Her Christmas Fantasy & The Winter Bride (30 page)

Angie tensed in dismay, not having been prepared for that very obvious question.

‘You see, I'm having something of a problem understanding that aspect,' Leo confided softly. ‘Wallace might in the heat of temper have forged that ridiculous deal with you, but all you had to do was contact me. Obviously there would've
been no question of a prosecution. Your pregnancy gave you a fistful of aces, yet for some peculiar reason you made no attempt to play them.'

Angie squirmed. Leo had started out by allaying her worst fears, and had then cruelly pounced when she was a sitting duck. She didn't feel equal to the challenge of searching questions for clarification of what had motivated her at the time.

The silence lingered and grew until it clawed at her nerves.

‘I just couldn't face telling you that I was pregnant…OK?' she shot back in the sudden desperation that swiftly translated into temper. ‘In fact, after the way you treated me, I would've sooner drunk cyanide!'

‘That seems reasonably comprehensive,' Leo responded with considerable irony, glittering dark eyes resting coolly on her hectically flushed and defiant face. ‘I dented your ego and nothing, not even greed or ambition, could somehow persuade you to put my son's needs ahead of your own wounded pride.'

Angie winced and spun her head away. ‘I wondered how long it would take you to start talking like that.'

‘You're quite right,' Leo slotted in in unsettling agreement. ‘Talk of that nature is most unproductive. And this
is
, after all, that very special moment when all that keen plotting and planning of two and a half years ago, all that assiduous tracking, hunting and tempting, leads to what now seems its almost inevitable conclusion…'

Every silky word hitting its shrinking target, Angie's strained blue eyes skimmed back to him in growing bewilderment.

Leo's brilliant dark gaze held hers fast. ‘I can only legitimise my son's birth by marrying you.' A glimmer of a hard smile slanted his lips as he took in her utter stupefaction at
his making that point. ‘And I intend to carry through on that absolute necessity. Nobody will get the chance to call my son an “embarrassing little mistake” ever again!'

‘Y
OU'RE
asking me to m-marry you?' Angie stammered in frank astonishment.

‘Not asking—
telling
you.' In emphasis of that not so subtle distinction, Leo closed the distance between them and stilled mere inches from her, his hard, dark features set with relentless determination. ‘We are getting married.'

Angie swallowed with difficulty and simply gaped at him. Here, at least, was confirmation that there could be no other woman in Leo's life.

‘
Before
the tabloids dream up crashingly crude and comic headlines about the butler's daughter, the Demetrios love-child and droit du seigneur in the steamy depths of Devon,' Leo clarified with a slashing twist of his sardonic mouth. ‘Before Jake or anyone else starts asking awkward questions. And, last but not least, so that I can have full access to and rights over my own child!'

Slowly, Angie brought her lower lip up into contact with the upper again. It took considerable courage even to do that with Leo standing over her in the most intimidating fashion, bold dark eyes waiting to pounce on the smallest sign of opposition.

‘But—'

‘But
nothing
!' Leo blazed down at her with explosive menace. ‘You owe it to your son and you owe it to me!'

Angie tried to retreat a step, but Leo was ready for that too. His hands shot out and entrapped hers, imprisoning her
to the spot. Volatile dark eyes struck hers like a shower of lightning sparks. ‘And let us not pretend that sharing a marital bed is likely to be a huge sacrifice for either of us. While you console yourself with my wealth, I will console myself with your beautiful body…I think it sounds like a match made in heaven,
pethi mou
.'

He backed her up against one of the pillars supporting the Folly's porticoed entrance, freed her hands and settled his own on the feminine swell of her hips. Angie shivered violently, legs weak as water, brain power in stunned suspension, the glorious heat and feel of Leo's lean, muscular body against her yielding softness provoking the most shattering surge of raw excitement inside her.

‘Leo…' she whispered almost pleadingly.

Eyes burning pure gold, he pushed back the coat and skimmed long, lean fingers slowly up the straining length of her trembling thighs. She shuddered, leant back, throat extending. He took the invitation she offered with a wild, hot hunger that electrified her, crushing her mouth under his, and then, with a ragged groan, he jerked back from her. Angie's eyes opened again, defenceless in their confusion. It was like recovering consciousness after a stunning blow to the head.

Leo expelled his breath in a pent-up hiss. ‘
Theos
…we're in full view of the house!'

Angie flushed with mortified colour and looked away, fighting to regain control of her quivering body.

‘I can't keep my hands off you,' Leo gritted half under his breath. ‘But I shouldn't start things I can't finish and, to satisfy Wallace, we have a Christmas tree to choose.'

‘A Ch-Christmas tree…?' Angie mumbled, wide-eyed.

‘Tradition, Angie,' Leo imparted in stern reproof as he eased her off the pillar, smoothed down her skirt and rearranged her father's coat since it was perfectly obvious she was in no state to do it herself. He urged her back down the
path. ‘My grandfather is a stickler for tradition. As the future mistress of the Court, you get to pick the tree and watch me chop it down.'

‘I haven't said I'll marry you.'

‘I can't think of a single reason why you should refuse.'

You don't love me.
Her warm colour bled away on that stark truth. Leo, her hero from adolescence, her one and only lover and the father of her child. He had been her most destructive weakness from the age of thirteen. But to be Leo's wife, to possess him in body and legality, if not in soul…to turn over in bed at night and find him…to have the right to lift the phone and hear his voice whenever she felt like it… A rush of intoxicating emotion gripped Angie.

‘All right…I'll marry you.' Shamefaced, she addressed the ground at her feet, horribly conscious of that overpowering surge of love and its lack of pride or conscience.

‘Of course you will…I rather took agreement for granted when you leant back against that pillar and offered yourself to me in broad daylight.'

Crimson-cheeked, Angie flung up her head and met spectacular dark eyes ablaze with sharply disconcerting amusement. That shook her. But then nothing Leo had said or done over the past minutes had even come close to matching her expectations, she conceded dazedly as he walked her across the bridge over the lake.

It was as if there was a core of joyous vibrancy now lit deep inside him and it was a major effort for him to keep it concealed. It was Jake, of course. Her son had walked right into Leo's heart and immediately found a place there as she herself had never managed to do. Her shoulders drooped, the high-wire tension that had kept her on edge for hours draining away.

‘I'll make arrangements for a special licence,' Leo announced as they crunched across the gravel at the front of
the Court. ‘We'll get the ceremony out of the way before Christmas—'

‘
Before
Christmas?' Angie gasped.

‘Christmas Eve, if the rector's agreeable. A quiet family ceremony. You'll need a ring, not to mention a new wardrobe,' Leo mused reflectively. ‘Then there's the matter of Jake's Christmas presents. I know it's far from cool, but I can hardly wait to sack the toy shops. We'll fly up to London tomorrow.'

‘Yes,' Angie muttered rather weakly, conscious of her growing exhaustion as they entered the house.

Her father was waiting in the Great Hall, Emily beside him, her face pinched and pale, her eyes evasive. ‘Could we have a word with you, sir?' he asked stiffly.

Belatedly recalling that her stepmother had been looking for Leo earlier, Angie tensed. A frown line of surprise and unease divided her brows but, with a faint smile, Leo settled a hand on her taut spine and swept her with him into the study.

The door hadn't even closed before Emily broke into speech.

‘It wasn't Angie who stole those things… I let her take the b-blame,' her stepmother stammered in a tearful rush, ‘but I was the one who took them and sold them. Angie was trying to put the miniature back when Mr Wallace found her with it!'

Angie's stunned gaze leapt from her father's impenetrable gravity to her stepmother's open terror and then to Leo's stasis in the centre of the room.

‘Mr Neville has known the truth for a long time,' Samuel Brown admitted tautly.

Angie stiffened in shock, finally understanding why Wallace had found it possible to welcome her so warmly back into his home.

His magnificent bone structure rigid, Leo studied his butler incredulously. ‘My grandfather
knew
?'

‘My wife didn't confide in me until she was in hospital, and by—'

‘When was Emily in hospital?' Angie broke in anxiously.

‘A few months after you left, I had a nervous breakdown,' her stepmother confided tightly.

‘Why wasn't I told about all this?' Leo demanded rawly.

‘By the time I was able to tell Mr Wallace what Emily had done, the Court had already been sold to you, sir,' Samuel explained. ‘Mr Wallace advised us to keep quiet.'

‘To keep quiet,' Leo echoed half under his breath, a perceptible shudder racking him. ‘My grandfather advised you not to tell me?'

‘Mr Wallace believed that you would sack me, and it would've been no more than we deserved… But at the time, with my wife ill and no savings to fall back on…' the older man framed with growing difficulty.

‘Simon Legree or Judge Jeffreys…take your pick,' Leo filled in grimly. ‘What a salutary experience it is to see myself through the eyes of others!'

Angie crossed the room to wrap her arms round her petrified stepmother and give her a soothing hug. ‘It's all right, Em,' she said gently while shooting Leo a positively pleading look. ‘Leo understands. He isn't angry. It's all over and done with now.'

Her father was poker-straight, but sickly pale. ‘Obviously I'm tendering my resignation, sir.'

‘I'm marrying your daughter, Samuel. I'm afraid you're stuck with this family for the rest of your days.'

‘Marrying my daughter?' The older man was visibly shaken by the announcement.

‘Yes…we're getting married,' Angie confirmed.

A slow smile blossomed on her father's strained face. ‘That's wonderful news.' He hesitated then, discomfiture with this new situation clearly overtaking him almost as quickly. ‘I'll take Emily downstairs now, if I may? Facing up to this has taken a lot out of her, sir.'

Silence fell as they left the room. Angie's gaze connected apprehensively with Leo's now blatant stare of outraged condemnation. ‘I would've told you once we were married!' she asserted.

‘Thank you for that slender vote of confidence!' Leo grated with a curled lip. ‘Why the hell didn't you just tell me last week?'

‘Well, for a start, I didn't know that Emily had even owned up to my father,' Angie groaned, her head beginning to ache. ‘And it wasn't my story to tell. It wasn't me who was going to suffer if you reacted badly and decided to prosecute and threw the two of them out of the house.'

‘So instead you let me call you a thief.' His mouth hard as iron, Leo thrust raking, not quite steady fingers through his glossy black hair.

Angie hastened to explain why her stepmother had gone so wildly off the rails. Emily had got into secret debt with a credit card. Too ashamed to confide in her husband, and conscious that their tiny budget would never stretch to meet the payments being demanded, desperation had driven her to stealing. She had sold everything for next to nothing to an unscrupulous trader in a local market. By pure chance, Angie had found the miniature portrait hidden in the flat. After dragging the whole sorry story out of the terrified older woman, Angie had made the last payment on the card, using her savings from a part-time job she had had.

‘Your father's salary was static for almost fifteen years,' Leo volunteered flatly. ‘He didn't complain, and it wasn't noticed until my staff took over and examined the household
accounts. I imagine that goes some way to explaining why your stepmother got herself into a mess.'

He understood. He genuinely understood. Angie felt quite sick with relief and, simultaneously, her legs began shaking beneath her. Those thefts had hung round her neck like an albatross for
so
long. She had never dared to hope that Emily would work up the courage to confess the truth to anyone, had even feared that Leo might not believe her if she did choose to speak up.

‘I never doubted your guilt,' Leo bit out roughly, his lean, strong features fiercely taut as he made that grudging but honest admission. ‘When I saw the disgusting state of your father's flat two years ago, I was appalled. Wallace hadn't been down there in twenty years, and wouldn't even have thought to check up. I understood your resentment on your family's behalf, and for that reason I accepted that you were the thief.'

Angie now had a thumping tension headache, and her weary shoulders sagged. ‘I'm sorry I couldn't risk telling you the truth—'

‘And now I know everything, do I?' Leo prompted with a sudden soft and disturbing quietness, brilliant eyes resting on her pale, drawn profile. ‘The butler's daughter chose not to steal but instead set her sights squarely and very sensibly on marrying the richest prospect in the family?'

‘I'm not feeling very well, Leo,' she mumbled, pushing her hair off her damp brow as a wave of dismaying dizziness ran over her.

‘Because you haven't the wit of a flea when it comes to looking after yourself.' Striding forward, Leo swept her swaying figure up into his powerful arms. ‘You were ill last night…so what do you do? You skip lunch, stand around in temperatures below freezing for hours and, for good measure, neglect to button up that wretched coat. There is this huge horrific
gap inside you where other people have common sense…and the extraordinary thing is that at this moment
I'm
feeling tremendous!'

‘Because of Jake,' she mumbled miserably.

‘Don't whine,
pethi mou
…you've caught yourself a billionaire.'

‘I wasn't whining.'

‘It sounded remarkably like a whine to me. Relax; we'll reschedule the historic choosing of the tree until tomorrow. Even Wallace will understand that I don't want a bride on the brink of collapse. Right now, you will eat and then sleep.'

Angie was too utterly exhausted to argue. It had been the most emotionally draining day of her life, and now that the artificial stimulant of stress had been removed she could barely keep her heavy eyes open.

 

Angie breakfasted in bed the next morning, feeling deliciously pampered and incredibly insouciant. She had slept the clock round. She was seeing the whole world through rose-coloured glasses. She was going to marry the man she loved… Leo was right—whining would be most inappropriate.

As soon as she was dressed, she took Jake down to the basement where her father and stepmother lived in their self-contained flat.

‘You're in for a surprise,' her father warned as he opened the smart new front door.

She certainly was. The damp and cramped accommodation she recalled had been extended and transformed into a light, bright and comfortably furnished home.

‘Mr Leo had it all done up just for us,' Samuel Brown explained. ‘He increased my salary too…he's been a very generous employer.'

The previous day's distress overcome, Emily smiled uncer
tainly at Angie. ‘I feel so much better now it's all come out,' she admitted.