His smile was hard and enigmatic, green eyes the colour and clarity of peridots scanning her mutinous face. ‘Of course you do,’ he said. ‘I imagine Rick’s told you all about his horrible, unsympathetic, bad-tempered, far too demanding half-brother.’
Reluctantly, and only because she didn’t trust him not to plonk her into the chair if she objected, she sat down. Her frown turned to surprise as one of the waiters, yet another of the owner’s sons, arrived with a plate of linguine.
‘No—Arabella’s made a mistake,’ she said, smiling. ‘I told her I didn’t want it.’
Leo Dacre pushed the plate towards her. ‘Eat it up,’ he ordered. ‘No doubt the half-starved look is a professional asset when you’re singing Piaf, but it doesn’t do anything for your face.’
She didn’t like him, she didn’t trust him as far as she could throw him, yet the casual cruelty of his words hurt. ‘I’ve always been thin,’ she said stiffly.
‘So you starve yourself to make sure you stay that way? Eat up, there’s a good girl.’
Tansy hesitated. Leo nodded at the waiter, and said with enough command in his voice, ‘Thanks.’
Waiting until Peter had scurried off, Tansy said, ‘I don’t like being told what to eat.’
‘There’s no sense in being stubborn merely for the sake of it.’
He was, of course, maddeningly right. Until that moment Tansy hadn’t felt in the least hungry, but the steaming pasta smelt wonderful. Picking up her fork, she began to eat.
Tansy had a thing about hands. She believed they could tell her far more than expressions; people trained their faces to reveal only the thoughts and emotions that were politic, but hands and their movements were difficult to disguise.
Leo Dacre’s were competent as well as graceful. They were also under control. He didn’t wave them around, or drum them on the table, or scratch himself with them. Tansy found them distinctly unsettling.
Almost as unsettling as Leo Dacre himself.
A group of young men came in, shouting, laughing boisterously. Leo’s dark head swung around, presenting a profile as autocratic as a king on a coin; he checked them out before dismissing them as harmless.
He was a barrister, Tansy knew, well on the way to taking silk and becoming a Queen’s Counsel. Rick had been very proud of his brother’s speedy rise through the ranks.
Leo worked in offices and courtrooms. Why then did he look as though he’d be more than competent to deal with any number of rowdy youths? Unwillingly, Tansy was intrigued. A good gym and a certain amount of dedication and sweat would give him the muscles that covered his long bones, but beneath the sophisticated, disciplined veneer she sensed something untamed and lethal.
He had a predator’s focused awareness of his surroundings, a predator’s skill in finding the weak spots in armour—look at the way he had charmed Arabella into submission, the way he had homed in on her own reluctance to make things worse for Rick’s mother. As well, he displayed a predator’s frighteningly fast reactions, and that invisible, potent aura of danger.
Altogether an alarming man. And she was his prey, the person that sharp, clear brain wanted to break.
For as long as she could remember, Tansy had singlemindedly aimed for one goal. She had sacrificed almost everything—a family, an easy life, even friends—for it. She had put herself in jeopardy, had learned to be streetwise, had gone hungry and cold for her ambition, and she had come to believe that nothing scared her any more.
But Leo Dacre did. Of course, she could save herself all this worry, and tell him where his brother was; she had done more for Rick than most would expect from a chance-met stranger. Unfortunately it wasn’t in her to tamely knuckle under. And if she had been tempted, she’d only to recall Rick’s desperate face and urgent plea to change her mind.
‘This is my last chance,’ he’d said just before he left, his determination as obvious as his fear. ‘I have to do this, Tansy, and if Leo finds out where I am he’ll have me out of there without a second thought.’
‘Why?’ she asked. ‘Surely he’d be pleased that you’re getting help.’
‘You don’t know Leo. He’d never find himself in a situation like this, he’s too strong, but if somehow he did he’d deal with it himself. In our family Leo’s the one everyone goes to when they need help, the only one who doesn’t need help himself. He’s tough, and he’s brilliant, and he’s got no weaknesses. People admire him, they look up to him. More than anything in the world I want to be like him. If he finds out where I am he’ll take me home and make me see a psychiatrist, and it won’t work, because he’ll be there, he’ll be watching all the time, and if I let him down again I—’ He looked at her with such painful intensity that her heart twisted.
Then he said heavily, ‘It would kill me, Tansy. If I can only have the time and the privacy, I know this will work. I can’t cope with things like he does—I’m not as tough as he is—but I have to prove to myself and to him that I can do something right.’
All of his longing, the echo of years growing up in another man’s shadow, sounded in his voice.
Tansy grimaced. She knew what was driving him, his need to prove himself. Her relationship with her foster-family had foundered on the rock of her inability to be the daughter and sister they wanted.
She looked at Rick’s bent brown head and said angrily, ‘Surely he doesn’t expect you to be a clone of him, and if he is so insensitive, you’re better off without him!’
‘He’s not like that,’ he said simply. ‘Just don’t tell him where I am, OK? I hate asking you, because Leo’s a master of applying pressure and you’ve been so good to me.’
Tansy laughed. ‘If he finds me, which I doubt, he can’t do anything more than ask. He’s got no leverage.’
Rick eyed her with a grimness she now understood. ‘You don’t know Leo. He’ll find something to threaten you with. But please, promise me.’
She’d promised. So, she thought, shaking her head at the offer of coffee, she would make sure that, whatever tactics Leo Dacre tried, she wouldn’t give Rick away. He’d convinced himself that this was his last chance, and he deserved his opportunity.
A strange, fierce exhilaration flooded her. She would show Leo Dacre that she wasn’t easily intimidated.
‘Let’s go,’ he said, getting to his feet.
Apparently one of the tricks in his armoury was to take it for granted that she was going to fall in with whatever he suggested. Tonight she’d do that, for her own good reasons. Outside the bitter wind was now driving rain before it, and if she walked she’d be drenched by the time she got halfway home.
He didn’t ask where she lived. She didn’t tell him, but he drove straight there.
At the door of her flat he said, ‘Are you going to ask me in?’
‘No,’ she said abruptly, bracing herself for an argument. Huddling a little further into her coat, she said coolly, ‘It’s no use, you know.’
Of course she’d known she wouldn’t put him off so easily, but she was unprepared for his low laughter.
‘I enjoy a good fight,’ he said, a note of mockery giving emphasis to the words. ‘Open your door.’
‘I don’t want—’
Ignoring her struggles, he picked up the hand that held her key and, with his warm one around it, forced the key into the lock and turned it. His other hand came up and switched the light on.
‘All right?’ He looked around her cramped domain