HAD EXPECTED similar alarm from Hal about being trapped at Greyling Manor for the night—he was a family man with three young children—but he seemed pleased as punch not to be returning to London.
‘Treacherous roads,’ he said comfortably as he settled in front of the array of wildly extravagant food which had been laid on for them by Leandro’s housekeeper. ‘Wouldn’t want to risk driving on them, and besides, I haven’t been out of London in months.’
While he had tucked into the surplus party grub, with Julie nodding approvingly at his hearty appetite, Abigail toyed worriedly with her food. She had, at least, managed to get through to her friend Claire who was looking after Sam for the evening, and she had cheerfully agreed to stay until she returned.
‘I’ll be back no later than tomorrow lunchtime,’ Abigail had said sotto voce, for she had been directed to the landline and was petrified that Leandro might be lurking behind a door and overhearing her conversation. ‘I don’t care what the weather decides to do. There’s no way I can stay here.’
‘I know you miss Sam,’ her friend had said soothingly, ‘but it’s better for you to wait and travel back when it’s safe rather than risk life and limb. I promise to take very good care of the little guy!’
Abigail knew that her friend would. She had met Claire at the handful of antenatal classes they had attended together, and they had hit it off immediately. Both young, both single and both pregnant. Although, in Claire’s case, she had had a job at the local nursery. Thanks to Claire, Abigail had managed to get Sam registered and, much as she had hated leaving him there when he had only been four months old, she’d had to in order to work to keep the roof over both their heads. Knowing that Claire was there, looking after him every bit as thoroughly as she looked after her own son, had helped a lot. Just as Vanessa had given her a job when she had needed it most, so too had Claire chipped in and helped her with Sam when she’d needed it.
Claire had no idea where Abigail was and neither did she know why she so desperately needed to leave.
So far, she had inspected the weather a dozen times in the space of the past two hours.
There was some let up but not much. She had barely been able to touch a morsel of food and was only thankful that Leandro had disappeared into the bowels of the house. There was a slim chance that she wouldn’t see him again but she knew that that would make little difference to the onslaught of memories, heartache and misgivings that had risen to the surface, like debris washed ashore.
Of course you could never forget the past, but now the scab that had been formed had been picked apart to expose the barely healed wound underneath.
As Hal was shepherded up to his quarters, as happy as a privileged guest in a five-star hotel, Abigail remained in the kitchen with her cup of coffee, remembering the past she had tried to put behind her.
She could recall the very second she had looked up and seen Leandro standing in front of her, so unbelievably gorgeous that her mouth had run dry and every single thought had fled her head. In that split second, she had forgotten all about the job she had just failed to secure, the uncertain future staring her in the face, the last laugh her philandering, lecherous ex-boss had had at her expense by insinuating in his reference that she had been sacked for theft. She had turned down the pass he had made, had allowed her disgust to show and had paid the price.
She had been at rock bottom. Every single effort she had ever made to elevate herself and get away from a background that had been a slideshow of foster homes and indifferent adults had been for nothing.
Then she had felt a shadow, looked up and there he’d been, all big, brooding and heart-stoppingly gorgeous, and for the first time in her life Abigail had discovered the meaning of sexual chemistry.
She’d spent so many years playing down her looks, telling herself that she would never, ever allow anyone into her life because they wanted to have sex with her, and fending off unwanted advances from the age of thirteen, that she’d been quite unprepared to discover that sexual attraction had no time at all for pep talks and earnest lectures.
Indeed, sexual attraction hadn’t given a damn about her resolve never to leap into bed with a man who wanted her for her body and not much else. Her mother had been that woman before an overdose had ended her life. Abigail had known that she would never end up selling herself short like her mother had. Unfortunately, the power of that same sexual attraction she had had under tight control had refused to obey her ground rules. It had raced out of the box in which it had been contained with the gusto of a racehorse sprinting from the starting box.
Leandro hadn’t even beaten around the bush. He’d just said, conversationally, that it was nearly lunchtime and he knew a nice little Italian just round the corner. He had not bothered to wrap up what he’d wanted in fancy packaging. She’d bowled him over, he had said over lunch, looking at her with those fabulous, long-lashed eyes, the very casualness of his voice at odds with what he was saying. He didn’t do commitment, he’d made it clear, but he wanted her and he was going to New York. He’d glanced at his watch with a nonchalance she’d found unutterably cool and had told her he wanted to take her with him, but that she’d have to decide on the spot, because his private jet was due to leave in three hours.
His eyes had roved over her with open desire but everything about him had told her that, if she chose to walk away, he wouldn’t try to stop her.
He’d been everything she hadn’t been looking for and she’d dumped every single principle she’d ever had and gone with him. She’d let him sweep her into his world of chauffeur-driven cars, five-star hotels and every whim granted at the snap of a finger. He’d worked during the day and had insisted that she buy herself a new wardrobe, and whatever else she fancied in whatever store she chose, because money was no object.
But she had objected, only to learn that, what Leandro didn’t want to hear, he simply chose to ignore, and he hadn’t wanted to hear her objections.
‘I have never,’ he had told her, undressing her very, very slowly, ‘allowed any woman of mine to pay for anything. Not going to change the habit now.’
No-strings-attached sex was what he’d offered and it was what she’d taken, greedy for him in a way that had shocked her beyond words. They’d lived for the moment and, whilst she had not lied to him about her past, neither had she told him about it. Somewhere along the line, she’d felt that it would turn him off and quite quickly she’d known that she hadn’t wanted to turn him off.
When one week had turned into two and then three, and when, on the spur of the moment, he had decided to take a break with her in the wilds of Canada, she’d begun to hope that what had started out as just sex might end up as more.
But then everything had gone wrong, and it had all happened so fast. One minute she had been dreaming impossible dreams, and the next minute his sister had entered the frame and within three days all her fledgling dreams had lain in ruins around her and she’d been turfed out of his Manhattan apartment without a backward glance.
He’d made no bones about spelling out the sort of unscrupulous guy he was when it came to women and, instead of listening, she had chosen to ignore the writing on the wall because she had been first bowled over by him and then head over heels in love with him.
Abigail stared off now into the distance. She hadn’t drawn the curtains in the kitchen and she could see that, whilst the snow wasn’t getting any heavier, it was still falling, a flurry of white, shining and beautiful where the lights around the house illuminated the drift.
‘So...’
