But now Romy was sitting opposite him instead.
With her baby.
At the front of the cabin, Nicola was hurriedly stowing away the extraordinary amount of equipment Romy had seen fit to bring with her. The door had closed after the driver, who had escaped gratefully down the steps, and the pilot was already taxiing, anxious to make up for lost time.
Lex wrenched his mind back from the past and looked at his watch. Two and a half hours behind schedule, and they still had a fair drive after they got to Inverness. Willie Grant lived in a castle in the wilds of Sutherland, in the far north west of Scotland, and God only knew how long it would take to get there. Summer, his PA, would ring and explain the delay, but Lex hated being late.
He hated it when events were out of his control, like this morning. The way they always seemed to be whenever Romy was around.
His life was spent keeping a close guard on himself and his surroundings. Only once had he let it drop, in Paris twelve years ago, when he had lost his head and begged Romy to marry him. Lex had never made that mistake again.
The plane was turning at the end of the runway, and the engines revved until they were screaming with frustration. Then the pilot set them hurtling down the runway.
Lex resisted the temptation to close his eyes and grip the seat arms. He knew his fear was irrational, but he hated being dependent on a pilot. It wasn’t the speed that bothered him, or even the thought of crashing. It was putting himself completely in someone else’s control.
Romy loved take-off. He remembered how her eyes had shone as the seats pushed into their backs and the power and the speed lifted the plane into the air. Lex hadn’t said anything, but she had taken his hand and held it all the way to Paris.
Did she remember?
Lex’s face was set with the effort of keeping his gaze on the window, but it was as if his eyes had a will of their own. Like a compass needle being dragged to true north, they kept turning to Romy in spite of the stern message his brain was sending.
The baby, he saw, was looking as doubtful about the whole business as he felt. When the plane lifted off the tarmac and Lex’s stomach dropped, she opened her mouth to wail, but Romy bounced her on her lap, distracting her from the pressure in her ears until she was gurgling with laughter.
‘You’re a born traveller,’ Romy told her. ‘Just like your old mum.’
She smiled at her daughter and Lex could see the crooked tooth that was so typical of the way Romy just missed being perfect. It was only a tiny kink, only just noticeable, but the faint quirkiness of it gave her face character. He had always thought it made her more beautiful.
Then her eyes met Lex’s over the baby’s head, and the smile faded.
She was remembering that flight to Paris, too. He could see it in her eyes. The memory was so vivid that they might as well have been back on that plane, side by side, shoulders touching, their hands entwined, her perfume filling his senses as she leaned into him, distracting him with her smile, until it had felt to Lex as if he had left his real self behind and was soaring up with the plane into a different reality where he was a man who didn’t care about control or responsibility or being sensible, and could open himself to every pleasure that came his way.
And look where that had got him.
Obviously he might as well have spared himself the effort of looking unconcerned, though. Romy didn’t quite roll her eyes at his clenched jaw, but she might as well have done.
‘Why didn’t you take the train?’ she asked.
‘It’s too far,’ said Lex shortly. He hated her thinking that he might be afraid. He wasn’t afraid, and if he was, he would never admit it.
‘It’s going to take most of the day to get there as it is. I can’t afford to waste all that time sitting on a train. There’s too much else to do. I was hoping Grant would be prepared to come to London to discuss the deal.’
Romy shook her head. ‘Willie never leaves Duncardie now,’ she said. ‘His wife died five years ago, and since then he’s been a virtual recluse.’
‘So Tim explained. He told me that if I wanted to persuade Willie Grant to agree to the sale, I would have to go there myself.’
‘You must want it badly if you’re prepared to fly,’ said Romy with a faint smile.
‘I do.’ Lex’s face was set in grim lines. ‘My father never managed to get a foothold in Scotland, and it was his one big disappointment. If he hadn’t had his stroke last year, he’d still be on this plane now, on his way to see Willie Grant. He would never have trusted the negotiations to me.’
‘He must have trusted you,’ Romy protested. ‘You’re the one who’s carrying on his legacy.’
‘Yes, that’s what I’ve been doing,’ he agreed, a trace of bitterness in his voice. ‘And now I’m ready to move the company in new directions. It’s not about my father any more.’
For years he had been trying to prove himself to his father, and now, at last, he had a chance to show him just what he could do with the company.
‘This is my deal,’ he said. ‘The one I made, the one he never could.’
‘It’s not a competition,’ said Romy, but he looked back at her, unsmiling.
‘Yes,’ he said. ‘It is. And it’s one I’m going to win. That’s why I really needed Tim with me today. If this deal doesn’t go through because of his family crisis…’
Romy leant forward at that and fixed him with a look. ‘I know you won’t take it out on Tim,’ she said crisply. ‘You’re a lot of things, Lex, but you’re never unfair, and that would be. Tim has to be with his son. His family has to come first. You know that.’
Lex did know that, but he didn’t have to like it. ‘I sometimes think it would be easier if we only employed people without families,’ he grumbled.
‘You wouldn’t have a very large workforce in that case.’
‘Without children, then. You can be sure that the moment an important deal comes up, the vital person has to go home because some child is ill or needs to be picked up from school or has to be taken to the dentist, and then everybody else has to run around rearranging things to cover for them, like you and Tim.’
‘I don’t mind,’ said Romy, not entirely truthfully. ‘I know Tim would do the same for me. It’s part of working in a good team.’
Lex grunted. Phin was always going on about teams, but he liked to work on his own. ‘That’s all very well, but if we’re going to make this work I need to know that you’re as committed to the success of this deal as Tim is.’
She met his eyes squarely as she settled Freya more comfortably on her lap. ‘I am,’ she said. ‘I owe Tim a lot, and I don’t want to let him down. I owe Gibson & Grieve a lot, too. I know Phin took a risk giving me the job, and I want to prove that I’m worth it. I’ll do whatever it takes.’
‘Except leave your baby behind,’ Lex commented sourly.
‘Except that,’ she agreed.
CHAPTER TWO
‘ACTUALLY, I think Freya could work to our advantage,’ Romy said, stroking her daughter’s head so that the beaten silver bracelets chittered softly together.
The baby was a funny-looking little thing, Lex thought. She had very fine dark hair that stuck up in an absurd quiff, and round, astounded eyes as dark as her mother’s.
‘How do you work that out?’ he asked, wishing Freya wouldn’t stare at him like that. It was disconcerting having that uncompromising gaze fixed so directly on his face.