‘What do you want?’
He didn’t turn and Lexi hovered there, uncertain as to whether she should stay or go, some inner instinct telling her that he needed her right now. ‘I wanted to make sure you were okay.’
Stars twinkled overhead in the navy sky and the only sound was that of water slapping as it broke against the side of the yacht. ‘Still trying to solve the problems of the world, angel?’
Lexi returned her gaze back to him. He wasn’t looking at her, but lay with his eyes closed and his hands folded behind his head. ‘No. I thought you might like company.’
He opened his eyes, his gaze raking her from head to toe before closing them again. ‘You’re wearing too many clothes for the company I need right now.’
‘It might help if you talked about what’s wrong.’
‘Really.’ His voice was snide and Lexi questioned her decision to interrupt him. ‘Let’s give it a try, shall we. I don’t want Amanda to be married and to leave me in charge of the care of my son.’ He bared his teeth in a parody of a smile. ‘Net. Still married. What a surprise.’
Lexi moved out onto the balcony and shivered as she felt the chill in the air descend on her bare skin. Or was that just the frost coming off the brooding man with his eyes now fixed on some dark spot in the distance? She perched on the matching chair beside his. ‘I know you’re upset at the news.’
‘Upset? I’m not upset, angel. I’m furious.’
‘Because you love her?’ she acknowledged ruefully.
‘You think that’s what’s going on here? You think that I love Amanda Weston?’
‘You seemed devastated by the email she sent and—’
His sneer stopped the rest of her words. ‘And you thought it was a love gone wrong. I don’t do love, angel.’
‘If it’s not love you feel for Amanda, then … I’m confused. Why do you act as if Ty doesn’t exist?’
‘Because to me he doesn’t.’
Lexi’s breath caught in her throat. She wouldn’t believe that. She couldn’t. ‘I don’t believe you.’
He paused and she didn’t think he was going to answer her.
‘You want to know what happened with Amanda, I’ll tell you. She came onto me at the Brussels Airport when all flights were grounded and we had sex. It was never going to be anything more than one night but she was looking for a rich husband and we used her condom—which I later found out she had already tampered with. It was a one-night fluke but she hit the jackpot.’
‘That’s terrible.’
Leo looked at Lexi’s shocked face. Why had he told her that? He’d never told anyone before. Was it because he was sick of her thinking that he’d abandoned Ty for nothing? ‘Poor Lexi. Doesn’t that fit in with your ideal world where two parents love their children beyond measure?’ He shook his head dourly and turned back to the ocean.
‘I don’t live in a fantasy world, Leo, if that’s what you’re suggesting. I know that sometimes one loving parent is better than two who can’t get along.’
Leo glanced back at her averted face. Her chin was angled defiantly, her spine rigid. He knew instantly that whatever had gone on in her own childhood had affected her deeply and, despite his never having been interested in a woman’s past before, he couldn’t hold back his curiosity. ‘You’re talking about your father’s double life, I take it.’
She stared at her hands for a minute and then her eyes met his. ‘Yes. My father was a mildly successful golfer who travelled the world and my mother accepted that as part and parcel of loving him. She was a very understanding person and she never pushed to travel with him—mainly, I think, because she would have found it hard with Joe and I—but nor did she push to marry him. Then one night her world fell apart when the daughter he had fathered with his long-time mistress had an accident and his mistress gave him an ultimatum. Mum or her.’
Leo looked over and saw that Lexi’s jaw was tight. ‘And he chose the other woman.’
‘He did try to visit Joe and I but … somehow he never seemed to make it.’ She gave a forced laugh. ‘For years we would dutifully dress in our best clothes once a month in the hope that today would be the day he would keep to his promise. Only it rarely was and soon Joe stopped dressing up altogether.’
‘And you?’ he asked. ‘Did you stop dressing up?’
She fingered the necklace, a move he had noticed her do countless times before when she was nervous, and wondered who had given it to her. ‘I’m a bit of an optimist.’ She laughed a little self-consciously. ‘I might have given him more of a chance than Joe.’
‘A bit of a dreamer, you mean,’ he said, but there was no harshness behind the words. Just resignation that he could never be as forgiving. ‘Who gave you that?’
His eyes dropped to the necklace she was drawing back and forth across her bottom lip and wished it was his tongue.
‘My father gave it to me on my tenth birthday.’
‘And you’ve never taken it off since,’ he guessed.
She let it drop back down between her breasts and when she spoke her voice was choked. ‘You make me sound pathetic.’
‘Not pathetic. Just someone who believes in happy ever afters.’
‘Is that such a bad thing?’
Leo wasn’t particularly comfortable with the turn of the conversation and contemplated telling her to leave. If only he didn’t want her so damned much. ‘Only if it means you don’t see things for what they really are,’ he said, raising a mocking eyebrow, willing her to deny that she didn’t.
‘What makes you think that I don’t?’
His eyebrow climbed higher. ‘You wear a necklace to keep a connection with a man who deserted you and you need to ask that?’
Lexi’s hand rose to her neck. ‘I just … I never …’
‘You never wanted to accept that he chose the other family?’
Her hand dropped and she pushed off the lounger and walked to the railing, gripping it firmly and leaning slightly forward as she gazed down at the sea. ‘You’re very astute.’
Leo didn’t respond. He could see that she was deep in thought and he was struggling with his own desire to go to her. Comfort her. Then she glanced back over her shoulder and the delicate muscles around her shoulder blades shifted alluringly.
‘Children are innocent. They don’t ask to be born. They deserve proper care. And …’ she paused and he watched her throat work as she swallowed ‘… I guess I always hoped he’d come back. I hated that his selfishness caused my mother to have to work two jobs, because that was hard on us all.’ She paused. ‘I don’t know why I still wear the necklace.’
‘So you became a childcare worker to provide care for kids whose parents have to go to work?’
She looked surprised, as if she hadn’t made that connection before. But it explained why she was so keen for him to have a relationship with Ty and why she was so wary of him. A wariness she was right to feel.
‘What’s your relationship with your father like now?’ he asked softly.
‘We don’t have one.’ Her eyes connected earnestly with his. ‘It’s what I’ve been trying to tell you. Now is the time to get to know Ty. I haven’t seen my father in ten years and Joe even longer than that.’
Leo looked away as she came to sit back down opposite him. He had more than just Amanda’s subterfuge