‘You had a bad marriage,’ she said tightly. ‘And the way you deal with it is by never getting close to anyone. You don’t want any woman to penetrate your fortress, so you just have affairs—nothing permanent, nothing that could get too emotionally messy.’
‘Spare me the analysis.’
‘Because that’s something else you’re not into? There are quite a few things you’re not into, aren’t there?’ Her skin felt hot and tight. She knew in some part of her that was still being rational that there was no need for her to start having a go at him, but she wanted to. She was just so angry that she had allowed herself to get in this situation in the first place.
‘I may have that lonely bed for a while, but at least I won’t be scarred for ever. At least I know that there’s someone out there who’s right for me, and I know that someone isn’t going to be a workaholic who doesn’t have time for the rest of the human race!’
‘This conversation,’ Leo drawled, stepping out of the door and reaching for his car keys in his pocket, ‘is officially closed.’
Heather watched as he let himself out of the room, out of the front door, out of her orbit. Success; she had said her piece. He wouldn’t try anything again.
She should have been sagging with relief.
Instead, she felt one tear dribble down her cheek, followed by another, as she contemplated the lonely bed waiting for her upstairs.
CHAPTER FIVE
AT TEN past nine on a Wednesday evening, Leo finally allowed himself to scan through the last of his emails, and swivelled his chair round so that he could stare at the uninterrupted view of skyline from his London office.
Like his apartment, his office was cool, uncluttered and furnished in the kind of uber-modern style that only real money could buy. One white wall was dominated by an abstract painting, subject incomprehensible. The carpet was pale and thick, and the furniture was a light, solid wood, handmade to stand the test of time, with very clever drawers that opened and closed without the benefit of handles. Leo had left it all to his design team and was still pleased with the result after five years. He could have had it stripped and updated but what would have been the point? He would still have gone for something similar.
A working environment should not indulge in the luxury of distractions.
And his private life should likewise be uncomplicated.
He frowned, very much aware that, since Heather Of The Background Issues had burst into his life a month previously, his private life had been anything but uncomplicated.
And this despite the fact that he hadn’t set eyes on her since their last encounter.
Twice he had visited his mother and Daniel, even staying for the whole weekend, which he seldom did, as time was a commodity rarely at his disposal. On both occasions, Heather had been conspicuous by her absence. She was clearly avoiding him at all costs. After some casual questioning he had discovered, via Daniel and his mother separately, that she had variously been away on an art course or visiting friends up north.
‘Busy lady,’ he had remarked, at which point he had been subjected to an enthusiastic account of her good work in the community by his mother—art classes for the little kids; volunteer work helping with the gardens once a month at the local retirement homes; cake baking, apparently, whenever there was a cake to be baked.
‘But no guy in her life,’ he had murmured encouragingly. ‘All that domestic stuff probably makes them run a mile.’ Having taken minimal interest in the doings of the various people in his mother’s life, a habit born over time and cemented through the years, he had been amused to find himself assaulted with all the tittle tattle that seemed to comprise village life.
His mother had even tentatively suggested, without prompting, two visits to London, and had arrived with Daniel clutching a London guide with pages marked at various places they wanted to visit. Gone were the expensive meals out and in had come sightseeing on a major scale. Leo had found, close and personal, queues, cafés and tourist sights he had never clapped eyes on.
Now, staring out of his window, he cursed himself for the fact that he couldn’t stop thinking about Heather. He had left her house weeks ago and had convinced himself that he had had a lucky escape. If she wanted to nurse her bitterness and bury herself in a solitary existence pretending that she was happy, then that was her affair. He wasn’t in the business of trying to persuade her otherwise. In fact, he wasn’t in the business of trying to persuade any woman into bed with him. He never had been, and he wasn’t about to start now.
It irked him, however, that she was still managing to fester away inside some corner of his brain, disrupting the smooth running of his life, causing him to lose concentration in the middle of meetings. Even when he had been out with one of his lawyer friends, a glamorous blonde whom he had dated off and on in the past, he had still been unable to shake off the uninvited image of another woman—one with curly, golden hair and soft, blue eyes—adorning his bed.
Never having dealt with a woman walking away from him, Leo could only think that his problem lay in the novelty of the situation in which he now found himself.
Why else would she still be on his mind, like a low-level virus he hadn’t quite managed to clear out of his system?
Or maybe, having bought into the notion that he needed to have a change from clever, hard-nosed power babes, he was just frustrated at having his plans thwarted.
Leo was unaccustomed to analysing emotional situations. The women he had dated in the past had seldom brought their personal baggage to the table, and the ones who had had been the quickest to go. That was just the way he operated and he was unapologetic about it. Now he found himself spending far too much time thinking about what Heather had said, furious at her self-righteous assumption that she was somehow morally superior to him because she had decided on a life of self-imposed celibacy to deal with what had obviously been a grim marriage.
He was scowling, chewing over her accusations that he was little more than a ruthless womaniser, when he felt the vibration of his mobile phone in his pocket.
His first thought was that he hoped it wasn’t the leggy, blonde lawyer. They had parted company without having made any arrangements to meet up again, but she had threatened to be ‘in touch’, and he had been too polite to tell her not to bother.
He therefore answered in the tone of voice of someone prepared to deliver a let down.
To hear Heather’s voice down the line brought him to his feet in surprise, but he recovered fast and bypassed all the usual pleasantries to ask curtly what she wanted.
His response was pretty much what she had expected, but, hearing his dark, velvety voice at the other end of the line, still had Heather’s nerves jangling.
She had steeled herself to make the call, had known that she had to. In her hand, she was still clutching Katherine’s address book, which she had found in the little chest of drawers by the telephone in the kitchen as instructed.
‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ she apologised. ‘I tried your land line at your house, but you weren’t in.’
‘Repeat. What do you want?’
‘There’s no need to be so hostile.’
‘You’ve interrupted me in the middle of…let’s just say I’m busy.’
Busy doing what? Heather thought. And with whom? She swallowed back a dark, intrusive jealousy that sprang out at her from nowhere and left her shaken.
‘It’s about your mother.’
Leo tensed. ‘What about my mother?’
‘She’s in hospital,’ Heather told him bluntly.
‘Hospital? That’s impossible. I spoke to her last night and she was perfectly fine.’
‘She’s had a fall, Leo. She was using the ladder to change a light bulb and she fell. Apparently she hadn’t secured it properly, and she must have landed in an awkward position. Daniel and I have just come back from the hospital. She’s broken her leg, and I’m afraid she’s going to be there for at least a couple of weeks. I’m sorry. I know you’re all wrapped up with you whatever it is you’re in the middle of doing, but you’re going to have to come up.’
‘I’m on my way.’
So this was how it felt to have someone hang up on you. She took a couple of seconds to regain her composure, then she turned to Daniel, who was exhausted and finishing the last of the meal which she had hurriedly prepared for him the minute they had set foot back into the house.
‘Your dad’s on his way here,’ she said with a reassuring smile. Daniel hadn’t reacted well to his grandmother’s fall, and Heather suspected that it was because she had become the one stable person in his life, the adult on whom he had learnt to depend following his mother’s death. The ambulance, that ride to the hospital, seeing Katherine’s ashen face, must have taken him back in time. Heather had made sure to be very gentle with him and to assure him that everything was going to be just fine. She had brought him home, sat him down at the kitchen table and made him a fluffy cheese-omelette with potatoes and chatted comfortingly about inconsequential things that had happened to him at school.
‘When you’ve finished eating I’ll run you a nice, hot bath, and then it’s sleep time for you, Dan.’