It irked him, however, that she was still managing to fester away inside some corner of his brain, disrupting the smooth running of his life, causing him to lose concentration in the middle of meetings. Even when he had been out with one of his lawyer friends, a glamorous blonde whom he had dated off and on in the past, he had still been unable to shake off the uninvited image of another woman—one with curly, golden hair and soft, blue eyes—adorning his bed.
Never having dealt with a woman walking away from him, Leo could only think that his problem lay in the novelty of the situation in which he now found himself.
Why else would she still be on his mind, like a low-level virus he hadn’t quite managed to clear out of his system?
Or maybe, having bought into the notion that he needed to have a change from clever, hard-nosed power babes, he was just frustrated at having his plans thwarted.
Leo was unaccustomed to analysing emotional situations. The women he had dated in the past had seldom brought their personal baggage to the table, and the ones who had had been the quickest to go. That was just the way he operated and he was unapologetic about it. Now he found himself spending far too much time thinking about what Heather had said, furious at her self-righteous assumption that she was somehow morally superior to him because she had decided on a life of self-imposed celibacy to deal with what had obviously been a grim marriage.
He was scowling, chewing over her accusations that he was little more than a ruthless womaniser, when he felt the vibration of his mobile phone in his pocket.
His first thought was that he hoped it wasn’t the leggy, blonde lawyer. They had parted company without having made any arrangements to meet up again, but she had threatened to be ‘in touch’, and he had been too polite to tell her not to bother.
He therefore answered in the tone of voice of someone prepared to deliver a let down.
To hear Heather’s voice down the line brought him to his feet in surprise, but he recovered fast and bypassed all the usual pleasantries to ask curtly what she wanted.
His response was pretty much what she had expected, but, hearing his dark, velvety voice at the other end of the line, still had Heather’s nerves jangling.
She had steeled herself to make the call, had known that she had to. In her hand, she was still clutching Katherine’s address book, which she had found in the little chest of drawers by the telephone in the kitchen as instructed.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ she apologised. ‘I tried your land line at your house, but you weren’t in.’
‘Repeat. What do you want?’
‘There’s no need to be so hostile.’
‘You’ve interrupted me in the middle of…let’s just say I’m busy.’
Busy doing what? Heather thought. And with whom? She swallowed back a dark, intrusive jealousy that sprang out at her from nowhere and left her shaken.
‘It’s about your mother.’
Leo tensed. ‘What about my mother?’
‘She’s in hospital,’ Heather told him bluntly.
‘Hospital? That’s impossible. I spoke to her last night and she was perfectly fine.’
‘She’s had a fall, Leo. She was using the ladder to change a light bulb and she fell. Apparently she hadn’t secured it properly, and she must have landed in an awkward position. Daniel and I have just come back from the hospital. She’s broken her leg, and I’m afraid she’s going to be there for at least a couple of weeks. I’m sorry. I know you’re all wrapped up with you whatever it is you’re in the middle of doing, but you’re going to have to come up.’
‘I’m on my way.’
So this was how it felt to have someone hang up on you. She took a couple of seconds to regain her composure, then she turned to Daniel, who was exhausted and finishing the last of the meal which she had hurriedly prepared for him the minute they had set foot back into the house.
‘Your dad’s on his way here,’ she said with a reassuring smile. Daniel hadn’t reacted well to his grandmother’s fall, and Heather suspected that it was because she had become the one stable person in his life, the adult on whom he had learnt to depend following his mother’s death. The ambulance, that ride to the hospital, seeing Katherine’s ashen face, must have taken him back in time. Heather had made sure to be very gentle with him and to assure him that everything was going to be just fine. She had brought him home, sat him down at the kitchen table and made him a fluffy cheese-omelette with potatoes and chatted comfortingly about inconsequential things that had happened to him at school.
‘When you’ve finished eating I’ll run you a nice, hot bath, and then it’s sleep time for you, Dan.’
‘Do I have to go to school tomorrow? I haven’t done my homework.’
‘Oh, I think Miss Porter will understand. I’ll take you in and explain the situation myself, so there’s no need for you to worry on that score.’ She began clearing away his dishes, stacking them in the dishwasher.
‘Will my father be here when I get up in the morning?’
‘Of course he will!’ Just the thought of Leo closing the gap between them in that big, silent car of his was enough to bring her out in a cold sweat. She had been careful to avoid being around on the occasions he had visited. Yes, avoidance was always the coward’s way of dealing with a problem, but Heather hadn’t cared. If thinking about the man had sent her nerves into crazy free fall, then how bad would it have been to actually see him? Worse, to have to talk to him and feel those fabulous eyes of his rake over her with pity and scorn? Because she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he would not have understood a word of what she had told him about learning from her past experience with Brian, about not jumping into bed with anyone just because she happened to fancy them. He had looked at her as if she had taken leave of her senses, and she had been left feeling like Miss Haversham on a bad day.
‘He’s your dad, Daniel,’ Heather asserted with more optimism than confidence. ‘He’s going to be here when you need him.’
‘He can’t be here. He works in London. He showed me around his office the last time we went down. He says he’s away a lot. What if he’s away and Gran’s still in hospital? What then?’
‘He runs his own company, Dan. He can choose whether he goes away or not, and if he’s needed here then he’ll choose to stay put.’
That closed that particular line of enquiry, and Heather didn’t show how anxious she was that Daniel’s predictions did not materialise. Katherine had been thrilled with what she had described as her son ‘making such a big effort’, but as far as Heather was concerned Leo’s ‘big effort’ was only really big in comparison to how extremely small it had been before. With Katherine in hospital, Leo would have to make more than just what he considered ‘a big effort’. He would have to put great sections of his life on hold.
The little boy fell into sleep within minutes and, without the distraction of his worrying list of questions, Heather had time on her hands to get really wound up over Leo’s impending arrival.
She felt crumpled and unprepared. Three hours previously, Katherine had called and calmly explained that she had taken a tumble from a step ladder and was in a little bit of pain. In fact, Heather had rushed over to find the older woman on the ground, unable to move and white as a sheet. There had only been time to phone for an ambulance, to try to comfort a wideeyed, terrified Daniel, and then the mad, panicked hospital scenario of waiting and X-rays and doctors. Any question of having a bath had been out of the question, and so here she was, dishevelled and unable to leave the house, because Daniel was upstairs sleeping and couldn’t be left on his own.
She calmed herself with a pot of tea, having phoned the hospital and spoken to Katherine, who was sorted out in a private room, and thankfully in considerably less pain, but anxious about Daniel and about having to go under the knife.
She must have fallen into a light doze because the sharp ring of the doorbell made her jump and she hurried out, giving herself no time to dwell on the prospect of s
eeing Leo again and thereby get herself into a tizzy.
She had managed to convince herself that he couldn’t be as impossibly overwhelming as she remembered, that his impact had really only been so powerful because initially she had not expected him to be so good-looking; that she had had valuable time to put everything into perspective and so would be prepared to face him. Besides, none of that mattered, given the situation.
She was wrong on all counts.
She pulled open the door and momentarily froze. Her skin suddenly felt hot and tight and she had a moment of sheer, blind panic as she took in the stunningly beautiful lines of his lean, chiselled face; she was as much affected by his masculine beauty now as she had been the first time she had clapped eyes on him. Against her lacy bra, she could feel her nipples tingle and harden and respond to that unbidden memory that this was the man who had wanted to make love to her.
‘Are you going to stand there gaping for much longer?’ Leo asked. He placed the palm of his hand flat against the door and gave it a little push, which was Heather’s cue to step back immediately and rein in her turbulent thoughts.
He had noticed her gaping at him like a teenager with a crush! She could have died of embarrassment.
‘You made good time,’ she said, clearing her throat.
‘No traffic at this time of night.’ Leo strode into the house and then turned around to look at her. ‘Tell me what happened. In detail.’
‘Of course. Would you like something to drink?’ She watched in fascination as he impatiently began rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt. He had ditched the tie at some point during the journey, and her eyes were drawn to that slither of bronzed skin where the top two buttons of his shirt had been undone.
‘Just tell me what happened, and then I intend to head straight to the hospital.’
‘Now?’
‘I’m not one to stand around waiting for the grass to grow under my feet.’
‘But no one’s going to be there! I mean of course, your mother will be there, but you won’t be able to find a doctor or anything.’
‘You’d be surprised what I’m capable of achieving,’ Leo informed her with such bone-deep, casual conviction that Heather was left in no doubt that he would have a consultant dashing out to see him at the speed of light.
He was heading towards the kitchen and Heather followed in his wake, rather like an obedient dog waiting to take orders from its master. As he grabbed himself a bottle of water from the fridge and began to drink, he actually snapped his fingers, and she began telling him the sequence of events, concluding by assuring him that his mother was fine, all things considered.
Leo continued to drink until the water was completely gone, then he looked at her carefully.
He had been looking forward to seeing her again, having, with a sense of satisfaction, regained control over the situation by realising that her vanishing acts had been a direct consequence of the impact he had made on her—forget all that rubbish about never going near a man like him in a thousand years. If she had been so convinced of her rightness, she wouldn’t have spent the two weekends he had been up on mysterious away-days.
Of course, he wouldn’t touch her with a barge pole now, but it still made him feel good that he hadn’t been off-target when he had tuned in to that high-voltage sexual awareness he had felt emanating from her.
Annoyingly, however, he was aware that his body was lagging behind his thoughts for once.
Not even the alarming dullness of her clothes—a pair of baggy, grey jogging-bottoms, an equally baggy tee shirt and an even baggier cardigan thrown over it—could reduce the surge of adrenaline he had felt the minute she had opened the door to him.
The fact that she hadn’t been able to conceal her reaction to seeing him was overshadowed by the realisation that he wasn’t quite as much in control of things as he had anticipated.
‘Why didn’t you think to call me sooner?’
Heather counted to ten. ‘Everything was frantic here. By the time things had calmed down and Katherine had been seen to, I called you at your house, but you weren’t there and your mother couldn’t remember your mobile number.’
‘It’s programmed into her phone.’
‘Which she didn’t think to take with her!’ She took a deep breath.
‘She must have asked you to bring it for her once she was at hospital?’
‘Katherine doesn’t see her mobile phone as some kind of indispensable appendage, Leo. You might, but she doesn’t. In fact, she very rarely remembers to take it with her when she goes out so, no, it wasn’t on her list of requests when I came back here to fetch her some clothes for the hospital. If I had seen it lying around, then I might have thought to take it in for her, but I didn’t.’
‘And I suppose it didn’t occur to you to look for it because it’s not a necessary appendage for you either?’ He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration because he could feel himself getting away from the matter in hand, falling victim to an inexplicable surge of something, some uninvited emotion that he didn’t want or have time for. ‘I might have got here sooner if I had been contacted earlier. How’s Daniel been?’
‘How do you think?’ Heather asked, and then she subdued her aggression to add, in a more level voice, ‘He’s been pretty rotten, poor kid. I think he remembers…Well, it might help if you talk to him. He’s asleep now, but in the morning. Just reassure him that everything’s going to be okay.’
‘Of course.’ How the hell was he going to do that? Leo wondered. That kind of intimate conversation with his son did not come naturally to him. Maybe, if he’d been a father figure throughout his formative years, he might know how to handle things…But, no; he refused to think of the unpleasant circumstances surrounding that murky issue. In the past month or so, the boy had at least begun to look at him slightly less unforgivingly. He had opened up enough to occasionally mention his mother, but there had been no heart-to-heart chats about feelings and emotions. How was he supposed to handle that now? ‘I expect this must bring back memories,’ Leo said, annoyed to realise that he was looking for clues on how to deal with the situation.
‘Yes. I think so.’ Some of Heather’s tension melted away. ‘He might need a bit of reassurance that you aren’t going to disappear with Katherine in hospital.’
‘Disappear?’
‘As in hot foot it back to London the minute you have a quick word with the consultant.’
In truth, the reality of the situation was really only now beginning to sink in. His mother would be off her feet for some weeks. He would have to make suitable arrangements for Daniel. He could hardly be expected to abandon work for an indefinite period of time; it had been years since he had taken more than a few days off!
‘Right. Well, I’m going to head off to the hospital now. I take it you will be able to cover here until I return?’
The underlying assumption was that she would be. Here was a man who took it as a given that other people would have no problem in falling in with whatever plans he had for them, even if it meant disrupting their lives.
‘Yes, but then I’ll need to be away.’
‘Naturally. Art courses to attend, friends to visit.’
‘How did you know about the art course?’
Leo decided that it was definitely time to go. ‘My mother must have said something in passing.’ He began walking away. It was late, and it would probably have been more sensible to wait until morning before going to the hospital, but something had changed between his mother and him over the past weeks. Having been emotionally independent of her for more years than he cared to remember, Leo had recently made tentative steps to bridge the invisible gap that separated them. He had stepped out of his cocoon and begun to see the considerable sacrifices which she had made for him with Daniel. He had also been treated to one or two trips down memory lane, which was a place he had seldom visited, and had begun piecing together a past that might not have been quite as clear cut as he remembered.
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Now, he was reluctant to jeopardise that fragile relationship by showing up in his own sweet time, allowing his mother to assume, with that resigned air of hers, that yet again the pressing demands of work took precedence over everything else.
‘What time do you think you’ll be back?’ Heather pressed him for an answer.
‘Couple of hours. Why?’
‘Look at me!’ She drew his attention to her dishevelled state and then instantly regretted it when he paused to look at her. It was a thorough inspection that took in the very worst of her stay-at-home gear, the sort of clothes which would have had her instantly hanged, drawn and quartered by the Fashion Police. She hadn’t glanced into a mirror recently, but she was willing to bet that her face was shiny and her hair was a mop. ‘I need a bath,’ she muttered.
‘I don’t remember telling you that you couldn’t have one.’ Leo shrugged, gritting his teeth as his imagination surged beyond her unsightly garb to the body underneath. ‘I have a wardrobe of spare clothes upstairs. Feel free to take what you need.’
Heather could think of nothing she would rather do less, but she nodded, willing him on his way so that she could take advantage of his absence to shower, change and scramble into one of the five spare bedrooms before he returned.
Thanks to an interruption by Daniel, who had woken and had needed comforting and then a rambling story before he fell back to sleep, it was nearly midnight by the time Heather had her much-longed-for bath. She found one of Leo’s pristine white work-shirts to use as a nightie. Although it was much shorter than anything she usually dared wear, at least it was clean.
Having had nothing to eat for the evening, she was aware of the growling pains in her stomach when she finally settled into bed and turned off the light. Her last meal had been hours previously, a snatched sandwich in between preparing some stuff for the art class which she did at the local school.
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