happens now, Ms Delane,’ he intoned heavily, with that killing look still levelled at her, ‘is that you get out of my sight. Before I change my mind and get you slung into jail, where a thief like you belongs! Now, get out.’
Leo’s eyes were dark, inward-looking, his face closed. He could feel the black deadly rage roiling through him like a heavy sea.
How dared she think she could steal from him? And then deny it, defy him as she had? Christos, he had heard the word shameless used before, but never had he realised just what it meant. His face darkened even more. Now he did.
She stood there in front of me, lying through her teeth. Pretending her innocence even as the bracelet was in her pocket.
And she might even have got away with it.
He saw again in his head the moment when she’d headed towards the front door of the Schloss, walking with her elegant, poised model’s saunter, distancing herself completely from the search going on behind her.
And all along…
But she’d given herself away. That tiny but instinctive gesture she’d made with one hand, brushing her pocket.
Checking if something was still there…
And he’d known—known with every gut instinct—that the thief was her. He’d already carpeted the cowering Justin, lambasted the head of security for the shambles that had happened that afternoon. It had been obvious that that was when the theft had taken place, and the only suspects had been those close enough to the spilt jewels to have purloined any.
It had been Anna Delane who’d spilt them in the first place. Anna Delane who’d been the first to scrabble down to the ground. Every finger had already been pointing at her.
But investigating would have been a delicate business. The missing bracelet could have been anywhere in the Schloss—secreted in any of a thousand unlikely places for collection later. Or even off the premises. It could have been miles away, in completely different hands. Searching any of the suspects’ rooms would have been fruitless.
And Anna Delane had had the audacity to think she could walk straight past him carrying it on her!
The black rage roiled through him again. That anyone should have stolen from him—and for it to be her—her of all people.
His eyes narrowed.
Had he been mad to let her walk out? Mad not simply to pick the phone up again and get the police here?
But the vixen had been right. She’d gone immediately for his one weak spot—his determination to avoid any bad publicity tainting the launch of the Levantsky jewels.
No. Leo let his rage sink down again, congealing into a cold, hard mass inside him. He’d done the right thing. No police—no publicity—no prison.
Anna Delane would make amends to him in a manner he would find far, far more satisfying.
She didn’t want him in her bed? Thought herself too virtuous for his desires?
A grim smile twisted at his mouth.
She’d be begging for him before he was done with her!
CHAPTER FIVE
ANNA sat in her wide leather seat in the first class cabin and stared unseeingly at the glossy magazine lying across her lap. At her side, separated from her only by a drinks table, sat Leo Makarios.
He was working at his laptop, completely ignoring her.
But then, he’d ignored her almost entirely ever since she’d fled from his office, taking on her shoulders the burden of guilt for a crime she had not committed.
Accepting the blame for having stolen a priceless bracelet.
Accepting the ‘choice’ Leo Makarios had held out to her.
But she hadn’t had any other option. She’d told herself that over and over again, like a litany running in her head. She could not let Jenny be sent to prison and have her baby taken from her, brought up in some faraway desert country, where wives were locked up in harems, kow-towing to every male in sight…
So I’m going to have to go through with what Leo Makarios wants. There’s nothing else I can do.
Yet the enormity of it crushed her. Appalled her.
She couldn’t think about it; she just couldn’t. It was the only way she could keep going. By not thinking about what she had done, what she was going to do…
She willed herself not to think. Because if she thought about it, if for a moment, a single moment, she let her brain accept what she had agreed to, she would, she would…
The grille sliced shut in her brain again. Stopping her thinking. Stopping her doing anything—anything at all except what she had to do.
And it had started straight away—last night, when she’d walked out of Leo Makarios’s office, with the word thief branded on her, to see the person she had taken the branding for.
She’d made herself go back to Jenny’s room and tell her that she’d simply slipped the bracelet under the hall table, positioning it such that it was in shadow, obscured by one of the heavy wooden struts supporting the table’s weight.
‘They’ll just think they missed it, that’s all,’ she’d told Jenny.
Her friend had gone white with relief.
‘I must have been insane,’ she’d whispered, burying her head in her hands and starting to cry.
Mopping up Jenny had taken all Anna’s energies. So had getting through the evening ahead.
A gala ball, followed by fireworks, opened by a breathtaking descent down the grand staircase of all four models en grande tenue, glittering, for the last time, with the full panoply of the Levantsky jewels, to the music of Strauss and the audience’s applause.
It had taken all Anna’s professionalism to get through the evening. Only one thing had been spared her—waltzing with Leo Makarios.
Or, indeed, being anywhere near him. If the previous evening he’d kept her glued to his side, last evening he’d done the opposite. He hadn’t danced with any of the models, sticking to high-ranking female guests like the Austrian minister’s wife.
Anna had been sickly grateful. And even more grateful to the kindly German spa-loving industrialist who’d made a beeline for her. She’d hung on to him all evening.
When the ball had finally ended, deep in the early hours of the morning, and the models had been let off duty at last, Anna had hurried back to her room.
And locked her door.
If Leo Makarios wanted to come in he’d have to break through it with a sledgehammer.
But he had other plans for her, she’d learnt that morning, after a nerve-racking, sleepless night.
