She stood up and began edging towards the door. ‘I also know that it makes things a little uncomfortable between us at the moment, so I’m going to transfer back to my place tomorrow. You’ll have to stay here with Daniel until your mother returns.’ She collided with the door and paused, licking her lips nervously, willing him to say something instead of maintaining a silence from which she could deduce nothing whatsoever. Maybe, though, his continuing silence was preferable to his mockery or contempt.
Looking at her as she backed towards the door, Leo had been overcome with an angry, urgent need to stop her in her tracks. The inevitability of this outcome hit him like a sledgehammer. He didn’t know what he wanted to say, but he damn well wasn’t going to remain in tongue-tied silence. But before he could utter a word she was holding up her hand. The other hand had already turned the door handle.
‘I don’t want you to say anything. We both knew that this was going to end, anyway, for whatever reason.’ There was a silence that lasted only a heartbeat. ‘But, before I go, I mustn’t forget to tell you: your brother’s coming home. He’ll be here on Saturday. In time for when Katherine arrives back from the hospital.’ It was good to have the conversation back onto a prosaic level. It helped her diminishing self-control and reminded her that this wasn’t some great romantic drama, just an everyday story of two people who weren’t destined to be together. He would move on and she would too, eventually.
‘Goodbye, Leo.’
She fled. He could hear her retreating footsteps, and he knew that she wasn’t heading back up to her room because he heard the slam of the front door. It was as final as a full stop at the end of a sentence.
CHAPTER NINE
HEATHER looked at her reflection in the mirror. She could feel the flutter of nerves in her stomach and it was making her feel sick. Was she wearing the right thing? Was she giving off the correct message? What exactly was that message anyway? Some could argue that, having declared your love to a man who had a stone for a heart, there was no appropriate message that could be achieved with an outfit.
She had spent the past three days unable to eat, concentrate or do much of anything apart from think, and her thoughts had been very poor company. She had barely glanced at her work, which she had stolen back from Katherine’s house, furtively having made sure that Leo was nowhere around when she had been inside the house. She had, however, checked her mobile phone every other second, or so it seemed, and had wished against the odds that she would hear the distinctive beeping sound of a text message from him. When they had been together he had often texted her, and she still blushed when she remembered the content of some of his messages. But she had not heard a word from him and, while that was precisely what she had expected, the pain of missing him was still unbearable. She had got the closure she had wanted, except it had done nothing to put her on the path to recovery.
And now she was about to see him again—when she still felt raw, bruised and vulnerable.
Katherine had returned from hospital—in fine fettle, although still unable to walk without the aid of crutches—and with the help of Marjorie, the lady who came in to clean the house during the week, she was hosting a dinner in celebration of her son returning from foreign shores.
Heather knew all this because she had been invited to the little dinner party, which was going to be a cosy affair. Just family. And Heather. No amount of helpful suggestions along the lines of, ‘Wouldn’t it be nice to have some time with your sons on your own? To catch up?’ had managed to rescue her from the horror of having to face Leo again.
Which brought her right back to her outfit: casual. Nothing that would indicate that she might, in any way whatsoever, be attempting to attract him: a pair of grey trousers and a black tee shirt with a simple black cotton jacket flung over it, and some plain, black flat shoes. No one, she decided, could accuse her of wanting to draw attention to herself when she was dressed in the most background colours known to mankind. Colours that, coincidentally, were great for bolstering her confidence, because they made her feel utterly sexless. All she needed was the addition of a briefcase, and she might have been going for a job interview at a bank.
Not that she felt in any way confident as she left her house fifteen minutes later. In fact, she felt about as confident as a prisoner being led to the guillotine. She had decided to walk and, the closer she got to the big house, the slower her pace became until she was standing in the cool early evening, staring at the house in front of her, searching out the little attic window from which she had looked down, only days ago, to a breathtaking view of open fields and sky. Leo’s car, the gleaming, silver Bentley, was parked at an angle in the large, gravelled courtyard, as was a small, red runabout which Heather knew belonged to the housekeeper who had come for the evening to prepare the meal and do the dishes. Close to the front door was a black motorcycle which looked as though it had seen better times.
Heather took a deep breath and forced herself on with the cheering thought that the evening wouldn’t last for ever. In fact, she was determined to stay for as little time as humanly and politely possible.
Also on the plus side was the fact that they wouldn’t be alone together. Alex, Katherine and Daniel would all be there as well, and chances were high that Leo would barely notice her presence at all.
In all events, he wasn’t there when she entered the house. Where was he?
‘He had to rush off to London this morning,’ Katherine said, smiling from the sofa where she was sitting with a drink in her hand. ‘He hasn’t even had the opportunity to see his brother again!’ Which drew Heather’s eyes to the man sitting next to Katherine—no doubt the owner of the battered motorcycle parked askew outside the house.
Alex had the same set of features as his brother, but without the sharp edges, and with none of the power and arrogance that stamped the contours of Leo’s face, giving it its own distinctive brand of sexual potency. When he stood up smiling to shake her hand, she could see that he was a little shorter than Leo and with the wiry body of a cyclist. He didn’t threaten her in any way at all and Heather liked him immediately on sight.
Without Leo around her anxiety faded, and as introductions were made and a drink pressed into her hand she felt herself begin to relax. If Leo had gone to London, then it was unlikely that he would be returning any time soon. She didn’t have to be on the lookout. She could give herself over to listening to Katherine and Alex as they chatted animatedly with one another, Alex telling them about his travels, and Katherine chastising him gently about the risks he took living rough on the other side of the world.
Daniel’s eyes were like saucers as Alex regaled them with tales of high adventure, teasing his mother that as soon as she was back on her feet she would have to ride pillion with him when he next took off.
‘Although,’ he mused as they went in for dinner, an informal meal served in the kitchen, ‘being here, I kinda think that it might be time to find me a steady wife and settle down…’
‘Just what I wish your brother would do.’ Katherine sighed, taking her place at a table which had been optimistically set for five. Leo’s empty space spoke volumes for his absence. Now that his mother had returned, he had clearly returned to his bad old ways of putting work first, Heather thought.
She noticed that, at the mention of Leo, Alex’s face became closed, but the impression lasted only a second then he was back to smiling and joking, involving Daniel in the conversation with a warmth and ease that brought a smile to Heather’s face—although, as the spectator watching the mother-son interplay, she couldn’t help but feel a strong pull of sympathy for Leo. He had from a young age felt locked out of the family unit, Katherine had confided, felt less loved than his brother and less appreciated for his efforts.
‘What he couldn’t have understood,’ Katherine had told her thoughtfully at the hospital when they had had their heart to heart, ‘was that Alex had always just needed more looking after. He never seemed to really know himself the way Leo did. He had always needed reassurance.’
Now she thought about Leo and the way he had pulled back over the years from his family until now, when Daniel and then Katherine’s fall had brought him back into the fold. Not entirely, but life, after all, was a gradual process of growing and learning.
She felt momentarily faint, thinking how much she would have loved to be by his side over the years, learning and growing alongside him. Instead, not only had he disappeared but no one seemed entirely sure when he would return.
‘You must be really disappointed.’ She turned to Alex when there was a lull in the conversation over dinner. ‘Having travelled all the way over here to find that Leo’s been called away on business.’
Next to her, Daniel was all ears as he demanded to know the gory bits of his grandmother’s operation: ‘What do you think it looked like, all that blood and stuff? Couldn’t you have asked them to take a picture?’ All those pressing questions which he had obviously felt constrained not to ask when Katherine had been in hospital, and which Katherine was now strenuously trying to evade, although Heather could tell from the expression on her face that she was close to laughing.