It was all bravado. She hoped he couldn’t detect the desperate edge to her voice. Of course the outcome of this unexpected visit would change nothing, but she had had no choice but to come. To tell him everything. She didn’t want, never mind expect, his sympathy, but she had finally come to the conclusion that love wasn’t just painful, it also made a shambles of all your good intentions and put you in a place where you just could no longer forge ahead and think straight. You found yourself compelled to do things that went against the grain—compelled to ditch your pride, to become...vulnerable, whatever the consequences.
‘You’d better come in, but I should warn you that you’re an uninvited guest and the only reason I’m not shutting the door on you is because I wouldn’t send my worst enemy out at this hour, to face the vagaries of public transport.’
Leandro marvelled that he had managed that sentence without slurring his words. He began heading back towards the sitting room and could feel her presence behind him.
The lethargy that had afflicted him seemed to have miraculously disappeared.
‘You should drink some black coffee—sober up.’
Leandro swung round to look at her and Emily automatically took a couple of steps back.
‘Reason being...?’
‘I don’t want you falling all over the place when I say what I...I’ve come to say...’
‘Why don’t you tell me now and get it over and done with? I’m thinking you’ve had a chance to rustle up a plausible story, but you can forget it if you imagine that a plausible story can buy you a ticket back to my bed.’
‘Do you know something, Leandro? I am mystified as to how I could have done something so stupid as to fall in love with you!’
Leandro stared at her. He didn’t need any black coffee. He felt as sober as a judge. And once he’d started staring he found that he couldn’t peel his eyes away from her face. She was bright red but she was standing her ground, glaring at him as though she had somehow been forced to utter those words against her will.
‘I don’t think I heard you correctly.’
‘I’m in love with you. Okay?’
Leandro suddenly laughed, leaning against the wall. ‘Nice try,’ he finally said drily.
The cynicism he should have been feeling was curiously absent. Instead he was filled with a wild satisfaction which he could only put down to having had his ego stroked.
‘What do you mean, “nice try”?’
‘I mean you only jacked the ex in on the back of being able to sustain a relationship with me for as long as it would take to leave with some financial gain and you must be kicking yourself that you never quite managed to reach the point of success...’
In love with him? It was a bloody lie—of course it was. She had economised with the truth to such an extent that he would be a complete fool to believe a word she came out with. He should, he knew, just call her a cab and cut short this pointless conversation before it had time to degenerate into a shouting match. He didn’t do shouting, or hitting things, but he had a suspicion that she was just the woman to bring that out in him.
Emily continued to glare, then she sidestepped him and headed towards the kitchen, not looking back to see if he was following her, knowing that he was. She was ramrod-straight, her head held high, but her heart was beating a mile a minute and she felt dizzy and sick.
The kitchen was a marvel of up-to-the-minute technology. It had never been her style and she had told him so on numerous occasions, much to his amusement, but she could still admire the stark lines, the clean surfaces and the plethora of high-tech gadgets, none of which looked as though they had ever been used.
There was an advanced and scary-looking coffee-making machine on the counter, sparkling white against the black granite, but she opted for the kettle instead and didn’t look at him as she made them both some coffee. Black for him...white with two teaspoons of sugar for herself.
When she did finally turn around it was to see him lounging against the doorframe, watching her with narrow-eyed hostility.
‘You should sit.’
‘Who the hell do you think you are, Emily? Walking in here after we’ve parted company and issuing orders?’
‘I think I’m a woman who never expected to fall in love with you, or with anyone, and now that I have I find that I can’t walk away without...without telling you the whole story...’
‘What’s there to tell? You were going to marry a gay guy for his money before you decided that I was a better bet. No marriage needed and yet play your cards right, plenty of hot sex, and sooner or later—money...’
‘Sit down, Leandro!’
How on earth was she managing to do this? She just knew that she had to lay the whole story on the line for him and then he could do with the information what he liked. Despise her more. Kick her out. Turn her into the butt of his jokes in the years to come. Whatever...
Leandro opened his mouth to protest in automatic dismissal of anyone daring to tell him what to do. Except...hadn’t he dumped that all-controlling persona with her?
He shrugged nonchalantly and moved to one of the black leather chairs, turning it away from the chrome and glass table so that he was looking at her.
‘Okay.’ Emily drew in a deep breath. ‘I got engaged to Oliver knowing that he was gay because it suited us both.’
She took a few seconds to get her thoughts into order, to arrange them in a way that made some kind of sense. Hesitantly, she walked across to the table and sat facing him, nursing the mug between her hands.
‘You wanted his money,’ Leandro said with scathing contempt.
‘I wanted his money,’ Emily agreed. ‘I needed his money.’
Her blue eyes were clear and honest when she looked at him, and Leandro did his best to fight the temptation to be sucked into whatever fairytale she was telling even though he knew that what he would hear would be the full truth, no holds barred.
About time. Lord only knew what she was going to come out with. A secret gambling addiction? Debts that had been racked up to the point of no return?
‘Needed?’
‘I told you about my father—about what he had done. What I didn’t tell you was that when he took off for Bangkok he took all the money with him. Mum tried to get some kind of settlement but she waited too long, was too dazed by what had happened. During that time he made as much of his money disappear as he could. By the time the lawyers demanded full financial disclosure he was claiming poverty and announcing that he was broke.’
Emily had been young at the time, but she could still remember her mother wondering how on earth they were going to afford to live, to put bread on the table.
‘She had to go out to work to make ends meet. We lived in the family home. A mansion. It had been in my mother’s family for generations and she refused to get rid of it even though it ate money. In winter whole sections had to be shut off because we couldn’t begin to afford to run them.’
‘What exactly did your mother manage to get from the guy?’
‘My father?’ Emily sighed. ‘A pittance. I had to be pulled from private school, and that was that for holidays. Anyway, all my dreams of a career basically went down the pan because I simply had to go out to work and get a good job—which I did as fast as I could. By then Mum had been ill for a while. Breast cancer. I believe it was brought on by the stress.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Leandro said gruffly. ‘Why didn’t you say something before? And what does this have to do with the gay fiancé?’
He had to return the conversation to a point he could handle.
‘I’m getting there,’ Emily said quietly. ‘My mother has early onset Alzheimer’s. It’s not serious. But it’s going to get worse. Eventually she’s going to need proper care, but she still refuses to sell the house and I can’t afford to cover the costs on my salary. As it is, most of what I earn goes towards helping her and keeping the wretched house from falling into complete disrepair.’
She ran her fingers through her hair and realised that her hand was trembling.
‘I reconnected with Oliver a while ago. He’d been in the States and made a small fortune. He had a proposal for me. He wanted to get his foot back on the ground over here. Property. He had grand schemes for a golf course. Our house sits in a lot of land—most of it wild, wooded. You know... He knows the house well, and the land, and he suggested that if we got married I could sign the house over to him and he would help keep it ticking over. When the time came, in exchange for the house—which he would turn into a high-end country hotel set in its own private golf course—he would give me a sum of money sufficient to give my mother the best possible private care available and to set me up in my own little place. He was willing to bide his time, and figured that he would be able to get in with the small community by being my husband. He didn’t think that they would accept him if he came out. It suited me.’