Lex snatched off his glasses. ‘For God’s sake, Romy, you’re not seriously proposing to bring a baby along on a business trip?’

‘I don’t have a choice. I told Tim all this, and he assured me that it wouldn’t be a problem.’

‘No problem?’ he echoed in disbelief. ‘We’re on the verge of negotiating a major deal with a difficult client and you don’t think it’s a problem to turn up with a baby in tow? We’ll look totally unprofessional! It’s out of the question,’ he said with finality.

Romy was strongly tempted to turn on her heel and walk out, but if she did that, what would happen to Tim, and the deal the whole team had worked so hard on?

Drawing a breath, she struggled to keep her temper under control. ‘I was under the impression that you wanted someone from Acquisitions to accompany you?’

‘I do want you,’ said Lex, and for one horrible moment the words seemed to jangle in the air, a bitter parody of the ones he had once murmured against her skin.

I love you. I want you. I need you.

He folded the glasses he wore when working at a computer and put them in the breast pocket of his shirt. ‘I just don’t want a baby.’

‘Well, I’m sorry,’ said Romy, ‘but you can’t have me without her. What do you want me to do, leave her on the tarmac?’

Lex scowled. ‘Haven’t you got…I don’t know…childcare or something? What do you do when you’re at work? Or is Acquisitions doubling as a nursery these days?’

Romy set her teeth at the sardonic note in his voice. ‘She goes to the crèche at the office.’

‘There’s a crèche?’

‘Yes, there’s a crèche,’ she said, holding onto her temper with difficulty.

‘One of Phin’s projects, I suppose.’ Lex looked disapproving. His brother had reluctantly joined the company after their father’s stroke, and Lex had put him in charge of staff development. It was meant to be a token position, but he was always coming across initiatives in unlikely places nowadays.