He leaned against the wooden railing that skirted the dining area. Heavy bougainvillaea, abloom with bright red and orange flowers, shielded them from the sun and threw his handsome face into shadow. That said, she was still perfectly capable of making out the cold, set line of his jaw and the aloofness in his eyes.
Hesitantly she reached out and placed her hand on his arm. She didn’t remove it when he looked at it and then back at her, his expression hard and unforgiving.
‘You can look,’ he drawled, ‘but you have lost the right to touch.’
‘No, I haven’t.’
She looked him squarely in the face. Her voice was calm and controlled but her heart was beating like a jackhammer and her mouth was dry.
‘Come again?’ Leandro found that he was holding his breath, watching her face intently, barely able to move a muscle.
‘You’re right,’ she said quietly. ‘I can’t marry Oliver. Not when this is happening between us. Safety might be appealing, but what we have is too strong to resist. So I’m going to call him as soon as I get to my room and tell him that the marriage is...off...’
CHAPTER NINE
EMILY STRETCHED OUT on the massive king-sized bed and did a slow visual tour of the bedroom.
This was her routine every time she stayed the night at his apartment. Sex, and a great deal of it, then a pleasantly fractured night’s sleep during which one or the other might reach out blindly and their bodies would fuse, even though they might both be half asleep, and in the morning while he went downstairs to make them both a cup of coffee before the day began this...this visual tour of his bedroom. She was committing it to memory because, although it had been nearly five weeks since they had returned to the UK, she knew that she was living on borrowed time.
Having broken up with Oliver, she had given up on worrying. The problems her marriage to him would have solved were still there, but it was no longer in her to angst over them. The solution she had found had disappeared the day she had phoned her fiancé and told him that the wedding was off.
But what else could she have done? Love had bludgeoned her from behind and she had felt as though her options had been limited. Sleep with Leandro and break off her engagement—take, in other words, what was on offer or else endure a lifetime of bitter regret.
She knew that she was falling deeper and deeper in love with him. She also knew that it was a feeling that was not reciprocated. She was his plaything. A different sort of plaything from the ones he had dated in the past, but still his plaything. He liked her well enough, and he enjoyed her company, but falling in love was certainly not what he was in the process of doing.
The word love never crossed his lips. That was an emotion reserved for the special woman he would eventually find and marry—because, as she had discovered, he really did believe that marriages could work out. You had to be realistic, he had said, and had shrugged with a smile, but love was not an impossible dream. What, he had asked her, would be the point of working, earning money, fulfilling ambitions small or great, if at the end of it you were too cynical, too bitter or too disillusioned to enjoy sharing the rewards with someone else?
Working for him, she would never have guessed it. She had written him off as someone else like her father—just another philandering man who didn’t care how he treated women as long as he could get from them what he wanted. Another man who didn’t give a damn about his discards.
She had discovered that he was nothing like her father. He occasionally spoke about his exes with affection, and if there had been a higher than average number of girlfriends in the past then, he had laughingly told her, it was because he was extremely cautious about getting too wrapped up with any one woman when he knew, in his heart, that she was not the one for him—not the one with whom he wanted to form a permanent relationship.
In fact, he had assured her, he was the consummate gentleman when it came to the fairer sex.
Emily would have laughed with outright derision at that a few weeks previously, but after digging a little deeper she had discovered that he kept in touch with a surprising number of his exes.
Two he had set up in their own businesses. He was godfather to the children of a few of them, and took his duties as godfather very seriously.
‘It’s the Latin American way,’ he had told her smugly. ‘We’re big into families... When I eventually settle down I shall expect the lucky lady to agree with me that a nice round number like six is perfect when it comes to children...’
When he spoke like that she could feel something twist painfully inside her.
She assumed that ‘the lucky lady’ would be from his own country—a sexy, dark-haired beauty who was possibly a family friend and knew the way his world worked. Someone from the same elevated background.
She never asked what this woman would be like or where he might find her. She didn’t want to have answers to those questions, and at any rate he would have been surprised had she asked. They were lovers with an understanding. She wasn’t looking for anything else and so, like him, could enjoy their relationship without inconveniently wanting more.
And it helped that she no longer worked for him. He had pulled strings, despite her protests, and found her an equally well paid job at a law firm in the City.
The responsibilities were different, but she found that she enjoyed the work, enjoyed the variation in her tasks...enjoyed playing with the idea of possibly becoming a paralegal...
She knew that she should have objected to having him help her get another job. Pulling strings was not something of which she approved. But she needed the money. It was as simple as that. And he had swept aside her concerns by reminding her that she had been a brilliant employee, that Stern, Hodge and Smith should consider themselves lucky to have nabbed her...
All these thoughts were lazily swirling through her mind as she looked at the hand-crafted chest of drawers by the window, the fall of the curtains, the built-in wardrobes fashioned from the same smooth, blond and tan wood as the dressing table.
There was an original Picasso—a small, exquisite sketch—casually hanging over the chest of drawers, and more than anything else that was a constant reminder of how different their worlds were.
She glanced away as she heard the sound of him nearing the room and helplessly watched the door, waiting for him to nudge it open, already anticipating the little thrill of delight that would shoot through her the second she saw him. She hated this weakness in herself, this absolute powerlessness when it came to him, but she accepted it just as she accepted that after a lifetime of being in control, of always remaining on the sidelines, a spectator to any emotion that might suck her under, she was no longer in that position.
‘You’re up.’
Leandro looked at her with open male satisfaction—looked at the duvet which was making a poor attempt at covering her nakedness, looked at the spread of her blonde hair across the pillow and the way her blue eyes lazily drank him up, as shamelessly appreciative of his nudity as he was of hers.
Emily wound a strand of long hair around her finger and smiled. ‘I was up when you left the bedroom.’
‘Really?’
‘I didn’t want you to know because I wanted to see that cute little rear of yours as you walked out of the bedroom. I didn’t want you to be modest and hide it away from me under your dressing gown...’
‘Modest? I feel you’re thinking of the wrong guy...’ He never failed to marvel that she could be like this...soft and sexy and teasing...nothing at all like his dim recollection of how she’d used to be when she worked for him.
He frowned and moved to place her coffee on the table next to the bed. ‘You’ve never told me what the people you work with are like,’ he said suddenly.
He eased himself next to her and reached behind to cover her peachy bottom with his hand, so that with very little pressure he could draw her towards him and feel the length of her nakedness pressed against his.
‘You’ve told me,’ he continued, nibbling her neck, then the side of her mouth, before drawing back and settling her into the crook of his arm, ‘that you get along with them, but what does that mean? It’s been a while since I went to see old Hodge. Can’t really remember what kind of ship he’s running there...’
‘It’s a tight one, Captain...’ She traced his bare chest with her hand. ‘Have I told you that I’m interested in maybe doing a bit more than just being a PA? I think I could really do well in law. I enjoy it. I enjoy the precision...’
Leandro grunted. He wasn’t that interested in her future career as a hotshot corporate lawyer. ‘I was thinking more along the lines of the people you work with. I wouldn’t want to have set you up with a job where you’re surrounded by bores...’
‘Well, you can rest assured that they’re all very interesting.’
‘All of them? Is that possible?’