LEO WATCHED IN near disbelief as his father climbed into the helicopter with the children, the nannies and Letty: he was going to London too.
Letty had invited Panos, pointing out to Leo that the grandkids were a great source of distraction for the older man and that, apparently, he enjoyed Christmas shopping. And, seemingly, she planned to be doing a great deal of shopping, even though it was only November and Christmas had never started for Leo before Christmas Eve, when a last-minute dash settled all his requirements.
‘But I’ve got so many people to buy for now and no credit limit!’ Letty had enthused with starry eyes and not a hint of the greed Leo was accustomed to seeing in a woman’s face. He knew that Letty was already imagining the pleasure she could give to others with her gifts and he frowned at that oddity and yet smiled at the same time.
Even so, his entire family abandoning him sucked, Leo conceded grimly. Like rats leaving a sinking ship, they had left him alone, the wagons circling Letty as though she were a bonfire on a winter’s day. A text arrived on his phone and he glanced down at it, his jawline hardening as he recognised that he had a small problem from his more eventful past that required handling...and not with gracious tact either.
In the week that followed, Leo had a great deal to think about because he was still coming to terms with what his father had confessed about his marriage to Leo’s mother, Athena. Having his assumptions about both parents so brutally rearranged had shaken Leo, reminding him that he had been a clueless six-year-old when his mother, Athena, died, giving birth to his sister, Ana.
Athena had been an extremely wealthy heiress, an only child of the Romanos dynasty with an authoritarian widowed father. Part of the marriage settlement had entailed Panos’s agreement to assume the Romanos name on the marriage. On their wedding night Athena had admitted that she had only married Panos because her father had threatened to disinherit her in favour of his nephew if she did not marry and have a child. She had also disclosed the truth that, having been abused as a little girl by a long-dead uncle, she had no interest in sex but would engage in it solely to conceive as she too longed to have a child of her own. Leo’s father had been urged to seek sexual pleasure elsewhere by his bride.
Learning those facts had utterly transformed Leo’s image of his father, whom he had long tended to view rather as a fortune-hunting adulterous gigolo who had taken advantage of a naïve heiress. Ironically, if anything, it was his father who had suffered rejection from the woman he’d loved and who had continued to love the troubled woman until she died.
Katrina had come after Athena’s death, not before, as Leo had always believed and his father, overwhelmed to find himself apparently wanted and loved at last, had fallen fast and hard and had swiftly remarried, hoping for a more normal marriage. By the end of that admission, Leo had sympathised with the older man, understanding, as Panos did not, that he had been targeted by Katrina, who had assumed he was much richer than he truly was. The family trust had ensured that Athena’s children inherited virtually everything that had been hers, limiting his father to only an ongoing income from the estate while he was raising his two children and, after that, a considerably smaller income.
In short, Leo was suffering a great deal of regret when it came to his father. Panos had been stitched up in the marriage settlement by Leo’s wily grandfather, duped into his first marriage and had then fallen madly in love with a mercenary and unscrupulous woman. Yet Leo had never reached out to the older man and had never offered him financial help, had, effectively, never done anything but judge on false premises and found Panos wanting. That awareness sat on his conscience like a giant weight and he would have liked to discuss it with Letty, only she wasn’t there and the wretched house echoed with her absence...
* * *
In contrast to Leo, Letty, initially, had a wonderful time back in London. She enjoyed a most successful interview relating to her return to medical school and was assured of her place the following year. Her mother was slowly becoming fully mobile again and it had transformed her life. She was ready to return to being the active, interested parent whom Letty recalled from her younger years and she was quite overpowered by Leo’s generous signing over of the lovely apartment, where she was now living in comfort. It was a challenge for Gillian to grasp the extent of the Romanos wealth but a visit to her daughter’s marital home in London helped to dispel her misapprehension that her son-in-law had spent money he couldn’t afford to spend on her.
Her half-brothers, on the other hand, had converted to their new lifestyle with an enthusiasm that was slightly embarrassing to Letty, but the sight of Leo’s games room in the mansion provoked them into excited whoops of rare teenage enthusiasm. Assured that her family’s future was now rosy beyond belief from what it had been only weeks earlier, Letty could only be happy at what her marriage had achieved for those she loved.
Panos, meanwhile, had found a compassionate listener in her mother, Gillian, because both of them had suffered the misery of having an unfaithful partner. At the same time, Panos, having recovered from the first shock of Katrina’s betrayal, was already moving on and was very much occupied getting to know the grandchildren that Katrina had rigorously kept him apart from to finally become a loving grandfather to his daughter’s orphaned offspring. He had also admitted to Letty that his new closeness to Leo meant a great deal to him because Leo’s reserve had kept him at a distance for years.
In the meantime, Letty was resisting Popi’s pleas to put up Christmas decorations in November, so excited was the little girl at the prospect of the festive season. Apparently, her late mother, Ana, had always done so and Letty was tempted but stood firm on the point until Gillian shoved a gossip page under her nose when they were having coffee one morning, ten days after her return to London.
‘I think it’s sickening what these journalists try to do to rich men like Leo!’ Letty’s mother opined in disgust. ‘There he is, having a business lunch or a meal with a friend, and they try to make it into something sordid just to get a story!’
Letty glanced down at the black and white photo of Leo caught in profile, smiling at the woman on the other side of the table, and her breath caught in her throat because it was Dido, the beautiful actress who had pursued Leo with such relentless interest on the two occasions when she had met her.
‘She’s an old flame,’ she said and for her mother’s benefit she forced her shoulders into a careless shrug and smiled, keen to hide that she felt as though someone had just planted a knife in her heart. She understood from her mother’s face that she was genuinely worried that her daughter had married a man who slept around, just as her ex-husband had.
‘Oh...’ Gillian responded uncomfortably, searching her daughter’s expression for any sign of concern. ‘But you don’t think that—?’
‘No, of course not!’ That was when Letty’s previously unexercised acting ability really kicked in and she contrived to laugh to reassure the older woman. ‘Not Leo,’ she declared firmly. ‘He’s not like Robbie in any way.’
‘I didn’t think so,’ Gillian agreed with clear relief on her daughter’s behalf. ‘You wouldn’t stand for that.’
‘No, I wouldn’t,’ Letty fibbed with a frog in her throat and a fierce attempt to hold back the shocked tears stinging the back of her eyes as she thought about that prenuptial agreement and Leo’s determination to keep it in place.
Well, Leo had warned her, hadn’t he? Really, why was she so shocked by what had been written in the stars, never mind imposed in legal terms, even before they’d married?
Panos wandered in to join the women and Letty took the opportunity to make an excuse and leave the older couple chatting. Inside her chest she could feel her heart cracking down the middle and she went into the bathroom she had been naively expecting to share with Leo as a couple, closed the door and broke down into sobbing misery.
She would allow herself thirty minutes in which to grieve the loss of hope and faith which she had just endured. Leo had been with Dido and no way could she credit that it had been innocent when she was aware that the actress was so desperate to regain his interest. Dido was the sort of woman always ready to pounce on an available man and, evidently, Leo was still available. He had been unfaithful to her, exactly as she had feared. Deal with it, she told herself fiercely...but how?
She needed to protect herself, needed to be strong and, ironically, being with Leo, living with Leo and challenging him had made her stronger, she acknowledged wryly. She was tough as old boots, she told herself; she could do it.
After all, nothing had gone the way she had expected in their marriage. First, they had been in agreement that their marriage would be sexless and then Leo had changed his mind and changed her mind as well. She had then swung back on the defensive once she’d appreciated that Leo was still not willing to surrender his freedom to sleep with whomever he chose. For the space of a week they had been extremely polite to each other, but that week had concluded with her breaking her promise to herself that he had to remain faithful and she was now thinking of that thoroughly wanton joining on the office desk of Leo’s new club. Recalling that episode her face burned, and it burned even more when she looked back on the sensual indulgence of that last week she had spent on the island with Leo.
They had been like rabbits, she thought shamefacedly, her entire body tightening and heating in acknowledgement of her own weakness. She hadn’t been able to keep her hands off him. It was not as though Leo had been sex-starved at the time of her departure, it was not as though there were any kind of excuse for his meeting up with Dido again. Maybe there was such a thing as sex addiction, the celebrity excuse for misbehaviour, but the suggestion of rehabilitation wasn’t one she felt equal to tackling with Leo. He would probably just laugh, she reflected, stricken, because evidently he saw sexual freedom as one of life’s necessities and he was determined not to live any other way.
And that was the guy she had knowingly married and fallen crazily in love with, she reminded herself with dogged honesty. He had been upfront on the fidelity score from the very beginning.
Her head was starting to ache and she checked herself in the mirror, appalled to see how red her nose was and how swollen her eyes were from her giving way so freely to her distress. Yes, thirty minutes of self-pity was all she would allow herself for hadn’t she agreed to the marriage? And wasn’t she very happy with what that marriage had achieved for her family?
Yes, she was.
And if she divorced Leo she would lose the children and she loved them too. Occasional access to Popi, Sybella, Cosmo and Theon would not compensate any of them for such a brutal severance. The children would suffer, and she did not have an automatic right to write off their need for her as a mother simply because marriage to Leo was turning out to be more of a nightmare than she had innocently foreseen.
Life wasn’t that simple, she acknowledged ruefully. The innocents in her family and his would be hurt by her departure from Leo’s life. If she broke up with Leo, her mother would want to sell the apartment she lived in and return the money to him because that was the sort of woman she was. Accepting such a massive gift from a member of her family, as Leo currently was, was one thing but retaining it as the proceeds of a very short-lived marriage would strike Gillian as something else entirely.
So, she had to be tough and adapt to being married to an adulterous husband, didn’t she? She would stay married to Leo. She would hide her hurt and act as if everything in the garden was rosy and wonderful because only then could she keep everybody around her happy.
Her eyes misted again just when she was managing to use concealer on her eyes and she blinked rapidly. On one level she didn’t want to live like that but just then she didn’t feel she had much of a choice unless she was prepared to destroy everything that their marriage had achieved...
And just as Panos had required a distraction from his depressed thoughts about his broken marriage, Letty registered that she needed one too. Leo phoned her every day and while, only hours ago, she had been longing for his arrival in London, now she was considering it fortunate that it would be a couple of weeks before he returned. His absence would give her time to come to terms with his infidelity in whatever way she could, and she had to stop loving and missing him as well because that was an even worse recipe for disaster and she would have to live in a continual state of being hurt and disillusioned.
So, step one in her own necessary emotional rehabilitation, she told herself in her mirror reflection, was to stop loving Leo, step back, look after herself... That was the sensible approach.
By the time she was descending the stairs it was lunchtime, Leo’s father and her mother were still chatting and Popi was home from school, proudly displaying a homemade Christmas card with drawings of her family that made Letty crack up in genuine appreciation. Ana’s children were learning to see her and Leo as their family unit and she was proud of that achievement and resolved not to damage it with what she told herself would be selfish oversensitivity. She would cope with his infidelity because she was tough, she reminded herself doggedly, but she wouldn’t continue to sleep with him. They would have the convenient marriage he had first wanted while she devoted herself to raising the children and completing her studies. That way she would preserve her dignity and her strength.
As for the distraction she sensed she currently needed while she came to terms with the effective end of her intimacy with Leo, she decided to go for an over-the-top Christmas to delight the children and keep herself busy. Christmas was going to start in November for them, just as it had when they had still had their birthparents. And she was going to buy a family dog and buy a present for Leo, even though he didn’t deserve one. Yes, she would be treating him perfectly normally by the time he flew back from the US, doubtless having sampled various other female bodies during his time away from her, she told herself sourly. He would not even suspect that anything was amiss with her. She would be solid steel and calm and quite unbothered by what she had discovered...
* * *
Leo arrived home on the first day of December and so unrecognisable was his home he almost walked straight out of the door again. A scruffy terrier rushed up to him, sniffed him thoroughly and then retreated to bark as though he were an intruder. That was odd enough, but the transformation of the entrance hall could only put him in mind of a Christmas grotto gone mad. There was not an inch of space left because everywhere he looked there were glittering trees, giant stuffed reindeer and elves, stockings and tinsel and holly and decorations. A log fire roared in the grate of a fireplace that had never been lit before. He had vague memories of his sister’s house during the festive season but even his kid sister, bless her heart, hadn’t gone for anything quite so magnificent or...extreme.
Leo smiled though, registering that Letty treated Christmas as an explosion of glitter and good cheer, which was probably exactly what the children loved. He did notice the absence of mistletoe though, just as he noticed that the warm welcome he had subconsciously expected from his wife was missing. At that point the children came rushing downstairs and he was greeted with all the enthusiasm he could’ve wished for, attended by cries of ‘Unc’ Leo’ and ‘Daddy Leo’, because evidently the children hadn’t yet made up their minds what to call him.
Of course, all his conversations with Letty on the phone had somehow always turned into conversations about the children. No matter how hard he had tried to take those talks in a more personal direction, he had been redirected to discussing his nephews and nieces. The whole time he was away he had felt starved of Letty, as if she was a presence that could only be pinned down and enjoyed when she was face to face with him. He had sensed the difference in her attitude towards him; he did not consider himself an imaginative man and it bothered him, seriously disturbed his usual rock-solid assurance with women. Something was badly wrong with Letty and that brought him out in a cold sweat of anxiety that he had never experienced before.
‘Where’s Letty?’ he asked with a rather fake smile when his father and mother-in-law appeared in the doorway of the drawing room.
‘She had to rush out for something and she took Theon with her,’ Gillian imparted anxiously. ‘I did warn her that she might miss you but she’s got so into this Christmas stuff—’
‘It’s wonderful that she has,’ Leo commented, not having failed to notice that he had three happy kids bouncing and chattering at his side when only months earlier they had all been subdued and tense. ‘How are you doing, Dad?’
‘Oh, I’m feeling much more myself,’ Panos Romanos assured him with a grin and a hand that Leo noted, surprisingly, had been anchored on Gillian’s slim hip. ‘Friends and family, that’s what my life is all about now.’
Bit more than friends, Leo reckoned by the very sociable way the older couple kept on exchanging glances. ‘I’m disappointed Letty’s not here,’ he admitted. ‘I mean, I’ve been gone for weeks and—’
The front door opened, and Letty blew in with the baby clamped to one hip. ‘Leo, I’m so sorry I wasn’t here!’ she carolled because their respective parents were standing there as an audience and she didn’t want either of them to suspect that anything was amiss between her and Leo.
Passing over Theon to the nanny at the foot of the stairs, whereupon he wailed like a banshee in protest, Letty stripped off her coat and gloves and feasted her attention on Leo. Still absolutely gorgeous, clad in a cashmere overcoat on top of one of his exquisitely well-fitted business suits, he still took her breath away. That was a disappointment, she allowed, because she had tried to make him less sexy in her recollections, worked hard at trying to make herself less vulnerable. But there he stood and even travel-worn and badly in need of a shave, stubble outlining his wide sensual mouth and somehow accentuating his fantastic bone structure and oh, those eyes... Well, they certainly weren’t the windows of the soul, she scolded herself. His eyes were spectacular but they had to carry a hint of an innately manipulative and secretive personality, she instructed herself. After all, this was the man she had spent pretty much most of a week in bed with, striving to be the sensual woman every man was supposed to want and crave...and where had it got her?
Well, he had given her a great deal of sexual satisfaction and then he had still gone on to get into bed with other women. Oh, yes, she was convinced that there had been more than that encounter with Dido, for the opportunities to flirt and seduce for a man of Leo’s looks and wealth probably came up everywhere he went, particularly when he was travelling. This was a guy she literally could not trust out of her sight, she reminded herself sternly.
‘So, how was your trip?’ Letty asked Leo with an interest that even he could see was false, for she was not a good dissembler and her expressive face was a dead giveaway.
‘Like every other trip.’
What the hell had he done? Leo was asking himself in frustration, striving to think of something he might have said on the phone that could have brought about such a change in her. She had left Ios acting warm and confiding and caring and all of a sudden that was gone. He watched in disbelief as Letty sped upstairs, clearly keen to leave him behind, and that was the final straw that broke his control and sent him stalking up the stairs in her wake.
Letty was locked in the bathroom, frantically washing and rewashing her hands, unaware that she was doing it while she struggled to work out how she was supposed to deal with Leo, now that he was back in the house.
She had decorated the whole house for Christmas. There were trees everywhere but the bedrooms. They now had George the dog, a rescue animal with more bad habits than a criminal. George chewed everything from shoes to rugs. He stole food. He tried to get into bed with the children. Much like Leo, George had no boundaries but, unlike Leo, he was very loving. Leo would totally freak out if he knew she was comparing him, even in passing, with a homeless animal, she conceded, finally drying her hands and pulling herself together, although the tendency to cry over the pain she was suppressing still hovered over her like a threatening black cloud. It had been easier to pretend to be happy when Leo was absent. Now that he was back it was a huge challenge for her.
‘Letty!’ A sharp knock sounded on the door and she froze like a burglar caught in the act of theft before swallowing hard and opening the door.
‘Sorry... I’m sure you want a shower,’ she said in a brittle tone.
‘No, surprisingly enough,’ Leo murmured with only the merest hint of sarcasm, ‘I wanted to see my wife.’
Halfway to the bedroom door to leave, Letty stilled. ‘Oh?’ she said, spinning reluctantly back.
‘Luckily for me, you are a lousy actress,’ Leo continued tautly, subjecting her to a feverishly intense scrutiny. ‘I’m not blind, Letty. What’s wrong? Obviously there’s something wrong because you’ve changed.’
Letty lost colour and stiffened, wondering how on earth he had so quickly registered that change on her part while she had flattered herself with the belief that she was treating him as she always had.
‘We’ve always been honest with each other,’ Leo bit out harshly in the dragging silence that had fallen between them.
‘I saw a newspaper photo of you having lunch with Dido,’ Letty framed flatly, accusingly, failing utterly to hold back that tone of condemnation. ‘I didn’t require anything else to know that you’d returned to your former way of life.’
‘Theé mou, Letty,’ Leo growled. ‘I’m not guilty of that cardinal error. I lunched with Dido, no argument on that score. For a long time I’ve been a theatre angel. I back stage productions that are likely to be successful. That’s how I first met Dido years ago. She was a very good investment.’
‘Investment?’ Letty echoed with raised brows and a frown. ‘I think your ties were rather more intimate than that.’
‘Were being the correct word. Eight years ago, Letty, and there has been no sexual intimacy between us since that ended after an affair that lasted a couple of months,’ Leo clarified. ‘Dido, who is fiercely ambitious, chases me purely for my wealth in the hope of persuading me to invest in her next stage production. But, to be frank, I only had lunch with her in the first place to tell her to back off with the texts and the allegedly accidental meetings and the pretence that we were once a couple. We were never a couple. We were never close...and that’s the truth.’
Letty clamped her hands together because they were trembling, and she didn’t want him to notice that humiliating fact. ‘I’m not sure I can believe—’
‘I’m afraid you have to because I will not accept that one stupid photo can come between you and me!’ Leo countered in a raw undertone.
‘No...’ Letty made an almost clumsy movement with one hand to express her continuing tension. ‘What came between us was your insistence on retaining your freedom as a married man, which meant that naturally when I saw you in company with Dido, I assumed—’
Leo cast off his coat and dug a hand into the inner pocket of his suit jacket to withdraw a folded document. ‘Our prenuptial agreement with that clause removed. You have to sign it too with a witness before it’s legal but please note the date when I signed...’
Her throat tight, her brow indented with uncertainty as she accepted the document and rifled through it to check that the that offensive clause had genuinely been removed and not simply rephrased and slipped in someplace else. He had signed it within a day of her leaving the island, which was a surprise.
As Letty sat down at the foot of the bed to read it all properly, Leo’s mouth quirked with appreciation. ‘You’re never going to take me on trust, are you?’
‘Probably not,’ she agreed, setting the prenuptial contract down beside her on the bed and adding, ‘So... I have to ask...what led to this sudden change of heart. I mean, I know that only a few days before you signed that you were still vehemently insisting that you had to keep that freedom.’
Put on the spot that directly, Leo grimaced. ‘Finding out what my father went through, married to my mother, had an enormous effect on me. It knocked me for six,’ he confessed with faint embarrassment. ‘I have ignored him pretty much all my life because I held onto unfair assumptions about his character but, when I really thought about it, my resentment came down to his inability to control Katrina and the way she treated my sister and me as children. I blamed him for that because he married her. Now I appreciate that he had no idea what was going on in his own home because she never treated us badly when he was around.’
Letty nodded. ‘You had a real heart to heart with him, didn’t you?’ she pressed.
‘And I have you to thank for that because without your intervention I would have gone on with the same mind-set.’ He sighed with regret. ‘Now I have the father I always wanted but didn’t appreciate. Katrina being gone from our lives makes that possible.’
‘Does he know...? I mean, about Katrina coming on to you as well?’ Letty enquired with a grimace of distaste.
‘Yes. There had to be total honesty from both of us. He was devastated when I told him, but I think it also helped him to accept that Katrina never loved him the way he believed she did and, in a sense, it drew a line under all the rest of it,’ he completed grimly. ‘I notice that his state of mind is much improved since I last saw him.’
‘Yes, Mum and he are great buddies,’ Letty remarked. ‘I understand everything that you’re sharing with me but I still don’t understand why you finally decided to remove that clause from the agreement. Just to please me? To lull me into a false sense of security? Why?’
‘Do you believe me about Dido? She was after my financial backing, not me personally,’ Leo stated in frustration. ‘She’s very persistent, and I realised that it would take a personal meeting and a blunt refusal to get her to back off. She’s so vain that she couldn’t see that flattery and flirtation weren’t going to get her anywhere with me, particularly after she had offended my wife. That’s what that lunch was about.’
Letty nodded, wryly amused at that ‘offended my wife’, thrown in as if it was a fact of life that Leo should object to such a sin. ‘Yes, I believe that the lunch was innocent,’ she conceded, feeling a great rolling wave of wounded pain evaporating from her stiff body as she sat there. ‘So, according to you, you’re going to be faithful now...or are you still in the trying to be faithful phase?’ she asked suspiciously.
‘No, I’m all yours, entirely yours,’ Leo stressed, a faint smile lightening the lingering strain etched around his wide sensual mouth. ‘For good.’
Letty frowned. ‘For good?’ she queried in astonishment.
‘You’re not grasping what I’m trying to tell you here, yineka mou,’ Leo lamented. ‘A gorgeous blonde in biker leathers came into my office and blew my whole life apart in the space of a day. Within a week I was more fascinated by her than any woman I have ever met. Within two weeks I was so hot for her I was performing mental acrobatics to persuade her into being mine, really mine...but I hadn’t quite come to terms with what I was signing up for. That was my mistake. I came at you like a bull in a china shop before I had thought it all through.’
‘Are you talking about me?’ Letty whispered uncertainly.
‘Letty, who the hell else would I be talking about?’ he groaned, crouching down in front of her. ‘When I said I’m yours for good, I was telling you that I fell head over heels in love with you like a stupid teenager.’
Her lashes fluttered up on wide green eyes as she studied him fixedly. ‘Like a very bright but emotionally stunted teenager,’ she parried.
‘I knew you would put another spin on it...so to try romance with an unromantic and very practical woman and me being a man who has never tried that before either,’ Leo admitted ruefully, ‘I bought this...’
In a state of disbelief at Leo telling her that he had fallen in love with her, Letty watched as he threaded a diamond eternity ring on her finger next to her wedding band. ‘Is that the one I didn’t get for my birthday?’ she asked uneasily.
‘No, it’s an entirely new and much more expensive one and this time it truly expresses what I feel—that I’ve got to have you for ever,’ Leo confessed.
‘Oh...’ Letty was speechless, plunged in the misery of believing she was being forced to welcome home an unfaithful husband and then sent shooting back up to heights she had never dared to even dream of, before being told that she was loved. Leo loved her. It felt as if she was living a dream, a dizzy impossible girlish dream, and she burst into floods of tears, her self-control destroyed.
‘Theós mou...what did I say?’ Leo exclaimed, vaulting back upright again and hauling her up into the circle of his arms.
‘I’m just so h-happy!’ Letty sobbed into his shoulder. ‘I was worried you were a sex addict rather than a player and I didn’t think you’d consider therapy—’
‘Listen to me for once. I was never a player. I never did one-night stands. I picked one woman and would be with her for a couple of months...a mistress, rather than a lover, though,’ Leo hastened to explain.
‘But why...mistresses?’ Letty demanded, struggling to get the stupid, far too emotional, tears back under control because she knew he had to think she was crazy to react like that to a declaration of love.
‘Think about it, Letty. I never knew love. When I was still pretty young my grandfather informed me that I would be expected to marry but that the men in my family always had mistresses. It was what he called “a tidy solution”. He had one. I assumed my father had one, although he assures me he didn’t. It seemed normal not to want to get involved, other than sexually, with a woman. My mother’s love is the vaguest, most distant memory. My stepmother had no time for me and I soon understood that she didn’t love my father either,’ he explained. ‘Although Panos tried to be affectionate I backed away from it because Katrina was worse if Ana or I took my father’s attention away from her. I didn’t know what love was. I didn’t know what it felt like...’
‘And what does it feel like?’ she asked her volatile husband.
‘Like living in a storm where everything’s magnified and little things assume too much importance,’ he groaned. ‘When we were on the island it wasn’t that I resented the time you spent with the kids, it was that I wanted more of you myself and it wasn’t working out that way. Only when you were gone did I appreciate how confused I was, how everything seemed different with you and I didn’t understand why until I had the space to think it through.’
‘And decided that it was love? Are you sure?’ Letty, ever the doubter, questioned.
Leo laughed with unholy amusement as he gazed down into her anxious face. ‘Nobody was more shocked than I was to appreciate that I loved you, but then you’re a pretty special woman so it’s not really that surprising. You didn’t want me for my money, except to help your family. You didn’t want me for my body.’
‘And where did you get that idea?’ Letty asked as she began unbuttoning his shirt with alacrity.
‘Yes, but it’s not only for sex, is it?’ Leo studied her. ‘Although, if it is, I’m not strong enough to say no, you can’t have me until you return my feelings...but do you think you could...eventually?’
Not impervious to the vulnerability in his stunning gaze, Letty pretended to ponder and then said, ‘Truth is... I started falling in love with you that first day in your office too. There was just something about you and, apart from the commitment phobia, I liked everything else about you a lot.’
‘You...did? You didn’t show it.’
‘Obviously I tried to hide the fact that I found you attractive when you told me you were suggesting a platonic marriage,’ Letty pointed out. ‘But somehow that inappropriate attraction just kept on getting stronger, which is why I probably succumbed on our wedding night.’
‘And then I wrecked it all again within hours.’ Leo sighed. ‘I’m sorry, sincerely sorry that I kept on flip-flopping all over the place like a stranded fish on the shore. I didn’t know what I wanted at that point, apart from you, and my brain was still fighting with this concept of sacred bonds.’
‘Are you ever likely to let me forget that phrase?’ Letty teased as he shed his jacket and his shirt and dragged her down on the bed with him, solely to hold her close, both arms wrapped tightly and possessively round her while she continued to contemplate her glittering eternity ring with satisfaction.
‘Probably not. It doesn’t feel sacred to me, but then I’m too earthy for that kind of attitude,’ Leo murmured apologetically. ‘But when you’re not there, everything feels uncomfortable and lonely and depressing. When did you see that photo of Dido and me lunching?’
‘The first week we were apart,’ she said with regret.
‘I knew something was wrong, but I didn’t want to broach it on the phone. Didn’t it cross your mind that only a man in love phones you at least three times a day?’
‘Nope... I’ve no experience of men in love,’ she reminded him. ‘Oh, Leo, I’ve been such an idiot—and so unhappy without you.’
‘Well, you’re truly stuck with me now,’ Leo proclaimed with unashamed approval. ‘And, what’s more, we’re likely to have an enormous family because we are going to want to have children of our own, aren’t we?’
‘You mean, you’re actually comfortable with that idea?’ Letty asked in wonderment.
‘The more the merrier,’ Leo assured her. ‘I really love the kids. I know I’m selfish sometimes when it comes to you, but I really like having them in our life.’
‘That’s good because it’s likely to be years before you get a baby from me. I want to finish my training first,’ Letty informed him gently.
‘Enough talking and enough warnings...’ Leo covered her mouth with his in a long drugging kiss before breaking free to add, ‘We need some mistletoe downstairs. I want to watch my father trying to manoeuvre your mother under it.’
Letty rolled her eyes. ‘It’s a friendship, Leo...nothing else.’
‘Want to make a bet?’ Leo was convinced that, whether either party appreciated it or not, their respective parents were getting attached to each other and it was no surprise to Leo that, having finally been exposed to a normal middle-aged and kind-hearted woman, his father was attracted to her after so many years living with a brittle fashion queen many years his junior, who made constant demands for luxuries the older man could rarely afford to provide.
‘No, I don’t do bets,’ Letty told him circumspectly, circling his beautiful mouth with her own, nipping at his lower lip the way he had taught her because, yes, she was a very fast learner in some departments. ‘Allow me, though, to know my own mother better than you do...and she said, “Never ever again, that’s me done,” after divorcing Robbie.’
‘You haven’t a romantic bone in your body, Letty,’ Leo groaned.
‘I’ll put up the mistletoe for our benefit,’ she promised. ‘Goodness knows, I’ve got every other Christmas extra on display.’
‘Yes, I liked the giant reindeer and the elves.’
‘You mightn’t like them when you see what they cost.’
‘I don’t care. It all looks fantastic, like a real home, and I’ve never had that before,’ he told her huskily as he began to snake down the zip on her dress by tiny increments.
‘You’re breaking my heart, Leo...and being far too cool and subtle—just rip it off!’ Letty told him cheerfully. ‘I love you enough to forgive you anything... Well, just about...not other women—’
‘I’ve got you, and I don’t need anyone else. I love you more than I ever thought I could love anyone.’
Letty stretched luxuriantly, every romantic bone in her body that she denied twanging to that announcement but, true to her determination not to get slushy, she told him he was wearing too many clothes and it was remarkable how fast he got out of them.