She heard the soft click of his tongue as he tutted again, the gentle touch of his hand on her hair. ‘Oh, Amy.’
He put the tea down, sat on the floor next to her and hauled her into his arms. ‘Come here, you silly thing. You’ll be OK. It’ll all work out in the end.’
‘Will it? How? What am I going to do?’ she mumbled into his shoulder, busily shredding the sodden tissues in her lap. ‘I’ve given up my job, I’d already given up my flat—we were about to move out of his flat and buy a family house and have babies, and I was going to try going freelance with my photography, and now...I don’t have a life any more, Leo. It’s all gone, every part of it. I just walked away from it and I feel as if I’ve stepped off a cliff. I must be mad!’
Leo’s heart contracted.
Poor Amy. She sounded utterly lost, and it tugged at something deep inside him, some part of him that had spent years protecting her from the fallout of her impulsive nature. He hugged her closer, rocking her gently against his chest. ‘I don’t think you’re mad. I think it’s the first sensible thing you’ve done in ages,’ he told her gently, echoing her mother’s words.
She shifted so she could see his face. ‘How come everybody else knew this except me?’ she said plaintively. ‘Why am I so stupid?’
‘You aren’t stupid. He’s a nice guy. He’s just not the right man for you. If he was, you wouldn’t have hesitated for a moment, and nor would he. And it didn’t seem to me as if you’d broken his heart. Quite the opposite.’
‘No.’ There’d been nothing heartbroken, she thought, about the flash of relief in his eyes in that fleeting moment. Sadness, yes, but no heartbreak. ‘I suppose he was just doing the decent thing.’
Leo’s eyes clouded and he turned away. ‘Yeah. Trust me, it doesn’t work.’
‘Was that what you did?’ she asked him, momentarily distracted from her own self-induced catastrophe. ‘The decent thing? When you married the wrong person for the wrong reasons?’
A muscle bunched in his jaw. ‘Something like that. Are you going to drink this tea or not?’
She took the mug that he was holding out to her, cradled it in both hands and sighed shakily.
‘You OK now?’
She nodded. She was, she realised. Just about, so long as she didn’t have to make any more decisions, because clearly she was unqualified in that department. She sipped her tea, lifted her head and rested it back against the wall with another shaky little sigh. ‘I will be. I don’t know; I just feel—I can’t explain—as if I can’t trust myself any more. I don’t know who I am, and I thought I knew. Does that make sense, Leo?’
‘Absolutely. Been there, done that, worn out the T-shirt.’
She turned to him, searching his face and finding only kindness and concern. No reproach. No disappointment in her. Just Leo, doing what he always did, getting her out of the mess she’d got herself into.
Again.
‘Leo, will you get me out of here?’ she asked unevenly. ‘I can’t stay here, not with all this...’
‘Of course I will. That’s what I’m here for.’
‘To rescue me? Poor you. I bet you thought you were done with all that at last.’
‘What, me? Change the habits of a lifetime?’ he teased, and she had to laugh, even though it wasn’t really remotely funny.
She glanced down at herself, then at him. He’d abandoned the tailcoat, loosened the rose-pink cravat which showed off his olive skin to perfection, and turned back the cuffs on his immaculate white shirt to reveal strong wrists above hands criss-crossed with fine white scars. Chef’s hands, he called them, but the scars didn’t detract from his appeal, not in any way. He’d been fighting girls off with a stick since he’d hit puberty, and the scars hadn’t put them off at all.
She managed a small smile. ‘We might have to change first, before we go.’
His lips quirked. ‘You think? I thought I looked rather good like this.’
So did she, but then she thought he looked good in anything.
‘You do, but if the press catch a glimpse of us, they’ll think the nation’s favourite celebrity chef’s secretly tied the knot again,’ she said, her mouth on autopilot, and his face clouded.
‘Yeah, well, it’ll be a cold day in hell before that ever happens,’ he said tightly, and she could have kicked herself for blundering all over such a sensitive area. She closed her eyes and let out an anguished sigh.
‘Oh, God, Leo, I’m so sorry. I can’t believe I said that—’
‘It’s OK, it doesn’t matter, and you’re quite right. I don’t need that sort of publicity, and neither do you.’ He smiled fleetingly, then looked away again. ‘So, anywhere in particular you want to go?’
‘I don’t know. Got any ideas?’
He shrugged. ‘Not really. My house is still crawling with builders, and I have to fly to Tuscany tomorrow on business.’
‘Oh.’ Her heart sank at the thought of him going, and she felt her smile slip. ‘I don’t suppose you want to smuggle me out there in your luggage?’ she joked weakly, and propped up her wavering smile. ‘I promise not to be a nuisance.’
‘How many times have I heard you say that?’ he murmured drily, and she felt a wash of guilt flood over her.
He was right—she was always imposing on him, getting him to extract her from one mess or another. Or she had done, back in the days when they really had been best friends. And that was years ago.
She forced herself to ease away from him, to stop leaning on him, both metaphorically and physically. Time to get out her big girl pants and put their friendship on a more equal and adult footing.
She scraped up the last smile in the bottom of the bucket and plastered it on her face.
‘I’m sorry, I was only joking. I know you can’t. Don’t worry about me, Leo, I’ll be all right. It’s my mess, I’ll clear it up.’
Somehow...
HE COULDN’T DO IT.
He couldn’t desert her when her life had just turned upside down—and anyway, it might well be the perfect solution for both of them.
He’d been worrying about leaving tomorrow and abandoning her with the repercussions of all this, worrying about how he was going to juggle his tiny daughter and business meetings, and here was the answer, on a plate. Unless...
He studied her thoughtfully, searching her face for clues. ‘Were you joking about coming with me? Because if not, it could be a great idea. Not the smuggling, obviously, but if you did it could solve both our problems.’
A
