrust. ‘That’s really none of my business.’

‘You don’t have to be jealous. We only lasted a week.’

‘I only lasted a night,’ she countered spikily.

‘The two situations are not comparable.’

An image of the tall Nordic blonde model with the endless legs, hair extensions and false eyelashes came into her head. Most men had been intrigued by her, particularly her gravity-defying breasts. ‘True, I have a baby and she has massive boobs!’

She was not aware that she was clutching her own boobs when his amused glance lingered there. She
dropped her hands hastily and reminded herself of the old adage of quality being superior to quantity.

‘You are jealous!’

Izzy narrowed her eyes and delivered a haughty look. ‘I don’t much like the idea of walking into a room filled with your ex-lovers and having them laugh about me behind my back. Don’t …’ she snapped as he laid his hands on her shoulders.

He ignored her.

‘I think the chances of you being in a room filled with my exes is unlikely, but, that aside, they will not be laughing at you when you are my wife. They will be envying you.’

A bubble of laughter emerged from her aching throat. ‘Do you know how arrogant that sounds?’

‘Yes, but it made you laugh so who cares?’ He hooked a thumb under her chin and turned her face up to him. ‘While the women will be envying you the men will be envying me. You put all those women in the shade tonight.’ His glance slid down the slender length of her shapely body. ‘I have wanted to kiss you all night and all you have done is witter on like a star-struck teenager.
Madre di Dio!
’

‘What?’

‘I have just realised that one day Lily will be a teenager.’

His horrified expression drew another laugh from Izzy.

‘But seriously, Isabel, you do not have to be jealous. I have had lovers in the past, but once we are married I will respect my vows.’

Izzy nodded and expelled a sigh, allowing the jealous
poison to drain away with the trapped air … A tiny portion lingered stubbornly.

She was ready to believe that the casual lovers he had had over the years meant nothing, but Roman had been engaged once before to Lauren. Lauren, the beautiful blonde who had dumped him. Theirs had not been a casual relationship; he had been going to marry her, not for practical reasons, but for love.

She touched the ring on her finger and looked up at him and felt something twist hard in her chest. He was so beautiful. She had ruined the entire evening by being eaten up with jealousy, but there was still some evening to enjoy.

‘That kiss you were talking about …?’

She shivered as he framed her face between his big hands. The kiss was deep with a passion that sent a shiver of pleasure through her body and without a word he picked her up.

In the bedroom they stood facing each other and in the moonlight they undressed slowly, punctuating the slow striptease with murmurs and moans of pleasure and deep, languid, drowning kisses that made Izzy’s lips tingle and her insides melt.

She closed her eyes as he removed the last item of her clothing, her panties, pressing a kiss to the curls at the juncture of her thighs as she stepped out of them.

Kneeling, he curved his hands around the taut curve of her rounded bottom, kissing his way up her belly. He stood up, slowly running his hands up her body to cup and caress the creamy swells of her aching breasts.

As he kissed her breasts, running his tongue across the engorged rosy peaks, Izzy’s fingers closed over the
hot, silky shaft of his erection, drawing a raw groan from his throat.

They both stumbled to the bed, falling on it in a tangle of limbs.

His hands shook as he parted her legs, but Izzy was shaking too hard herself to notice. The mixture of raw passion and tenderness in his face brought tears to her eyes in response to emotions she had no words to express.

A keening cry was wrenched from her dry throat as he slid fully into her, burying himself. The primal connection was stronger than she had ever felt it before as they moved together, straining towards the final explosion of mind-numbing pleasure.

When Roman finally rolled off her, she was relaxed in every cell of her body and she curled up against him and fell asleep.

Surely he could not make love like that without loving her a little, was her last wistful thought.

The next day Roman left early to attend a charity auction he had committed to months earlier.

‘I would get out of it if I could,’ he said, sitting on the bed to kiss her goodbye. A few minutes later he was back.

Izzy looked up at him drowsily. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Come with me.’

She blinked, startled. ‘You mean to the charity auction?’

He nodded. ‘Why not? I can wait.’

Fully awake now, Izzy gave a twisted smile. ‘I’d love to, but I’ve already arranged to go shopping to the paint wholesaler’s and Chloe is coming with me. She’s
a great sounding board and we’re dropping Lily off for a play date with—’

‘Fine. It was just a thought.’

She thought she saw something in his face that suggested her response had not pleased him, but when she had rubbed her bleary eyes it was not there … Maybe she had imagined it.

‘Enjoy your day and I hope Lily enjoys her play date.’

Lily didn’t, as it turned out, as she was a bit out of sorts when she woke that morning. Izzy cancelled her play date and her trip to the wholesaler’s.

By lunchtime Lily’s out of sorts had become something a lot more worrying. Lily was crying inconsolably, thrashing around in her cot red-faced. Izzy took her temperature and the reading on the strip was so high that she took it again.

The reading was a degree higher.

Should she bundle Lily in the car and drive to the local emergency department or should she ring for an ambulance? Having been in the habit of making decisions for herself for most of her life, it struck her forcibly how much her mindset had changed when she found herself wishing that Roman were here to share the responsibility with.

After a few minutes she no longer cared if she came across as an overanxious mother and dialled the emergency number.

Rocking Lily in her arms, as the baby had gone scarily quiet, she tried to ring Roman, but kept getting put straight through to his messaging service. She decided not to leave an alarming message for him when there was a chance this was a false alarm and took the decision to wait until she could speak directly to him.

There were several times during the ambulance journey that she regretted this decision and would have given anything to know that Roman was on his way or even waiting for her at the hospital.

The doctors in the accident department were attentive and quietly efficient, which was comforting; what they had to say was not.

‘It looks very much like Lily has appendicitis. We need to operate.’

‘But she’s a baby … No, that can’t be right.’ Fear tightened like an icy stone in her chest, panic clawing its way into her brain. She struggled to keep it at bay.

She had to stay in control; Lily needed her. She made herself take a deep breath and tried to lower her tension-hunched shoulders …
I want Roman … no, I can do this myself
.

‘I realise this is alarming, but we will look after Lily for you and—’

‘Of course, I’m sorry … When will you …?’

‘Immediately.’

Lily’s dark lashes fluttered against her cheeks and her eyes were filled with fear as she stared at the medic. ‘That’s not good, is it?’

‘If you could sign the consent for us?’

Izzy sniffed and wiped a shaky hand across her face. ‘Of course, she’s just so little and … of course.’

Her hand continued to shake so hard she doubted her signature was legible. Everything happened very quickly and Izzy still wasn’t sure whether to read good or bad things into this, but one minute she was sitting next to Lily’s cot and the next she was walking along a seemingly endless corridor beside a cheery porter
who wheeled Lily’s cot to the entrance of the operating theatre.

Everyone was very kind but when she had to say goodbye to Lily she couldn’t hold back the tears, as much as she tried. Back on the ward they promised that they would let her know the moment Lily was out of surgery and offered her a cup of tea.

Unable to stomach the idea of swallowing anything, she refused. Pacing the small cubicle, she dialled Roman. On the fourth time the phone was picked up.

She felt weak with relief until a voice she did not recognise said, ‘This is Roman Petrelli’s phone.’

A female voice.

‘Who is this?’

There was a pause the other end, then a small laugh.

‘Who is this? I want to speak to Roman.’

‘Don’t we all, darling?’ the female voiced drawled.

Before she could respond Izzy heard a very familiar voice in the background. She didn’t catch all of what Roman said; actually just one word—Lauren.

It was enough.

‘Am I speaking to Lauren St James?’

‘Yes, Roman is here now—’

‘It doesn’t matter—you can give him a message.’

‘Sure, but—’

‘Tell him his daughter is in surgery and that he can go to hell and stay there and I never want to hear, speak to or see him again!’

Having delivered her message, she sat on the plastic chair wanting to cry, but there were no tears. She felt cold and empty inside.

She hated him.

Later Roman had no memory of the drive from the city to the hospital; he just knew he made it in record time.

When he saw her face he immediately thought the worst.

His eyes went to the empty cot and Roman felt as though someone had reached into his chest and ripped out a vital organ. His lovely little girl … He couldn’t bear life without his daughter, either of the women in his life—they were his heart. His haunted glance slid to Isabel. How had he been so stupid?

He had let himself love Lily, but he had been too weak and too scared to allow himself to admit that his heart held two women—mother and daughter, the two for ever inextricably linked.

And now one was gone … his baby. He breathed through the pain—his pain could wait. Right now Isabel needed him.

She looked like a broken doll, so pale and fragile, so vulnerable. It was enough to rouse the protective instincts of even a hardened professional.

But he was not a professional; he was the man who loved her. The man who had spent the last weeks avoiding facing this knowledge because basically he was a coward, he concluded contemptuously. A woman had rejected him once, a shallow woman who had little to recommend her but a pretty face and a family tree that stretched back into the mists of time, and for that reason he had decided to exclude the possibility of love from his life with all the logic and self-preservation instincts of a wounded animal.

He’d not been licking his wounds, he’d been nursing his bruised ego.

‘Isabel.’ The blazing blue eyes that lifted to him were not tear-filled, they were hate-filled.
‘Tesoro mio.’

‘Do not speak to me. Do not touch me!’ she shrieked shrilly, glaring at his outstretched hand as though it were a striking snake. ‘You are not wanted here.’

‘Well, tough, because I am here.’ He looked at the empty cot and swallowed again. His eyes misted as he thought of Lily, the ache in his chest so intense that it felt like a steel band tightening like a vice around his ribcage. ‘I should have been here for you.’ His hands tightened into white-knuckled fists at his sides as he asked in a pain-filled whisper. ‘When she … did she suffer?’

Izzy was blind to his suffering. ‘Of course she suffered. Her appendix was about to burst, they said.’

‘Appendix … burst …’ His relief was cautious, the relief of a man who had lost something precious and was being offered it back. If he was given this second chance he would not waste it. ‘You mean she is not … our little Lily is alive.’

The break in his deep voice brought her eyes to his face where strain drew the skin tight across his perfect bones, deepening the lines that radiated from his mouth and fanned out from around his eyes. Izzy gripped her lip between her teeth and fought against a tide of empathy. This was not about shared pain—she was alone.

‘She’s in recovery now,’ Izzy said, watching as the colour slowly seeped back into his face and the awful grey receded. ‘You thought she was dead?’ She hated him but not enough to wish that on him. She wound her hands together to stop herself reaching out for him.