Chapter Two
Amy was dog-tired, although she almost welcomed the exhaustion as it stopped her worrying. She worried a lot, but lately, since she had agreed to her father’s suggestion that she put her name to his new venture, she worried even more.
She was, of course, glad that he had regained some focus and proud that he wanted to rebuild his life and repay the investors who had lost out because of what he called his bad decisions.
He’d complained that there were unfair obstacles stopping someone like him rebuilding their life, making a success of himself.
It had been a relief to see the fire in his eyes when he had come up with a way to overcome those obstacles. Since he had been released early from prison, he had accused her of watching him like a hawk and, although she denied it, she was.
Amy would never forget that terrible night after he had been given bail before the trial, when she’d found him lying on the sofa surrounded by empty pill bottles.
She hadn’t been watching him then—she’d been so angry with him she’d spent as little time in his company as possible, and he had almost died.
‘But I don’t understand—what are they investing in?’ There was no way her business was worth a fraction of the sort of sums she had glimpsed on the documents her father had wanted her to sign.
She had been wary, but was terrified of how he might react if she didn’t show she had faith in him.
Though, in all honesty, she couldn’t see the business justifying the investment and the suppliers she already had were cheaper than the contracts her father was so proud of negotiating.
She was already working twenty-four-seven to keep her head above water, to make a go of Gourmet Gypsy without the additional overheads, and what sort of influence would these investors want for their money?
But she’d wanted to make her father happy. He was, after all, the only family she had left after her mother had died just before he was arrested.
He had assured her that the investors would not interfere. All he needed was her signature—a lot of signatures, it seemed to Amy, and when she had wanted to read the papers she was putting her name to, her father had looked hurt and asked her if she didn’t trust him.
He had served his time and paid a heavy price for his crime, he’d declared. He deserved a second chance, and if his own daughter wouldn’t give him one, who would?
Amy fished out her phone from her pocket and glanced at the clock, estimating what time she’d arrive home.
Despite her father being pretty sniffy about the flat, she couldn’t really afford it.
But she’d needed a second bedroom for him when he was released, and she liked it.
The top floor afforded views of trees and while the brick, purpose-built block wasn’t pretty, it was quiet Also, it was only five minutes from the Tube, so all she had was a ten-minute walk the other end.
She hadn’t put the phone back in her deep pocket before it was snatched out of her hand.
Amy jolted back to the moment with a thud by the adrenaline dump into her bloodstream, and she took in the boys, faces invisible, that she had been oblivious to.
Boys now circling her…laughing, jeering.
She let out a sharp cry of protest and ignored the voice in her head that suggested she should run.
She couldn’t afford a new phone and her whole life was on it.
‘It’s a really old phone—you don’t need it, I do.’ She tried to inject calm reason into her voice but could barely hear her words, let alone the intonation, above the thud of her own heartbeat vibrating in her eardrums.
‘Need it!’ mocked the one holding her phone.
‘Posh, isn’t she…?’ He turned with a flood of expletives and a titter and found his companions were not where they’d just been.
He couldn’t think why they had run and the phone he had just been tauntingly holding up had been snatched back. ‘Bitch!’ he snarled and grabbed her.
Amy had sometimes imagined how she would react in a situation of this sort, never actually thinking it would happen.
Because it didn’t, did it? Things like this happened to someone else.
She had always decided that a brains rather than brawn response would be the best plan, given she was only five foot three.
Her first option was to run, and she was actually quite fast, but if that wasn’t an option she would try talking her way out of the situation.
Resorting to violence had never been one of the options.
It turned out that reality differed from theory big time! Blind instinct along with panic kicked in and she began to struggle wildly as she wriggled, feeling a small moment of satisfaction as she stepped down hard on something she thought—she hoped—was a foot.
The grunt and curse suggested it was. But then the arm around her neck tightened and ice-cold brain-numbing fear conquered every other emotion.
She felt darkness lower across her vision and nerveless fingers dropped the phone—but then, quite suddenly, she could breathe again.
As her brain sparked into life she was aware, in her peripheral vision, of someone who was very tall.
Like a puppet whose strings had been severed she fell to her knees and stayed there, breathing hard.
Aware too that things were happening off-camera while she fought the urge to vomit.
She eventually got to her feet and, with her eyes still squished closed, addressed her hoarse question to a point over her shoulder. ‘Have they gone?’
‘They have gone.’ A few harsh words followed in a language she could identify but didn’t know.
The voice she could identify in any language.
Amy didn’t need to look. She knew that voice at a cellular level, as well as the person it belonged to.
She had no clue in the world how he was here, but he was.
Had she gone mad?
Or sustained a knock on the head?
Both seemed a lot more likely than Leo being here in this place, now.
Her heart hammering against her ribcage, she lifted her braced hands off her thighs, her palms slick with sweat.
She straightened up slowly and, with one hand anchoring her messed hair that had come adrift during the short, frantic tussle, she opened her eyes.
He’d found a wall to lean his shoulders against, looking nonchalant and unbelievably sleek and exclusive. He didn’t even have a single hair out of place.
‘Leo?’ A whisper was all she could manage as she stared in shaky disbelief at the tall figure, cataloguing every detail of his patrician features, every shift of expression on his face.
It was still all angles and intriguing hollows, with strong classic features creating a miracle of symmetry.
Looking at him acted like a trip switch that turned her brain off as she experienced a weird collision of past and present.
Seeing him that last time, the hurt and disillusion in his face before he’d walked away, had always stuck with her.
There was no hurt now; his dark eyes were shuttered, stance relaxed, though there was a telltale tension in his flexing jawline that some might miss.
But she knew that face so well, or at least a younger version of it, that she didn’t miss anything.
Not the tiny scar by the side of his mouth—she remembered tracing it with her finger—nor the waves of sinful male magnetism that poured off him.
A debilitating weakness slid through her and she wrapped her arms around herself as if that would keep the tight ball of her suppressed emotions in place. She was shivering despite the tendrils of heat that were breaking out across her skin, leaving a fiery trail.
Leo was there—impossible but a fact, the same but different. Nine years had built muscle, hardened the lines of his extraordinary, fascinating face, with its broad forehead, sharp commanding nose, a mouth that was all sin…and eyes that felt as though they were reaching into your soul.
She recognised, as her brain kicked into life, that it was better to acknowledge this was nothing more than sexual attraction. Admittedly on an atomic scale, but it was all just hormones and chemical reactions.
Nothing more.
Of all the things she could have said—should have said—she heard herself gasp accusingly, ‘You speak Italian!’
His lips quirked and her traitorous stomach flipped. ‘It seemed only polite to learn my mother’s tongue.’
‘Of course—congratulations. It must be nice to have family.’
‘That must have hurt.’
She shook her head, struggling to make sense of the tangle of emotions flooding her thoughts. Shaking her head, she said, ‘I don’t understand what you mean by that…’
‘It could have been your family too—that must have hurt.’
An angry retort trembled on her tongue, but then she remembered her father’s reaction to the news. ‘I was happy for you, whether you believe it or not.’
‘Most people would say you do sincerity very well.’
‘Did you hurt them, those youths?’ She needed a moment’s reprieve from thinking about the past and Leo’s clear scorn for her.
‘We had a civilised conversation and they left. There’s no need to thank me.’
His devil-may-care wide white grin did not extend to his eyes, framed by the dark, dense, curling lashes.
‘I won’t. I had it under control.’ She saw something that could have been surprise flicker in the inky blackness of his eyes and lifted her chin a little higher.
‘Yes, I saw that.’
She ignored the sarcastic jibe. ‘Well, I don’t know why you are here, but I don’t believe in coincidences, so…?’
‘Then you have changed, because you used to believe in the Easter bunny,’ he ground out, his hard expression countering the pretend amazement in his voice.
‘It’s been nine years. Of course I’ve changed, Leo.’ She had not let herself say or even think his name in that time. Excluding her dreams; she’d had to cut herself some slack where her subconscious was involved.