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She wasn’t aware, two hours later, of the soft knock on her bedroom door.
On the other side of that door, Leandro waited, torn between knocking again or bailing.
He’d gone for a drink but had ended up on strong coffee instead.
Everything had been going along swimmingly so Celia’s revelations had come as a body blow. Of course, he had accepted that life as he knew it had been irrevocably changed the second she had told him about the pregnancy. If he had been a little surprised at how easily he had assimilated that change into his psyche, then he had simply put it down to his expertise at dealing with what life threw at him.
He had been more astonished at how passionately he had felt about the baby she was carrying.
He’d gone from the prospect of fatherhood not being anywhere remotely on his radar to it being the most important thing in his life. Why else would he have agreed with alacrity to sacrifice his way of life? Without question?
But therehadbeen clauses, he’d thought, as he’d stared down into his cup of black coffee an hour previously.
He’d brought the same clauses to marriage as he had brought to their fling when they’d been trapped by snow in Scotland.No love...no emotional anchor being sunk to the bottom of the ocean...
He’d expected her to fall in line and do the right thing becausehewas prepared to do so. And she had. She’d agreed because she was someone rooted in doing what was morally right. He hadn’t had to beg because she was unselfish by nature and traditional enough to acquiesce to the overriding importance of family. She wasn’t someone who was trained to put herself first.
Leandro had realised, as the thoughts had piled up in his head, that he had been lazy.
He’d read so much of her and enjoyed it all but he hadn’t bothered to join the dots to see the road ahead.
He’d grown accustomed to her openness, her refreshing honesty and that way she had of looking at him that made him feel a hundred metres tall.
He’d sunk himself into their love-making and become addicted to it.
In every single way, he had luxuriated in her giving and her affection and her warm, supportive, empathetic conversation that had seen him open up in ways he never had before, and still he had kept reminding her of the boundaries to what they had. He’d stuck to what he knew without bothering to analyse why. It was who he was and what he did and he hadn’t questioned it.
And he’d watched her fall in love with him without considering the ramifications.
Worse, he’d watchedhimselffalling in love with her and completely ignored the signs because falling in love had never been in his remit.
Which brought him here now, with his hand raised to knock on the door again.
Except was it going to be too little too late? He would bare his soul, but would it seem too coincidental? Would she think that he was simply playing a card from his hand in the hope of bringing her back on board? Manufacturing his words into what she wanted him to say?
He knocked on the door, this time a little more forcefully, and then he gently pushed it open to stand, framed in the doorway, for a couple of seconds.
Celia had dimly been aware ofa soundbut it was only when Leandro knocked for a second time that she blinked and rubbed her eyes and realised that someone was at the bedroom door and, since there were only two of them in this presidential suite, there was no mystery as to who her caller was.
She sat up, on full alert, and stared at Leandro backlit in the doorway.
Was he drunk? Had he come on the back of several whiskies to try and make her change her mind? She tightened her lips. She wasn’t going to start arguing because he was right, they needed to keep their lines of communication open. But she wasn’t going to cave in either.
‘I’m sorry.’
Those two words were enough to give her a jolt.
‘What are you doing here?’
She had left the light voile curtains pulled and the shutters open and, through the slats, moonlight illuminated the bedroom. He didn’t sound drunk.
‘I...can I come in? I won’t sit on the bed. Don’t worry. I can...pull a chair...please.’
Please.Another word to undermine her defences.
‘You can’t change my mind, Leandro.’
‘I... I’m not here to do that. I’m here because I find I have no choice.’
