‘Do I have to go to school tomorrow? I haven’t done my homework.’
‘Oh, I think Miss Porter will understand. I’ll take you in and explain the situation myself, so there’s no need for you to worry on that score.’ She began clearing away his dishes, stacking them in the dishwasher.
‘Will my father be here when I get up in the morning?’
‘Of course he will!’ Just the thought of Leo closing the gap between them in that big, silent car of his was enough to bring her out in a cold sweat. She had been careful to avoid being around on the occasions he had visited. Yes, avoidance was always the coward’s way of dealing with a problem, but Heather hadn’t cared. If thinking about the man had sent her nerves into crazy free fall, then how bad would it have been to actually see him? Worse, to have to talk to him and feel those fabulous eyes of his rake over her with pity and scorn? Because she knew without a shadow of a doubt that he would not have understood a word of what she had told him about learning from her past experience with Brian, about not jumping into bed with anyone just because she happened to fancy them. He had looked at her as if she had taken leave of her senses, and she had been left feeling like Miss Haversham on a bad day.
‘He’s your dad, Daniel,’ Heather asserted with more optimism than confidence. ‘He’s going to be here when you need him.’
‘He can’t be here. He works in London. He showed me around his office the last time we went down. He says he’s away a lot. What if he’s away and Gran’s still in hospital? What then?’
‘He runs his own company, Dan. He can choose whether he goes away or not, and if he’s needed here then he’ll choose to stay put.’
That closed that particular line of enquiry, and Heather didn’t show how anxious she was that Daniel’s predictions did not materialise. Katherine had been thrilled with what she had described as her son ‘making such a big effort’, but as far as Heather was concerned Leo’s ‘big effort’ was only really big in comparison to how extremely small it had been before. With Katherine in hospital, Leo would have to make more than just what he considered ‘a big effort’. He would have to put great sections of his life on hold.
The little boy fell into sleep within minutes and, without the distraction of his worrying list of questions, Heather had time on her hands to get really wound up over Leo’s impending arrival.
She felt crumpled and unprepared. Three hours previously, Katherine had called and calmly explained that she had taken a tumble from a step ladder and was in a little bit of pain. In fact, Heather had rushed over to find the older woman on the ground, unable to move and white as a sheet. There had only been time to phone for an ambulance, to try to comfort a wideeyed, terrified Daniel, and then the mad, panicked hospital scenario of waiting and X-rays and doctors. Any question of having a bath had been out of the question, and so here she was, dishevelled and unable to leave the house, because Daniel was upstairs sleeping and couldn’t be left on his own.
She calmed herself with a pot of tea, having phoned the hospital and spoken to Katherine, who was sorted out in a private room, and thankfully in considerably less pain, but anxious about Daniel and about having to go under the knife.
She must have fallen into a light doze because the sharp ring of the doorbell made her jump and she hurried out, giving herself no time to dwell on the prospect of seeing Leo again and thereby get herself into a tizzy.
She had managed to convince herself that he couldn’t be as impossibly overwhelming as she remembered, that his impact had really only been so powerful because initially she had not expected him to be so good-looking; that she had had valuable time to put everything into perspective and so would be prepared to face him. Besides, none of that mattered, given the situation.
She was wrong on all counts.
She pulled open the door and momentarily froze. Her skin suddenly felt hot and tight and she had a moment of sheer, blind panic as she took in the stunningly beautiful lines of his lean, chiselled face; she was as much affected by his masculine beauty now as she had been the first time she had clapped eyes on him. Against her lacy bra, she could feel her nipples tingle and harden and respond to that unbidden memory that this was the man who had wanted to make love to her.
‘Are you going to stand there gaping for much longer?’ Leo asked. He placed the palm of his hand flat against the door and gave it a little push, which was Heather’s cue to step back immediately and rein in her turbulent thoughts.
He had noticed her gaping at him like a teenager with a crush! She could have died of embarrassment.
‘You made good time,’ she said, clearing her throat.
‘No traffic at this time of night.’ Leo strode into the house and then turned around to look at her. ‘Tell me what happened. In detail.’
‘Of course. Would you like something to drink?’ She watched in fascination as he impatiently began rolling up the sleeves of his white shirt. He had ditched the tie at some point during the journey, and her eyes were drawn to that slither of bronzed skin where the top two buttons of his shirt had been undone.
‘Just tell me what happened, and then I intend to head straight to the hospital.’
‘Now?’
‘I’m not one to stand around waiting for the grass to grow under my feet.’
‘But no one’s going to be there! I mean of course, your mother will be there, but you won’t be able to find a doctor or anything.’
‘You’d be surprised what I’m capable of achieving,’ Leo informed her with such bone-deep, casual conviction that Heather was left in no doubt that he would have a consultant dashing out to see him at the speed of light.
He was heading towards the kitchen and Heather followed in his wake, rather like an obedient dog waiting to take orders from its master. As he grabbed himself a bottle of water from the fridge and began to drink, he actually snapped his fingers, and she began telling him the sequence of events, concluding by assuring him that his mother was fine, all things considered.
Leo continued to drink until the water was completely gone, then he looked at her carefully.
He had been looking forward to seeing her again, having, with a sense of satisfaction, regained control over the situation by realising that her vanishing acts had been a direct consequence of the impact he had made on her—forget all that rubbish about never going near a man like him in a thousand years. If she had been so convinced of her rightness, she wouldn’t have spent the two weekends he had been up on mysterious away-days.
Of course, he wouldn’t touch her with a barge pole now, but it still made him feel good that he hadn’t been off-target when he had tuned in to that high-voltage sexual awareness he had felt emanating from her.
Annoyingly, however, he was aware that his body was lagging behind his thoughts for once.
Not even the alarming dullness of her clothes—a pair of baggy, grey jogging-bottoms, an equally baggy tee shirt and an even baggier cardigan thrown over it—could reduce the surge of adrenaline he had felt the minute she had opened the door to him.
The fact that she hadn’t been able to conceal her reaction to seeing him was overshadowed by the realisation that he wasn’t quite as much in control of things as he had anticipated.
‘Why didn’t you think to call me sooner?’
Heather counted to ten. ‘Everything was frantic here. By the time things had calmed down and Katherine had been seen to, I called you at your house, but you weren’t there and your mother couldn’t remember your mobile number.’
‘It’s programmed into her phone.’
‘Which she didn’t think to take with her!’ She took a deep breath.
‘She must have asked you to bring it for her once she was at hospital?’
‘Katherine doesn’t see her mobile phone as some kind of indispensable appendage, Leo. You might, but she doesn’t. In fact, she very rarely remembers to take it with her when she goes out so, no, it wasn’t on her list of requests when I came back here to fetch her some clothes for the hospital. If I had seen it lying around, then I might have thought to take it in for her, but I didn’t.’
‘And I suppose it didn’t occur to you to look for it because it’s not a necessary appendage for you either?’ He raked his fingers through his hair in frustration because he could feel himself getting away from the matter in hand, falling victim to an inexplicable surge of something, some uninvited emotion that he didn’t want or have time for. ‘I might have got here sooner if I had been contacted earlier. How’s Daniel been?’
‘How do you think?’ Heather asked, and then she subdued her aggression to add, in a more level voice, ‘He’s been pretty rotten, poor kid. I think he remembers…Well, it might help if you talk to him. He’s asleep now, but in the morning. Just reassure him that everything’s going to be okay.’
‘Of course.’ How the hell was he going to do that? Leo wondered. That kind of intimate conversation with his son did not come naturally to him. Maybe, if he’d been a father figure throughout his formative years, he might know how to handle things…But, no; he refused to think of the unpleasant circumstances surrounding that murky issue. In the past month or so, the boy had at least begun to look at him slightly less unforgivingly. He had opened up enough to occasionally mention his mother, but there had been no heart-to-heart chats about feelings and emotions. How was he supposed to handle that now? ‘I expect this must bring back memories,’ Leo said, annoyed to realise that he was looking for clues on how to deal with the situation.