He stood up and pierced her with a warning look that had been known to make grown men quake.
The plane dipped slightly and one of the small cars Ty was playing with rolled towards him. Leo automatically bent to pick it up and then his eyes met his son’s. They were blue, like his. And he could see now how Lexi had made the connection between them so quickly. On top of the eye colour, his son had the slashing eyebrows and strong bone structure that indicated his Cossack ancestry. Leo held his breath as dark images of Sasha at that age rolled into his brain like thunderclouds.
Ty moved towards him, intent on getting his car, and Leo felt the urge to get as far away from him as possible. Then he felt the unmistakable shift of the aircraft as it hit an air pocket, the bottom seeming to fall out of the plane. As if in slow motion, Ty stumbled, his little arms instinctively thrown forward to break his fall, and Leo reacted purely on instinct—reaching down and lifting his son into his arms before bracing himself against the side of the plane. They staggered together and Ty flung his arms around Leo’s neck and for the first time ever Leo breathed in his clean, little boy scent. His eyes closed, his body tensed. Within seconds the turbulence had passed, the plane once again steady.
‘Are you okay?’ Lexi’s worried voice broke his paralysis and he opened his eyes to find her standing in front of him. He released a breath and clenched his jaw. No, he was not okay.
‘Here.’ He thrust Ty at her. ‘Make sure he’s strapped in at all times while the plane is in the air,’ he grated coldly.
‘Mr Aleksandrov …’ He didn’t know what she had been about to say and he didn’t wait around to hear, making his way to his private bedroom for the rest of the journey. He slumped down on the edge of the bed and held his unsteady hands in front of him. Ty had felt so small and fragile. He spread his fingers and turned them back and forth, no longer seeing his own hands but those of his father’s. How had he hit them at such a young age?
Athens was a revelation to Lexi. Hot, dry, crumbly … ancient! She loved it. Loved the busyness of the streets and the organised chaos of locals, tourists and Vespas winging in and out of the traffic.
She pointed things out to Ty as their taxi fought its way through the gridlock to God only knew where. She hadn’t seen Leo after the incident on the plane and again found herself wondering at the type of man he was. She hadn’t missed the pain behind his eyes as he had looked at Ty on the plane. Almost as if he was looking at someone else. A ghost. And did that have anything to do with his nightmare last night?
She knew from reading his biography online that he was an only child to ‘warm and loving parents’ who had died in a tragic accident when he was twenty. From there he had bought a scaffolding company and turned it into a global entity before expanding into hotels and construction. According to Wikipedia he had become the richest man in Russia by his thirtieth birthday, a position he still held five years on.
But if he came from such a loving family, why had he never accepted Ty as his son? What had gone wrong between him and Amanda? She hadn’t been able to find any information about his connection to either one of them online, which was strange for such a high-profile person—which she now realised he was.
Not to mention the most exciting male she had ever set eyes on. Not that she planned to do anything about that. She only wished she wasn’t so physically aware of him.
Like now, with her thigh touching the length of his in the taxi they had been forced to take from the airport. They were supposed to have ridden in Leo’s helicopter, but as soon as Ty had heard the whine of the rotors he’d started to cry and Lexi had been pleasantly surprised when Leo had ordered a taxi instead. Now she was unpleasantly hot pressed against him in the confines of the small car and, from what she could tell by the amount of tapping Leo was doing on his phone, he hadn’t noticed at all.
Finally, they alighted from the taxi and Lexi stretched and looked around. The port of Piraeus was teeming with activity and various large ferries and boats were docked at the tiny, industrious harbour, Athens rising behind her in a tier of mostly grubby, worn, age-old buildings.
‘Look, Ty—’ she pointed up the hill, where a cluster of deep green trees circled below the rocky ledge that housed the Parthenon and other ancient ruins ‘—the Acropolis.’
The little boy looked, but of course showed none of the excitement that she felt.
‘Hurry up, it’s hot,’ Leo demanded grumpily behind her.
She turned and spotted the four casually dressed bodyguards she was still not used to flanking them.
‘Of course it’s hot.’ She smiled, determined not to let his dark mood, or her own awareness of him as a man, colour her enjoyment of her surroundings. He had forced her to come, but it was her natural inclination to try and find the best in every situation. ‘It’s summer in Greece. Have you been to the Acropolis before?’
Leo scowled down at her. ‘No.’
‘Is this your first time in Athens, then?’ she asked interestedly, shading her eyes against the sun as she looked up at him.
‘I come here to work, not play.’ He glanced at Ty and then back. ‘Is he heavy?’
‘No.’
‘Good. Danny will give you a tour of Proteus and see to anything that you need.’
‘Oh, what will you be doing?’
Her question caught Leo off guard and he didn’t know if it was the heat of the sun, or her annoying serenity, or the fact he’d just spent the better part of an hour pressed up against her in a stifling taxi, but his patience was paper-thin. ‘If I wanted to answer to someone, Miss Somers, I’d have a wife.’
Her eyebrows shot up and her exotic eyes, which had sparkled before as she’d enjoyed her surroundings, turned frigid. ‘A novel concept for you, to be sure,’ she retorted, stalking off ahead of him as if she were a queen dismissing a minion.
No, angel, you’re the novel concept.
Simmering with frustration, Leo found himself absently watching the provocative sway of her hips in jeans that were surely a size too small before indicating to two of his security detail to follow her.
He boarded his yacht and his captain and two engineers were waiting to give him a personal tour. When that was done, he headed to his private office to work.
Only his mind wouldn’t focus and by nightfall he had given up. Tomorrow he would have up to thirty guests enjoying a weekend on-board and he would need to be in top form for the meetings he had planned.