He must have found it strange after saying she was hungry that Helen hardly touched her meal. The chicken cooked in a spicy sauce and the fresh green salad were delicious, and the creamy peach dessert was out of this world, but Leon glowering across the table at her was not.
He had returned from the bedroom obviously refreshed from a shower and a change of clothes, the black silk shirt unbuttoned casually to the waist in the heat of the apartment, the black trousers resting low down on his lean hips, and yet Helen could see his anger hadn’t abated; his scowl was indicative of his mood.
Neither of them did justice to the meal and Helen smiled apologetically at the manservant as he cleared away the dishes. Leon sat moodily on the sofa, shrouded in the smoke from the cheroots he lit one after the other. Helen watched him from beneath lowered lashes, sipping the coffee Leon had refused, preferring a large glass of brandy. He had drunk quite a lot of wine during the meal too, and Helen eyed him warily.
His tawny gaze levelled on her, cold and chilling, making her shiver apprehensively. ‘I’m not going to suddenly leap on you in a drunken haze,’ he drawled mockingly, stubbing
out a half-smoked cheroot.
Her face paled. ‘That was cruel, Leon,’ she choked. ‘Cruel and insensitive.’
‘I feel bloody cruel!’ he snapped, lighting a fresh cheroot.
Helen stood up. ‘This isn’t going to work, Leon. I—I’ll get my case and leave.’
‘Sit down!’
‘Wh-what did you say?’
‘I said sit down, damn you,’ he ordered harshly. ‘If you think I’m letting you leave now then you’re mistaken.’
‘But—’
‘You aren’t leaving, Helen. Before you remembered the swine you married you were doing just fine. I’ll make you forget him if it’s the last thing I do,’ he told her grimly. ‘You’re driving me quietly out of my mind, but I’ll make you forget him, I swear it.’
‘And what’s it going to do to you in the meantime?’ she asked gently.
His eyes were shadowed, deep hollows in his cheeks. ‘It’s destroying me, that’s what it’s doing—but you’ve been doing that since the moment I first saw you. I knew then that you were going to be something important in my life. It wasn’t until I tried to kiss you that I realised exactly what I’d let myself in for. Maybe if I could have taken you to my bed at the start I may have been able to forget you, as I’ve forgotten every other woman I’ve ever wanted. Although I doubt it—you’re the sort that gets under the skin and refuses to be forgotten.’
‘But you tried,’ she reminded him.
He frowned. ‘Does that bother you?’
Helen regretted her jibe, it seeming to imply that she was jealous of these other women. ‘No,’ she denied instantly. ‘No, of course not.’
He swung his legs down off the sofa, his eyes intent on her as he sat forward. ‘Are you sure?’ he probed.
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ Her hands twisted together. ‘Why should I care who you sleep with?’
‘What I did didn’t have much to do with sleeping,’ he derided.
Helen stood up, finding the thought of his naked golden body intimately entwined with some unknown woman vaguely nauseating. She swallowed hard to fight down these feelings, not recognising them in herself. But Leon had deliberately made her aware of his lean attractive body, and now that she was she didn’t like the thought of him being with other women. It was rather dog-in-the-manger of her, not wanting him to have other women but not willing to give herself to him.
‘Why so tense, Helen?’ he queried softly, another cheroot in his hand.
‘Tense?’ she repeated shrilly. ‘I’m not tense!’
‘Yes, you are. It disturbs you, doesn’t it, that I’ve had other women?’
‘No! I—Yes!’ she admitted reluctantly. ‘But I don’t understand why it does. And will you’ stop smoking those things, it’s choking me!’
‘My, my, you are tense!’ He gave a slow smile and stubbed out the cheroot. ‘Darling, are you—’
‘Don’t call me that!’ She was completely agitated now.
‘But you are my darling,’ he insisted. ‘My beautiful darling Helen.’
She swallowed hard. ‘Do you think I ever will be—yours, I mean?’