Her Christmas Fantasy & The Winter Bride (22 page)

‘On my desk?' Leo prompted drily, possibly because she was standing only a foot from it with the air of being caught in mid-flight.

‘I haven't been anywhere near your desk,' Angie muttered defensively, backing away from it as Leo moved slowly forward. ‘I was glancing through the magazines on that chair.'

‘Since when were you interested in electronics?'

Angie stared at him. His black hair was tousled. His bow-tie was missing and his shirt partially unbuttoned, revealing a disturbing triangle of brown skin and the start of the riot of dark, curling hair that she knew covered his pectoral muscles. Embarrassed by that knowledge and the memory, Angie momentarily shut her eyes. But still she saw Leo standing there, strong jawline blue-shadowed with the same early-morning stubble which had once felt so interestingly, arousingly rough against her softer, smoother skin.

Inside her own head, she shrieked at her treacherous subconscious to leave her alone and stop throwing up things she didn't want to remember—most particularly when it was obvious that Leo had recently vacated some other woman's bed. As that conviction assailed her, a searing spasm of hot jealousy and resentment shot through Angie, leaving her deeply shaken.

‘Were you looking for money?'

Her dazed and troubled eyes flew wide. ‘M-money?' she stammered blankly.

Leo gave her a grim smile. ‘Somehow I don't think you have graduated to safe-cracking yet.'

As Angie grasped his meaning, pain and anger combined in the bitter look she threw at him. ‘Damn you to hell, Leo. I
wouldn't
steal
from you!' she flung at him, and turned strickenly away, devastated by the extent of his distrust.

‘You don't need to,' Leo breathed harshly. ‘I'll give you money if you want it.'

Angie covered her anguished face with spread hands. ‘You swine! I was only looking for something to read because I couldn't sleep!'

‘I wish you had been a kleptomaniac,' Leo drawled softly. ‘Intellectually, I could have dealt with kleptomania. But sadly the victims of that particular illness hoard what they take—they don't sell it on for profit…as you did.'

Snatching in a shuddering breath, Angie whirled back to him with clenched fists. ‘I don't want to talk about it—'

‘I'm afraid it left rather a bitter taste in my mouth when I worked out that, if you were the thief, you stole from my grandfather the very day before you shared my bed,' Leo admitted, his relentless dark eyes scanning her taut face. ‘I
said
that I didn't want to talk about it!' Angie launched at him furiously.

‘And you must have been remarkably nifty in that particular operation. As I recall you spent most of that morning riding so that you could accidentally on purpose keep on bumping into me on the estate. You then brought me lunch, which you had definitely made with your own fair hands because it was infinitely superior to anything Wallace's geriatric cook could possibly have prepared,' Leo continued with a disturbing glimmer of raw amusement breaking through the forbidding cast of his features.

‘Leo…' Angie gritted.

‘After lunch, you spent the afternoon haunting the woods round the lake and gathering flowers in a basket…most picturesque. My evening meal you also supplied and that same night you walked Wallace's dog until it almost dropped dead
with exhaustion. In fact, your pursuit of me was very much a f-full-time occupation…'

As Leo's increasingly unsteady voice broke down altogether, his hard dark face suddenly slashed into a breathtakingly charismatic smile, and he threw his arrogant head back and laughed with uninhibited appreciation. ‘
Cristos
… Angie, when I watched you struggling to carry that fat old dog home, I was doubled up!'

Angie had stood there listening to that recitation of her past behaviour with an initially defiant and unmoved stare, but, as Leo had persisted in enumerating the lengths her desperate desire to be noticed by him had driven her to, boiling mortification had engulfed her in waves of regret. ‘I'm so glad I entertained you!' she snapped, and tried to sidestep him.

Leo reached out and stilled her in her tracks with strong hands, laughter dying out of his strikingly handsome features to leave only a flaring, drugging intensity in his bold black eyes. ‘You made me laugh…and, at the time, I was very grateful.'

‘Let go of me—'

‘I was intending to ask where you found the time that day to flex light fingers, but right now I don't really care,' Leo confided, his rich, dark drawl thickening and deepening on that startling admission. ‘Not when I have you in my arms half-naked…'

Angie's eyes widened, and dropped in belated awareness to the green nightshirt she wore. There was nothing remotely provocative about its crew neckline or the hem that came to her knees. Even deeper colour staining her cheeks, she gazed up at him in angry reproach. ‘I am
not
half-naked.'

Leo was not listening. ‘The average Greek male does not require even this much encouragement when he is presented with a beautiful blonde,
pethi mou
,' he informed her in an
earthy amused undertone as he banded his arms slowly round her.

‘What are you d-doing?' Angie gasped, heart hammering in shock as he determinedly brought her into contact with his tautly muscular length and the heat of his big, powerful body penetrated the fine cotton she wore, suddenly making her feel as if she was indeed only semi-clothed. ‘Leo…'

Burning dark eyes gazed down into hers. ‘You quiver when I touch you…and you can scarcely be impervious to the effect you're having on me.'

Angie was trembling, face flushing hot pink as Leo shamelessly clamped his hands to the curve of her hips and hauled her into collision with the unmistakable thrust of his hard male arousal. Her legs went hollow, her nipples pinching into agonisingly erect peaks as a wave of the most terrifying and shameless yearning swept over her, and she fought it with all her might. ‘Don't be disgusting.'

Leo dropped his head lower, his breath softly fanning her temples, shimmering dark golden eyes holding her in shivering stasis. ‘If I can surrender to my desire, so can you…'

‘No!'

‘I see that same hunger in you,
feel
it,' Leo delivered with husky satisfaction. ‘I saw it last night, swore I would play hard to get for at least a few days… But what a waste of time and opportunity that would be. Let's go to bed.'

That word, ‘bed,' beckoned like a sensual invitation to paradise, and Angie hated herself so much for her own weakness of both body and will-power that that self-loathing gave her the strength to tear herself free of Leo's powerfully seductive spell.

‘If I went to bed with you again, I'd deserve to be hung, drawn and quartered!' Angie slung at him wildly as she pulled back from him. ‘And I can't imagine why you think I still want you like that…because I don't; I really don't!'

‘
Cristos
… Of course you do!' Leo shot back at her with a look of impatience. ‘Why do you think I ensured you would be with me by tonight?'

Barely able to assemble her thoughts, Angie nonetheless caught the truly shattering drift of that blunt admission. ‘Ensured?' she queried. ‘How could you possibly have
ensured
that I would be here?'

Leo's mouth twisted. ‘Your former employer leapt at the provocation I offered and reacted exactly as I had foreseen.'

Angie was so taken aback by that confession, she just gaped at him.

‘Angie, I had no intention of leaving that house without you. Why do you think I brought the limo?' he asked drily. ‘Only a complete idiot would try to transport a woman, a child and all their worldly possessions in a Ferrari!'

‘You got me thrown out of that house
deliberately
…' Angie was horrified by his complete lack of scruples and the even greater arrogance which had prompted him to freely admit it. She studied him with appalled blue eyes. ‘Dear heaven…how could you be so selfish and destructive?'

‘I acted in your best interests,' Leo countered.

Abruptly, Angie backed away from him, utterly chilled by that dispassionate response. ‘It was an absolutely unforgivable thing to do to us—you don't even
understand
that, do you?' she condemned shakily. ‘But then how could someone like you understand what it feels like to be broke, unemployed and without a roof over your head when you have a child's needs to consider?'

Leo dealt her a smouldering look. ‘Whatever happens with Wallace, I will personally ensure that your circumstances will be vastly improved from what they were in that house. That is a promise.'

Her teeth clenched, eyes wild with censure. ‘Oh, that's so big of you, Leo! But your help would come at a cost, wouldn't
it? Something for nothing not being a goal you're famed for following!'

‘What the hell is that supposed to mean?' Leo growled.

‘And you were
so
patronising and superior just a few short hours ago!' Angie recalled with fierce mortification. ‘What was that about me needing to learn the lesson that I couldn't rely on my looks to survive? And exactly what are
you
offering me, Leo?'

Slow-building anger now glittered in Leo's shimmering dark eyes. ‘I am only offering you what we both know you want.'

Angie flinched. ‘A sleazy roll in the hay with an oversexed louse who has just climbed out of some other woman's bed?' she bit out painfully, scorning him as much as she scorned herself, for she had been all too willing to forget that probability when Leo had come too close.

He vented a harsh laugh and raked his fingers through his luxuriant black hair. Tousled, those thick, sleek strands demonstrated a strong tendency to curl. So like Jake's hair that, momentarily, she ached just looking at him.

‘“A sleazy roll in the hay”,' he repeated with a darkly reflective look. ‘Yet it is so very appealing a prospect when I am with you… Furthermore, I have not been in another woman's bed!'

Angie folded her arms in a jerky movement, devastated by how very personal things were getting at such mind-blowing speed. Meaning to walk out of the room but somehow finding herself glued to the carpet, she said, ‘I don't believe you.'

‘Would that I had had either the desire or the common sense to fulfil your expectation!' Leo ground out with wrathful emphasis. ‘But from the minute I laid eyes on you last night I wanted you again, and I haven't yet sunk so low that I would try to dull that desire in any other bed—most especially not with a woman who deserves only my respect!'

Angie unravelled and absorbed that speech. She saw that she had already been allotted the blame for the reawakening of that sexual hunger. The eternal Eve, tempting and luring—but Leo was no innocent and trusting Adam likely to be drawn blindly to destruction! And she could've done without the silent confirmation that she was not worthy of the same respect as the unknown woman he had spent so many hours with, in bed or otherwise. ‘I hate you, Leo.'

‘No, you don't. A little hatred would be a big help to us both right now,' Leo breathed with savage candour as he strode restively away from her, chiselled classic profile hard as iron. ‘I didn't seek this attraction, but it is still there between us…'

‘Is that your excuse for coming on to me like a bull in a china shop?' Angie whispered unsteadily.

Leo wheeled round, outraged black eyes glittering over her in a stormy arc. He hissed something in Greek.

Unimpressed, Angie gave him a look blistering with all the hatred he had so recently denied she could be feeling, but inside she still felt about an inch tall and sick to the stomach with humiliation. ‘Because you thought I'd be easy; you thought all you had to do was take one look and stretch out a hand and say, “Let's go to bed,” and I would naturally fall over myself to please. After all, you are
so
rich and
so
good-looking and
so
tremendous in bed that some lesser being like me who does other people's washing and cleaning wouldn't require any more taxing or charming approach from you!'

A blaze of dark colour fired over Leo's bold cheekbones. He spread both hands wide in front of him in a violent movement that sought to silence her. ‘You are making me furious…and I can barely believe that you should dare to insult me like this!'

‘That stupid teenager who thought she was calling all the shots got rings run round her two and a half years ago—and that is the lesson I learned best, Leo,' Angie informed
him bitterly. ‘I was nothing to you; I was just a body you used—'

He strode forward and settled two powerful hands on her slim shoulders. He was so enraged that she let out a startled yelp of fear, and his hands flew off her again as he gritted a sharp expletive and drew back from her. ‘You twist the past so much, I don't recognise it on your lips…and don't you
dare
jump like that as if I'm about to hit you!' he roared down at her in angry reproach.

‘Is it my fault you don't like the plain speaking you're so good at yourself?' Angie swiftly recovered the ground she had lost with that craven cry of fright.

‘I know what is wrong with you now. You can't handle the fact that I should admit that I didn't want this attraction to be reborn,' Leo sliced back at her crushingly.

‘From where I'm standing there
is
no attraction!'

‘No?' Leo gave her a very dangerous look, redolent of a male well aware of his own powers of seduction.

‘Just you stay away from me, Leo.'

‘Is not the proof of the pudding in the eating?' Leo enquired thickly.

‘You're furious with me right now,' Angie reminded him, because he appeared to be in need of that reminder.