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He was unsettled by the realisation that he had not been tempted by another woman since he’d made Marnie his mistress.
A waiter offered him champagne and canapés. Leandro lifted a glass from the tray and took a long sip, needing the hit of alcohol in his bloodstream. His schedule in New York had been hellish, even by his standards, but he always pushed himself to his limits. He was proud of Vialli Entertainment, the business he had built without the support or help of his father. Work was central to his existence and gave him a sense of control that in the past few years had been missing from other areas of his life.
After his marriage had failed he had focused on being a good father, determined that Henry would not suffer from the divorce the way he had done when he was a kid and his own parents had split up. But since he’d received the devastating proof that Henry wasn’t his son he had been left with a void inside him where his heart had once been, and he had vowed never to lay himself open to that level of pain ever again.
His father had spent his life avoiding making emotional attachments, Leandro thought cynically. It was the only trait of Silvestro’s that he was determined to emulate. His mother, on the other hand, had fallen in love dozens of times, with men who had broken her heart, but she hadn’t loved the one person who had adored her—her son.
Leandro forced his thoughts back to the present and Marnie’s unexpected behaviour. What the hell had got into her? He hadn’t tried to stop her from leaving the party because he’d been concerned that she would create a scene in front of his staff. But that was shocking in itself, because generally she was mild natured and until recently had seemed content to take a backstage role in his life.
He frowned as he recalled that when he had phoned her from New York a couple of days ago she had sounded odd, unlike her usual cheerful self. He had almost been tempted to ask if something had upset her. But he hadn’t gone down that route, reminding himself that she was his mistress and he neither sought nor offered to share personal confidences with her.
It might be a good thing that she had demonstrated this volatile side to her character, he brooded. He was frankly stunned that he had allowed their affair to continue for a year, and if Marnie was going to start making emotional demands on him it was time to think about replacing her in his bed.
He was aware that several of his senior staff were trying to catch his attention and told himself to forget about Marnie and enjoy the party. But he had glimpsed the sparkle of tears in her eyes before she’d hurried away from him and his conscience was pricked.
He guessed she would take a cab back to his house in Chelsea because she had nowhere else to go. She had told him that her mother had died a few months before they’d met and her only other relatives lived in Norfolk.
Leandro gulped down the rest of his champagne and swore beneath his breath. Experience had taught him that women were nothing but trouble, and he did not know why he was surprised that Marnie was no different from all the rest. She wasn’t his responsibility, but she was upset, and he acknowledged that he was partly to blame.
He walked over to his deputy CEO and spoke to him briefly before he phoned his chauffeur and requested to be collected from the party.
* * *
Marnie emerged from the air-conditioned restaurant into what felt like a furnace. The summer heatwave had lasted for weeks, and London was sweltering in unusually high temperatures. Even at eight o’clock in the evening the sun was a burning golden disc in the sky, and she was conscious of her dress sticking to her as she walked dispiritedly towards the bus stop.
She couldn’t believe she had stormed out of the party like that. Leandro had looked shocked by her loss of temper and it was hardly surprising that he had not followed her after she had yelled at him like a fishwife.
More tears filled her eyes. What was wrong with her? She never cried.
Even when her brother Luke had been killed in a motorbike accident she had bottled up her grief, and maybe that was why she still felt his loss acutely, five years later. Growing up with her chronically depressed mother had made her fearful of allowing herself to feel deep emotions. She was scared that if she cried for Luke she might never be able to stop. Besides, she’d had to stay strong for her other brother, Jake, who had been devastated by his twin’s death. And she had done her best to take care of her mother, as she had done since she was eleven, when her father had left home.
She leaned against the bus shelter and gave a deep sigh. This past year that she had lived with Leandro had been the happiest time she’d known since she was a child, when her family had still been together. But even back then there had been problems in her parents’ marriage. Memories of her parents’ frequent rows, when her dad had accused her mum of smothering him with her possessiveness, had taught Marnie that she must give Leandro space.
She had certainly tried to do that. It occurred to her that she knew barely any more about him now than when they had first met. He had never introduced her to his friends or family, and the only pieces of personal information he had revealed were that his father lived in New York and his mother had been a famous musical theatre star who had died ten years ago.
She did not know why it suddenly mattered that Leandro kept so much of his private life secret from her. She’d been prone to odd mood swings lately, and maybe that explained why she felt so hurt by his cavalier treatment of her. But her forgiving nature was quick to point out that he was a millionaire business tycoon who had a high-octane lifestyle and he couldn’t make her his top priority all the time.
She had been looking forward to his return from New York because she was excited about telling him her amazing news. It was still hard to believe that not only had she gained a first-class honours degree in astrophysics, but had earned the highest exam marks in the country. Leandro would certainly be surprised. She chewed on her lip. Maybe she should have told him before now that for the past year she had worked only one day a week as a waitress in the cocktail bar, and on the other days had studied astronomy, space science and astrophysics at a top London university.
Marnie heard her mother’s voice in her mind. ‘Why do you want to study astronomy? What’s the use in looking at stars and planets? You need to train for a proper job instead of setting your sights on an impossible dream.’
The teachers at the rough comprehensive school she’d attended had been similarly dismissive of her chances of becoming an astronomer, but she had worked hard at school and ignored the bullies who had called her a geek because she’d enjoyed science lessons. Even though she had been accepted at a top university back then she had lacked confidence in her abilities, and she’d decided to wait to see if she passed her final exams before she told Leandro about her dream of becoming an astronomer.
Now that dream was a step closer to being fulfilled. She had been offered a place on an internship programme to study towards a doctoral degree at NASA’s research academy in California. It would necessitate her moving to the States temporarily, and she hoped Leandro would understand that they would have to have a long-distance relationship for nine months while she was studying in America.
Marnie glanced along the road, hoping to see a bus approaching. Her heart lurched when a black saloon car with dark-tinted windows drew up against the pavement and the rear door opened. Leandro’s face was shadowed in the dim interior of the car, but his steel-grey eyes gleamed with hard brilliance.
‘Get in the car, Marnie.’
She almost sagged with relief that he had come after her. But the rebellious streak that seemed to be intent on causing trouble argued that she could not allow him to continue to walk all over her, that she should stand up for herself a bit more because she did not want to be his ‘dirty little secret’.
While she hesitated, Leandro drawled, ‘I will only ask you once, cara.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_97ec182b-7814-58d8-8d52-0b86a7971e33)
MARNIE DID NOT look at Leandro as she slid onto the back seat of the car beside him and shut the door. He instructed the chauffeur to drive on before he closed the privacy glass. The tension between them was almost tangible, and she knotted her fingers together in her lap, determined that she was not going to be the first to speak.
‘What the hell was that about?’ He did not try to hide his irritation. ‘I didn’t invite you to the staff party because I had planned to show my face for an hour at most before I rushed home to you.’
It was partially true, and Leandro realised he had to smooth over an awkward situation. His eyes were drawn to the jerky rise and fall of Marnie’s breasts, which appeared to be in imminent danger of escaping from the plunging neckline of her dress. Her skin was peaches and cream and her honey-blonde hair rippled halfway down her back. A shaft of unadulterated lust swept through him as he imagined undressing her and cupping her ripe curves in his hands.
‘Really?’
She sounded uncertain, and Leandro stifled his impatience to push her back against the leather seat and cover her mouth with his.
‘We could have spent time together at the party,’ Marnie muttered. She had felt really hurt by Leandro’s attitude and for once was determined not to allow him to brush her feelings aside as if they didn’t matter.
‘I spend a significant chunk of my life in the company of the people I work with and I won’t apologise for wanting to spend my leisure time exclusively with you.’
‘Oh.’ When he put it like that his decision not to invite her to the party sounded reasonable. Perhaps she had overreacted a bit.
Leandro closed his hand over hers, and as Marnie looked down at his tanned fingers wrapped around her paler ones she pictured his naked limbs entwined with hers, dark against pale, hard against soft.
She was intensely aware of his hard thigh muscles pressed up against her. He reached out and wrapped a lock of her long hair around his finger, and her breath became trapped in her throat when he gently tugged to make her turn her head towards him. The hard gleam in his eyes had been replaced with a sultry smokiness that turned her bones to liquid.
Leandro felt Marnie relax and was confident he had won her over. His hunger became more urgent as he tipped her chin up and plundered her soft, moist lips without mercy, wanting to punish her just a little and remind her that he called the shots in their affair.
Her eager response fanned the flames of his desire. He had taught her well, and she was no longer shy and inexperienced as she had been in the early days of their affair. When she pushed her tongue into his mouth his heart slammed against his ribs, his desire a potent force that strained against the zip of his trousers.
Lifting his head, Leandro was satisfied to see rosy colour on her cheeks, and saw that her blush continued down her throat and spread a warm stain over the upper slopes of her breasts. This was how he had pictured his mistress while he was away: flushed with desire and her brown eyes soft with sensual promise.
Leandro’s words had allayed some of Marnie’s concerns that their relationship did not mean as much to him as it did to her. She rested her hand on the bulge beneath his trousers and smiled when he groaned. ‘Did you miss me while you were away?’
‘Of course I missed you.’ He gave a rough laugh. ‘After two weeks without sex I am seriously frustrated, cara.’
‘I wasn’t only talking about sex.’
But her tiny flicker of doubt wavered as he crushed her to him and sought her mouth again, kissing her with a possessive intent that thrilled her. Passion ignited into an inferno between them and she forgot everything but the need to feel his hands on her body.
He pushed her back against the leather seat and leaned over her. ‘Dio, I’ve wanted this so badly,’ he said thickly.
Marnie allowed herself to sink into the bliss of Leandro’s kiss. Too many nights without him had made her body extra-responsive, and she gave a low moan when he slipped his hand into the front of her dress and stroked her breasts through her sheer lace bra. When he rolled her nipples between his fingers she almost leapt off the seat as starbursts of pleasure arrowed down from her breasts to the hot, moist core of her femininity.
He gave a husky laugh. ‘This is what I missed. Your beautiful body, ready and eager for me. I’m impatient to get you home so that I can undress you.’ He traced the neckline of her dress with his forefinger. ‘Is this a new dress? Did you buy it for the party? When I walked into the restaurant I was blown away by how sexy you looked.’
She remembered how unsure of herself she had felt while she had waited for Leandro to arrive at the restaurant. If he felt proud of her, perhaps she would feel more his equal.
‘Leandro,’ she murmured, when he tore his mouth from hers to allow them to draw breath. ‘Do you wish I had a better job than waitressing?’
‘There’s nothing wrong with being a waitress,’ he said indistinctly, busy nibbling her earlobe before trailing his lips down her throat and moving purposefully towards her cleavage.
‘But wouldn’t you like me to have a high-flying career, like the women you employ at your company?’ she persisted.
‘I’ve dated career women, and to be frank it was a nightmare trying to align our schedules and arrange to meet when we happened to be on the same continent. I like knowing that you’re at home waiting for me when I get back from work.’
Marnie was disappointed by Leandro’s apparent lack of enthusiasm for her to have a career, but at the same time her foolish heart quivered because he’d said that he looked forward to coming home to her every evening. She drew an unsteady breath when he eased the stretchy neckline of her dress and her bra down and cupped her breasts in his palms, so that he could flick his tongue across one nipple and then the other. The sensation of him sucking each tender peak was electrifying.
Dazed with desire, she decided to wait and tell him about the opportunity she had been offered to study astronomy at NASA until later—after they had assuaged their hunger for each other that was now at fever pitch after their two-week separation.
Leandro pulled her onto his lap and thrust his hand beneath her skirt to stroke the strip of sensitive bare skin above the lace band of her stocking tops. Shivering with longing, she let her thighs fall open to allow him to move his hand higher, to the place where she longed for him to touch her.
‘You are hungry,’ he drawled, satisfaction thickening his voice as he eased his finger beneath her thong and discovered the slick wetness of her arousal.
A voice in the back of Marnie’s mind taunted her, telling her that her weakness for Leandro was shameful. She didn’t want to appear needy, but the truth was she did need him. Before she had met him she’d felt empty and alone.
He pushed another finger into her and moved his hand with rhythmical strokes, in and out, faster, deeper, taking her higher until she couldn’t think of anything but the beauty of what he was doing to her.
‘Leandro...’ She clung to his shoulders as she felt the first exquisite spasms of her orgasm.
‘That’s right, baby. Come for me,’ he said thickly.
Overwhelmed with pleasure, she pressed her face into his neck and breathed in the spicy scent of his aftershave. Her heart clenched with emotion. She had missed him so much, and from the size of the rock-hard erection she could feel beneath her bottom he had missed her as badly.
Minutes later the car drew up in Eaton Square and Marnie quickly tugged her dress into place before the chauffeur opened the door. Leandro kept his arm around her waist, as if he knew that her legs felt unsteady, and they hurried up the steps of the house.
As they entered the hallway he kicked the front door shut and pulled her against his hard body, his hands roaming over her with feverish urgency. He curled his fingers into the soft mounds of her buttocks before running a hand up her spine and unzipping her dress. With his help the black velvet slipped down to expose her semi-sheer bra, through which her dusky nipples were clearly visible.
Leandro gave a growl that sent a shiver of anticipation through Marnie. She wanted him now—this minute.
He must have sensed her desperation, because he lifted her and sat her on the marble table in the hall, pushed her skirt up to her thighs.
‘I can’t wait long enough for us to get upstairs to the bedroom,’ he said hoarsely.
Her heart lurched when she saw the feral hunger in his eyes. But a familiar sound that she had grown to hate shattered the sizzling sexual tension.
‘Your damned phone!’ she muttered.
‘I’ll switch it off,’ he promised.
But as he pulled his mobile phone out of his jacket pocket he glanced at the screen and stiffened.
‘Cara, I’m sorry, but I have to take this.’
‘You can’t be serious...’ She almost wept with frustration, but her sense of hurt and abandonment was even worse than the unfulfilled ache between her legs as she watched him stride into his study and close the door behind him, shutting her out of his life—as usual, Marnie thought bitterly.
But he was the head of a multi-million-pound company and sometimes he had to deal with business matters at unsociable hours, she reminded herself. She recognised that he was speaking French—which was another surprise, because she hadn’t known that he was fluent in the language. There were so many things she did not know about Leandro.
She slid down from the table and readjusted her dress. Her breasts ached and she felt a little bit sick. She recalled that she’d felt nauseous at about the same time on the previous few evenings and wondered if it had something to do with the heatwave. Maybe she needed to drink more water.
Leandro’s voice was still audible through the study door. Marnie wandered into the sitting room. Like all the rooms in the house, its modern décor was a contrast to the building’s imposing Georgian façade. The walls and furnishings were in neutral tones and a few pieces of contemporary and no doubt very expensive artwork added splashes of bold colour.
It was a curiously impersonal room, but Leandro had told her that he had employed interior designers to decorate the house, which perhaps explained why there was no stamp of his personality anywhere. When she had moved in with him Marnie had placed a couple of potted ferns on the windowsill to try and breathe some life into the room, but they looked as out of place as she felt.
She stood by the window and watched the shadows lengthen in the private gardens at the centre of the square. The district of Belgravia was very different from the council estate where she’d grown up. She had moved there, to one of the most deprived parts of south London, with her mother and brothers after her dad had left and their family home had been sold. The Silden Estate had been notorious for gang crime and drug dealing, and one reason why she had wanted a good career was so that she could escape the sense of hopelessness that had pervaded the estate.
Marnie remembered that when she’d first met Leandro she had told herself he was out of her league. He had been a regular customer at the cocktail bar and restaurant where she worked and she hadn’t taken his flirting seriously—until one night when he had asked her out to dinner.
It had been the first time she’d been on a proper dinner date, and to start with she had felt on edge, but he had soon put her at her ease with his charismatic charm. By the end of the evening she had fallen completely under his spell and had needed little persuading to spend the night with him.
She did not know if he had guessed that he was her first lover. Up until then she hadn’t had time for boyfriends. She’d been too busy studying, working and looking after her mother, whose depression had worsened after Luke had died and Jake had disappeared. But following her mother’s death she had felt a sense of freedom from responsibility, and when Leandro had asked her to move in with him she’d fallen headlong into their passionate affair.
Marnie sighed. In those early days it hadn’t worried her that Leandro worked long hours, or that the only time they spent together was in bed. She’d enjoyed having sex with him—she still did. But although the situation was the same she realised that she had changed. She had fallen in love with him, and she was seeking clues that would indicate how he felt about her.
Up until he had gone to New York she had believed that he felt something more for her than sexual attraction. But his attitude towards her at the party and the ease with which he had dismissed her and answered the phone had reawakened her doubts about their relationship.
The study door was open when Marnie walked past again, and she saw that the room was empty. She hurried up the stairs and her heart gave a little skip as she headed into the master bedroom that she shared with Leandro. Now that he had finished his phone call there would hopefully be no more interruptions to prevent him making love to her.
They communicated best in bed. Their passion for each other made words unnecessary when their bodies were in perfect accord. But for her it wasn’t just about sex. She craved the feeling of closeness when he held her in his arms and stroked her hair. When he was tender she could convince herself that he cared about her.
As she entered the bedroom Leandro walked out of the en suite bathroom, naked apart from the towel hitched around his hips. Droplets of water clung to the whorls of dark hair that covered his chest. It was his habit to shower before they had sex, and Marnie’s mouth went dry as her eyes followed the path of his body hair as it arrowed over his flat stomach and she visualised his powerful manhood beneath the towel.
But while she stared, and tried to control her thundering pulse, he opened a drawer, took out a pair of silk boxer shorts and returned to the bathroom, emerging moments later wearing the boxers.
Marnie’s disappointment turned to confusion as she watched him pull on a pair of jeans. She froze when she noticed a suitcase on the bed. ‘Are you...going somewhere?’
He finished buttoning his shirt and spared her a brief glance. ‘Paris.’
‘Now? Tonight?’ She couldn’t accept what her eyes were telling her as she watched him throw a few other items of clothing into the case. ‘Why?’ Her insecurity about their relationship made her voice sharp. ‘You went to Paris the weekend before you flew to New York.’
In fact he visited Paris regularly, once a month, and spent the weekend there. She assumed he went for business reasons, but he had never given any explanation for his trips and she had not dared ask him, telling herself that she mustn’t crowd him or seem possessive.
Another thought struck her. ‘Have you remembered that we’re going to Norfolk for my cousin’s wedding?’
‘I’m afraid I won’t be able to go with you.’
She couldn’t disguise her disappointment. ‘But you said you would come—and I’ve told Gemma that I’m bringing an additional guest.’
‘I said I would try to keep the date of the wedding free but I didn’t promise,’ Leandro said tersely. He raked a hand through his hair. ‘I’m going to Paris because a...a close friend has been injured in an accident and I need to be with them.’
Marnie looked at him and noticed the lines of strain around his mouth. It was so unlike him to show any emotion, and she immediately felt guilty that she had doubted him. ‘I’m sorry. Is your friend seriously hurt?’
She refused to listen to the voice in her head that questioned whether Leandro considered her to be a close friend. Would he drop everything if she was hurt and rush to be with her?
‘I don’t have many details.’ He sounded distracted. ‘I just had the phone call...’ He gave her a wry glance as he referred to their interrupted lovemaking downstairs. ‘I’m sorry I have to rush off, and I’m sorry about your cousin’s wedding. I can’t say yet when I’ll be home.’
This from a man who organised his life with military precision. It made Marnie realise how worried Leandro must be. ‘It doesn’t matter. Of course you must go to your friend. Is there anything I can do to help?’ she asked softly.
He closed the zip on his suitcase and reached for his jacket. ‘Can you grab my phone? I must have left it in the bathroom.’
