THERE was a terrible silence.
Why on earth did I say that? I must be mad.
Then Amer threw back his head and laughed aloud. Leo could not believe it. She was still reeling with shock at her own words. And he laughed. At that moment she hated him.
But, even so, she needed to withdraw her stupid remark. And fast.
She said with stiff apology, ‘That was uncalled for. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean…’
Amer ignored that. He said softly, ‘Be careful what you wish for. You might get it.’
‘W-wish for?’ Leo was outraged. ‘Are you implying I wish to marry you?’
Amer looked soulful. ‘What else is a man to think when a lady pays him the compliment of asking him to marry her?’
Leo choked. ‘I did not ask you to marry me.’
‘That’s what it sounded like to me,’ Amer said imperturbably.
Leo stopped feeling even the slightest bit apologetic. She glared.
‘I said I’d cut you a deal. That’s different.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘I’d be interested to hear how you work that out. Let us have dinner and discuss it.’
‘No,’ said Leo sharply. ‘Thank you,’ she added with patent lack of gratitude.
Amer smiled. ‘I never sign up to a deal until I have explored the implications.’
She shrugged. ‘Fine. So no deal. I can live with that.’ She turned away.
He caught her by the arm. Well no, that was not exactly true. He hardly touched her. But Leo stopped dead as if she had walked into an invisible electric fence.
‘And I never turn one down before I’ve done just that.’
Leo looked over her shoulder at him. Her heart was thundering so hard it was all she could do not to press her hand against her shaken rib cage. What was worse, she was almost certain he knew it. She clenched her hand into a tight, tight fist and kept it at her side.
Amer’s remarkable eyes crinkled at the corners as he met hers. The sensuous mouth remained in a prim line but Leo was not deceived. It was an amused, secretive look and it made her blood run cold.
He is laughing at me, she thought.
She said, as haughtily as she knew how, ‘My car?’
‘Of course.’ It was as smooth as cream.
Not taking his hand from her arm he escorted her out into the evening. It had been a hot day and the air was full of the stale heat of combustion engines and too many people. Leo shuddered.
‘Sticky,’ he agreed with her unspoken distaste. ‘You will be glad of a cool drink.’
He must have made some sign, though Leo had not detected it. A long dark car drew up silently in front of them. Amer opened the passenger door.
Leo was not getting caught like that again.
‘That’s not my car.’
‘Of course not.’ Amer was shocked. ‘When I take a lady out to dinner, I pick her up and see her home.’
‘You are not,’ said Leo between her teeth, ‘taking me out to dinner.’
‘I’m glad you feel like that,’ Amer said mysteriously.
He shepherded her solicitously into the back seat. To her own fury, Leo found herself complying. He shut the door on her and slipped round to the off side. In the car his smile was very seductive. She recognised that it was designed to be.
‘I so much prefer to eat at home.’
Unseduced, Leo narrowed her eyes at all that deceptive openness.
‘I’m not cooking for you, either,’ she announced.
He chuckled. ‘A pleasure deferred.’
‘No, it’s not. I’m never going to—’ Leo broke off, as the car did not turn west as she expected. Instead it slid into Hyde Park and turned right. ‘Where are we going?’
Amer widened his eyes at her. ‘Why home, of course. Just as you wanted.’
‘I live that way,’ said Leo, pointing firmly in the direction from which they had come.
He was bland. ‘How interesting.’
Leo ground her teeth. ‘All right. Whose home?’
‘Mine,’ he said coolly.
Leo could be cool, too. ‘Interesting,’ she drawled back at him. ‘Would that be the home from home palace or the bachelor pad where anything goes?’
Amer looked amused. ‘Which would you prefer?’
Leo resisted the temptation to hit him. Only because she thought it might make her burst into tears. She felt she’d had more fights tonight than she’d had in the whole of her life up to now. She’d not acquitted herself badly. But it had taken more out of her than she could afford if she was going to lock horns with Amer el-Barbary.
She leaned back in her seat with an angry little sigh. A policy of passive resistance, that was the answer. If he got no reaction out of her, Leo reasoned, he would soon get bored and let her go home.
So she managed not to react to the imposing Palladian house. It was no more than she expected after all. She nodded at the butler, managing to stay as impassive as the perfect servant himself. She even kept her cool in the marble entrance hall, though the original Canaletto made her blink a bit. But when Amer led her through the house and out the other side, her strategy tumbled into ruins.
She stopped stock-still, gasping. She was suddenly in the garden of Eden. It was surrounded by an old wall, its stones almost hidden by lush falls of lilac wisteria. Old trees formed a copse at the end of the garden. While a perfect lawn, the grass golden in the late-evening sun, curved away under huge azalea bushes. They were so brilliant with bloom that she could hardly believe it—apricot and lemon and buttercup and champagne; and then a blaze of fiery pink that made her eyes hurt. And the scent! Her senses swam.
‘I don’t believe it,’ Leo whispered.
Amer liked her awe. He smiled.
‘Better than the bachelor pad?’
Leo was recalled to herself. She looked at him with dislike.
‘It may be beautiful. That doesn’t mean that I want to be here.’
‘You’d rather we went to the bachelor pad,’ he interpreted.
He raised a hand. The silent butler materialised.
‘Bring the car round.’
The butler inclined his head.
‘No,’ said Leo hastily. ‘No, I don’t want to go anywhere else.’ In case Amer misunderstood—or pretended to misunderstand—she added with emphasis, ‘Until I go home that is.’
Amer bit back a smile.
‘Then we will have to drink out here. Unless you are cold?’ he added courteously.
Leo was uncomfortably conscious of a heat that had nothing to do with the summer evening.
‘No,’ she said with constraint.
‘Then bring drinks please,’ said Amer, every inch the concerned host. ‘Dinner in an hour.’
The butler bowed and disappeared.
Leo attempted heavy irony. ‘So I’m staying for dinner, am I?’
‘I said I would feed you,’ Amer reminded her.
‘I don’t remember accepting.’
He laughed. ‘Then do so now.’
And as she looked mulish, he strolled over to her and put an arm round her shoulders, turning her to face the golden garden.
‘Look at that,’ he said lazily. ‘You can’t honestly say you want to leave all this and go back into the dirt of the city.’
For the second time since she had arrived, Leo’s senses swam. He was too close. His arm was too heavy. If she turned her head just a fraction, she would rest her cheek against the grey-suited chest. She could smell the warm skin and the faint expensive fragrance of orange flowers and orris.
She remembered that smell. She had thought she would remember it for the rest of her life. Now, she thought with sudden insight, she was going to have to be seriously careful to make sure that was all she remembered from this encounter. The whole evening was turning into an elephant trap for a woman with big feet and minimal experience of seduction.
She gave herself a mental shake and said firmly, ‘I can say I don’t want to be kidnapped, however.’
For a moment the hand on her upper arm tightened almost unbearably. Not so lazy, now.
‘Don’t fight me, Leonora.’
She looked up at him indignantly, forgetting for a moment that he was too close.
‘Are you threatening me?’
Amer looked down at her. Yes, much too close. The grey eyes were unreadable. But Leo’s breath still caught in her throat. Then his lashes dropped and he was lazy again. He gave her shoulders a squeeze, laughing.
‘Say thank-you prettily and stop arguing. Let us savour the twilight.’
Leo thought: Something’s wrong with me. I want to do what he says. I must be out of my mind.
The butler came back, carrying an enormous embossed tray. He put it on a filigree ironwork table. Still stunned by her unwanted revelation, Leo watched him lift an ornate jug that might have been brass or might—if that were not ridiculous—have been gold. He poured a cloudy liquid into crystal goblets and put them on another tray before presenting them to Amer.
Amer took both and held one out to her. Leo looked at it, not moving. He was amused.
‘Lemon, lime, honey and a hint of cinnamon,’ he said as if she had voiced her suspicions. ‘Maybe a dash of rosewater, though that’s a professional secret. Try. If you hate it you can always have more champagne. Though personally, I suspect you’re over your limit.’
Leo was so incensed that she grabbed the goblet and swallowed the brew as if it were medicine. She barely tasted it as it went down. She did not care.
‘I hate it,’ she said deliberately.
Just for a moment the impassive butler was less than impassive. An expression of distinct shock passed over his face, Leo saw. Presumably the Sheikh’s usual guests did what he told them and said thank-you for it. Well, this guest was going to be different she thought vengefully.
Amer, of course, was unmoved. ‘Then champagne it is.’ Without turning his head, he said, ‘See to it, Harrods.’
The man left silently.
‘Harrods?’ said Leo, temporarily diverted. ‘Is that really his name?’
‘In a way. I dare say you won’t approve,’ Amer said with wry amusement, ‘but the name goes with the job.’
She stared.
‘My mother,’ he explained. ‘When we first bought this house she said the only person she knew in London was the man who delivered her orders from Harrods. Eventually she persuaded him to come and work here. But she had always called him Harrods. So—’ He shrugged.
Leo was appalled. ‘You made the poor man give up his name?’
‘I knew you would disapprove,’ Amer sighed.
‘I think it’s barbaric. It’s as if you have bought up his whole identity.’ She shivered at the thought of such arrogance. ‘You really do think you can do anything you want, don’t you?’
Amer frowned. ‘He could always have left. In fact, he has stayed with us for thirty years.’
But Leo was still chilled by this further evidence of tyranny.
‘You set your own rules and everyone else has to obey, don’t they?’ she said hotly. ‘You just think you’re above the rest of us.’
Amer was thunderstruck. ‘Above—What are you talking about?’
Leo snorted. ‘Look at this evening. As I remember, I said I didn’t want to have dinner with you several times. Did you take any notice?’
‘It’s good for you to have new experiences.’
‘So you have a right to decide what’s good for me now?’ raged Leo.
Amer’s eyes gleamed.
‘More like a duty,’ he said blandly.
Leo was utterly unprepared for that.
‘What?’
‘Well, you keep throwing out challenges.’ He gave her his most winning smile. ‘What sort of a man would I be if I didn’t take them up?’
Leo was speechless.
Harrods returned with a frosted bottle and a crystal flute. Amer flicked his fingers. Harrods surrendered the bottle to him without comment. But as he withdrew Leo thought she detected wintry surprise.
Amer dealt expertly with the bottle and poured the wine. He gave her the glass and took up his own, toasting her.
‘Your health.’
Leo was still reeling. She raised her glass but could not think of anything to say. Amer clinked his goblet against hers.
‘Truce?’
Looking up, Leo found his eyes were smiling straight into hers. It made her feel as if the world was suddenly very small and turning so fast that she might fall off. It was all she could do not to grab hold of him to steady herself.
‘Come on, Leonora.’ It was as smooth as silk and twice as seductive. ‘What have you got to lose? Call a truce until sunset.’
She did not trust him an inch.
‘What sort of truce?’
His eyes gleamed. ‘You don’t tear into me and I don’t take your hair down.’
Leo choked.
‘Truce,’ he said firmly and held out his hand.
To her own amazement, Leo found herself giving him her own. This is crazy, she thought. I ought to insist on going home now.
But she did not. Instead she let him shake her hand. And then, of course, hold onto it. He ran his fingers over the back of her hand in a movement that was not quite a caress. It set her shivering as none of Simon’s most ardent kisses had though.
She hauled her hand back and said the first thing that came into her head.
‘Wh-what an interesting garden,’ she said quickly. ‘No one would think you were in the heart of London.’ I sound like my mother, she thought in despair.
Amer frowned.
‘Is it difficult to maintain?’ gabbled Leo. She held her champagne flute in front of her like an amulet.
Amer’s frown deepened. He let out an explosive sigh.
‘God spare me from Englishwomen. Every time anyone gets near your feelings you start talking like the Queen.’
Leo decided not to hear that. She started to stroll round the garden, asking intelligent questions about the plants. Their scent was almost overwhelming but she was determined not to let it get to her. Just as she took her wineglass with her but did not drink any more. She needed all her wits about her and she knew it.
So did Amer. He went with her, answering her questions with a barbed politeness that told her he knew exactly what she was doing.
‘Bog standard azalea,’ he said indifferently as she stopped in front of a ten-foot bush of honey-scented gold.
‘H-how interesting.’
He looked down at her ironically. Then a thought occurred to him and his mouth tilted.
‘It is, actually. This was the plant that intoxicated Xenophon’s soldiers on the way to Trebizond.’ He gave her a slow, lazy smile that set her pulses thrumming and her teeth on edge. ‘Do you rate your resistance higher or lower?’
Leo’s resistance was fraying at the edges with every moment and she suspected he knew it. When he looked at her like that, there did not seem to be much resistance left at all. It was not fair.
He laughed softly. Oh he knew what he was doing all right.
Get a grip, Leo told herself feverishly, Get a grip.
‘I thought we had a truce?’ she managed.
‘I haven’t laid a hand on you,’ he pointed out, all innocence.
She looked at him. He laughed and opened his hands. As if he were letting go of a leading rein, she thought indignantly.
‘All right,’ he said kindly. ‘I won’t tease you any more.’
‘Thank you.’
‘A least not until sunset,’ he murmured mischievously.
Leo looked at the sky. It was beginning to darken.
‘Perhaps we’d better eat soon.’
‘Coward,’ he taunted.
But he led the way back to the house and gave the order.
They ate in a small room on the first floor overlooking the garden. Leo hardly knew what the quiet servants put in front of her. She had no appetite and did no more than pick at it.
Amer was concerned.
‘Sorry,’ said Leo. She was enough her father’s daughter to feel guilty about wasting good food. ‘It’s been quite a day. I think I just ran out of steam.’
She fully expected him to say something sexy and provocative. But he did not.
Instead he said gravely, ‘Because of your broken engagement?’
Leo nursed her left hand. Her ring finger was still slightly sore. She gave a brief, unhappy smile.
‘Among other things.’
Amer looked at her thoughtfully.
‘Is this where you tell me why you are so anxious to get married?’
Leo jumped. ‘I’m not,’ she denied hotly.
‘That was not the impression you gave me earlier. When you offered me that deal,’ he reminded her.
She blushed. ‘Yes. Well. I was angry.’
‘Evidently.’ He paused. ‘I am often angry. It has never occurred to me to marry in order to vent my spleen.’
That gave her pause. ‘Put like that it doesn’t sound very nice.’
‘Or very sensible.’ He took a peach out of the silver filigree dish and began to peel it casually. Concentrating on the task, he said, ‘So answer my question. Why do you—’ He corrected himself. ‘Why did you think you wanted to marry?’
Leo looked at him. With the steep lids dropped, he was no longer a teasing duellist. Just someone who wanted to know something about her. Not about the business, or her father. Her.
She said abruptly, ‘I never thought I’d marry. I’ve always been the wallflower. I’ve sort of got used to it. I was going to run the business. I worked hard—’ Her voice became suspended.
Amer’s brows twitched together in a brief, fierce frown. He must have snicked himself with the knife, she thought.
Not raising his eyes, he said, ‘So why Simon Hartley?’
Leo shrugged. ‘The Hartleys want to save their stately home. Simon’s the eldest son.’
‘That explains his side of it,’ said Amer without expression. ‘What about yours?’
Leo stared out into the garden. Twilight had swathed it in a soft grey that somehow made her want to cry.
‘My father doesn’t really want me to work in the business, it seems,’ she said in a hard voice. ‘I needn’t have bothered to go to Cairo or anywhere else. He wants to start a dynasty. Work experience isn’t much good for that.’
Amer’s eyes lifted. He put the peach down and regarded her for a frowning moment.
‘And an impoverished aristocrat is?’ he drawled.
Leo did not look at him. If she kept her eyes fixed on the garden and very wide, the shaming tears might subside.
‘Yes.’
‘I see.’
No you don’t, she thought. You don’t see at all.
She said, ‘You must think I’m a fool.’
There was a pause. She did not look at him.
‘I think you’re a coward,’ Amer said coolly.
Leo gasped, her eyes flying to him in spite of herself. He was smiling but the grey eyes were nearly black and there was a pulse throbbing at his temple as if he was so angry he could barely contain himself.
‘But not because you did what your father wanted,’ he went on. ‘I think you did what you wanted. And for all the wrong reasons.’ He was not drawling any more.
Leo thought: He sounds furious. He must terrify people when he looks at them like that. Why am I not terrified?
And then her own anger took over.
‘How dare you?’
The unamused smile widened. ‘You asked,’ he clipped.
‘You don’t know a thing about it.’
Amer was coldly furious.
‘I know you didn’t get engaged until you realised that I was in the country.’
Leo felt her colour rise. ‘What has that got to do with it?’ she snapped.
Quite suddenly Amer smiled. ‘So you don’t deny it.’ He sounded pleased with himself.
Damn. She looked away.
‘The timing was an unfortunate coincidence,’ she said loftily.
He raised his eyebrows.
‘It was.’
He shrugged. ‘Will you tell me something?’
‘Probably not,’ said Leo, thoroughly disturbed.
‘Were you ever in love with him?’
‘Simon?’ Leo was shocked. ‘Of course I—’
He held up a hand. ‘Don’t lie to me, Leonora. Tell me nothing, if you don’t want to. But don’t tell me lies.’
Leo was silenced. The fight went out of her all of a sudden. She passed a hand over her eyes.
‘I don’t know,’ she muttered.
‘You don’t know if you’re going to tell me anything? Or you don’t know if you loved him?’ Amer pressed.
She glared at him. ‘Stop interrogating me.’
He laughed. ‘All right. Have some peach.’ He speared a segment and offered it to her.
She took it. But the little gesture shook Leo. It was too intimate. It seemed to imply that they had eaten like this many times before. And—even more unsettling—would again.
He watched her eat the piece of fruit. His expression was unreadable. So why did she feel as if she had just conceded him a victory?
‘I don’t understand you,’ she burst out.
Amer leaned back in his chair. His body was utterly relaxed. But the sleepy eyes were watchful.
‘But I am a simple man.’ He was drawling again.
‘Huh.’
He laughed. ‘I am,’ he insisted. ‘Simple pleasures. Simple wants.’
Leo surveyed the table eloquently: Venetian crystal, embossed silver, hand-painted china…
‘It looks like it,’ she said drily.
‘Don’t judge by appearances,’ he chided.
‘What else have I got to judge by?’
He considered her thoughtfully.
‘You could try asking a few questions.’
‘Questions? About what for Heaven’s sake?’
Amer raised his eyes to the ceiling. ‘Me, you contrary woman,’ he said exasperated. ‘Don’t you want to know anything about me?’
Leo blinked. Was there the faintest undertone of hurt there? Or was it all outraged vanity because she had managed to resist him? After all, he did not know what a struggle she was having to keep to her resolve.
She said drily, ‘I know all about you.’
He was pleased. ‘You’ve been asking about me.’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Then you don’t know anything.’
She gave him her sweetest smile. ‘Well, let’s just say I know all I need to know. You spelled it out for me.’
He frowned, puzzled. ‘I did?’
Leo said malevolently, ‘“Come with me to the Casbah”, remember?’
His contribution to the Antika Foundation’s book! Amer’s brow cleared, enlightened.
‘Is that what made you sign up with Simon Hartley?’ He needed to know for sure.
Leo ground her teeth. ‘Will you get rid of the idea that you have any influence on my behaviour? You are nothing to me.’
She thought he would be annoyed. But he was amused. Not just pretending, really amused. Leo looked at him with the deepest suspicion. He laughed aloud.
‘Prove it.’
For an outraged second Leo thought she really was going to hit him. She, who had never hit anyone in her life? She clenched her fists in her lap.
‘I think it’s time I was going,’ she said in a suffocated voice.
His eyes danced. ‘No coffee?’
‘I—’
‘Very wise,’ he said kindly. ‘If you think you can’t handle it.’
Leo glared. ‘I can handle anything you throw at me,’ she announced.
Amer threw back his head and gave another of his deep-throated laughs. She watched, helpless.
‘You,’ he said when he regained control over his voice, ‘are a delight. And a terrible temptation.’
Leo was shaken. No one had ever called her a temptation before. I knew this dress was too low-cut, she thought. It was her only coherent thought. The rest was a panicky whirl of half-formed suspicions and wholly impractical escape strategies.
She huddled her shawl round her incendiary décolletage and refused to meet his eyes.
‘If I have coffee with you, will you call me a cab?’
‘If you still want to go.’
Leo swallowed. ‘Then let’s have coffee now.’
Having made her bargain, she turned her eyes away dismissively and looked pointedly out of the window.
Amer summoned the butler.
‘Coffee in the conservatory,’ he told him. With one eye on Leo’s averted face, he added in a lower voice, ‘And then, I won’t be needing you again tonight.’
It was not the first time the butler had received such instructions from Amer. His expression did not change.
‘Certainly, Your Excellency. And do you wish to speak to Mr Farah?’
‘No,’ said Amer unequivocally. He stood up and held out a hand to Leo.
‘Come and see some more plants you can interrogate me about.’
Ignoring the hand, she got up and followed him. I must not bump into the furniture, she thought hazily. I could not bear it if I blundered into one of his priceless bits of art in my dash for the door. With today’s luck, I’d probably break it.
The conservatory ran the entire length of the house and looked out onto the now twilit garden. Discreetly placed lights illuminated palms, vines and a column of jasmine, covered with fragrant star flowers. At one end a wall-mounted fountain played. Leo’s lips parted in amazement.
‘Yes, you like that, don’t you?’ Amer was wry. ‘I’m beginning to think botany is the only thing that turns you on.’
Leo swung round indignantly—and bumped into the butler, bearing the coffee tray silently behind her.
The butler recovered his balance. Not so the tray he was carrying. China flew, and the coffeepot tipped its contents in a neat stream down the front of her dress.
Leo closed her eyes. ‘Today’s luck strikes again.’
Amer whisked the stained shawl away from her. ‘See what can be done with that Harrods.’
The butler bore it off rapidly.
Amer was blotting the hot coffee with an impeccable white handkerchief. His hands were quite impersonal. Leo swallowed and opened her eyes hurriedly. She was disconcerted to find that she did not feel impersonal at all.
He stood back, dissatisfied. ‘This is soaked. We’ll have to do better than this.’ A thought occurred to him. ‘Come with me.’
He whisked her up two flights of stairs to an imposing set of double doors in shining mahogany. Leo was taken aback. But Amer flung open their magnificence as casually as if they led to a broom cupboard and ushered Leo inside.
It was not a broom cupboard, of course. It was a bedroom. The most sumptuous bedroom she had ever seen. Luxury like this was something that Leo, well-off and widely travelled though she was, had never even imagined.
Gulping, Leo looked round in disbelief. It was like a renaissance prince’s salon. The room she was standing in was enormous. Carved pillars supported a domed ceiling that was clearly intended to represent the sky and was nearly as big. The wooden floor had been polished until it shone like wine. Great swathes of gold brocade framed tall windows. One entire wall was painted with a desert hunting scene. Against it stood a gilded couch upholstered in royal blue and scattered with gold cushions.
And the bed. Leo swallowed hard. She kept an eye on that bed. It looked dangerous. It was big and low and rich; ebony inlaid with intricate gold decoration; and it was covered with a shimmering cloth that she had very little doubt was woven gold.
She said the first thing that came into her head.
‘Simple pleasures, my eye.’
Amer was shaken by a silent laugh. ‘Design approved by my cousin the Minister for Culture, I’m sorry you don’t approve of his taste.’ He waved a hand at the couch. ‘Take off that wet dress and sit down. I’ll find you something to wear.’
He disappeared through a door behind a pillar.
Leo unzipped her dress and sank down onto the couch, holding the damp cloth modestly in front of her. A tubular cushion fell squashily to the floor, its ornate tassels flying wide. Gold thread unravelled. It pooled on the polished floor like tangled knitting.
She winced. Leo Groom, true to form, causing devastation wherever she set her clumsy feet. It was the last straw. Leo choked and began to cry.
Amer appeared at once, a robe of some sort over his arm.
‘What’s the matter?’ he said, concerned.
Leo looked up. ‘I’ve spoiled your cushion,’ she said tragically.
She pointed at the puddle of gold braiding on the floor. It had hooked itself round the diamanté motif on her smart black shoe and before she got it off became ten times more tangled than before.
Amer was blank. He cast the robe from him and went down on one knee beside her. Very gently he put a fingertip to her eye. Sure enough, when he removed it there was a tear on the end of it.
‘You cry over a cushion?’ he said in disbelief.
‘I always spoil things,’ said Leo. She sniffed. ‘I always have. I’m clumsy. I break things and fall over things and get coffee down my dress…’ Her voice became suspended.
‘I count your getting coffee on your dress as a bonus,’ he said softly. ‘Believe me.’
Leo turned drowned brown eyes to his. He smoothed the anxiety lines from her forehead with a gentle finger.
‘Believe me,’ he repeated, his voice suddenly husky.
With a little gesture of surrender Leo leaned forward and rested her head against his chest.
‘I think this has been the worst day of my life,’ she said, her voice muffled in the ivory silk of his shirt.
Amer stroked her hair. His hand was not entirely steady. Leo was unaware of it.
‘No, it hasn’t,’ he said caressingly. ‘You broke off an engagement you should never have got into. And you put me in my place. Can’t be all bad.’
Leo gave a choke of startled laughter.
‘Put you in your place?’ she echoed drily. ‘Oh sure.’
She looked up and met his eyes. They were warm, the grey of the soft twilight sky outside. Intent. And very close indeed.
Leo drew a shaky breath. There was that fugitive cologne again. Leo moistened her lips. The scent of it seemed to curl round her like smoke, like fog, awaking all her senses.
She said uncertainly, ‘I—’
Suddenly it did not seem to matter that she was an emotional mess; or clumsy; or not wanted in the business. She was in his arms—well, almost in his arms—and it was Heaven.
Amer touched her cheek. ‘Hush,’ he said. ‘Hush.’
This time she did notice that he was shaking. It was a gentle gesture. No force. No demand. It should have been kind and comforting, but the tremor in his fingers distracted her and it was neither.
For a long moment they looked at each other in silence. Leo thought hazily: I’ve been here before. This is how he made me feel that night. I want…I want…
Very, very gently, he prised the dress out of her unresisting fingers. Her lace-covered breasts started at the sudden chill. She heard him catch his breath.
‘Beautiful,’ he said reverently.
Leo turned her head away. Acute need warred with acute embarrassment. She vibrated with tension.
Taking his time, Amer stroked the lace aside and bent his head. Leo kept her head turned away. She held her breath. Very softly he brushed his lips across the nipple he had uncovered. She groaned.
‘Truce over, I think,’ he murmured. ‘Don’t you?’
Leo was beyond answering; beyond concentrating on anything but this incredible feeling.
‘Time we were somewhere more comfortable.’
He was on his feet. Leo watched him, dazed. He twitched the corner of the gold coverlet. It rippled off the bed like a water snake.
‘Scratchy,’ explained Amer.
He slid his arms round her, lifting. She could feel his every tiny muscle movement in her fingers’ ends.
He laid her down so gently. She hardly felt her silks and laces slide away until he replaced them with the warm sensuousness of his mouth. Leo could not believe it. He ran his open palm possessively over her naked hip and she shivered. Nothing had ever prepared her for this exquisite sensitivity. It was so piercing that it was almost like pain. But at the same time it was like being bathed in sunlight. She closed her eyes, drifting in delight.
‘I’m glad you grew your hair.’ It was a whisper.
Leo turned her head to look at him. He was drawing the pins out of her sophisticated hairstyle and fanning her hair out on his pillow. He ran his hands through it, watching absorbedly.
‘I knew I would do this,’ he murmured.
He shifted his gaze and smiled down at her, right into her eyes. Wonderingly she put up a hand to touch his mouth, his cheekbones, the corner of those silver eyes.
He stilled. For a moment his eyes were not silver any more, or gentle. And all vestige of amusement left his face. For a moment he looked as if he was in agony.
Leo was alarmed. ‘What is it?’
But he did not answer. Or not with words. Instead he bent over her unhurriedly and his hands began to move. They smoothed and moulded and explored every inch of her body. Slowly. Then his mouth followed the same path down her pliant limbs with butterfly kisses.
Leo had never imagined such exquisite sensations. Soon she was writhing with pleasure and a wholly new hunger. Eyes tight shut, she reached for him.
He let her get rid of his jacket, even helped her with the buttons of his shirt so that she could feel the amazing sensation of her cool, quivering flesh against his warmth. But that was as far as he permitted.
‘No,’ he said, catching her clumsy, seeking hands.
Leo froze and her eyes flew open.
Amer saw her reaction. His eyes darkened. Suddenly he was unhurried no longer. He pushed her back, his mouth urgent at her breast, his hands shifting her as if he knew without words what her body required. His fingers circled, spiralled, drew her irresistibly into a dark vortex of response.
Leo cried out. Amer said something harsh she did not hear—or did not understand—and then his caress deepened urgently.
A rhythm she did not know she knew took hold of Leo. She arched and arched. Her heart raced. The strange, fierce sensation made her cry out, almost in fear.
Just for a moment she saw Amer’s expression. It was total triumph.
And then she convulsed and the world spun out of control.