Chapter Ten
LEO STARED, SCOWLING, at the computer in front of him. The office was, as was usual late in the evening, quiet. Under normal circumstances, he would have relished the peace and solitude to catch up on the enormous amount of work that required his undivided attention.
Unfortunately, normal circumstances had not been in evidence for some time now.
And yet current circumstances couldn’t have been more normal in the great scheme of things.
He had won custody of Adele. The child psychologist had done a thorough job, had spent time assessing Adele through the child-friendly means of drawing, paper tasks and games.
Unbeknown to Leo, it emerged that some testing had previously taken place and had indicated some areas of concern with her grandmother.
These areas of concern were not in evidence when it came to Adele’s experiences with Leo and Sammy.
The process of bonding had begun and the psychologist had been gratified to note that, thanks to her interpretation of the various tasks set, under that quiet five-year-old’s exterior was a child who was tentative but keen to face the future with a couple who would allow her to be a child without fear of reprisal.
Ironically, the act they had instigated had convinced everyone that the love between them would provide just the security that Adele needed.
Furthermore, the parting of ways between the child and her grandmother had been less nightmarish than expected, thanks to the vast amount of cash he had gifted the woman.
Along with assurances that contact would be maintained between her and her granddaughter, with one trip a year being paid for so that they could physically meet.
With defeat staring her in the face, Gail had tactfully backtracked from her belligerent stance to become the epitome of helpfulness.
That had been over two months ago.
He had, before even leaving Melbourne, instructed his PA to supervise the redecorating of the room Adele would call her own and, with money thrown at the project, it had been completed in record time.
A week after the agreement had been reached, they had arrived back at his penthouse apartment to a wonderfully child-friendly environment.
Sammy had even gone beyond the call of duty and stayed on the scene for a couple of weeks after they’d returned.
Leo’s scowl deepened. She’d thrown his marriage proposal back in his face, politely told him that circumstances had altered and she would no longer feel comfortable being his lover and had then proceeded to act as though nothing had ever happened between them.
She had blanked out the amazing sex and turned into a distant friend, acting the part she had been hired to play.
She had spent the remainder of their time at the villa keeping Adele occupied, smiling and chatting politely to him and reading her book in the evenings, out on the front deck that gave on to the spectacular ocean views.
He hadn’t been able to comprehend why she had turned him down.
What he did comprehend, what had become patently clear over time, as she had gradually extricated herself out of his life, was that she had left some kind of ridiculous void.
She was on his mind all the time.
He couldn’t focus.
There were many times he wanted to talk to her about Adele, ask her opinion on the child’s progress. He knew she’d have been pleased at how his progress with Adele had been and he caught himself wishing she was around to congratulate him, with that warm smile that he missed so much.
He had got a top child psychologist on board to come for little ‘chats’ three times a week, so that he could spot any problems in the making, of which there were, thankfully, none.
She would have approved of that. He had taken his time and, with Sammy’s help during those first couple of weeks, had employed a young nanny who worked part-time at the school into which Adele had been enrolled.
He had made a big effort to try and curtail his working hours and he had spent every weekend with his father, who had been over the moon to have his granddaughter back in England.
Indeed, this was the first late night he had had at the office and only because Adele was in the country staying with his father for a long weekend.
He would be joining them at lunchtime the following day.
It irked him to acknowledge that he couldn’t stop wondering whether Sammy had spent the day with Adele and his father. He knew that she was building up her fledgling career as a freelance artist because his father had told him so in passing.
Pride had prevented him from asking for more detailed information.
But pride made a very cold bedfellow and his bed was the coldest it had been since he had reached adulthood. He had no interest in inviting any woman to share it.
With a groan of pure frustration, Leo glanced at his watch to register that it was a little after eight and he had managed to achieve very little on the work front.
This couldn’t continue. Accustomed to assuming that for every single problem there was a solution, Leo made his mind up on the spot. It would take him several hours to get down to Devon but the only way he would ever get the wretched woman out of his head was if he actually confronted her.
They had parted company with too many things left unsaid behind the polite smiles and courteous, remote conversation and cornflower-blue eyes that had refused to quite meet his.
He needed to tell her...
Leo’s mind braked to a halt and he frowned because he had to dig deep to find the answer to that and digging deep when it came to anything emotional was not in his nature.
So instead he focused on the logistics of getting down to Devon on a Friday evening, debating whether to get his driver to do the honours so that he could try and work in the back of the limo, or else driving himself.
Moving and thinking at the same time, he opted to drive down himself.
He enjoyed driving and being behind the wheel of his high-performance sports car might just clear his head.
There was no need to pack for he kept a wardrobe in his room at his father’s house so he didn’t have to return to his apartment.
He hit the road and as soon as he cleared the chaos of late-evening London traffic his head also began to clear.
Just leaving London behind induced a rush of freedom and he realised that this, at least in part, was down to the fact that he was going to do something about the messy tangle of emotions that had afflicted him ever since Sammy had walked out of his life.
In the morning he would talk to her.
He would pay her a civilised visit. He would ask her how she was doing.
Ask to see the studio, maybe talk about her work.
Having a civilised conversation with her would fill the nagging hole she had left in his life.
It would remove her from the pedestal on which she had somehow managed to get herself placed and he would once again see her for what she was—a nice, uncomplicated and rather ordinary young woman who was ill suited to have any place in his fast-moving, high-octane London life.
She had been a temporary blip and because of the way things had ended, because she had been the one to walk away, he had been left with his nose out of joint.
Wounded pride and a dented ego were curable ailments but he would have to re-establish some sort of normality between them instead of the frozen silence that currently existed.
Frankly, he just felt that he needed to see the woman to get a grip on his wayward emotions.
Adele would be pleased to see him and he found himself smiling. Every shy smile she directed at him was worth its weight in gold.
He had never had much of a paternal streak in him and he had accepted that having the child in his life would be the equivalent of taking on an honourable duty, but Leo was beginning to taste the sweet beginnings of unconditional, uncomplicated love.
He was discovering that there was nothing boring in looking at a three-line story written in oversized letters that were misspelt.
Nor was it a waste of his time fumbling to try to braid her hair and secure the braid with the bright pink ribbons she seemed to like so much.
She still didn’t talk much but she no longer darted into hiding whenever he appeared.
The nanny and the psychologist had worked miracles but the miracle had really started in Melbourne, under the attentive eye of Sammy.
Thoughts flitted through his head as he steadily burned up the distance between London and Devon.
He didn’t allow any of them to settle for too long. He knew that at one point he toyed with the crazy notion that the only way he would get her out of his system would be if he slept with her again.
It was beyond incomprehensible because he couldn’t conceive of ever chasing behind any woman who had turned him down, especially one who had turned him down when the offer had gone way past the bedroom door and up the aisle in a church.
But the memory of her responsive, hot body still burned a hole through all his attempts at shutting down the temptation to try it on with her again.
He was barely aware of the darkness gathering as he drove fast and smooth past Bristol and into the West Country.
He was also barely aware that he had bypassed the usual route to his father’s mansion and was instead following the less travelled road to where Sammy lived with her mother.
He knew the route.
He had taken it on two occasions, the first when they had both arrived down in Devon with Adele and had taken her first to see the grandfather she had never known and then to Sammy’s mother.
The second time he had managed to find some excuse to take his little charge there.
It had been only two weeks previously and Sammy had not been there.
He had made a point of not asking where she was.