some might say boyish, hips.
She took her tee shirt between her hands and attempted to stretch it this way and that without much success. A size six now, but it had survived the hot washing cycle in the industrial-sized machine a local firm had kindly donated to them better than her bra, which had come out looking like a dish rag.
She heard the knock on the door just as she was pulling her tee shirt over her head.
‘Come in, Angie,’ she called out, her voice muffled. ‘I just wanted to ask if you’d mind covering for Barbara in the morning.’
Roman, preceded by his entrance card, a giant teddy bear, pushed the slightly ajar door fully open and walked in.
His experience of buying gifts for small children was limited, but he knew enough to know that the case of excellent claret he had put down for his godson on the occasion of his christening and the additions he had generously donated to the child’s investment portfolio at Christmas and birthdays would not be suitable on this occasion. Wine and shares being inappropriate gifts he had sought the advice of his PA.
‘What sort of gift is appropriate for a child of three?’
‘Boy or girl?’
‘Boy.’
‘How much money do you want to spend?’
‘I don’t want to be seen as throwing money at the problem.’
‘Right, but you do want to be seen as thoughtful; that’s always more difficult.’
‘Do you like your job?’
Alice grinned. ‘All children like teddy bears, Roman,’ she told him confidently. ‘Yeah, a teddy bear is a good bet. A big one.’
He had followed her advice with some misgivings. Alice’s knowledge of fitness videos, football and chocolate was second to none, but she had never struck him as being particularly child-orientated, unless you counted his kid brother, Luca, but you never could tell with women. Some of the most unlikely ones, women who had publicly declared themselves wedded to their careers, one day started looking on you as potential father material.
He had learnt to read the signals. When he became a father he wanted it to be his decision.
Roman was perfectly aware of his responsibility to provide an heir and perpetuate the family name…as if the world didn’t have enough O’Hagans in it. But just in case it slipped his mind, his father, who seemed to think his eldest son might well walk under a moving bus at any moment, obligingly reminded him of the fact at regular intervals.
He would get round to doing what his father wanted in his own time, but at the moment he didn’t have a son, he’d never met this woman before today, and this was a pointless exercise. There were a hundred other things that he could and should be doing.
Despite these facts he was determined to see the farce through to the end, because he always completed tasks he began. But more importantly, this way, when his mother asked, as she would, he would be able to tell her with a clear conscience that he had seen mother and child and they were nothing to do with him.
Nothing less was going to satisfy her.
Also in the short space of time that had elapsed since Scarlet Smith had knocked back his lunch invitation, Roman had totally forgotten that, not only had he regretted issuing the invite the moment he’d made it—did he even know any restaurants where they served dribbling toddlers?—but he had also lost track of the crucial fact that he hadn’t issued the spur-of-the-moment invitation out of any desire for her abrasive company, but because he couldn’t think of an easier way of getting to see her son.
‘I’d be really grateful,’ Scarlet said, still thinking she was talking to Angie. She grunted as she groped to insert her hand through the arm hole. ‘Hold on a mo, I think this thing has shrunk.’
She clicked her tongue in regret. The tee shirt had been produced at their last fundraising event and it was decorated with self-portraits produced by the older children, including Sam. Now it was shrunk it would be lovingly stored with the growing collection of childhood memorabilia she was accumulating.
‘It could have been worse, the machine totally shredded my bra,’ she confided. ‘Not that I’m in any position to complain. This is one of those times being flat-chested pays off,’ she huffed with a strangulated laugh as she inhaled deeply to allow the over-stretched fabric to cover and compress her small, pointed breasts.
Roman wasn’t complaining either; he had no objections to ‘holding on a mo.’ Beneath the enticing expanse of slender back he had an excellent opportunity to appreciate the curvy shape and firmness of a small but perfectly formed bottom complete with strategically placed dimple above her peachy left buttock. And he didn’t think she was flat chested; his entrance into the room had been perfectly timed to coincide with the brief bare-breasted interval.
He’d been taken unawares; the sight of pink-tipped, delightfully bouncy breasts had frozen him to the spot and primitive urges oblivious to the social restraints of being a modern man had surged into painful life.
It was extraordinary but, far from being shapeless, Scarlet Smith had an enticing body, slim with supple, succulent and very sexy curves. The transformation was nothing short of mind-blowing.
That made it official. He did not have a son—no way would he have forgotten sleeping with Scarlet Smith!
Smoothing the slightly creased cotton fabric over her flat midriff, Scarlet turned around. The smile on her face faded as she saw who was standing there. ‘You!’ she gasped accusingly.
For a horror-struck moment, she peered up at Roman before her brain got back into gear. She forced herself to release the breath painfully trapped in her chest, unfolded her arms, which she’d wrapped across her bosom in an instinctively protective gesture, and groped behind her on the desk for the glasses she’d set aside a few moments earlier.
‘Dio! It’s absolutely amazing.’
It took her several seconds for her slightly unsteady hands to locate her glasses from the table where she had put them. She slid them back onto her nose and his dark, fatally handsome face slipped into focus.
She was tempted to take them off again.
Roman frowned. Before she had replaced the glasses he had seen a red welt across the bridge of her nose, livid against the pallor of her skin. It was obviously caused by those stupid glasses. It was a crime to hide such beautiful eyes behind thick lenses. Didn’t she know glasses were meant to be fashion accessories? That you could get paper-thin lenses and attractive frames these days.
‘Those spectacles are too big and heavy for your face,’ he censured in a gruff, distracted voice.
Scarlet shook her head ruefully. ‘I know, but five years ago they were the height of fashion.’ She gave a wry grin. ‘It was my funky period,’ she explained drily. ‘I can’t wait to put them back in the dark, dusty drawer they were hiding in,’ she confessed.
‘Then why don’t you?’
‘They won’t let me wear my lenses until my corneal abrasion heals, and it hardly seemed worth forking out for a new pair.’
‘Corneal abrasion!
