What greeted him was the sweet curve of Lexi Somers’ backside in the pale pink panties he’d shoved his hand into not a few hours ago. She was asleep on her side, his T-shirt bunched around her waist, her magnificent hair like a dark flag streaming out behind her, her body curved like a protective bow around the small form of his son.
Leo felt a vice grip his heart and absently rubbed his chest. They both looked so innocent, so untouchable, and his mouth tightened as he forced himself to turn away and leave the room.
He should never have agreed to take them to Greece.
A THOUGHT that had only grown stronger since his private plane had taken off from Heathrow an hour ago. Having worked with Danny for the past hour, he now cupped his hands behind his head and stretched his legs out in front of him.
His eyes cruised Lexi Somers’ creamy complexion and lowered to her even white teeth as she smiled at something Ty said. They were sitting on the floor playing with toy cars Lexi had insisted he buy at the airport. She was wearing a plain T-shirt and denim jeans with her hair in a ponytail and should have looked like any other girl, but she didn’t. She had an understated sexiness that she didn’t seem to be aware of and while he appreciated that the scrubbed, girl-next door image turned some men on, he hadn’t numbered among them before now.
He wondered how lover boy had taken the news that Paris was off and whether she had told him about the kisses they had shared the night before.
Probably not. Women were rarely honest about such things. And if she had, and lover boy was worth his salt, he would have come and laid Leo out cold. That was what he would have done if the situation had been reversed. If she was his and some guy had held her underneath him. But why was he thinking like this? She wasn’t his. No woman was, or ever would be.
Leo scowled, annoyed with his thoughts and the way she had treated him with polite detachment since she had woken this morning. She hadn’t mentioned what had transpired in his bed last night and he knew that was for the best. Why rehash something he didn’t care to explain, or repeat?
But he couldn’t deny that her indifference rankled. They had stopped briefly at her apartment and, much to her chagrin, he had accompanied her inside. He’d wanted to appease some latent curiosity about who she really was and what her motivation was for wanting to accompany him to Greece. Initially he had wondered if a latent gold-digger hadn’t been hiding beneath her down-to-earth demeanour but, if anything her home only confirmed that she was most likely a nice girl. Soft furnishings, family photos on the mantelpiece in the sitting room, personal knick-knacks carefully placed on well-worn surfaces. The opposite of the various homes he kept around the world, which were always pristine and well ordered. Like his life usually was.
And hell, she hadn’t even known who he was when they’d first met!
He glanced at Ty and cursed Danny’s lack of foresight in sending him a nanny without a passport, knowing as he did that it wasn’t Danny’s fault. None of it was. It was his. And only he could fix things. The key now was to keep Lexi and Ty as far away from him as possible, which shouldn’t be too hard. Yes, they’d be trapped together on his yacht for three days but the thing was as big as two football fields and consisted of eight levels. How hard could it be?
Bracing himself, Leo looked at his son. A boy he didn’t want and a boy who hadn’t asked to be born. Some might call it fate that Amanda had conceived on that one time they had had sex. He knew Lexi Somers thought Ty was suffering from his absence but Leo didn’t want to believe that. He had always believed he was doing the right thing, the honourable thing, in staying out of Ty’s life. In leaving him with his mother. But it seemed he might have been wrong and he couldn’t stomach that. Couldn’t stomach the thought of making a mistake again, of being responsible for another person’s future happiness.
But still Lexi’s words nagged at him. Was she right in suggesting that Ty’s emotional needs were suffering? She was the expert who had cared for him for two years. Why would she say it if it wasn’t true? And why had Amanda’s mother been looking after Ty? He needed to find out more information, that was clear.
‘Do you want to come join us?’ The soft query from the angel—on the floor—brought his attention back to the present. His eyes met hers and he saw a wealth of questions in her guarded expression. She was trying to figure him out and that wasn’t going to happen.
He stood up and pierced her with a warning look that had been known to make grown men quake.
The plane dipped slightly and one of the small cars Ty was playing with rolled towards him. Leo automatically bent to pick it up and then his eyes met his son’s. They were blue, like his. And he could see now how Lexi had made the connection between them so quickly. On top of the eye colour, his son had the slashing eyebrows and strong bone structure that indicated his Cossack ancestry. Leo held his breath as dark images of Sasha at that age rolled into his brain like thunderclouds.
Ty moved towards him, intent on getting his car, and Leo felt the urge to get as far away from him as possible. Then he felt the unmistakable shift of the aircraft as it hit an air pocket, the bottom seeming to fall out of the plane. As if in slow motion, Ty stumbled, his little arms instinctively thrown forward to break his fall, and Leo reacted purely on instinct—reaching down and lifting his son into his arms before bracing himself against the side of the plane. They staggered together and Ty flung his arms around Leo’s neck and for the first time ever Leo breathed in his clean, little boy scent. His eyes closed, his body tensed. Within seconds the turbulence had passed, the plane once again steady.
‘Are you okay?’ Lexi’s worried voice broke his paralysis and he opened his eyes to find her standing in front of him. He released a breath and clenched his jaw. No, he was not okay.
‘Here.’ He thrust Ty at her. ‘Make sure he’s strapped in at all times while the plane is in the air,’ he grated coldly.
‘Mr Aleksandrov …’ He didn’t know what she had been about to say and he didn’t wait around to hear, making his way to his private bedroom for the rest of the journey. He slumped down on the edge of the bed and held his unsteady hands in front of him. Ty had felt so small and fragile. He spread his fingers and turned them back and forth, no longer seeing his own hands but those of his father’s. How had he hit them at such a young age?
Athens was a revelation to Lexi. Hot, dry, crumbly … ancient! She loved it. Loved the busyness of the streets and the organised chaos of locals, tourists and Vespas winging in and out of the traffic.
She pointed things out to Ty as their taxi fought its way through the gridlock to God only knew where. She hadn’t seen Leo after the incident on the plane and again found herself wondering at the type of man he was. She hadn’t missed the pain behind his eyes as he had looked at Ty on the plane. Almost as if he was looking at someone else. A ghost. And did that have anything to do with his nightmare last night?
She knew from reading his biography online that he was an only child to ‘warm and loving parents’ who had died in a tragic accident when he was twenty. From there he had bought a scaffolding company and turned it into a global entity before expanding into hotels and construction. According to Wikipedia he had become the richest man in Russia by his thirtieth birthday, a position he still held five years on.
But if he came from such a loving family, why had he never accepted Ty as his son? What had gone wrong between him and Amanda? She hadn’t been able to find any information about his connection to either one of them online, which was strange for such a high-profile person—which she now realised he was.
Not to mention the most exciting male she had ever set eyes on. Not that she planned to do anything about that. She only wished she wasn’t so physically aware of him.
Like now, with her thigh touching the length of his in the taxi they had been