His Last Chance at Redemption (21 page)

Lexi wished the words back as soon as they left her mouth because even though she thought they might be true, he most likely didn’t need to hear them right now.

Leo turned on her. ‘Is that what you imagine is going on
here, Lexi?’ he snarled. ‘Did you imagine I was falling in love with you? That you had beaten every other woman to the post and would get my ring on your finger?’ He laughed harshly as if the idea was ludicrous. ‘Because I’ll tell you now, I’m not the type to hand out trinkets you can wear around your neck in the hope that one day I’ll come back.’

Lexi felt as if she’d been punched. Not only because of what he had said, but also because she could see that she had just done what her mother had done—harangued a man into ending a relationship with her.

But she couldn’t be sorry. Not like her mother had been. Because Lexi knew she deserved more from a man. Where her mother would have settled if her father had stayed, Lexi realised that she never would. So, as sick as she felt at losing the man that she loved, she couldn’t be sorry that she had forced the confrontation. ‘I wasn’t talking about you taking a chance on me, Leo,’ she said with quiet dignity. ‘I was talking about Ty.’

‘Leo? Hellooooo?’

Leo blinked at the sound of the cutesy female voice in front of him and landed back at the Duke of Greythorn’s swanky London party with a thud.

He glanced down as the blonde curled her fingers around his forearm as she smiled up at him. ‘For a minute there I didn’t think you’d heard a word I said.’

Leo stared at her. For a minute? Try the last half an hour.

He rubbed the back of his neck and glanced around the opulent hotel room and thought that his investment team had done a good job in procuring it for his portfolio. But that was it. He couldn’t care less about the party, or the people in it.

‘Look, Sarah—’

‘Samantha.’

‘Samantha.’ He smiled, but it felt like more of a wince. ‘To
be honest, I didn’t. My son is at home with a cold and I’m a little distracted right now.’

‘You have a son? Does he look like you?’

Yes. Yes, he did. And Leo felt his heart swell with pride at the fact. He shook his head slowly. ‘You know, you’re the first person who isn’t in his inner circle who knows about him.’

The blonde tilted her head coquettishly. ‘I feel privileged.’

Leo frowned. He hadn’t told her because he wanted her to feel privileged, he’d told her because for the first time he actually felt like it. For the first time he actually
felt
like Ty’s father and it pained him to think that Ty still didn’t know who he really was.

‘Do you have a wife as well?’ Samantha purred.

‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘I’m not that lucky.’ Lucky? Where had that come from? ‘If you’ll excuse me, I have to go.’

‘Of course. I hope your child feels better soon.’

Leo brooded about the evening he’d had all the way home. It wasn’t the party that was the problem, or even most of the people in it. It was him. He’d changed. He wanted more from life than polite chitchat and a fleeting moment of losing himself inside a beautiul woman’s body.

He’d only been back from Greece for a week but other than work and Ty, he had to admit that he was bored, and for once he didn’t want to just carry on as if everything was okay. Because it wasn’t. It was empty.

As if on cue, an image of Lexi’s smiling face came to mind and he realised he’d never once been bored in her company. Phenomenally turned on—and exceptionally frustrated—but never bored.

He recalled the moment she had left the yacht exactly seven days ago. He hadn’t gone after her straight after she’d walked out of his room, his emotions stripped bare when her pained expression had reminded him of how his mother had often looked at him when he’d disappointed her as a child.

He and his mother had an estranged relationship at best.
He sent her money she didn’t use and she called him on his birthday, which made him feel guilty and hurt. The fact was, something had broken between them after she had asked the nursing staff to turn off Sasha’s life support system and he didn’t know how to get it back.

And Lexi had only exacerbated those feelings with her unrelenting questions that morning. So, instead of going to her straight away to apologise for his callous words, he had done what he always did when emotion threatened to swamp him—he’d switched off. Gone for a swim.

He would have gone to her after he had cooled down but he’d been too late. She had already boarded one of his choppers for Athens—supposedly under his instructions! He’d nearly called it back but he knew how much she hated them and it had been a mark of her desperation to get away from him so he’d decided to let her go. Ty had cried and then become remote. Just like he did when he was trying to stop himself from feeling anything.

‘Good evening, Mr Aleksandrov.’

‘Good evening, Mrs Parsons.’ Leo pasted on a smile and walked through to his sitting room, shrugging out of his dinner jacket. ‘How’s Ty?’

‘Sleeping like a little lamb. I told you the worst of his illness was over.’

‘So you did.’ He tossed his jacket onto the back of the sofa. ‘Do you have that passport yet?’

‘Not yet sir, but I’ll be sure to tell you when it comes through.’

Leo nodded and walked her to the door once she had collected her bag. ‘Goodnight, Mrs Parsons. I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon.’

‘Actually, I’m back in tomorrow morning, sir. Carolina has an appointment to attend to in the morning.’

‘Fine. See you in the morning.’

He saw her out of the door and tugged at his bow tie.

He stopped outside Ty’s room and opened the door a whisker to look inside. The room looked vastly different from the way it had before he’d gone to Greece. Gone was the double bed and modern furnishings and in its place was a racing car bed and half a toy store. Leo smiled at the thought of how much he would have loved this room as a child.

All he could see from the dim light given off from Ty’s nightlight was a small lump under the covers and a shock of pale hair. He stood beside the bed and watched the steady rhythm of Ty’s breathing for some time, automatically smoothing his hair back from his forehead when he stirred.

As if sensing his presence, Ty muttered in his sleep and rolled over. ‘Grandma?’

Leo felt gutted as Ty called out for Amanda’s deceased mother. How was it that he had got the care of his young son so wrong? How was it that he had been so blind to so many things? Lexi was right, he hadn’t faced anything. He’d just buried it in a six-foot pit and piled a heap of manure on top.

He lay down on top of the covers and curled himself around Ty’s sleeping body as he had seen Lexi do weeks earlier. A lump formed in his throat and his nose tingled as he fought to hold back tears. This was his son. His own flesh and blood and he’d used every excuse he could come up with to stop himself from feeling anything for him. To stop himself from loving him. And all because he was afraid.

Leo thought about himself as a boy, hiding under his blankets late at night as he listened to his parents fighting and then, full of worry for his mother, creeping into the hallway to make sure she was okay.

He remembered how lonely he had felt, sitting with his back to the wall in a tight huddle. How … stoic. How strong he had decided he needed to be to survive. He hadn’t shown emotion even then.

No wonder his mother had said he was like his father! And yet she had still called him every year to maintain a connection
with him. Maybe she
had
loved him. Maybe Lexi was right in saying that she had just been so overcome with grief that she had only
seemed
to close off from him. And, drowning in his own grief, he had pushed her away so that he didn’t have to face his own guilt. His own fear of hearing how like his father he was.

Leo grimaced. He had unknowingly made himself over in his father’s image anyway and he was still doing it.

Bohze
; he didn’t want that any more. He recalled the blissful nights on the yacht, with Lexi sleeping beside him all soft and warm. He’d convinced himself that it was just sex that had given him the sense of well-being he always experienced in her arms, but it wasn’t.

It was her.

He thought again of that last morning they had been together and the moment he’d felt sure she had been about to tell him that she needed him. At the time it had sent him into a flat spin but now … now he was ready to admit that he needed her too. Needed her more than his next breath.

Bohze!

She’d made him care and he’d been so afraid of admitting it, he had driven her away. Had laughed in her face at the notion that he was falling in love with her. Which he was. Had.

He loved her.

The thought hit him with the force of a bullet.

What an ass he was. He loved her and he had pushed her away.

He had to tell her. He had to
have
her. And he was sure she felt the same way. He was sure she wouldn’t have given herself to him, lain with him every night in his bed, if she hadn’t had strong feelings for him. So okay, maybe not love—
yet—
but he’d move heaven and earth to change that.

‘Grandma?’

Ty stirred again and Leo stroked his brow. ‘It’s not Grandma, Ty. It’s Papa.’

He felt a sense of warmth he’d only ever experienced in one other person’s arms steal over him and it was as if a lifetime of pain and suffering just melted away. He could feel Sasha in Ty’s small body, but it was different.

When he’d held Sasha he’d done so with the arms of a child. Now he could feel Ty with the arms of a man. He could sense his own strength compared to Ty’s vulnerability and realised that he didn’t feel any of the vindictiveness his father had expressed through violence. He just felt love.

Lexi read and reread the email and knew she should feel happier.

‘So Darth Vader has approved the loan?’ Aimee said with a gleeful smile as she read over Lexi’s shoulder. ‘You are such a legend. Three weeks ago, I thought there was no chance we’d get the money but now …’ She did a little jig. ‘Now we move on to phase two.’

Lexi nodded. ‘It’s thanks to Leo Aleksandrov that we have the loan approved.’

She flicked through a couple more emails knowing that Aimee was watching her sympathetically. When she had returned from Greece a week ago she had been red-eyed and hadn’t been able to hide her misery. Of course she’d told her friend everything. Including the full extent of the hurt Brandon had once caused her, which had been easy because it no longer had any effect on her at all. What hadn’t been easy was waking up each morning with the memory of how it had felt to have Leo spooning her, of draping herself over his hard male body, and knowing she’d never experience that again.

‘Don’t look now,’ Aimee whispered, ‘but the man in question has just walked in.’

‘Mr Hammond?’ Lexi looked around despite her friend’s warning.

‘Not Darth Vader. Leo Aleksandrov.’

‘Wha—’ Lexi closed her mouth, her eyes fixed on Leo’s
blond head as he walked through the main childcare room holding Ty’s hand.

‘I wondered whether Ty would be back,’ Aimee mused. ‘Do you want to go out and greet them?’

Did she …?

‘No!’ Not on your life. ‘In fact—’ Lexi stood up and looked around for a place to hide ‘—you go, and lock my door after you. If he asks, and I doubt he will, tell him I’m sick.’

Which she was.

Heartsick.

‘Too la— Good morning,’ Aimee trilled.

Lexi felt Leo’s presence and deliberately kept her eyes on the cooling cup of tea on her desk.

‘You must be Aimee.’ His deep voice resonated inside every one of Lexi’s cells. ‘It’s nice to meet you properly. I am Leo Aleksandrov.’

‘I know.’ Aimee sounded breathless and when Lexi looked up it wasn’t hard to discern why. Leo filled the doorway of her office, wearing black low-riding jeans and a peacock blue T-shirt that matched his eyes and hugged every one of the hard muscles lining his chest. Wasn’t today a work day?

She drew in a slow, discreet breath and tried to put on a brave face. If she had thought about Ty returning to the centre at all she hadn’t considered that Leo would be the one to bring him. Amanda maybe, but not Leo.

She looked at him, her brain empty of everything but getting through the next few minutes.

She cleared her throat discreetly before speaking. ‘If you want the sign-in sheet, then—’

‘I don’t want the sign-in sheet.’ His dazzling eyes, which seemed impossibly blue, held hers. ‘I want you.’

Lexi felt light-headed.
Oh, boy, how easy would it be to misconstrue that statement?

Aimee made a squeaking noise. ‘I think I have some wool
to wind.’ She made a dash for the door and Leo stepped into the room to let her past.

Lexi’s knees went weak and she dropped back down in her chair, not caring that it made him that much taller.

‘So how can I help you?’ she asked carefully, pleased with her moderated tone.

‘You’re wearing more make-up than usual,’ he rasped. ‘Why?’

Lexi felt herself redden. She was wearing more make-up because she was trying to hide the bags under her eyes from lack of sleep and too many hours pining over him.

‘This is what I normally wear,’ she lied.

‘You don’t need it.’

Lexi cleared her throat again. This was excruciating. ‘I can’t believe you stopped in here to discuss my make-up requirements,’ she said, wishing he’d just say what he had to say and leave.

‘No.’ He rubbed the back of his neck and she noticed for the first time that his own eyes didn’t look that rested either. Was Ty keeping him up? He wouldn’t have been happy to see her leave the yacht, but he had seemed fine with Carolina …

‘I came to tell you that I’m buying a new house.’

‘A new house?’

‘With a garden.’

‘Oh.’

‘And a pool.’

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

He pulled out the visitors’ chair and sat down opposite her, looking far too big for the tiny structure. ‘Don’t you want to know why?’ he asked carefully.

Lexi took a deep breath. ‘If you want to tell me.’

‘I’m keeping Ty.’ His words were quiet and sure, his eyes shining. Then he shook his head. ‘That makes him sound like a pet. What I meant to say was that I have agreed to take full
custody of Ty and Amanda has agreed to see him during the holiday periods.’