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Lexi wished the words back as soon as they left her mouth because even though she thought they might be true, he most likely didn’t need to hear them right now.
Leo turned on her. ‘Is that what you imagine is going on here, Lexi?’ he snarled. ‘Did you imagine I was falling in love with you? That you had beaten every other woman to the post and would get my ring on your finger?’ He laughed harshly as if the idea was ludicrous. ‘Because I’ll tell you now, I’m not the type to hand out trinkets you can wear around your neck in the hope that one day I’ll come back.’
Lexi felt as if she’d been punched. Not only because of what he had said, but also because she could see that she had just done what her mother had done—harangued a man into ending a relationship with her.
But she couldn’t be sorry. Not like her mother had been. Because Lexi knew she deserved more from a man. Where her mother would have settled if her father had stayed, Lexi realised that she never would. So, as sick as she felt at losing the man that she loved, she couldn’t be sorry that she had forced the confrontation. ‘I wasn’t talking about you taking a chance on me, Leo,’ she said with quiet dignity. ‘I was talking about Ty.’
‘Leo? Hellooooo?’
Leo blinked at the sound of the cutesy female voice in front of him and landed back at the Duke of Greythorn’s swanky London party with a thud.
He glanced down as the blonde curled her fingers around his forearm as she smiled up at him. ‘For a minute there I didn’t think you’d heard a word I said.’
Leo stared at her. For a minute? Try the last half an hour.
He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced around the opulent hotel room and thought that his investment team had done a good job in procuring it for his portfolio. But that was it. He couldn’t care less about the party, or the people in it.
‘Look, Sarah—’
‘Samantha.’
‘Samantha.’ He smiled, but it felt like more of a wince. ‘To be honest, I didn’t. My son is at home with a cold and I’m a little distracted right now.’
‘You have a son? Does he look like you?’
Yes. Yes, he did. And Leo felt his heart swell with pride at the fact. He shook his head slowly. ‘You know, you’re the first person who isn’t in his inner circle who knows about him.’
The blonde tilted her head coquettishly. ‘I feel privileged.’
Leo frowned. He hadn’t told her because he wanted her to feel privileged, he’d told her because for the first time he actually felt like it. For the first time he actually felt like Ty’s father and it pained him to think that Ty still didn’t know who he really was.
‘Do you have a wife as well?’ Samantha purred.
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not that lucky.’ Lucky? Where had that come from? ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have to go.’
‘Of course. I hope your child feels better soon.’
Leo brooded about the evening he’d had all the way home. It wasn’t the party that was the problem, or even most of the people in it. It was him. He’d changed. He wanted more from life than polite chitchat and a fleeting moment of losing himself inside a beautiul woman’s body.
He’d only been back from Greece for a week but other than work and Ty, he had to admit that he was bored, and for once he didn’t want to just carry on as if everything was okay. Because it wasn’t. It was empty.
As if on cue, an image of Lexi’s smiling face came to mind and he realised he’d never once been bored in her company. Phenomenally turned on—and exceptionally frustrated—but never bored.
He recalled the moment she had left the
yacht exactly seven days ago. He hadn’t gone after her straight after she’d walked out of his room, his emotions stripped bare when her pained expression had reminded him of how his mother had often looked at him when he’d disappointed her as a child.
He and his mother had an estranged relationship at best. He sent her money she didn’t use and she called him on his birthday, which made him feel guilty and hurt. The fact was, something had broken between them after she had asked the nursing staff to turn off Sasha’s life support system and he didn’t know how to get it back.
And Lexi had only exacerbated those feelings with her unrelenting questions that morning. So, instead of going to her straight away to apologise for his callous words, he had done what he always did when emotion threatened to swamp him—he’d switched off. Gone for a swim.
He would have gone to her after he had cooled down but he’d been too late. She had already boarded one of his choppers for Athens—supposedly under his instructions! He’d nearly called it back but he knew how much she hated them and it had been a mark of her desperation to get away from him so he’d decided to let her go. Ty had cried and then become remote. Just like he did when he was trying to stop himself from feeling anything.
‘Good evening, Mr Aleksandrov.’
‘Good evening, Mrs Parsons.’ Leo pasted on a smile and walked through to his sitting room, shrugging out of his dinner jacket. ‘How’s Ty?’
‘Sleeping like a little lamb. I told you the worst of his illness was over.’
