The Virgin's Secret (12 page)

Angel nodded, and tried not to acknowledge the stab of disappointment low down in her belly. Just before she turned away she stopped and said, ‘I'm going to be out all day tomorrow with my sister. We're shopping for our dresses.'

And then she said hesitantly, ‘I never said thank you for making sure Delphi's wedding could be organised so quickly.'

Leo's face was cast in shadow, so Angel couldn't see his expression, and all he said was ‘It was part of our agreement, remember?'

Angel's mouth felt numb. ‘Of course.' And she turned and went into her bedroom.

 

Leo knew he should be making his calls—they were important, and an entire boardroom was in New York right now, waiting for him to contact them—but…he couldn't get Angel's face out of his head. And the dark shadows of tiredness he'd seen under her eyes. He couldn't get the roller coaster of the past days and nights out of his head, when everything as he knew it had been turned upside down and inside out. When only one thing seemed to make sense: Angel Kassianides in his bed.

It was as if the fog and haze that had clouded his brain since he'd caught Angel in the study was clearing slightly, and the extent to which he'd become consumed by her shocked him. The anatomy of their relationship was so utterly different from any other he'd known. And he still couldn't get a handle on Angel. She was an enigma. A dangerous enigma.

He couldn't get out of his head the way she'd just thanked him for organising her sister's wedding. When she had been so quick to jump on it and use it as a bargaining tool—no doubt ensuring her own future as well as her sister's. There had been something about it that niggled at him now.

Leo knew that she'd had plenty of opportunity to speak with her father, and yet she hadn't. On the few occasions she'd gone out it had been to meet her sister. She'd gone nowhere near her own home. So that pointed to her father not being involved. But Leo knew he would be a fool to let go his suspicions entirely.

One thing he knew: the more time he spent with Angel, in bed or out, the less logical he became. Maybe it was time to start pulling back, getting some perspective on things.

He finally picked up the phone, and spent the next couple of hours doing his best to forget all about the woman asleep upstairs.

 

A week later Angel lay in bed. Alone. It was late. Leo had rung earlier to say that he had to work late and that she should eat at home. It wasn't the first night in the past week that this had happened, and, rather than making Angel feel relieved at having a reprieve of sorts, it made her feel slightly nervous.

Leo had been so all-encompassing, so passionate since the moment they'd met, that it was a shock to see this more distant side to him. She heard a noise then: the unmistakable sound of Leo moving around his room. She held her breath, but as the minutes ticked by he didn't come in.

Angel turned over and stared into the dark. She hated the fact that she couldn't feel relieved he wasn't coming in. Hated the fact that her body throbbed with need. She closed her eyes, but opened them again quickly when lurid images filled her mind. She'd never thought that sex could be so…so…
exciting
. And addictive. She felt like some kind of sex addict; the minute she saw Leo her hormones seemed to go into overdrive and she had zero will-power when it came to resisting him. He only had to look at her and she caught on fire.

Angel couldn't help but suspect that this had to be part of his plan of revenge. After all, he was so much more experienced than her.

She tried her best to sleep, but even after everything had gone silent next door sleep still eluded her, so she gave up and sat up, swinging her legs out of bed. She'd get some water from the kitchen…

Padding down through the quiet villa, Angel felt a jolt, thinking back to the party that night, all those weeks before. Never in a million years would she have imagined that she'd be here, ensconced as Leo Parnassus' mistress.

Too late, just as she was pushing open the kitchen door, she realised that she wasn't the only night visitor. Leo sat at
the island in the middle of the kitchen, illuminated under a circle of low light from overhead. He looked up as she came in. He was eating something. Angel instinctively started backing away, feeling as if she was intruding on a private moment. ‘Sorry. I didn't realise you were up.'

Leo waved a hand, gesturing for her to come in. ‘You couldn't sleep?'

Angel hovered awkwardly and shook her head, ‘No.' She felt self-conscious in loose pyjama bottoms and a skimpily clinging vest top, but knew it was silly to feel self conscious when this man seemed to know more about her own body than she did. Not that he seemed inclined to be all that interested any more. Insecurity lanced her. ‘I just wanted to get some water.'

It would be ridiculous if she left now, so she went to the fridge in the corner and busied herself getting out a bottle, trying to ignore the way her pulse had rocketed. She hated to think that he might see something of how much she craved him.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw that Leo was wearing a T-shirt and jeans. Angel glanced at him surreptitiously. He might have been working late in the study after he'd come home. She noticed that he had faint smudges of colour under his eyes and felt a spike of concern. Something else caught her eye then, distracting her. Despite herself she moved closer to where Leo sat at the gleaming counter, clutching the bottle of water to her chest.

‘Is that peanut butter and
jam
?'

Leo nodded and finished eating a mouthful of sandwich. Angel must have looked bemused, because Leo wiped his mouth with a napkin and said dryly, ‘What?'

She shook her head and moved closer to the stool opposite Leo, unconsciously resting against it for a moment. ‘I just…I
wouldn't have expected…' she said inanely, feeling like a complete idiot. But there was just something so disarming about finding Leo like this that her stomach had turned to mush. Without realising what she was doing, she sat on the stool opposite him.

‘Want one?' he offered, with a quirk of his mouth.

Angel shook her head, slightly transfixed.

Leo started putting lids back on the jars. ‘My
ya ya
was the one who introduced me to it. She used to say that peanut butter and Jell-O was the only thing that made living in the States bearable. We'd sneak down to the kitchen at night, and she'd make sandwiches and tell me all about Greece.'

Angel felt a strange ache in her chest. ‘Sounds like she was a lovely lady.'

‘She was. And strong. She gave birth to my youngest uncle when they were a day away from Ellis Island on the boat from Greece. They both nearly died.'

Angel didn't know what to say. The ache grew bigger. She started hesitantly, ‘I was close to my
ya ya
too. But she didn't live with us. Father and she didn't get on, so she only visited infrequently. But as we grew up Delphi, Damia and I would go and see her as much as we could. She taught us all about plants and herbs…cooking traditional Greek dishes—everything Irini, my stepmother, wasn't interested in.'

Leo frowned. ‘Damia?'

‘Damia was our sister. Delphi's twin.' Familiar pain lanced Angel.

‘Was?'

She nodded. ‘She died when she was fifteen, in a car accident on one of the roads down into Athens from the hills.' Angel grimaced. ‘She was a bit wild, going through a rebellious phase. And I wasn't here to…' She stopped. Why was
she blathering about all of this now? Leo wouldn't be remotely interested in her life story.

But nevertheless he asked, ‘Why weren't you here?'

Angel sent him a quick look. He seemed genuinely interested, and there was something very easy about talking to him like this. She decided to trust it. ‘Father sent me to a boarding school in the west of Ireland from the time I was twelve until I finished my schooling, so I could learn about the Irish part of my heritage and see my mother.' Angel conveniently left out the part about how her father had basically wanted her gone.

She looked down for a moment, picking at the label on her bottle of water. ‘The worst bit was leaving the girls and
ya ya
. She died my first term there. It was too far for me to come home in time for the funeral.'

Angel looked up again, and pushed down the emotion threatening to rise when she thought of how she'd not been allowed home for Damia's funeral either—hence Delphi's subsequent clinginess and their intense connection.

Leo just sat there, arms relaxed, and then asked quietly, ‘Why did your mother leave?'

Immediately Angel bristled. She never talked about her mother to anyone. Not even Delphi. She felt so many conflicting emotions, and yet Leo wasn't being pushy. Wasn't cajoling. They were making bizarre late-night conversation. So with a deep breath Angel told him. ‘She left when I was two. She was a beautiful model from Dublin, and I think she found the reality of being married to a Greek man and living a domestic life in Athens too much for her.'

‘She didn't take you with her?'

Angel fought against flinching. She shook her head. ‘No. I think the reality of a small toddler was also too much for
her to bear. She went home, and back to her glamorous jet-setting life. I saw her a couple of times while I was at school in the west of Ireland…but that was it.'

It sounded so pathetic now that Angel told it. Her own mother hadn't deemed her worth keeping. If it hadn't been for the birth of the twins, their instantaneous bond, Angel didn't know how she would have coped.

Leo, seemingly not content with that, asked, ‘What was the school like?'

Angel had the strangest sensation of the earth shifting beneath her feet. She quirked a small smile. ‘It's in Connemara, one of the most stunning parts of Ireland, but very remote. It's an old abbey, and it looms across a choppy lake like something out of a Gothic nightmare fantasy. When I went that first September it was raining and grey, and it was just…' Angel couldn't help a shudder running through her.

‘A million miles from here?'

Angel nodded, surprised that Leo seemed to understand. ‘Yes.'

Silence fell, and Angel felt awkward. She'd just told Leo more than she'd ever willingly shared with another person. When he got up to put away the jam and peanut butter she felt a question of her own bubbling up inside her. It was something her father had mentioned that fateful night she'd found him with the will. Afraid to ask, but emboldened after what she'd shared with him, as he came back she said, ‘What happened to your mother?'

Leo stopped in his tracks and put his hands on his hips. The temperature in the air around them dropped a few degrees. But Angel was determined not to be intimidated; she was only asking him what he'd asked her.

‘Why do you ask?' he said sharply.

Angel gulped. She couldn't lie. ‘Is it true that she committed suicide?'

Leo went even more still. ‘And where did you pick up that nugget of information?'

Angel had to say it, even though she knew that it would damn her to hell for ever in his eyes. ‘The will.'

His body had gone taut, his eyes to obsidian black. No gold. He seemed distant, as if he wasn't even really aware that Angel was there any more. And then he laughed curtly. ‘The will. Of course. How could I have forgotten? Yes, I do believe that my mother's suicide is mentioned there—while omitting the gory details, of course.'

Angel wanted to put out a hand and tell Leo to stop; he was looking at her but not
seeing her.

‘I saw her. Everyone thinks to this day that I didn't see her, but I did. She'd hung herself with a torn sheet from one of the banister railings at the top of the stairs.'

Horror and sorrow filled Angel's heart. But instinctively she kept quiet.

‘My parents' marriage was an arranged one. The only problem was that my mother loved my father, but he loved building up the business and reclaiming our home in Greece more than her—or me. My mother couldn't cope with being sidelined, so she got more and more manipulative, more and more extreme in trying to get his attention. She started with emotional outbursts, but that just turned my father in on himself. The more tears, the less he'd react. Then she started self-harming and claiming that she'd been mugged. When that didn't work, she took the ultimate step.'

Angel had gone cold inside. What a hideous, hideous thing to have borne. She knew from reading between his words that Leo had seen a lot more than anyone had believed. Not just
the suicide. She remembered his reaction to seeing that couple arguing in public, how disgusted he'd looked.

She stood up from the stool. ‘Leo, I…' She shook her head. What could she say that wasn't going to sound inept, ridiculous?

Leo finally looked at her properly, as if coming to, and a shiver went down Angel's spine. She'd no doubt that he'd resent having told her this.

‘“Leo, I…”
what
?' he asked, his voice harsh.

Angel stood tall. She knew that he hurt, but it wasn't her fault. ‘There's nothing I can say that won't sound like a worthless platitude…except that I'm sorry you went through that. No child should have to see something so awful.'

Angel's lack of crocodile tears and her simple yet sincere-sounding statement did something to Leo. It broke something apart inside him. He felt a nameless emotion welling upwards, and knew the only way to push it down would be to find release. A release he'd been denying himself in the belief that he was regaining control, when control was the last thing he seemed to have in his possession.

He was done with denying himself what he wanted and what he needed. But damned if he was going to let Angel know how badly he needed her. She was going to admit her hunger for
him
.