‘You should have a look at his.’ Leo reached towards a slender file and pushed it across the desk to her.
Business was business. That had always been his mantra. Even if she had agreed to see him so that she could somehow seduce him into doing what she wanted, there was no way he would succumb to the temptation. At any rate, the defiant tilt of her head was not the body language of a woman gearing up to use her feminine wiles on him, and Leo knew that, however pleasurable it had been to play with that tantalising thought, he would have thought a great deal less of her had she chosen to go down that road.
So what choice did he have but to play the cards in his hand?
He watched carefully as she took the file and opened it. He noted the pallor in her cheeks, followed by hot colour as she read and then re-read the report he had received a couple of days ago.
When she’d finished reading it, her head remained lowered, even though she’d quietly closed the file and kept it on her lap.
Deep-seated unease coursed through him, unfamiliar and disconcerting. Leo had no idea what to do with those feelings because he’d never had them before.
This wasn’t playing dirty. This information hadn’t come into his possession via bribery or blackmail. It was documented, and it had been sourced in five seconds flat by the man he’d instructed.
So why did he now feel like a cad? Why was that lowered head doing all sorts of things to his conscience?
Leo scowled. ‘Well?’
‘Well, what?’ Maddie looked at him. Her eyes were filled with unshed tears. ‘Is this why you summoned me to come and see you? I’m surprised you aren’t surrounded by your army of lawyers so that they can pick me apart and then spit me out. Because that’s why you’ve got this, isn’t it? So that you can use it against me. So that you can force me to sell to you under the threat of making this information public. How could you, Leo?’
Leo flushed darkly. ‘This information is in the public domain, Maddie.’
‘That doesn’t mean that you should use it to scare me into doing as you say.’
Suddenly restless, Leo rose to his feet in one easy movement and began pacing his office, finally returning to his desk, perching on the edge of it right in front of her.
‘Tell me what happened.’
‘Why?’ Her green eyes flashed.
‘Because I want to hear.’
Leo sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. It felt as though life had been a lot more straightforward before this woman had entered it. Under normal circumstances, with ammunition available, he certainly wouldn’t be hanging around asking for back stories.
But he could see that she was trying hard not to cry and that cut him to the quick. The report was simply factual. There would be more to it than was written in black and white.
Maddie glared at him and hesitated. Inside, anger warred with pride. He looked as though he really wanted to hear what she had to say, but how could she trust him? This was the guy who had pretended to be a pauper because it had suited his purpose at the time.
‘Please, Maddie.’ Leo surprised himself but he meant it. ‘What’s there is the skeleton of a story. Fill it out for me.’
‘How did you know what to look for?’
‘I didn’t. But I always do very thorough background checks on people and companies before I put money on the table and start signing papers.’
‘And if you come across something dodgy you use it against them? Is that it?’
‘It’s standard business practice to make sure all the facts are on the table. Any fresh-faced accounts manager might have a gambling problem, and that’s something that would require close scrutiny of the books. I’m not a big, bad wolf. I’m doing what anyone else would do in my situation.’
Maddie looked down at her fingers and then met his hooded gaze. ‘When my mother died,’ she began, avoiding sentiment and keeping strictly to the facts, ‘I was all over the place. I’d had to abandon my university dreams to look after her, as I think I told you. I therefore left school with a lot of dreams but not much hope of realising any of them, or even of getting a halfway decent job.’
She drew in a deep, steadying breath and detached herself from the remembered emotion. Leo was gazing at her levelly, his expression neither sympathetic nor unsympathetic, merely interested.
‘I made money doing menial stuff, and eventually found a well-paid job working for a lovely elderly lady in one of the most expensive suburbs in Sydney. I lived in—which suited me because I saved on rent. In return I took care of her, and I also helped her with an autobiography she was writing. Through her I met Adam, her grandson. He was handsome and charming and... Well, the whole package, really. Or so I thought. We began dating. I was cautious at first. I’ve had experience with boys wanting to go out with me because of the way...’
She blushed and he looked at her with amusement, as if he’d never heard any woman so obviously wanting to play down her attractiveness.
‘Because of the way you look?’ he inserted smoothly, and she gave a jerky nod.
‘I really thought we had something good,’ she said bitterly. ‘I really believed that life was being kind to me after all I’d been through with my mum. Anyway, that’s by the by.’
She gathered herself, told herself that this wasn’t a confessional in front of someone who was going to give her a big bear hug before telling her that everything was going to be all right. This was a story that she wanted to relate because she refused to be defined by the cold, harsh facts without him hearing what was behind those facts.
They might be on opposite sides of the fence now, but they’d also been as intimate as it was possible for two people to get. Something inside her didn’t want him to be left with the wrong impression of her.
At which thought, she firmed her soft mouth and ploughed on. ‘Lacey—the lady I worked for—started getting forgetful shortly after I started with her. Small things at first, and I didn’t think anything of it. Not enough for alarm bells to start ringing. But then it seemed to progress quite fast—although it’s possible that I just didn’t notice anything to begin with because I was in recovery from Mum’s death.’
She sneaked a glance at him. Was he bored? Maybe trying to sift through the information so that he could find her weak spot? She recalled what his PA had said about him being fair and realised that, however angry she was with him, she did think that he was fair.
‘And then?’ But Leo had some idea of what was going to come, and he knew that it would all be wrapped up with the ex she had fled from.
‘A very valuable necklace went missing. It was worth...well, more than I can say. Adam and his sister blamed me. I tried to tell them... I couldn’t believe that the guy I’d thought I had a future with could turn on me—could believe that I was nothing more than a common thief and a liar.’
She broke eye contact and stared without blinking for a few seconds, gathering herself.
Angry at a man he’d never met in his life, and held captive by the strangest surge of protectiveness, Leo thrust a box of tissues from his drawer towards her. She snatched a few without tearing her eyes away from the wall.
She sucked in some air and crumpled the tissues in her hand, then looked at Leo levelly.
‘No one believed me,’ she said simply, ‘and Lacey was so forgetful that no one took much notice of her at all. There was a missing necklace, and I was a poor girl from the wrong side of the tracks, so therefore there was no question that I was guilty. The police were called in and I was formally charged with theft.
‘I was staring a prison sentence in the face, or at least the threat of one, when one of the police officers, having chatted to Lacey, brought in a medic. She was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. Shortly after that, by a stroke of luck, the necklace resurfaced. It had been in the pocket of one of her skirts. She must have removed it and stuck it in there when sh
e was out in the garden. I was unconditionally cleared of all charges—but mud sticks and all I wanted to do was run away. The whole episode... I felt dirty, disgraced, even though I’d done nothing wrong. The questions...the suspicions...and then the horror of what could have happened if that diagnosis hadn’t been made—if one person hadn’t noticed what no one else had... It was all too much.’
She laughed shortly.
‘So you were right when you said that I must have been running away from something.’
‘And the ex?’
‘What about him?’
‘Did he come crawling back to apologise, clutching flowers and the engagement ring you were hoping he would eventually put on your finger?’
Maddie stiffened with pride. ‘I broke off all contact with his entire family and with him. He got the message loud and clear that I wanted nothing more to do with him.’
‘But he hurt you?’
‘What do you think?’
‘Then suddenly, out of the blue, you discover that you’re the sole beneficiary of old Tommaso’s dwindling fortune...’
‘It’s my chance to do something with my life, to move on, and I’m going to take it.’
Did she mean that even now that circumstances had changed? Leo had detected the shadow of a hesitation in that declaration. She said she wasn’t going to cave in and sell to him. She’d shouted that from the rooftops. But there was an inflection in her voice that made him wonder just how adamant she was about that.
He’d increased his offer. The diminutive lawyer who had traipsed along in her wake must have opened her eyes to the advantages of taking what had been put on the table.
He looked at the folder, still resting on her lap, his dark eyes lazy, thoughtful, speculative.
Maddie followed that lazy gaze. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that he knew just what he had to do to get her where he wanted her. She’d been exonerated of all charges, her name fully cleared, but any brush with the law would be enough to have bankers and shareholders running to the table to snatch at the deal Leo had thrown down—even if she had emerged as pure as driven snow from the unfortunate episode.
‘You’re going to use this information against me, aren’t you?’ she said quietly.
Leo, who had decided to do no such thing, allowed a telling silence to develop between them.
‘Do you think it would be fair for all parties involved in this deal—all the people who stand to gain or lose by the decision you and I make—that they remain in ignorance of what’s taken place?’
It was a valid enough question as far as Leo was concerned, even though he knew without a shadow of a doubt, as he watched the emotions flicker across her beautiful face, that he would bury the report—bury it so well that it would never see the light of day.
‘I see.’ Maddie stood up. ‘I wonder why I expected anything different.’
‘Sit down!’
‘Don’t you dare tell me what to do! I should have guessed that all rich men are exactly the same. They may talk differently and walk differently, but in the end they’re all the same. They’re all prepared to go the extra mile when it comes to getting what they want.’
‘That is outrageous!’
‘Is it? Okay, Leo, you win. I’ll take whatever deal it is you want to offer. I’ll accept the money and I’ll go away—because the last thing I need is to start a new life over here with my past following behind me like a bad smell!’
‘Stop being hysterical and sit down! Whoever said anything about my using this information? I admit under normal circumstances I wouldn’t hesitate, but in this instance...’
Maddie barely heard a word he was saying. Her heart was beating as fast and as hard as a sledgehammer and she was breathing so rapidly that she thought she might hyperventilate.
Which was the last thing she needed in her condition.
And suddenly the whole point of this meeting surged back to her consciousness and she stared at him.
‘Are you going to sit down?’ Leo demanded, vaulting upright and swinging round his desk so that he was staring down at her. ‘And before we go any further let’s get one thing straight—I am nothing like that scumbag you got mixed up with! I don’t lead women up any garden paths and I damn well would never shout guilty until proved innocent!’
‘But you would drag my name through the mud even though I am innocent!’
‘Have you heard a word I’ve said to you?’
Maddie stared fiercely at him. Without even realising what she was doing, she rested the flat of her hand against his chest, warding him off but wanting badly to draw him towards her.
She sprang away, shocked at how he could scramble her brains even when she was in the midst of a ferocious argument.
‘I am not going to use any information against you, Maddie, so you can relax on that score. It doesn’t mean that I won’t get the store from you, because I will, but I won’t be making any of this sorry business public knowledge in order to further my intentions.’
Maddie stared. Her hand still burned from where she had rested it against his chest. She was turned on by him. There was no ignoring the hot dampness between her thighs and the pinching of her nipples.
Maybe it was her hormones, she thought wildly. Her responses were going every which way. She had come here planning on being cool and contained, but very quickly all those good intentions had unravelled and now here she was, screaming at him and not listening to a word he was saying.
He wasn’t going to use the information he had uncovered. That didn’t matter, however. This meeting had disclosed something very important—something she couldn’t just look away from in the hope that she might be wrong.
She still wanted Leo more than she’d ever wanted anything or anyone in her life before.
No matter what she thought of him personally, her body still craved his touch and that terrified her.
So the fighting would end.
She would hand over the store to him and she would tell him about the baby.
But once the store was his, contact would be effectively broken. She would take the money and she would sell her grandfather’s house and leave Ireland for good.
Maddie didn’t think that a fully paid up member of the successful bachelor club would travel far and wide to see a child he had never committed to having in the first place. She would be able to step back from something that felt a lot like fire. The life she would build would not hold the legacy she had inherited, but it would have something else—something equally important. A child. Plus, she would have more than enough money to support them both.
‘You don’t have to fight me for the store, Leo. I told you. It’s yours for the taking. You can get your lawyers to talk to Anthony and they can sort out the sale.’
Leo took a step back and tilted his head to one side, as though listening for a noise he couldn’t quite hear. Yet.
‘And your change of heart stems from...?’
Maddie backed towards the door until she was pressed against it. ‘I have more on my plate now than just the store.’
‘Explain.’ Leo took two steps towards her, the depth of his navy eyes skewering her temporarily to the spot.
‘I’m pregnant, Leo.’
She stared at him and watched the colour drain away from his face. He was a man who’d been slammed by a train at full speed and was finding it hard to breathe.
The outer office was empty. Maddie could tell that much. She realised Leo must have dismissed the PA, knowing that his chat with her was going to be highly personal, involving sensitive information about her past.
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘I’m pregnant. So you can have the damned store! I’m going now. I’ll give you a chance to digest what I’ve said. But the store is yours and that’s the main thing. Isn’t it?’
With which
parting shot she pulled open the door and shot out of his office, walking briskly without a backward glance towards the elevator that had earlier whooshed her up to his office.
CHAPTER SIX
MADDIE DIDN’T MAKE IT. Not quite. As he followed her into the elevator she spun round, the look on her face evidence that she hadn’t heard him behind her.
‘Leo...’
‘You don’t get to do this, Maddie.’
‘Do what?’
‘Detonate a bomb in my life and then make a run for it.’
‘I wasn’t making a run for it.’
‘We’re going back to my apartment and you’re going to tell me in words of one syllable what the hell is going on!’
But Leo knew what was going on. He’d taken an appalling chance and now the chickens had come home to roost. She wasn’t lying. She wasn’t the sort. He was going to be a father, and it was a nightmare so all-encompassing that he had to absorb it in stages.
After all the lessons he’d learnt from the five-second marriage that should never have happened, and which had ended up costing him an arm and a leg and certainly a great deal of pride, he’d blithely had unprotected sex with a woman because he hadn’t been able to resist.
After a decade of playing it safe, never taking chances and avoiding anything that smelled like a honey trap, he’d blown it all with a woman he’d known for less than a day.
But, by God, the sex had been amazing.
Leo was infuriated that that ridiculous thought had the nerve even to cross his mind when what he had to deal with was the fact that life as he knew it was over.
He wondered, briefly, whether she had engineered the whole bloody mess—but that suspicion barely lasted a second. Somehow, however cynical he was on the subject of women and what they would do when it came to getting their hands on pots of gold, there was something fundamentally honest about Maddie.
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