Her Christmas Fantasy & The Winter Bride (25 page)

‘It has to be someone with easy access to the house,' the police had told Wallace.

All the staff had been grilled repeatedly. Angie herself had been interviewed twice over. As her father had discovered and announced each fresh disappearance, the entire household had gone into uproar. Suspicion had divided everybody into uneasy camps. For weeks, Samuel Brown had prowled about at night, hoping to catch the culprit. He had responded to those thefts as if he had personally failed in his duty towards his employer. And nobody, not a single one of them, had once, to Angie's knowledge, even begun to suspect the person whom Angie had ultimately found in possession of that miniature…

Angie had been shattered, too, but desperately keen to mount a cover-up. She had rushed to replace the miniature before its absence could be noted. But Wallace had surprised her with the tiny portrait still clasped in her hand, and had naturally assumed that she'd been stealing it. Angie had appreciated too late the risk she had run.

Downstairs today, Wallace had betrayed not an ounce of recollection of that previous humiliating encounter. But Angie would never forget that instant of being caught, the old man's shock and outrage and the terror which had made her proclaim her pregnancy. She shook her head to clear it of the unpleasant memory, and focused then on the three figures walking slowly towards the stable block in the fading light. Wallace and her son, Nanny Davis bringing up the rear.

With a sigh, Angie sank down on the edge of the bed, feeling her own superfluity. But since she couldn't imagine Leo's grandfather dining in the messy presence of a toddler—and that same toddler would by that hour be ready only for bed, yet still in need of careful supervision in so large and unfamiliar
a house—perhaps Leo had been right about her needing some help. More right certainly, it seemed, than he had been about Wallace requiring her to grovel…

Her head was heavy. Deciding that she might as well lie down for a while, Angie undressed down to her bra and pants. She studied the fire burning in the marble fireplace. Such luxury for the butler's daughter—but then she was really stealing a ride on her son's bandwagon, she reminded herself ruefully. After carefully rolling back the opulent bedspread, she slid between the crisp, laundered sheets.

Wallace had outlived his own children, become estranged from one grandson and endured the death of his first great-grandchild, Leo's baby daughter. Now he was prepared to welcome Jake into his home in spite of the manner of his birth. Why was it that she wasn't wholly convinced by Wallace's change of heart? Her son was the old man's flesh and blood, and the passage of time could work miracles…

Only not when it came to her response to Leo, Angie affixed in stark shame. No, nothing had changed there. Leo looked at her and she still burned. She pressed her hot face into the cool of the pillow, but it couldn't ease her growing apprehension. One moment of weakness and she would put both herself and her son in an intolerable—indeed, unthinkable—position.

 

A small sound woke Angie up, sending her eyes flying wide. A lamp by the bed had been lit, the curtains pulled. Leo was poised by the fire, a brooding frown on his strong, dark face. It was there, and then it was gone the instant he met her startled eyes, his vibrantly handsome features smoothing back into impassivity.

‘What are you doing in here?' Angie whispered shakily.

‘I came to see how you were and stayed to replenish the fire.'

‘I'm feeling OK,' Angie lied tautly, having been brought
up to believe that it was bad manners to admit to not feeling well in the company of others.

‘You don't look it. I suggest you give dinner a miss and remain in bed.'

Abruptly, Angie sat up. ‘Oh, that would make a great impression on your grandfather, wouldn't it? The guest who arrived and took straight to her bed like a dying swan!'

‘Jake is a major hit. I don't think you need to worry about the impression you might be making.'

‘I wasn't worrying.' Her voice was tart because she hated it when Leo saw her weaknesses and insecurities.

‘You've been jumping at your own shadow ever since you arrived,' Leo traded, unimpressed. ‘Peace and quiet might soothe your nerves—'

‘I don't have nerves!'

‘You have them all over every inch of that exquisitely responsive body, and in some of the most truly entrancing and unexpected places,' Leo countered with indolent cool, glittering dark eyes anchored without remorse to the colour rising in her cheeks as he strolled round to the side of the bed.

‘Stay away from me!' Angie warned half an octave higher as she scrambled across the mattress in the other direction.

Leo stilled to look reflectively down at her. ‘Is this another game,
pethi mou
?'

‘I don't know what you're talking about.'

‘All the virginal screeching and evasive manoeuvres.'

Angie's unsteady hands clenched hard. ‘I just don't want to get involved with you again.'

Leo loosened his jacket and sank fluidly down onto the edge of the bed. ‘Did I hurt you so much?' he enquired softly, casually, making it intimidatingly obvious that he was in complete control. ‘You bit off rather more than you could chew with me, Angie. Isn't that the truth? Two and a half years ago you wanted to tease and play, and I yanked the rug from
beneath your feet and took more than I believe you ever intended to give.'

‘Shut up, Leo!' Angie flopped back down against the pillows, her eyes over-bright, her soft mouth tremulous with pain.

‘I ask you now…what did you expect from a man who had buried both his wife and his child only months earlier and who was still haunted by his memories and his conscience?' Leo continued levelly. ‘I wanted to be alone and you crowded me. You forced me to notice you and, in some ways, I hated you for that. But even then I couldn't deny that I wanted you too.'

‘All I want now is for you to leave me alone!'

Leo ran a caressing forefinger down over the taut, slim fingers clutching the sheet, and she snatched her hand out of reach as if the warm touch of his skin had scorched her. ‘You've learnt to be wary…you're scared this time—'

‘I'm not scared!'

‘No?' Leo gazed down at her steadily, and her world shrank to the drowning darkness of his spectacular eyes. ‘Then why do you behave like a frightened child every time I come close?'

‘That's rubbish…'

Leo laced long brown fingers slowly into a hank of pale blonde hair and, with his other hand, drew her inexorably up to him. Her heart was banging like clashing cymbals against her taut ribcage. She could hardly get breath into her lungs for she knew that if he touched her she was lost, and yet she could not summon up the strength to break away from him.

‘You're all woman, Angie…you melt in my arms,' he breathed caressingly. ‘That is how it should be…'

Alarm bells rang in Angie's head. ‘Like heck it is…it's blasted dangerous!'

‘Safe things can be very boring,' Leo told her thickly as he
lowered his dark, arrogant head and pressed his mouth with raw, driving hunger to hers.

She fell into that kiss like a starving woman at a banquet. Anguished desire stormed through her, and suddenly her arms were opening and reaching up, finding his broad shoulders, rejoicing in the hard muscles and the heat she could feel through his jacket. Pulses racing, heartbeat thundering in her eardrums, her own need rose up inside her and overflowed with devastating effect.

Leo gave a growl of satisfaction and rolled over, hauling the sheet out of his path to pull her fully into his arms, one powerful hand curving round a slender hip to press her into contact with the forceful thrust of his erection. Angie trembled as he sealed her to him, and shut her eyes tightly as a wild tide of longing quivered along her weakened length. Her body remembered the hard, sleek heat of his possession and ached intolerably for what it had once known so briefly.

His tongue played an erotic, teasing game with the sensitive interior of her mouth, and she jerked and squirmed against him as if she were being tortured, tiny little pleading cries breaking low in her throat as she clutched at every part of him she could reach, hands sliding beneath his jacket to feel the warmth of his skin through the silk shirt beneath.

Leo lifted his head, dark golden eyes ablaze with primal satisfaction. ‘You need this as much as I do…'

With an expert hand he reached beneath her and unclasped her bra, staring intently down at her as he smoothed the straps down her extended arms and tossed the garment out of his way. His smouldering and appreciative gaze swept down, like a kiss of fire, over the full, pouting mounds of breasts crowned by hard rosy nipples, and Angie made a sudden instinctive move to cover herself from that all-encompassing scrutiny. With a ragged laugh, Leo closed both hands over hers and prevented her.

‘I ache…I want to ravish every bit of you at once,' Leo confided hungrily. ‘But at the same time I want to make you beg because it's better that way—a slow, steady torment all the way to paradise.'

His intense sensuality sent treacherous excitement sweeping over her. She couldn't look away from his eyes any more than she could stop the burning deep down inside her. And, when he bowed his sleek dark head over her bared breasts and allowed the tip of his tongue to flick one taut pink crest, Angie's spine arched up and she gasped and tore her hands free to plunge them into his hair and force him down to her. He curved knowing fingers round the sensitive flesh straining up for his attention, and gently toyed with the aching tips until she thought she might pass out from sheer frustration.

She heard someone moaning, didn't realise it was herself. She couldn't stay still, and she gave a cry of satisfaction as Leo suddenly drove his hands beneath her hips and crushed her beneath him, the carnal force of his mouth devouring hers as he settled himself hungrily between her eagerly spread thighs. The weight and the feel of him against the most sensitive spot in her entire body drove her wild. Unbearable heat pulsed at the very heart of her…until Leo rolled back from her with a low-pitched but splintering curse.

Only then did Angie hear the knocking on the door. Raking smoothing fingers through his black hair, Leo sprang off the bed. Forced back to reality by his desertion, Angie initially froze, and then every nerve switched channel from screaming frustration to appalled shock at her own abandoned behaviour.

‘Don't you dare answer that door!' she whispered fiercely in horror as she flew off the bed and intercepted him. ‘I don't want anyone to know you've been in here!'

Tugging the door open a couple of inches, keeping her par
tially clothed body well out of view, Angie popped her head into the gap to say breathlessly, ‘Sorry; I was in the bath.'

‘Miss Davis asked me to tell you that she would be putting your little boy to bed soon,' an unfamiliar maid in a uniform informed her.

‘Thanks. I'll be with her in ten minutes,' Angie promised, assailed by a rollicking tide of maternal guilt as she closed the door again.

Leo strode forward with flaring dark eyes. ‘I said that you weren't to be disturbed—'

‘What a pity you didn't observe that same courtesy yourself!' Her face was scorched with mortified colour as she looked down at the wanton bareness of her swollen breasts and hurriedly turned a defensive back on him. ‘Now, will you please leave? I want nothing more to do with you—'

‘Until the next time…and the next time after that,' Leo incised with supreme self-assurance, making her rigid spine notch even tighter with tension. ‘Some hungers you can't fight and this is one of them. You're mine now, and you might as well get used to the idea. After all, I can offer you so much.'

That cynicism sliced jagged pain through Angie. ‘You're so romantic, Leo.'

‘You'd be surprised how romantic I once was.' A soft, derisive laugh punctuated the admission as he opened the door. ‘But I grew out of that particular habit. What we have now is basic, honest and much more to my taste.'

‘Damn you, we have nothing! Don't you listen to anything I say?' Angie flung almost wildly over her shoulder.

‘I'll listen when you start talking sense.' His shrewd gaze scanned her flushed and defensive face. ‘I also suggest that after you see Jake you go back to bed and dine off a tray. To be frank, you look lousy.'

Her head was still heavy, her throat raw, but she wasn't prepared to use a common cold as an excuse to avoid the
dinner table. Indeed, as she slid in haste into the scoop-necked black body and long turquoise cotton skirt which were the only remotely suitable garments she had to grace such an occasion, she marvelled at Leo's unusually poor advice.

Wallace Neville despised cowardice, and if she failed to put in an appearance he would assume that she had shrunk from the challenge of behaving like a normal guest. Refusing to let herself think of what had almost happened with Leo, Angie dragged a brush through her tangled hair and hurried down the corridor to the nursery suite.

Harriet Davis was reading Jake a story. He was tucked into a bed with a safety rail attached, drowsy dark eyes already halfway to closing. He livened up briefly at his mother's appearance, and chattered at an incoherent rate of knots about the horses he had seen. Winding down again, he accepted a hug and was asleep within minutes.

‘Sorry you were left to hold the fort,' Angie said uncomfortably.

‘But that's what I'm here for, Miss Brown,' the older woman responded in some surprise. ‘Jake's a joy to look after, too, not a bit shy or strange. You won't need to worry about him while you're downstairs either. I'll be just through there—' she indicated the connecting bedroom ‘—with the door wide open in case he should wake up.'

Angie tensed as the big Edwardian gong that announced pre-dinner drinks sounded in the distance. ‘Jake usually only wakes up if he has a nightmare.'