Angie breathed in slowly and deeply. It didn’t help to steady her leaping nerves or to subdue the dangerous surge of anger ready to explode from her lips. She focused on Jake’s down-bent dark head and faithfully promised herself that she would not raise her voice and risk upsetting her son.
‘Do you realise what you’ve done?’ Her low-pitched enquiry shook with the effort it took to control her temper.
‘Theos… It is beginning to sink in,’ Leo confessed with outrageous calm. ‘I cannot take you to Deveraux Court until Thursday at the earliest. Wallace has guests. It would be inappropriate for you to arrive while they remain.’
Angie trembled and threw her head up, eyes shimmering like piercing blue arrows of accusation. ‘You have deprived my son of the only home and security he has ever known…’
‘You should be thanking me.’ Bold black eyes instantly challenged her.
‘Th-thanking you?’ Angie stammered in disbelief.
‘How could you remain in that house enslaved by that harpy? Where is your spirit and sense, that you should’ve accepted such terms for so long?’
As raw rage splintered explosively through Angie’s slender frame, she sucked in oxygen like a drowning swimmer in an effort to contain it. ‘I stayed for my son’s benefit,’ she bit out tautly. ‘I was able to be with him all day…and he’s enjoyed many advantages there that I could never have given him.’
‘I made a polite approach and a most modest request. That woman was not reasonable,’ Leo asserted, smoothly disclaiming all responsibility.
‘You interfered in something which was none of your business, and you gave Claudia precisely two minutes to snap to attention and do your bidding before you went on the offensive. I told you there was no way that I could leave the Dicksons over Christmas… I told you that nothing on earth would persuade me to go back to Deveraux Court,’ Angie reminded him in a steadily rising crescendo. ‘But you wouldn’t listen, and now we’re homeless and I’m out of a job!’
Leo cast her a gleaming look of reproof. ‘Drop the dramatics, Angie. Naturally, I will assume responsibility for you both until such time as Wallace relieves me of the necessity.’
Angie was so close to exploding, she couldn’t trust herself to speak.
‘Thursday, you go to Deveraux Court and eat humble pie. I don’t care if it chokes you. It is the price of reacceptance, and you will pay it,’ Leo informed her with daunting conviction. ‘Today I did you a favour.’
Angie gulped. ‘A favour? As of this moment, my son has only the clothes he is wearing and not one single toy to his name—’
‘Waff.’ Jake spoke up for the first time, with an air of expectancy. ‘Want Waff…’
Angie froze in dismay. ‘Waff’s at home, darling,’ she muttered weakly. ‘He couldn’t come.’
Jake scowled, looking so shockingly like a miniature version of his father that for an instant Angie could not believe that Leo had not guessed the truth the minute he’d seen him. ‘Want Waff…Waff like cars too.’
Angie swallowed the great lump threatening her throat and shot Leo a look of accusing censure. ‘Perhaps you would like to explain that the T-O-Y,’ she spelt out, ‘which he has slept with every night of his life, no longer belongs to him.’
‘What are you talking about? Ah…you mean you were careless enough to forget it in your rushed departure.’
‘N-no, that’s not what I meant,’ Angie managed unevenly. ‘All his clothes and almost all his playthings originally belonged to Claudia’s children and she refused to let me remove any of them from the house—not very surprising, after the way you insulted her. She couldn’t get back at you, so she took her temper out on my child instead!’
His lean, dark features stiffened with incredulous comprehension. ‘His clothes…his toys?’
Angie nodded jerkily.
‘Toy,’ Jake said doggedly. ‘Waff toy.’
‘So we buy some more—particularly this Waff thing,’ Leo gritted with stark impatience. ‘I wouldn’t have believed that any woman could exercise such petty spite!’
‘A W-A-F-F cannot be bought at any price,’ Angie informed him in a voice thick with condemnation and a deep inner dread of Jake’s bedtime. ‘It was made by Claudia’s grandmother for Sophia. It’s a pink giraffe.’
Leo spread unimpressed and autocratic lean brown hands. ‘I will buy a proper giraffe.’
‘It won’t fool him, Leo.’ Slowly, numbly, Angie shook her aching head, wondering why she was focusing on a humble but much loved soft toy when she didn’t even know where they would be sleeping tonight. ‘Where are you planning to take us?’
‘My town house—where else?’
‘I’m not going home with you!’ Angie exclaimed in shock.
‘Home,’ Jake said more cheerfully. ‘Waff…’
‘He’s obsessed,’ Leo remarked disapprovingly.
‘He’s still only a baby,’ Angie said defensively. ‘How could you do this to us?’
‘With the greatest of ease. I did what was right—’
‘Right?’
‘For better or for worse your child is a Neville. He is a part of my family circle,’ Leo ground out in grudging concession. ‘He should not suffer for the faults of his parents.’
Angie slung him a scorching glance. ‘I am not at fault as a parent in any way.’
‘I would suggest that we save this conversation until we are alone.’
‘I don’t want to go to your house,’ Angie told him between clenched teeth.
‘I’m not checking you into a hotel. You might be stupid enough to disappear again, and I have wasted enough time tracking you down—’
‘I thought it was Wallace who—’
‘My grandfather is in his eighties,’ Leo reminded her drily. ‘I employed the investigation agency and dealt with them, and you were far from easily found.’
‘I didn’t want to be found,’ Angie whispered in sudden, dragging weariness, her taut shoulders slumping in defeat.
Silence fell. For a minute or two, she stared blindly out at the passing traffic but then slowly she turned until she was watching Leo instead. The relaxation of his impressive lean length had an indolent quality which mocked her own explosive tension, yet was, in its own way, highly deceptive for there was nothing indolent about Leo. A white-hot core of raw energy drove him, not to mention his fierce Greek pride. And even without that spectacular bone structure and build Leo would have commanded attention in any company for he had a presence equalled by few men, and women were mesmerised by the high-voltage charge of his intense sexuality.
His hard, classic profile turned, brilliant dark eyes catching her out, lingering unashamedly as she coloured, his lush lashes dropping low to study her intently with nothing of her own inhibition. A curl of heat clenched her stomach and tensed every muscle in her slender body.
‘I was afraid that you might have ended up on the streets.’ Leo broke the silence with that devastatingly candid admission.
Her jaw dropping, Angie’s eyes widened in outrage.
‘It was a natural fear,’ Leo stated quietly. ‘What