And that was why, like a poor, deluded, faintly desperate fool, she’d kept the dialogue going by asking ridiculous questions that resulted in her having to scour the internet for one hundred and twenty biodegradable red heart-shaped balloons and a helium pump, and making ridiculous suggestions, such as this totally unnecessary meeting.
With hindsight she shouldn’t have done it. There was no need to meet. But she’d been working at that Valentine’s Day cocktail party, surrounded by love and romance and smooching couples, and for a moment she’d felt so very, very lonely. She’d wanted nothing more than to be going home to someone. Someone to talk to, have a glass of wine with and snuggle up next to on the sofa.
Then he’d texted and told her he wasn’t bringing a date to his parents’ party, and quite suddenly, quite unexpectedly and quite desperately she’d wanted to see him.
But it had been a mistake because nothing would ever come of doing anything about her infatuation with Leo Cartwright. He wasn’t the talking kind, even less the snuggling kind, and as he was unlikely to become any of that there was absolutely no point in continuing with it.
Glancing down at the top that had seemed such a good idea when she’d put it on, Abby sighed because Gemma was right. Apart from the heavy folder sitting on the kitchen table, nothing she’d done today in preparation for this evening was a coincidence, and for the sake of her sanity she needed to put a stop to it. ‘I think I’d better change.’
* * *
Normally when he came back from a trip Leo was knackered. Normally all he wanted was to crash out and re-emerge only when he’d recovered. Not so tonight. Despite a ten-hour flight followed by an extremely frustrating extra hour circling over Heathrow he was feeling remarkably awake. Alert. Hyped, even. Whatever, sleep was the furthest thing from his mind.
Unlike Abby.
She’d barely been out of his thoughts over the last couple of months, and not just because she was organising this party. Try as he might—because what was the point when she clearly wasn’t interested in him?—he couldn’t stop thinking about the night they’d spent together. If he’d hoped that the memories would fade with time he’d been mistaken because if anything they’d sharpened and had very probably become exaggerated because surely the night couldn’t have been that great.
What the hell he’d been thinking, sort of cyber-flirting with her, he had no idea. He ought to have been stamping out the flames not fanning them, but he just hadn’t been able to help himself.
He’d been impressed by her efficiency and amused by her ideas. Teasing her about the kisses had been fun. And as for texting her about Jake’s plus one when he knew perfectly well that his brother had already informed her of the change, well, he’d done that because it had been a while since he’d heard from her, and, standing there on the sixty-fifth floor of the skeleton building that shot into the sky leaving the chaotic mess of Beijing way below, he’d weirdly and unnervingly missed the contact, so it had simply been something he’d just had to do.
He couldn’t explain any of it and wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to be able to. All he knew was that he’d never been so distracted, never been so confused by his behaviour, and for a man who craved control, order and regularity, the absence of all three was a bit harrowing.
The one upside to the whole mad enterprise, he thought, rolling his glass of whisky between his hands as he sat at the table and waited for her to show up, was that getting through Christmas had been a breeze. With Abby’s missives to look forward to and his own state of apparent mental collapse to deal with, he’d barely spared a moment’s thought for Lisa and the humiliation she’d put him through, which was a huge relief because he was beginning to realise that five years was way too long to still be hung up on it.
But whatever he thought about Abby, whatever he wanted—and, as he glanced up and caught sight of her weaving her way through the tables, looking so beautiful that for a moment he forgot how to breathe, right now what he wanted involved forgetting dinner, grabbing her hand and carting her off to his place—it had to stop. This was business. Nothing more, nothing less, and if he didn’t want to look like a pathetic drooling idiot he’d do well to remember it.
Pulling himself together and fixing a smile to his face, Leo got up. As she reached their table he glanced down at her outstretched hand for a moment and when he ignored it and gave her a quick kiss on the cheek instead it was hard to say who was more surprised.
‘Hi,’ she said, sounding a bit breathless and looking slightly flushed, but then she had been striding through the restaurant at quite a pace. He had no such excuse.
‘Hello.’
He waited for her to sit down and then did the same. She thanked the waiter who’d pushed her chair in as she sat, and in response to his offer of a drink ordered a tequila. Then she stowed her handbag beneath her chair and fiddled with
her napkin and all the while Leo couldn’t take his eyes off her.
He didn’t know why. It wasn’t as if her outfit of black trousers and black polo-neck was particularly revealing. And it wasn’t as if she looked any different from the last time he’d seen her. Yet something about her was holding him captivated and rendering him unable to think, let alone speak, which was highly disturbing not least because he was now going to have to drum up some kind of conversation and once again his mind was blank.
‘So how was your flight?’ she said, sitting back and smiling at him and clearly having none of the trouble with basic functions that he was having.
‘Long.’
‘And China?’
‘Productive.’
‘What were you doing there?’ she said, picking up the menu and opening it.
‘Building a building.’
‘What kind of building?’
‘The tall kind.’
She frowned slightly and let out a tiny sigh—of exasperation?—and he told himself to get a grip and drum up some manners because he really ought to start contributing more to the conversation, and surely he could manage that.
‘Actually,’ he said, draining his drink and setting the glass on the table whereupon it was whisked away with the efficiency one would expect from one of the city’s top restaurants, ‘when it’s finished it’s going to be one of the biggest of its kind in Asia. It’ll have a hundred and fifty floors and over three million square feet of retail, office and residential space. A twelve-storey underground car park, landscaped gardens and every kind of amenity you could possibly imagine. Construction is more or less half complete and while it hasn’t been without its difficulties—’ and, goodness, some of their partners had been tricky to handle ‘—things are looking good. The views from the upper floors are going to be breathtaking.’