His mind on Millie, he was impatient to return to London.
He didn’t trust her not to vanish, taking the child with her.
What evidence did he have that she was committed to their marriage? To the baby?
None.
On edge and impatient, he pushed through the agenda with supersonic speed, issuing orders, obtaining clarification on points he considered important, and ignoring issues that he considered irrelevant.
Having condensed what should have been an all-day meeting into a few intense hours, he rose to his feet and paced over to the window that ran from floor to ceiling along one side of the spectacular boardroom that dominated his Paris office. ‘We’re done here. Finish off. If you have any questions, you can speak to my team in London.’
The lawyer in charge of the deal picked up the thick pile of papers that had formed the focus of the discussion. ‘I wish everyone was as decisive as you. Clearly the abysmal state of the markets isn’t keeping you awake at night.’
‘No.’ Something else was responsible for that. His personal life.
The man snapped his briefcase closed. ‘I must congratulate you, Mr Demetrios. You have a quite startling ability to predict and understand human behaviour. Somehow you have still managed to make quite extraordinary profits even though the markets are collapsing around you. You anticipated the shift in the market before there were any outward signs. Stock in the Demetrios Corporation actually rose yesterday and yet market conditions have never been more challenging.’
‘One person’s challenge is another person’s opportunity.’ Distracted, Leandro kept his eyes fixed on the Paris skyline, his mind on his fragile marriage. Was he mad, trying to save it? Or was it like rare china dropped onto concrete? Shattered beyond repair.
In the past twenty-four hours he’d learned how little he knew about Millie.
Either that, or she’d changed. She was more…assertive. Or maybe she’d always been like that and he hadn’t looked closely enough. Certainly there were plenty of aspects to her personality that he hadn’t seen.
Leandro frowned. Had she really found him scary?
‘Speculation about the parentage of the baby doesn’t seem to have had an adverse effect on the price of your stock.’ The voice of the lawyer broke into his thoughts and Leandro stilled.
‘Our business is concluded for the day,’ he said coldly. ‘My assistant will show you out.’
Aware that he’d committed a gross error of judgement in mentioning something so personal, the man turned scarlet and stammered an apology but Leandro didn’t turn.
Perhaps he couldn’t blame Millie for believing the worst of him, he thought grimly, when the rest of the world was thinking it alongside her.
His reputation had always been a matter of supreme indifference to him, but he was starting to realise that it was now coming back to bite him.
The lawyers rose, like a room full of children drilled in classroom etiquette, almost comical in their desperation to absent themselves.
Once the room was empty Leandro rolled his shoulders, trying to relieve the tension. He prowled the length of the boardroom, gazing through the floor-to-ceiling plate-glass window that allowed him to enjoy a view of the Seine as it snaked through the city.
A sense of foreboding came over him. He really shouldn’t have left her.
He ran his hand over the back of his neck and withdrew his phone from his pocket. He’d speak to her—tell her that he’d be home in the next few hours. They’d spend some time together. Tapping his foot, he waited for someone to answer.
And it was a long wait.
When the housekeeper finally answered the phone and informed him that both his wife and the baby had gone out, his tension levels increased tenfold. When he was told they’d gone out without a driver or a member of his security staff, Leandro abandoned thoughts of work for the rest of the day and ordered his car to be brought round to the front of the building.
She’d left.
She’d run again.
What had he expected?
‘An astonishing ability to predict and understand human behaviour’—wasn’t that what the lawyer had said?
Leandro gave a humourless laugh. Where had that ability been when it had come to understanding his own wife? If he’d studied her as closely as he studied the stock markets and company portfolios, he would never have left London.
At every turn, she surprised him. He hadn’t expected her to show up at the house, he certainly hadn’t expected her to offer to care for her sister’s baby. And as for their relationship, he’d made a number of assumptions—assumptions he was now beginning to question. Her humble confession that she was ‘ordinary’ had revealed a depth of insecurity that he’d been unaware of. And the fact that he’d been unaware of it made him realise just how little he knew of her. But he intended to rectify that.