Her Christmas Fantasy & The Winter Bride (34 page)

‘This is as close as I ever got to Angie's bed…honest it is,' Drew quipped with a distinctly strained laugh. ‘For heaven's sake, Leo…lighten up before you give me a heart attack!'

Leo swung on his heel and strode off down the corridor.
Angie made a move to follow him. Drew stepped in her path. ‘Give me a chance to get well out of the way first,' he said wryly. ‘I do not want to be involved in this round. I've got Tally now, and, although you're still a remarkable eyeful, you're definitely more Leo's style. I'm not into throbbing passion and high drama, but the pair of you appear to thrive on them!'

As soon as Drew was gone, Angie splashed her face with cold water. Leo had come back specifically to see her on that flying visit to the Court two years ago… Dear heaven, could that be true? And had she, in her bitter pride and driving need to appear untouched by his rejection, been her own worst enemy too? The suspicion savaged her.

 

‘Your presence has a wondrously enlivening effect on Leo,' Wallace remarked when she went to collect Jake from the drawing room. ‘I know my grandson as a serious, rational and even-tempered man. You make him do extraordinary things.'

‘Such as?'

Wallace gave her a sardonic smile. ‘Sneaking into his own home like a cat burglar with roses and pink champagne. He hates flowers…he hates champagne. Such as storming out like a thundercloud, leaping into his Ferrari and driving off…'

Angie had turned pink. ‘Leo's gone out?'

His grandfather nodded. Angie swallowed hard and took Jake to have his tea. Her son's energy level was flagging fast. He was half-asleep when she lifted him out of the high chair, and in no state for a bath. Gently slotting him into his pyjamas, she put him to bed. Drew's girlfriend, Tally, came in to take a peek at him.

They parted outside Angie's bedroom door, having shared a thorough discussion of what each of them planned to wear that night, although the brunette had done most of the talking.
Angie was finding it hard to concentrate because all the time she was wondering when Leo would get back,
if
Leo was planning to come back and even if there would be a wedding—for avoiding confrontation was not a characteristic that she was used to Leo displaying.

She owed him a full explanation about Drew. She had never attempted to explain that relationship in a way which would make sense to Leo. So naturally he was still uneasy. His cousin was a part of his family, and likely to be around now on a regular basis. All Leo had ever asked her for was the truth, but she had been too proud to give him it.

 

Was the intensity of her relief written across her face when she entered the drawing room and found Leo there? He skimmed a narrowed glance over her jade-green dress and light jacket. Angie stared back at him helplessly, her pupils dilating, her breath running out in her throat. His hair still damp and slightly curly from the shower, he was wearing a casual but incredibly elegant dark suit with a silver-grey sweater. He looked devastatingly sexy in the way only a very masculine man could.

‘Shall we go?' he suggested to the room at large, and then he flicked a glance at Angie. ‘I presume you're putting on your coat?'

She would have a chance to talk to him in the car, she assumed. But it was not to be. All five of them piled into the back of the limousine. It was a short drive to the country house hotel which had the only restaurant in the district Wallace was prepared to patronise. Angie was seething with desperation to get Leo on his own by the time they walked into the hotel. She closed a hand round his sleeve and leant up to whisper, ‘Leo—'

‘This is not the place, Angie,' he said very drily.

Mortified, Angie withdrew her hand. She watched him
over dinner. Although the winter chill never ebbed from his spectacular dark eyes, he laughed and he chatted with an easy social dexterity she was quite incapable of emulating. Wallace was the life and soul of the party.

‘Leo behaving badly…I love it,' Drew murmured at one point under cover of the conversation.

Angie looked up as a group of people stopped by their table to exchange greetings with Leo. A tiny, svelte blonde with huge blue eyes studied her intently and then smiled at her. She extended her hand. ‘I don't think we've ever been formally introduced, Angie.'

‘Marisa…' Angie's smile was strained as she stood up, towering over the other woman and feeling absolutely huge.

‘I'm so pleased for you both,' Marisa confided with the kind of warm and deep sincerity that even the Wicked Witch of the West couldn't have doubted.

‘Lovely woman,' Wallace commented as she moved off again. ‘It's a mystery to me why she's not married. This career woman nonsense, I expect…owns one of those twee decorating outfits, doesn't she?'

‘An interior design consultancy that's worth several million,' Leo responded.

‘Never…'
Wallace ejaculated in healthy astonishment.

Angie was shrinking. Marisa was little, gorgeous to look at, successful in business and genuinely nice. She was convinced that Leo had to be comparing them to
her
detriment. Tally and Drew got up to dance. Wallace was hailed by an old gentleman sitting at a nearby table and he went over to socialise. Leo lounged back in his chair and surveyed Angie in silence.

‘You're angry with me—'

Leo rose abruptly from his seat. ‘Let's get some fresh air…'

‘Leo… Drew came to my room to apologise for all the
things he's done,' she muttered as he fed her into her coat with astonishingly gentle hands in the foyer.

‘You were crying,' he gritted.

Angie sucked in a deep, anxious breath. ‘I was in love with you two and a half years ago.'

‘I know…' Leo said flatly, swinging open the door and walking her into the still white world beyond. ‘I am not stupid.'

Silenced by that assurance, Angie bit the soft underside of her lower lip, tasted blood and shivered in the cold, crisp air.

‘But you were very young,' Leo murmured in driven addition. ‘It was perfectly possible that in the space of a few weeks you had fallen out of love with me and into love with him.'

‘But I didn't…and Drew knew right from the start that I loved you—'

‘You
told
him?' Leo shot her a startled glance and then he groaned. ‘For the first time in my life I feel sorry for my cousin.'

‘That's why we were only ever friends.'

‘
Cristos
…no wonder he hit the bottle so hard while he was with you! To have you and yet
not
have you,' Leo breathed with a stark shudder. ‘I could not have borne a relationship like that.'

‘I talked about you all the time as well,' Angie confided guiltily. ‘But I honestly
didn't
know how he felt about me. And this evening something he said upset me and that's why I was crying. He said…he said that time you flew over for twenty-four hours—he said that he thought you wanted me back—'

‘I
did
,' Leo confirmed, closing a strong arm round her and pulling her close as they walked down the well-lit path under the white, frosted silhouette of the trees.

‘So why did you ditch me in the first place, then?' Angie
demanded strickenly, her lovely face convulsing with the strength of her emotions.

Leo stilled and rested his hands on her quivering shoulders. His brilliant dark eyes were full of pain and regret. ‘I needed time away from you to work out what was going on inside my own head. I wasn't happy with Petrina, but I
chose
her…how could I have any faith in my own judgement after one weekend with you? What room did I have to even explore my feelings
with
you when both our families would've been justly outraged by the level of intimacy we had already enjoyed?'

‘Are you s-saying that you thought you m-might be in love with me then?' Angie framed so shakily she could hardly get the words out.

‘I was afraid it was only an infatuation which wouldn't last on my side…and you were so vulnerable. I
had
to leave, and I couldn't make you any promises. I didn't know if I would come back to you.'

‘You could've told me the truth,' Angie condemned unevenly. ‘You could've asked me to wait—'

Leo vented a harsh laugh. ‘I was arrogant enough to believe that I didn't
have
to ask. I wasn't prepared for you to take up with Drew, but I recalled enough of my own teenage experiences to know that nothing is more fickle and fleeting than the emotions of youth. You seemed happy with him—'

‘Where were your eyes?' Angie gulped, tears clogging up her throat. ‘I was
miserable
.'

‘I was very angry… Strange as it may seem, I felt that you were the one who had made a fool out of me. I had spent six weeks wrestling with my desire for you,' he admitted rawly. ‘And there you were, prancing about happily with my cousin. I wanted to kill you, but I told myself I had had a narrow escape from making an even bigger ass of myself.'

‘I didn't w-want you to know how much you'd hurt me.'

‘Ditto…' Leo said roughly half under his breath, and he
gathered her close, crushing her into his arms and then framing her tear-stained face with his hands to look down at her, bold dark eyes intense and possessive. ‘And now I've got you back in my arms I'm never letting go of you again.'

His hungry mouth was cool on hers and then hot…hot…hot, the taste and the scent of him and the hard strength of his powerful physique filling her with electrifying excitement. She went pliant and clung. Leo needed no further encouragement. Wallace coughed unnoticed from the hotel steps. That kiss went on and on and on until Drew wolf-whistled from the limousine which had drawn up on the other side of the snowy verge.

Angie didn't remember the drive back to the Court. It meant so much to her that Leo had come back for her after that weekend, and she didn't know whether she was on her head or her heels. She floated back into the house, tucked under Leo's arm, and drank a toast to Christmas with him as the staff gathered in the Great Hall, laughing and chatting and full of seasonal spirit after their own evening of festivities. Leo gave a wonderful speech about how much he appreciated everyone's hard work. Angie watched him with the exclusive attention of a woman in love.

They got one foot towards the stairs. The head groom broke breathlessly through the thinning knots of the departing staff, his wrinkled face troubled. ‘I'm afraid that little mare looks like she's going to deliver early, sir. I've phoned for the vet but he's on another call, and with it being her first foal…'

‘It's OK…I'll come and take a look at her.' Leo gave Angie a rueful look. ‘Don't wait up for me,' he advised.

‘I could come with you…'

Leo frowned and shook his head with decision. ‘No point in both of us going without a night's sleep.'

Angie went to bed alone, feeling hurt. She might not be as skilled or as experienced as Leo was with horses, but it
certainly wouldn't have been the first foal she had helped to deliver. As a teenager she had spent all her free time down at the stables. But then Leo didn't feel any need to have her hovering round him
all
the time, did he? Only a man in love would have welcomed her company.

But two and a half years ago, given the time, the space and the opportunity, Leo
might
have fallen in love with her. That was a bitter pill to swallow. But after he had seen her with Drew any fledgling feelings he had had for her had been destroyed. He had spent almost all the years since believing that she had slept with Drew, become pregnant with his cousin's child…not to mention believing that she was the household thief.

When he had come back into her life again, he had done so on Wallace's behalf alone, and initially he had been anything but pleased to find himself still attracted to her. But, being Leo, he had soon decided that the logical thing to do was to go to bed with her and get her out of his system, and he probably would have managed that feat, she conceded, growing steadily more wretched, had it not been for the fact that she was the mother of his son.

Any treacherous and insidious thought that she might reasonably lodge herself in Leo's bed and wait for his return was now soundly squashed, and even the memory of the thought a source of deep shame. Angie clutched a pillow miserably to herself. She would never throw herself at Leo again.

 

Angie's father brought her breakfast in bed the next morning. She sat up and practically snatched the tray from him. ‘Dad!' she scolded in embarrassment. ‘I don't want you waiting on me…it's not right!'

Samuel Brown chuckled. ‘There are so many staff here now that I rarely get to lift anything heavier than the morning post. I wanted a word with you. Have you got a wedding
dress yet?' he enquired anxiously. ‘I suppose I'm a little late asking.'

‘No, you're not.'

Smiling with relief at the news, he informed her that that was just as well because it was his duty to buy her one. These days, he told her proudly, he had a very healthy savings account. Before she knew where she was, he had organised her day for her. She was to make a shopping trip into Exeter with her stepmother and buy the best dress she could find. And what about presents? he asked. Had she bought presents for everyone? Her face fell a mile. He shook his greying head. ‘So Leo doesn't think of everything.'

‘It wouldn't even occur to Leo to suspect that I might be running round with less than five pounds in my purse…he couldn't imagine that level of penury— Gosh!' she exclaimed. ‘You actually called him
Leo
!'

‘I feel rather idiotic calling my future son-in-law anything else. As Wallace says, we have to move with the times unless we want to be written off as a couple of hidebound old fogies. But it's hard to break the habits of a lifetime.'