Kitabı oku: «The Winter Bride», sayfa 3

‘No—’

But as her anxious gaze melded with the drowning darkness of his, explosive anticipation tore through her like a storm warning, tightening every muscle and firing every nerve-ending with tortured expectancy. With a guttural sound somewhere between a harsh laugh and a groan, Leo dropped his strong hands to the swell of her hips and took her mouth hotly and hungrily with his own.

He crushed her to him, and the very blood in her veins sang with the heat of her excitement. Under the onslaught of his demanding lips and the carnal thrust of his tongue, Angie burned. He ravaged her mouth with the fierce heat of an innately sexual male, hell-bent on possession, and she fell victim to a hot and disorientating tide of intimate memory that tore down every remaining barrier and reduced her to submissive rubble.

As suddenly as he had reached for her, Leo dragged his mouth from hers again. Glittering dark eyes cloaked, he thrust himself back from her and strode over to the window.

For a split second, Angie thought she might slide down to the rug because her knees were ready to fold beneath her. For a split second, Angie didn’t even recall where she was. But her body ached and pulsed in a way she had almost forgotten, sensually alive and hurting in a way she did not want to acknowledge. She felt the swollen tenderness of her breasts, the painful sense of tormenting emptiness between her thighs, and shivered in disbelieving horror that Leo could still have that devastating an effect on her body.

She studied his back view with stricken eyes, reading the savage tension in his broad shoulders and the rigid bracing of his long, powerful thighs. And just as swiftly she suspected that that sudden flare of physical hunger and even more physical connection might have been no more welcome to him.

‘The difference between my cousin and I,’ Leo framed rawly as he swung back to face her, burnished, censorious dark eyes like flaring arrows of gold, ‘is that I was ashamed of what happened between us two and a half years ago!’

‘Ashamed?’ Angie repeated sickly.

‘Cristos…what else?’ Leo demanded in a wrathful growl of rebuke. ‘What did you expect? My wife had been dead only seven months…and you were nineteen and naive as they come, for all your wiles! Did you think I could be proud of making such a conquest? The teenage daughter of one of my grandfather’s most loyal and trusted dependants? And, even worse, a virgin?’

CHAPTER THREE

ANGIE HAD TURNED TO STONE, the pallor of her perfect features pronounced but rigidly uninformative—for one necessary skill she had learned working for Claudia was the ability to keep her face devoid of expression. But, inside herself, she was cringing. ‘Conquest’…‘dependant’…‘virgin’… Not one single term welcome to her ears—indeed each and every one of them emphasising the humiliating inequality which had always divided her from Leo.

In bitter mortification, she flew out of the room and down the hall, not even knowing where she was going in an unfamiliar house. Espying a cloakroom, she hurriedly and gratefully took refuge there. No, she had never had the advantage of a level playing field with Leo, she conceded wretchedly. Everything had separated them—age, background and experience. But, worst of all, she had met Leo in the time-warp world of Deveraux Court, leaving herself forever fixed in his mind as the butler’s daughter and never, it seemed, to be anything else.

Why on earth had he kissed her? The ultimate put-down? Her insult had drawn an overwhelmingly primitive masculine response. But then, in the grip of strong emotion, Leo was no English gentleman of restraint, and he was very highly sexed. A dangerous little quiver of remembrance ran through Angie and her face burned with shame. She had no excuse to offer for her own behaviour. Leo still attracted her in much the same way that a magnet attracted iron filings. But it was just a physical thing now, she told herself with driven defensiveness—all down to body chemistry and hormones, and nothing whatsoever to do with her emotions.

A knock sounded on the door. Angie ignored it.

‘Angie, you have a count of five to show yourself…’

Leo’s warning sent Angie flying for a towel to dry her face with, which she had splashed thoroughly with cold water in the forlorn hope of cooling herself down.

She unlocked the door. ‘Where’s Jake?’ she questioned stiffly, focusing on Leo’s pale blue silk tie.

‘Upstairs with Epifania. Listen,’ Leo advised impatiently.

And she heard Jake’s delighted chortles of glee filtering down from the floor above. Her son sounded as if he was having a whale of a time.

‘I don’t want to talk about the past!’ Angie stated fiercely.

‘It’s unfinished business. I want it dealt with,’ Leo countered without apology.

Angie flung her head high, blue eyes darkened by stress. ‘There was nothing unfinished about it. You made yourself perfectly plain at the time—sorry, Angie, I needed a woman and I was drunk!’ she interpreted with a raw bitterness she could not conceal.

Leo’s even white teeth gritted. ‘That wasn’t what I said—’

‘That’s what it came down to!’ In too much pain from her memories to find such proximity to Leo bearable, Angie wrapped her arms around herself in a starkly protective movement. ‘Don’t you ever touch me again. Once bitten, forever shy!’

Leo sent her a flashfire glance of involuntary amusement. ‘That rejection routine of yours needs some extensive work and application.’

A deep flush of mortification lit Angie’s cheeks as he reminded her of her eager response in his arms. Her skin felt super-thin, as if the tiniest dent might wound her to the death. And it was Leo who was doing that to her, and that appalled her because she had honestly believed that Leo could not have the power to hurt her any more. She had buried that foolish teenager deep and fancied herself mature beyond imagining. Now she was discovering her error.

Leo curved a hand over her tense shoulder and she flinched away. He vented a soft, soothing sound that was terrifyingly sexy. ‘You’re trembling…’

‘I’ll never forgive you for bringing me here! Where the heck are we supposed to go now? I’m not crawling back to Deveraux Court to grovel—or eat humble pie—so where does that leave us?’

Leo surveyed her mutinous face with reflective cool. ‘Enjoying my hospitality,’ he supplied smoothly, and swung on his heel.

‘But I don’t want to accept your hospitality, Leo.’

Leo stilled, and responded without turning his arrogant dark head. ‘In five days’ time, you will have seen sense and you will be heading to the Court. If you haven’t the wit to grovel, you will undoubtedly feel the rough edge of Wallace’s tongue—but then that’s your business, not mine.’

As he left her standing there, Angie felt horribly alone and scared for the first time in a long while. The feeling of insecurity gripping her now was intense. The very last place she wanted to go was Deveraux Court, and the very last place she wanted to stay was in Leo’s house.

She finally headed upstairs, where the housekeeper showed her into a large bedroom which connected with the even more spacious room where the older woman had been keeping Jake occupied. An evening meal was suggested, and her son’s likes and dislikes were discussed in almost embarrassing detail.

But not by word, look or gesture did Epifania even hint that Jake might be anything more than the child of a guest. Angie scolded herself for the guilty conscience which had made her far too imaginative earlier. Of course Epifania hadn’t spotted any instant resemblance which linked Jake to her employer! Clearly the housekeeper was just extremely fond of children.

Forty minutes later, Angie and her son were summoned down to eat. One solitary place was set at the massive polished table in the imposing gold and blue dining room, and, to the left of it, a high chair for Jake. Evidently Leo was not to join them. But then undoubtedly Leo did not dine at so early an hour. When Angie took Jake back upstairs, a positive feast of plush soft toys and a small mound of packages awaited them in his bedroom. A giant furry giraffe was prominent in the spread.

As Jake whooped in delight and rushed to investigate, Angie stilled in surprise and dismay on the threshold.

‘You see? A young child is easily distracted with new toys,’ Leo drawled with cool superiority from behind her.

Sharply disconcerted because she hadn’t heard his approach, Angie whipped round. ‘Where did all these things come from?’

‘A friend made the selection for me and had them sent over. There should be some clothes as well.’

Angie reddened with discomfiture. ‘And how much did this generous gesture of yours cost?’

Leo shifted a relaxed shoulder in a dismissive shrug. ‘That’s irrelevant.’

‘Is it?’ Angie queried with embarrassed heat. ‘Surely you can appreciate that I can’t accept this stuff?’

‘It was nothing…forget it,’ Leo responded drily.

‘But I can’t let you just pay for it all!’

His beautifully expressive mouth curled. ‘Don’t make me drag up that past you’re so very reluctant to recall.’

‘And what’s that supposed to mean?’

‘When it comes to moral principles, we both know you are not Pollyanna.’

Understanding came too late to protect Angie from that humiliating reminder. She turned white as if Leo had struck her. He was referring to the thefts.

Leo made an impatient movement with one brown hand. ‘Try just to be yourself around me, Angie. I loathe hypocrisy…and all this fuss about a few necessities for a child? Who do you think you are impressing with this charade of objections?’

Angie backed unsteadily into the bedroom and closed the door. She wanted to race back out again and grab Leo by his arrogant, judgemental throat and scream, I am not a thief! She wanted to proclaim her innocence with the very strongest force. But she had surrendered that right of her own volition over two years ago. Only by naming the true culprit could she clear her own name, and, if she did that, she would still cause unthinkable damage…

Leo would not allow even a reformed and deeply repentant thief to remain in his grandfather’s home. He would bring in the police and press charges without hesitation. Leo had no liberal convictions where crime and punishment were concerned.

Lost in increasingly distressing introspection, Angie undressed Jake and bathed him in the en suite. Leo despised her for her apparent greed and dishonesty. Why hadn’t she faced up to that harsh fact sooner? Just minutes ago, his distaste and anger had rung out as clear as a bell. And she had drawn his censure by daring to behave as if she wasn’t the greedy, grasping profiteer and eager free-loader he undoubtedly saw her as. Leo believed she had got off too lightly for her sins. And no doubt he also thought that returning to Deveraux Court to grovel to Wallace and cringe at the knowledge that everyone knew her to be a thief was a long-overdue slice of her just desserts.

The packages revealed a sensible skeleton wardrobe for Jake. Underwear and pyjamas, a duo of sweaters, shirts and trousers, all bearing the brand name of a reasonably priced chain store—unlike the array of blatantly expensive toys. Sighing, Angie tucked Jake into the comfortable single bed. Over-tired now, her son flipped fussily between the soft toys which had earlier enthralled him, and then he said that fatal word which Angie had been hoping not to hear.

‘Waff…where Waff?’

‘Waff’s not here. I’m sorry,’ Angie groaned as Jake’s bottom lip began to wobble alarmingly, big dark eyes suddenly flooding with tears.

‘Want Waff!’ Jake sobbed.

Fifteen minutes of lamentations later, the housekeeper had joined Angie in her efforts to console and distract Jake, but the whole house continued to echo with the boy’s noisy, convulsive sobs.

Without warning, Leo strode in. In an off-white dinner jacket and black silk bow-tie, he was clearly on his way out for the evening. He cast a grim glance down at Jake, an abandoned slump of utter misery on the bed. ‘Your son knows how to get what he wants.’

‘That’s not fair, Leo,’ Angie muttered in reproach.

Releasing his breath in a slow, driven hiss, Leo crouched fluidly down beside the bed and gently shook Jake’s shoulder to gain his attention. ‘Jake…I’m going to get Waff.’

‘Don’t make promises you can’t keep,’ Angie hissed, but it was too late. Her son’s damp, tousled head had come off the pillow and a look of pathetic hope was already blossoming in his tear-drenched eyes.

‘If George Dickson wants to be sued through the courts for a pink giraffe, I’ll do it,’ Leo swore, vaulting upright again.

‘Don’t be daft…that would take forever.’

‘Give me an hour… George struck me as a very level-headed and rational man.’

Stunned, Angie watched him stride back out again. Leo was planning to drive over to the Dicksons’ to demand custody of a pink giraffe? Jake sat up, rubbing at his eyes. ‘Waff…?’ he mumbled with a hint of a wobbly smile.

‘Wait and see…maybe,’ Angie said carefully.

Leo was back, however, within the hour. He came through the door with Waff extended like a small but tremendously important peace offering. Jake shot out of bed like a jet-propelled missile, hurled himself ecstatically at Leo’s knees and accepted Waff back, tucking the battered toy possessively under his arm. ‘Night, night,’ he said happily, accepting Angie’s help to climb back into bed.

‘How did you do it?’ Angie whispered as Leo moved back to the door again.

‘Dickson was so embarrassed, he couldn’t hand Waff over fast enough. He sends his apologies for what he termed “an unfortunate misunderstanding”,’ Leo informed Angie very drily over his shoulder.

‘Really?’ Angie followed Leo out into the corridor. ‘What else did he say?’

‘I’m afraid I don’t have the time to tell you.’

Belatedly, Angie reread the significance of the dinner jacket he wore and flushed uncomfortably. ‘You’re running late again.’

His dark eyes gleamed as he studied her. ‘And tomorrow morning I’m flying over to Brussels for a few days. You’ll have the house to yourself until Thursday.’

He went on down the stairs, and Angie listened to the distant thud of the front door and glanced in at Jake again. Leo’s son had gone out like a light, Waff a barely visible pink splodge tucked under his chin. For some reason she found that she couldn’t stop wondering who the lady in Leo’s life was… Did she play games? Probably not. Games were the province of the young and brash and insecure, she reminded herself heavily. And quite the reverse of appealing when recognised for what they were by the quarry.

In the early hours, Angie lay awake. Leo hadn’t come home, Leo obviously wasn’t coming home—and why had she been unconsciously straining to hear his return? she asked herself with angry self-loathing. Take the average single male on a Saturday night—he did not sit in toasting his feet by the fire. When that same male was also gorgeous, rich, oversexed and spoilt for female choice, he was undoubtedly involved in an intimate relationship, and extremely unlikely to come racing home like Cinderella, struggling to beat the clock at midnight.

Switching on the light, she peered at her alarm clock. Almost two. The house was silent as the grave. Desperate for something to read to pass the time, she slid out of bed, automatically reached for her towelling dressing gown and then realised that, in her eagerness to escape Claudia, she hadn’t retrieved it, or several other garments which she could ill afford to lose, from the wash. More things to replace, and she had barely five pounds to her name, she reflected dully. Furthermore Christmas was hurtling towards them at break-neck speed and she had next to nothing bought for Jake.

She crept downstairs and into the library. Surprise, surprise… Leo’s shelves were packed with books written in Greek. As she began flipping irritably through a pile of business magazines in search of something lighter, the door suddenly opened. In fright, Angie almost jumped a foot in the air.

Bold dark eyes whipped over her paralysed figure. ‘What are you doing in here?’

Recovering, Angie pushed an awkward hand through her tumbled hair. ‘I was looking for something to read—’

‘On my desk?’ Leo prompted drily, possibly because she was standing only a foot from it with the air of being caught in mid-flight.

‘I haven’t been anywhere near your desk,’ Angie muttered defensively, backing away from it as Leo moved slowly forward. ‘I was glancing through the magazines on that chair.’

‘Since when were you interested in electronics?’

Angie stared at him. His black hair was tousled. His bow-tie was missing and his shirt partially unbuttoned, revealing a disturbing triangle of brown skin and the start of the riot of dark, curling hair that she knew covered his pectoral muscles. Embarrassed by that knowledge and the memory, Angie momentarily shut her eyes. But still she saw Leo standing there, strong jawline blue-shadowed with the same early-morning stubble which had once felt so interestingly, arousingly rough against her softer, smoother skin.

Inside her own head, she shrieked at her treacherous subconscious to leave her alone and stop throwing up things she didn’t want to remember—most particularly when it was obvious that Leo had recently vacated some other woman’s bed. As that conviction assailed her, a searing spasm of hot jealousy and resentment shot through Angie, leaving her deeply shaken.

‘Were you looking for money?’

Her dazed and troubled eyes flew wide. ‘M-money?’ she stammered blankly.

Leo gave her a grim smile. ‘Somehow I don’t think you have graduated to safe-cracking yet.’

As Angie grasped his meaning, pain and anger combined in the bitter look she threw at him. ‘Damn you to hell, Leo. I wouldn’t steal from you!’ she flung at him, and turned strickenly away, devastated by the extent of his distrust.

‘You don’t need to,’ Leo breathed harshly. ‘I’ll give you money if you want it.’

Angie covered her anguished face with spread hands. ‘You swine! I was only looking for something to read because I couldn’t sleep!’

‘I wish you had been a kleptomaniac,’ Leo drawled softly. ‘Intellectually, I could have dealt with kleptomania. But sadly the victims of that particular illness hoard what they take—they don’t sell it on for profit…as you did.’

Snatching in a shuddering breath, Angie whirled back to him with clenched fists. ‘I don’t want to talk about it—’

‘I’m afraid it left rather a bitter taste in my mouth when I worked out that, if you were the thief, you stole from my grandfather the very day before you shared my bed,’ Leo admitted, his relentless dark eyes scanning her taut face. ‘I said that I didn’t want to talk about it!’ Angie launched at him furiously.

‘And you must have been remarkably nifty in that particular operation. As I recall you spent most of that morning riding so that you could accidentally on purpose keep on bumping into me on the estate. You then brought me lunch, which you had definitely made with your own fair hands because it was infinitely superior to anything Wallace’s geriatric cook could possibly have prepared,’ Leo continued with a disturbing glimmer of raw amusement breaking through the forbidding cast of his features.

‘Leo…’ Angie gritted.

‘After lunch, you spent the afternoon haunting the woods round the lake and gathering flowers in a basket…most picturesque. My evening meal you also supplied and that same night you walked Wallace’s dog until it almost dropped dead with exhaustion. In fact, your pursuit of me was very much a f-full-time occupation…’

As Leo’s increasingly unsteady voice broke down altogether, his hard dark face suddenly slashed into a breathtakingly charismatic smile, and he threw his arrogant head back and laughed with uninhibited appreciation. ‘Cristos… Angie, when I watched you struggling to carry that fat old dog home, I was doubled up!’

Angie had stood there listening to that recitation of her past behaviour with an initially defiant and unmoved stare, but, as Leo had persisted in enumerating the lengths her desperate desire to be noticed by him had driven her to, boiling mortification had engulfed her in waves of regret. ‘I’m so glad I entertained you!’ she snapped, and tried to sidestep him.

Leo reached out and stilled her in her tracks with strong hands, laughter dying out of his strikingly handsome features to leave only a flaring, drugging intensity in his bold black eyes. ‘You made me laugh…and, at the time, I was very grateful.’

‘Let go of me—’

‘I was intending to ask where you found the time that day to flex light fingers, but right now I don’t really care,’ Leo confided, his rich, dark drawl thickening and deepening on that startling admission. ‘Not when I have you in my arms half-naked…’

Angie’s eyes widened, and dropped in belated awareness to the green nightshirt she wore. There was nothing remotely provocative about its crew neckline or the hem that came to her knees. Even deeper colour staining her cheeks, she gazed up at him in angry reproach. ‘I am not half-naked.’

Leo was not listening. ‘The average Greek male does not require even this much encouragement when he is presented with a beautiful blonde, pethi mou,’ he informed her in an earthy amused undertone as he banded his arms slowly round her.

‘What are you d-doing?’ Angie gasped, heart hammering in shock as he determinedly brought her into contact with his tautly muscular length and the heat of his big, powerful body penetrated the fine cotton she wore, suddenly making her feel as if she was indeed only semi-clothed. ‘Leo…’

Burning dark eyes gazed down into hers. ‘You quiver when I touch you…and you can scarcely be impervious to the effect you’re having on me.’

Angie was trembling, face flushing hot pink as Leo shamelessly clamped his hands to the curve of her hips and hauled her into collision with the unmistakable thrust of his hard male arousal. Her legs went hollow, her nipples pinching into agonisingly erect peaks as a wave of the most terrifying and shameless yearning swept over her, and she fought it with all her might. ‘Don’t be disgusting.’

Leo dropped his head lower, his breath softly fanning her temples, shimmering dark golden eyes holding her in shivering stasis. ‘If I can surrender to my desire, so can you…’

‘No!’

‘I see that same hunger in you, feel it,’ Leo delivered with husky satisfaction. ‘I saw it last night, swore I would play hard to get for at least a few days… But what a waste of time and opportunity that would be. Let’s go to bed.’

That word, ‘bed,’ beckoned like a sensual invitation to paradise, and Angie hated herself so much for her own weakness of both body and will-power that that self-loathing gave her the strength to tear herself free of Leo’s powerfully seductive spell.

‘If I went to bed with you again, I’d deserve to be hung, drawn and quartered!’ Angie slung at him wildly as she pulled back from him. ‘And I can’t imagine why you think I still want you like that…because I don’t; I really don’t!’

‘Cristos… Of course you do!’ Leo shot back at her with a look of impatience. ‘Why do you think I ensured you would be with me by tonight?’

Barely able to assemble her thoughts, Angie nonetheless caught the truly shattering drift of that blunt admission. ‘Ensured?’ she queried. ‘How could you possibly have ensured that I would be here?’

Leo’s mouth twisted. ‘Your former employer leapt at the provocation I offered and reacted exactly as I had foreseen.’

Angie was so taken aback by that confession, she just gaped at him.

‘Angie, I had no intention of leaving that house without you. Why do you think I brought the limo?’ he asked drily. ‘Only a complete idiot would try to transport a woman, a child and all their worldly possessions in a Ferrari!’

‘You got me thrown out of that house deliberately…’ Angie was horrified by his complete lack of scruples and the even greater arrogance which had prompted him to freely admit it. She studied him with appalled blue eyes. ‘Dear heaven…how could you be so selfish and destructive?’

‘I acted in your best interests,’ Leo countered.

Abruptly, Angie backed away from him, utterly chilled by that dispassionate response. ‘It was an absolutely unforgivable thing to do to us—you don’t even understand that, do you?’ she condemned shakily. ‘But then how could someone like you understand what it feels like to be broke, unemployed and without a roof over your head when you have a child’s needs to consider?’

Leo dealt her a smouldering look. ‘Whatever happens with Wallace, I will personally ensure that your circumstances will be vastly improved from what they were in that house. That is a promise.’

Her teeth clenched, eyes wild with censure. ‘Oh, that’s so big of you, Leo! But your help would come at a cost, wouldn’t it? Something for nothing not being a goal you’re famed for following!’

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?’ Leo growled.

‘And you were so patronising and superior just a few short hours ago!’ Angie recalled with fierce mortification. ‘What was that about me needing to learn the lesson that I couldn’t rely on my looks to survive? And exactly what are you offering me, Leo?’

Slow-building anger now glittered in Leo’s shimmering dark eyes. ‘I am only offering you what we both know you want.’

Angie flinched. ‘A sleazy roll in the hay with an oversexed louse who has just climbed out of some other woman’s bed?’ she bit out painfully, scorning him as much as she scorned herself, for she had been all too willing to forget that probability when Leo had come too close.

He vented a harsh laugh and raked his fingers through his luxuriant black hair. Tousled, those thick, sleek strands demonstrated a strong tendency to curl. So like Jake’s hair that, momentarily, she ached just looking at him.

‘“A sleazy roll in the hay”,’ he repeated with a darkly reflective look. ‘Yet it is so very appealing a prospect when I am with you… Furthermore, I have not been in another woman’s bed!’

Angie folded her arms in a jerky movement, devastated by how very personal things were getting at such mind-blowing speed. Meaning to walk out of the room but somehow finding herself glued to the carpet, she said, ‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Would that I had had either the desire or the common sense to fulfil your expectation!’ Leo ground out with wrathful emphasis. ‘But from the minute I laid eyes on you last night I wanted you again, and I haven’t yet sunk so low that I would try to dull that desire in any other bed—most especially not with a woman who deserves only my respect!’

Angie unravelled and absorbed that speech. She saw that she had already been allotted the blame for the reawakening of that sexual hunger. The eternal Eve, tempting and luring—but Leo was no innocent and trusting Adam likely to be drawn blindly to destruction! And she could’ve done without the silent confirmation that she was not worthy of the same respect as the unknown woman he had spent so many hours with, in bed or otherwise. ‘I hate you, Leo.’

‘No, you don’t. A little hatred would be a big help to us both right now,’ Leo breathed with savage candour as he strode restively away from her, chiselled classic profile hard as iron. ‘I didn’t seek this attraction, but it is still there between us…’

‘Is that your excuse for coming on to me like a bull in a china shop?’ Angie whispered unsteadily.

Leo wheeled round, outraged black eyes glittering over her in a stormy arc. He hissed something in Greek.

Unimpressed, Angie gave him a look blistering with all the hatred he had so recently denied she could be feeling, but inside she still felt about an inch tall and sick to the stomach with humiliation. ‘Because you thought I’d be easy; you thought all you had to do was take one look and stretch out a hand and say, “Let’s go to bed,” and I would naturally fall over myself to please. After all, you are so rich and so good-looking and so tremendous in bed that some lesser being like me who does other people’s washing and cleaning wouldn’t require any more taxing or charming approach from you!’

A blaze of dark colour fired over Leo’s bold cheekbones. He spread both hands wide in front of him in a violent movement that sought to silence her. ‘You are making me furious…and I can barely believe that you should dare to insult me like this!’

‘That stupid teenager who thought she was calling all the shots got rings run round her two and a half years ago—and that is the lesson I learned best, Leo,’ Angie informed him bitterly. ‘I was nothing to you; I was just a body you used—’

He strode forward and settled two powerful hands on her slim shoulders. He was so enraged that she let out a startled yelp of fear, and his hands flew off her again as he gritted a sharp expletive and drew back from her. ‘You twist the past so much, I don’t recognise it on your lips…and don’t you dare jump like that as if I’m about to hit you!’ he roared down at her in angry reproach.

‘Is it my fault you don’t like the plain speaking you’re so good at yourself?’ Angie swiftly recovered the ground she had lost with that craven cry of fright.

‘I know what is wrong with you now. You can’t handle the fact that I should admit that I didn’t want this attraction to be reborn,’ Leo sliced back at her crushingly.

‘From where I’m standing there is no attraction!’

‘No?’ Leo gave her a very dangerous look, redolent of a male well aware of his own powers of seduction.

‘Just you stay away from me, Leo.’

‘Is not the proof of the pudding in the eating?’ Leo enquired thickly.