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‘So you did.’ He tossed his jacket onto the back of the sofa. ‘Do you have that passport yet?’
‘Not yet sir, but I’ll be sure to tell you when it comes through.’
Leo nodded and walked her to the door once she had collected her bag. ‘Goodnight, Mrs Parsons. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.’
‘Actually, I’m back in tomorrow morning, sir. Carolina has an appointment to attend to in the morning.’
‘Fine. See you in the morning.’
He saw her out of the door and tugged at his bow tie.
He stopped outside Ty’s room and opened the door a whisker to look inside. The room looked vastly different from the way it had before he’d gone to Greece. Gone was the double bed and modern furnishings and in its place was a racing car bed and half a toy store. Leo smiled at the thought of how much he would have loved this room as a child.
All he could see from the dim light given off from Ty’s nightlight was a small lump under the covers and a shock of pale hair. He stood beside the bed and watched the steady rhythm of Ty’s breathing for some time, automatically smoothing his hair back from his forehead when he stirred.
As if sensing his presence, Ty muttered in his sleep and rolled over. ‘Grandma?’
Leo felt gutted as Ty called out for Amanda’s deceased mother. How was it that he had got the care of his young son so wrong? How was it that he had been so blind to so many things? Lexi was right, he hadn’t faced anything. He’d just buried it in a six-foot pit and piled a heap of manure on top.
He lay down on top of the covers and curled himself around Ty’s sleeping body as he had seen Lexi do weeks earlier. A lump formed in his throat and his nose tingled as he fought to hold back tears. This was his son. His own flesh and blood and he’d used every excuse he could come up with to stop himself from feeling anything for him. To stop himself from loving him. And all because he was afraid.
Leo thought about himself as a boy, hiding under his blankets late at night as he listened to his parents fighting and then, full of worry for his mother, creeping into the hallway to make sure she was okay.
He remembered how lonely he had felt, sitting with his back to the wall in a tight huddle. How … stoic. How strong he had decided he needed to be to survive. He hadn’t shown emotion even then.
No wonder his mother had said he was like his father! And yet she had still called him every year to maintain a connection with him. Maybe she had loved him. Maybe Lexi was right in saying that she had just been so overcome with grief that she had only seemed to close off from him. And, drowning in his own grief, he had pushed her away so that he didn’t have to face his own guilt. His own fear of hearing how like his father he was.
Leo grimaced. He had unknowingly made himself over in his father’s image anyway and he was still doing it.
Bohze; he didn’t want that any more. He recalled the blissful nights on the yacht, with Lexi sleeping beside him all soft and warm. He’d convinced himself that it was just sex that had given him the sense of well-being he always experienced in her arms, but it wasn’t.
It was her.
He thought again of that last morning they had been together and the moment he’d felt sure she had been about to tell him that she needed him. At the time it had sent him into a flat spin but now … now he was ready to admit that he needed her too. Needed her more than his next breath.
Bohze!
She’d made him care and he’d been so afraid of admitting it, he had driven her away. Had laughed in her face at the notion that he was falling in love with her. Which he was. Had.
He loved her.
The thought hit him with the force of a bullet.
What an ass he was. He loved her and he had pushed her away.
He had to tell her. He had to have her. And he was sure she felt the same way. He was sure she wouldn’t have given herself to him, lain with him every night in his bed, if she hadn’t had strong feelings for him. So okay, maybe not love—yet—but he’d move heaven and earth to change that.
‘Grandma?’
Ty stirred again and Leo stroked his brow. ‘It’s not Grandma, Ty. It’s Papa.’
He felt a sense of warmth he’d only ever experienced in one other person’s arms steal over him and it was as if a lifetime of pain and suffering just melted away. He could feel Sasha in Ty’s small body, but it was different.
When he’d held Sasha he’d done so with the arms of a child. Now he could feel Ty with the arms of a man. He could sense his own strength compared to Ty’s vulnerability and realised that he didn’t feel any of the vindictiveness his father had expressed through violence. He just felt love.
Lexi read and reread the email and knew she should feel happier.
‘So Darth Vader has approved the loan?’ Aimee said with a gleeful smile as she read over Lexi’s shoulder. ‘You are such a legend. Three weeks ago, I thought there was no chance we’d get the money but now …’ She did a little jig. ‘Now we move on to phase two.’
