Chapter Nine #3
‘Okay...’ It seemed ridiculous that he had put his trousers back on while she remained on the sofa in her birthday suit, so she, likewise, stuck on her shorts and her tee shirt although she could still smell the tang of sex on her body and could still feel the powerful throb of him inside her.
She sat up straight, hands primly on her knees, and watched him.
‘Of course, I did understand that having a child around would alter the dynamics of my life.’
‘Did you really?’
Leo grimaced. ‘I deserve your sarcasm,’ he conceded with a graceful gesture of rueful surrender. ‘I was na?ve.’
‘You’re way too accustomed to having everything your own way.’
‘I also thought that Adele would be...less stubborn. I have no experience with young children but, in my head, I naturally assumed that this would, indeed, be a rescue mission and the object of the rescue would be overjoyed at being saved.’
‘And instead,’ Sammy filled in slowly, ‘you got a little girl with problems and anxieties. And despite the fact that remaining in this country with her grandmother will probably be the worst thing for her, despite the fact that she probably, from the sounds of it, doesn’t even enjoy living with her, it’s still all she’s ever known and she’s going to cling to the familiarity. ’
‘I frighten her,’ Leo said bluntly. ‘The second I try to engage her in conversation, she clams up. The minute I get too close, even if I’m obeying your teacher theory of stooping down to her level, she looks as though she’s going to have a panic attack.’
‘She just needs to get used to you and she will. Wait and see.’
‘Whilst I deeply appreciate your stirring words of encouragement,’ Leo said wryly, ‘I don’t have a great deal of time left over here before the case is decided one way or another.
If the outcome is that she is allowed to come back with me, and I very much think that it will be a favourable outcome, then it doesn’t give me much time for the bonding process to be solidified.
’ He looked at her speculatively. ‘She likes you. She feels safe with you.’
Sammy didn’t say anything. The marriage proposal and that brief flare of thrilling, wonderful joy had withered fast. She knew where he was going and it made her feel faint.
‘And so you want to marry me because marrying me would make your life easier with Adele.’
Leo flushed darkly. ‘That’s not quite how I would have put it.’
‘Then how would you have put it?’
‘What started as a necessary charade to win this custody battle has stopped being a charade. We’re lovers and we both know the sex between us is amazing.
On top of that, you have won Adele over.
She trusts you and it would certainly make things easier for her if you were to be around when we return to London.
Provided, of course, that we return mission accomplished,’ he amended dutifully.
‘You’ve paid me a great deal of money,’ Sammy said coolly. ‘You could just have asked me to stick around for a couple of weeks until she settled in to life over there.’
‘I could have,’ Leo admitted, ‘but it occurred to me that marriage might be no bad thing. I cannot expect to resume my old life as I knew it with a child on the scene.’
‘So what you’re proposing is a business arrangement.’ Sammy’s voice had dropped from cool to positively freezing.
‘Since when can sex ever be classified as part of a business arrangement?’
Restlessness consumed her and she paced the room, prowling to stand by the glass pane overlooking the living area, distractedly appreciating the fabulous symmetry of the house while she fought down the hurt and anger of being offered a marriage of convenience.
‘I don’t suppose it’s occurred to you that I might want a little bit more for myself than a marriage of convenience?’
Leo’s jaw clenched. He wondered whether he had approached this matter in the right way but how else could he have broached the subject?
And why was she now attacking him? He had asked her to marry him.
It was a proposal that made sense and not just for him but for her, as well.
They got along and the sex was great. She would make a terrific surrogate mother to Adele.
Was the prospect of all of that, with unlimited money thrown in for good measure, so appalling?
She was a virgin when she had met him. So obviously the man of her dreams had not sauntered by waving a wedding ring in his hand and patting a cushion in preparation for his bended knee, and surely she was practical enough to wonder whether such a man existed anyway.
Whatever line of reasoning he used, Leo knew that he was aggrieved because he had offered her marriage, the single thing he had never offered any other woman, and she had turned him down, which no other woman—not one, not a single one—would have done.
‘You only want to marry me because it makes sense.’ Bitter disappointment made her sound shrill.
She hated herself for actually imagining, even for a second, that he had been about to follow up on his marriage proposal with a confession of love.
She had truly forgotten the game they’d been playing.
She’d truly forgotten that he hadn’t jumped into bed with her for any other reason than passing lust and, now that they were lovers, she made sense as a wife because of the relationship she had fostered with his charge.
‘Remind me what’s wrong with a marriage based on good sense,’ Leo gritted. ‘Look at my father’s disastrous union with Sean’s mother and Sean’s disastrous union with Adele’s mother. The list could go on and on and on. Emotions have a nasty habit of sabotaging good intentions.’
‘No.’ It would be pointless going into lots of reasons why she wouldn’t marry him but for her the biggest one was that he just didn’t love her and, when it came to spending the rest of her life with someone, love had to be on the menu.
And he could quote as many disastrous unions as he wanted—that was his learning curve, not hers.
He wanted her to be a fixture in his life because he would be inheriting a small child and having Sammy around would enable him to return to his normal life without too much difficulty.
She would be there to take the brunt of the childcare away from him.
She would be working freelance and could so devote her time to ensuring that Adele settled in as best she could.
Leo might have sidelined work a little whilst he was in Melbourne but as soon as his feet hit British soil he would once again immerse himself in his job and if she were around as the dutiful wife he would be unfettered by having to compromise his time.
Marrying her was the lazy, selfish solution to a complex situation he had not given much thought to.
She could understand that he might think that he was conferring a great honour on her because the women he dated would all have probably walked on a bed of burning embers to get to the other side if the ring had been on offer.
He wasn’t to know that she was in love with him.
He wasn’t to know that the thought of being with someone who couldn’t love her back would have been torture.
Plus, whilst he might be attracted to her now, what was to say that he wouldn’t lose interest in a few weeks’ time?
Without love there to provide the necessary glue to a relationship, would he consider it acceptable to have affairs with women because he had married a woman to basically look after his charge?
How could the commitment ever be there between two people locked in a marriage that was an arrangement?
When would she start to become a liability?
In time, he would form a firm bond with Adele and her usefulness would be at an end.
Would he then start regretting his impulsive proposal?
The arrangement he had proposed had more holes than a colander but she still felt sick because she knew that if she turned him down then what remained of their stay in Melbourne would be awkward and stilted and she had become so accustomed to the easy, sexy, flirty rapport they had developed.
But turn him down she would.
‘I can never marry you,’ she explained quietly.
‘I want more from life than being harnessed to someone for all the wrong reasons. If you’re worried about how Adele will adjust if you win this fight and get custody of her, then you just need to employ a nanny.
’ She looked him straight in the eye. ‘If you employ a good-looking one, you might even find that you want to hop into bed with her. You really don’t have to stick a ring on my finger to get what you want.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll go have a shower. ..and an early night.’