He finally picked up the phone, and spent the next couple of hours doing his best to forget all about the woman asleep upstairs.

A week later Angel lay in bed. Alone. It was late. Leo had rung earlier to say that he had to work late and that she should eat at home. It wasn’t the first night in the past week that this had happened, and, rather than making Angel feel relieved at having a reprieve of sorts, it made her feel slightly nervous.

Leo had been so all-encompassing, so passionate since the moment they’d met, that it was a shock to see this more distant side to him. She heard a noise then: the unmistakable sound of Leo moving around his room. She held her breath, but as the minutes ticked by he didn’t come in.

Angel turned over and stared into the dark. She hated the fact that she couldn’t feel relieved he wasn’t coming in. Hated the fact that her body throbbed with need. She closed her eyes, but opened them again quickly when lurid images filled her mind. She’d never thought that sex could be so…so…exciting. And addictive. She felt like some kind of sex addict; the minute she saw Leo her hormones seemed to go into overdrive and she had zero will-power when it came to resisting him. He only had to look at her and she caught on fire.

Angel couldn’t help but suspect that this had to be part of his plan of revenge. After all, he was so much more experienced than her.

She tried her best to sleep, but even after everything had gone silent next door sleep still eluded her, so she gave up and sat up, swinging her legs out of bed. She’d get some water from the kitchen…

Padding down through the quiet villa, Angel felt a jolt, thinking back to the party that night, all those weeks before. Never in a million years would she have imagined that she’d be here, ensconced as Leo Parnassus’ mistress.

Too late, just as she was pushing open the kitchen door, she realised that she wasn’t the only night visitor. Leo sat at the island in the middle of the kitchen, illuminated under a circle of low light from overhead. He looked up as she came in. He was eating something. Angel instinctively started backing away, feeling as if she was intruding on a private moment. ‘Sorry. I didn’t realise you were up.’

Leo waved a hand, gesturing for her to come in. ‘You couldn’t sleep?’

Angel hovered awkwardly and shook her head, ‘No.’ She felt self-conscious in loose pyjama bottoms and a skimpily clinging vest top, but knew it was silly to feel self conscious when this man seemed to know more about her own body than she did. Not that he seemed inclined to be all that interested any more. Insecurity lanced her. ‘I just wanted to get some water.’

It would be ridiculous if she left now, so she went to the fridge in the corner and busied herself getting out a bottle, trying to ignore the way her pulse had rocketed. She hated to think that he might see something of how much she craved him.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Leo was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Angel glanced at him surreptitiously. He might have been working late in the study after he’d come home. She noticed that he had faint smudges of colour under his eyes and felt a spike of concern. Something else caught her eye then, distracting her. Despite herself she moved closer to where Leo sat at the gleaming counter, clutching the bottle of water to her chest.

‘Is that peanut butter and jam?’

Leo nodded and finished eating a mouthful of sandwich. Angel must have looked bemused, because Leo wiped his mouth with a napkin and said dryly, ‘What?’

She shook her head and moved closer to the stool opposite Leo, unconsciously resting against it for a moment. ‘I just…I wouldn’t have expected…’ she said inanely, feeling like a complete idiot. But there was just something so disarming about finding Leo like this that her stomach had turned to mush. Without realising what she was doing, she sat on the stool opposite him.

‘Want one?’ he offered, with a quirk of his mouth.

Angel shook her head, slightly transfixed.

Leo started putting lids back on the jars. ‘My ya ya was the one who introduced me to it. She used to say that peanut butter and Jell-O was the only thing that made living in the States bearable. We’d sneak down to the kitchen at night, and she’d make sandwiches and tell me all about Greece.’

Angel felt a strange ache in her chest. ‘Sounds like she was a lovely lady.’

‘She was. And strong. She gave birth to my youngest uncle when they were a day away from Ellis Island on the boat from Greece. They both nearly died.’

Angel didn’t know what to say. The ache grew bigger. She started hesitantly, ‘I was close to my ya ya too. But she didn’t live with us. Father and she didn’t get on, so she only visited infrequently. But as we grew up Delphi, Damia and I would go and see her as much as we could. She taught us all about plants and herbs…cooking traditional Greek dishes—everything Irini, my stepmother, wasn’t interested in.’

Leo frowned. ‘Damia?’

‘Damia was our sister. Delphi’s twin.’ Familiar pain lanced Angel.

‘Was?’

She nodded. ‘She died when she was fifteen, in a car accident on one of the roads down into Athens from the hills.’ Angel grimaced. ‘She was a bit wild, going through a rebellious phase. And I wasn’t here to…’ She stopped. Why was she blathering about all of this now? Leo wouldn’t be remotely interested in her life story.

But nevertheless he asked, ‘Why weren’t you here?’

Angel sent him a quick look. He seemed genuinely interested, and there was something very easy about talking to him like this. She decided to trust it. ‘Father sent me to a boarding school in the west of Ireland from the time I was twelve until I finished my schooling, so I could learn about the Irish part of my heritage and see my mother.’ Angel conveniently left out the part about how her father had basically wanted her gone.

She looked down for a moment, picking at the label on her bottle of water. ‘The worst bit was leaving the girls and ya ya. She died my first term there. It was too far for me to come home in time for the funeral.’

Angel looked up again, and pushed down the emotion threatening to rise when she thought of how she’d not been allowed home for Damia’s funeral either—hence Delphi’s subsequent clinginess and their intense connection.

Leo just sat there, arms relaxed, and then asked quietly, ‘Why did your mother leave?’

Tags: Abby Green Billionaire Romance
Source: readsnovelonline.net