It felt like ages until Bridget was examined, wheeled off for tests and examined again. Leo was in the thick of it. She, on the other hand, kept her distance and at one point was firmly ushered to a plush waiting room, gently encouraged to sit, handed a cappuccino and informed that she would help matters enormously if she just relaxed, that everything was going to be perfectly fine.
How on earth was she supposed to relax? she wondered. Not only was she worried sick, but alongside all her concerns about her friend other, more unsettling ideas were jostling in her head like pernicious, stinging insects trying to get a hold.
She was dead on her feet by the time Leo finally made an appearance and he, too, looked haggard. Brianna half-rose and he waved her back down, pulled one the chairs across and sat opposite her, legs apart, his arms resting loosely on his thighs.
More than anything else, she wanted to reach out and smooth away the tired lines around his eyes and she sat on her hands to avoid giving in to the temptation which here, and now, seemed horribly inappropriate.
‘Leo, what’s going on?’
‘The main thing is that Bridget is going to be okay. It seems she stood up and fell as she was reaching for her cane. She banged her head against the edge of the table and knocked herself out. They’ve done tests to make sure that she suffered no brain damage and to ascertain that the shock didn’t affect her heart.’ He looked at her upturned face and flushed darkly.
‘I’m amazed you rushed into action like that when she could have just gone to the local hospital.’ She reached out tentatively to touch his arm and he vaulted upright and prowled through the shiny, expensive waiting room of which they were the only occupants.
‘Brianna...’ He paused to stare down at her and all of a sudden there was no justification whatsoever for any of the lies he had told. It didn’t matter whether they had been told in good faith, whether the consequences had been unforeseen. Nor did the rights and wrongs of sleeping with the girl, now staring up at him, come into play.
‘It’s late. You need to get some rest. But more importantly we have to talk...’
‘Yes.’ Why was she so reluctant to hear what he had to say? Where was that gut reaction coming from?
‘I’m going to take you back to my place.’
‘I beg your pardon? You still have a place in London? What place? I thought you might have sold that—you know?—to do your travelling.’
Leo shook his head and raked his fingers through his dishevelled hair. ‘I think when we get there,’ he said on a heavy sigh, ‘some of the questions you’re asking yourself might begin to fall into place.
CHAPTER SEVEN
BRIANNA’S FIRST SHOCK was when they emerged from the hospital and Leo immediately made a call on his mobile which resulted, five minutes later, in the appearance of a top-of-the range black Range Rover. It paused and he opened the back door for her and stood aside to allow her to slide into the luxurious leather seat.
Suddenly she was seeing him in a whole new light. He was still wearing the jeans in which he had travelled, a long-sleeved jumper and one of the old coats which he had found in a cupboard at the back of the pub and which he had adopted because it was well lined. But even with this casual clothing he now seemed a different person. He was no longer the outdoor guy with that slow, sexy smile that dragged on her senses. There was a harshness to his face that she was picking up for the first time and it sent a shiver of apprehension racing up and down her spine.
The silence stretched on and on as the car slowly pulled away from the kerb and began heading into central London.
When she looked over to him, it was to quail inwardly at the sight of the forbidding cast of his features, so she pretended to be absorbed in the monotonous, crowded London landscape of pavements and buildings.
It was very late but, whereas in Ireland the night sky would be dense and black at this hour and the countryside barely visible, here the streetlights illuminated everything. And there were people around: little groups shivering on the pavements, the odd business man in a suit and, the further towards the centre of London the car went, the busier the streets were.
Where one earth were they going? So he had a house in London. Why had he never mentioned that? Her mind scrabbled frantically to come up with some logical reason why he might have kept it a secret. Perhaps he was in the process of selling it. Everyone knew that it could take for ever to sell a property and, if he was selling it, then maybe he thought that there was no point mentioning it at all. But when she glanced surreptitiously at his forbidding profile, all the excuses she tried to formulate in her head withered and died.