CHAPTER EIGHT
MADDIE HAD NO real idea what to expect at the end of the nine-hour trip—mostly by plane, but for the final leg on the small speedboat which had been waiting for them at the marina. But any awkwardness at being so far removed from her comfort zone with Leo was dispelled in her speechless wonderment at the stunning island on which they finally found themselves.
Evening was fast approaching, and as they were taken from one marina on the main island to be deposited at another marina on its much smaller sister, she could just about appreciate the scenery as it was gradually absorbed into darkness. Burnt orange skies turned to violet, then finally to star-pricked black, and she saw lush vegetation, soft, rounded hills, a main road that was just big enough for two cars to pass side by side, and banks upon banks of gently swaying coconut trees, tall and spindly and graceful.
‘It’s stunning,’ she breathed, her head swinging from left to right as the car which had been waiting for them, and which Leo was now handling like an expert, bounced along the uneven road.
There was virtually no traffic at all. But lights from occupied houses could be glimpsed as they went along. This was the enclave of the super-rich—an island on which they could relax without fear of paparazzi or nosy neighbours with binoculars.
Somewhere close to the marina they had left behind was a small but functioning town, where the essentials could be purchased and where several high-end restaurants catered for the island’s wealthy visitors, and for anyone else who wanted to travel by boat from the main island and enjoy the top-rated cuisine.
Leo explained all this as they drove towards his villa. His voice was low and soothing, and the melodious background noise of the sea was achieving the impossible and making her forget all about the stress she had left behind in Ireland.
Leo had promised her complete rest and relaxation and he was already delivering on that promise big-time. She hadn’t felt this rested in a long, long time.
Sneaking a sideways glance at his strong profile as he concentrated on driving, she felt her body respond in the way she had tried so hard to train it not to do. Her breathing slowed and her eyelids fluttered and she was assailed by total recall of how those strong hands had felt roaming all over her body.
She pushed those thoughts away to the back of her mind because they were inappropriate. She and Leo had to grope their way to a new and different footing, and getting turned on by him had no place in that scenario.
They would share a child and have a cordial but detached relationship. There could be nothing else for them. Because she could never and would never marry anyone who had to be dragged up the aisle like a prisoner in handcuffs. She deserved better—no matter what he said about two parents being better than one. She knew that two parents were better than one! But only if those parents had married for the right reasons.
What if her parents had decided to stick together because of her? Would her childhood have been picture-perfect with a disillusioned and bitter mother and a father manacled against his will? He would only have wanted marriage for the fortune he’d anticipated getting out of her mother, and would have suddenly found himself anchored down because of a child on the way.
Needless to say that was a fairly impossible scenario to imagine, because her father hadn’t had an ounce of responsibility running through his veins, but still...
And yet for all that sensible reasoning, with the balmy night air outside and the foreign sight of a velvety black sky dotted with stars, Maddie was turned on—as though a dimmer switch had been buzzing in the background and had suddenly been turned to full beam.
She shifted, and was alarmed at the suffocating sense of want.
It was almost a relief when the car rounded a bend and there was the villa, lit up on the outside. It was ranch-style, with a massive outer veranda that seemed to circle the whole impressive building like a necklace. They drove into the courtyard, with Leo making innocuous conversation about the island and what she might expect by way of entertainment.
Which was very little from the sounds of it.
‘I hate clubs anyway,’ Maddie said distractedly as she stared at the villa and tried to get her head around how much her life had changed in the space of a few months.
She rested her hand on her stomach and for a few seconds wished that the perfect life she’d always dreamed of had materialised. With a baby on the way and financial security, and finally feeling well and truly over her stupid, ill-advised ex, things should have been so good—but what promised so much on the outside was riddled with rot on the inside, and she couldn’t get away from that.
Leo didn’t care about her. He was doing all this because of the baby. If it weren’t for the new life she was carrying he would have waged a no-holds-barred attack on her in order to get the store, and the single night they had shared would have been a distant memory.
He didn’t care about her.
But she cared about him.
She shivered and tried to unravel that thought so that she could pick it apart and make a nonsense of it. But it had formed and it refused to budge.
She cared about him.
She might have thrown caution to the wind and slept with him for all the right reasons, but she had remained connected to him after sex, even though she’d barely been aware of it.
And then finding out she was pregnant... That had opened a door and allowed all sorts of things to enter—all sorts of emotions that she hadn’t been able to staunch. She’d seen beyond the billionaire. And once that had happened she’d been seduced by all the complex sides of him that showed him to be honourable, decent, fair...
She’d fallen for those traits.
She’d fallen for the guy who had stepped up to the plate when it had mattered and had backed off when she had told him to.
Maddie had to remind herself strenuously of all the reasons she had told him to back off, because in a moment of weakness, as he drew to a stop and then turned to look at her, his beautiful face all shadows and angles, she wondered what she had done.
He’d proposed marriage and she’d turned him down flat. Why? Had he been right? Had she been selfish?
She could do a lot worse than marry someone who was not the sort of ruthless money-making machine she had written him off as being. And who knew? He could come to love her. Couldn’t he?
Maddie hated having those thoughts, because she knew how dangerous they were.
‘Hello?’ Leo interrupted drily. ‘I’ve lost you. Please don’t tell me that you’ve suddenly decided to get cold feet because you’re going to be sharing a villa with me.’
‘Huh?’ Maddie blinked.
Leo contained his impatience. ‘Separate quarters,’ he told her abruptly, swinging out of the car and feeling the blast of late-evening humidity, hearing the orchestra of insects which was so much part and parcel of this part of the world.
Never had he had to curtail his energy and his driving need to act as much as over the past few hours. It was frustrating. He was the father of her child and prepared to do the decent thing. He was ready to sacrifice his freedom for the greater good. He couldn’t understand why it was so damned hard for her to see that and accept it.
He prided himself on being a pretty unemotional guy, but now he was having to deal with irrational mood swings. One minute he was optimistic, determined to work his way into any cracks he could see, to find a foothold and frankly exploit it. The next minute he could smell her retreat and was at a loss as to whether to push forward or stand still. There was a helplessness to this situation that he found maddening, and it took all he had to tame his urge to do something.
His work was suffering. For the first time in his life he wasn’t able to focus with the level of intensity he was so accustomed to. He was, for once, impotent. Unable to stamp his authority and get what he wanted, what he knew was right. And he thought about her. Without warn
ing he would think about the sound of her laughter, or the way she sometimes looked at him out of the corner of her eye, or the things she said that could make him laugh out loud because her sense of humour so often mirrored his.
It was doing his head in.
‘Separate quarters?’ Maddie parroted.
‘You needn’t worry that your privacy is going to be invaded in any way,’ Leo gritted, not looking at her but heaving the suitcases out of the car and preceding her into the villa. ‘Although I should warn you in advance that there’s no one here at the moment. We’re both adults, and I didn’t think it was necessary to have members of staff hovering here past their bedtime because we need chaperones.’
Maddie flushed, clearly apprehensive that he might not be able to restrain himself around her. Where would she have got that idea? Considering he’d backed right off and hadn’t shown the slightest interest in her since she’d turned him down.
‘Absolutely!’ She smiled brightly and changed the subject. ‘The villa is gorgeous, Leo. I’m surprised you don’t want to retire here permanently!’
‘Sun, sea and stars has never been my thing for longer than five minutes.’
Leo grinned that sexy grin that made her quiver inside.
‘You’re more wine, women and song?’ Maddie quipped, following him into the villa and doing a complete turn as she absorbed her surroundings.
Cool shades of cream complemented wood and the bold silkscreen paintings on the walls. White shutters would keep the glare of the sun out. And as she wandered, agog, towards an expanse of glass towards the back of the villa, she glimpsed manicured lawns, lit up just as the front was.
When she turned around it was to find Leo looking at her—although he looked away as soon as their eyes met.
‘Hungry?’ he asked.
‘A bit.’
‘Kitchen’s through here. Food will have been prepared and there will be no shortage of anything.’
‘This is the most amazing house I’ve ever been in,’ Maddie breathed, frankly awestruck and working hard to remember every socialist tendency that should be fighting to play down the shameless splendour of the villa.
Leo paused to look at her again, head tilted to one side. ‘Funny, but I no longer notice my surroundings,’ he mused truthfully.
‘That’s because you’ve always had far too much money,’ she said sternly, and he burst out laughing, his navy eyes appreciative.
‘I never thought I’d ever hear those words leave any woman’s mouth.’
‘Then you’ve been mixing with the wrong type of woman.’
She wasn’t looking at him as she said this. She was shamelessly peering out through the glass doors, squinting into the darkness, intrigued by the glimpse of an illuminated infinity pool.
‘What sort of women do you think I should have been mixing with?’
Maddie started, because he had come up behind her and she could see his reflection in the glass—a towering, impossibly forceful presence that gave her goosebumps. The urge to sink back against that hard body was so overpowering that she inhaled deeply and stared blindly, trying hard to block him from her line of vision.
‘Well?’
Leo stepped closer towards her. He had managed to angle the conversation into a place that felt highly personal, and suddenly he seemed determined to explore all those places she was trying to keep hidden from him—places where desire and lust were locked away.
‘I—I don’t know,’ she stammered.
When she turned round it was to discover that he was even closer to her than she’d thought. But if she stepped back she’d bump into the glass. She was trapped with only inches between them.
Maddie could feel the heat emanating from his body in waves, and like a dose of incense it went to her head and made her feel giddy. She licked her lips and tried to think straight.
‘Tut-tut,’ Leo chided softly. ‘You can’t just make sweeping statements and then refuse to back them up. Do you think I should have been going out with earnest young women who like nothing better than to spend an evening discussing books?’
Maddie shifted and blushed. She tried to imagine Leo with a woman fitting that description and honestly couldn’t think of any woman who wouldn’t want to rip his clothes off within five seconds of occupying the same sofa as him.
‘Well, they would have been better than women who like you for your money.’
‘What makes you think that earnest young women who like discussing books wouldn’t want me for my money? Wouldn’t be impressed by all of this?’ He spread his arms in an all-encompassing gesture, but his fabulous eyes remained firmly fixed to Maddie’s face. ‘After all, you are.’
Maddie glared at him and Leo laughed.
‘But I do know that you weren’t attracted to me because of my bank balance,’ he murmured with satisfaction. ‘Were you?’
Maddie muttered something inaudible. He was pinning her into a corner, standing just a fraction too close to her and looking at her just a little too intently and with slightly too much sexy humour for her to be comfortable.
Sex was off the menu!
But then she mentally kicked herself for even thinking that that would be going through his head. Leo was good at making her think all sorts of forbidden thoughts just by doing what he was doing now—getting just a little too much under her skin. He probably didn’t even realise what he was doing!
Restless in her own skin, Maddie stared down for a few seconds and fidgeted.
‘I really like that about you...’
Leo placed one finger under her chin in a barely there touch and Maddie immediately looked up, bright green eyes meeting deepest blue.
Suddenly she had somehow managed to turn into a swooning Victorian maiden—the same swooning maiden who had been bowled over by him, enough to leap into bed with him before he’d even finished asking. And as far as impulse decisions went, how clever had that one been? Considering she was standing here now, pregnant with his baby?
And yet...
When Maddie went through those ‘sliding doors’ and thought about the other road she might have gone down, she knew that she preferred this one.
What if he hadn’t been after her store? What if he had genuinely been who he’d said he was? Or implied he was? A sexy guy just passing through—another rolling stone looking for adventure?
One night of passion and that would have been it. She would never have lain eyes on him again. She couldn’t get her head around the enormity of that, because he had managed to become such a huge part of her life—always there in her thoughts in one way or another.
With the less attractive option—and the reason why she had to stand firm against the pulsing tide of craving that threatened to breach her defences the second she took her eye off the ball—came the realisation that under normal circumstances, and without a baby on the way, she would have met him again.
They would have had their one night and then she would have met the real Leo—the billionaire who wanted what she had and would stop at nothing to get his hands on it. He wouldn’t have been toting her off to this fabulous villa in a tropical paradise. He would have been sitting, steely eyed, on the opposite side of a boardroom table while his team of lawyers tried to prise the store away from her. He wouldn’t have given a damn about the sentiment wrapped up in her need to do something with her legacy. She would have been disposable.
Unfortunately nothing could stop the ache inside her when their eyes locked. It was as if he had somehow programmed her brain to ignore common sense. She could give herself a thousand bracing lectures about why she couldn’t afford to let her body do the talking, but the second he did what he was doing now—looking at her like that—she was all lust and craving and weak-kneed desire.
‘You bucked the trend,’ Leo continued in the same musing low voice, as rich and as silky as the finest
chocolate. ‘You thought I had nothing and you weren’t bothered. In fact what bothered you was thinking that you might have more than me...’
‘I’m suspicious of rich guys after Adam,’ Maddie breathed. ‘And besides, I was raised not to place too much importance on money. I guess, when I look back, that was my mother’s response to being disinherited. She’d given up everything for love. She couldn’t start telling me that the only thing that mattered was money. But she must have found it so hard—especially in the beginning, when she could still remember what it was like to have everything she wanted at the snap of a finger.’
‘Like I said...you bucked the trend...’
Maddie was mesmerised by his eyes, weakly unable to tear her gaze away. She blinked and gathered herself against the riptide pulling her under. ‘Poor Leo. What a daily strain it must be, having to beat back women who want nothing more than to do whatever you want and fall into bed with you.’
Leo laughed and stepped back—which at least meant that she could breathe without fear that her airways would start closing up.
‘Fortunately,’ he drawled, ‘I’m made of stern stuff, and I’ve found that I can handle that thorny dilemma reasonably well. Now, shall I show you to your quarters? You can shower and then join me for something to eat. It’s late, but you need to fatten up.’
Wrenched out of her heated torpor, Maddie took a few seconds to establish that Leo was back to his usual self—casual and courteous and practically whistling a merry tune as he spun round and began sauntering off into the bowels of the sprawling villa.
She tripped along, soon catching up with him. She’d packed only one suitcase, which he’d retrieved from the airy hallway. When she reached for her carry-on he tut-tutted in a fashion that made her teeth snap together in frustration and took it from her.
‘I’m not completely helpless, Leo,’ she said, her mouth downturned and resentful because she knew that, however appropriate it was, this was not how she wished to be treated by him.
The Italian's One-Night Consequence Page 12