Leo cast a cursory glance around him and asked her what she wanted to drink: a glass of water. He would have expected something a little more stiff to get her through her ‘begging bowl’ speech, but to each their own. He ordered some mineral water and another stiff drink for himself then settled back with an air of palpable boredom.
Something in him railed against believing the worst of her, knowing her to be the person that she was, yet he refused to give house room to that voice. He felt he needed to be black and white or else forever be lost. Let it not be forgotten that she had refused to listen to him when he had attempted to explain the reason for his fabrications. She had turned her back and stalked off and for the past month he had seen and heard nothing from her.
She had taken off her coat, the gruesome coat which he was annoyed to discover made inroads into his indifference, because he could remember teasing her that she needed something a little less worn, that waterproof coats like that were never fashion statements.
‘What’s it like?’ Brianna opened the conversation with something as far removed from what she actually needed to say as she could get, and Leo shot her a perplexed glance.
‘What’s what like? What are you talking about?’
‘Having your... Having Bridget in your life. It must be very satisfying for you.’
Leo flushed. No one knew about Bridget, aside from Harry. He had never been the sort of man who spilled his guts to all and sundry and there had been absolutely no temptation to tell anyone about his mother living with him. He had not been dating, so there had been no women coming to his apartment, asking questions. Even if there had been, it was debatable whether he would have confided in any of them or not. He looked at her open, upturned face and found it hard to resurrect his cynicism.
‘It’s working for me,’ he said gruffly. Working for them both. The years had dropped off his mother. She had been to the hairdresser, had her hair styled, had her nails done... She bore little resemblance to the fragile creature he had first set eyes on.
Drinks were brought and he sat back to allow the waiter to fuss as he put them on the table, along with a plate of appetisers which had not been ordered. ‘But you didn’t come here to talk about my relationship with Bridget.’
‘No, I didn’t, but I’m interested.’ She just couldn’t launch into her real reason for coming to London without some sort of preamble.
And, an inner voice whispered, didn’t she just want to prolong being in his company, like a thief stealing time that didn’t belong to them? Didn’t she just want to breathe him in, that clean, masculine scent, and slide her eyes over a body she knew so well even when, as now, it was sheathed in the finest tailored suit money could buy?
‘Just tell me why you’re here, Brianna. You said something about money. How much are you looking for?’
‘It’s a bit more complicated than that.’
‘What’s more complicated than asking for a hand-out?’
Brianna looked down and fiddled with the bottle of water before pouring a little more into her glass. She envied him his stiff drink. She felt that under different circumstances, without this baby inside her, she could have done with a little Dutch courage.
‘Leo...’ She looked him directly in the eye and felt that this was the last time that she would be seeing him like this: a free man who could do whatever he wanted to do. She could even appreciate that, however dismissive he was of her now, it was an emotion that would soon be overtaken by far more overwhelming ones. Perhaps, thinking about it, it was just as well that they were having this conversation somewhere noisy and crowded.
‘I’m pregnant.’
For a few seconds, Leo thought that he might have misheard her, but even as his mind was absorbing her body language—taking in the way she now couldn’t meet his eyes, the hectic flush on her cheeks, the way her hand was trembling on the glass—he still couldn’t put two and two together.
‘Come again?’ He leaned forward, straining to catch her every word. There was a buzzing in his ears that was growing louder by the second.
‘I’m having a baby, Leo. Your baby. I’m sorry. I do realise that this is probably the last thing in the world you expected to hear, and the last thing you wanted to hear, but I felt you ought to know. I did think about keeping it to myself but that would have been impossible. Well, you know how small the place is, and sooner or later Bridget would have found out. In fact, there’s no way that I would have wanted to keep it from her.’
Why wasn’t he saying anything? She had expected more of an immediate and explosive reaction, but then he was probably still in a state of shock.
‘You’re telling me that you’re having my baby.’ The words felt odd as they passed his lips. The thought had taken root now with blinding clarity and he looked down at her stomach. She was as slender as she had always been. He heard himself asking questions: how pregnant was she? Was she absolutely certain? Had it been verified by a doctor? He knew home tests existed but any test that could be done at home would always be open to error...
‘I’m not expecting anything from you,’ Brianna ended. ‘I just thought that you ought to know.’
‘You thought that I ought to know?’ Leo shot her a look of utter incredulity. The impersonal bistro he had chosen now seemed inappropriate. Restless energy was pouring through his body and, as fast as he tried to decipher a pattern to what he was thinking, his thoughts came unstuck, leaving him with just the explosive realisation that in a matter of months he was going to be a father.
‘I realise that you might want to have some input...’
‘You have got to be kidding me, Brianna. You come here, drop this bombshell on me, and the only two things you can find to say are that you felt I ought to know and you realise that I might want some input? We have to get out of here.’
‘And go where?’ she cried.
‘Somewhere a little less full of chattering morons.’
‘I’m not going to your apartment,’ she said, refusing to budge and clutching the sides of her chair as though fearful that at any moment he might just get it into his head to bodily pick her up and haul her over his shoulder to the front door, caveman style.
‘I haven’t said anything to Bridget yet and I’d rather not just at the moment. I...I need time to absorb it all myself so, if you don’t mind, I’d quite like to stay here. Not that there’s much more for me to bring to the table.’
‘And another classic line from you. God, I just don’t believe this.’
Brianna watched as he dropped his head to his hands. ‘I’m so sorry to be the bearer of unexpected tidings. Like I said, though...’
‘Spare me whatever pearls of wisdom are going to emerge from your mouth, Brianna.’ He raised his head to stare at her. ‘It is as it is, and now we’re going to have to decide how we deal with this situation.’ He rubbed his eyes and continued holding her gaze with his.
‘Perhaps you should go away and think about this. It’s a lot to take on board. We could fix a time to meet again.’
‘I don’t think so.’ He straightened and sat back. ‘Waiting for another day isn’t going to alter this problem.’
Brianna stiffened. ‘This isn’t your problem, it’s mine, and I don’t see it as a problem. I’m going to be the one having the baby and I shall be the one looking after it. I recognise that you’ll want to contribute in some way, but let me assure you that I expect nothing from you.’
‘Do you honestly believe that you can dump this on me and I’m going to walk away from it?’
‘I don’t know. A few weeks ago I would have said that the guy at the pub who helped clear snow wouldn’t, but then you weren’t that guy at all, were you? So, honestly? I have no idea.’ She sat on her hands and leaned towards him. ‘If you want to contribute financially, then that would be fine and much appreciated. I don’t expect you to give anything to me, but helping to meet the needs of the baby would be okay. They may be small, but they can be very expensive, and you know all too w
ell what the finances at the pub are like. Especially with all the closures of late.’
‘I know what you think of me, Brianna, but I’m not a man to run away from my responsibilities—and in this instance my responsibilities don’t stop at sending you a monthly cheque to cover baby food.’
‘They don’t?’ Brianna queried uneasily. She wondered what else he had in mind. ‘Naturally you would be free to see your child whenever you wanted, but it might be difficult, considering you live in London...’ She quailed inwardly at the prospect of him turning up at the front door. She wondered whether the onslaught of times remembered, before she had discovered who he really was, would be just too much for her. Not that she would have any choice. It would be his right to visit his child, whether it made her uncomfortable or not.
‘Visiting rights? No, I don’t think so.’
‘I won’t let you take custody of my baby.’
‘Our baby,’ he corrected.
Brianna blanched as her worst imaginings went into free fall. She hadn’t even thought that he might want to take the baby away from her, yet, why hadn’t that occurred to her? He was adopted. He would have very strong feelings about being on hand as a father because his own real father had not been on hand. And, whatever concoctions he had come up with to disguise his true identity, she knew instinctively that he possessed a core of inner integrity.
And those concoctions, she was reluctantly forced to conclude, had not been fabricated for the sheer hell of it. They had been done for a reason and, once he had embarked on that road, it would have been difficult to get off it.
Would that core of integrity propel him to try and fight her for custody of the baby? He was rolling in money whilst she was borderline broke and, when it came to getting results, the guy who was rolling in money was always going to win hands down over the woman who was borderline broke. You didn’t need a degree in quantum physics to work that one out.
‘You can stop looking as though you’re about to pass out, Brianna. I have no intention of indulging in a protracted battle with you to take custody of our baby.’ He was slightly surprised at how naturally the words ‘our baby’ rolled off his tongue. The shock appeared to have worn off far more quickly than might have been expected, but then he prided himself as being the sort of guy who could roll with the punches and come up with solutions in the tightest of spots.
Brianna breathed a sigh of relief. ‘So what are you proposing?’
‘We get married. Obvious solution.’
‘You have got to be joking.’
‘Do I look like someone about to burst into laughter?’
‘That’s a crazy idea.’
‘Explain why.’
‘Because it’s not a solution, Leo. Two people don’t just get married because, accidentally, there’s a baby on the way. Two people who broke up. Two people who wouldn’t have laid eyes on one another again were it not for the fact that the girl in question happens to find herself pregnant.’
‘Brianna, I’m not prepared to take a backseat in the upbringing of my child. I’m not prepared for any child of mine to ever think that they got less of me than they might have wanted.’
‘I’m not asking you to take a back seat in anything.’
‘Nor,’ Leo continued, overriding her interruption as though it hadn’t registered, ‘am I willing to watch on the sidelines as you find yourself another man who decides to take over the upbringing of my child.’
‘That’s not likely to happen! I think I’ve had enough of men to last a lifetime.’
‘Of course, you’ll have to move to London, but in all events that won’t depend on the sale of the pub. In fact, you can hand it over to someone else to run on your behalf.’
‘Are you listening to a word I’m saying?’
‘Are you listening to what I’m saying?’ he said softly. ‘I hope so, because the proposal I’ve put on the table is the only solution at hand.’
‘This isn’t a maths problem that needs a solution. This is something completely different.’
‘I’m failing to see your objections, aside from a selfish need to put yourself ahead of our child.’
‘I could never live in London. And I could never marry someone for the wrong reasons. We would end up resenting one another and that would be the worst possible atmosphere in which to raise a child. Don’t you see that?’
‘Before you knew who I was,’ Leo said tautly, his dark eyes fixed intently on her face, ‘did you hope that our relationship would go further?’
He sat forward and all of a sudden her space was invaded and she could barely breathe. ‘I knew that you weren’t intending on hanging around,’ she said and she could hear the choked breathlessness in her voice. ‘You said so. You made that perfectly clear.’
‘Which doesn’t answer my question. Were you hoping for more?’
‘I didn’t think it would end the way it did,’ she threw back at him with bristling defiance.
‘But it did, and you may not have liked the way it ended, but what we had...’ He watched the slow colour creep up her cheeks and a rush of satisfaction poured through him, because behind those lowered eyes he could smell the impact he still had on her.
‘This wouldn’t be a marriage in name only for the sake of a child. This would be a marriage in every sense of the word because—let’s not kid each other—what we had was good.’ Her naked, pale body flashed through his mind, as did the memory of all those little whimpering noises she made when he touched her, the way her nostrils flared and her eyelids quivered as her body gathered pace and hurtled towards orgasm. He already felt himself harden at the thought and this time he didn’t try to kill it at source because it was inappropriate given she was no longer part of his life. She was a part of his life now, once again, and the freedom to think of her without restraint was a powerful kick to his system.
‘What we had was...was...’
‘Was good and you know it. Shall I remind you how good it was?’ He didn’t give her time to move or time even to think about what was coming. He leant across the small table, cupped his hand on the nape of her neck and pulled her towards him.
Brianna’s body responded with the knee-jerk response of immediate reaction, as though responding with learned behaviour. Her mouth parted and the feel his tongue thrusting against her was as heady as the most powerful drug. Her mind emptied and she kissed him back, and she felt as though she never wanted the kiss to end. The coolness of his withdrawal, leaving her with her mouth still slightly parted and her eyes half-closed, was a horrifying return to reality.
‘Point proven,’ he murmured softly. ‘So, when I tell you that you need to look outside the box and start seeing the upsides to my proposal, you know what I’m talking about. This won’t be a union without one or two definite bonuses.’
‘I’ll never move to London and I’ll never marry you.’ Her breathing was only now returning to normal and the mortification of what she had done, of how her treacherous body had betrayed her, felt like acid running through her veins. ‘I’m going now but I’ll give you a call in a couple of days. When you’re ready to accept what I’ve said, then we’ll talk again.’ She stood up on wobbly legs and turned her back. The urge to run away as fast as she could was overpowering, and she did. Out to the pavement, where she hailed the nearest taxi and instructed him to drive her to a hotel—something cheap, something close to the airport.
She wouldn’t marry him. He didn’t love her and there was no way that she would ever accept sacrificing both their lives for the wrong reason, whatever he said about the bonus of good sex. Good sex would die and then where would they be?
But she had to get away because she knew that there was something craven and weak in the very deepest part of her that might just play with the idea.
And there was no way she was going to give that weak, craven part of her a voice.
CHAPTER NINE
LEO LOOKED AT the sprawling house facing him and immediately wondered whether he had go
ne for the wrong thing. Too big, maybe? Too ostentatious? Too much land?
He shook his head with frustration and fired a couple of questions at the estate agent without bothering to glance in her direction.
In the space of six weeks, this was the eighth property he had personally seen out in the rolling Berkshire countryside, sufficiently far away from London to promote the idea of clean air, whilst being within easy commuting distance from the city.
Brianna had no idea that he was even hunting down a house. As far as she was concerned, he was the guy she’d refused to commit to who seemed intent on pursuing her even though she had already given him her answer—again and again and again, in varying formats, but all conveying the same message.
No thank you, I won’t be getting married to you.
On the upside, he had managed to persuade her temporarily to move to London, although that in itself had been a task of no small order. She had refused to budge, had informed him that he was wasting his time, that they weren’t living in the Victorian ages. She had folded her arms, given him a gimlet stare of pure stubbornness. He had been reduced to deviating from his intention to get what he wanted—what was needed, at all costs—in favour of thinking creatively.
For starters, he had had to pursue her to Ireland because she’d refused to continue her conversation with him in London. And then, he had had to travel to the pub to see her, because she didn’t want him staying under her roof, not given the circumstances. He had refrained from pointing out the saying about horses bolting and stable doors. He had initiated his process of getting what he wanted by pointing out that it made sense.
He had done that over the finest meal to be had in a really very good restaurant not a million miles away from the pub. He had used every argument in the book and had got precisely nowhere. Then he had returned, this time to try and persuade her to see his point of view during a bracing walk by one of the lakes with the wind whipping his hair into disarray and his mega-expensive coat proving no match for the cold. He had tried to remind her of the sexual chemistry that was still there between them, but had cut short that line of argument when she’d threatened to walk back to the pub without him.
Secrets of a Ruthless Tycoon Page 14
