Chapter Three
‘Look, thanks for your help but—’
‘Get in.’
‘What?’ Until the long, sleek designer car they were standing beside bleeped, she had no idea they had been walking while they talked. He had basically been herding her like a sheep as they spoke and she hadn’t even noticed.
‘I was always told not to get into cars with strangers,’ she said, trying to inject some levity, admittedly strained, into the situation.
‘I’m not a stranger, Amy.’
Her head tilted to look him full in the face.
Yes, he was.
It was as if he had been stripped back to a shell and rebuilt as a harder, scarier version of the Leo she had known and loved.
‘The Tube—you can walk me to the Tube. That’s it.’ It was a meeting him midway offer that he appeared not to recognise.
‘It’s either home or the police station,’ he said in a voice that left no room for negotiation. She was starting to suspect it was the norm for this Leo.
‘Police?’
‘To report the attack and theft.’
‘I still have my phone and they won’t class it as a mugging, so what would be the point?’
‘You sound like an expert.’
She shook her head. ‘I’m just stating the obvious.’
‘In what world is that obvious?’
‘My world, Leo.’ But no longer his.
He said something in Italian and looked at her oddly.
‘We can stand here arguing all day or you can get in.’
‘Night,’ she corrected, adding, ‘not day.’
He looked bewildered and utterly vexed by her pedantic insertion. She took a deep breath and weighed her limited options.
‘All right,’ she said, sliding into the leather seat and sinking into the padded luxury that swallowed her up.
It probably made her shallow, but she missed that part of having money—the comfort, the space, the security and the smell of luxury. She inhaled, and Leo’s scent hit her. Warm, clean, male. With an elusive hint of an undeniably expensive fragrance.
The engine was silent so when the car moved off she gave a little gasp of shock. ‘Don’t you want to know where I live?’
He flashed her a look before pulling out into the traffic. ‘I know where you live, Amy.’
That could have sounded sinister… Actually, there was no could about it, it was sinister.
‘Now,’ he said, flashing her a smile that didn’t reach his eyes, ‘isn’t this more comfortable than the Tube?’
She could lie and tell him that no, she would feel more comfortable packed in like a sardine with her face in someone’s armpit. It wouldn’t even be a total lie. Being in a confined space with this version of Leo was proving to be just as stressful. On a much deeper, chemical level.
Luckily, he didn’t feel the need to make conversation because she was not capable of it.
She sat there with a dazed look on her face as he drove, trying to build up some resistance to the aura of maleness he exuded.
Trying not to tax her sex-whacked brain as she struggled to work out how he’d just happened to be passing by.
Obviously, he hadn’t just happened to be passing by. This had all been planned. But what, exactly, was he planning now?
By the time he drew up outside her apartment block, she virtually threw herself out of the car.
He followed her. ‘I’ll see you in.’
If this had been an argument she could have won, she’d have fought it. But she knew resistance would be futile. She wouldn’t win, not against this Leo.
To regain any amount of control she could, she avoided the lift in favour of the stairs. Being alone in a small space with him wasn’t wise right now. She wasn’t about to make that mistake twice.
He wasn’t subtle when he strode straight past her into the living room of the flat before she’d barely opened the door. Her nostrils flared in annoyance. He was invading her space but she was in control, she reminded herself. She clung with bloodless fingers to the illusion.
‘So, you live here alone?’
Her lips quirked into an ironic smile as she directed a look at her uninvited guest, who was taking in every detail of her home.
Maybe he was thinking of when she had smuggled him into the Manor when her parents were absent, no doubt enjoying the fact that she was no longer living in the lap of luxury.
‘I think maybe you know I don’t, Leo.’ He knew where she lived so it wasn’t such a massive jump to assume he knew that her father lived here too.
He shrugged. ‘Is your father around?’
‘He’s away for the weekend.’ She caught her full lower lip between her teeth and tried to disguise her worry about the situation beneath a shrug and a smile.
Her dad had been cagey when she had challenged him about where he was going, and who with, adding another hurt, ‘Don’t you trust me?
’ to end the discussion. Because actually, no, she didn’t trust him, but there was no question of her voicing the fact.
Her father was vulnerable; he had already tried to take his life once, and she hadn’t been there for him.
He needed support, not a guilt trip, she reminded herself. He’d done his time.
‘Why are you here, Leo? Nothing about this is accidental, is it?’ she charged.
‘You think I arranged for you to be attacked?’
‘Of course not! But you weren’t just passing either, were you?’
‘True.’ He performed a ninety-degree turn. ‘This is a nice place.’
Her eyes narrowed and she couldn’t bear it any longer.
‘Stop it! Why not say what you mean? How the mighty have fallen! Enjoy the moment, that’s fine!
I guess I owe you that.’ She extended her arms wide in invitation.
‘If you must know, even this place is more than I can really afford, but Dad…’ She bit her lip and shook her head, wondering why she had volunteered this much information.
‘Wouldn’t enjoy slumming it?’
Her eyes slid from his intuitive dark stare. Her father had made his opinion of the flat very clear, and it hadn’t been positive!
‘When will he be back?’
Amy continued to shrug off the inappropriately thick coat to reveal a pale blue denim shirt tied at the waist. Her jeans were a shade darker and clung to her thighs and when she bent down to unzip the ankle boots she was wearing the fabric pulled distractingly tight across her firm, rounded bottom.
Her waist-length glossy hair, which was working its way loose of the braid, fell over one shoulder as she straightened up and kicked off the soft ankle boots she wore.
Leo was still struggling to take control of the testosterone-charged heat in his groin when she lifted her head.
‘Monday,’ she said, giving the knot at her waist an extra sharp tug.
‘Like I already explained to you, he’s away for the weekend, staying with friends.
’ Her hands landed on her hips as her chin lifted to a defensive angle, drawing his attention to the narrowness of her waist and the curve of her hips.
Her supple, streamlined figure, the smooth curves of her body and her natural elegance had always made him think of a sleek cat.
With claws, he added silently, thinking not just of the marks she had left on his shoulders on occasion, but the way she hadn’t hesitated before cutting him out of her life.
It was a good reminder of what he was here to do.
‘Is this an interrogation?’ she asked with a frown.
Leo looked at her and laughed again.
At eighteen, Amy hadn’t had a clue about the sort of power her beauty gave her, let alone how use it to her own advantage. The fact that she still didn’t amazed him.
‘Have I said something funny?’ she demanded, the hoarse note of belligerence in her voice shaking loose a memory—a memory of that throaty little whimper, low in her throat, she would let out when he kissed her, promptly negating any control he’d ever had around her.
‘You’re very touchy, cara.’ He shifted his stance slightly to ease the ache in his groin.
A man might ask himself at this point just who was being punished here, he thought, permitting himself a flicker of an ironic self-mocking smile.
‘I’m not.’
It might be a piece of poetic justice, his plan to rub her little nose in their flipped fortunes by bringing her into his world, allowing her to see what she had missed out on, but he hadn’t factored in the fact that she wouldn’t be the only one made to feel uncomfortable with the arrangement.
She was still the most incredibly sensual woman he had ever met.
Amy, reacting to the tension buzzing in the air like static, closed her eyes, bringing her lashes down to act like a glossy but inadequate protective shield, casting a shadow across her high smooth cheeks. It was then that he noted the purple smudges under her soft brown eyes.
‘Do you ever sleep?’
She shrank under his critical stare, clearly suddenly aware of what a wreck she looked. So different from the flawlessly glossy women he was used to escorting.
‘Thank you for your concern, but being self-employed means I need to put in the hours, and I like being my own boss.’
The look she gave him suggested that wasn’t entirely true. But he didn’t care to explore it further. He was more interested in furthering his cause.
‘Do you like your father’s new friends?’
It took Amy a moment to retrieve the thread he had picked back up. Where was he going with this? Why did he want to know?
‘New friends—?’
‘Well, I doubt if many of his old golf club buddies hung around, and you said he was away with friends.’
‘After he was…arrested…’ she silently mocked herself for the small tell-tale hesitation ‘…we were toxic, but who needs friends like that, anyway?’ she countered with a shrug, thinking miserably that her father needed them, he desperately needed them, his old life, the club memberships and committees.
Leo just shrugged and, not for the first time, Amy wondered how he had become so invulnerable. Hard as steel.
‘But not you—you stood by him,’ he stated.
Amy’s glance slid from his. She remembered, all too well, wishing that she could walk away. ‘He’s my father. I know he’s not perfect.’ And she also knew how vulnerable he was.