She had. But suddenly she wanted nothing more than to escape his suffocating masculine presence, find a spot where she could straighten out her tangled thoughts.
‘Well, I want to make sure that it’s just right,’ she said sharply.
Leo stepped aside. ‘And I think I’ll go and have a shower and do something productive with my time in my room.’
‘You don’t have to disappear! You’re a paying guest, Leo. You can come down and do your writing in your usual place. Bridget and I won’t make any noise at all. She’ll probably just want to rest.’
‘I’ll let the two of you do your bonding in peace,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll come down for dinner. I take it you’ll be cooking for three?’
‘You know I will, and please don’t start on the business of me being a mug.’
Leo held up both hands in a gesture of mock-indignation that she could even contemplate such a thing.
Brianna shot him a reluctant smile. ‘You wait and see. You’ll end up loving her as much as I do.’
‘Yes. We’ll certainly wait and see,’ Leo delivered with a coolness that Brianna felt rather than saw, because his expression was mildly amused. She wondered if she had perhaps imagined it.
Leo remained where he was while she disappeared upstairs to do her last check of the bedroom where Bridget would be staying, doubtless making sure that the sheets were in place with hospital precision, corners tucked in just so.
His mouth curled with derision. The thought of her being taken advantage of filled him with disgust. The thought of her putting her trust in a woman who would inevitably turn out not to be the person she thought she was made his stomach turn. He could think of no other woman whose trusting nature should be allowed to remain intact.
He slammed his clenched fist against the wall and gritted his teeth. He had come here predisposed to dislike the woman who had given birth to him and then given him away. He was even more predisposed to dislike her as the woman who, in the final analysis, would reveal her true colours to the girl who had had the kindness to take her under her wing.
The force of his feelings on this subject surprised him. It was like the powerful impact of a depth charge, rumbling down deep in the very core of him.
He didn’t wait for the ambulance bearing his destiny towards him to arrive, instead pushing himself away from the wall and heading up to his bedroom. His focus on work had been alarmingly casual and now, having had a shower, he buried himself in reports, numbers, figures and all the things that usually had the ability to fully engage his attention.
Not now. His brain refused to obey the commands being issued to it. What would the woman look like? Years ago, he could have had pictures taken of her when he had set his man on her trail, but he hadn’t bothered because she had been just a missing slot in his life he had wanted to fill. He hadn’t given a damn what she looked like. Now, he had to fight the temptation to stroll over to the window and peer out to the courtyard which his room overlooked.
He stiffened when he eventually heard the sound of the ambulance pulling up and the muffled rise and fall of voices which carried up to his room.
Deliberately he tuned out and exerted every ounce of will power to rein in his exasperating, wandering mind.
* * *
At a little after five, he got a text from Brianna: a light early supper would be served at six. If he wanted to join them, then he was more than welcome. Sorry she couldn’t come up to his room but she had barely had time to draw breath since Bridget had arrived.
She had concluded her text with a smiley face. Who did that? He smiled and texted back: yes, he’d be down promptly at six.
He sat back and stared at the wall. In an hour he would meet his past. He would put that to bed and then, when that was done, he would move on, back to the life from which he had taken this brief respite.
He had an image of Brianna’s face gazing at him, of her lithe, slim body, of the way she had of humming under her breath when she was occupied doing something, and the way she looked when she was curled up on the sofa trying to make sense of her accounts.
But of course, he thought grimly, that was fine. Sure, she would be on his mind. They might not have spent a long time in each other’s company but it had been concentrated time. Plenty long enough for images of her to get stuck in his head.
But she was not part of his reality. He would check out the woman who had given birth to him, put his curiosity to bed and, yes, move on...
CHAPTER SIX
LEO WASN’T QUITE sure when the snow had stopped, when the furious blizzards had turned to tamer snowfall, and when that tamer snowfall had given way to a fine, steady drizzle that wiped clean the white horizon and returned it to its original, snow-free state.