‘Isn’t it? I thought…Mum said that…’
Heather felt her face flame with unbidden colour, but her voice remained steady as she shrugged and gave a little laugh of dismissal. ‘Oh, that,’ she whispered in a shifty voice. What on earth had Katherine said? Okay, so it didn’t take a genius to hazard a pretty good guess. Leo had clearly said nothing to his mother about recent events, and Katherine still believed that Heather and her son were an item. There had been no opportunity to talk to her, and when Heather thought about the awkward conversation that lay ahead—because she knew that she would have to disabuse Katherine of her romantic daydreams sooner rather than later—she felt a little nauseous.
‘That…was nothing.’ She gave a nervous, tinkling laugh and took refuge in a large mouthful of dessert.
‘Now now, no need to be coy. I think we’ve known each other long enough for complete honesty. Mum’s said Cupid’s been busy with his little arrows.’
‘You’re awful!’ But she was laughing, although she could feel the hysteria of tears welling up just below the surface. Thankfully she was spared any further embarrassment by Katherine standing up and excusing herself.
‘Daniel needs to go to bed now,’ she said, ignoring her grandson’s pleas that it was the weekend, that he wanted to see his dad, that no one in his class went to bed before ten on a weekend. ‘And I’m feeling rather tired,’ she admitted, clasping Daniel’s hand affectionately. ‘Now,’ she said, turning to Daniel, ‘are you going to be the perfect gentleman and help an old lady up the stairs?’
‘Mum, I’ll walk you up.’ Alex was already on his feet, but was being waved down by Katherine, who wanted the young things to enjoy getting to know one another.
‘I’m just sorry that Leo couldn’t be here, but he’ll be back home first thing in the morning.’ She looked at Heather warmly. ‘There’s an awful lot for him to return to.’
Heather smiled wanly. She could feel a thin veil of perspiration break out, but this was not the right time for revelations, not when Katherine looked all in and Daniel was yawning and coming over to wrap his thin arms around her for a hug. Furthermore, she thought, why should she be the one to break it to Katherine that the hot item had turned into a damp squib? Hadn’t she been put through the wringer enough?
She would stay for a quick cup of coffee with Alex and then she would retreat and leave it to Leo to fill his mother in. After all, she thought bitterly, when it came to letting women down his experience was second to none.
‘So tell me everything,’ were Alex’s first words as they sat on the sofa in the sitting room, he with a glass of port—because, he had told her, travelling the world had deprived him of that one small pleasure—and she with a cup of coffee which she cradled in her hands.
‘Shall we start with age?’ Heather sipped her coffee. ‘Height? Vital statistics? Occupation?’
‘All very interesting, of course, but I’m thinking more along the lines of you and Leo. What’s going on there? Mum’s over the moon. She thinks he’s a changed person and it’s all down to you. Actually, she’s all but bought the hat.’
Heather groaned and sat back. ‘I don’t want to talk about Leo.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘Why,’ she asked, half-exasperated, half-amused at his persistence, ‘are you and your brother just so damned stubborn?’
‘You mean I have something in common with Leo?’
‘You don’t have an awful lot of time for him, do you?’
Alex wagged an admonishing finger. ‘Uh-uh. No way. You’re not getting off that lightly.’
Heather compressed her lips and stared down at the sensible black pumps which in all events had been an unnecessary gesture. Leo hadn’t even bothered to turn up. He’d been that horrified at her admission that avoidance had been his chosen way of dealing with the prospect of seeing her again.
‘How long are you here for?’
‘Another attempt to change the subject. Things must be bad. ‘Course, if you really don’t want to talk about it then I’m happy to chat about your occupation, but it’s always better to get things off your chest. Or else you risk ending up like Leo.’
It wasn’t so much his tenacity as the sympathy in Alex’s voice that did it. The tears that had been threatening like black clouds on a summer day came in a sobbing rush that frightened her with its intensity. She hunched over on the sofa and buried her head in her arms. When she felt Alex’s arms enfold her, she turned to him blindly, thankful for his silent, accepting compassion. For the past few days she had kept her feelings locked up inside her, and now it was a relief to have someone else share the burden.
When she felt the handkerchief thrust into her hand she grabbed it gratefully, and after a while the racking sobs subsided to the odd hiccup until she was able to draw back and make an attempt to gather herself.
Unburdening herself of her feelings about Leo was like shedding herself of a great weight, and once she had started the need to tell everything was an unstoppable force, helped by the fact that Alex was an excellent listener. There were very few interruptions. As her words trailed off into silence, he told her that she needed a brandy, and she nodded in agreement even though she had never touched brandy in her life before.
He was still holding her hand. Every so often, he patted it sympathetically. His voice was a low murmur, which was very soothing, although she wasn’t really taking in a word he was saying. She was back to thinking about Leo, thinking about the love she had confessed to, wondering what he was doing right now. Would work keep him away all night or would he be filling the space she had left behind with another woman? Just the thought of that made her clutch at the handkerchief again.
Neither of them noticed the figure in the doorway. The overhead light hadn’t been switched on, and the light from the small lamp on the table by the mantelpiece barely managed to reach the far corners of the room.
The sound of Leo’s voice, ice-cold and forbidding, shocked them into springing apart. Heather felt the blood rush to her face and she stared helplessly at him. His face was in shadow, but there was no mistaking the angry tension of his stance.
‘Am I interrupting something?’
Alex was the first to react, leaping to his feet with a grin on his face, but Leo stayed where he was, making no effort to move forward and take the hand which was outstretched towards his in a gesture of welcome.
‘I was about to leave,’ Heather muttered, lagging behind with the response. She was finding it hard to drag her eyes away from Leo’s face. She was mesmerised by the long lines of his muscular body, the same body which had covered hers in love-making. She looked at his mouth, the same mouth which could do things to her that no man ever had, and overwhelmed as she was she still couldn’t stop her body from its purely physical response at all that remembered passion. Her nipples tightened into sensitive buds and she felt hot moisture dampen her underwear.
‘We were just getting to know one another.’ Alex’s hand had dropped and he was eyeing his brother cautiously—as well he might, Heather thought, because Leo looked fit to kill. She felt a slow, burning anger begin to curl in the pit of her stomach.
Leo might have done his best to avoid her, might be enraged that she was still hanging around when he thought that the coast was clear, but that didn’t give him the right to vent his anger on his brother.
‘What exactly were the pair of you up to?’ Leo asked in the kind of soft, sibilant voice that sent a tremor of apprehension racing up and down her spine.
‘Up to?’ Alex countered the preposterous question with a laugh, but Heather could hear the nervousness behind the laughter and her heart went out to him because when it came to everything there was no contest between the brothers: physically, verbally…Leo would always be the winner and right now, for reasons she couldn’t understand, he looked very much as though there could be no better thing than taking on his brother.
‘Leo! What on earth are you talking about?’ Heather made to move towa
rds him, but fell back at the glance he shot in her direction.
What am I talking about? The innocence of the question was like a red rag to a bull. ‘I’m talking about finding the two of you huddled on the sofa like love birds,’ he bit out, taking a step towards her, although what he really, really wanted to do was cover the distance between himself and Alex and show him who was the boss. Respect for his mother kept him from fulfilling the desire, but if he kept his fists clenched to his sides this was still a war that had been a long time coming.
‘Leo, please,’ Heather pleaded in growing confusion. Was he jealous? Those were the enraged, possessive remarks of a jealous lover, but since when had Leo been either possessive or jealous? There was also something else going on here. The air felt thick and heavy with threat.
‘Love birds? You must be joking, Leo! I told you, Heather and I were just talking.’
‘About what? What conversation is so intimate that it requires you to be entwined with one another?’
‘We weren’t entwined,’ Heather protested, while her heart continued to beat out an erratic tattoo.
They had leapt apart like guilty lovers, Leo thought irrationally, and the more they defended themselves the more culpable they seemed to him. Rage was coursing through him like a toxin. He didn’t know where it was coming from. He could almost taste it in his mouth, and he had to breathe deeply to regain some of his formidable self-control.
Was it his imagination or did she look ever so slightly tousled? This was the woman who three days ago had confessed her love for him, shocking him with her honesty. He had felt as though a gauntlet had been laid down, and it had not been one which he had been inclined to take up. He had never given her the slightest inclination that there could be a future between them. Not only had she chosen to disregard that glaring point of truth, but she had stubbornly refused the two options which had been left open to her—either slink away with a discreet lack of fuss, or else put aside her silly dreams and continue their relationship, which would have been his preferred path. She must have known, he had told himself repeatedly, that to fling all her cards on the table would put him in an untenable position.
He was a man who was not fashioned for long-term relationships. Hadn’t he made that perfectly clear to her during the time they had spent together? More than with any previous woman, he had actually opened up to her under direct questioning, and had told her certain things about his marriage which had previously been kept in his own private terrain. Of course, he had not told her everything, but combined with everything else—and no one could say that he hadn’t been upfront from the start—the least she could have done was take the hint.
Women, the very few who had ever dared to nurture inappropriate ambitions as far as he was concerned, always but always took the hint.
He had spent three days telling himself that he had to be ruthless when it came to this one woman who had dared to crash through the barriers he had carefully, over time, constructed around himself.
He had decided that he would have one final conversation with her, clear the air.
The last thing he had expected was to walk in on her and his brother cuddled up on his mother’s sofa in virtual darkness.
Thinking about that now, Leo banged on the lights and proceeded to look first at her and then at his brother.
‘I didn’t think you would be back tonight.’ Heather filled the awkward silence with the worst choice of explanation and the taut lines of Leo’s face darkened further.
He hadn’t expected to find her still at the house, and this was the last thing he needed to hear. Was this how she was managing to deal with her unrequited love? He was besieged by a host of unpleasant, conflicting emotions. He had never before been aware that he was a man who had a comfort zone, a place which was inaccessible to the rest of the human race. He was now keenly aware that she had managed to barge right into it, because he didn’t feel himself, and it wasn’t because his brother was back on the scene.
Leo found that when he tried to think about it his brain seemed to shut down, leaving him floundering in a morass of weirdly unanswerable questions. He didn’t like it. It distracted him from the purity of his rage, forced him to ask why exactly he was so enraged. Was it just the thought that she might have declared her love for him—and she hadn’t been lying about that, because hadn’t he been the one who had sensed it, probably even before she had herself?—only to find herself in thrall to his brother, of all people?
‘Where did you think I would be?’
‘Katherine said that you had gone to London. It’s so late; I thought you might have stayed there overnight.’ Even with his face stony cold and her emotions all over the place, Heather was vitally aware of that leashed power and grace that was so hypnotic. His impact on her was so powerful that it made her feel giddy. ‘I…I should leave. You and your brother probably have a lot of catching up to do.’
In his mind’s eye, Leo was tormented by the picture of them sitting together in a darkened room, so close to one another that you couldn’t have put a cushion between them. Normally adept at eliminating anything that threatened to disturb his much-valued equilibrium, he was finding it impossible to erase the distasteful memory from his head.
He made himself look at Alex. By active choice, he had only seen him a handful of times over the years and it struck him that, yes, his brother was a man who might seem to him lightweight but to some women could easily appear appealing. He looked vaguely unruly, just the sort to ride his battered motorbike around the world. Just the sort to be on Heather’s wavelength. A free spirit. His tension ratcheted up a notch and a sense of purpose crystallised inside him like a block of ice.
‘Yes,’ Leo agreed, unsmiling. ‘But, first, let me apologise for misunderstanding a situation.’ He turned to Heather and forced himself to smile. ‘You’ll have to excuse a lover for being a little jealous.’
Lover? Wasn’t ex-lover a more fitting description of their current status? She looked at him in total bewilderment. Jealous? She would have been more capable of appreciating that startling sentiment if she wasn’t presently feeling as though she had somehow been transported to a parallel universe.
‘But—but—’ she stammered in utter confusion as he began walking slowly towards her. She glanced across to Alex, who seemed as perplexed as she was, and then back to Leo.
So she had confided all in his brother. Leo caught that exchanged glance, and at once read the situation as it really was. She had been pouring her heart out to Alex. The jealous rage that had swept over him had been misplaced. She loved him. The certainty of that knowledge, while frustrating—because he could have spared himself his momentary lapse in self-control—was surprisingly soothing. For once he didn’t mind being wrong about a situation.
‘A lover’s tiff,’ he threw at his brother while moving to curl his long fingers in Heather’s hair. It felt good. Better than he would have imagined possible. It also felt right, which was odd, considering he had spent three days building up a strong case for talking to her without the interference of emotions about where exactly she had gone wrong in trying to pin him down.
He felt himself harden, and it was an effort to bring himself down from that sudden surge of hot arousal. It was her proximity, the tempting fullness of her half-opened mouth.
Unable to resist, he lowered his head and took her mouth with his. ‘You’ve been crying,’ he murmured against her lips. ‘Was it because of me?’
‘Leo, no…’ Heather pushed him, but she was trembling so hard and he was an immovable force. He caught her fluttering hands in his and repeated his softly spoken question, demanding an answer, and when she gave an imperceptible nod he was momentarily overwhelmed by a surge of pure, primitive triumph.
Heather couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes, but she could sense his satisfaction at her miserable, grudging surrender, and she pulled back angrily. She forgot that Alex was still in the room. Leo could do that to her, make her forget everything, and he
was doing it now. For what? To prove that he could? He didn’t love her and he didn’t want her, but maybe he just didn’t care for the thought of her wanting someone else. He was a man who had become accustomed to absolute and supreme control. His high-octane, hugely successful financial acumen had won him an army of yes men, and his ludicrously powerful sex appeal had enabled him to snap his fingers and have any woman sprinting in his direction. So now that same desire to control would doubtless dictate that she pine for him.
She glared up at his arrogantly smug face and stamped down on her body’s weak, automatic response to his proximity. She was shaking as she wrenched herself away from him.
‘I fell for you, Leo,’ she told him, keeping her voice low, controlled and steady. ‘And, sure, right now I’m a little down in the dumps. But I won’t be crying for you for the rest of my life. I’ve already cried over one failed relationship.’
‘Don’t even think of putting me in the same bracket as your ex! I’ve already told you that the man was a creep!’
‘We were too young when we married, and he was weak. Since when are you any different?’
‘I’m a one-woman man,’ Leo responded comfortably, still riding high on the notion that she had been crying over him. Of course, he abhorred the thought of her being unhappy—but being unhappy on his behalf was a hell of a lot better than flinging herself into someone else’s arms as a method of recovery. ‘I don’t play the field when I know that there’s a woman keeping my bed warm for me.’
‘You’re a one-woman man for just as long as it suits you,’ Heather flung back at him, taking another step backwards and folding her arms. ‘You talk a lot about making sure never to give a woman the wrong idea, but I think you quite enjoy the thought that you can get them into a position where they’d do anything for you. ‘Course, that gets boring after a while, but when you walk away you can always remind them that you never promised them anything.’
‘That’s called being fair.’
‘That’s called being a creep. You’re just a different kind of creep, Leo!’
Hired for the Boss's Bedroom Page 15