Chapter Two #2
She would have known him, his voice, in pitch darkness, but he had changed too, she realised as she took in the minute details, looking up at him through her lashes and noting the power in his broader leather-covered shoulders.
The fact he looked slick, polished and expensive, attired head-to-toe in designer labels, did nothing to lessen the sheer force of him that had captivated her the first time she’d seen him all those years ago.
Now there was an additional layer, an overall hardness to everything about him.
Not just the planes of his superbly, austerely beautiful face, but in his stance.
He carried himself with an arrogance that had not been there nine years ago.
He exuded the absolute confidence of a male in the prime of his life who knew he was right at the top of the food chain.
The illicit shudders that shamefully ripped through her body as she stared up at him were no less primal than they had been that very first time she’d set eyes on Leo.
She acknowledged the fact with a stab of self-disgust, but took comfort from the fact she was no longer running recklessly towards the excitement he represented.
Despite the shameful heat between her legs, she had changed.
She knew about consequences.
Giving him up had been the hardest, most painful thing she’d ever had to do. Watching him walk away from her, thinking that she had betrayed him, had added an extra layer to that pain.
And now she had no idea what was in his head. His blank expression left her totally off-balance and in the dark. He had become an unknown entity.
He had always been, and still was, beautiful—the most beautiful thing she had ever seen—but the lanky, coltish quality he’d possessed at twenty had hardened.
Exciting.
The word popped into her head unbidden and she lowered her lashes in a silky screen while she fought for composure, or something that passed for it.
His presence was more disturbing than the young thugs he had seen off, but in a very different way.
Leo watched as she straightened her spine and lifted her head, cloaked in a coolness that didn’t fool him. It amused him to think she imagined he couldn’t see it for what it was—barely even skin-deep.
Amy was reacting to him the way she always had. Nine years was a long time, but it hadn’t taught her how to conceal the fact that she was lusting after him.
‘You should have given them your phone!’
For a split second his cloaked expression fell away and she could see his anger, hot enough to make her take an involuntary step backwards.
He clamped his lips tightly, as if to hold back further remonstrations, but his gaze continued to move over her face, studying each feature with disturbing intensity, travelling from her neck to her chin and lingering on her mouth before finally settling on her eyes.
She didn’t react; indeed, she barely registered his words. The impact, the impossibility of him being there, the stream of questions tumbling through her head, made it a struggle to maintain a facade of anything even approaching calm.
Her tongue flickered across her dry lips, drawing his eyes and an inarticulate sound from his throat.
The noise jolted her free of her trance as her gaze shifted from his face to the phone he’d picked up, which he was now holding out to her.
‘You were willing to fight for it, so take it.’
She ignored the sarcastic reminder and reached out, a deep shudder running though her body as their fingers grazed for a split second. Her eyes darted everywhere but at the face of the man she had once loved as she closed her fingers over the phone and brought it up tight against her chest.
Loved and left.
It had taken her months after that fateful night to stop reimagining the scene, replacing the facts with alternative outcomes, but none of the other scenarios had a particularly happy conclusion either.
Some people were just not meant to be together.
She tipped her head awkwardly in acknowledgement. Her eyes lifted as she shook her head and forced her lips into a smile. Not a great smile and it hurt, but she was definitely smiling, which was better than the alternative—which was gibbering incoherence.
‘My whole life is on this phone…’ Her attempt at a laugh didn’t work out brilliantly and his only response was a scowl.
‘Your life!’ He expelled the words through gritted teeth. ‘Walking alone at this time of night in an area like this doesn’t suggest too much concern for your life!’
‘This area is perfectly—’ She stopped and took a deep breath, recognising that arguing with him wasn’t going to de-escalate a situation that needed some serious de-escalation. ‘Look, I’m grateful, but I could have handled it. I was handling it.’
‘Oh, is that a fact?’
This fresh display of blatant sarcasm brought a faint flush to her pale cheeks.
‘Yes!’ she retorted, pausing and trying to stick a hairpin back into her once neat braid, which immediately tumbled back down. So much for dignity.
How dare he comment on where she ran her business, where she lived her life? Him, with his new family, his new life—he knew nothing of hers any more.
She flung the unravelling braid over her shoulder and cleared her throat. ‘Sorry. Obviously, I am grateful, but I just…’ She swallowed convulsively as emotion rose in her throat, thickening her words and, worse, bringing the sting of tears to her eyes. ‘I just want to go home now.’
Aware that her voice had risen to a shrill plaintive wail, she took a deep breath, calming in theory but less so in reality.
She cleared her throat again. ‘This is just all a bit weird. You, here? Looking like this…’ Her voice stalled.
She fought the urge to say something daft like Do you work out? and said nothing at all.
‘You have no security?’
The taut condemnation in his voice wrenched an ironic laugh from her. His comment showed just how far removed this man was from the Leo she had known.
‘Sure. It’s their day off.’ She studied his face; he used to have a sense of humour. ‘Seriously, this is normally a quiet time of night, and I’ve taken self-defence classes.’ She hadn’t, but she didn’t want him to know his criticism had got to her.
‘You did?’ He raised his eyebrows in challenge. She could tell he’d seen straight through her falsehood.
Sometimes it was irritating that she couldn’t follow through with a perfectly good lie.
‘No, but I intend to when I have the time, and I’ve read a lot of self-help books.’
‘What, to whack little shits across the head with?’
She laughed and she didn’t know why, because laughter in this situation was not a sane reaction, but for a second he had sounded so like the Leo she had once known that a wistful sigh left her lips.
Before reality came flooding back in and she realised that he was no more like the old Leo than she was the old Amy.
They never could be. It was time to say goodbye, once and for all.