Why had she refused to give Theo her number? Why had she refused to take his? Why had that contraception failed?
She felt too fragile to cope with public scrutiny and rejection. But as she glanced around, she realised her hesitation had caught the attention of the security guard. He was staring at her, unsmiling. All those old feelings of insecurity and inferiority burned. She was so out of place—again. She wasn’t good enough—she was never good enough. Humiliated, hurting, scared, Leah pushed forward and went up to the counter. This wasn’t about her. This was about her baby.
‘I’d like to get in touch with Theo Savas, please,’ she said quietly to the receptionist.
Leah liked working on reception. She liked greeting people with a smile and being able to help them with their enquiries or to help them find the person they’d come to visit. This woman didn’t look as though she enjoyed her job. There was no welcoming smile.
‘Is he expecting you?’
‘No, but I need to—’
‘Mr Savas has no immediate plans to visit the London office at this time,’ the receptionist informed her with precise finality.
‘If I could just get a phone number—’
‘I’m not authorised to give his private number out.’
‘I understand, but if I could leave my number...’ Leah was shaking with humiliation and embarrassment at the lack of courteous help.
The woman typed something on her screen. ‘Your name and number?’
‘Leah Turner,’ she mumbled and then gave her phone number. ‘You’ll make sure he gets that message?’
‘Certainly,’ the woman answered with frosty dismissiveness. ‘Was there anything else?’
‘No. Thank you.’
It was too awful.
Leah watched her phone for days. But there was no call, no message and she could think of no other way to get in contact with him. She couldn’t phone or email or scrape together the money to get to Athens...and even if she did get there, it wasn’t as if she could knock on his door because she had no idea where he lived. And doubtless he’d have security staff there too—protecting him from random women.
She sighed. As much as she dreaded it, she was going to have to go back to his wretched bank.
CHAPTER FOUR
‘DO YOU HAVE a moment, Theo?’
Theo glanced up as his security chief, Philip, paused in his doorway, an ominous-looking red file in his hands.
‘Of course.’ Theo sat back in his chair, eyes narrowing as Philip entered and closed the door behind him. ‘What is it?’
‘A woman visited the London office last week,’ Philip said without preamble. ‘The guard on the ground noticed her before she went up to Reception. There was also a call to the Greek office the day before.’
A woman? Theo raised his brows at Philip’s ferociously serious expression. ‘You think she’s a threat?’
Philip extracted a photo from the folder. ‘We pulled this from the security footage. It’s the woman you asked for that summary report on a few months ago. Leah Turner.’
Theo stilled as every muscle in his body tensed. Leah? His Leah-of-the-Lost-Ticket?
He stared at the glossy image Philip had put on his desk and tried to breathe but it was as if a monster had grabbed his guts in a giant fist and squeezed hard. Because it was her—all legs and pale skin. In this picture she wore a wool jacket and a worried look. Why?
‘What did she want?’ His voice was so gravelly he barely recognised it as his own.
‘To speak with you on a personal matter.’
She’d tried to contact him? Why now? Why months later? A surge of triumph ripped through him, swiftly followed by anger. ‘Why wasn’t she put through?’
He sighed and held up his hand. ‘Never mind.’ His staff would never interrupt him for, or give out his personal details to, a woman who’d just called in. ‘Did she leave her number?’
‘Unfortunately the details she left at Reception were mislaid.’ Philip frowned. ‘I’ve just interviewed the staff member—’
‘How long ago was this?’ Theo snapped.
‘It didn’t cross my desk until this morning.’ Philip sounded apologetic. ‘I’m sorry for the delay.’
Theo drew a steadying breath as he stared at her picture, but it didn’t stop the roar of his blood as feral want blazed. But that want mixed with a deeper delight. He’d missed her. A flat-out desperate need to know ached.
‘Would you like me to—?’
‘Leave it with me,’ Theo dismissed him brusquely, needing privacy to process. ‘And close the door on your way out.’
He needed to be alone to breathe and think and dampen down the fire arcing through his body.
‘Philip,’ he relented just as his man reached the door. ‘Thank you.’
He hadn’t opened the report on the lovely Leah Turner. He’d ordered it after that night they’d shared because he’d found himself unable to stop thinking about her. He’d half hoped to discover something in the report that would kill his constant interest in her. But it had got so bad that when the report had arrived he’d decided to exercise restraint and not even read the thing—to prove his self-control to himself and not make that intolerable yearning worse. Usually he was very good at self-control. So that report sat in a file o
n his home screen. Mocking him. Tempting him.
Every night since the ballet, he’d dreamed of being with her again and again. His imagination had inevitably returned to her dark hair, her pale skin, her long, long limbs... But it was the loss of something more ephemeral that had kept him awake—the sparkle in her eyes when she’d made one of her surprisingly astute comments or inadvertent slips of the tongue, the shy playfulness that had emerged with only a little encouragement and most of all that soft laugh and the emotional expressiveness that he’d found both a welcome and a warning...the thing he’d been most unable to resist responding to.
She’d not wanted to see him again. She’d not wanted his number. She’d avoided his touch in the morning. He’d taken that to be a kind of self-preservation instinct, because he too knew finality was for the best.
Circumstance had then buried Theo in a gamut of responsibility. On his return to Athens that day, Dimitri had taken a turn for the worse, forcing Theo to cancel all upcoming travel. For months he’d stayed home to oversee Dimitri’s care while working around the clock to keep the business on track. The old man was finally better now and he’d even revived that inconvenient idea to find Theo a suitable wife. But, for all his comments to placate Dimitri, Theo still had zero intention of following through on the idea.
Now he stared at the still of Leah—wrapped in that bulky wool jacket despite the spring weather—and it was her worried expression that struck him most. Why had she wanted to see him? Why now—all these months later?
He shoved his chair back and stood, rapidly assessing the pros and cons of immediate departure. But the decision was already made. He needed to see her in person.
He’d needed that for months.
CHAPTER FIVE
THE IMPERIOUS KNOCKING on her door startled Leah so much she dropped a stitch. She scrambled to her feet, heart thudding as she crossed the room. She didn’t get visitors at this time of night.
‘Hello?’ she called through her door.