come in for the rooms, it would be helpful for me to know when yours might be free to, er, rent out...’
And this, Leo thought, was the perfect opportunity to put a date in the calendar. It was as obvious as the nose on his face that her reason for wanting to find out when he would be leaving had nothing to do with a possible mystery surge in bookings for the rooms. He didn’t like being put in a position of feeling trapped.
‘I told you I’d stick around, make sure you didn’t get ripped off or taken advantage of by this so-called best buddy of yours,’ he said roughly. ‘I won’t be going anywhere until I’m satisfied that you’re okay on that score. Satisfied? No; you’re not. What else is on your mind, Brianna? Spit it out and then I can disappear for a shower and some work and leave you to get on with your female bonding in peace.’
Brianna shrugged. Everything about his body language suggested that he was in no mood to stand here, answering questions. Perhaps, she thought, answering questions was something else he didn’t do when it came to women. Like jealousy. And yet he wasn’t moving. ‘Did you end up here on the back of a bad relationship?’ she asked bluntly. She shot him a defiant look from under her lashes. ‘I know you don’t want me to ask lots of questions...’
‘Did I ever say that?’
‘You don’t have to.’
‘Because, let me guess, you seem to have a hot line to my thoughts!’ He scowled. Far from backing away from an interrogation he didn’t want and certainly didn’t need, his feet appeared to be disobeying the express orders of his brain. Against all odds, he wanted to wipe that defensive, guarded expression from her face. ‘And no, I did not end up here on the back of a bad relationship.’ He had ended up here because...
Leo flushed darkly, uncomfortable with where his thoughts were drifting.
‘I’m sleeping with you, and I know it’s going to end soon, but I still want to know that you’re not using me as some sort of sticking plaster while you try to recover from a broken heart.’
‘I’ve never suffered from a broken heart, Brianna.’ Leo smiled crookedly at her and stroked the side of her face with his finger.
Just then her mobile buzzed and after only a few seconds on the phone she said to him, ‘Bridget’s had her final check-up with the consultant and they’re going to be setting off in about half an hour. They’ll probably be here in about an hour and a half or so. Depends on the roads, but the main roads will all be gritted. It’s only the country lanes around here that are still a little snowed up.’
An hour and a half. Leo’s lips thinned but, despite the impending meeting with his mother, one which he had quietly anticipated for a number of years ever since he had tracked down her whereabouts, his focus remained exclusively on the girl standing in front of him.
‘Everyone has suffered from a broken heart at some point.’ She reverted to her original topic.
‘I’m the exception to the rule.’
‘You’ve never been in love?’
‘You say that as though it’s inconceivable. No. Never. And stop looking at me as though I’ve suddenly turned into an alien life-form. Are you telling me that, after your experience with the guy you thought you would be spending your life with, you’re still glad to have been in love?’
He lounged against the bar and stared down at her. He had become so accustomed to wearing jeans and an assortment of her father’s old plaid flannel shirts, a vast array of which she seemed to have kept, that he idly wondered what it would feel like returning to his snappy handmade suits, his Italian shoes, the silk ties, driving one of his three cars or having Harry chauffeur him. He would return to the reality of high-powered meetings, life in the fast lane, private planes and first-class travel to all four corners of the globe.
Here, he could be a million miles away, living on another planet. Was that why he now found himself inclined to have this type of conversation? The sort of touchy-feely conversation that he had always made a point of steering well clear from? Really, since when had he ever been into probing any woman about her thoughts and feelings about past loves?
‘Of course I am,’ Brianna exclaimed stoutly. ‘It may have crashed and burned, but there were moments of real happiness.’
Leo frowned. Real happiness? What did she mean by that? Good sex? He didn’t care much for a trip down happiness lane with her. If she felt inclined to reminisce over the good old days, conveniently forgetting the misery that had been dished up to her in the end, then he was not the man with the listening ear.
‘How salutary that you can ignore the fact that you were taken for a ride for years... Are you still in touch with the creep?’
Brianna frowned and tried to remember what the creep looked like. ‘No,’ she said honestly. ‘I haven’t got a clue what he’s up to. The last I heard from one of my friends from uni, he had gone abroad to work for some important law firm in New York. He’s disappeared completely. I was heartbroken at the time, but it doesn’t mean that I’m not glad I met him, and it doesn’t mean that I don’t hope to meet that someone special at some point in the future.’
And as she said that a very clear picture of Mr Special floated into her mind. He was approximately six-two with bronzed skin, nearly black hair and lazy, midnight-dark eyes that could send shivers racing up and down her spine. He came in a package that had carried very clear health warnings but still she had fallen for him like a stupid teenager with more hormones than common sense.
Fallen in lust with him, she thought with feverish panic. She hadn’t had a relationship with a guy for years! And then he had come along, drop-dead gorgeous, with all the seductive anonymity of a stranger—a writer, no less. Was it any wonder that she had fallen in lust with him?
Was that why she could now feel herself becoming clingy? Not wanting him to go? Losing all sense of perspective?
‘And no one special is on the scene here?’ Leo drawled lazily. ‘Surely the lads must be queuing up for you...’
Of course there had been nibbles, but Brianna had never been interested. She had reasoned to herself that she just didn’t have the time; that her big, broken love affair had irreparably damaged something inside her; that, just as soon as the pub really began paying its way, she would jump back into the dating world.
All lies. She could have had all the time in the world, a fully paid-up functioning heart and a pub that turned over a million pounds a year in profit and she still wouldn’t have been drawn to anyone—because she had been waiting for just the moment when Leo Spencer walked through the door, tall, dark and dangerous, like a gunslinger in a Western movie.
‘I’m not interested in anything serious at the moment,’ she said faintly. ‘I have loads of time. Bridget should be arriving any minute now.’
‘At least an hour left to go...’ How was it possible to shove all thoughts of his so-called mother out of his head? He had almost forgotten that the woman was on her way.
‘I need to go and get her room ready.’
‘Haven’t you already done that? The potpourri and the new throw from the jack-of-all-trades supermarket?’
She had. But suddenly she wanted nothing more than to escape his suffocating masculine presence, find a spot where she could straighten out her tangled thoughts.
‘Well, I want to make sure that it’s just right,’ she said sharply.
Leo stepped aside. ‘And I think I’ll go and have a shower and do something productive with my time in my room.’
‘You don’t have to disappear! You’re a paying guest, Leo. You can come down and do your writing in your usual place. Bridget and I won’t make any noise at all. She’ll probably just want to rest.’
‘I’ll let the two of you do your bonding in peace,’ he murmured. ‘I’ll come down for dinner. I take it you’ll be cooking for