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‘Your face is never out of the papers,’ Harold admonished, dabbing his eyes and then looking sternly at his son. ‘There’s always some...some silly little thing hanging on to your arm, batting her eyelashes at you.’
Leo flushed with irritation. ‘We’ve covered this ground already.’
‘And we’ll cover it again, son.’ Harold sniffed and, just like that, Leo realised it was as though the energy and life force had been sucked out of him, leaving behind a shell. He was an aging man and it seemed as though he had suddenly lost the will to live.
‘You choose to do what you like when it comes to...women,’ his father said quietly. ‘And I know better now than to try and point you in the right direction. But this is more than being just about you. The woman claims that you’re morally unfit to take guardianship of the child.’
Leo pushed his hands through his hair and shook his head. ‘I’ll take care of it,’ he said grimly.
Theoretically, he and his father could simply reach an agreement to pull the plug on the money. Sean, after all, hadn’t been in any way related to either of them, but he knew and personally agreed that the child should not be allowed to suffer because of the mistakes of her parents. Like it or not, she was a moral responsibility.
‘It’s a worst-case scenario.’ His father shook his head and pressed his fingers to his eyes.
‘You’re upsetting yourself, Dad.’
‘Wouldn’t you if you were in my shoes?’ He looked up. ‘Adele is important to me and I cannot lose.’
‘If the law refuses to budge—’ Leo spread his hands in a gesture of frustration ‘—then there’s only so much I can do. I can’t kidnap the child and then hide her until she turns eighteen.’
‘No, but there is something you can do...’
‘I’m struggling to think what.’
‘You could get engaged. I’m not saying married, but engaged. You could present the court with the sort of responsible image that might persuade them into thinking that you’re a good bet as a father figure for Adele.’
Leo stared at his father in silence. He wondered whether the events of the past few weeks had finally pushed the man over the edge. Either that or he had misheard every single word in that sweeping, unbelievable statement.
‘I could get engaged...?’ Leo shook his head with rampant incredulity. ‘Do you suggest I purchase a suitable candidate online?’
‘Don’t be stupid, son!’
‘Then I’m not following you.’
‘If you need to present the image of a solid, dependable, normal human being with a serious and suitable woman by your side, then I don’t know why you wouldn’t do that. For me. For Adele.’
‘Serious and suitable woman?’ Leo spluttered. He didn’t do either serious or suitable when it came to women. He did frivolous and highly unsuitable. He liked it that way. No involvement, easy to dispatch. If they enjoyed his money, then that was fine because he wasn’t going to marry any of them. When it came to women, the revolving door that brought them in and took them out was efficient and worked for him.
‘Samantha.’ His father dropped the name with the flair of a magician pulling a rabbit out of a hat.
‘Samantha...’ Leo repeated slowly.
‘Little Sammy Wilson,’ Harold expanded. ‘You know who I’m talking about. She would be perfect for the part!’
‘You want me to involve Samantha Wilson in a far-fetched charade to win custody of Adele?’
‘It makes perfect sense.’
‘In whose world?’
‘Don’t be rude, son!’ Harold reprimanded with an unusual amount of authority.
‘Does she know about this? Have you two been plotting this crazy scheme behind my back?’ Leo was aghast. His father had clearly taken leave of his senses.
‘I haven’t mentioned a word of this to her,’ Harold admitted. ‘Well, you know that she only manages to get to Salcombe on weekends...’
‘No, I didn’t. Why would I?’
‘You will have to broach the subject with her. You can be very persuasive and I don’t see why you wouldn’t bring those considerable skills to bear on this. It’s not as though I ask favours of you as a general rule. I think it’s the very least you can do, son. I would so love to know Adele is safe and cared for and we both know that Gail would make as bad a grandparent as her daughter made a parent. I would spend the remainder of my days fearing for what might happen to the girl...’
‘Gail might be many things,’ Leo returned drily, ‘but aren’t you over-egging the pudding here?’
His father breezed over the interruption. ‘And you would condemn a child to a future with a woman of that calibre? We both know the rumours about her...’ His eyes, when they met Leo’s, were filled with sadness. ‘I can’t force you but I’m very much afraid that I... Well, what would be the point of my living...?’
* * *
Samantha hadn’t been in her tiny rented flat for more than half an hour before she heard the insistent buzz of her doorbell and she grimaced with annoyance.
She had too much to do to waste time on a cold-caller. Or, worse, her neighbour from the flat upstairs, who had a habit of randomly showing up around this hour, a little after six in the evening, for wine with someone too polite and too soft-hearted to turn her away.
Samantha had spent many hours listening to her neighbour discuss her latest boyfriend or weep over a broken heart that would never be mended.
Right now, she simply had too much to do.
Too much homework from her eight-year-old charges to mark. Too many lessons to prepare. Too much red tape with Ofsted to get through. Not to mention the bank, who had been politely reminding her mother for the past three months that the mortgage hadn’t been paid.
But whoever was at the door wasn’t about to go away, not if the insistent finger on the button was anything to go by.
Sweeping the stack of exercise books off her lap and onto the little coffee table by the side of her chair and plunging her feet into her cosy bedroom slippers, she was working out which negative response, depending on who was at the door, she would be delivering so that her evening remained uninterrupted.
She yanked open the door and her mouth fell open. Literally. She stood there like a stranded goldfish, eyes like saucers, because the last person she ever, in a million years, had expected to see was standing in front of her.
Or rather lounging, his long, muscular body indolently leaning against the door frame, his hands thrust into the pockets of his black cashmere coat.
It had been several weeks since she had seen Leo Morgan-White.
He had nodded to her from across the width of his father’s massive drawing room, which had been crowded with at least three dozen locals, all friends from the village where his father and her mother lived. Harold was a popular member of the community and his annual Christmas party was something of an event on the local calendar.
She hadn’t even spoken to Leo that night. He’d been there with a leggy brunette who, in the depths of winter, had been wearing something very bright and very short, garnering attention from every single male in the room.
‘Have I come at a bad time?’
* * *
He’d taken the bait. Sly old fox that his father was, Leo had been persuaded into doing the unthinkable by the threat of ill health and a return of the depression that had dogged his father for years and from which he was only recently surfacing.
Of course, Harold genuinely and truly wanted Adele close to him and safe and, of course, he truly believed, and was probably spot on, that Gail would turn out to be a horrendous influence on her five-year-old granddaughter, but when he had pulled the ill-health-so-what’s-the-point-of-carrying-on? threat from the hat Leo had confessed himself to be beaten.
So here he was, two days later, with the soon-to-be object of his desire standing in front of him in some dull grey outfit and a pair of ridiculous, brightly coloured bedroom slippers.
‘Leo?’ Sammy blinked and wondered whether it was possible for stress to induce very realistic hallucinations. ‘What do you want? How did you find out where I live? What on earth are you doing here?’
‘Lots of questions, and I’ll answer them just as soon as you invite me in.’
Struck by a sudden thought, Sammy paled and stared up at him. ‘Has something happened? Is your dad all right?’ She was finding it very difficult to think but then the wretched man had always had that effect on her. Something about his devastatingly good looks. He was just so...so much larger than life.
Taller, more striking, with the rakish, swarthy sexiness of a pirate. Next to him, the rest of the male population always seemed to pale in comparison and, considering the long, long line of women he had run through over the years, she wasn’t the only one who thought so.
Unlike that long, long line of women, though, she knew better than to let all that drop-dead male sexiness get to her.
She still cringed in shame when she thought back to that awful incident years ago. She’d had gone along to a party at the big house, as everyone in the village called the Morgan-White mansion up on the hill.
The place had been teeming with people. It had been a birthday bash for Leo and half the world seemed to be there. Heaven only knew why she’d been invited but she imagined that it had been something of a pity invite and, whilst she had cringed at the thought of going, she had been encouraged by the fact that several of the locals had also been on the guest list so she wouldn’t be a complete fish out of water. She’d spent ages choosing just the right dress. She’d only spotted him from a distance later, when she had been standing in the garden and, miracle of miracles, he had shown up right next to her and they had chatted for what had seemed like ages. He’d torn himself away from his gilded crowd and Sammy had been on cloud nine until, late in the evening, a very tall, very blonde girl had broken free from the group and confronted her just outside the marquee which had been erected in the garden.
‘You’re making a bloody fool of yourself,’ she’d hissed, words slurring from too much free champagne. ‘Can’t you see that Leo is never, and I mean never, going to give you the time of day? You may have grown up next to him but you’re poor, you’re fat and you’re boring. You’re making a laughing stock of yourself.’
Her infatuation had died fast. Since then, watching off and on from the sidelines, she had come to see just how repulsive his approach to women was. He picked them up and then, when he’d got what he wanted and boredom began setting in, he dumped them without a backward glance and moved on.
Romantic at heart, with a core of firmly held family values, Sammy marvelled that she could ever have looked twice at someone like Leo. But, then again, she’d been young and he’d been crazily good-looking.
‘He’s been better. Are you going to invite me in or are we going to have this conversation here?’
‘I suppose you can come in.’
* * *
Great start, Leo thought wryly. A very auspicious beginning to what’s intended to be the relationship of a lifetime.
He hadn’t thought about how she was going to react to his proposition but he didn’t expect too much protesting. He was, after all, bringing a great deal of money to the table and, as everyone knew, money talked a lot louder than words.
Anne Wilson, Samantha’s mother, was a close friend of his father’s and had been since Leo’s mother had fallen ill and Anne, a nurse at the local hospital, had gone beyond the call of duty to help out. Their bond had strengthened over the years as she had proved to be a solid rock upon whom his father had often leaned, particularly after his acrimonious divorce from Georgia.
It was no surprise then that Anne had confided in Harold about her ill health and the money problems she was having with the bank because she had been forced to quit her job. Though Harold had offered to give her the money, and, when that hadn’t worked, to lend it to her, she had refused.
* * *
‘So...’ Sammy folded her arms and stared at him almost before he had shut the door behind him. ‘What have you come here for?’ He was so good-looking that she could barely look at him without blushing.
Leo’s fabulous looks had to do with far more than just the arrangement of his features. Yes, he was indecently perfect, from the long, dark, thick lashes that shielded equally dark eyes and the straight, arrogant nose to the sensuous curve of his mouth. Yes, he had the toned, lean, six-foot-two-inch frame of an athlete and the lazy grace of some kind of predatory jungle animal, but he also generated an impression of power that was frankly mesmerising.
‘Are you always so welcoming to visitors?’ Leo drawled, ignoring her bristling hostility to shrug off his coat, which he proceeded to dump on the coat hook by the front door.
The house had clearly been made into flats, each with a separate entrance and, from the looks of it, on the cheap. Too much door-slamming and the whole structure would collapse like a house of cards.
‘I happen to be very busy at the moment,’ Sammy said shortly. She led the way into the sitting room and gestured to the mound of exercise books which she had been about to look at.
He sat himself in a chair. He had come to visit for reasons she couldn’t begin to understand and she was furious with herself for the silly heat that was pouring through her.
* * *
She was as awkward as he recalled. He’d never spoken to her without getting the feeling that she would much rather have been somewhere else. He’d never really paid a huge amount of attention to her appearance in the past, simply absorbing the impression that she didn’t dress to impress, but now that she was going to be the love of his life he couldn’t help but notice that she really had mastered the art of not making an effort.
Accustomed to women who bent over backwards to show off flawless bodies, who devoted unreasonable amounts of time to their appearance, he was weirdly disconcerted by someone who didn’t seem to give a hoot. He stared at her narrowly, recognising that, despite the appalling dress sense and the mop of blond hair that had been piled on top of her head and secured with a fluorescent elastic band, there was a certain pretty appeal to her heart-shaped face. Plus she had amazing eyes. Huge, cornflower blue with long lashes.
‘I take it you’re not interested in pleasantries, so shall I skip past the bit where I ask you how you are and what you’ve been up to recently?’
‘Do you care how I am and what I’ve been up to recently?’
‘You should sit down, Sammy. The reason I’m here is because I have something of a complicated favour to ask. If you insist on hearing me out on your feet, then you’re going to have aching calves by the time I’m through.’
‘A favour? What are you talking about? I don’t see how I could possibly help you out with anything.’
‘Sit down. No, better still...why don’t you offer me a glass of wine? Or a cup of coffee?’
* * *
Sammy resisted scowling. By nature, she was a kind-hearted woman who would never have dreamed of being downright rude to anyone she knew, but something about Leo always got her back up. She’d long ago written him off as too rich, too good-looking and too arrogant, and the way he had settled into her flat and was proceeding to order her about was only hardening her attitude.
She would quite have liked to have asked him politely to clear off.
As though reading her mind, Leo raised his eyebrows and subjected her to a long, appraising look that made her go red.
‘Okay,’ he drawled, ‘I’ll cut to the chase, shall I?’ He shifted slightly, reached inside his trouser pocket and withdrew a small box which he dumped on the table in front of him. ‘I’m here to ask you to marry me.’
CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_340aa76c-f4c6-5855-a0b2-f8b9e3ca2e2d)
SAMMY BLINKED AND then folded her arms, body as rigid as a plank of wood. Anger was bubbling up inside her. After one glance at the navy blue box he had dumped on the table, she hadn’t deigned to give it a second look.
‘Is this some kind of joke?’ she asked coldly.
‘Do I look like the kind of man who would show up on a woman’s doorstep and propose marriage as a joke?’
‘I have no idea, Leo. I don’t know what kind of person you are.’ Aside, she thought furiously, from the obvious.
‘Open the box.’
Sammy eyed it with a guarded expression and did nothing of the sort. But her fingers were twitching and, uttering a soft, impatient curse under her breath, she reached down and flipped open the lid.
An engagement ring nestled on a deep blue velvet cushion. The exquisite solitaire diamond blinked at her and she blinked back at it, utterly dumbfounded. Her hand was shaking as she placed the box, still open, back on the table and moved to sit down on the chair facing him.
‘What the heck is going on here, Leo? You can’t possibly be serious. You show up here with an engagement ring, asking me to marry you. Something’s wrong. What is it? Is that ring even real?’
‘Oh, it’s a hundred per cent real. And guess what? You get to keep it when this is all over.’
Sammy’s head was swimming. Less than an hour ago, she was a stressed out primary school teacher with a stack of exercise books to mark. Now, she was the main character in some weird parallel universe story with a sexy billionaire sitting on one of her chairs and an engagement ring in front of her.
Nothing about this scenario was making any sense.
‘When what’s all over?’ she asked as she tried to make sense of the situation and came up blank.
