Or was it?
As Anna stood there, her back pressed against the door, with those heavy-lidded, hard-as-stone eyes boring into her like diamond-tipped drills, a sense of almost overpowering disbelief shuddered through her.
Oh, God, what have I done…?
The words ricocheted round and round inside her head. Like bullets. Each one a killing shot.
But it was too late to do anything now. Far too late. She’d taken on the burden of Jenny’s crime and now she had to see it through.
And the only way to do that, she knew, was not to think about it. Absolutely not think about what she had just agreed to.
A barrier sliced down in her brain. Don’t think about anything but now! That was all she must deal with.
‘Well,’ she heard her voice say, and marvelled that it sounded so cool, so unconcerned, ‘what happens now, then?’ She levered herself away from the door panel, deliberately thrusting her hands inside her pockets, staring, chin lifted, across at the man who had caught her red-handed with a priceless ruby bracelet in her illicit possession.
Again her attitude seemed to send a flash of black anger through his eyes.
‘What happens now, Ms Delane,’ he intoned heavily, with that killing look still levelled at her, ‘is that you get out of my sight. Before I change my mind and get you slung into jail, where a thief like you belongs! Now, get out.’
Leo’s eyes were dark, inward-looking, his face closed. He could feel the black deadly rage roiling through him like a heavy sea.
How dared she think she could steal from him? And then deny it, defy him as she had? Christos, he had heard the word shameless used before, but never had he realised just what it meant. His face darkened even more. Now he did.
She stood there in front of me, lying through her teeth. Pretending her innocence even as the bracelet was in her pocket.
And she might even have got away with it.
He saw again in his head the moment when she’d headed towards the front door of the Schloss, walking with her elegant, poised model’s saunter, distancing herself completely from the search going on behind her.
And all along…
But she’d given herself away. That tiny but instinctive gesture she’d made with one hand, brushing her pocket.
Checking if something was still there…
And he’d known—known with every gut instinct—that the thief was her. He’d already carpeted the cowering Justin, lambasted the head of security for the shambles that had happened that afternoon. It had been obvious that that was when the theft had taken place, and the only suspects had been those close enough to the spilt jewels to have purloined any.
It had been Anna Delane who’d spilt them in the first place. Anna Delane who’d been the first to scrabble down to the ground. Every finger had already been pointing at her.
But investigating would have been a delicate business. The missing bracelet could have been anywhere in the Schloss—secreted in any of a thousand unlikely places for collection later. Or even off the premises. It could have been miles away, in completely different hands. Searching any of the suspects’ rooms would have been fruitless.
And Anna Delane had had the audacity to think she could walk straight past him carrying it on her!
The black rage roiled through him again. That anyone should have stolen from him—and for it to be her—her of all people.
His eyes narrowed.
Had he been mad to let her walk out? Mad not simply to pick the phone up again and get the police here?
But the vixen had been right. She’d gone immediately for his one weak spot—his determination to avoid any bad publicity tainting the launch of the Levantsky jewels.
No. Leo let his rage sink down again, congealing into a cold, hard mass inside him. He’d done the right thing. No police—no publicity—no prison.
Anna Delane would make amends to him in a manner he would find far, far more satisfying.
She didn’t want him in her bed? Thought herself too virtuous for his desires?
A grim smile twisted at his mouth.
She’d be begging for him before he was done with her!
CHAPTER FIVE
ANNA sat in her wide leather seat in the first class cabin and stared unseeingly at the glossy magazine lying across her lap. At her side, separated from her only by a drinks table, sat Leo Makarios.
He was working at his laptop, completely ignoring her.
But then, he’d ignored her almost entirely ever since she’d fled from his office, taking on her shoulders the burden of guilt for a crime she had not committed.
Accepting the blame for having stolen a priceless bracelet.
Accepting the ‘choice’ Leo Makarios had held out to her.
But she hadn’t had any other option. She’d told herself that over and over again, like a litany running in her head. She could not let Jenny be sent to prison and have her baby taken from her, brought up in some faraway desert country, where wives were locked up in harems, kow-towing to every male in sight…