His father dropped the name with the flair of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
‘Samantha...’ Leo repeated slowly.
‘Little Sammy Wilson,’ Harold expanded. ‘You know who I’m talking about. She would be perfect for the part!’
‘You want me to involve Samantha Wilson in a far-fetched charade to win custody of Adele?’
‘It makes perfect sense.’
‘In whose world?’
‘Don’t be rude, son!’ Harold reprimanded with an unusual amount of authority.
‘Does she know about this? Have you two been plotting this crazy scheme behind my back?’ Leo was aghast. His father had clearly taken leave of his senses.
‘I haven’t mentioned a word of this to her,’ Harold admitted. ‘Well, you know that she only manages to get to Salcombe on weekends...’
‘No, I didn’t. Why would I?’
‘You will have to broach the subject with her. You can be very persuasive and I don’t see why you wouldn’t bring those considerable skills to bear on this. It’s not as though I ask favours of you as a general rule. I think it’s the very least you can do, son. I would so love to know Adele is safe and cared for and we both know that Gail would make as bad a grandparent as her daughter made a parent. I would spend the remainder of my days fearing for what might happen to the girl...’
‘Gail might be many things,’ Leo returned drily, ‘but aren’t you over-egging the pudding here?’
His father breezed over the interruption. ‘And you would condemn a child to a future with a woman of that calibre? We both know the rumours about her...’ His eyes, when they met Leo’s, were filled with sadness. ‘I can’t force you but I’m very much afraid that I... Well, what would be the point of my living...?’
* * *
Samantha hadn’t been in her tiny rented flat for more than half an hour before she heard the insistent buzz of her doorbell and she grimaced with annoyance.
She had too much to do to waste time on a cold-caller. Or, worse, her neighbour from the flat upstairs, who had a habit of randomly showing up around this hour, a little after six in the evening, for wine with someone too polite and too soft-hearted to turn her away.
Samantha had spent many hours listening to her neighbour discuss her latest boyfriend or weep over a broken heart that would never be mended.
Right now, she simply had too much to do.
Too much homework from her eight-year-old charges to mark. Too many lessons to prepare. Too much red tape with Ofsted to get through. Not to mention the bank, who had been politely reminding her mother for the past three months that the mortgage hadn’t been paid.
But whoever was at the door wasn’t about to go away, not if the insistent finger on the button was anything to go by.
Sweeping the stack of exercise books off her lap and onto the little coffee table by the side of her chair and plunging her feet into her cosy bedroom slippers, she was working out which negative response, depending on who was at the door, she would be delivering so that her evening remained uninterrupted.
She yanked open the door and her mouth fell open. Literally. She stood there like a stranded goldfish, eyes like saucers, because the last person she ever, in a million years, had expected to see was standing in front of her.
Or rather lounging, his long, muscular body indolently leaning against the door frame, his hands thrust into the pockets of his black cashmere coat.
It had been several weeks since she had seen Leo Morgan-White.
He had nodded to her from across the width of his father’s massive drawing room, which had been crowded with at least three dozen locals, all friends from the village where his father and her mother lived. Harold was a popular member of the community and his annual Christmas party was something of an event on the local calendar.
She hadn’t even spoken to Leo that night. He’d been there with a leggy brunette who, in the depths of winter, had been wearing something very bright and very short, garnering attention from every single male in the room.
‘Have I come at a bad time?’
* * *
He’d taken the bait. Sly old fox that his father was, Leo had been persuaded into doing the unthinkable by the threat of ill health and a return of the depression that had dogged his father for years and from which he was only recently surfacing.
Of course, Harold genuinely and truly wanted Adele close to him and safe and, of course, he truly believed, and was probably spot on, that Gail would turn out to be a horrendous influence on her five-year-old granddaughter, but when he had pulled the ill-health-so-what’s-the-point-of-carrying-on? threat from the hat Leo had confessed himself to be beaten.
So here he was, two days later, with the soon-to-be object of his desire standing in front of him in some dull grey outfit and a pair of ridiculous, brightly coloured bedroom slippers.
‘Leo?’ Sammy blinked and wondered whether it was possible for stress to induce very realistic hallucinations. ‘What do you want? How did you find out where I live? What on earth are you doing here?’
‘Lots of questions, and I’ll answer them just as soon as you invite me in.’
Struck by a sudden thought, Sammy paled and stared up at him. ‘Has something happened? Is your dad all right?’ She was finding it very difficult to think but then the wretched man had always had that effect on her. Something about his devastatingly good looks. He was just so...so much larger than life.
Taller, more striking, with the rakish, swarthy sexiness of a pirate. Next to him, the rest of the male population always seemed to pale in comparison and, considering the long, long line of women he had run through over the years, she wasn’t the only one who thought so.
Unlike that long, long line of women, though, she knew better than to let all that drop-dead male sexiness get to her.
She still cringed in shame when she thought back to that awful incident years ago. She’d had gone along to a party at the big house, as everyone in the village called the Morgan-White mansion up on the hill.
The place had been teeming with people. It had been a birthday bash for Leo and half the world seemed to be there. Heaven only knew why she’d been invited but she imagined that it had been something of a pity invite and, whilst she had cringed at the thought of going, she had been encouraged by the fact that several of the locals had also been on the guest list so she wouldn’t be a complete fish out of water. She’d spent ages choosing just the right dress. She’d only spotted him from a distance later, when she had been standing in the garden and, miracle of miracles, he had shown up right next to her and they had chatted for what had seemed like ages. He’d torn himself away from his gilded crowd and Sammy had been on cloud nine until, late in the evening, a very tall, very blonde girl had broken free from the group and confronted her just outside the marquee which had been erected in the garden.
‘You’re making a bloody fool of yourself,’ she’d hissed, words slurring from too much free champagne.
