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CHAPTER FOUR
HOWWASLEANDROto know that those glibly spoken words that‘tomorrow is another day’would come back to bite him? Tomorrowshouldhave been another day. It should have been the day they returned to London, where he would pick up the search for Julie, having first begun the business of sorting her father’s financial woes, never mind about the old man’s misplaced pride. He and Celia would part company, she the better for tickets to the fashion show. Despite what he had said to Celia, he had been privately convinced that, with no Julie or Dan there, making the trip back by helicopter the following day would have been a certainty.
That was four days ago.
He knew that when snow fell in this part of the world, it meant business. He had awoken to the silent force of a snowstorm the morning after they’d arrived and realised that any hope of getting the helicopter up was out of the question.
In his meticulously ordered life, where there was no place for surprises, the weather had decided to blindside him.
They had sat opposite one another at the vast table in his kitchen, which was a marvel of what money could buy, from the four-door cream oven to the high-tech seldom-used gadgets and he had seen exactly what she’d been thinking as clearly as if her thoughts had been emblazoned across her forehead in neon lettering.
Get me out of here.
She couldn’t have looked more horrified if she’d glanced up to discover that the sky was falling down.
She’d been prepared to be polite for a night or two, knowing that she would be rescued from having to be alone with him because they would be greeted at the house by Julie and her brother.
The prospect of them both sharing space for longer than that without any convenient chaperones or a helicopter on red-alert standby had appalled her and she hadn’t bothered to disguise her reaction, even though he had spent at least an hour assuring her that the house was so vast that they could get lost in it and, besides, he would remove himself during the day to carry on working from the office that was set up in another wing of the manor house.
‘You won’t notice I’m here,’ he had said. ‘We can meet in the evenings for dinner, but you’ll find your quarters comfortable enough for you to stay put all day while we’re here. You’ll have your own suite, with a television and a dedicated space if you want to work...’
‘Good,’ she had said with visible relief, and so here they were, several days later, their time together reduced to an hour or so in the evenings over dinner.
Where he had always had a short attention span when it came to listening to people talk about their feelings, he found, to his intense irritation, that her silence on the subject got on his nerves. Where he was used to zoning out, his mind veering off to work-related issues when meandering anecdotes from dates turned into searching questions designed to elicit confidences he had no intention of sharing, he found himself encouraging her to open up. Thus far his success rate hovered around the zero mark.
And in this scenario, how was it possible that his libido moved into fifth gear every time he looked at her? How did that even begin to make sense?
Was it the novelty of being in the company of a woman who didn’t spare him a second glance? Or did those lush curves appeal to him in ways that bypassed his brain and went straight to his groin?
Or maybe it was just the stark isolation of their circumstances...
He banged his fist in seething frustration on the desk where he was now forced to abandon work because the Internet had decided to crash, and scowled.
It was a little after three in the afternoon. Through the window, the swirling snow against a darkening sky made for an eerie landscape.
There was an afternoon to fill and an evening to get through. For a workaholic, the prospect of idling in the slow lane indefinitely was the stuff of nightmares.
Defeated by the lack of Internet and not caring for the direction of his thoughts, Leandro vacated his office to wander in the direction of the kitchen.
The size of the place had naturally lent itself to subdivision, with one half reserved for friends and family as and when they chose to visit, which was not often, and the other half devoted to work-related gatherings, which had been far more frequent over the years.
It was not unusual for entire high-performing teams to be given all-expenses-paid time there where they could enjoy first-class service and idyllic surroundings with their family.
Connecting doors could slide seamlessly into place, separating one side from the other completely. It was a marvel of advanced engineering and Leandro had personally overseen its implementation.
Now, making his way through the vast house, absently contemplating the prospect of Celia and his wayward responses to her and wondering, yet again, what the hell was going on with him, he glanced through the windows of one of the rooms he swung by and there she was.
Outside!
What was she doingoutside?
Was this what she got up to mid-afternoon when he was in the office, sitting in front of a computer, linked up to half the world for his uninterrupted hours of virtual meetings?
Having walks outside in driving snow? Or was this her first venture out to make a change from the horror of being cooped up in a luxury manor house the size of a small castle?
Leandro didn’t give himself time to dwell. Instead, he sprinted to the front door, grabbing the house keys en route, not bothering to hunt down his wellies from the boot room behind the kitchen.
The freezing cold hit him with the force of a body blow. He gasped sharply but didn’t slow his pace, moving swiftly through the snow and oblivious to the physical discomfort.
