Lexi felt her face grow hot and her hands start to tremble at the silent rebuff. For the past few days, whenever the conversation had veered onto the personal he had clammed up and she had let him, not wanting to push him as her mother had pushed her father. But now it was different.
Now her heart was involved and she felt even more vulnerable than before. She remembered her father had had topics that were off-limits and it had meant that at times they had all felt as if they were walking on eggshells around him. Just as she felt she was doing now with Leo.
‘Where are you going?’ he demanded gruffly.
Lexi stopped at the sound of his voice. She had been so deep in thought she had put on Leo’s linen robe and was halfway across the room and hadn’t even realised she’d moved.
She hesitated, wishing he would put some clothes on. ‘You didn’t seem to be in the mood to talk.’
‘I’m rarely in the mood for the type of conversation you want to have, angel.’
‘A personal one?’
‘An interrogation.’
Lexi thought of her parents. Of Brandon. And then an image of the family on Santorini swam into her consciousness. She wasn’t silly enough to idealise that they were the perfect couple—everyone had some sort of issue to contend with—but the fact was they were a couple. They had committed to be together for the long haul. Lexi’s father had never married her mother and if she continued sleeping with Leo she would be doing so knowing that the end of their relationship was also marked in the sand.
She thought of the needy, clinging woman her mother had become and Lexi didn’t want that for herself. She didn’t want to become a victim and right now she felt like both! She liked being in control of her life and falling in love with a man who had no intention of loving her back was certain to erode even the most confident woman’s self-esteem.
And maybe it hadn’t been the elusive Sasha on the phone. Maybe it had been Amanda. And maybe she could just quit with all the guesswork and ask him.
‘I was curious as to who was on the phone,’ she defended herself. ‘I think that’s fairly normal.’
He stared at her for so long Lexi’s eyes started to drift down the impressive lines of his taut body, only to snap back up when he said, ‘It was my mother.’
‘Your mother?’
‘She calls this time every year.’
He looked as if he regretted adding that but Lexi was not in the mood to let him off the hook. ‘Why?’
His hesitation was fleeting, but Lexi caught it. ‘It’s my birthday, angel.’ His smile didn’t meet his eyes and Lexi stared dazedly as he moved towards the bathroom.
His birthday! ‘Were you going to tell me?’
And his mother was still alive?
Lexi’s mind reeled. His online biography had informed her that his mother had passed away and she’d forgotten it was false. Only half aware of what she was doing, she followed him into the bathroom and saw him shrug as he stopped in front of the mirror. ‘I hadn’t thought of it.’
‘Birthdays are special, Leo.’
‘Maybe in your world. In mine they are just another day.’
‘I didn’t realise your mother was still alive.’
He gazed into her eyes briefly in the mirror before they slid lower down her body, one hand rubbing his jaw. ‘I noticed this morning that the inside of your thighs are a little red so I thought I might shave this off.’
Lexi’s heart thundered at the image his words brought to mind but she ignored it. ‘Do you still see her?’
His eyes narrowed on hers. ‘What did I tell you? An interrogation.’
Lexi blew out a breath. He was right. She did want to interrogate him. But that was only because he wouldn’t talk to her. And if he wasn’t going to talk to her, why was she still standing there?
Shaking her head at herself, she walked out of the room, surprised when she heard his voice behind her.
‘It’s not like you to walk out on an argument, angel.’
She turned, glad that he had slung a towel around his hips. Not that it hid much … She forced her eyes to his and noticed he was looking at the necklace she was fondling. ‘I just need some space.’
The scowl on his face deepened. ‘Why?’
She threw her hands up in front of her. For an astute man, he could be terribly obtuse at times. ‘Because you have things you don’t want to discuss and I’m not good with that.’
He paced away from her. ‘This is why I don’t do relationships.’
‘Is that what this is?’
‘Obviously not.’
‘Leo, people in relationships talk to each other and not just about safe topics. They talk about real issues. Like this. Only you won’t discuss anything personal. You didn’t even tell me it was your birthday!’
‘What the hell is the problem with that? It was the day I was born. Get over it. I have.’
Lexi barely registered the harshness of his tone, still stung by how little she knew about him. And on the one hand that was completely normal. They had known each other for little more than a week. The problem was that if he asked her she would tell him anything and it scared her when he wouldn’t do the same for her. ‘I guess it just showed me how little of yourself you really share with me,’ she said testily.
He shook his head. ‘You don’t understand.’
‘No, you’re right, I don’t,’ she fumed. ‘I don’t understand why you haven’t told Ty you’re his father and I don’t understand why you won’t tell me who Sasha is. You called out her name again last night, just so you know.’
He looked momentarily stunned and she figured that he hadn’t remembered the dream after all. ‘I’ve told you Sasha is not important.’
And neither, it seemed, was she.
‘If that was really the case then you wouldn’t mind talking about her.’
‘Chort vozmi, Lexi. Sasha is not a woman. Sasha was my brother.’
His brother?
‘You have a brother?’
‘Was. I had a brother. He died when he was three.’
Ty’s age.
‘How old were you?’
He looked distinctly uncomfortable. ‘Ten.’
The time he had said his father went to prison. Lexi swallowed, not sure she wanted to find out the two were somehow connected, but unable to stop herself from asking, ‘How did he die?’
Leo blew out a frustrated breath and closed his eyes briefly before staring back at her. ‘He got in between my parents arguing one day and my father backhanded him into the wall.’
‘Oh, my God.’ Lexi’s hand flew to her mouth.
‘I told you there are some secrets you’re better off not knowing, angel,’ he sneered, walking through the doorway to the sitting room.
His voice was so cold, so clinical, and Lexi knew his brother’s death still cut deep. As it would.
She followed and sat on the sofa, her hands cupped between her knees as he made coffee. ‘That was why your father went to prison. Why you got into fights,’ she said softly. ‘I’m so sorry, Leo. You must have been devastated.’
The muscles in his back tensed but he didn’t say anything.
‘And your poor mother,’ Lexi continued, unable to comprehend how bad she would feel in the same situation. ‘She must have been so overcome with guilt and grief … Was it any wonder she couldn’t look after you properly after an event like that? It would have been so difficult.’
He flicked a switch on the coffee machine and the sound of hot water hissed into the room. Then he turned and pinned her with a hard stare. ‘She didn’t want to take care of me. But I was glad. I couldn’t wait to get away from her either.’
Lexi was shocked by the harsh vehemence of his words. ‘Why?’
His eyelids lowered to half-mast. ‘You planning to finish this interrogation any time soon, angel? I need a shower. With you in it.’
Lexi stared at him. Was this the best it would be between them? Was this all he had to offer? More secrets?
/>
She thought about her life back in London. Her friendship with Aimee. Her job. Her mother fostering children as a way of giving and receiving love. She felt a million miles from everything right now but that was her reality, not this. This was a potential fantasy and what had happened to her resolve to never enter into those again …?
Her sigh broke the silence and she stared at a point in the middle distance, despair weighing her down. She heard Leo move and glanced back at him. He was a man in pain and her heart gripped. She couldn’t give up on him just yet.
‘I realise that this is an intensely painful subject for you, but I think it’s eating you alive, Leo. And I think you’re still suffering from your mother’s abandonment of you at a time when you needed her most.’
‘She didn’t have a choice.’
‘So you keep saying, but …’
‘I was responsible for Sasha’s death.’ The harsh words seemed wrenched from some deeply hidden place inside him.
‘What do you mean?’
‘I was supposed to be looking after him that night.’
His voice held a wealth of self-recrimination and Lexi’s brows pulled together. ‘Where were your parents?’
He made a harsh sound. ‘Fighting. It was always my job to look after Sasha when they fought. Only that particular night I couldn’t be bothered. I was more interested in my computer game than my baby brother.’
He stormed back into the bedroom and Lexi heard the sound of him dressing. His revelation had been shocking and her heart went out to him.
She got up slowly and went to the doorway. He ignored her and continued to button his shirt. ‘Leo, you weren’t responsible for your brother.’
He continued to ignore her.
‘Your parents were wrong to burden you with his safety. You’re not to blame for his death. You know that, right?’
When he looked at her his eyes were bleak. ‘None of that changes the fact that he’s gone. That I let him down. That he would be here now if not for me!’
Lexi felt a lump form in her throat at his hoarse tone.
‘You didn’t—’
‘Enough! I’ve dealt with all this; it’s in the past.’ He tucked his shirt into his trousers and stalked away from her.
She hesitated briefly before persisting. ‘I don’t think you have dealt with it.’ She eyed him carefully. ‘Not if you think Sasha’s death was somehow your fault.’
He stopped dressing. ‘I was old enough to know better.’
‘You were ten!’
He ignored her and Lexi shook her head. Did he seriously believe he should have known better? ‘You were only a child yourself. But even if you refuse to see the truth in that, what does it mean? That you have to pay for Sasha’s death for the rest of your life?’
He stopped and stared at her and Lexi felt a spurt of hope that he was hearing her. ‘You have to forgive yourself, Leo. You have to stop playing God. But you also have to forgive your father. If you don’t, you just might become him. A lonely, empty man who was obviously filled with anger and hate.’
His blue eyes were icy as he looked at her. ‘Are you done?’
‘Leo, Ty needs you. I n—’ Lexi stopped on a sudden inhalation. What had she been about to say? That she needed him? No. She didn’t need him. She loved him. There was a difference. One created a dependency, the other a partnership. But he didn’t want that and she did. More than ever with him. ‘I know you can be a great father to Ty and, no matter what you think, you deserve to be happy.’
‘I asked if you were done.’
Lexi wrapped her arms around herself in an attempt to stop herself from going to him. She loved him and he was in pain and she felt it all the way to her bones.
‘Leo, I feel sick to think of what you must have gone through as a child, but you don’t have to live alone like your uncle, and you would never hurt Ty.’
He made a brittle sound in his throat. ‘You say that with such confidence, angel.’
Lexi felt him slipping away from her. ‘Because you’re different from your father, Leo. You’ve already made different choices in your life but for some reason you refuse to see that.’ She felt a spurt of anger at his cold detachment, desperate to reach him any way she could. ‘You know I’m starting to think you like hanging onto the pain of your childhood. I think it gives you an excuse for never taking a chance on love.’
Lexi wished the words back as soon as they left her mouth because even though she thought they might be true, he most likely didn’t need to hear them right now.
Leo turned on her. ‘Is that what you imagine is going on here, Lexi?’ he snarled. ‘Did you imagine I was falling in love with you? That you had beaten every other woman to the post and would get my ring on your finger?’ He laughed harshly as if the idea was ludicrous. ‘Because I’ll tell you now, I’m not the type to hand out trinkets you can wear around your neck in the hope that one day I’ll come back.’
Lexi felt as if she’d been punched. Not only because of what he had said, but also because she could see that she had just done what her mother had done—harangued a man into ending a relationship with her.
But she couldn’t be sorry. Not like her mother had been. Because Lexi knew she deserved more from a man. Where her mother would have settled if her father had stayed, Lexi realised that she never would. So, as sick as she felt at losing the man that she loved, she couldn’t be sorry that she had forced the confrontation. ‘I wasn’t talking about you taking a chance on me, Leo,’ she said with quiet dignity. ‘I was talking about Ty.’
‘Leo? Hellooooo?’
Leo blinked at the sound of the cutesy female voice in front of him and landed back at the Duke of Greythorn’s swanky London party with a thud.
He glanced down as the blonde curled her fingers around his forearm as she smiled up at him. ‘For a minute there I didn’t think you’d heard a word I said.’
Leo stared at her. For a minute? Try the last half an hour.
He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced around the opulent hotel room and thought that his investment team had done a good job in procuring it for his portfolio. But that was it. He couldn’t care less about the party, or the people in it.
‘Look, Sarah—’
‘Samantha.’
‘Samantha.’ He smiled, but it felt like more of a wince. ‘To be honest, I didn’t. My son is at home with a cold and I’m a little distracted right now.’
‘You have a son? Does he look like you?’
Yes. Yes, he did. And Leo felt his heart swell with pride at the fact. He shook his head slowly. ‘You know, you’re the first person who isn’t in his inner circle who knows about him.’
The blonde tilted her head coquettishly. ‘I feel privileged.’
Leo frowned. He hadn’t told her because he wanted her to feel privileged, he’d told her because for the first time he actually felt like it. For the first time he actually felt like Ty’s father and it pained him to think that Ty still didn’t know who he really was.
‘Do you have a wife as well?’ Samantha purred.
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not that lucky.’ Lucky? Where had that come from? ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have to go.’
‘Of course. I hope your child feels better soon.’
Leo brooded about the evening he’d had all the way home. It wasn’t the party that was the problem, or even most of the people in it. It was him. He’d changed. He wanted more from life than polite chitchat and a fleeting moment of losing himself inside a beautiul woman’s body.
He’d only been back from Greece for a week but other than work and Ty, he had to admit that he was bored, and for once he didn’t want to just carry on as if everything was okay. Because it wasn’t. It was empty.
As if on cue, an image of Lexi’s smiling face came to mind and he realised he’d never once been bored in her company. Phenomenally turned on—and exceptionally frustrated—but never bored.
He recalled the moment she had left the
yacht exactly seven days ago. He hadn’t gone after her straight after she’d walked out of his room, his emotions stripped bare when her pained expression had reminded him of how his mother had often looked at him when he’d disappointed her as a child.
He and his mother had an estranged relationship at best. He sent her money she didn’t use and she called him on his birthday, which made him feel guilty and hurt. The fact was, something had broken between them after she had asked the nursing staff to turn off Sasha’s life support system and he didn’t know how to get it back.
And Lexi had only exacerbated those feelings with her unrelenting questions that morning. So, instead of going to her straight away to apologise for his callous words, he had done what he always did when emotion threatened to swamp him—he’d switched off. Gone for a swim.
He would have gone to her after he had cooled down but he’d been too late. She had already boarded one of his choppers for Athens—supposedly under his instructions! He’d nearly called it back but he knew how much she hated them and it had been a mark of her desperation to get away from him so he’d decided to let her go. Ty had cried and then become remote. Just like he did when he was trying to stop himself from feeling anything.
‘Good evening, Mr Aleksandrov.’
‘Good evening, Mrs Parsons.’ Leo pasted on a smile and walked through to his sitting room, shrugging out of his dinner jacket. ‘How’s Ty?’
‘Sleeping like a little lamb. I told you the worst of his illness was over.’
‘So you did.’ He tossed his jacket onto the back of the sofa. ‘Do you have that passport yet?’
‘Not yet sir, but I’ll be sure to tell you when it comes through.’
Leo nodded and walked her to the door once she had collected her bag. ‘Goodnight, Mrs Parsons. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Actually, I’m back in tomorrow morning, sir. Carolina has an appointment to attend to in the morning.’
‘Fine. See you in the morning.’
He saw her out of the door and tugged at his bow tie.
He stopped outside Ty’s room and opened the door a whisker to look inside. The room looked vastly different from the way it had before he’d gone to Greece. Gone was the double bed and modern furnishings and in its place was a racing car bed and half a toy store. Leo smiled at the thought of how much he would have loved this room as a child.
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