me,’ he asked. ‘Please, Jemma,’ he begged when she went to turn away. ‘Listen—just listen? And when I have finished, if you still want to leave me I’ll—arrange it.’ Even Jemma in her wretchedness heard that hesitation in his voice for what it was.
She lifted her eyes to look at him. ‘Another lie, Leon?’ she challenged.
‘No,’ he denied. Then on a grimace, ‘Perhaps,’ he conceded. ‘Letting you go is not what I want to do and, selfish swine that I am, I am not sure that I can do it just like that.’ Grimly, he raked frustrated fingers through his hair. His face was pale, and she could see the strain of sleepless nights pulling at his features.
Her heart began to ache—for herself or for him she wasn’t sure, but it made her want to weep. Shakily, she put up a hand to cover her eyes. ‘I feel so wretched!’ she choked.
‘Come and sit down.’ His voice sounded gruff, and the hand he curled around her arm was trembling a little. She let him lead her over to one of the soft cushioned sofas and guide her into it. Then he pulled up a matching chair and sat down in front of her, bending to place his forearms on his knees while he waited for her to get a hold of herself.
Then, ‘Jemma,’ he said quietly, ‘I love you.’
She stiffened in instant rejection. ‘You don’t know the meaning of the word!’ she denounced, bitterly denouncing, too, that weak flutter of joy her heart responded with.
‘I thought I didn’t,’ he agreed. ‘I thought I never wanted to know, until I met you.’ His smile was heavy with irony, then was gone as he looked into her tear-washed eyes. ‘But I missed you when I was in New York,’ he murmured softly. ‘Nothing seemed worth breaking my neck for when I did not have you to rush back to.’
‘You seemed to do well enough,’ she remarked, remembering the article in the newspaper that had so sung his praises.
‘That is because I hardly ever went home,’ he explained. ‘I just bit people’s heads off and made the kind of reckless decisions that should have been the finish of me.’
‘Then it was lucky for you that it went the other way,’ she mocked that explanation acidly.
‘Yes.’ He deliberately ignored her scorn. ‘Then all this stuff with Nico blew up, and my father was on the phone panicking because Nico has announced his intention to marry and that stupid document he had drawn up to make me toe his line was suddenly backfiring on him because Anthia knew about it, and, although he loves her—almost to distraction—he also knows of her insane need to possess, if not for herself then for her son, anything that was once my mother’s. It is not entirely greed that drives her,’ he admitted. ‘She was my father’s first love—his only love! But he sold her out for a big purse, and if she ever forgave him for it she never forgave my mother—or me for that matter.’
Another grimace, and Jemma found herself wondering painfully what kind of childhood he must have had, with a stepmother who resented the very sight of him.
‘Being well aware of this,’ he went on, ‘through the years, my father had been very careful never to give her the slightest hope that Nico will ever inherit anything that belongs to the Leonadis family. There are other things,’ he explained. ‘Other ventures which are kept entirely separate from the main corporation. Ventures my father set up and built on his own merit. Those are Nico’s for the taking. He knows it—I know it! Nico was, until recently, content with what he knew was to be his. But Anthia wasn’t. This chance appeared and she took it with both hands by quickly marrying Nico off and making that document known to anyone who mattered.’
For a moment, angry frustration roughened his voice. ‘My father was now facing the prospect of having to make the biggest climb-down of his life by withdrawing that document. I couldn’t let him do it!’ he muttered. ‘He is old and he is ill, and, though we may not always see eye to eye, I love him and I am proud of all he has achieved with his life. I could not let him go out on such a low light.’ He took in a deep breath then let it out again. ‘”Marry Melva”, he begged. “Marry anyone but get me out of this mess”! And I realised that there was only one woman I could think of marrying—only one woman I wanted to marry! You!’ he stated huskily. ‘You and only you.’
He was looking at her, willing her to lift her eyes to his, but she didn’t, keeping them lowered on her twisting hands.
He sighed heavily, then went on. ‘So I came back to London to see you. I meant to explain all of this to you then ask for your help—keep it all as honest as I could. But—you know how I found you, Jemma!’ he declared. ‘Pregnant with my child! Weakened by sickness and so obviously struggling to survive that suddenly my priorities changed! Or maybe they were only excuses in the first place, I don’t know.’ He shrugged. ‘But from the moment I set eyes on you again it was you I was concerned about. Your health, your happiness and well-being! Blow my father, I thought to myself. He can stew for a while; Jemma needs me—and it felt so good to be needed by you,’ he chanted huskily, ‘that I proceeded to put the rest of it to the back of my mind because I was enjoying myself too much making up for all those miserable months in New York when I missed you so badly. I’ll explain the rest of it to her tomorrow, I kept telling myself. And the tomorrow became another tomorrow and another and another because we were happy and I didn’t want to spoil it with what had really become such an insignificant part of why I married you at all! Then suddenly I had run out of tomorrows!’ he bit out angrily. ‘And it hit me hard the morning my father came to the yacht that I had left it too late; that whatever I said now was going to hurt you because it looked so damned calculated!’
He ran a hand over his eyes, eyes that had been alight with a burning sincerity all the way through his long explanation.
‘Jemma,’ he pleaded, ‘you have to believe me when I say that I never wanted to hurt you. It just—reached a point where there was no other way out without hurting you! But, if you will let me, I will try my best to make it up to you.’
He didn’t know it, but he had already gone a long way to doing just that. Yet—
Confused by the wrangle of emotions churning inside her, she got up and walked over to gaze out of the window.
‘I lied, Jemma, about knowing the sex of our child,’ he said quietly. ‘My father knows I lied. I told him before I would let him sign anything over to me.’
Surprised, she glanced at him. ‘And he didn’t mind you lying to him in public like that?’
He shook his head. ‘He only wanted to save his own face. If we have a daughter it will be my credibility placed in question, not his.’
‘Which could happen if we do have a daughter,’ she pointed out.
Oddly, Leon smiled. ‘Actually,’ he murmured rather ruefully, ‘you quoted fifty-fifty odds at me on that event happening. But,’ he confessed, ‘I feel it only fair to warn you that there has not been a female born into the Stephanades line for five generations, which must widen the odds considerably.’
‘In your favour.’
He nodded. ‘Which does not help me in convincing you that I lied—does it?’
‘No, it doesn’t,’ Jemma agreed, turning to stare at the rich blue Ionian Sea sparkling in the morning sun. Yet she was beginning to believe him. Why she was not quite sure except, perhaps, because she wanted to believe him, needed to if she was going to be able to forgive him and put all of this aside, try to pick up the pieces of their relationship from here, but...
But what? she asked herself bleakly. What exactly is it you’re so upset about? A lie that, since you’ve been told it is a lie, has lost its power to wound? Or the fact that you trusted him so utterly that when he let you down you couldn’t take it?