Her Christmas Fantasy & The Winter Bride (29 page)

As Angie's eyes flooded with moisture, man and child swam out of focus. She twisted her head away, fighting to get a grip on her emotions. When she looked again, Leo was
crouched down at Jake's level, talking to him. She could see the electric tension in his broad shoulders but she couldn't see his face. As she reached the foot of the stairs, Leo leant forward, scooped his chattering son up into his arms and sprang up again.

He moved with fluid grace in a slow circle as he held Jake high and studied him with fierce, unashamed emotional intensity. A revealing glitter made his lustrous dark eyes seem more brilliant than ever. Angie's throat closed over. And then he saw her over his son's shoulder and he went rigid, shooting her a look of such volatile and angry condemnation that her stomach muscles contracted as if he had thrown her a punch as well.

‘I'm sorry…' she said thickly, overwhelmed by guilt.

‘You couldn't ever be sorry enough to satisfy me,' Leo swore with a bitter curve to his eloquent mouth.

Angie made no attempt to follow him as he carried Jake upstairs. In the mood Leo was in, she knew she couldn't handle him, knew that, while she was completely drained, Leo might well warm up for another attack if she put herself in his path again. And he had the right to some time alone with Jake.

‘He'll cool off…eventually,' Wallace commented from behind her, making her jump. ‘I should give him a very wide berth, though, until he does.'

Angie spun round. Leo's grandfather was already returning to the drawing room. ‘It's cold out here. Close the door behind you.'

After a second's pause, Angie recognised the unspoken invitation and followed him. ‘You
knew
…?'

‘I suspected it long before you even arrived,' the old man confirmed. ‘But I knew beyond all reasonable doubt the instant I laid eyes on the little chap.'

‘But you…you told Drew…
here
only last night that I was the mother of his child!'

Wallace lowered himself carefully down into an armchair. ‘He deserved a good fright. When he lied to Leo, he behaved despicably.' His faded blue eyes rested on Angie's bemused face. ‘And if you hadn't told Leo the truth I would've told him for you. If he's like an angry bear now, you have only yourself to thank. You should've known what that little boy would mean to him.'

That rebuke inflamed Angie. ‘Not so long ago, you didn't even want me to
have
that child!'

‘No, I didn't,' Wallace agreed grimly. ‘Not when I was suffering from the mistaken belief that Drew had fathered him. Drew never could measure up to Leo, and the last thing he needed was a wife who had only turned to him because she couldn't have his cousin!'

Angie reddened fiercely. ‘I only ever looked on Drew as a friend.'

‘And, at the time, I hadn't the foggiest idea that you and Leo had been up to no good down at the Folly,' Wallace admitted with blatant disapproval. ‘You'd been keeping company with Drew for weeks. Naturally I assumed that he was responsible for your condition, but I didn't face him with it.'

Angie shifted uncomfortably from one foot to the other, defiance squashed by Wallace's mortifying frankness. She waited in an agony of tension for him to refer to the thefts. Naturally his conviction that she was the household thief had heavily influenced his attitude towards her then as well.

‘Then Leo let drop that Drew was bragging about having sent you off for an abortion,' Wallace continued with strong distaste. ‘That didn't make sense to me. Drew was infatuated with you and he should've been eager to marry you. The most obvious explanation was that your child was
not
his…and I didn't have to look far to see that Leo was not behaving like a disinterested bystander.'

‘How
did
he behave?' Angie was lured into asking.

Wallace cast knowing eyes over her unwittingly expressive face. ‘Still Leo's most devoted admirer, aren't you?' he said with galling amusement. ‘I'll say one thing for you, Angie—you're not flighty. You've got staying power, and I admire that in a woman.'

The door opened and her father came in with the day's post.

Wallace gave him a tired but surprisingly warm smile of appreciation. ‘Brown, you crafty old codger…letting loose Jake was a master-stroke of ingenuity!'

‘Thank you, sir.'

Angie absorbed that exchange with shaken eyes. Her son's timely appearance in the hall had evidently not been the lucky chance she had assumed it to be.

‘It certainly lessened the damage,' Wallace said approvingly.

‘Quite so, sir…and after some time spent in the soothing company of his American lady Mr Drew will find it quite possible to pretend it never happened.'

‘You think he'll be back for Christmas?' Wallace smothered a yawn with a frail hand, and he looked anxious.

‘Oh, yes, sir. I shouldn't worry about that.' A surprisingly cynical twist briefly slanted her father's mouth as he picked up a mohair rug and almost tenderly spread it over Wallace's lap.

‘I do so wish I could be proud of the boy,' the old man confided heavily. ‘Leo's as straight as a die, nothing of the bad egg about him… One out of two; shouldn't complain, should I?'

In an undeniable daze, well aware that she had been quite forgotten about, Angie crept back to the door. Yet she knew that she would never forget that glimpse of Wallace and her father comfortably engaged in the candid dialogue of two older men who had known each other all their lives. For the first
time, she had seen that the formal distance they maintained in public was a very poor indicator of the nature of their relationship, and that behind her father's loyalty lay a very real affection.

Afraid to go upstairs in case she ran into Leo and the tension between them exploded in Jake's presence, Angie headed through the green baize door for the first time since her arrival and slammed straight into her stepmother, a small, thin woman in her late fifties with greying hair and rather protuberant eyes.

‘Angie…oh!' Emily gasped, looking hunted and dismayed.

‘Thank you for sitting up with me last night—'

‘Do you know where Mr Leo is?' Emily interrupted shrilly.

‘He's with Jake upstairs…I think. If you've got a message for him, I should give it to Dad…' Her voice trailed away in surprise as the older woman simply scurried on past her with what could have been a stifled sob.

Angie hesitated, wondering if she ought to go after her stepmother, but she was in no mood after so traumatic a morning to deal with anyone. She would see Emily later. She hurried on past the kitchens, which were noisy with the busy feet and chatter of lunchtime activity. At the end of the long, flagstoned corridor, she dived into the butler's room to borrow her father's overcoat off the back of the door.

It was a new coat, she noted in some surprise, the cloth heavy and expensive. Maybe it had been a misfit for Wallace. She dug her arms into the sleeves while she scanned the contents of the key cupboard. A minute later she had located the key she sought, and she headed for the old servants' tunnel. It was as dark and dank as it had ever been, created over a century earlier to enable the servants and estate workers to enter the house without intruding into the gardens above, and
thus offending the eyes of the family and their guests. Now the tunnel provided a very useful and concealed short cut into the grounds.

She dug her hands into her pockets. Beyond the old ice house she slanted off on the path to the lake. One of Drew's least successful ideas had been the transformation of the Folly into self-catering tourist accommodation. Blithely ignoring his grandfather's love of privacy, Drew had spent a small fortune on the conversion.

‘Honeymooners will love it!' he had forecast, putting in a Jacuzzi with gold taps and a bed the size of a small football pitch.

But nobody had ever got the chance to stay there. Apart from Leo. She walked by the lake, no longer seeing the wind-blown grass and the bare trees but remembering instead the lushness of that early summer two and a half years earlier, the glory of the wild flowers, the drugging heat of midday…and Leo miraculously waiting for her…

‘Join me,' he had suggested casually, indicating the elaborate picnic hamper resting on the rug. ‘Today, I start life anew.'

Leo had been far from sober and dangerously volatile but, in her excitement, she hadn't seen that, had only registered that he was finally paying attention to her and expressing a desire for her company. With her father safely distant in London, Angie had spent the entirety of the preceding week throwing herself in Leo's path with increasing desperation, waking up every day in terror of hearing that he was returning to Greece.

But once ensconced on that cashmere rug, headily conscious of Leo's smouldering appraisal and vainly aware that most men considered her beautiful, Angie had been on a triumphant high, and ripe for a rude awakening to the harsher realities of
life. And Leo had been right on one count—nothing that had happened that weekend had been on Angie's agenda.

‘You remind me of a little cat lapping cream,' Leo had confided, reaching for her with indolently amused confidence and kissing her breathless.

She had had no control over the incredibly powerful physical feelings he'd aroused in her. Leo had not been remotely like the admiring, unsophisticated young men whom she had easily held at a distance. Sooner than she cared to recall, Leo had carried her into the Folly and made love to her with a wild, passionate impatience that had taken her by shock and storm.

Remembering how she had behaved still made Angie feel quite sick and shaky. She must have seemed so shameless, so pathetically obsessed. In her lowest moments, she sometimes wondered if Leo had gone to bed with her just to get rid of her.

Withdrawing the key, she stuck it into the door of the Folly and walked inside. Dismay stilled her in her tracks. All the evidence of Drew's conversion had gone. The building had been returned to its former purpose—a viewpoint on the hill above the lake, a comfortable place to sit even on a cold day. She mounted the stone staircase in the corner and surveyed the empty room above. Then, suddenly, she was flying downstairs and back out into the cold fresh air, scalding tears of regret running down her face and an agony of pain mushrooming up inside her.

She had been so happy that weekend, and so stupid that she had believed he was happy too!

‘I like a woman who knows what she wants…as long as it's what I want too…and it was, it
was
,' Leo had confided with tender satisfaction as he'd gazed intently down at her, seemingly revelling in the tidal wave of affection and warmth
she had been engulfing him in. ‘And I like it even more when you look at me as if I'm the very centre of your universe…'

Dear God, how could he
ever
have asked her if she had used him as bait to make Drew jealous? She hadn't been able to hide her feelings that weekend, had been so helplessly, deliriously content—like a lost puppy finally finding its way home, she reflected, hating herself and just about the whole world at that instant, and scrubbing at her wet cheeks with feverishly unsteady hands.

How could she go on loving Leo when he had never, ever wanted her in the first place? And now he hated her like poison…of course he did! What male would welcome the fruit of a casual sexual encounter with a woman who meant nothing to him? But Leo, famed in the family for his sense of honour, would love and accept his son because Jake was an innocent victim of his mother's irresponsible behaviour.

The crack of a snapping twig broke through Angie's brooding, miserable thoughts and she whirled round. Leo fell still under the cover of the trees, his hooded dark gaze disturbingly level as he studied her. Angie snatched one appalled look at him and whipped her reddened eyes away again. He must have seen her from the house and, doubtless, had followed her up here to stage a showdown where nobody would be likely to hear them. She braced herself for the onslaught of bitter recriminations.

‘Jake fell asleep in the middle of his lunch. I over-tired him,' Leo said prosaically.

Angie blinked, hands stuffed deep into her pockets, shoulders rigid with strain.

‘It would be complete hypocrisy for me to bemoan his existence,' Leo mused, almost as if he were talking out loud to himself. ‘He is a part of me, he is my son and, now that the shock has faded a little, I have to confess that I am delighted
with him. I could be very angry that I missed out on the first years of his life, but what would be the point?'

Totally bemused by what she was hearing, Angie found herself gaping at him.

‘It would've been much easier for you to have an abortion.' A grim smile of acknowledgement curved Leo's wide, sensual mouth. ‘But you didn't. I have to be grateful for that.'

‘Grateful…?' Angie parroted, so deeply shaken by the concept that she could barely frame the word.

‘I was equally grateful for your candour earlier.' Leo continued to watch her with disturbing intensity, spiky black lashes low on his penetrating dark eyes. ‘Few women would admit that they cold-bloodedly set out to try and entrap a rich husband.'

Angie jolted back into life and flushed to the roots of her hair. ‘I…I…' she began, but she got no further because disabusing him of the conviction that she had been a committed, calculating little gold-digger would entail admitting that she had been madly in love with him—and, even worse, actually dumb enough to believe that she could miraculously replace the baby daughter he had lost, and thereafter bask in his warm and devoted appreciation.

In the electric silence, Leo regarded her expectantly, a black brow slightly raised as he waited for a further response.

‘Yes, well,' Angie finally mumbled with a jerky shrug. ‘Now you know.'

‘So why didn't you ever make a bid to collect on your fertility?'