But he was the head of a multi-million-pound company and sometimes he had to deal with business matters at unsociable hours, she reminded herself. She recognised that he was speaking French—which was another surprise, because she hadn’t known that he was fluent in the language. There were so many things she did not know about Leandro.
She slid down from the table and readjusted her dress. Her breasts ached and she felt a little bit sick. She recalled that she’d felt nauseous at about the same time on the previous few evenings and wondered if it had something to do with the heatwave. Maybe she needed to drink more water.
Leandro’s voice was still audible through the study door. Marnie wandered into the sitting room. Like all the rooms in the house, its modern décor was a contrast to the building’s imposing Georgian façade. The walls and furnishings were in neutral tones and a few pieces of contemporary and no doubt very expensive artwork added splashes of bold colour.
It was a curiously impersonal room, but Leandro had told her that he had employed interior designers to decorate the house, which perhaps explained why there was no stamp of his personality anywhere. When she had moved in with him Marnie had placed a couple of potted ferns on the windowsill to try and breathe some life into the room, but they looked as out of place as she felt.
She stood by the window and watched the shadows lengthen in the private gardens at the centre of the square. The district of Belgravia was very different from the council estate where she’d grown up. She had moved there, to one of the most deprived parts of south London, with her mother and brothers after her dad had left and their family home had been sold. The Silden Estate had been notorious for gang crime and drug dealing, and one reason why she had wanted a good career was so that she could escape the sense of hopelessness that had pervaded the estate.
Marnie remembered that when she’d first met Leandro she had told herself he was out of her league. He had been a regular customer at the cocktail bar and restaurant where she worked and she hadn’t taken his flirting seriously—until one night when he had asked her out to dinner.
It had been the first time she’d been on a proper dinner date, and to start with she had felt on edge, but he had soon put her at her ease with his charismatic charm. By the end of the evening she had fallen completely under his spell and had needed little persuading to spend the night with him.
She did not know if he had guessed that he was her first lover. Up until then she hadn’t had time for boyfriends. She’d been too busy studying, working and looking after her mother, whose depression had worsened after Luke had died and Jake had disappeared. But following her mother’s death she had felt a sense of freedom from responsibility, and when Leandro had asked her to move in with him she’d fallen headlong into their passionate affair.
Marnie sighed. In those early days it hadn’t worried her that Leandro worked long hours, or that the only time they spent together was in bed. She’d enjoyed having sex with him—she still did. But although the situation was the same she realised that she had changed. She had fallen in love with him, and she was seeking clues that would indicate how he felt about her.
Up until he had gone to New York she had believed that he felt something more for her than sexual attraction. But his attitude towards her at the party and the ease with which he had dismissed her and answered the phone had reawakened her doubts about their relationship.
The study door was open when Marnie walked past again, and she saw that the room was empty. She hurried up the stairs and her heart gave a little skip as she headed into the master bedroom that she shared with Leandro. Now that he had finished his phone call there would hopefully be no more interruptions to prevent him making love to her.
They communicated best in bed. Their passion for each other made words unnecessary when their bodies were in perfect accord. But for her it wasn’t just about sex. She craved the feeling of closeness when he held her in his arms and stroked her hair. When he was tender she could convince herself that he cared about her.
As she entered the bedroom Leandro walked out of the en suite bathroom, naked apart from the towel hitched around his hips. Droplets of water clung to the whorls of dark hair that covered his chest. It was his habit to shower before they had sex, and Marnie’s mouth went dry as her eyes followed the path of his body hair as it arrowed over his flat stomach and she visualised his powerful manhood beneath the towel.
But while she stared, and tried to control her thundering pulse, he opened a drawer, took out a pair of silk boxer shorts and returned to the bathroom, emerging moments later wearing the boxers.
Marnie’s disappointment turned to confusion as she watched him pull on a pair of jeans. She froze when she noticed a suitcase on the bed. ‘Are you...going somewhere?’
He finished buttoning his shirt and spared her a brief glance. ‘Paris.’
‘Now? Tonight?’ She couldn’t accept what her eyes were telling her as she watched him throw a few other items of clothing into the case. ‘Why?’ Her insecurity about their relationship made her voice sharp. ‘You went to Paris the weekend before you flew to New York.’
In fact he visited Paris regularly, once a month, and spent the weekend there. She assumed he went for business reasons, but he had never given any explanation for his trips and she had not dared ask him, telling herself that she mustn’t crowd him or seem possessive.
Another thought struck her. ‘Have you remembered that we’re going to Norfolk for my cousin’s wedding?’
‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to go with you.’
She couldn’t disguise her disappointment. ‘But you said you would come—and I’ve told Gemma that I’m bringing an additional guest.’
‘I said I would try to keep the date of the wedding free but I didn’t promise,’ Leandro said tersely. He raked a hand through his hair. ‘I’m going to Paris because a...a close friend has been injured in an accident and I need to be with them.’
Marnie looked at him and noticed the lines of strain around his mouth. It was so unlike him to show any emotion, and she immediately felt guilty that she had doubted him. ‘I’m sorry. Is your friend seriously hurt?’
She refused to listen to the voice in her head that questioned whether Leandro considered her to be a close friend. Would he drop everything if she was hurt and rush to be with her?
‘I don’t have many details.’ He sounded distracted. ‘I just had the phone call...’ He gave her a wry glance as he referred to their interrupted lovemaking downstairs. ‘I’m sorry I have to rush off, and I’m sorry about your cousin’s wedding. I can’t say yet when I’ll be home.’
This from a man who organised his life with military precision. It made Marnie realise how worried Leandro must be. ‘It doesn’t matter. Of course you must go to your friend. Is there anything I can do to help?’ she asked softly.
He closed the zip on his suitcase and reached for his jacket. ‘Can you grab my phone? I must have left it in the bathroom.’
His mobile bleeped as she picked it up from the vanity unit and she could not help but notice the words on the screen.
You have a message from Stephanie.
Who was Stephanie? A member of his staff? Another friend?
For a split second Marnie was tempted to read his messages. Then a memory from her childhood, when she had seen her mother searching the pockets of her father’s jacket for proof that he was seeing another woman, made her feel sickened with herself. Leandro had never given her a reason not to trust him. She could not bear the idea that she might have inherited her mother’s suspicious nature, and she hurried back into the bedroom and thrust his phone at him as if it had burned her hand.
She followed him over to the door and her soft heart ached with sympathy when he pushed his hair back from his brow in a weary gesture.
‘You must be tired after travelling from a different time zon
e. I hope your friend is okay.’
‘Thanks.’ He bent his head and brushed his mouth across hers.
She responded instantly, her lips softening and clinging just a little when he tried to break the kiss. He hesitated, and looked at her with an odd expression on his face. Marnie sensed he was about to say something, but then the moment passed and the connection she had felt with him shattered as he turned and strode down the hall.
* * *
Leandro’s driver opened the car door for him before stowing his suitcase in the boot. ‘The pilot has the plane ready, sir. It’s a busy night for you—off abroad again only a few hours after you arrived back in England.’
‘You’re telling me,’ Leandro muttered.
As the car pulled away from the kerb he leaned his head against the back of the seat and took a deep breath. God, he hoped Henry was all right. A suspected broken collarbone, the headmaster of Henry’s school in Paris had said on the phone. Apparently the boy had been on an adventure hiking trip with some classmates and had slipped and fallen down a steep gully. Due to the remote location, it had taken a few hours to transport Henry to a hospital in Paris.
Henry’s injury wasn’t life-threatening, but Leandro knew it must be incredibly painful. He remembered that he had dislocated his collarbone playing rugby when he was about twelve and it had been agony. His father had been away on a business trip and his mother had been performing somewhere else in the world, so he had been left on his own at the hospital to receive treatment for his injury before one of his father’s staff had collected him and taken him back to the penthouse apartment on Fifth Avenue that had never felt like a home to Leandro.
He hated the thought of Henry being in pain and maybe feeling scared and alone. Nicole was abroad, which was why the school had phoned Leandro—he was listed as an emergency contact for Henry. He suspected that his ex-wife only allowed him to maintain a relationship with Henry because it suited her, he thought cynically.
Leandro’s thoughts turned to Marnie. He could not explain why he had felt an urge to tell her that the friend he was rushing to visit in Paris was a ten-year-old boy whom his ex-wife had led him to believe was his son for six years. But the desire to confide in Marnie had only lasted for a few moments, before his brain had taken charge and reminded him that he had never shared personal information with any of his previous mistresses, so why would he with her?
He deliberately did not bring his emotions into his affairs. Just because his affair with Marnie had lasted longer than his affairs with previous mistresses it held no significance. She did not mean anything to him, he assured himself. But the concern in her eyes as he had been about to walk out of the door had got to him.
He wondered if she would understand that he had felt as though his heart had been ripped out when he’d learned that he wasn’t Henry’s father.
His jaw clenched. How could Marnie—how could anyone—comprehend what it felt like to bring a child up for six years, to love that child more than anything else in life, and then discover from a DNA test that the boy you had believed was yours was actually another man’s son?
Leandro guessed the grief he felt was similar to the pain of bereavement. He had lost his child—lost his role as a father. He’d promised Henry that they would always be friends, but nothing could alter the painful truth that the child he had cradled as a newborn baby in his arms had no biological connection to him.
Aboard his private jet, Leandro phoned Henry’s headmaster and was reassured by the news that an X-ray had shown that the boy did not have any broken bones. Arriving in Paris, he drove straight to the hospital and was escorted to the private room where Henry was lying in bed. He was deathly pale, but managed a grin when he saw Leandro.
‘Papa. My shoulder hurts.’
Leandro felt a knife blade twist in his heart. ‘We decided you would call me Leo instead of Papa,’ he reminded Henry gently. ‘I’ve spoken to the doctor and he said your collarbone isn’t broken, but you have sprained the ligaments in your shoulder. There is not a lot that can be done to treat the injury—you just have to rest it and give it time to heal. You can be discharged and I’ll take you back to the apartment for the rest of the weekend, if your mother agrees.’
‘Cool. Can we have pizza for dinner?’
‘I’m glad your appetite hasn’t been affected,’ Leandro said drily.
‘Maman is on holiday in Barbados, with my real father, so Monsieur Bergier phoned you. I knew you would come.’ Henry’s expression clouded. ‘I wish you were my papa, Leo.’
The knife in Leandro’s heart cut deeper. ‘We’ll always be best buddies. That will never change.’ He rearranged Henry’s pillows. ‘The painkillers the nurse gave you should start working soon, so try and sleep while I go and phone your mother. I expect she is worried about you.’
‘I don’t suppose she is,’ Henry said matter-of-factly. ‘She and Dominic will be having too much of a nice time on holiday to think about me.’
‘That’s not true.’ Leandro gritted his teeth and forced himself to go on. ‘Your mother and...and father care about you very much.’
He stepped out of the room and swore savagely beneath his breath. Nicole had told Henry six months ago that Dominic Chilton was his real father, but instead of choosing to spend time with the boy, as a family, she and her lover had gone on a month’s holiday to the Caribbean.
Leandro hated feeling helpless, but he could not protect Henry from his mother’s casual approach to parenting. He remembered how rejected he had felt when he was a boy and his mother had failed to turn up when she was supposed to visit him—either because she had forgotten or because she was too busy. Disappointment and hurt that neither of his parents had much time for him had been constant features of his childhood, and his concern that Henry felt the same sense of abandonment meant that Leandro had to bite back his anger when he spoke to his ex-wife.
‘There’s no reason for me to rush back to Paris if Henry’s injury is not serious,’ Nicole stated. ‘Dominic and I only arrived in St Lucia a few days ago, and it’s the first chance I’ve had to relax and enjoy a break.’
It was on the tip of Leandro’s tongue to ask Nicole what she needed a break from, when her life consisted of shopping and beauty salon appointments. But he was bitterly aware that he had no legal rights to Henry, and that if he antagonised Nicole she could prevent him from maintaining a relationship with the boy. She would not care that Henry had declared that he wanted to stay in regular contact with ‘Uncle Leandro’.
The hatred Leandro had felt for his ex-wife when he had discovered how she had deceived him had turned to contempt, and he only half listened to her whining that Dominic was facing demands for a huge divorce settlement from his wife. His thoughts strayed to Marnie, and he was struck by the contrasting characters of his ex-wife and his current mistress.
He had missed Marnie while he’d been in New York—and not only in bed, he admitted. Logically he knew he should not allow their affair to continue for much longer. A year was at least six months too long to keep a mistress. An alarm bell sounded in his mind as he acknowledged that he did not want to end the affair just yet, but he assured himself that it was because the sex was good.
Now that he was no longer so worried about Henry he was able to relax, and thinking of the passionate sex life he enjoyed with Marnie evoked an ache in his groin. He felt bad that he had hurt her feelings at the party. Would it compromise the rules he had set for their affair if he gave her a token to show that he valued her being his mistress? He frowned as he tried to think of a suitable gift. Jewellery was too emotive, and he did not want her to think that his emotions were at all involved, but flowers were too impersonal. And he usually sent flowers to his mistresses when he dumped them.
It would be useful if he knew of any hobby Marnie enjoyed, but he had no idea what she did in her spare time when she wasn’t w
orking as a cocktail waitress. She was just there in the background of his life, always cheerful and smiling as she handed him a martini when he arrived home from work, and always as eager for sex as he was at any time of the day or night. She was the perfect mistress, Leandro acknowledged.
He recalled that earlier in the summer they had spent a week cruising the French Riviera on his yacht, and one starlit night after they had made love outside on the deck Marnie had said that she liked looking at the stars. Problem solved—he would buy her a book about stargazing. A book was the sort of gift that showed he had thought about her, but not too much.
Satisfied with his reasoning, Leandro zoned back to his ex-wife’s conversation. He was instantly bored but, although it irked him, he had to be diplomatic with Nicole, and it was a few more minutes before he was able to end the call and return to Henry’s bedside.
CHAPTER THREE
‘IT’S SUCH A shame Leandro couldn’t come to the wedding. Your uncle and I were looking forward to meeting him.’ Marnie’s aunt, Susan, who was her mother’s sister, smiled at her across the buffet table at the wedding reception. ‘You said he had to dash off to Paris unexpectedly?’
‘Yes, his friend was hurt in an accident but I don’t know any more details,’ Marnie murmured. She had hoped that Leandro would phone her, but she hadn’t heard from him since he left London two days ago.
‘Perhaps you and Leandro will visit when he has a free weekend?’ Aunt Susan suggested. ‘I’m serious about wanting to meet him. You are my sister’s only daughter, and for Sheena’s sake I’d like to be sure that you’ve met a decent man who will look after you.’
‘I don’t need anyone to look after me. I had to take care of myself after Dad left, and Mum was...’ Marnie grimaced. ‘Well, you know how she was. Sometimes her depression was so bad that she didn’t get out of bed for days on end.’
Her aunt sighed. ‘I wish I’d known the extent of Sheena’s mental health problems. I think she must have been devastated when she found out your father was having an affair.’
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