Thank God, thought Lex, feeling the band around his heart ease very slightly.

There was a beat, and then his mind caught up with his eyes, in a double take so startled that it would have been comical if Lex had felt anything like laughing, which he didn’t.

With a what in her arms? A baby?

Romy’s baby. Another man’s baby. The steel band contracted once more.

His brows snapped together. ‘What,’ he demanded, ‘is that baby doing here?’

‘This is Freya.’ Romy put up her chin at his tone. Was that really all he had to say, after twelve years?

She was furious. With Lex, for daring to sit there, looking like that. Looking as if he had never kissed her, as if he had never made her senses snarl with the touch of his hand. As if he had never loved her.

With herself, for being so bitterly disappointed.

What had she expected, after all? That he would sweep her back into his arms? That the heat would still crackle between them, after twelve long years?

Fool.

‘I explained to Tim that I would have to bring her with me,’ she said in a voice quite as cold as Lex’s. She could do remote and chilly just as well as he could. ‘Didn’t he tell you?’

‘What?’

‘Tim said he would clear it with Willie Grant’s people.’

Lex wasn’t listening. Behind Romy, he could see the driver unloading pushchairs and carry cots and God only knew what else into the cabin. ‘What the hell is going on? You,’ he snapped at Phil, who froze guiltily. ‘Take all that stuff off right now!’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Just a minute,’ said Romy clearly, advancing down the cabin towards Lex. ‘Freya needs all that.’