The Girl Nobody Wanted Lynne Raye Harris

by Lynne Raye Harris

  The sun dropped behind the horizon and the temperature cooled as storm clouds moved in. They’d hardly spoken in hours when Leo offered Anna another food packet and some water. She looked up at him with those wide green eyes and a jolt of electricity hit him in the gut.

  Sex. It was all he could think about when he looked at her, all he wanted.

  And all she wanted, if the way she looked at him was any indication. Like she was starving for something other than food.

  He forced himself to turn away. Lightning flashed across the sky in the distance, turning the clouds pink before winking out again. The weather wasn’t threatening, but it would probably rain later. Which was a good thing. They were almost out of water, and he’d be able to collect some in the makeshift reservoir he’d created out of plastic sheeting and rocks.

  He sat down and they ate in silence as the surf crashed against the beach nearby. It was peaceful out here in a way. So different from his life in London or Los Angeles. There, he was always on the go, always seeking new business opportunities for the Leonidas Group. He traveled and he dated and he moved on to new challenges on a regular basis. Always looking for the next thrill, the next high. It was what he wanted, what he craved.

  Anna glanced over at him. He looked up instinctually, as if they were connected on some level he didn’t yet understand, and met her gaze. She dropped her chin, stared at the ground.

  And then she fixed him with a look. “What did you want to be when you were a child, Leo?”

  He didn’t attempt to hide the surprise that must have shown on his face. “Where did this come from?”

  She shrugged a pretty shoulder. “I’m tired of the silence. And I want to know,” she said, pushing her hair from her face. It was thick hair, long and heavy, and he loved wrapping his hands in it while they made love. When she was on top, her hair flowed around them, curtaining them in their own cocoon. Her green eyes watched him carefully. Coolly, as if she expected rejection and had dared to ask anyway.

  He thought about denying her, but strangely he didn’t want to. Not yet anyway. “I wanted to be a professional footballer, like my father. His career didn’t last long, but the perks did.”

  “The perks?”

  “Women,” he said without hesitation, and then felt bad for saying it when she dropped her gaze and swallowed. He’d done it because he was still angry with her, but he wasn’t proud of himself for it.

  “So why didn’t you?” she asked, pressing on.

  He finished the packet of dried food and crumpled the foil. What was the point in being an ass? They barely knew each other. They’d had sex—fabulous sex—but they weren’t lovers in the usual sense. And they weren’t going to be. She’d made that clear.

  And Leo Jackson didn’t beg.

  He didn’t need to. Or want to. When they got back to Santina, there would be no shortage of women who wanted his attention. That was the life he was accustomed to, the life he adored. One woman, no matter how sexy, how desirable, wasn’t going to change that.

  He leaned back on his elbows. “I decided I could make more money catering to the exclusive tastes of the rich and famous. So I did.”

  “The Leonidas Group.”

  He could hear the question in her statement.

  “Leonidas is my name,” he said. He’d hated his name as a child, never understood why his mother had saddled him with something so unwieldy. He’d thought it was because she’d been an heiress and socialite with pretensions beyond her station in life. It wasn’t until he was much older that he’d begun to understand she’d wanted him to be strong and brave and fearless.

  “Leonidas was a hero king of Sparta,” Anna said. “A very brave man.”

  Leo knew the story by rote. “He led the Greek forces in the Battle of Thermopylae. And he died defending the cause. I prefer to live to fight another day.”

  “Very sensible of you.”

  “What about you, Anna?” he asked, wanting to talk about her instead. He didn’t like talking about himself. It took him into territory he didn’t wish to explore, at least not tonight. He was, quite simply, a man who knew his limitations and hid them behind a strong will to succeed and a wealth of cocky charm he’d inherited from his father. He had no wish to discuss it with her. Or anyone.

  But he did want to know what made her tick, who she was in truth. She’d given him glimpses of it last night, today. When she’d been naked beneath him, naked on top of him, surrounding him. She was a passionate woman beneath the uptight exterior. He hated to see that exterior return, and yet he knew it would when their rescue arrived. It was as natural to her as breathing.

  “What did you want to be when you were a child? Or was queen your only choice?”

  She shook her head. “Oh, no, definitely not. I thought I wanted to be a veterinarian. But then I realized there would be blood, so that idea went away. After that, I wanted to be a celebrity chef for a while. And of course there was the ballerina dream.”

  “And the princess dream, I imagine.”

  She tensed. “Of course there was the princess dream. But that one was supposed to come true.” She shrugged, yet he knew how difficult it was for her to let the idea be lowered into the ground. “But that is life, yes?”

  “Life is many things,” Leo said. “Some of them disappointing, some of them frustrating and some of them blissfully happy.”

  She looked pensive. “Have you ever been blissfully happy?”

  He’d opened himself up for that one. “I suppose that depends on how you define happy. But yes, I’d say I have.”

  If she asked him to name the times, he wasn’t sure he could. All he knew was that he must have been very happy at one time or another. He’d lived a hedonistic life. He’d had fun. How could he not have been happy?

  He had it all. He had plenty of money and plenty of women. Who needed more?

  Anna sighed, the curtain of her hair falling over her forehead as she dipped her chin toward her chest. “I think I’m still waiting for that.”

  A sharp sensation bloomed in his gut. “Don’t wait for it. Make it happen.”

  She looked up at him, her eyes wide and gleaming in the light of the fire. “I’m trying,” she said. “I.” She hesitated before continuing. “It’s not that I don’t want to see you when we get home again. But I can’t. Not yet.”

  A shaft of lightning lit up the sky, a crack of thunder following hard on its heels. Electricity sizzled in the air. He could smell the sulfur, could feel the bite of it in his throat. It tasted like anger.

  “And how long do you think it will take, Anna? One month? Two? Six? A year?”

  She swallowed. “I—I don’t know.”

  “Then perhaps you’re right,” he said tightly. “Perhaps it’s best we say goodbye now.”

  “I knew you’d say that.”

  Anger whipped through him. “What did you expect me to say? That I’d be happy to wait until you’re no longer scared of the media?”

  She swallowed. “That’s not fair, Leo.”

  “Nothing ever is,” he replied.

  The storm broke around midnight. Water poured down onto the plastic sheeting of their makeshift shelter, waking Anna from a deep sleep. Beside her, Leo lay still, one arm propped behind his head as he stared at the roof above their heads. She felt a pang of longing, but shoved it down deep and tried to ignore it. She and Leo were through. And it was best that way.

  They lay together beneath the blanket for warmth, but there was no warmth between them. Not any longer.

  The thought made a lump form in her throat, a hard heavy knot she couldn’t swallow. Tomorrow, perhaps, they would be rescued. And she might never see him again. He was a man of the world, and she was a woman without purpose. She would soon return to her home on Amanti and lock herself away until she could face the world again.

  Without Leo. The thought hurt. Crazy.

  “Leo,” she said—choked, really—and he turned his head toward her. She couldn’t stop herself from re
aching out and touching his jaw, running her fingers into the silk of his hair.

  He stiffened. She expected him to reject her, to push her away, but after a moment he groaned, as if he, too, were unable to stay strong in the face of this overwhelming need.

  He caught her hand and pressed a kiss into her palm. Heat flooded her in great waves, softening her limbs, making the ache sharper. He gathered her to him, pulled her into his heat and hardness.

  “I want you, Anna. Dammit, I still want you.”

  “Yes,” she breathed. “Oh, yes.”

  The rain pounded against the sheeting, dripping off the sides, marooning them in a small dry place that became their island within an island. They didn’t speak as they stripped and made love. Instead, they spoke in kisses, in touches, in the long luxurious glide of his body into hers. The storm raged around them, between them. Leo managed to take her angrily and tenderly at the same time, and she answered him in kind, their bodies tangling and battling and straining and melting again and again.

  When it was over, they collapsed together and slept the night away until they awoke to a bright blue sky, a clean ocean breeze …

  … and a boat anchored offshore.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  PREGNANT.

  Anna stared at the test stick in her fingers, her entire body going hot and cold and numb all at once. She was pregnant. With Leo’s child. How had it happened? How could it possibly have happened?

  She blinked and fell back against the bathroom counter. Oh, God.

  No. No, no, no.

  It had been a month since they’d been rescued from the island. A month since she’d last seen him. As soon as they’d reached Santina, he’d left again. It had broken her heart, but it’s what she’d wanted. What she’d insisted on.

  She’d returned to her home on Amanti and hidden herself away, waiting for the media attention to die down.

  And it had. There’d been a little bit of a stir over their plane crash and subsequent rescue by Santina’s coast guard—but then nothing. Alex and Allegra, and their various siblings, had proven far more interesting to the collective conscious lately, thank goodness.

  Leo had gone his merry way, she’d gone hers, and the press had turned their attention to the more flamboyant members of the Jackson family—and even some of the Santinas—and the fallout from the clash of families at the engagement party.

  But now … this. Oh, God, this.

  She’d missed Leo. She’d missed his touch, his laugh, his arrogant and cocky grin. She’d missed the feel of his body sliding into hers, the exquisite pleasure he’d given her for two days on that island. She’d missed swimming with him naked, and she’d missed lying beneath a makeshift shelter and making love during a raging storm.

  She’d missed everything about being with Leo. But she’d pushed him away, shoved him from her life without so much as a backward glance. It was her fault he was gone.

  She looked at the test again, hoping that she’d read it wrong, that the answer had changed somehow. It had not. And she had to tell Leo. He had a right to know. She considered, for one brief moment, terminating the pregnancy.

  But she didn’t want to. Already, though it frightened her, she loved the idea of a child that was part her and part Leo. How could she not? She’d felt so adrift recently, but now she felt as if she had a renewed purpose, a reason to be the best person she could be. She would stop feeling sorry for herself and she would teach this baby everything she knew. Her baby would have the freedom to be whatever he or she wanted to be.

  From this moment forward, Anna would protect her baby at all costs.

  She put the test stick in a drawer. As she was turning away, she caught sight of her reflection in the mirror and stopped short. She looked tired, drawn. Her skin was golden, her eyes bright, but there was a strain in her expression that hadn’t been there before. She ran a hand over her cheeks, her forehead. There were circles under her eyes. She’d been so, so tired lately.

  Now she knew why she couldn’t drag herself out of bed in the morning.

  A baby. Leo’s baby.

  She had to call him. But no, she couldn’t just ring him up and deliver news like that over the phone, could she? She had to see him. She had to find out where he was and go to him. She hadn’t allowed herself to search for information about him, afraid of what she might find, but now she had no choice.

  Anna left the bathroom and went into her huge walk-in closet to retrieve her suitcase. Wherever Leo was, she would find him. And she would tell him personally that he was going to be a father. Her heart leaped at the thought of seeing him again.

  But her stomach twisted. She was nervous, stunned. What if he had a girlfriend? What if he didn’t want to see her or, worse, didn’t care about her news? What then?

  Anna tossed a folded sweater set into the suitcase. She couldn’t think like that. She simply couldn’t. If she did, she’d lose her nerve. And she couldn’t lose her nerve. In the not too distant future, she would begin to show. How could she face the media then? How could she shame her parents that way after everything else they’d been through? She would not be a laughingstock over this, nor would she allow them to be.

  This baby meant too much to her, and she wouldn’t allow anyone to make her feel ashamed. But she knew that if she was going to protect her child, she needed Leo.

  It only took a matter of hours to make the arrangements, and then she was on her way to London. A check of the newspapers had revealed a photo of Leo just last night in a restaurant with a group of businessmen.

  He hadn’t been with a woman, and that gave her hope. In fact, when she dared to skim the tabloids from the month since he’d returned to London, she found not one mention of him with another woman. Perhaps he’d missed her just a little bit. Perhaps, she thought crazily, he’d even been waiting for her to call him, to tell him she was ready to see him again. The thought gave her courage.

  When her plane touched down at Heathrow, it was raining heavily. Anna stood in the chilly London air and hailed a cab to take her to her hotel. It was no mistake she’d chosen a Leonidas Group property. The Crescent Hotel was located in Mayfair, a stunning Victorian-era building that had been renovated and turned into the kind of luxury hotel Leo was famous for.

  The address was exclusive, the rooms exquisite, and her reception had been beyond compare. But all she could think about was the owner of the hotel and what he would say when she told him her news.

  She stood at the window and gazed out over the view of Hyde Park long after the porter had delivered her luggage. The park was green, but the sky was gray and leaden. Black cabs crawled through the busy streets along with red double-decker buses and cars of all description. It was insane compared to Amanti, and she felt a pang for home. Amanti was modern and busy, but not as busy as London. This city teemed with people going about their hectic lives. Lives she didn’t understand.

  She felt very small and very lost as she watched the city slide by on the streets below. But she had no time to be lost. She had to find Leo.

  His offices weren’t very far, so she donned her raincoat and umbrella and followed her phone’s GPS directions until she stood outside the tall glass building that housed the Leonidas Group’s London headquarters. It had been a bit of a walk from her hotel, but the exercise felt good.

  She’d gotten wet during her walk, regardless of the umbrella, and she felt a bit bedraggled and cold, but she would not turn back now. She stood outside the building, staring at the door and trying to gather the courage that had melted on her walk. People streamed by on the sidewalk, oblivious to her torment. The smoky glass of the Leonidas building looked so imposing suddenly, like a black gaping hole into which she would disappear should she be brave enough to enter.

  A car pulled up to the curb as Anna stood there, undecided. A moment later, a uniformed driver emerged with an umbrella. He walked past her to the door of the building and waited only a minute before the door swung open and a man came out.


  Anna’s heart kicked up. A tall, dark-haired man in an expensive suit exited the building. A man she would know anywhere, even were she blind-folded.

  A man who was not alone. A fresh chill stole through Anna, rooting her to the spot. The woman with Leo was small, blonde, and clung to his arm as if she’d never let go. She turned her face up to him, smiled, her even white teeth flashing in the semidarkness that was falling on the city.

  A hot slice of something passed through Anna then. She almost turned away, almost slunk into the night and back to the hotel. Except she thought of the baby growing inside her—Leo’s baby—and courage blazed into her veins again.

  “Leo,” she said as he passed by.

  He ground to a stop as if he’d run into a brick wall. Turned to her, his dark eyes as hot and intense as she remembered them. The woman with him frowned.

  “Anna?”

  Anna pushed the umbrella back so that her face was no longer shadowed. She was not as beautiful as the woman at his side, not as polished or … as dry, she thought wryly.

  “Yes, it’s me.”

  Leo disentangled himself from his companion and came over to her. He was as hard and handsome as always, and her heart skipped a beat at his nearness.

  He did not, she noticed, look very friendly as he gazed down at her. She drank in his scent, that unique combination of subtle spice and man that was Leo. She even thought she could smell a tinge of the ocean, of the salt spray against his sun-warmed skin. It took her back so forcefully that she nearly crumpled on the sidewalk in front of him.

  He reached out to steady her, and she realized that she’d nearly crumpled in truth, not merely in her head.

  “Are you well?” he demanded.

  She shook her head, unable to answer for fear of blurting it out right there on the dark street.

  Leo swore softly. And then he was gathering her against him, one arm firmly around her, barking orders to his driver and the woman who stood so forlornly under the driver’s umbrella. The door to the limo opened, and then Anna was ushered inside the warm interior and Leo slid in beside her. The woman also joined them, Anna noted sourly.