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The owners had clearly been as bowled over by his over-the-top, generous offer as he had anticipated. There was a bottle of champagne on the central island and two champagne glasses.
‘Well? What do you think?’
‘It’s wonderful,’ Brianna murmured. ‘I’d never have thought that you could find somewhere like this so close to London. Is it going to be a second home for you?’
‘It’s going to be a first home for us.’
Brianna felt as though the breath had temporarily been knocked out of her. Elation zipped through her at the thought of this—a house, the perfect house, shared with the man she loved and their child. In the space of a few seconds, she projected into the future where she saw their son or daughter enjoying the open space, running through the garden with a dog trailing behind, while she watched from the kitchen window with Leo right there behind her, sitting by the big pine table, chatting about his day.
The illusion disappeared almost as fast as it had surfaced because that was never going to be reality. The reality would be her, stuck out here on her own, while Leo carried on working all hours in the city, eventually bored by the woman he was stuck with. He would do his duty for his child but the image of cosy domesticity was an illusion and she had to face that.
‘It’s not going to work,’ she said abruptly, turning away and blinking back stupid tears. ‘Nothing’s changed, Leo, and you can’t bribe me into marrying you with a nice house and a nice garden.’
For a few seconds, Leo wasn’t sure that he had heard her correctly. He had been so confident of winning her over with the house that he was lost for words as what she had said gradually sank in.
‘I didn’t realise that I was trying to bribe you,’ he muttered in a driven undertone. He raked his fingers through his hair and grappled with an inability to get his thoughts in order. ‘You liked the house; you said so.’
‘I do, but a house isn’t enough, just like sex isn’t enough. That glue would never keep us together.’ The words felt as though they had been ripped out of her and she had to turn away because she just couldn’t bear to see his face.
‘Right.’ And still he couldn’t quite get it through his head that she had turned him down, that any notion of marriage was over. He hesitated and stared at the stubborn angle of her profile then he strode towards the door. He was filled with a surge of restlessness, a keen desire to be outside, as if the open air might clear his head and point him towards a suitably logical way forward.
It was a mild evening and he circled the house, barely taking in the glorious scenery he had earlier made a great show of pointing out to her.
Inside, Brianna heard the slam of the front door and spun around, shaking like a leaf. The void he had left behind felt like a physical, tangible weight in the room, filling it up until she thought she would suffocate.
Where had he gone? Surely he wouldn’t just drive off and leave her alone here in the middle of nowhere? She contemplated the awkward drive back into London and wondered whether it wouldn’t be better to be stuck out here. But, when she dashed out of the front door, it was to find his car parked exactly where it had been when they had first arrived. And he was nowhere to be seen.
He was a grown man, fully capable of taking care of himself, and yet as she dashed down the drive to the main road and peered up and down, failing to spot him, she couldn’t stop a surge of panic rising inside her.
What if he had been run over by a car? It was very quiet here, she sternly told herself; what called itself the main road was hardly a thoroughfare. In fact, no more than a tractor or two and the occasional passing car, so there was no need to get into a flap. But, like a runaway train, she saw in her mind’s eyes his crumpled body lying at the kerbside, and she felt giddy and nauseous at the thought of it.
She circled the house at a trot, circled it again and then...she saw him sitting on the ground under one of the trees, his back towards the house. Sitting on the muddy ground in his hand-tailored Italian suit.
‘What are you doing?’ She approached him cautiously because for the life of her she had never seen him like this—silent, his head lowered, his body language so redolent of vulnerability that she felt her breath catch painfully in her throat.
He looked up at her and her mouth went dry. ‘You have no intention of ever forgiving me for the lie I told you, have you?’ he asked so quietly that she had to bend a little to hear what he was saying. ‘Even though you know that I had no intention of engineering a lie when I first arrived. Even though you know, or you should know, that what appeared harmless to me at the time was simply a means towards an end. I was thinking on my feet. I never expected to end up painting myself into the box of pathological liar.’
