sent the entire lot back to his flash apartment when their relationship had crashed and burned, and had promptly returned to the sorts of clothes she’d always felt comfortable in.
Leo, at least, would appreciate her choice of clothing, since they came from the same side of the tracks.
Feeling more buoyant, she pushed open the door to the trattoria and looked around, hoping she’d arrived before he had because then she could have a drink to steady her nerves, and also hoping that she hadn’t, because to arrive early might suggest that she was desperate for male company. More than that—desperate for his company.
Nursing a drink at the very back of the restaurant, Leo had spotted her immediately. How could he not? The entire restaurant had spotted her at roughly the same time. Every male head swung round. Mouths fell open. In fairness to her, she didn’t seem to notice any of this as she peered around her, squinting into the semi-lit depths of the trattoria, which was noisy, packed and uncomfortable.
In a room full of pale faces her honeyed tan stood out, as did her hair, flowing in a wavy mane over narrow shoulders almost down to her waist. Leo half stood and she walked towards him, weaving a path through the crowds until she was right in front of him.
‘Been here before?’ he asked, and when she shook her head he nodded and scanned the room. ‘Do you think we’ll be able to have a conversation or should we resign ourselves to shouting?’
‘It’s cheap and cheerful. And I hear that the food’s good.’
She slipped into a chair and tried not to drink in his masculine beauty. She’d just about managed to convince herself that he couldn’t possibly be as striking as she remembered, but he was even more so. He radiated a dynamism that made her shiver with awareness, and his exotic colouring only added to the potent appeal of his good looks.
Very quickly Maddie had a glass of wine to calm her nerves, even though common sense told her there was nothing to be nervous about.
Certainly he was sticking to the script. If his original dinner invitation had set her antennae onto red alert, actually being here with him was doing the opposite, dispelling any misgivings she might have been harbouring about his intentions.
He was charm itself. He chatted about the many countries he had visited—which made sense because he was obviously a guy who lived for the present and absorbed whatever adventures life had to offer. It was something she really admired. He was witty and insightful, and she found herself laughing out loud at some of his anecdotes, barely noticing the antipasti he had ordered for them to share.
‘I envy you,’ she said truthfully as plates were cleared, glasses refilled and bowls of pasta placed in front of them. ‘I’ve never got to travel. I would have loved to, but my mum and I barely had enough to make ends meet and we would never have been able to afford it. I guess it’s a lot easier when you only have yourself to consider, and I suppose you could always pick up jobs here and there to pay your way...’
‘I do try and get myself an honest day’s work when I’m abroad,’ he said, almost uncomfortably. ‘Tell me why you’ve run away from Australia.’
The abrupt change in the conversation caught Maddie off-guard and she stiffened—her natural response whenever she thought about her past. What would this complete stranger think were she to tell him the truth? He might be an adventurer, living off the land and shunning responsibility, but that didn’t mean that he wouldn’t be judgemental if she were to share her story with him.
The whole of her story.
Maddie found that she didn’t want him to think badly of her. ‘Whoever said anything about running away?’ she hedged lightly, winding long strands of spaghetti around her fork and avoiding eye contact.
Leo raised his eyebrows wryly. He sat back and gave her the benefit of his full attention, which was enough to make her blush furiously.
Her glass-green eyes drifted to his forearms, strong and muscled and sprinkled with dark hair, and she wondered what it would be like to be touched by them, to have his hands roam and explore her body. Her heart picked up speed and she licked her lips, panicked by the way her body was insisting on slipping its leash and running wild.
‘Well,’ Leo drawled, his voice a low murmur that made the hairs on the nape of her neck stand on end, ‘looking at the facts: you’re on the other side of the world, without a network of fellow travelling friends, and working in a job that can’t really be classed as career-building. You haven’t mentioned anything about studying, so I’m thinking that’s not relevant. Which leads me to think that you’re running away from something. Or someone. Or both.’
Maddie laughed, but the tide of colour in her cheeks was more vibrant now. ‘My mum died,’ she said, twirling the stem of her wine glass and then pausing as he filled it with more wine. ‘I’d spent some time looking after her. It was very unexpected. Bad luck, really. She broke her leg, and it was a very complex break, but it should have been okay.’ She blinked furiously. ‘Unfortunately the operation turned out to be a fiasco. She was confined to hospital for much longer than anticipated and then she needed a great deal of further surgery. Every time she felt she was back on her feet something would go wrong and back she would have to go.’
‘How old were you when all this happened?’
‘Just before my twentieth birthday,’ Maddie admitted.
‘Must have been tough.’
‘Everyone goes through tough times.’ She brushed off any show of sympathy because she was close enough to tears already. But she could see sympathy in the deep navy eyes resting on her and that was weird, because her very first impression of him had been of a guy who was as hard as nails.
Something about the predatory way he moved, the cool, lazy self-assurance in his eyes, the arrogant set of his features... But then being wary of the opposite sex, suspecting the worst before the worst could happen, had become a way of life for her.
‘You must have,’ she said lightly, blushing. ‘Gone through rough times, I mean? Or at least had one or two hairy encounters! Isn’t that part and parcel of being a nomad? A side effect of living life as an adventurer?’
Leo was enjoying the tinge of colour staining her cheeks. Australia. Hence the golden hue of her skin. Next to her, the other women in the restaurant seemed pale and anaemic.
He shrugged, adept as always at evading any sort of real sharing. ‘Sisters? Brothers?’ he asked. ‘Anyone out there for you when your mother was ill?’
‘Just me.’ Maddie realised that somewhere along the line food had been eaten and plates cleared away. She couldn’t remember when exactly that had happened. ‘My mother was from here, actually...’
‘Ireland?’ Startled, Leo caught her eyes.
‘As a matter of fact, she was.’
Maddie wondered what he would think if she told him that she was the owner of the very store he had been busy criticising only hours before. He didn’t look the type to scare easily, but men could be funny when it came to women being higher up the financial pecking order than they were.
‘Hence you’re returning to your motherland...?’
‘I thought it made sense. I wanted to get out of Australia after...after everything...’
