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She stole his Levantsky rubies, and she never said sorry.
She got him achingly aroused and then threw him out of her bedroom, and she never said sorry.
She shouted harassment at him, and never said sorry.
She accused him of criminal blackmail, and she never said sorry.
She called sex with him sordid, and never said sorry.
Worst of all, she got herself abducted by psychos and he had to go after her and save her and get shot to pieces.
But she was saying sorry now. He could hear her.
His eyes opened.
It wasn’t a dream.
Anna Delane was sitting by his bed, her face blotched with crying, and she was saying, ‘I’m sorry, Leo. I’m just so sorry.’
Then she saw his eyes open, and fell silent in mid ‘sorry’.
For one long, endless moment he saw her mouth quiver, as though she were trying to control something.
Then she burst into renewed noisy tears.
Leo just stared.
Her green eyes were smeared, lashes clogged, cheeks runnelled, colour blotchy, and her nose was red.
She looked awful.
She looked the most precious sight in the world to him.
He reached for her hand. It was twisting with her other hand in her lap. There was a soggy wet tissue in their clutch. He dropped it disgustedly on the floor and took her hand, lifting it back on the bed. It felt ludicrously heavy.
But it felt the most precious thing in the world to him.
He was insane, he knew. She was a thief, a hypocrite, a cussed, unrepentant, shameless, uncooperating, accusatory damn woman, with more attitude than Genghis Khan, and she could make him angrier than he’d ever felt about a woman before. But when he’d seen her standing there, forcibly stripped to the waist, that scum jamming a gun under her ear, he’d felt a rage that he had never known in his life.
No one, no one was going to do that to her and live.
Even if it meant he ended up like a damn sieve, full of bullet holes!
With supreme effort he yanked her hand closer to him, possessively.
‘Theos, but you’re trouble, yineka mou,’ he said, his voice slurring with tiredness.
Her storm of weeping increased. He watched with heavy-lidded eyes he could hardly keep open.
Well, he thought wonderingly, you see something new every day. Anna Delane, crying. His beautiful Anna, crying.
He squeezed her fingers. He wanted to haul her down on him and hold her so tight she’d never storm off again—ever. But he hadn’t got the strength right now. So he just squeezed her fingers instead.
It made her cry more.
‘Oh, God, Leo, I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. It’s my fault. All my fault.’
He hazed a faint smile. Anna Delane, apologising at last. It was a good feeling.
Irrelevant now, but still good.
‘You came after me. You thought me a thief, and I said all those horrible things to you, and you still came after me. You saved my life—and I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. And I’m so glad, so incredibly grateful, that you’re alive.’
Leo went on watching her. He still couldn’t get over hardboiled Anna Delane bawling her eyes out for him.
It was doing the strangest thing to him. The damnedest thing.
He decided to hell with his stitches, and yanked her down to him.
It cut the apologising out instantly.
‘Leo! Oh, my God—your wounds.’
She was trying to struggle up from where he’d pulled her to him. He wasn’t having that. He definitely wasn’t having that. She wasn’t getting away from him.
‘Hold still. I’m not letting you go.’
‘But I’m hurting you!’
‘Quiet,’ ordered Leo.
He lifted his free hand and brought it round to cup her cheek. His thumb grazed her tear-wet cheek.
‘Tears for me?’ he said wonderingly. ‘Anna Delane, crying over me?’
‘Of course I’m crying! I owe you my life,’ she wailed. ‘And you nearly got killed for my sake. You nearly got killed. And I feel so bad. I thought you were just a spoilt, arrogant bastard who believed he could help himself to me because I was a model, that you just wanted a quick lay because you thought I was cheap and easy—and then you got sex from me by threatening me with jail, because I had to let you think I was a thief, and you didn’t see anything wrong with getting sex that way, and I hated you for that, and I hated you even more because you made me forget that was why you were having sex with me, and that made me even angrier with you—that you could make me so stupid over you, wanting a man who was treating me like that—and so I hated you even more, and I was horrible to you—as horrible as I could be—and then you went and came after me when those sicko goons got me, and they would have killed me, and tortured me and you saved me and nearly got killed—you nearly got killed—and I thought you were dead. Oh, God, I thought you were dead, Leo, and it was… It just made everything else seem pointless and stupid, and I didn’t care if you were spoilt and arrogant, because I just wanted you to be alive. I just desperately, desperately wanted you to be alive…’
