‘It depends on your definition of bad.’ She grimaced. ‘Trina thinks it horrifying. Watching me has put her off having children for life, I think!’
‘Ah, Trina,’ he murmured, loading his mug with two heaped teaspoonfuls of instant, no less. ‘A very good friend you have there, Jemma. One of the best, I would say.’
Jemma sat back in her chair, eyeing him narrowly. ‘Quite a mutual-admiration society you two have set up together, isn’t it?’ she drawled, recalling the way Trina had spent every available moment the day before singing Leon’s praises. ‘I remember a time when you could do nothing but bite each other’s head off!’
‘We share a mutual interest,’ he defended mildly. ‘That kind of thing can draw the most unlikely people together.’
‘Enough to make one betray another friend?’ she suggested succinctly.
‘Betrayal?’ He glanced thoughtfully at her, then returned his attention to pouring hot water on his coffee. ‘Trina did not betray you.’ He did not even try to misunderstand. ‘If anything, she betrayed herself in her efforts to maintain her loyalty as your closest friend.’ Bringing his drink with him to the table, he sat down then looked levelly at her. ‘Did you know she has turned down an offer of marriage from her accountant because she is so concerned about what will happen to you if she did marry him?’
The easier mood shattered, sprinkling around her like a million and one shards of sharp, piercing glass.
Leon watched her for a few minutes, sipping calmly at his coffee while the full impact of what he had just said sunk indelibly in. Then he set down his cup and said smoothly, ‘Now we talk weddings, Jemma.’ And her eyelashes flickered as she focused on his grimly determined face. ‘Ours, not your friend’s. She has taken enough interference from us.’
The ‘us’ was a mere sop. But it stated its point well enough. Trina must have been feeling as if she was being pulled in two, what with her sick, pregnant and alone friend tugging her heartstrings on one side, and the man who wanted to marry her tugging frustratedly on the other!
It was no wonder she’d gone to Leon. She must have seen him as her only salvation!
She swallowed, seeing herself as Trina must see her, and felt the rise of nausea bite into her stomach again. A weight. She had become that weight around her best friend’s neck.
Slowly, she lifted her eyes to Leon’s. ‘What do you want me to do?’ she asked, and Leon nodded once firmly, as if her reply moved her up a couple of notches in his estimation.
‘I want you to pack your things and be ready to move out of here by tomorrow lunchtime,’ he said, giving his instructions in much the same way he would give them to anyone under his power—with a level but an unchallengeable tone. ‘By the time I come to collect you, you will have left a long letter for your friend, convincing her not only that she did the right thing in confiding in me, but that you also can’t thank her enough for it. You will tell her how ecstatic you are. How much in love!’ He slid the words out mockingly. ‘Then you will thank her nicely for being the good friend she has been to you, and wish her good luck and goodbye. But at no point will you so much as hint that you know anything of her own frustrated wedding plans,’ he warned. ‘Because she is no fool, that one, and she will guess that I have used my knowledge of it to coerce you, which will in turn only make her feel wretched and guilty—which we do not want, do we, Jemma?’
She shook her head, too full up with aching tears to speak.
‘Good,’ he said, and got up. ‘Now we go out and eat,’ he announced as if the rest just hadn’t happened.
‘I can’t,’ she whispered thickly, the idea of food appalling her delicate stomach.
‘You can.’ His hand, firm on her arm, lifted her out of the chair. ‘And you will.’ He looked determinedly into her defeated blue eyes. ‘If I have to carry you there with a bucket stuck beneath your nose, you will come—and eat. Understand?’
Understand? she echoed dully. She understood everything. She had just become one of Leon’s possessions, to do and be whatever he demanded of her.
&
nbsp; Surprisingly, the nausea subsided again. It hovered for a little while longer, threatening to send her running, but after a couple of deep controlling breaths of the warm humid air it left her, and she climbed into his silver Mercedes feeling more settled inside than she had for days.
Weeks—months? a little voice inside her head quizzed. Now there was a loaded concept, she mocked it. But not one she wished to dwell on right now.
He had her back at the flat by ten-thirty. ‘I won’t come in,’ he informed her as the car engine died. ‘Get some sleep,’ he instructed, lifting a hand to comb a stray lock of hair lightly from her cheek. ‘And try not to dwell too deeply on your lot, agape mou. I am not such a bad catch, surely?’
She glanced at him, her blue eyes clashing with his in the darkness of the car. ‘The point is,’ she posed, ‘would the catch be caught if it weren’t for a heavily baited hook?’
‘You are referring to my lot?’
‘I just don’t understand why you’re doing this,’ she explained, then sighed heavily. ‘I never asked for marriage from you, Leon, and still don’t expect it from you!’
‘You would prefer I set you up in a nice little semi-detached house somewhere in London suburbia?’ he suggested. ‘With a nice little allowance with which to live on while you rear my child?’
‘I would rather you just leave me alone to get on with my life in my own way!’ she snapped, retaliating to his disparaging tone.
‘Your life?’ he snapped out angrily. ‘What has your life got to do with this? Or my life come to that?’ He turned on her, his hand once again making the possessive statement by coming to lie over her stomach. ‘This is the only life that counts now, Jemma!’ His eyes flashed in the late summer darkness, naked with a stunning sincerity. ‘What you or I want for ourselves from now on can take only second place to this! And this needs both a mother and a father! Which is exactly what he will get, if I have to drag you screaming to the altar by the roots of your beautiful hair!’
He moved jerkily, throwing himself away from her and back into his seat to sit glaring out of the car window as though the world beyond it had suddenly become his enemy while the space inside the car hung with the echo of his passionate vow.
And it had been a vow, she acknowledged as she sat there and shook in reaction. A vow which put all her high-minded principles about leaving Leon his freedom while she struggled to bring their child up alone to shame.