Normally.
Normally, when his brain was operating at one hundred per cent capacity. Normally, when he was with any other woman but her. He felt a frisson of unease slither through him as her fingers once again threaded through the hair on his chest.
Now he should get her up. Send her back to her room. Give her every indication of how this situation was going to play out.
Her breathing became choppy and he knew she’d sensed the subtle sense of dread that had overcome him.
‘Did I just ruin everything with my big mouth?’ She lifted her head, uncertainty threaded through her voice just as her fingers had been lightly threading through the hair on his chest before he’d ruined it.
‘No,’ he said gruffly. He moved a hand into her hair and gently urged her head back down onto his shoulder. ‘Sleep.’
She let out a sigh that whispered across his skin like the sea breeze.
Leave. He’d meant to say leave.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
LEXI woke the next morning and the first thing she registered was that she was smiling. The second, as she moved her legs and rolled over, was that her body felt different. Languid. Replete. Achy.
Her eyes flew to the empty pillow beside her and then around the masculine bedroom. Empty, both. She breathed out and let the sense of happiness glide over her again.
Leo. Last night.
And then another emotion took hold. Panic. What had she done?
She rolled back onto her stomach and groaned into the pillow. She’d come to his room last night because she’d been worried about his state of mind. She’d stayed because … because … he was just so male. So commanding. When he’d said, ‘Come here,’ in his rough, accented voice she had felt powerless to resist. Hadn’t wanted to resist. Some part of her knowing that to do so was pointless. This thing between them had been building since the moment she’d first walked into her office and seen him standing there like a modern day terminator, about to take her room apart if he didn’t get what he wanted.
After her initial uncertainty last night she had felt so uninhibited. So free! Her insides started to melt at just the thought of all the things they had done together.
It was everything she had ever fantasised sex could be and more. So much more. When he had moved over her and his body had first joined with hers something inside her had shifted and she remembered thinking that she would be forever changed after that. That no other man could ever possibly make her feel the way he did.
But that was absurd … and unnecessarily sombre.
Feeling silly at the thought she lay still, straining to hear any signs of life in the outer rooms of Leo’s private suite. Almost relieved when she didn’t hear anything but seagulls circling overhead and the low, intermittent murmur of distant voices through the open balcony doors.
Relaxing slightly, her mind flashed back to his childhood revelations. She felt warm knowing that he had trusted her with such sensitive information and wondered if he’d told anyone else. He wasn’t at all what she had expected after meeting him in her office. He wasn’t the privileged, shallow bigot she had first thought.
Like her, he was damaged. He truly believed he had nothing to offer his son but the pain he had experienced as a boy. She thought that if his father was in the room right then she would smack him. How anybody could hit a child she didn’t know and her own childhood upset at having an absent father faded into the background compared to the agony Leo had suffered.
Lexi instinctively felt that there was no way Leo was like his father. There was no way a person who hurt others cared about his staff the way Leo did and nor would they care that their son might feel afraid spending a weekend in a strange apartment with a nanny he had never met before. Nor, she felt sure, would they get six monthly checks carried out on a son they supposedly didn’t care about to ensure his safety.
Ty!
She’d forgotten all about him!
Was he okay? She knew that he liked Carolina but Carolina wouldn’t know where to find her if Ty should need her.
Jumping out of bed, she quickly scrambled around for her dress and felt a blush flood across her cheeks as she remembered that Leo had torn it down the middle.
At least her knickers were still in one piece. She found them on the carpet and wriggled into them, berating her memory for reminding her how he had peeled them slowly down her legs last night. Shaking off the effects of those memories she walked into Leo’s wardrobe, her eyes growing bigger than balloons as she took in the rows of beautifully crafted male clothing on offer. All of it formal, or semi-formal. She felt a bit awkward riffling through his shelves in search of a T-shirt and a pang of regret that he had not stayed to wake her this morning punctured the small bubble of bliss she had been feeling.
Last night he had said she was beautiful, feminine—and she had felt as if he adored her. Only that was silly. He didn’t adore her. He wasn’t even here.
And why wasn’t he here? Had last night not been as good for him as it had been for her? She swallowed hard and pushed those unwanted thoughts aside. He was just busy. He had things to do. He wouldn’t have had time to wait around for her to wake up and wasn’t it more considerate that he’d left her to sleep?
Yes. No. Maybe. It would have been nice to have been kissed awake by him. Had he wanted to do that? Had he even stopped for a moment beside the bed and watched her sleep? No, of course he hadn’t and wanting the opposite to be true was a one way ticket to heartache and misery. She knew that better than anyone.
Finally locating maybe the only casual item of clothing in his wardrobe, Lexi donned a long-sleeved black T-shirt that dangled way down over her hands and covered her almost to her knees. Feeling decently covered, she grabbed her sling back heels and rolled her dress into a tight ball. She considered fixing her hair and straightening the bed but thought maybe it was best to get out of there before the maid showed up to make it.