‘Bother me?’ An eyebrow arched sardonically. ‘Of course not. She believes she has your best interests at heart.’ His hand came to her nape, curving it caressingly. ‘And for that reason she can snipe at me all she wants, so long as she does not succeed in convincing you that what she believes is in the truth.’
Bending his head, he kissed the tip of her nose, then smiled, and Trina was forgotten—like everything else as he set himself out to charm and amuse her throughout the long, leisurely taken dinner at the kind of restaurant Jemma had only read about in good magazines.
He drove her home to her flat afterwards.
Her body grew cold as they went way beyond the point where she could continue fooling herself that he was taking the long way back to his own home.
Was this it? she wondered achingly. Thanks for everything, Jemma, but I’ve decided you’re not really what I want in my life?
By the time he stopped the car, she was like a statue frozen in ice in the seat beside him. She couldn’t believe it—couldn’t understand why, when he had been so openly warm and tender all evening. His eyes had never left her for a moment, his concentration on her alone, so intense that she’d begun to glow inside in anticipation of what was to come.
Slipping free both their seatbelts, he turned, making her jerk violently as his long-fingered hand curved around her nape again. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘For a beautiful evening.’
She swallowed, unable to stand it, turning pain-glazed eyes up to his. ‘Y-you don’t want me tonight?’ she whispered tremulously.
‘Want you...?’ he repeated, black eyes frowning down at her. Then he caught on and sighed heavily. ‘I am not a married man, Jemma,’ he derided, ‘with a wife and two-point-five children at home to give me all the companionship I require.’
‘I never said you were!’ she protested.
‘Yet you expected me to treat you as a married man treats his mistress? Seeing you—being with you—only when I need some sexual relief?’
She frowned in confusion. She’d thought that was exactly what all this was about.
Removing his hand, he sat back in his seat. ‘This is supposed to be a relationship!’ he snapped out impatiently. ‘Not a convenience!’
‘I’m sorry,’ she mumbled, feeling a fool for reading the situation so terribly wrong.
‘You insult me!’ he claimed stiffly.
‘Well!’ she snapped back defensively. ‘How am I supposed to know the way these things are played? It is my first try at it after all! Perhaps you had better write down the ground rules so I won’t insult your sensibilities again!’
Huffily, she turned, searching for the door lock, feeling a big enough fool to want to get away from him as soon as she could.
‘Come back here!’ he growled, catching her by the arm and pulling her around and against him. ‘You crazy woman.’ His chest lifted and fell beneath her cheek on a long-suffering sigh. ‘You’ve been sweet and amusing and downright seductive all evening.’ She felt his mouth brush against her hair. ‘And if I’ve had to fight the urge to rush you home to my bed, then I did so out of respect for you, not because I did not want you. But come Friday...’ he growled, pushing her away a little so that he could burn her with his eyes. ‘Pack only a toothbrush, agape mou. It will be all you will need for two days!’
He was right: her toothbrush was all she needed. Which from then on set the pattern for Jemma’s first real love-affair. If he was in town, then Wednesday evenings they spent simply enjoying each other’s company. If he was away, then each night he would ring her up and spend long delicious minutes just talking to her via the phone. Weekends he always managed to be in London, working his tight and busy schedule around it, Jemma guessed when sometimes he looked so tired when she arrived at his home on Fridays that it filled her with warmth to know he would go to such lengths just to be with her.
One Wednesday, almost a month into their relationship, he looked tired when he picked her up, and Trina’s acid glances seemed to irritate him. ‘I’ll tell her to lay off you, shall I?’ Jemma suggested when they’d driven the distance between her flat and a small but exclusive restaurant he intended taking her to in total silence.
‘She does not bother me unduly,’ he dismissed. ‘I have been continent-hopping for the last two days, and I am just a trifle jet-lagged, that’s all.’
She studied him, seeing the lines of weariness tugging at the corners of his eyes and mouth, and gently placed her hand on his thigh. ‘We don’t have to go anywhere if you don’t feel like it, Leon,’ she told him softly.
He glanced at her, mockery twisting his beautiful mouth. ‘You wish me to stop here? And we’ll just spend the rest of the evening in the car?’
‘No.’ She smiled at his sarcastic humour. ‘But we could go back to your house,’ she suggested. ‘Spend the evening just—relaxing.’
The car slowed while he spent several seconds reading the message in her eyes before, without a word, he returned his attention to the road. He didn’t say anything, but his hand came to cover hers where it rested on his thigh, and remained there until they concluded their journey to his home.
That night they made love, then she made them omelettes for supper, strolling casually about his modern kitchen wearing only one of his shirts. He sat at the kitchen table in his dark towelling robe, following her lazily with his eyes. The mood was lazy, beautifully so. After they’d eaten in front of the TV set in his sitting-room, he stretched out on the sofa and pulled her down to lie beside him. In ten minutes he was a
sleep.
She just lay there watching him for hours, loving the way all the toughness had left his face, how he slept with his lips slightly parted, breathing light and evenly. At twelve o’clock she crept out of the house and caught a taxi back to her flat. The next morning he rang her at work before she’d even taken off her coat.
‘You left me to make your own way home,’ he said. ‘Don’t do it again.’
‘You were sleeping,’ she explained. ‘It wouldn’t have been fair to disturb you when a taxi could transport me door to door just as easily.’