CHAPTER THIRTEEN
AT EIGHT O’CLOCK, after a quick shower and a stern talking-to along the lines of making sure she kept her wits about her and her eyes from wandering, Abby was back at Barton Hall, sitting at the huge oak table in the kitchen with a small glass of wine, and watching Leo as he took an incredible-looking pie out of the bottom right oven of the Aga.
As the heavenly scent drifted towards her her mouth watered and her stomach rumbled and she had to admit that it did make a nice change from the rubbery chicken in a basket she’d tried her best to saw through last night.
Not that she’d had much choice about accepting Leo’s invitation once he’d issued her with what practically amounted to an ultimatum. It was bad enough that he’d known how strongly the sight of his bare chest affected her. The idea that he might think he had her running scared was simply too much to stomach, so here they were.
‘Are you sure I can’t do anything to help?’ she asked, because she’d been here for a quarter of an hour and so far he hadn’t let her lift a finger.
‘You could lay the table.’
Glad for something to keep her hands and mind busy, Abby got up and went in search of crockery and cutlery. Five minutes of clattering activity and zero conversation other than a couple of ‘knives are in the top drawer’ kind of murmurings, the table was laid, and she and Leo were sitting opposite each other with nothing between them except the pie and a bowl of steaming vegetables that sat on a couple of trivets in the centre of the table.
Abby flapped her napkin and laid it on her lap. ‘So,’ she said brightly because the silence was shifting into decidedly uncomfortable territory and Leo didn’t appear to be doing anything to break it. ‘You said you wanted to talk, Leo, and here I am.’
Leo had been sitting back, almost lounging in his chair, but now he shifted, straightened a little and tensed. ‘Right. Yes.’ He stopped, took a deep breath, and then he continued. ‘I’m really sorry about the whole St Jude’s thing, Abby. I can honestly say I don’t know what I was thinking.’
She picked up her fork and shot him an arch but not entirely unamused look. ‘About your ulterior motive probably. You did have one, didn’t you?’
He grimaced. ‘Yes.’
‘Which was?’
‘You know what it was. You even pointed it out.’
‘Humour me.’ And humiliate yourself, while you’re at it, why don’t you? Because you sure humiliated me.
‘Fair enough. I was trying to break down your resistance to me.’
‘Why?’
‘I don’t take rejection well.’
‘Who does?’
‘I take it exceptionally badly.’
And it didn’t take a genius to work out why, she thought, putting a forkful of pie in her mouth and almost groaning with pleasure. Presumably being jilted at the altar in front of all your family and friends could do that to a man.
‘So what was it?’ she asked. ‘Punishment?’
He shook his head, his eyes dark and steady on hers. ‘More of an attempt to re-establish the control that I always lose whenever I’m around you.’
Abby reached for her glass of wine, took a sip and thought that that was something she could certainly understand. ‘The thing is, though,’ she said, looking at him thoughtfully, ‘I didn’t actually reject you. I just put accepting you on hold for a while.’
‘I realise that now. But at the time I wasn’t thinking all that straight. Patience doesn’t seem to be one of my strong points when it comes to you, any more than self-control does.’
As she wasn’t sure what to make of that Abby put down her glass and concentrated on eating for a few moments, because honestly the crisp golden pastry was way too irresistible to ignore.
‘What you did really didn’t show you in your best light, Leo,’ she said after a while.
‘I know. It’s not the way I normally behave.’
‘I should hope not.’
‘I can’t explain it. You seem to bring with you chaos of thought.’
She wasn’t quite sure what to make of that either, although she had a certain sympathy for that too. ‘I don’t mean to. I hate chaos.’