laughed, completely disarming her for a moment, and his eyes danced at her in open admiration, disarming her even further. “I don’t suppose you’d believe me if I said I love you,” he tossed at her, moving closer to the sandstone rim of the pond, then lifting a foot onto it, leaning forward, resting his arms on the bent knee.
The pose brought him effectively closer to her, setting up an intimate togetherness while still respecting her personal space. And suddenly there was a sizzle in his eyes that set all her nerve ends twitching.
“But don’t think I don’t want you, Leigh,” he said in a low purring voice, stirring even more havoc inside her. “There’s nothing about you I don’t want, including your blazing directness, which I find more refreshing than you could ever begin to believe.”
Her heart was pumping so hard she couldn’t think of a word to say. Her mind was jammed with sexual signals. And the terrible part was she couldn’t push them out. There was a dreadful fascination in this crazy physical response to Richard Seymour. She remembered how his presence had always tied her in knots when she was a teenager. She hadn’t recognised it then as sexual attraction. But now…
Did he know?
Did he feel it?
Sheer panic kept her silent.
He was not the least bit perturbed by her lack of response. He went on talking with easy confidence, knowing that she understood what he was spelling out. “You were supposed to be the son to carry on Lawrence’s name and dynasty. And you paid one hell of a price for not being that son. What you don’t know—yet—is he never lost the obsession of having his own flesh and blood carry on from him.”
“But that’s impossible now,” Leigh murmured, struggling out of her distraction.
“No, it’s not impossible…if he has a grandson with the right capabilities. And Lawrence thought of that before he died. Thought of it and planned it.”
A grandson! It was sickening. An innocent little baby boy created for Lawrence Durant’s massive ego, life and goals all rigidly mapped out before he even started living. As hers would have been if she had been the right sex and the right material for moulding into the right monument to a man who didn’t deserve any kind of monument.
“Did he pick out the name, too?” she asked in savage disgust. “Mine was supposed to be Leigh Jason. The Jason part was dropped when I turned out to be a girl.”
“Lawrence,” came the dry reply.
“Of course. One Lawrence gone. Another coming up.”
Something infinitely dangerous and determined flashed through the clear blue of his eyes. “He can’t reach that far from the grave, Leigh, and his purpose can be defeated.”
She was tantalised by the brief glimpse of something she didn’t know—a force driving him that went beyond her previous judgement of his character. “Go on,” she urged.
“I was the one who took your designated role, insofar as I met the expectations he would have had for his son. My much publicised position as his successor is not ironclad. It is provisional to my fulfilling the terms of his will.”
“Which are?” she prompted when he paused, although she could guess what was coming, and another painful emptiness yawned inside her.
His mouth curled into a mirthless smile. “If I marry one of his daughters and produce a son, I get the necessary percentage of company shares which will make my position as his successor unassailable.”
The right material wedded to the Durant genes.
Hence the proposal of marriage.
Except she couldn’t be the chosen one…never the chosen one.
There was one huge flaw in Richard Seymour’s selection of her as his bride, and Leigh wasn’t the only one who knew it. Her mother certainly did. Her four sisters might very well be aware of it, as well. They’d tell him soon enough, if it served their interests, and the evidence of her own observations pointed that way.
All five of them undoubtedly knew the contents of the will. Whomever Richard chose to marry would be sitting pretty in the world they knew. It explained why her mother and sisters had been so focused on courting his favour and not paying any attention to the return of the prodigal daughter. It was the same old sick game, sucking up to power.
Leigh found her gaze had dropped to the leg Richard had propped on the sandstone platform. The fine woollen fabric of his suit trousers was pulled taut over a strongly muscled thigh. Her mind fuzzed over an image of how he might look naked, all that male power energised by desire, wanting her…
Another fanciful dream turned to dust, she thought, feeling the same old ache of disappointment Richard had always left her with. If she told him the truth he wouldn’t want her, not as a wife. Even if he still fancied her—the woman she was now—she couldn’t allow anything to come of it, knowing he would inevitably choose to make one of her sisters his bride. Best to cut it dead right now.
She dragged her gaze up and kept it levelled on his as she delivered her rejection. “The answer is no, Richard. I won’t marry you.”
Then to emphasise the matter was closed, she was up on her feet with her back turned to him and heading towards the steps that led down to the next terrace, away from him, away from the house that had dominated much of her life, away from the family who cared more for what it represented than they’d ever cared for her.
“Why not?” Richard shot after her.
She waved a dismissive hand without glancing around. “You have four other daughters to choose from. You just struck out on me, that’s all.”
“I don’t want any of the others,” he declared vehemently.
She shook her head over the black irony of that statement and kept on walking, down the steps to the summer-house which presided over the terrace of rose gardens. She could hear his footsteps following her and fiercely wished he’d leave her alone.
It was so perverse of him to choose her ahead of the far more suitable daughters, the beautiful blonde accomplished socialites with the right blood in them, only too eager to snap him up and grace his arm, his bed, and his bank balance. Felicity, Vanessa, Caroline, Nadine…such pretty, feminine, classy names.
The impulse to shove one truth she’d had to accept down Richard Seymour’s throat made Leigh pause by the summer-house and cast a derisive look at him. He was already at the foot of the steps and striding towards her.
“You know, Richard, most people don’t get everything they want. You may not be used to that but I’m sure compromises sometimes have to be taken, even in your world.”
He kept on coming. “You can have everything you want from me, Leigh.”
The strong conviction in his voice clutched at her heart, but only for a moment. He wasn’t offering love. He probably didn’t know what love was, any more than she did. The sheer sweep of his extravagant promise suddenly evoked another wild laugh, peeling into a wind that carried it away from her as swiftly as it arose.
It didn’t stop him. His eyes didn’t waver from hers, determined on burning away her scorn and supplanting it with possibilities that
