Despite all this impressive framework, it was his eyes that drew and dominated, piercing blue eyes, all the more compelling for being set off by thick black lashes and arched eyebrows which carried more than a hint of arrogance. They scanned her expression with too sharp an intelligence for Leigh’s comfort.
“Have you come home?” he asked in a soft lilt that sent a shiver down her spine.
All the defences she could summon shot into place. He was not going to get to her. She couldn’t—wouldn’t—let him. With the most determined deliberation Leigh could manage, she adopted a careless air.
“Only to test the waters again. They seem rather cold at the moment so I thought I’d take a walk in the garden while the VIPs are attended to.” She threw him a dismissive little smile as she added, “If you’ll excuse me…” then proceeded down the steps.
His voice followed her. “Do you mind if I accompany you?”
It wasn’t so much a shiver this time. Her spine literally crawled with a tangled mass of unresolved feelings, but nothing good could come of pursuing any of them with Richard Seymour. That time was gone…gone…gone! He might look like hero material but he hadn’t been a hero when it counted to her, when she’d wished he’d charge in like a white knight, smiting her father and rescuing her. Such foolish, teenage yearnings!
She squared her shoulders before glancing back at him. “You’ll be missed,” she pointed out, mocking the importance everyone else placed on his company.
“You’re the person I want to be with,” he said with a directness that jiggled something deep in Leigh’s heart, deep and dangerous to her.
“Not a good choice,” she quickly parried.
“It’s mine. I don’t allow other people to make my choices for me.”
There was purpose written in his eyes, undivertable purpose. As much as Leigh wanted to defy it, she knew he would not be turned away. A ruthless hunter always caught up with what he was hunting.
Did he think she’d come home to make trouble for him? Did he see her as someone he might need to pin down and neutralise so his takeover from Lawrence Durant was absolutely smooth? A black sheep could be unpredictable. After all, why turn up at the funeral after six years of non-communication?
Knowing herself to be a total waste of Richard Seymour’s time, Leigh decided no harm could come to her from one brief cross-examination from him. “Fine!” she agreed, then, determined to show she wasn’t disturbed by the prospect, she added, “I do admire people who have the strength of character to make their own choices.”
He smiled. “So do I.”
Leigh felt a very definite punch to the heart. His smile seemed to link her to him, as though they were co-conspirators in complete tune with each other. Leigh instantly rejected the idea, but she still felt shaken by it. Richard Seymour was not the man she’d wanted him to be and she wasn’t about to be tricked into thinking differently.
He ran appreciative eyes over her as he headed down the steps. “You’re looking good, Leigh.”
“Thank you.” She dragged out the memory of the last time he’d commented on her appearance, instinctively defending herself against the flattering power of his compliment. “As opposed to looking anorexic, I presume.”
He’d accused her of it after one of Lawrence’s ritual Sunday lunches, which she’d been unable to eat, her stomach too screwed up to accept anything. Although she had been dieting, her non-consumption of that meal had nothing to do with losing weight.
Richard shrugged. “Believe it or not, I was worried about you at the time. You were far too thin.”
“And you put it so kindly. Anorexia might be a way of taking control of your body but it won’t give you control over anything else,” she quoted.
His eyes locked onto hers again as he reached her side at the foot of the steps. “I thought you needed a jolt,” he explained without apology.
He was giving her a jolt right now with his perverse interest in her, with the clarity of a memory that surely held no significance to him. She’d been seventeen, fighting what she then saw as an unfair weight problem, trying to look more like her model-slim sisters. Impossible task.
She’d been born with a different bone structure and no matter how thin she got, the natural curves of her body denied her a boyish figure. Away from the repressive influences of her family, she’d grown into the woman she was always going to be, voluptuously curved, but not grossly so for her height. She was taller than average, though even in high heels, she found herself half a head shorter than Richard Seymour, looking up to him, which she suddenly resented.
“Well, Richard,” she drawled, turning away to start down the path to the ornamental pond, “let me tell you I don’t need your approval for who or what I am. In fact, your opinion—good or bad—is irrelevant to me.” Which put him in his place in her world.
He laughed as he fell into step with her.
Leigh found herself clenching her hands at his amusement. She sliced him a totally unamused look, wishing he would take his disturbing presence elsewhere.
He grinned. “I have missed the black blaze of those incredibly expressive eyes.”
Missed? Had she really made such a strong impression on him all those years ago? Or was he attempting to flirt with her, now that she “looked good”?
She frowned over the questions as he walked on with her. The black suit she’d bought for the funeral was figure-hugging. She didn’t favour layers of shapeless clothes that made her look fat. Apparently Richard liked her current shape. As for her eyes, Leigh simply accepted them as part and parcel of her coloring—matching the blackness of her hair and toning with her olive skin. She had a slightly long nose and a wide, very full-lipped mouth, and she’d come to accept them, too. Since her face had filled out, the features she’d despaired over looked more right somehow, in keeping with the rest of her.
Certainly she no longer felt like the ugly duckling she’d always been in the Durant household, though she could never be counted as a blonde beauty like her older sisters. Ruefully she remembered her one desperate attempt to dye her hair blonde. Total disaster. Like everything else she had attempted in her teens in her hopeless need to fit some acceptable mould. She hadn’t known then she was a cuckoo in the nest and cuckoos couldn’t turn into anything else.
“I have no doubt you have no need of my approval, Leigh,” Richard picked up, apparently determined on teasing her out of her silence. As she glanced at him he added, “There wouldn’t be one red-blooded male who didn’t approve of you.”
Sex! Leigh wrenched her gaze from his and walked faster, inwardly fuming over this shallow view of her. She was more than just a lush body that a lot of men fancied. But then men like Richard Seymour probably didn’t want a woman with a mind or a heart. Taking sex as needed was probably his style.
In all the publicity and media speculation sparked by Lawrence Durant’s fatal heart attack, the newspapers had made much of the fact Richard Seymour was not married—one of the most eligible bachelors in Australia—and Leigh wondered if he was as much a womaniser as Lawrence Durant had been, behind the respectable facade of his marriage. With his looks, Richard certainly wouldn’t lack choice.
Was he now thinking the same of her? He was wrong, if he did. She hadn’t even cared to sample the chances that had come her way. Somehow an internal barrier went up the moment any man started getting too close to her. As for desiring them…she’d often wondered if desire was linked to trust and that was why she couldn’t feel it. Maybe one day she would meet someone she could really trust to love her as she wanted to be loved.
“Are you happy in the life you’ve made for yourself?”