Briefly, Angie closed her aching eyes in a spasm of bitter regret. When in the heat of the moment she had confessed to something she hadn’t done, she had been bolstered by the belief that she was protecting someone she loved and that, in any case, she herself had nothing more to lose. After all, she had already lost Leo, had already accepted that she would have to leave Deveraux Court before her condition became obvious. She had been too proud and too devastated by Leo’s rejection to confront him with the consequences of their stolen weekend of passion.
‘Wallace is prepared to overlook the past for the sake of your child,’ Leo continued levelly.
‘My child has a name…and his name is Jake,’ Angie told him thinly.
If possible, Leo’s rawly handsome features set even harder as he ignored that unasked-for piece of information. ‘In your position it would be very foolish to ignore the offer of an olive branch. I believe that Wallace may now be willing to give you financial assistance.’
‘I want nothing from any of you.’ Hotly flushed and deeply chagrined by the assurance, Angie leapt upright again. ‘But I would like to know why Wallace should feel it’s his responsibility to offer me money!’
Diamond-hard dark eyes assailed hers in icy collision. ‘Obviously because his grandson Drew has failed to observe his duty to support you both.’
In stark confusion, Angie froze. How was it Drew’s duty to support her and Jake? And then finally, and most belatedly, comprehension gripped her, only to leave her drowning in bemusement again. Evidently, Leo was under the impression that his cousin, Drew, had fathered her child. How on earth could he think that? How on earth could anyone think that?
Outrage swelled inside Angie until she thought the top of her head might come flying off. In that instant it didn’t matter how such a ludicrous misapprehension had come about. Angie was too infuriated by Leo’s evident opinion of her morals to concern herself with anything else. So, Leo saw her as a thief and a tart. After all, only a fairly promiscuous young woman would have become intimate with both of Wallace’s grandsons within the space of three months. But Leo was clearly quite happy to believe that she had slept with his cousin after sleeping with him, and no doubt was even more content to believe that responsibility for her illegitimate child could be laid at Drew’s door rather than his own.
‘Angie, I didn’t come here to argue with you or to become involved in personal matters which are frankly nothing to do with me,’ Leo drawled in a tone of cool reproof. ‘I’ve issued the invitation on Wallace’s behalf, and I haven’t got the time to wrangle with you—I have a date, and I’m already running very late.’
For a split second, Angie felt as though he had plunged a knife into her ribs and stabbed her to the heart. A date? So the grieving widower was finally back in social circulation… Wow, bully for him! And, naturally, Angie’s sordid personal problems were beneath his notice and wholly devoid of interest to him. Indeed, knowing Leo as she did—brutally candid, highly intelligent and uncontrolled only in bed, she enumerated painfully—he had probably been congratulating himself on a narrow escape from severe embarrassment ever since she’d been exposed as the household thief.
‘Angie…?’ Leo prompted.
She turned round, her perfect features pale and set. As the bitterness rose inside her, it was the most unbearable moment of temptation she had ever experienced. She had a sudden fierce urge to smash Leo’s self-possession, punish him for his deliberate distancing of himself from her predicament and hurt him, as he was hurting her with the humiliating pretence that they had never been anything to each other but casual acquaintances.
His hard, dark features were impatient. ‘Wallace is expecting you to arrive on Thursday. I assume I can give him the assurance that you will be accepting his invitation?’
In the unstable hold of a tidal wave of conflicting emotion, Angie tore her pained eyes from the dark, savage splendour of Leo as he stood there, so effortlessly detached from her. The anger went out of her at that same moment.
‘You’ve just got to be kidding,’ she breathed with a forced and brittle smile. ‘I have no desire to spend Christmas with your grandfather, and I should think he would have even less desire to spend it with me.’
‘I thought you might, at the very least, be tempted by the possibility of a reconciliation with your own family.’
A humourless laugh was dredged from Angie. Reconciliation? He didn’t know what he was talking about. She had never had anything but an uneasy and difficult relationship with her father. Now an unwed mother, and labelled a thief into the bargain, what possible welcome did Leo fondly imagine she would receive?
‘When I walked out of Deveraux Court…’ her throat thickened, making her voice gruff ‘…I knew I would never be walking back. I wasn’t sorry to leave and I don’t want to return even for a visit. That whole phase of my life is behind me now.’
Bold dark eyes scanned her strained profile in exasperation. ‘I suppose it was less than tactful of me to mention the thefts.’
Angie grimaced, willing back tears, determined not to break down in front of him. ‘I would never expect tact or consideration from you,’ she told him helplessly. ‘But I really do object to being patronised. You’re out of your mind if you think I would be willing to go cap in hand to your grandfather like some pathetic charity case! I’ve managed fine on my own.’
The very faintest darkening of colour emphasised the hard slant of Leo’s high cheekbones. ‘You are working as a servant…you always swore that you would never do that.’
Angie flinched, fingernails biting painfully into her palms. Servant. Not for Leo, surrounded from birth by the faceless breed, with the more egalitarian label of ‘domestic staff’. As hot pink scored her complexion, she whirled away from him before she was tempted to slap him for that most undiplomatic reminder. ‘Theos… Only the most stupid and selfish pride could make you refuse so magnanimous an invitation! Wallace could do a great deal for your son. Think of the child. Why should he suffer for your mistakes?’ Leo demanded abrasively. ‘It is your duty as a mother to consider his future.’
A raw ripple of pain and fury sizzled through Angie as she spun back, blue eyes gleaming like sapphires. ‘And what about his father’s duty?’
His wide, sensual mouth twisted. ‘When you got into bed with someone as self-centred and irresponsible as Drew, you must’ve known that you’d be on your own if anything went wrong.’
Leo was angry, Angie registered in surprise. Tension splintered from the fierce cast of his strong features and icy condemnation glittered in his narrowed gaze. Recognising that look for what it was, Angie realised that Leo was not quite as indifferent as he would like to pretend when it came to his conviction that she had leapt into his cousin’s bed so soon after she had succumbed to him. Bitter amusement filled her at the awareness. He hadn’t wanted her but it seemed he hadn’t wanted any other man to want her either.
‘Believe it or not, at the time I thought Jake’s father was as steady as a rock,’ Angie heard herself admit, tongue-in-cheek. ‘I was very much in love with him. In fact I believed he was the very last man likely to leave me in the lurch.’
‘You were only nineteen…what did you know then of men or their motivations?’ Leo’s response was harsh, dismissive, as he glanced with sudden, unconcealed impatience at the thin gold watch on his wrist and strode towards the door. ‘I’m afraid I really do have to leave.’
The abruptness of his exit took Angie by surprise. She sped out after him and by then he was already in the porch. As she opened the door, he stared broodingly down at her and, without warning, time slid dangerously back for Angie and served up a disturbingly intimate memory.