LEANDRO GRIMACED. CONFIDING WAS not in his nature. In fact, it was so much not in his nature that he was temporarily at a loss as to where to begin.
Her eyes were curious, her mouth parted and there was a puzzled expectancy in her expression. Of course there was. She was an incurable romantic. It shone in everything she said and in her sympathetic misconception that he was somehow broken-hearted, having been dumped by his ex.
On every level, she was unknown territory. Leandro had always made sure to steer clear of women with romantic dreams because he knew that he was incapable of fulfilling them. The thought of becoming entangled with someone who wanted more than he could give brought him out in a cold sweat. A woman in search of love had no place in his life. His speciality was an ability to shower lavish gifts and open doors to experiences only afforded to the uber rich.
But she deserved to have the full story because he needed her co-operation and it was unfair to keep her in the dark, that being the case.
‘You think that Julie and I are...in love...’
‘I don’t know. I did, to start with, but I’m beginning to think that maybe that wasn’t the case. But if that’s so, then why would you get married in the first place?’ She frowned. ‘I know that you two go back a long way...’
Leandro could see her trying to work out how anyone could make a leap from friendship to marriage without the middleman of Love being at the party.
Looking at her now, Leandro suddenly felt a hundred years old. There had been no gullible staging posts in his life. He had made the leap from boy to man at a young age. Too young? He’d never asked himself that question. He’d grown up associating love with pain and loss. He’d never hankered for kids because he knew his limitations and respected them. Love wasn’t for him and if you couldn’t give love then surely any child would be born immediately disadvantaged?
‘Many would agree that a solid friendship is the best basis for a successful union,’ he now said, curtly. ‘The statistics say it all. Most marriages end in divorce once the shine wears off and reality begins to bite. People walk up the aisle with stars in their eyes but give it a few years and the stars get snuffed out and the next joint venture out is to the divorce courts.’
‘That’s an awful interpretation of marriage!’
‘We’ll have to agree to disagree on that one. The point I’m making is that Julie and I had...an understanding. I’m assuming you know about her first marriage?’
‘Yes, she mentioned that it wasn’t a happy one.’
‘We made a joint decision to marry for practical reasons.’
‘Children?’ Celia asked faintly.
‘No.’ Leandro paused and marvelled that spelling out the blunt facts behind their marriage, which he had not once questioned to himself, now felt like an act of positive cruelty. Impatient with himself, he shook his head and frowned. ‘What we were going to have would have been, essentially, an open marriage.’
‘An open marriage...’
‘There’s no need to sound so shocked,’ Leandro said irritably.
‘But I am shocked,’ Celia said simply. ‘And I don’t understand...’
‘Julie found out several months ago that her father had, basically, gone bankrupt. She made the discovery quite by accident. Happened to be at home at their estate in Northumberland when her father’s bank manager unexpectedly decided to pay a visit. Charles was out but Julie managed to glean sufficient information to form a rough idea of what was going on. Mountains of debt...and a supply chain to his outlets that had ground to a halt because suppliers were owed money.’ Leandro sighed and raked his fingers through his hair. ‘I could go into the details of when what happened and what the knock-on effects were, but, to sum it up, he was in deep financial trouble with creditors banging on the door and threats of the family estate having to be dismantled to pay debts.’
‘How awful,’ Celia said softly. ‘Where do you fit in, if you don’t mind me asking?’
‘I...’ Leandro paused. So much of his life was accessible and out there on the World Wide Web, the bare bones of the road he had travelled to get from A to B, but this? No, this was a part of him that had always been firmly barricaded behind No Trespass signs. His thoughts and feelings about the life he’d led and the debts he owed.
‘Yes?’ Celia prompted. He didn’t like talking about himself. He was intensely private and she could tell that parting with whatever information he thought she was owed was going to be difficult. She got that. In a way. She had never discussed the business of her break-up with Martin with anyone. She had smiled and offered anodyne explanations, but she had largely kept her feelings private.
The fact that he felt obliged to open up with her, more than anything else, showed her just how much he wanted her to go to Scotland with him because Dan was there and suddenly, because of that, she had become part of the equation.
‘When I said that Julie and I go back a long way, I should clarify by adding that our fathers...grew up together in a manner of speaking...’
‘What does that mean? In a manner of speaking?’ She felt as though she were being asked to swim through a river of treacle to get to what he was trying to say. ‘You grew up...in...’
‘Argentina.’ He sighed, fidgeted and then muttered, lowering his eyes, ‘I don’t make a habit of doing this.’
‘Confiding?’
‘All that touchy-feely stuff normally has no place in my life...but in this instance...’
Just for a split second, there was something so incredibly human about him that Celia was shaken.
‘My father worked on a ranch for a guy called Roberto Suarez. He was a dogsbody, but he became close to Roberto’s son, Fernando, and then, along the way, with Julie’s father, who had been to university in Oxford with Fernando and used to come over to the ranch for the long summer vacations. They were all roughly the same age. They hung out. My father was an excellent horseman and I suppose they bonded over that.’
He shrugged. When he was much younger, Leandro had been scathing about the quality of this so-called friendship, which he saw as one based on pity because how could the masters ever feel anything meaningful towards the servant? But time had proved him wrong and he had never really forgiven himself for that brief period of resentment. He’d been young.
‘When my mother...was no longer around...they took my father under their wing, so to speak, and much later, as the years rolled on...well, my father had an accident. He was thrown from a horse and was bedridden for a time. When it transpired that he was not going to be able to work in the capacity he’d worked in previously, Fernando, who was now in charge of the ranch and with a family of his own, ensured that my father was secure in his house...’
‘And where were you at the time? Did your mother...pass on?’
‘My mother passed on or, should I say, continued her onward journey in life with a very rich house guest who had visited the ranch to talk business with Roberto Suarez. She never looked back. I was a toddler at the time.’ Leandro moved on quickly from that statement of fact even though, as he looked at her, there was a gentleness in her gaze that almost made him want to break the rulebook and elaborate. He didn’t, of course. Not his thing.
‘When my father had his fall... Roberto gave him, as I said, permanent residence at the place he had always called home and Julie’s father...took care of every aspect of my education. He paid for me to attend a private school in Buenos Aires. My father had been saving for years but the accident reduced his income. It was a mess, as I came to understand. Later, Charles took care of every single bill that came my way, when I gained a scholarship to study at Cambridge. During the holidays, he paid for my flights back to Argentina and when I wasn’t there, I stayed at his country house, sometimes for weeks on end.’
‘It’s how you know Julie...’
‘Correct. We met from a young age but became good friends once I began studying in England. I was at her wedding, as it happens. I was the first and only person she told about her father’s financial situation. I would have been happy to have simply handed over the cash to sort out the mess but he’s too damned proud for his own good...’
There was affection, indulgence and frustration in Leandro’s voice.
‘I get it,’ Celia said softly. ‘You and Julie decided on a marriage of convenience to bail her father out without him seeing it as an act of charity.’
‘Charles fondly thinks that he’s giving me the cachet of being absorbed into one of the country’s oldest families. He doesn’t know that I don’t give a damn about any of that.’
‘But what about love?’
Leandro shrugged. ‘What does that have to do with anything? I’m repaying a debt, doing what any man of honour would do. There’s no place in this scenario for misty-eyed daydreams.’ He leant forward with a sense of urgency. ‘This is why I’ve come here. Of course, I can’t drag you off to Scotland with me. But I think that if for some reason Julie fancies herself in love with your brother, the two of us together might stand a better chance of at least trying to find a way to salvage the situation.’
‘I barely know you,’ Celia said, without thinking, and his eyebrows shot up in obvious amusement.
‘What do you think I’m going to do?’
‘Nothing!’ But she was bright red. ‘But...the thought of just taking off with a stranger...’
‘I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t think it was important. Charles is in hospital with a stroke. Not only will Julie’s disappearance be a major cause of worry for him, but he will now be having to come to terms with the fact that he might be looking at losing everything that has been in his family for centuries. Either that, or he, as you put it, accepts charity from me, which would cut to the quick for a man who is kind and generous but too proud for his own good.’
‘Yes, I get that...’
‘You’re one hundred per cent safe with me,’ Leandro said earnestly, and Celia felt as though, somehow, he had a direct hotline to her thoughts and was having a private laugh at her unfounded misgivings. Not that she wasn’t well aware that her misgivings were unfounded, but she had led a sheltered life where impulse had always taken a back seat to common sense and it was hard not to fall back into that mindset even though she could see where he was coming from.
Dan had been the impulsive one. He had been the one who lived outside the box, always willing to take risks and explore options.
Celia, on the other hand, several years younger and born after her mother had suffered two miscarriages, had been raised with kid gloves, protected by loving parents who no longer had the mindset to let her run wild and free, as they had her brother.
That was the only basis for her hesitancy, she feverishly told herself.
The fact that there was a treacherous sizzle of something disturbing in her responses to this man had nothing to do with anything.
‘Celia...’
‘I’m not suggesting anything...it’s the way I am... I suppose I’m quite a careful person...’ She fell into an erratic explanation for her reluctance before lapsing into silence, mesmerised by the dark eyes pinned to her face as he listened to her rambling.
‘You’re not my type.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘I’m not being at all...insulting when I tell you that you’re perfectly safe with me because you’re not my type.’
Celia was mortified. She had no idea how to respond to the bluntness of his statement, and the fact that he genuinely hadn’t said it to offend her, because she could see the gentle sincerity in his eyes, somehow made his casual remark all the more offensive. Yes, she was short with freckles that had once been the bane of her life, but it still hurt to have her physical shortcomings pointed out by a guy with killer looks.
By anybody it would have been bad enough, but with someone as devastatingly good-looking as Leandro, it was positively humiliating.
‘I realise I’m not a catwalk model,’ Celia began stiffly, and Leandro grinned and waved his hand in airy dismissal.
‘Nothing to do with looks,’ he asserted. ‘You’re a romantic, Celia. Am I right? You don’t really understand why I would want to get married for any reason other than love.’
‘I see why you feel indebted to Julie’s father,’ Celia stammered, still red-faced but slightly mollified by what he had just said.
‘But for you, marriage is something that goes hand in hand with love. For me? I have no such illusions, and when I say that you’re not my type? My type of women aren’t looking for permanence, at least not with me. Scotland will involve a helicopter flight and then two nights at my estate, where your brother and Julie are currently hiding out.’
‘How do you know for sure?’
‘Because Julie has a key and it’s the only place they are likely to be heading. Trust me on this.’ He looked around him and then said, as though the thought had only just occurred to him, ‘I haven’t asked, but I’m assuming that you would be able to take two days off from your commitments?’
‘Work?’
‘I was thinking of commitments of a more personal nature. Boyfriend? Girlfriend? No dogs at any rate...’
‘I...no, I don’t have a boyfriend,’ Celia said stiffly. ‘Not that that’s any of your business.’
‘It is if I think it’s something that might influence your decision.’
‘I would never go out with someone who’s autocratic enough to disapprove of me being away for a couple of days.’
‘With another man. Apologies, forgot we’d established that I don’t fall into that category.’ Leandro grinned but then said, seriously, thoughtfully, ‘You’ll be gone for two days at the very most and I would want to leave first thing in the morning. I can’t force you to accept any financial compensation from me for the inconvenience, but every year I get several tickets for front seats at the London Fashion week. This year, it’s a winter spectacular according to the blurb.’
‘You like that kind of thing?’ She knew that he was cleverly tempting her in a way that showed just how adept he was at getting what he wanted. Would she want to go to the show of the year for a dress designer? Just thinking about the chance made her feel faint.
‘Oh, I try to avoid that event at all costs,’ he murmured silkily, ‘but I imagine the opportunities for you could be considerable. I could even put a word in about your...er...designs—from what I’ve seen, you’ve got a great deal of talent, which could end up going to waste without the right exposure.’
‘Are you trying to bribe me?’
‘I’m trying to persuade you.’
‘Will you let me think about it?’
Leandro smiled slowly and sat back. ‘Of course. The last thing I would want to do is force your hand. I’ll call you...’ he glanced at his Rolex then looked at her ‘...in precisely two hours.’
He would send a car for her and it would deliver her to an airfield, where he would meet her shortly after lunch.
Celia had squashed her apprehensions and agreed. She’d been swayed by her conscience. If someone were to suffer a misfortune because of her, then how would she ever be able to live with herself? If Julie’s father, on the brink of financial collapse, were to suffer a fatal stroke through the sheer stress of the situation, then no amount of reasoning would have persuaded her to conclude that walking away from the situation had been okay.
She also wanted to find out what was going on with Dan. Leandro’s assumption was that if anyone was going to be hurt, it would be Julie for having been targeted by someone who was after her money. Money she didn’t have, as things stood. Was he still of the opinion that her brother was guilty of being a gold digger? The topic had been shelved. He’d decided that he needed her input and so had tactfully pulled back from anything contentious.
From Celia’s point of view, what if her brother was the one at risk of being hurt if Julie had absconded because of a sudden attack of to-be-expected pre-wedding nerves? What if she had second thoughts and decided to get back together with Leandro? There were compelling reasons for her to do just that and where would that leave Dan? Footloose and easy-going he might be, but, like her, he was a solid traditionalist at heart. He’d been out with countless girls, but he’d never come close to asking any of them to marry him. What if the one turned out to be a mistake? She could remember her own hurt all those years ago when the blinkers had been pulled from her eyes and she wouldn’t wish that on her brother.
And then the dangling carrot of that ticket to the fashion show...
He’d known just how to tempt. He’d been smart enough to drop all talk of money changing hands and instead had offered her something priceless. A golden opportunity to climb the career ladder and to see, first hand, what was happening in the fashion world, to have a possible audience for her calling cards.
They stood on opposite sides of the fence on pretty much everything. He was cold, tough and driven to make money and she could never like a guy like that, but she’d agreed, and even if the misgivings hadn’t been completely put to bed she managed to put a lid on them as, the following afternoon, she was duly delivered to the airfield in gathering gloom.
The helicopter was a dark shadow against the velvety sky, as still and as ominous as a giant, watchful, waiting insect.
Snow had gathered apace overnight though not enough to settle. The chauffeur-driven car slowly pulled to a stop just as the door to the helicopter was flung open and there he was, a commanding silhouette, barely visible in the semi darkness.
She had her overnight bag with her, stuffed with thick clothing and a selection of thermals and her computer in its waterproof case. Now, as the driver fought the sleet and snow to open the car door, Celia took a couple of seconds to review her situation. The darkness and Leandro’s commanding presence didn’t do much for her nervous system, which suddenly went into sharp overdrive.
Her heart began a steady thump as she headed towards the helicopter, with the driver bringing up the rear with her cases.
If she’d ever secretly mourned the predictability of her day-to-day life, then no one could accuse her of not being wildly and scarily unpredictable now.
‘Good. On time.’
The helicopter door slammed behind her. She’d never been in a helicopter before. Her life didn’t include such adventures.
Just the two of them in a tiny little bubble with sleet and flurries of snow gusting around them.
She was shaking as he strapped her in but, even though she was in a state of anxious meltdown, her eyes skittered to him. He was in black, from his shoes to his black polo neck and the bomber jacket. Like her, he was wearing a woolly hat, which he kept on. It was freezing in the helicopter.
‘You’re scared,’ he threw over his shoulder, before opening the throttle so that the eerie silence turned into a cacophony of noise from the rotor blades. ‘Don’t be,’ he shouted. ‘You’re in safe hands.’
But Celia felt far from safe as the helicopter spun into motion, accelerating sharply upwards and then buzzing at speed over a vista submerged in darkness.
She hadn’t thought out what she was going to say to her brother when she saw him and she couldn’t think about that now because she was too busy clinging to her seat, eyes tightly shut, breathing all over the place.
Through a haze of fear, she was aware of the helicopter shuddering like a tin can in a tornado, taking for ever, and then the descent, sharp and fast and over in the blink of an eye.
The silence as the rotor blades slowed was as deafening as the noise of them rotating had been.
She opened her eyes to find that Leandro had unbuckled and moved towards her and was grinning.
‘Have you had your eyes closed for the entire flight?’
Busying herself with the safety belt, Celia glanced at him and blushed.
‘It’s my first time in a helicopter,’ she muttered. ‘How did I know that it wasn’t going to crash?’
‘Because I was piloting it,’ Leandro said with supreme confidence. ‘It’s pretty bad here. Leave your bags. I’ll take them. We can make a dash for the house. Snow here isn’t like snow in London. Up here, I find the snow is generally a little less polite.’
‘I know,’ Celia puffed breathlessly, ‘it’s the same in Shropshire where I grew up. It comes and then never knows when it’s time to leave.’
‘Well put. Let me help you.’ He cranked open the door to a white, barren and starkly beautiful wilderness.
For a few seconds, Celia looked out in awe at the splendid isolation. Pure darkness encased a wintry wonderland that shimmered under silent, falling snow. She forgot how cold she was, how anxious, how apprehensive. Dark shapes were visible, definitions of the landscape, but they could have landed on another planet.
The snow was thick and vicious, slicing through her clothes as he hoisted the various bags in one hand and propelled her through the darkness towards the looming vast shape of his country estate.
She could sense unease in his silence.
They hit the front door at pace. Massive front door. Behind them, the helicopter was a disappearing dark blot and behind that, Celia could only surmise, lay gates and trees and hedges and who knew what else. All the stuff of a country estate.
The actual manor house was so big as they stood in front of it that Celia could barely see where it began and ended through the densely falling snow.
It was shrouded in complete darkness and as they entered, Leandro banging on the lights, flooding the vast hall with light, bitterly cold.
He dumped all the bags and made straight through the hall, bypassing the grand staircases to the left and the right and towards the bowels of the house.
Celia followed. She had to half run because he was moving at a brisk pace but, even so, she still managed to take in the opulent grandeur of the surroundings. Pale walls, marble, exquisite panelling and chandeliers and paintings that looked as though they cost a fortune.
There was an urgency to his purposeful stride that ratcheted up her nervousness and, sure enough, when he flung open a cupboard to fire up the central heating and turned to her, she knew what he was going to say before the words could leave his mouth.
‘There’s no one here.’
Their eyes tangled and a frisson swept through her body as the ramifications of that simple statement took root.
No Dan. No Julie. No safety net of other people around, however thorny the atmosphere might have been. Just her and Leandro rattling around in his sprawling mansion with a snowstorm raging outside. One night here? Two? Or more?
As he’d said, the snow in this part of the world, as it was in Shropshire, was not polite. It didn’t fall for a couple of hours before packing it in. It outstayed its welcome.
What did that mean? What if they were stuck here?
Celia didn’t want to dwell on worst-case scenarios but as she stood there, in front of him, they filled her head, swamping all rational thought until she could feel her pulses racing and her body prickling with panicked perspiration.
She was as safe as houses with him, whatever the circumstances. She wasn’t his type and he wasn’t hers.
But those killer looks...
She could breathe him in, the smell of cold mingled with woody aftershave. It made her feel unsteady on her feet and she automatically took a couple of steps back, breathing in deeply and gathering herself.
‘If they’re not here, then where are they? You said that they were going to be here!’
‘It’s obvious they started in this direction.’ He began walking, throwing over his shoulder that she should follow him, that there was no harm in checking all the rooms. ‘But...’ he picked up where he had left off as he led the way up one of the grand staircases, which ascended to a huge galleried landing ‘...with the last leg to go and travelling by car, they must have decided not to brave the weather.’
‘So what do we do now?’ Celia dashed past him and then spun round so that she was ahead of him, looking down the staircase to the marble-floored landing and the richness of the paintings on the walls. From this vantage point she was almost on eye level with him and for a few seconds she regretted her move because they were so close, close enough to see the flecks of gold in his midnight-dark eyes and the lush thickness of his lashes. She breathed in sharply, heart beating like a sledgehammer.
‘We check all the rooms and then decide in the morning.’
‘Is that it?’ Celia cried.
‘What more is it possible to do at this hour in the evening? There’s no way I’m going to attempt to make the journey back in this weather.’ His eyes were as cool as his voice. ‘I’m not jeopardising your life nor am I jeopardising my own because you’re panicking about being here with me.’
‘That’s not it at all!’
‘You’re tired and hungry, but getting over-emotional about this situation isn’t going to help either of us.’
‘And what if we’re stuck here for longer than one night?’ Celia demanded. ‘Will you be able to fly the helicopter back in the morning if it continues to snow overnight?’
Leandro met her blazing green eyes with a remote, unreadable expression.
Her cheeks were flushed, her copper hair tangled around her heart-shaped face, her full lips pursed. She oozed fury. How could that be attractive? It couldn’t. He loathed this sort of extreme emotionalism. What was the point of overreacting to something that couldn’t be changed? And yet, as he stared at her, he was disconcerted by the tug of something strong, swift and primal. She was the very essence of lush, tempting femininity and as he looked away, impatient with his response to her, he could feel a telltale tic in his jaw, a potent reminder that his lofty reassurances that she was utterly safe with him might have a few holes he hadn’t foreseen.
But a lifetime of iron control came to his rescue. He had never been ruled by his body and that was something that was never going to change.
‘Pointless question,’ he said smoothly, moving to step past her, feeling the warmth of her body close to his as he brushed past and sensing the hurried, breathless shift of her body to let him pass by. Now, he was gazing down at her, her face upturned to his, and again, that uninvited intrusion of a libido that was always kept under control. ‘In the morning, we’ll see what’s happening with the weather and take it from there. For now, I’ll show you where you can sleep, and we’ll have something to eat. Tomorrow, as I’ve said, is another day.’