Read Online The Petrelli Heir by Kim Lawrence - Free Book Online

wrong—he had to be wrong.
    Was it coincidental that the subject had been much on his mind since he had updated his will? He had no child to pass his wealth on to but there were good causes and not all of them were females with a taste for designer shoes.
    As he had left the lawyer’s office the older man had shaken his hand warmly and said with a smile, ‘No doubt the next time we see you will be when you marry or have your first child?’
    Roman prided himself on focusing his energy on things he could change, not lost causes. Anyone who got to be thirty and didn’t realise that life was not fair was either very stupid or very lucky. He was neither, so he had not wasted time bewailing the hand fate had dealt him. He got on with life—a life that would not contain a family. He’d thought he had come to terms with it, but now …?
    Had he only been seeing in Lily what he wanted to see? he wondered. Did he imagine the resemblance the child had to his family line? No, he dismissed the possibility almost immediately.
    After his parents’ deaths he had discovered a box of photographs and one among the dozens of images had been of him on his first birthday. The likeness between that image and Lily was not just striking, it was almost identical.
    He’d had sex with her mother and now two years later his mystery woman turned up with a baby wholooked impossibly like him. It did not take a genius to do the maths …
    ‘Michelle said that Lily was fourteen months old, but she must be nearly fifteen months …?’
    ‘Fourteen, she was premature.’ The long labour had ended in an emergency Caesarean when the baby had become distressed.
    The silence stretched between them, broken finally by Roman’s hoarse voice. ‘Were you ever going to tell me?’ He could feel the vibration of a dull roar in his ears as his stunned gaze narrowed and swung her way. She’d had ample opportunity to come clean and she hadn’t.
    Izzy registered the accusation in his glare and let out a grunt of sheer disbelief. How dared he act like some innocent victim? Presumably he had conveniently absolved himself of all responsibility!
    ‘Telling you was never an option—I didn’t know your name.’ Hard not to say it out loud without feeling shame.
    ‘You were the one who insisted on anonymity,’ he reminded her grimly. She was not the one who had encouraged him to have unprotected sex, though, reminded the voice in his head. In his defence, in a brief moment of sanity he had made an attempt to ask her if she was protected, but it had been an attempt he’d abandoned when she had touched a finger to his lips, encouraging him to be silent. ‘And I meant today, or didn’t you recognise the father of your child?’
    Oh, yeah, because there was more than one man out there that looked like him.
    ‘Oh, so now it’s
my
child …’ She smiled and had the satisfaction of seeing his jaw clench. ‘Make yourmind up, Roman.’ His flush suggested she had made her point.
    ‘And when was I meant to tell you about her? In the middle of the marriage service perhaps? Or during our delightful walk back here?’ she snapped. ‘It was kind of hard to get a word in edgewise while you were so charmingly propositioning me. Tell me, does the
I need you
line normally work for you?
I want you, really
?’
    ‘It worked with you. No, I take that back, you were the one that said that, weren’t you?’
    The seamless comeback sent a flush of shame to Izzy’s pale face. ‘Look, I know this was a shock for you and I’m trying to make allowances—’
    ‘That’s really good of you,’ he said in a voice like dry ice.
    ‘Well, one of us has to act like an adult!’ she snapped back.
    ‘I’m struggling here, but what exactly is adult about hiding from me?’ he drawled sarcastically.
    She cast a quick furtive glance over her shoulder. They were alone but for the pianist and the dozing guest, but that situation could not last. ‘Yes, I was avoiding you, because I