‘Shall I stay while you get changed? I’d hate for him to ruin your dress.’ The nanny looked at her pityingly and Millie realised that she knew about the papers.
Her face turned scarlet because she hated the thought of people pitying her. ‘I don’t care about the dress. You go to bed. Thanks.’
The girl hesitated and then quietly left the nursery.
Millie sat down in the chair, Costas in her lap, happy to hide away with the baby for a while. The alternative was facing Leandro, and she wasn’t up to that at the moment.
She needed to get her thoughts straight.
‘What a mess,’ she murmured. ‘You have no idea what a mess this is. Why can’t people just mind their own business? Why do they love reading about trouble in other people’s lives? I’m never buying a newspaper again on principle. I’m going to read gardening magazines. They don’t hurt anyone.’
Exhausted by the demands of the conversation, Costas hiccoughed a few times and eventually drifted off to sleep on her shoulder.
As she laid him carefully in the cot, Millie stared down at him. She looked at the dark lashes and the dark hair and felt her stomach flip uncomfortably.
The gossip and speculation was endless.
It was always going to happen, wasn’t it?
Maybe he wouldn’t have affairs, but while she was with Leandro there was always going to be someone willing to sell him out for money, or point out her imperfections for an audience of millions to laugh at.
There would always be women willing to talk about their experiences in bed with him.
Millie dragged the chair next to the cot and flopped down into it, miserable, vulnerable and worried.
For half an hour she watched the baby sleep, checked his temperature and listened to his breathing.
Leandro stood in his study, his tension levels soaring into the stratosphere as he finished talking to his lawyers. The newspapers were strewn in front of him. Ordinarily he wouldn’t have given any of them a first read, let alone a second, but this wasn’t about him. It was about Millie. And he knew that today it was newspapers, but next week the celebrity magazines would pick up the story and it would run and run.
Thinking about Millie’s fragile confidence, he wanted to punch something.
Being exposed to this wasn’t fair on her, was it?
She was too sensitive.
He had no idea where she was now but, knowing Millie, he suspected she’d be curled up in an insecure heap somewhere, convinced that their relationship was never going to work.
His jaw tightened.
Perhaps she was
right. Perhaps it never was going to work. Who on earth wanted to live with this?
Needing to do something to relieve his frustration, Leandro took the stairs to the top floor and pushed his way through the door that led to the secluded roof terrace.
Here, there were no cameras. No one watching.
Just the soothing rush of water from the fountain in the centre, the scent of plants, darkness and his thoughts.
He strolled to the balcony, from where he was able to see over the rooftops of London.
Up until this point in his life he’d been indifferent to the media intrusion. It hadn’t bothered him. But now…
Millie was a living, breathing human being with feelings.
And those feelings had been badly hurt.
Leandro thought about those few seconds before they’d known what was wrong. Her thoughts had immediately been with the baby.