His Last Chance at Redemption (6 page)

‘Oh—’ Lexi shook her head ‘—I’ll add chauvinist to your list of personal attributes, shall I?’

‘I meant it as a compliment.’

‘That’s even worse!’

He leaned his hip against the edge of the sofa and cocked his head. ‘Will I like any of the other things on your list?’

Lexi shot him a fulminating glare, feeling a little spent after her tirade. ‘What do you think?’

He laughed and Lexi felt a tug of awareness low in her pelvis as he studied her, his casual stance and insolent regard making her aware of her femininity—her womanliness—in a way she hated. Making her think of sex—of all things!

She swallowed heavily and his eyes dropped to her throat and Lexi nearly raised her hand to cover it. What was he thinking about? Heat crept up her neck and she was afraid she might know.

‘I think you’re a woman with exacting standards that not many men manage to live up to.’

Lexi blinked. ‘I think you’d fail to live up to most people’s standards,’ she retorted, stung a little by his assessment of her.

‘You’d be surprised.’

‘I’m not talking about the hundreds of women you go through like disposable razors.’

He smiled at that. ‘Neither was I. And for your information, I use an electric.’

‘Well, you didn’t use it today,’ she said hotly and then wished she hadn’t when a sexy smile crossed his face. Damn. Now he probably thought she liked his stubble. Wanted to touch it, even. Huh! As if.

She tightened her hold on her bag, aware that the conversation was taking a dangerous turn. ‘This is irrelevant.’

‘I agree.’ He pushed off from the sofa and sat down on it, his arms spread wide along the back like a sultan surveying his kingdom. ‘So tell me, what is it going to take to get you to agree to take care of Ty this weekend?’

‘Surely you have someone else who can help you out. A girlfriend, perhaps?’

‘Is that your way of asking if I’m available, Miss Somers?’

Lexi glared at him. ‘That’s my way of asking if you have someone else to help you out. I would ask if you had a mother but I’m not sure you weren’t hatched from an egg.’

Leo laughed, a deep, husky sound that sent tingles tracking down her spine. ‘I’m single. But, even if I wasn’t, bringing a girlfriend in at this late stage isn’t really the answer, is it?’

It wasn’t really a question and, worst of all, she knew he was right. Lexi glanced outside at the endless view of the night sky and felt oddly cornered. ‘I can’t just drop everything in my life to help you.’

‘Think of it as helping Ty. You might find that more palatable,’ he drawled.

Lexi made a derisive sound in the back of her throat and thought that if she wasn’t such a nice person—and the thought of touching him didn’t scare her so much—she’d smack him. ‘Oh, you’re good.’

‘Thank you.’

‘It wasn’t a compliment.’

‘I know.’

Just as he knew she was about to capitulate
.

Lexi ground her teeth together and turned back and focused on the elegant dome of St Paul’s Cathedral in the distance. Anything was better than looking at Leo sprawled on the sofa with arrogant nonchalance. No doubt he would be attending parties in Greece and having a lovely time. A lovely time without his son. Lexi drummed her fingers against her arm. Just like her father.

‘What are you waiting for, Miss Somers?’ Leo drawled, his accent giving the words a sexy edge. ‘The stars to align?’

Lexi fumed. Arrogant so-and-so … And then an idea sprouted. What if he took Ty to Greece and had a chance to get to know his son? Would that change his attitude towards Ty? She didn’t know, but it was worth a try and it was better than staying in London where there was no chance at all of that happening. Lexi didn’t trust that Amanda could look after Ty without her mother around and, although Leo Aleksandrov didn’t appear to be much better, she had to find out.

She turned back to consider him and tried to ignore sensations she would rather not feel shimmy down her spine as he looked back at her with lazy insolence. ‘I’ll do it if you take Ty with you.’

His eyelids lowered and when he raised them his eyes were no longer lazy or insolent, but hard and flat. ‘Never been to Greece, angel?’

‘Your list just got longer.’

Knowing the type of man he was she hadn’t expected to win this point without a fight but, instead of arguing with her, he slowly rose to his feet, his eyes on her the whole time. Then he smiled, a killer’s smile, and Lexi felt the cold plate-glass window through her clothing and realised she’d backed up a step. ‘Careful, angel, you might fall.’

Lexi stiffened her spine and gave him a look that had been known to stay the rowdiest of children. ‘I’m not afraid of you Mr Aleksandrov.’ Or the way he called her
angel,
with the tiniest hint of sexual promise behind it.

Much, anyway
.

She lifted her chin just a fraction as he continued to stare at her and then finally—thankfully—he nodded his head and gestured towards the door.

‘Let me show you to your room.’

Lexi nearly threw her hands up in the air as she realised that she’d just inadvertently agreed to go to Greece with him.
The
last
thing she wanted to do. But how could she say no, now? ‘I must be mad,’ she muttered under her breath, trailing him up the long corridor towards the bedrooms.

He stopped in front of the room next to the one Ty occupied.

Lexi folded her arms across her chest. ‘Why do I have to stay here tonight if you’re not leaving until the morning?’

‘Insurance.’

‘If I give my word then I keep it.’

‘But you haven’t given me your word.’

She very nearly stamped her foot at that. ‘Are you always this argumentative?’

He leant against the door frame regarding her lazily. ‘Funny, I was going to ask the same thing about you.’ His voice held a husky quality she knew he’d probably used on a hundred other women and she hardened her resolve not to be affected by him.

Lexi took a deep breath. ‘I give you my word I will return first thing in the morning.’

He shrugged. ‘It doesn’t matter. I need you here tonight in case Ty wakes up.’

Lexi wanted to argue with him but again he had a point. ‘I don’t have anything to wear to bed,’ she mumbled, feeling utterly defeated and uncharacteristically irritable.

He held out his hand. ‘Give me your address and keys and I’ll send my driver to pick up whatever you need.’

‘Why can’t I go myself?’

‘Because Ty might wake up.’

‘I’ll be an hour,’ she said, completely exasperated.

‘No.’

‘Well, I’m not having someone I don’t know go through my things.’

And she knew Aimee would be at Todd’s by now so she couldn’t very well call and get her to send her things over in a cab.

He looked down at her, his blue eyes twin pools of open sensuality. ‘There’s always your birthday suit.’

Lexi chose to ignore the dangerous gleam in his gaze and instead focused on the fact that this man was the worst type of playboy around. Then she remembered his suggestive comment in her office earlier. The man would probably have sex with a lamp post if it offered.

‘I don’t suppose one of your many girlfriends left a nightie I could borrow, did they?’ she asked sweetly.

She was hoping he’d be a little embarrassed by her sarcasm, but instead the smile that curled the corners of his mouth was lethally sexy. ‘I don’t have
girlfriends
. But if you’re referring to my many bed partners, I’ll check.’

Lexi blew out a tank-load of air after he walked out and placed her bag on the embroidered silk bedspread and stood with her hands on her hips, wondering what she had got herself into. Then the hairs on the back of her neck rose and she didn’t need to glance in the full-length mirror opposite to know he was back. She turned just in time to catch a wad of grey fabric he tossed at her. Holding it up, she saw it was a well-worn T-shirt someone might wear to the gym. ‘This is yours,’ she said huskily.

He looked at her through heavy-lidded eyes. ‘And I’ll dream about you in it all night, angel.’

‘I don’t find comments like that funny,’ she reprimanded.

He smiled again and grabbed the door handle. ‘Goodnight, Miss Somers. Oh—’ he paused and Lexi felt her nerves, already jangling on a knife edge split down the middle ‘—in case I forget to tell you. I appreciate you staying. And tell lover boy I’m sorry for ruining his
plans
.’ That last was spoken with not even a shred of sincerity. The louse.

She had fallen in with the devil and he was every bit as ruthless as myth suggested.

L
EXI
didn’t know what had woken her. The room was pitch-black so it wasn’t yet morning and then she heard it again. A low, deep moaning sound.

‘Ty.’

She stumbled out of bed and down the hall into his room, only to pull up short when she found him sound asleep, his face relaxed and peaceful in the soft glow of the bedside lamp.

Wondering if she had been so on edge with the whole ‘sleeping at a billionaire’s apartment’ thing she had dreamt it, she was about to go back to bed when she heard it again.

‘Leo.’ She exhaled the word into the still night.

It was Leo, not Ty.

Lexi was momentarily paralysed in the middle of the darkened hallway, her heart thumping in her chest, indecision turning her into a statue. Then she heard him moan something that sounded like ‘No, Sasha’ and her legs carried her forward. She had always been a sucker for anyone in need. Stopping by roadsides to tend to hurt animals, collecting birds and trying to nurse them back to health. Once she had even demanded her mother stop the car and had rescued a lamb from a tangle of barbed wire. That lamb had been the love of her eight-year-old life, following her around in the garden every day as if it had imprinted on her.

Lexi forgot all about the lamb as she cautiously pushed open the door to Leo’s room and peered into the gloom. As
her eyes adjusted, she could make out the richly furnished room, the curtains slightly parted, letting in a finger of light that fell across the end of an enormous bed.

The man in it moved restlessly and Lexi’s eyes were drawn to the dark sheet that was tangled around his lower body. He lay on his back, one arm flung over his head, the other outstretched as if he was reaching for something. His chest was bare and utterly magnificent. Broad and lean with densely packed muscles beneath a light covering of chest hair that arrowed all the way down over his shadowed abdomen and beyond. And yes, it looked like he had a six-pack, she thought resentfully.

Lexi couldn’t tear her eyes away as he shifted restlessly and remembered his question about whether she wanted to know what he slept in, hoping it was more than it looked like right now. He moaned again and rolled onto his side, fingers flexing and such a look of anguished despair on his face that Lexi’s heart leapt and she automatically went to him. Whatever he was dreaming about, she felt sure he’d be better off awake than asleep.

Without even thinking, she reached down and placed her hand gently against the rounded ball of his shoulder.

Leo’s reaction was instantaneous and, before she could draw breath, Lexi felt all the air whoosh out of her lungs as she found herself flat on her back beneath him. The expression on his face was so intense real fear rippled through her body.

‘Mr Aleksandrov … Leo!’ Lexi raised her hands to his naked chest and shoved against solid muscle that didn’t give an inch. Heat spiked through her as her fingers slipped to the firm muscles of his shoulders, her lower body instantly clenching in reaction to the pressure of his hard, hair-roughened thighs pressed so intimately against her own. She tried to shift against him but she was literally pinned down and then
she gasped, going stock-still as she felt the hardness of his erection pressed intimately between her thighs.

Oh, boy! Sensation the like she had never experienced arced through her body, turning it liquid, and she found herself involuntarily arching into him to assuage the ache that had sprung up deep in her pelvis.

She knew he felt her undeniably sexual response because the hand that gripped her arm moved to the nape of her neck and then fisted in her hair as he tilted her face up towards his. She wanted to tell him he was dreaming, but she lost all sense of reason as their eyes met in the dimly lit room and everything else faded. A breath shuddered through her and as his masculine scent acted like a drug on her senses she raised her face to receive the hard promise of his beautiful mouth.

It was as if all the tension of worrying about Ty and the second childcare centre, and Leo himself, coalesced into this moment and she gave herself over to the feel of him, moaning in pleasure as his lips crushed hers in a hard, possessive kiss.

Excitement barrelled through her and her hands slid up the smooth skin of his back, kneading and testing the muscles as she went. His skilful tongue demanded entrance to her mouth and when she gave it their muted groans mingled hotly in the otherwise silent room. Lexi felt as if she were on fire and when his hands started roaming over her body, learning her shape, it was all she could do not to tell him to hurry up as his hands moved closer and closer to her aching breasts. She shifted again, trying to make it easier for him, and then cried out as he sensed what she needed and shoved his hand up under her T-shirt and palmed her naked breast, the rough pad of his thumb drawing an animalistic sound from her throat as it swept across her painfully sensitive nipple.

‘Oh!’ Her legs scissored helplessly as she tried to lift her hips under the heavy weight of his, energy building inside of her and driving her towards a nirvana she’d never felt in a man’s arms before.

‘Easy,’ his rough, sleep-laden voice whispered against her ear at the same time as one of his hands slid to her hips to stay her restless squirming.

But it was as if that one word had intruded on a magical, secret world and shattered it, reality returning with a sickening thud as she recalled where she was and who she was with.

Lexi pushed against his chest, her movements now frenzied for a different reason. ‘Leo … Mr Aleksandrov. Get off. You’ve had a bad dream.’