agog with curiosity when I get back.’
Leon took her elbow in a firm grasp. ‘Worry about that later.’
‘It’s all right for you to say that. You—–’ She stopped as she saw he was directing her towards a gold-coloured Porsche parked on a double yellow line. ‘Where are you taking me?’
He opened the car door for her. ‘I told you, lunch. Get in, Helen, there’s a good girl. There’s a menacing-looking policeman making his way over here.’
She gave him a sweet smile of sarcasm. ‘I’m sure you could manage to charm your way out of it.’
‘Maybe.’ He pushed her inside the car before going round the other side and getting in himself. ‘But I don’t intend wasting any time trying.’ He manoeuvred the car into the flow of traffic.
‘That remark you made just now,’ Helen said tentatively. ‘What did you mean by it?’
He gave her a fleeting glance. ‘Which remark?’
‘About the publicity.’
Leon shrugged his broad shoulders. ‘I don’t mind it being known I’m attracted to a very lovely lady.’
Helen sighed. ‘I didn’t mean you, I meant what did you mean by asking if I could stand the publicity?’ She gave him a searching look, but could tell nothing from his expression.
He frowned. ‘I thought may be you wouldn’t like me to cause trouble at your place of work.’
’Is that all?’ she probed suspiciously.
They were heading out of town now and Leon turned to look at her momentarily. ‘What else could I have meant?’
Helen evaded those searching tawny eyes. ‘You tell me.’
He shook his head. ‘I have no idea.’
‘You—you really don’t know?’
‘Know what, for God’s sake?’ he demanded impatiently. ‘Do you have some murky secret in your past that you don’t want people to know about?’ he teased.
Helen drew a ragged breath. ‘Don’t joke about it, Leon.’
‘You mean you do have a secret?’
‘It wasn’t such a secret a couple of years ago, and I just couldn’t bear for it all to be raked up again.’
‘For what to be raked up? Come on, Helen, you might as well tell me now you’ve gone this far.’
Her hands twisted nervously together in her lap. ‘My—my husband was Michael West.’ She looked at him searchingly, watching for the recognition, for the disgust.
‘So? What does—Michael West?’ he queried softly.
She bowed her head. ‘Yes.’
‘Of West Hotels?’
‘That’s his father, actually.’
‘You were married to Mike West?’ He sounded incredulous.
‘Yes,’ she admitted chokingly.
‘Then you must be—–’
‘I’m the girl who married him, lived with him for only two days before walking out, and was called a fortune-hunter by the press for weeks afterwards.’
‘BUT you can’t be!’ Leon denied, glancing at her again.
She gave a bitter smile. ‘But I am.’
‘You’re the girl who stayed with him just long enough to consummate the marriage? The girl everyone said had only married him for what she could get out of the divorce settlement?’
Helen bit her bottom lip to stop it shaking. ‘That’s right.’
Leon gave her a scathing look. ‘I don’t believe you. You’re making this up. What are you, some sort of sensation-seeker?’ he rasped.
‘I’m telling you the truth, Leon,’ she said quietly.
‘No!’ he snapped. ‘You can’t be. That girl isn’t you. You aren’t like that at all.’
She gave a wan smile. ‘You’re only the second person to see that I’m just not capable of such subterfuge, and for that I thank you.’
‘The second person?’
‘Jenny has always believed in me too.’
He frowned. ‘You mean you really were married to Mike West?’
‘I really was.’ She met his gaze unflinchingly.
‘My God!’ he breathed softly.
‘So now you can see why I don’t want to be seen with you. Whatever you do, whoever you see, it’s news. If the press saw me with you they wouldn’t stop probing until they’d unearthed the fact that I was married to Michael, and the whole thing would be dragged up again. I would be hounded, and I couldn’t take that. And it wouldn’t do you much good either.’
‘But if you’re Mike’s widow why do you work?’
’Have you forgotten the fact that Michael was killed in a road accident only four months after we were married? I didn’t have time to divorce him and claim all that money the press said I wanted. His money was left to his parents in his will. I received only a token amount, enough not to work if I didn’t want to, but certainly not a fortune.’
‘I still don’t believe it,’ he said firmly.
‘That I was married to Michael, or that I could do the things they said I did?
‘Either of them. I met Mike West a couple of times—he was like a spoilt child, into every vice going,’ he added disgustedly. ‘You couldn’t have married someone like him.’
‘But I did.’ And paid for it in a thousand different ways! she thought. She noticed for the first time that they were heading back to town. ‘Where are we going now?’
‘Back to my apartment,’ he told her tersely. ‘We have to talk this thing out, and I would rather do it in privacy.’
‘I can’t.’ Helen looked at her wrist-watch. ‘I have to get back to work, my lunch-hour is nearly up.’
‘Say you’ve been taken ill.’
She shook her head. ‘Mr Walters would guess I wasn’t.’
‘Okay, so you lose your job,’ he snapped. ‘You just said that you’re rich enough
