The Petrelli Heir Read Free

that she didn’t believe in soul mates, but in her view if two people were meant to be together they shouldn’t need a piece of paper to keep them that way.
    ‘Don’t worry, your Prince Charming is out there somewhere, Izzy—always supposing you don’t take the treat-them-mean-keep-them-keen thing too far.’
    ‘I don’t!’
    Unable to defend herself further because an expectant hush had fallen, Izzy slid into her own seat and waited as the other seated occupants passed her daughter along the row, like a smiling parcel. Lily landed in her lap happy and smiling.
    Izzy glowed with pride as she received a gummy grin. Her daughter really was the most perfect baby.
    Beside her, Rory’s mother, Michelle Fitzgerald, looked amused as Lily made a bid for the blue feather fascinator it had taken Izzy half an hour to attach attractively in the chestnut brown hair she had pinned up in a simple twist. But even with a dozen hairpins the artistic loose tendrils had been joined by numerous wispy strands despite a double dose of hairspray. Her hair just had a mind of its own.
    ‘Rory!’ Michelle snapped, turning her attention to her son, who had still not taken his seat.
    ‘All right, Ma,’ he soothed with an eye roll as he dropped down into the pew next to Izzy.
    ‘Rory, perhaps we should swap?’ Izzy suggested as she abandoned her attempt to secure her headgear to the slippery surface of her shiny hair. Instead she shoved it in her pocket and offered a toy duck to Lily to distract her. ‘In case Lily kicks off and I have to make a quick exit.’
    She would have hated her small daughter to ruin the bride’s big moment and, though she was for the most part a sunny baby, Lily was capable of some seismic meltdowns when thwarted.
    According to Michelle it was just a phase all babies went through, and as much as Izzy respected the older woman’s knowledge of all things baby she privately wondered if it was possible her daughter had inherited her volatile temperament from her father.
    But that was one thing Izzy would never know, because although she knew every angle and shadow, every curve and plane of his face, as page after page in her sketchbooks filled with his likeness attested, Izzy didn’t know the name of the man who had fathered her child.
    She had not thought seriously about the day when Lily asked about her father—nothing beyond its inevitability. Maybe she would get her sketchbooks out on that day and show her daughter. Would she say,
‘This is how he looked. He was possibly the most handsome man ever to draw breath … oh, and he smelt good too …’
Who knew? Since Lily’s birth Izzy had adopted a one-day-at-a-time approach to life.
    In the meantime she viewed the sketches as a cathartic coping mechanism. Her sketches were her therapyand one day presumably she would draw him out of her system.
    ‘Sure, if you like.’ Rory stood up, ducking his head in an attempt to appear inconspicuous, hard when you were a lanky six four. ‘You two haven’t met, have you?’ he added, turning as he spoke to let Izzy shuffle along the wooden pew. ‘Izzy, this is Roman Petrelli. He’s here to buy some horses … Dad hopes. Do you remember Gianni arranged for that placement for me with Roman’s Paris office last summer? Roman, this is my sister Izzy.’
    Last summer she had been knee deep in nappies and night feeds and pretty much everything else had passed her by, but she did find it easy to place the handsome half-Italian Gianni among the plethora of Fitzgerald cousins. And there were a lot of cousins—her father was one of nine siblings.
    ‘Hello.’ A distracted smile curving her lips, she turned her head, following the direction of Rory’s introductory nod, and her eyes connected, her smile wobbled and vanished.
    She had walked right past him. How did that happen?
    He was not the sort of man that under normal circumstances would be overlooked—Izzy hadn’t the first time she had seen him.
    Now he was here the