Her Christmas Fantasy & The Winter Bride (26 page)

She started back down the corridor, moving very much more slowly this time. Leo, she thought in sudden tearing pain, without conscience employing her own physical weakness against her like a weapon of destruction. He had no doubt that she would surrender. He had had no doubt two and a half years ago either, and in the space of forty-eight hours he had satisfied his curiosity and his lust and walked away
from her again. He had taught her a hard lesson, but she might have handled that rejection better had he been less brutally candid…

‘This…'
Leo had drawled with ice-cold clarity, ‘has been a serious error of judgement on my part. Sober and in a more stable state of mind, I would never have taken you to my bed.'

‘You wanted me.' Angie had been devastated by the speed with which he had changed towards her. She had slept the night through with a lover and woken up to a stranger. ‘
Cristos
…I have had nothing but my own company for months on end! I wanted a woman…I
needed
a woman,' Leo had spelt out with harsh emphasis. ‘And you were in the wrong place at the wrong time.'

Just like an accident waiting to happen, Angie reflected now in growing anguish. What had been true then was no less true now. Unlike Leo, she didn't make serious errors of judgement where matters of the heart were concerned. Nothing so logical had betrayed her…because she wasn't logical about Leo Demetrios. Never had been. Not from the day he had married Petrina and Angie had been physically sick with distress—and certainly not when he had lounged back in the meadow grass two years later in tight, faded jeans and an open-necked shirt, a bottle of Metaxa brandy in one hand and the look of the devil about to reel in a poor lost soul in his smouldering dark eyes…

She had fallen so hard and so heavy, she hadn't known what had hit her, had sunk without trace the minute he'd switched the heat on. Overpowered, overwhelmed,
obsessed
, she conceded fearfully, recoiling. Pale and trembling, she finally reached the ground floor, torn in two already, wanting,
needing
to see Leo again with that part of her she couldn't control, but what brain power she retained frantically urging her to keep her distance and protect herself. She hesitated and
then her chin came up and she walked, head held high, into the drawing room.

Leo swung round and she saw only him, the severe tailoring of his dinner jacket accentuating his magnificent physique and spectacular dark good looks. Angie's heart gave a gigantic thud much as if she had just fallen down a ravine. She stilled, wild rose-pink suffusing her cheeks as she met his intensely dark eyes. With a far from steady hand she accepted a glass of sherry from the tray extended by a maid, and Leo curved an arm round Angie's waist, welding her up against a lean hip with an intimacy that was completely unexpected.

‘Angie…?'
a familiar male voice questioned dubiously.

Her startled gaze only then took in the rest of the room, skimming to the slimly built blond man lodged beside Wallace. And there her attention stayed. She went white. It was Drew, his handsome face revealing his astonishment at her sudden appearance in the family drawing room.

Shock set in hard and fast on Angie. Instantly she registered the danger she was in. While she struggled to conceal her horror, her mind reeled off in fearful, frantic circles. What price Drew's supposed fathering of Jake now? When Drew had made that malicious claim he had undoubtedly assumed that Angie would choose to have an abortion. Drew would have had no thought of his own lies coming back to haunt him. Was he now aware that she had given birth, and that that child was at this very moment sleeping upstairs, acknowledged by both Wallace and Leo as
his
son?

‘Someone might have told me that Angie was back.' Drew was rather flushed and stiff, but he managed to laugh.

‘Christmas is a time of reconciliation,' Wallace remarked smoothly.

‘Dining with us too,' Drew continued tightly. ‘Has something changed around here that I should know about?'

‘Doubtless Leo has Angie in an arm-lock for some good
reason best known to himself.' His grandfather angled a surprisingly amused look of enquiry in their direction.

Angie reddened, and jerked away from Leo as if she had been surprised in an indecent act. Outside the door, the dinner gong sounded again.

Drew was frowning at Angie. ‘You're here with Leo?'

Angie uttered a strangled laugh. ‘Good heavens, are you kidding? Leo and
me
?' she appealed in an emphatic but distinctly high-pitched denial.

A split second later, she stole an involuntary glance at Leo and then wished she hadn't. Leo gave her a hard-edged smile that chilled her to the marrow and turned her already queasy stomach over sickly.

‘Dinner, before the staff get in a fuss,' Wallace decreed, seemingly oblivious to the strong discordant undertones in the atmosphere.

Drew shot forward and planted himself beside Angie as she moved out of the room. ‘What the hell's going on here?' he whispered confidentially out of the side of his mouth.

Angie ignored him, distaste and bitterness suddenly filling her. Drew, who had maligned her to Leo. He might at least have left her with her reputation. As for Leo, why hadn't he at least warned her that Drew was here? And did his cousin's arrival lie behind his firmly delivered suggestion that she remain upstairs for the evening?

Her stomach churned. How soon would the balloon go up on her charade? Unless she was very much mistaken, Drew was the only person present not yet aware of Jake's existence and the lie she had allowed to stand unchallenged.

Dinner was served in the sombre oak-panelled dining room. A manservant pulled out her chair and shook out her napkin. Even in her abstracted state, Angie was disconcerted by the sheer number of new staff in the house, each of them as unfamiliar to her as the maid who had earlier come to her
bedroom door. When she'd been here two and a half years ago, her father had served the meals with the aid of the cook's helper. Now he was stationed at the head of the room, frowning loftily in this direction, angling his head in another, silently orchestrating the whole show like some grand master of ceremonies.

While Angie ignored the first course and sank two glasses of wine as she waited for the axe of retribution to fall, Drew dealt her frequent curious glances, but concentrated on talking at length about his career as an advertising executive in New York. He referred on three separate occasions to an award he had won, and energetically pushed the image of himself as a thrusting success story.

Apparently enthralled, Leo asked several encouraging questions which seemed perfectly polite, yet inexplicably Drew's replies continually made the younger man sound boastful, vain and smug. Wallace merely responded to the flood of information with an occasional distant nod of acknowledgement.

‘Of course, I'm presently considering a transfer to London,' Drew informed them all with an expansive smile during the main course. ‘I can't tell you how good it feels to be home again, Gramps. I can see there's been a few improvements around here too…'

‘Possibly rather more than you can imagine,' his grandfather remarked.

‘The old place did need some work. If you like, you can take me round after dinner and show me what you've been doing,' Drew told the old man with the selfless air of one bestowing a generous favour he didn't expect to enjoy.

‘I should think you would be very bored,' Leo murmured drily, his strong, dark face hard as iron.

Drew's smile held, but with the suggestion of gritted teeth. ‘If there's one thing that living abroad has taught me, it's the importance of valuing my home.'

‘I'm afraid it's rather too late for that, Drew,' Wallace said flatly. ‘Two years ago, I sold the Court, lock, stock and barrel, to Leo.'

Her eyes dilating in sheer shock, Angie's hand jerked and she almost knocked her wineglass over. Drew gaped at his grandfather in rampant disbelief. A grim smile of satisfaction set Wallace's mouth and it was, Angie sensed, the first genuine emotion the old man had so far revealed. Only Leo was left untouched by the byplay.

W
ALLACE NEVILLE CLEARED
his throat with precision, his attention now squarely centred on Drew's shattered face. ‘Thanks to your mismanagement, the estate was running at a loss and your debts almost ruined me. The Court needed extensive repairs and I was in no position to finance them. I always believed that I only held this estate in trust for future generations. It will be safe in Leo's hands as it would not have been safe in yours.'

Drew's face went from shocked pallor to furiously flushed during that speech. Angie didn't know where to look and wasn't sure how much more her nerves could take. She too was devastated by the news that Leo now owned Deveraux Court, but she was also feeling grossly uncomfortable sitting in on a discussion of confidential family matters.

‘Why didn't you tell me two years ago?' Drew demanded with stark, angry resentment. ‘Didn't you think I had the right to know?'

‘No,' Wallace said simply. ‘When you left me alone to sink or swim with your debts, you lost any right you might have had to have a say in what I did with the Court. But don't worry, Drew…Leo paid a most handsome price, and my personal coffers are full again.'

As Drew recoiled from that unvarnished insult, Angie rose abruptly from her seat. ‘I think you'd all be much more comfortable having this conversation in private—'

‘Nonsense, girl!' Wallace told her with sharp impatience.
‘Sit down and keep quiet. There's more, and it concerns you as well.'

‘Me?'
Angie questioned as she sank reluctantly back down into her chair.

‘How can it possibly concern her? And would someone please tell me what she's doing here in the middle of all this?' Drew grated in furious frustration.

‘You have a short memory,' Leo breathed very softly.

‘
She
is the cat's mother,' Wallace responded with sardonic amusement as he surveyed his bewildered and furious grandson. ‘Angie is the mother of your child, Drew. Now isn't that an unexpected Christmas present?'

Angie's facial muscles froze. She was aghast by the announcement.

‘The mother of my
what
…?' Drew repeated explosively.

‘Angie didn't have that convenient abortion,' Leo supplied very drily. ‘She has a son.'

‘If she has, he's—' His mouth suddenly snapping shut again like a trap as he evidently recalled his own claim to be the father of her child, Drew shot Angie an incredulous, nakedly accusing glance. ‘Bloody hell, what is this?' he demanded rawly as he shot upright and glowered down at his grandfather. ‘Some sort of ceremonial witch hunt? Why did you invite me home for Christmas?'

‘As long as I'm alive, you'll always be welcome here,' Wallace informed him smoothly. ‘But I thought I ought to inform you that you now stand in great danger of being disinherited in favour of your son.'

‘Disinherited…?'
Drew ejaculated wrathfully.

Leo had stiffened. Beneath Angie's shattered gaze, a stark frown drew his black brows together as he studied his grandfather. It was obvious to Angie even in her shaken state that that particular announcement had come as a complete surprise to Leo as well.

Without a word or a further look in anyone's direction, Angie thrust her chair noisily back, rose unsteadily and walked quickly out of the room.

She was so devastated by what had taken place in the dining room that she was trembling, her head pounding, beads of perspiration dampening her brow as she took instant flight deep into the bowels of the house. She had been right to be suspicious of Wallace's change of heart, she thought strickenly. Outraged by his grandson's desertion, Wallace Neville had set them all up. The old man was trying to use her son as a weapon with which to punish Drew.

And she couldn't let Wallace do that; she couldn't possibly…indeed she ought to be walking back in there right now and telling the lot of them that Jake was Leo's son, not Drew's. But no doubt Drew was already loudly performing that particular task for her, she could not credit that he would remain silent in the face of that final, outrageous threat.

She found herself in the Orangery in the north wing—in its time a favourite schoolgirl haunt of hers because it had never been used by the family. But that vast and once extremely shabby forerunner of the modern day conservatory was barely recognisable to her astonished gaze. The worn mosaic-tiled floor had been restored to perfection. Water now played softly in the bronze lion fountain, and the lush foliage of towering, healthy plants was accentuated by concealed and undoubtedly very expensive lighting. A choked laugh escaped Angie then.

Oh, dear heaven, where had her eyes been since they'd arrived? The unusually pristine order of the grounds, the huge increase in staff, the absence of the smallest speck of dust, the exquisitely presented food and elaborate menu at the dinner table… So many changes, and all of them speaking of infinitely greater wealth than Wallace had ever possessed.

‘Angie…?'

Her bowed shoulders jerked up straight again, but she just couldn't make herself turn round and face Leo. But at least she knew that he didn't know he was a father yet, she conceded dully…
How
did she know? That deep, dark drawl had been too quiet and too controlled.

Predictably, Leo strode right into her view path to challenge her evasion. His heartbreakingly handsome features had a hard, forbidding cast that instantly disturbed her and she tore her eyes swiftly from him again.

‘I wasn't aware that Wallace had invited Drew. He didn't tell me,' Leo admitted harshly. ‘Nor had I any idea what his plans were. I would not have knowingly brought you into a situation like this.'

‘My father works for you now,' Angie whispered shakily.

Light and shadow played across the sculpted angles of Leo's strong face, his lean, hard body poised in predatory masculine stillness. He allowed the silence to gather and lie.

Angie shivered, skin clammy, head beginning to swim. She spun violently away. ‘Damn you, Leo,' she said chokily. ‘You should've told me!'

‘It wasn't relevant—'

‘Not relevant?' she echoed unevenly, thinking that only a male as immensely wealthy as Leo could dismiss the purchase of an ancestral home, an estate which ran to several thousand acres and a whole village full of tenants with such careless cool.

‘Wallace now occupies a suite of rooms on the ground floor, but only because he was finding the stairs a challenge. To all intents and purposes, he is as much master here as he ever was, and I would not have it any other way,' Leo told her curtly. ‘Drew almost bankrupted him. I bought because I had to buy,
not
out of any desire to deprive Drew of what he always fondly believed would be his.'

Angie was finding it very hard to concentrate. ‘He would've
sold it anyway,' she muttered, speaking the thought out loud without meaning to.

The silence came back, thunderous as a storm warning.

‘It's been an educational evening,' Leo finally murmured darkly, striking off on a conversational tangent just as she had minutes earlier, and in so doing revealing that on some deep, atavistic level below that surface composure Leo was infinitely more tense than he appeared.

Angie curved her arms round her trembling body, aching just at the sound of his voice. ‘Terrifying,' she whispered in stark truth.

‘Look at me…' Leo urged harshly.

‘I
can't
…' How was she ever going to meet his eyes while she told him? Told him that her son was also his son? He would hit the roof. He would hate her. He wouldn't turn his back and walk away from Jake. No, he would accept the burden of responsibility, but despise her utterly for putting him in that position.

‘Cristos!'
Leo grated with explosive abruptness as he settled a powerful hand on her shoulder and flipped her round to face him. ‘I said, look at me!'

Shivering and unsteady on her feet, she staggered slightly until he steadied her. She stared up at him, mouth dry, heart hammering like a wild thing in terror inside her breast. He searched her huge, shadowed eyes, the feverish flush demarcating her taut cheekbones, and just as suddenly set her back from him in a move of open, outright repulsion, his bold, dark features clenching with fierce derision.

Without warning, Leo attacked. ‘You little bitch…you couldn't take your eyes off him!'

The onslaught of that black, murderous fury shook Angie inside out with shock. ‘No—I—'

Leo spread his arms in an all-encompassing and violent gesture of disgust and dropped them again, glittering dark eyes
raking over her quailing figure. ‘He bedded you, he knocked you up and then he dumped you.
Theos
…not content with that, he bragged about his so-macho behaviour! And yet tonight he walked in after over two years and all of a sudden there was nobody else in that room for you
but
him!'

Angie was feeling horribly dizzy. ‘It w-wasn't like that—'

‘Perhaps you didn't note his reaction to the news that you had had the baby,' Leo derided with blistering effect. ‘He'd forgotten that there was ever a problem, and he was appalled. If he hadn't remembered just in time that he had boasted about his virility, he would've denied all responsibility!'

Angie pressed a weak hand to her throbbing brow. ‘Leo…I have something to tell you—'

‘No, you have nothing to tell me and nothing I could want to hear,' Leo interrupted with ruthless finality as he scanned her distraught face. ‘What I wanted to know I learnt at first hand tonight. You're still besotted with Drew.'

‘I'm not besot—'

‘You're pathetic, Angie!' Leo gritted half under his breath as he slung her one last hard, punishing glance then strode away.

‘Leo!' she gasped strickenly, moving after him, and then freezing into mortified paralysis as Drew appeared in the doorway.

‘She's all yours!' Leo drawled with crushing clarity as he brushed past his cousin.

Feeling as weak as a half-drowned kitten, Angie made it over to one of the capacious basketwork armchairs and fell down into it before her wobbling legs folded beneath her.

‘What's got into him?' Drew enquired irritably as he came to a halt several feet away.

‘Your filthy lies,' Angie informed him with a convulsive swallow.

Drew stiffened. ‘So Leo told you…'

‘Yes.'

‘Well, we all get a little foolish when we've had a few drinks too many,' Drew said in insultingly casual acknowledgement and dismissal of what he had done. ‘But that still doesn't explain why everyone is running round with the idea that your brat is mine! Why didn't
you
tell Wallace and Leo the truth?'

Angie buried her aching head in her hands. ‘I'm not feeling well enough for this.'

‘Too bad…you've made a real hash of my homecoming!' he condemned.

‘You did a hateful thing, Drew…don't try to put all the blame for this situation on me,' Angie warned him heavily.

Silence stretched for several taut seconds.

‘It's very easily sorted,' Drew told her with studied casualness then. ‘You just tell Leo that when you first became pregnant you assumed that the baby was mine, and then later realised your mistake.'

A hoarse laugh was dredged from Angie. Same old Drew, she noted dully. Drew had always been enormously, ridiculously conscious of his image where Leo was concerned. He didn't want to be branded a boastful liar. He didn't want it known even now that they had
never
been lovers! Disgusted by his selfishness, Angie forced her hands down on the chair arms and raised herself up again.

‘Where are you going?'

‘Bed… I'll tell Leo the truth when you tell him the truth,' Angie asserted unsteadily, but the look in her feverish blue eyes was one of fierce, immovable conviction.

Drew looked angrily incredulous at the challenge. ‘He wouldn't believe me!'

‘Then you'll have to work at being convincing…because
I will not pretend that I was a promiscuous slut to promote your Mr Cool image!'

‘My God…what do you have to lose?
Leo?
You never could catch him to keep, but that kid of yours could be your meal ticket for life! So why hold off on breaking the glad tidings?'

Appalled by a viciousness that Drew had never aimed at her before, Angie stared back at him with pained incomprehension.

‘OK…so Leo isn't likely to greet a little bastard with joy,' Drew conceded with a twist of his lips. ‘Particularly not when he's already got Marisa Laurence lined up as Mrs Demetrios number two. But I should think he'll make it well worth your while to keep a low profile, and you'll certainly never have to hire yourself out as an au pair again.'

Angie had turned bone-white. A trickle of perspiration ran down between her heaving breasts as she dragged in a tremulously short and inadequate breath to sustain herself. ‘Marisa…Laurence?'

Drew elevated a knowing brow, cruel amusement in his gaze as he scanned her stricken pallor. ‘He's known her practically all his life,' he reminded her unnecessarily. ‘Whatever recent spoke you contrived to put in the wheel of their relationship would seem to me to have snapped tonight…and Marisa is a very determined lady. If I were you, I'd settle for what I could get off Leo fast!'

Briefly, Angie closed her aching eyes, and then she began to walk away, afraid she would collapse where she stood if she didn't stay on the move. Marisa Laurence…daughter of the only other major landowner in the area and, even in Angie's time, a regular visitor to the Court. An elegant, dainty blonde, who had always made Angie feel like a great, hulking amazon. An ocean of pain filled her to overflowing and it was almost
more than she could bear. So
that
was who Leo had been with the night before he flew to Brussels!