‘I read the newspapers,’ she muttered stiffly.
‘You’d have to be a very avid reader of the Financial Times to know as much as you do about the global trading-market. So what’s going on here?’
‘Nothing’s going on, and can I just remind you that I don’t actually have to be here? I only agreed to come because I knew that Daniel would have been disappointed if I hadn’t—and he’s already had enough disappointment with you missing his Sports Day because of “unavoidable work commitments”.’
‘It’s not going to work, so you can forget it.’
‘What’s not going to work?’
‘Your attempt to change the subject. Who the hell are you really? That’s the question I can’t stop asking myself.’
Ahead of them, Daniel and Katherine were putting a bit of distance between them; when Katherine turned round and gesticulated that she and Daniel were going to pop into his favourite sports shop, Heather could have groaned with despair.
Leo was intrigued by her reaction to his remark. From not really caring one way or another who she was, he now seriously began to wonder about her provenance.
‘Are you always so suspicious?’
‘Comes with the territory.’
‘And what territory would that be? No, don’t bother answering that—I already know.’
‘Care to explain?’
‘No, not really. If you don’t mind, I think I’ll just go and see what Katherine and Daniel are up to in there.’
‘Oh, I’m sure they won’t mind if we go ahead to the restaurant and wait there for them. It’s a beautiful day. Why rush?’
‘Because I have things to do at the house.’
‘What things?’
‘None of your business!’
‘I’m getting the impression that you don’t like me very much. Would I be right in that assumption?’ He went into the sports shop to tell his mother that he would wait for them at the restaurant with Heather. No rush; take as long as they wanted. ‘But don’t buy anything.’ He looked at his son, who stared back at him with grudging curiosity. ‘I want to see whatever you buy—an athlete like you needs the best equipment.’ He was rewarded with something approaching a smile.
The sports shop was an Aladdin’s den. Leo reckoned his son could spend a satisfyingly long time browsing with his mother and that, he decided, would give him sufficient time to put his sudden curiosity to bed.
He had no doubt that she would be waiting for him outside. If there was one thing Leo knew with absolute certainty, it was that no one ever walked out on him until he was finished with them.
Sure enough, there she was, peering through the window of the shoe shop, and he took a little time to look at her. The strange gypsy-skirt of the night before had been replaced by something equally shapeless, but it was a hot day and her tee shirt outlined the contours of breasts that would be more than a handful. What would they look like? What would she feel like?
That sudden thought seemed to spring from nowhere and Leo shoved it aside, disconcerted.
The woman was most definitely not his type. After his short-lived and disastrous marriage to Sophia, he had exorcised pretty little airheads from his repertoire of beddable women, and he hadn’t looked back.
Although…
The girl next door wasn’t exactly quite the airhead he had assumed. Nor was she exactly pretty, although he supposed that there were a fair few men who might look twice at her, with her unruly gold hair and her lush curves.
She turned to find him staring, and he watched that telltale colour bloom into her cheeks.
‘They’ll be a little while,’ Leo said. ‘I told them to take their time.’
Heather fell into step with him. Without the presence of Daniel and Katherine, she was suddenly conscious of how intimidating she found him. Even when he was at his most casual, as he was now, in a pair of faded jeans and a white polo-shirt that emphasised his olive complexion.
Five minutes later, which was about long enough for Heather to really feel her nerves go into over drive, they were at the restaurant. It was tucked away up one of the smaller streets in the trendy part of the little town, with wine bars and little boutiques that specialised in selling designer clothes and designer kitchenware. Tables were laid outside, but Leo ignored them, choosing to stroll into the restaurant and net them the quietest table at the very back.
‘So,’ he said, relaxing his long body into the chair and giving her the benefit of all his undivided attention. ‘You never explained your in-depth knowledge of the business markets. And I have to admit I’m curious. Were you a banker before you decided to throw it all aside and devote your life to painting little fairies?’
‘I don’t paint little fairies. I illustrate children’s books,’ Heather said mutinously. ‘And I don’t like the way you’ve manoeuvred me into being here alone with you.’
‘Why? You have a suspicious mind. What do you think I’m going to get up to?’
‘You have no right to question me about my private life.’
‘Of course I have. Until yesterday, I didn’t even know you existed. Now I’m to assume that you’ve become an integral part of my family.’
‘I’m not an integral part of your family,’ Heather protested. She looked at Leo’s dark, clever, shockingly good-looking face with dislike. He was like a shark, patrolling his waters and ready to pounce on anything that might possibly be construed as prey. In this case, her. Wasn’t it enough that she was helping him out? Obviously not.
Leo ignored that interruption. Without bothering to glance around, he summoned a waiter, who appeared as if by magic even though the restaurant was busy, and he ordered some wine, his eyes still focused on Heather’s face.
‘You’ve known my mother for a year or two, my son for considerably less time, and yet here you are—a vital part of this weekend’s activities because you’ve managed to ingratiate yourself. Furthermore, you dabble in pretty little pictures yet seem to have an astute business mind, and I know when someone’s lifting other people’s opinions from the business section of a tabloid newspaper. You appear to have some kind of inside knowledge about how stock markets operate. A little unusual for someone who paints fairies, wouldn’t you say?’
With a few bits and pieces of information, he had somehow managed to make her sound like a secret-service agent.
‘I don’t know where you’re going with this.’
‘Put it this way,’ he drawled, taking his time to taste some of the wine that had been brought to their table and keeping those fabulous grey eyes fixed on her. ‘In my position, it’s always a good idea to be wary of anyone who doesn’t fit their brief.’
‘And I guess,’ she said acidly, ‘that my brief is the unattractive country girl without a brain cell in her head?’
‘Do you think of yourself as unattractive?’ Leo pounced on that small, unthinking slip of the tongue, and she flushed with embarrassment.
She could have told him that she never used to. Sure, she had always known that she didn’t have the stick-insect glamour of some of the girls she had grown up with, but she had never had an inferiority complex about her looks. Not until she had moved to London with Brian.
However, the last thing Heather intended to do was bare her soul to the man sitting opposite her.
‘Do you think I’m after…what? Your mother’s money—do you think I might try to con her out of her fortune?’
‘Stranger things have been known to happen.’ He really couldn’t credit that, though. If the woman had a taste for high living, then she was doing a good job of keeping it under wraps. So far he had yet to see her in something that didn’t look as though its last home was a charity shop.
Heather didn’t say anything. She could have scoffed at his cynicism, but she understood it. Brian had gone from the good-looking boy who had stolen her heart with his floppy blonde hair and sweats to a cold-eyed stranger in expensive clothes. He had made his money and, as the money had rolled in, so too had
the gold diggers, the people who’d always been there, wanting something from him.
She sighed and tried to appreciate his suspicions even though they were directed at her.
‘I guess so,’ she said with a shrug. ‘But not in this case. I think your mother’s a really sweet lady. We share a passion for plants and flowers, that’s all.’
‘Is there no one else on whom you could lavish your passion?’ Leo asked lazily. ‘For all things…horticultural?’
For a second there Heather could feel her skin prickling at what she had imagined he was asking her.
‘We get along, and I met Daniel quite by accident. He was exploring the fields; I guess he must have been lonely.’ This was the perfect time to turn the tables and do a little accusing of her own, but his presence was stifling, clogging up her brain, turning it to mush. ‘Anyway, I think he got lost. I asked him a few questions and he must have felt at ease because he came visiting again; I enjoy having him around.’
‘I guess you might,’ Leo mused thoughtfully. ‘You must get very lonely in that cottage of yours. Working from home is an isolated way of earning an income. I’m surprised someone as young as you is content to stay indoors all day. Don’t you crave to see what life in the fast lane is all about?’
‘No. I don’t.’ She lowered her eyes.
‘Really?’ What was she hiding? Leo thought. And didn’t she know that trying to keep secrets from a man was the one sure-fire way to fuel his curiosity? His curiosity was certainly on the move now…and he was beginning to enjoy the novelty. In fact, the weekend which had started on such an unfortunate note was definitely beginning to look up. Daniel had cracked one of those rare smiles of his, and even his mother seemed a little more relaxed than she normally did. The day so far had meandered in a more casual fashion than usual, and he had spent no time in front of his computer downloading his emails or generally continuing with business. It was proving to be all the more satisfying by the sudden challenge of ferreting out whatever Heather was keeping from him.
‘You never answered my question,’ he said, changing the subject so abruptly that she raised her startled blue gaze to him. ‘The one about your banking knowledge. And here’s another thing…’ Leo leaned forward, noticing the way she flinched back warily a couple of inches in her chair. ‘Last night you said that men like me take it for granted that women will want to spend time with them. What did you mean by that?’
‘I didn’t mean anything by it. In fact, I’m struggling to remember whether I made that remark or not.’ She looked at him resentfully.
‘If you deliver an insult, then you have to be prepared to back it up. What is a man like me?’
‘Self-assured,’ Heather told him bitterly. ‘Arrogant…accustomed to giving orders and having them obeyed. Ruthless, dismissive; the sort of man who doesn’t think it’s wrong to use other people.’
Leo would have taken offence, but for the fact that this was more than just a casual dismissal; this was personal experience speaking. Ferociously controlled as he was, he felt a flare of sexual curiosity which took him by surprise, but he didn’t fight it. He had a rich diet of very biddable women. Even women who could afford to pick and choose, women with both brains and beauty, had never been able to resist him. But he was without a woman at the moment, having parted company three months previously from the very delectable and very, very ambitious Eloise. Eloise had removed herself to New York, taking up a position with a hedge-fund company when it became obvious that their love affair wouldn’t be travelling down the altar any time soon.
And there was something refreshing about this woman’s candour as she glared at him with her cornflower-blue eyes, fully expecting him to hit the roof and duly confirm every scathing insult she had just listed.
‘To get to the top requires a certain amount of ruthlessness.’ Leo shrugged, sipped his wine and watched her over the rim of his glass.
‘Maybe so, but that still doesn’t make it acceptable. If you weren’t so busy being ruthless, you might find that you had the time to spend with your family.’
‘I will choose to overlook that,’ Leo said, his expression still impassive and mildly interested, but with a hint of steel in his voice. ‘Because what I really want to find out is why you’re hiding here, in the middle of nowhere. What are you running from?’
‘I’m not running from anything,’ Heather stammered. ‘And I’m not hiding. I happen to love living in the country! I don’t enjoy being trapped in a building surrounded by pavements and street lights that never go off.’ Behind him, Heather could see Katherine and Daniel finally making their long-overdue appearance. ‘They’re here,’ she said, resisting the urge to groan with relief.
‘Saved by the proverbial bell,’ Leo murmured, but he was enjoying himself in ways he had never expected to. It occurred to him, and not for the first time, that the pursuit of money was always more rewarding than the possession of it. Eleven years ago he had made financial success his one driving ambition in life. It had eluded his parents. It had certainly eluded his brother, the mere thought of whom brought a twisted scowl of displeasure to Leo’s mouth.
He had determined to prove to himself and to his parents that he could escape the cramped, stiflingly claustrophobic clutter of his lower middle-class background. Now, rich beyond his wildest dreams, he sometimes wondered whether he had managed to prove anything at all. Certainly not to his mother, even though he had been the one to bail her out of the massive debts which his father had incurred when he had chosen unwisely to invest his life savings on Alex and his ridiculous money-making ventures. He had provided her with enough financial security to last several lifetimes, and of course she was grateful—but years spent amassing his private fortune had left him with a jaded palate and a deep-rooted cynicism. Master of everything and everyone he surveyed, he had practically forgotten what it felt like to have someone ruffle his feathers.
Especially a woman—and, furthermore, a woman who could light up for seemingly everyone bar him. Right now, she was half-turned away from him, enthusing over a pair of football trainers, the must-have footwear for any aspiring footballer.
Leo leaned forward, invading her space. ‘I used to play football when I was your age.’
‘And you were a brilliant little footballer.’ Katherine looked at her son and half-smiled. ‘I remember your father taking you to your football game every Saturday morning. Do you remember that? I would stay at home with your little brother Alexander and you would trot off with your boots slung over your shoulder and a little packed lunch.’
‘I remember,’ Leo said gruffly. He did, now that the subject had been raised, but in truth that was a memory which had been well and truly buried.
He wasn’t given to reminiscing, but he had to admit that it certainly helped to carry the conversation along. Long-forgotten football stories were brought out for the benefit of his son. Every so often as the food was brought to them Heather chipped in, although never with a personal anecdote of her own.
‘You must have been to a football match or two,’ Leo said lazily, pushing his empty plate away and settling his body into the chair, feet extended at an angle and lightly crossed at the ankles. ‘Where did you grow up? Around here?’
‘Not a million miles away,’ Heather told him cautiously.
‘Which would be where, exactly?’
‘Reading. Near Reading, as a matter of fact.’
‘Good football team there.’ He looked to Daniel, including him in the conversation, making it impossible for her not to respond. ‘And your family…do they still live there?’
‘No. They don’t. My father died years ago, and my mother remarried and moved to Portugal. She lives there now. Has a little hairdressing business.’ No state secrets there, but Heather still didn’t like exposing her private life to him, and she didn’t know why.
‘Brothers? Sisters?’
‘Just me.’
‘So let me get this straight…’ Leo’s smile made her heart beat
with sickening force. ‘You lived in Reading, no siblings, mother in Portugal with stepfather…What made you decide to move out here? Reading might not be one of the biggest cities in the UK, but it’s still a city—still has nightclubs, restaurants, theatres, all the things that would appeal to a person of your age. In other words, you must find life pretty dead out here.’
‘Stop interrogating the poor child!’ Katherine said sharply, and Leo looked at his mother in amazement. When was the last time she had ever snapped at him? Normally she tiptoed around him, treating him as though he inhabited a different plane. ‘You might have lots of money and power, Leonardo West, but that doesn’t give you the right to do as you please with other people. You must be able to see that Heather feels uncomfortable about your probing!’
Duly chastised, Leo flushed. He noticed that his son was smirking at him.
‘Which just goes to show—’ he took advantage of the temporary ceasefire to draw Daniel into a conspiracy of male bonding ‘—that no man is safe from a nagging woman. You’ll discover that for yourself in due course.’
One Disney movie and three bags of popcorn later, Heather was more than ready to make her excuses and get back to the safety of her cottage.
Her head was in a whirl. Before she had even met him, she had had some very strong, preconceived notions of Leo West: he was a selfish, egotistic workaholic who virtually ignored his mother and paid lip service to the fact that he had found himself in possession of a son, having been an absentee father for the majority of Daniel’s life.
When she had finally set eyes on him, she was honest enough to admit she had been a little taken aback by the force of his personality and good looks. Having likened him to Brian in her head, she had very quickly realised that Brian was a minnow next to a man like Leo West.
After a few hours in his company, watching as some of that ferocious, icy discipline began to thaw, she was confused to find herself actually beginning to see him as more than just a comforting cardboard cutout. He was a complex, three-dimensional human being, and she didn’t know whether she wanted to deal with that. Fortunately, she wouldn’t have to.
Hired for the Boss's Bedroom Page 3
