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For a while he had gone along with her urgency to work their way out. Had he thought that a healthy dose of reality would re-establish his parameters?
She felt as though she knew the way his mind worked. How had that happened? How had bristling in his company, armed and ready for a fight with an opponent she scorned, turned into something so profound that it was as if her soul had somehow melded with his?
And how on earth had it been a one-way journey?
Withherdoing the sinking whilehejust enjoyed what was on offer with the safety of shore always within striking distance?
Inexperience.
She had been able to walk tough and talk tough, but deep inside her lack of experience had made her as soft as marshmallow.
Or maybe she had just found the guy she’d never even known she’d been looking for—the only problem being that he happened to be the wrong guy...
Could she keep making excuses about all of this?
Did she have the strength to stay put and manoeuvre her way out? Plant seeds of doubt in Leonard’s head?
How long would those seeds take before Leonard began edging towards seeing what she wanted him to realise?
A month? Two months? Six?
When Sophie thought about a month more of being with Alessio...or two months...or, horror of horrors,six...she felt weak and scared.
She would never be able to convince him that their sleeping together would be a bad idea. She wouldn’t even be able to convinceherselfof that.
He touched her and she melted inside.
He looked at her and she burned for him.
And he knew it.
And here they were now, with a crowd of people waiting for them in the sitting room, and she could hazard a pretty healthy guess as to what they’d been told.
The prodigal son had returned. Having wandered in the wilderness for years, Alessio was back. And he had saved Leonard’s company—had rescued him from the nightmare of an uncertain financial future and everything that went with that.
And the icing on the cake?
He was going to settle down with someone of whom Leonard approved.
The whole situation made Sophie feel faint, but she knew that she only had herself to blame because she had gone along with Alessio’s idea with only a token show of protest.
She had accepted the wisdom of his ‘tiny little white lie’ because it had been easier. With a duvet pulled up around her, in the darkness of the bedroom and still warm from Alessio’s body, she had heard the sound of Leonard outside and the thought of him being stressed out by finding them together had been too much.
She had been weak when she should have been strong.
Not that there was much point weighing up the pros and cons and beating herself up about it now.
It was what it was.
Reality wasn’t thinking in the abstract.
Reality was dealing with Leonard and his friends, who were probably all waiting with the champagne ready to be poured, eager to find out when they should make room in their calendars for the Big Day.
There was only one thing Sophie knew would work when it came to getting out of this scenario.
The truth.
‘Because...?’ she said.
