Deal With The Devil: Secrets of a Ruthless Tycoon / The Most Expensive Lie of All / The Magnate's Manifesto

Behind her, Leo scooped up the remainder of the files and began following her.

‘Never said what?’

‘All those women you’re so cynical about...’ She paused to look at him over her shoulder. ‘The ones who wear lacy underwear...’

‘Did I ever say that? I don’t recall.’

‘You didn’t have to. I can read between the lines.’ She spun back round and headed towards her suite of rooms, straight to the study, where she dumped all the files she had been carrying. She stood back and watched as he deposited the remainder of them, including her computer, which was as heavy as a barrow full of bricks, and—yes, he was right—in desperate need of updating.

Brianna took in his guarded, shuttered expression and knew instinctively that she was treading on quicksand, even though he hadn’t rushed in with any angry words telling her to mind her own business. She could see it on his face. Her heart was beating so fiercely that she could almost hear it in the still quiet of the room.

‘I’m going to have a shower,’ she mumbled, backing out of the little office. ‘On my own, if you don’t mind.’

Leo frowned and raked his fingers through his hair, but he didn’t move a muscle.

She wanted to talk. Talk about what? His exes? What was the point of that? When it came to women and meaningful conversations, they invariably led down the same road: a dead end. He wasn’t entirely sure where his aversion to commitment came from and he knew, if he were honest, that his parents would have wanted to see him travel down the traditional route of marriage and kids by thirty—but there it was; he hadn’t. He had never felt the inclination. Perhaps a feeling of security was something that developed in a mother’s womb and having been given up for adoption, by definition, had wiped that out and the security of making money, something tangible he could control, had taken its place.

At any rate, the minute any woman started showing signs of crossing the barriers he had firmly erected around himself, they were relegated to history.

He told himself that there should be no difficulty in this particular relationship following the same course because he could see, from the look in her eyes, that whatever chat she wanted to have was not going to begin and end with the choice of underwear his women were accustomed to wearing.

He told himself that in fact it would be easier to end this relationship because, in essence, it had never really functioned in his real life. It had functioned as something sweet and satisfying within a bubble. And within a day or two, once he had met his birth mother and put any unanswered questions to rest, he would be gone.

So there definitely was no point to a lengthy heart-to-,heart. He strolled into the bedroom and glanced down at the snow which was already beginning to thaw.

She emerged minutes later from the shower with a towel wrapped round her, her long hair piled up on top of her head and held in place with a hair grip. Tendrils had escaped and framed her heart-shaped face. She looked impossibly young and vulnerable.

‘What are you doing in my bedroom?’

‘Okay. So I go out with women who seem to spend a lot of money on fancy underwear.’ He glowered at her. ‘I don’t know what that has to do with anything.’ He watched as she rummaged in her drawers in silence and fetched out some faded jogging bottoms and a rugby-style jumper, likewise faded.

Brianna knew that a few passing remarks had escalated into something that she found unsettling. She didn’t want to pry into his life. She wanted to be the adult who took this on board, no questions asked and no strings attached. Unfortunately...

She disappeared back into the bathroom, changed and returned to find him still standing in an attitude of challenging defensiveness by the bedroom window.

‘You wanted to talk...’ he prompted, in defiance of common sense. ‘Are you jealous that I’ve had lovers? That they’ve been the sort of women who—?’

‘Don’t run pubs, live on a shoestring and wear functional underwear from department stores? No, I’m not jealous. Why would I be?’

‘Good. Because, personally, I don’t do jealousy.’ It occurred to Leo that there were a number of things he didn’t do when it came to his personal relationships and yet, here he was, doing one of them right now: having a talk.

‘Have we ended up in bed because you think I make a change?’ She took a deep breath and looked him squarely in the face. He was so beautiful. He literally took her breath away. ‘From all those women you went out with?’ If she found him beautiful, if he blew her mind away, then why wouldn’t he have had the same effect on hordes of other women?

‘No! That’s an absurd question.’

‘Is it?’ She turned on her heel and began back down the stairs to the bar area where she proceeded to do some unnecessary tidying. He lounged against the bar, hands in his pockets, and watched her as she worked. She appeared to be in no hurry to proceed with the conversation she had initiated. The longer the silence stretched between them, the more disgruntled Leo became.

Moving to stand directly in front of her, so that she was forced to stop arranging the beer mats in straight lines on the counter, he said, ‘If there’s any comparison to be done, then you win hands down.’

Brianna felt a stupid surge of pleasure. ‘I’m guessing you would say that, considering we’re sleeping together and you’re pretty much stuck here.’

‘Am I? The snow seems to be on its way out.’ They weren’t touching each other, but he could feel her as forcibly as if they had been lying naked on her bed.

‘How long do you intend to stay?’ She flushed and glanced down at her feet before taking a deep breath and looking at him without flinching. ‘I’m going to keep the pub closed for another fortnight but just in case, er, bookings come in for the rooms, it would be helpful for me to know when yours might be free to, er, rent out...’

And this, Leo thought, was the perfect opportunity to put a date in the calendar. It was as obvious as the nose on his face that her reason for wanting to find out when he would be leaving had nothing to do with a possible mystery surge in bookings for the rooms. He didn’t like being put in a position of feeling trapped.

‘I told you I’d stick around, make sure you didn’t get ripped off or taken advantage of by this so-called best buddy of yours,’ he said roughly. ‘I won’t be going anywhere until I’m satisfied that you’re okay on that score. Satisfied? No; you’re not. What else is on your mind, Brianna? Spit it out and then I can disappear for a shower and some work and leave you to get on with your female bonding in peace.’

Brianna shrugged. Everything about his body language suggested that he was in no mood to stand here, answering questions. Perhaps, she thought, answering questions was something else he didn’t do when it came to women. Like jealousy. And yet he wasn’t moving. ‘Did you end up here on the back of a bad relationship?’ she asked bluntly. She shot him a defiant look from under her lashes. ‘I know you don’t want me to ask lots of questions...’

‘Did I ever say that?’

‘You don’t have to.’

‘Because, let me guess, you seem to have a hot line to my thoughts!’ He scowled. Far from backing away from an interrogation he didn’t want and certainly didn’t need, his feet appeared to be disobeying the express orders of his brain. Against all odds, he wanted to wipe that defensive, guarded expression from her face. ‘And no, I did not end up here on the back of a bad relationship.’ He had ended up here because...

Leo flushed darkly, uncomfortable with where his thoughts were drifting.

‘I’m sleeping with you, and I know it’s going to end soon, but I still want to know that you’re not using me as some sort of sticking plaster while you try to recover from a broken heart.’

‘I’ve never suffered from a broken heart, Brianna.’ Leo smiled crookedly at her and stroked the side of her face with his finger.

Just then her mobile buzzed and after only a few seconds on the phone she said to him, ‘Bridget’s had her final check-up with the consultant and they’re going to be setting off in about half an hour. They’ll probably be here in about an hour and a half or so. Depends on the roads, but the main roads will all be gritted. It’s only the country lanes around here that are still a little snowed up.’

An hour and a half. Leo’s lips thinned but, despite the impending meeting with his mother, one which he had quietly anticipated for a number of years ever since he had tracked down her whereabouts, his focus remained exclusively on the girl standing in front of him.

‘Everyone has suffered from a broken heart at some point.’ She reverted to her original topic.

‘I’m the exception to the rule.’

‘You’ve never been in love?’

‘You say that as though it’s inconceivable. No. Never. And stop looking at me as though I’ve suddenly turned into an alien life-form. Are you telling me that, after your experience with the guy you thought you would be spending your life with, you’re still glad to have been in love?’

He lounged against the bar and stared down at her. He had become so accustomed to wearing jeans and an assortment of her father’s old plaid flannel shirts, a vast array of which she seemed to have kept, that he idly wondered what it would feel like returning to his snappy handmade suits, his Italian shoes, the silk ties, driving one of his three cars or having Harry chauffeur him. He would return to the reality of high-powered meetings, life in the fast lane, private planes and first-class travel to all four corners of the globe.

Here, he could be a million miles away, living on another planet. Was that why he now found himself inclined to have this type of conversation? The sort of touchy-feely conversation that he had always made a point of steering well clear from? Really, since when had he ever been into probing any woman about her thoughts and feelings about past loves?

‘Of course I am,’ Brianna exclaimed stoutly. ‘It may have crashed and burned, but there were moments of real happiness.’

Leo frowned. Real happiness? What did she mean by that? Good sex? He didn’t care much for a trip down happiness lane with her. If she felt inclined to reminisce over the good old days, conveniently forgetting the misery that had been dished up to her in the end, then he was not the man with the listening ear.

‘How salutary that you can ignore the fact that you were taken for a ride for years... Are you still in touch with the creep?’

Brianna frowned and tried to remember what the creep looked like. ‘No,’ she said honestly. ‘I haven’t got a clue what he’s up to. The last I heard from one of my friends from uni, he had gone abroad to work for some important law firm in New York. He’s disappeared completely. I was heartbroken at the time, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not glad I met him, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t hope to meet that someone special at some point in the future.’

And as she said that a very clear picture of Mr Special floated into her mind. He was approximately six-two with bronzed skin, nearly black hair and lazy, midnight-dark eyes that could send shivers racing up and down her spine. He came in a package that had carried very clear health warnings but still she had fallen for him like a stupid teenager with more hormones than common sense.