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‘You’re working yourself up into a state.’
‘Please don’t pretend you care about my feelings because you’ve already amply demonstrated that you don’t.’ Holding herself together by a thread, she wrapped her arms around her body and met his gaze.
Brave, he thought absently, part of him intrigued by the sudden strength he saw in her. Yes, she was upset. But she wasn’t caving in, was she? He hadn’t known that she possessed a layer of steel. By the end of their relationship he’d come to the conclusion that she was so lightweight that the only thing preventing her from being blown away was the weight of his money in her handbag.
Leandro’s hand tightened on his glass and then he lifted it to his lips and drained it. Then he placed the glass carefully on the table in front of him.
‘Given the circumstances of your departure, I’m surprised you chose to come back.’
Sinking back onto the side of the bed, the fight seemed to go out of her and she suddenly looked incredibly tired. Tired, wet, beaten. ‘If you thought I wouldn’t then you know even less about me than I thought you did.’
‘I never knew you.’ It had been a fantasy. An illusion. Or maybe a delusion?
‘And whose fault is that? You didn’t want to know me, did you? You weren’t interested in me—just in sex, and when that—’ She broke off and took a breath, clearly searching for the words she wanted. ‘I wasn’t right for you. To start with you liked the fact that I was “different”. I was just an ordinary girl, living in the country, working on her parents’ farm. Unsophisticated. But the novelty wore off, didn’t it, Leandro? You wanted me to fit into your life. Your world. And I didn’t.’
Watching her so closely, he was able to detect the exact moment when anger turned to awareness.
Her eyes slid to his bare, bronzed shoulders and then back to his. It was like putting a match to kerosene. The chemistry that had been simmering exploded to dangerous levels and she turned away with a murmur of frustration, although whether it was with herself or him, he wasn’t sure. ‘Don’t you dare, Leandro! Don’t you dare look at me like that—as if everything hasn’t changed between us.’
‘You were looking at me.’
‘Because you’re standing there half-naked!’
‘Does that bother you?’
‘No, it doesn’t.’ She rubbed her hands up and down her arms, trying to warm them. ‘I don’t feel anything for you any more.’
‘Oh, you feel plenty for me, Millie,’ Leandro said grimly, ‘and that’s the problem, isn’t it? You hate the fact that you can feel that way. A woman like you shouldn’t find herself hopelessly attracted to a bad boy like me. It’s not quite decent, is it?’
‘I’m not here because of you.’
‘Of course you’re not.’ His tone caustic, he watched as she flinched away from his words. ‘You wouldn’t have made the journey for something as trivial as the survival of our marriage, would you? That was never important to you.’ Filled with contempt, Leandro lifted the glass, wondering how much whisky it was going to take to dull what he was feeling.
‘Are you drunk?’
‘Unfortunately, no, not yet.’ He eyed the glass. ‘But I’m working on it.’
‘You’re totally irresponsible.’
‘I’m working on that, too.’ He was about to lift the glass to his lips when he noticed that the sole of her boot was starting to come away. Remembering how obsessive she’d been about her appearance, he frowned. ‘You look awful.’
‘Most people would look awful compared with the cream of Hollywood,’ she said tartly. She lifted her hand and he thought she was going to smooth her damp hair, but then she let her hand drop as if she’d decided it wasn’t worth the effort. ‘She’s very beautiful.’
He heard the pain in her voice and gritted his teeth. ‘Jealousy was the one aspect of our relationship at which you consistently excelled.’
‘You’re so unkind.’
Leandro discovered that his fingers had curled themselves into a fist. ‘Unkind?’ His mouth tightened. ‘Yes, I’m unkind.’
‘Do you love her?’
‘Now you’re getting personal.’
‘Of course I’m getting personal! Did my sis—?’ Her voice cracked and she cleared her throat. ‘Did…Becca know you were seeing the actress?’
The mention of that name made Leandro want to drain the bottle of whisky, as did the unspoken accusation behind her words. ‘Are you blaming me for the fact that your sister crashed the car while under the influence of drink and drugs?’
‘She drank because you rejected her! She was suffering from depression.’
Thinking about what he knew, Leandro gave a humourless smile. ‘I’ll just bet she was.’
She sprang to her feet and crossed the room with the grace of a dancer. ‘Don’t you dare speak about the dead like that! If anyone was responsible for my sister’s fragile mental state, it’s you. You broke her heart.’
And Leandro committed the unpardonable sin. He laughed. And that grim humour cost him.
She slapped him.
Then she put her hand against her throat and stepped backwards, as if she couldn’t believe what she’d done. Her skin was so pale she reminded him of something conjured from a child’s fairy story.
‘I should probably apologise but I’m not going to,’ she whispered, her fingers pressed against her slender neck. ‘Do you know the most hurtful part of all this? You don’t even care. You destroyed our marriage for sex. It didn’t even mean anything. If you’d loved her maybe, just maybe, I would have been able to understand all this, but for you it was just physical.’
‘As a matter of interest, did you say any of this to her?’
‘Yes. Actually, I did. I went to see her just after she was admitted to that clinic in Arizona. I…’ She rubbed her fingers across her forehead. ‘I needed to try and understand. She confessed that she was so madly in love with you that she wasn’t thinking clearly.’
‘She knew exactly what she was doing,’ Leandro said flatly. ‘The only person your sister ever loved was herself. That was probably the only thing we ever had in common.’
‘That’s a very cynical attitude.’
‘I’m a cynical guy.’
‘So you wrecked our marriage for a woman you don’t even care about.’
‘I didn’t wreck our marriage, agape mou,’ Leandro spoke softly, his eyes fixing on her white face, as he hammered home his barb. ‘You did that. All by yourself.’
If he’d hit her, she couldn’t have looked more shocked. ‘How can you say that? What did you expect? I’m not the sort of woman who can turn a blind eye while her husband has an affair. Especially when the woman involved was his wife’s sister. You made her pregnant, Leandro! How was I supposed to overlook that?’ Visibly distressed, she turned away. ‘What I don’t understand is why, if you wanted my sister, did you bother with me at all?’
Leandro let that question hover in the air. ‘And does the fact that you don’t understand help you draw any conclusions?’
His question drew a confused frown and he realised that she was too upset to focus on the facts.
She’d seen. She’d believed. She hadn’t questioned. Hadn’t cared enough to question and the knowledge that she hadn’t cared left the bitter taste of failure in his mouth.
In a life gilded by success, she’d been his only failure.
Leandro flexed his shoulders to relieve the tension and the movement caught her attention, her eyes drifting to the swell of hard muscle. Her gaze was feather light and yet he felt the responding sizzle of sexual heat and almost laughed at his own weakness.
It seemed his body was nowhere near as choosy as his mind.
Millie stared at him for a long moment and then sank her teeth into her lower lip. ‘Leandro, do me a favour.’ Her voice was strained. ‘Put your shirt on. We can’t have a proper conversation with you standing there half-naked.’
‘This may surprise you, but I’ve been known to conduct a conversation even when naked.’ His sardonic tone masked his own anger and brought a flush to her cheeks.
‘I’m sure. But if it’s all the same with you, I’d like you to get dressed.’
‘Why? Is the sight of my body bothering you, Millie?’ His tone silky smooth, Leandro strolled across the bedroom and retrieved his shirt from the floor. ‘Are you finding it hard to concentrate?’ He shrugged the shirt back on, discovered that there were no buttons and spread his arms in an exaggerated gesture of apology. ‘She was a bit over-eager, I’m afraid. This is the best I can do.’
‘It’s fine.’ She averted her eyes, but not before both of them had shared a memory they would rather have forgotten. ‘The media have been running the story for days now, and it’s awful. Somehow they know about you and my sister, and they know the baby’s been brought here.’ Her voice wobbled. ‘Where…?’
‘Asleep on the next floor.’ His voice terse, Leandro strolled over to the window that overlooked the garden. ‘Someone from the clinic brought the baby to me. Your sister left him alone and uncared for while she went for her little drive. He was found crying and neglected.’ The anger in him was like a roaring beast and he was shocked by the strength required to hold it back. Control was a skill he’d mastered at an impossibly young age, but when he thought of the baby his thoughts raced into the dark. ‘Evidently she didn’t have a maternal bone in her body.’ Another woman, another place.
‘She was sick.’
‘Well, that’s one thing we agree on.’ Infested with greed. Aware that the past and the present had become dangerously tangled and the conversation was taking a dangerous turn, Leandro changed direction. ‘Why do you think they brought the baby here, Millie?’
‘The clinic said she left a note saying that you were the father. She wanted the baby to be with family.’
He made an impatient sound, marvelling at her naivety. ‘Or perhaps she just wanted to make sure there was no chance of reconciliation between us. Her last, generous gift to you.’ His carefully planted seed of suggestion landed on barren ground.
‘There never was any chance of reconciliation.’ She didn’t look at him. ‘Where’s the baby? I should be going.’
Leandro stilled. ‘Where, exactly, are you planning to go?’
‘It’s already past midnight. I’ve booked into a small bed and breakfast near here.’
‘A bed and breakfast?’ Leandro looked at her with a mixture of disbelief and fascination, realising just how little he knew about this woman. ‘Are you suggesting what I think you are?’
‘I’m taking the baby, of course. What did you think?’
‘So you’re planning to take in your sister’s baby and care for it—this is the same baby that is supposedly the result of an affair between your own sister and your husband. Whether you think your sister was lying or telling the truth—’
‘Telling the truth.’
Leandro’s jaw tightened. ‘Whichever. Your sister wrecked your marriage. She hurt you. And you’re willing to take her baby? What are you, a doormat?’
Her narrow shoulders were rigid. ‘No, I’m responsible. And principled. Qualities that you probably don’t recognise. Am I angry with my sister? Yes, I’m angry. And that feels really horrible because even while I’m grieving I’m hurt that she could have done that to me.’ Her voice shook. ‘She behaved terribly. Some people wouldn’t forgive that. If I’m honest I’m not sure that I’ll ever forgive that. She betrayed my trust. But at least she was in love with you. And I think at the end she was truly sorry.’
Leandro raised an eyebrow but she ploughed on.
‘It was the guilt that pushed her into depression. And whatever had happened, I would never have wanted her to…’ Her voice trembled. ‘We were sisters. And as for the baby—well, I don’t believe that a child should be held responsible for the sins of his parents. My sister is dead. You can’t bring up a baby, so I will have him. He will have a loving home with me as long as he needs one.’
‘So you’re proposing to love and care for your husband’s bastard, is that right?’
‘Don’t ever call him that.’ Her eyes blazed. ‘And, yes, I’m intending to care for him. He’s three months old. He’s helpless.’
Curiously detached, Leandro looked at her. She wasn’t classically beautiful, he mused, but there was something about her face that was captivating. ‘So you have forgiven your sister.’
‘I’m working on it.’ She caught her lip between her teeth. ‘I understand the effect you have on a woman. Even that Hollywood actress was willing to humiliate herself to spend a night with you. Tell me one thing—why, when you have a reputation for not committing to a woman, did you marry me?’
‘Frankly?’ Leandro lifted his eyes from his scrutiny of her soft lips. ‘At this moment I have absolutely no idea.’
‘You really know how to hurt. You treated our marriage lightly.’
‘On the contrary, you’re the one who walked out at the first obstacle.’
Her shoulders sagged, as if she was bearing an enormous weight. ‘If you’ve said everything you wanted to say, I’d like to take the baby.’
‘As usual you are being quite breathtakingly naïve. For a start there is a pack of journalists on my doorstep. How do you think they’re going to react if you leave here clutching the baby?’
‘I think it would reflect very badly on you. But you don’t care about that, do you? You never care what people think about you. If you did, you wouldn’t behave so badly.’
Leandro pressed the tips of his long fingers to his forehead, his control at breaking point. ‘We’ll talk about this in a minute,’ he snapped. ‘For goodness’ sake, go and use the bathroom. You’re soaking wet. And next time use the front door, like my wife, instead of creeping through the garden like a burglar.’
‘Whatever you say, you wouldn’t have wanted those headlines any more than I did.’
Leandro sent her a brooding glance, marvelling that the male libido could be such a self-destructive force. ‘The headlines will stop when they realise there is no story.’
She didn’t appear to register his words. Certainly she didn’t question his meaning. ‘As soon as I’m dry, I’ll take him away. We’ll both be out of your life.’
Leandro watched in silence, allowing her to delude herself for a short time.
His wife was back.
And he had no intention of letting her walk out again.
CHAPTER TWO
NUMB with misery, Millie stood in front of the mirror in the huge, luxurious bathroom. She didn’t reach for a towel. She did nothing to improve her appearance. She simply stared at herself.
No wonder, she thought numbly. No wonder he’d strayed.
Leandro Demetrios was six feet two inches of devastatingly handsome, vibrant masculinity and she was—she was, what?
Ordinary.
She was just so ordinary.
Staring at her wild, curling hair, she reflected on how long it had taken her each day to straighten it into the tame, sleek sheet that everyone expected. And even with the weight she’d lost during the misery of the last year, her breasts were still large, and her hips curvy.
No wonder he’d chosen her sister.
Trying not to think about that, Millie ran the tap and splashed cold water on her face. One thing about already having lost your husband to another woman, she thought, was that you no longer had to pretend to be someone different. She could just be herself. What did she have to lose?
Nothing.
She’d already lost it all.
But life kept throwing boulders at her, and she had a whole new challenge ahead of her. She had to put aside all her dreams of having her own baby, and instead love and nurture the baby that had been the result of her husband’s affair with her sister.
Caught in a sudden rush of panic, Millie covered her mouth with her hand. It was all very well to say she was going to do this, but what if she looked at the baby and hated it? That would make her an awful person, wouldn’t it?
She wanted to do the right thing, she really did, but what if doing the right thing proved too hard?
Her encounter with Leandro had been a million times harder than she’d anticipated and she’d always known it was going to be awful.
Even though their marriage was over, nothing had prepared her for the agonising pain of seeing Leandro with another woman. And worse still was the realisation that she hadn’t healed at all. She wasn’t over him and she never would be.
She’d learned to survive, that was all. But life without him was flat and colourless.
‘Millie?’ Leandro’s harsh tones penetrated the closed door and she stilled, fastened to the spot like a rabbit caught in headlights. Then her eyes slid to the bolt on the door. Even Leandro in a black temper couldn’t break his way through a solid bolt, could he?
She didn’t understand his anger. Surely he should have been grateful to her for solving a problem for him. The last thing he needed in his life was a baby.
An image of the actress slid into her brain and paralysed her. For a moment she couldn’t move or think.
What had she expected? That he was sitting in alone at night, thinking of her?
‘Wait a minute!’ Hands shaking, she looked at herself in the mirror, hoping that she’d turn out to be the person she hoped she was. She didn’t want to be a pathetic, jealous wimp, did she? She wanted to have the strength to walk away from this marriage with her head held high and her dignity intact. She wanted to be mature enough to care for the baby and give him the love he deserved, regardless of how much his parents had hurt her.
That was the person she wanted to be.
Gritting her teeth, Millie turned away from the mirror, walked across the bathroom and opened the door.
Leandro was leaning against the doorframe, dark lights in his eyes warning her of just how short his fuse was. ‘What have you been doing for the last half an hour? You look exactly the same as you did when you went in. I assumed you were going to shower and change. Or at least use a towel.’
Up until that point she hadn’t realised that she’d forgotten to dry herself. ‘I…didn’t have anything to change into.’
Leandro reached out a hand and touched her damp hair with a frown of exasperation. ‘You didn’t bring any clothes.’
‘I left my suitcase on the train,’ she muttered. ‘I was…upset. And I’m only staying in London for one night. It will be fine.’ She wished she could feel angry again. The anger had given her energy to cope with the difficult situation. Without it, she felt nothing but exhaustion.
His hand dropped to his side. ‘You still have clothes here. Wear them.’
‘You kept my clothes?’ Shocked, Millie stared up at him and his cold, unemotional appraisal chilled her.
‘I hate waste and I find them useful for overnight guests.’
The barb sank deep, the pain resting alongside the earlier wounds he’d inflicted, and she wondered why it was that emotional agony could be so much more traumatic than physical wounds.
He’d dismissed her from his life so easily.
Millie thought about all the bleak, lonely hours she’d spent agonising over whether or not she was right to have walked out—about the tears she’d shed. The times she’d wondered whether he was thinking about her. Whether he cared about their break-up.
Well, she had her answer now.
He was just fine. He’d moved on—apparently with effortless ease. Which just proved that he’d never loved her. He’d married her on impulse. He’d seen her as a novelty. Unfortunately it hadn’t taken long for her novelty value to wear off. When they’d been living in their own little world everything had been fine. It had been when they’d returned to his world that the problems had started.
Did you really think you’d be able to hold him? Her sister’s sympathetic question was embedded in her brain, like a soundtrack that refused to stop playing.
‘The baby.’ Knowing that the only way she was going to be able to hold it together was if she didn’t dwell on how she felt, Millie forced herself to ask the question. ‘Who has been looking after him?’
‘Two nannies. Change your clothes,’ Leandro said roughly. ‘The last thing I need is you with pneumonia.’
‘I’m not cold.’
‘Then why are you shivering?’
Did he honestly not know? She wanted to hit him for not understanding her feelings. He possessed confidence by the barrel-load and that natural self-assurance seemed to prevent him understanding those to whom life didn’t come quite so easily. What did a man like Leandro Demetrios know about insecurity? He didn’t have a clue.
Neither had he shown any remorse for the way their relationship had ended. In fact, he’d made it obvious that he thought she’d been in the wrong.
Maybe other women would have turned a blind eye, but she wasn’t like that.
‘I’m shivering because I’m finding this situation…’ She struggled to find a suitably neutral word. ‘Difficult.’
‘Difficult?’ His sensual mouth formed a grim, taut line in his handsome face. ‘You haven’t begun to experience difficult yet, agape mou. But you will.’
What did he mean by that?
What could possibly be worse than being forced into the company of the man she adored and hadn’t been able to satisfy, and forced to care for the child he’d had with another woman? At the moment that challenge felt like the very essence of difficulty.
Feeling as though she was balancing precariously on the edge of a deep, dark pit, Millie took a deep breath. ‘I’d like to see my nephew.’ She drew the edges of her damp cardigan around her. She was shivering so hard she might have been in the Arctic, rather than his warm bedroom. ‘Where’s the baby?’
‘Sleeping. What else did you expect at this hour?’ His mouth grim, he strode across the bedroom and into the dressing room, emerging moments later with some clothes in his hands. ‘Put these on. At least they’re dry.’
‘They’re my old jeans.’ She frowned down at them. ‘The ones I wore when I first met you.’
‘This isn’t a trip down memory lane,’ he gritted. ‘It’s an attempt to get you out of wet clothes. Get back in that bathroom. And this time when you come out, make sure you’re dry.’
With a sigh, Millie turned back into the bathroom. The lights came on automatically and she stopped, remembering how that had amused her when he’d first brought her to this house. She’d walked in and out of all the rooms, feeling as though she’d walked into a vision of the future. Lights that came on when someone walked into a room, heating sensors, a house that vacuumed itself—Leandro exploited cuttingedge technology in every aspect of his life, and for her it had been like walking into a fantasy.
Trying not to think how the fantasy had ended, Millie stripped off her wet clothes, rubbed her cold skin with a warm towel and pulled on the jeans and silky green jumper he’d handed her.
She glanced in the enormous mirror and decided that the lighting had been designed specifically to highlight her imperfections. She looked nothing like a billionaire’s wife.
Emerging from the bathroom, her eyes clashed with his. ‘Now can I see the baby? I just…’ She swallowed. ‘I just want to look at him, that’s all.’ To get it over with. Part of her was so afraid she wouldn’t be able to do it.
This was a test, and she wasn’t sure whether she was going to pass or fail.
Leandro yanked a towel from the rail and starting rubbing her hair. ‘You’ve been in that bathroom twice and your hair is still soaking.’
‘You need to invest in a device that automatically dries someone’s hair if it’s wet.’
Something flickered in his eyes and she knew he was thinking of the time when he’d first brought her here and she’d played with the technology like a child with a new toy. ‘What were you doing all that time?’
Thinking about him. About her life.
Trying to find the strength to do this.
‘I was playing hide and seek with the lights. They’re a bit bright for me.’ Millie winced as his methodical rubbing became a little too brisk and tried not to think about the fact that he was turning her hair into a tangled mess.