Challenge Page 17

  `You're going to ache tomorrow if you go about it in that way,' said Leandro's voice in exactly the light,

  amused tone which had been echoing in her head for the last two days.

  Jessica gasped and her sweaty hands lost their grip on the implement. Leandro caught it neatly, and drove it, one-handed, into the earth. Then he came close up to her and tilted her face up for his inspection.

  'I don't think hard labour agrees with you,' he said at last. 'You look tired.'

  She snatched her chin away, compressing her lips. `What are you doing here?'

  `Chasing you, of course,' he said, as if it was obvious. `I told-you we would need to talk.'

  `That wasn't what you said when we said goodbye in Portofino,' Jessica muttered. That goodbye had hurt, for all that she knew she had deserved it and did not really want anything different.

  `Ah, but you had hurt my feelings, my darling. I was smarting, and I was very angry.'

  `So why have you come here now? To carry on being angry?'

  He shook his head. For once he was not wearing those detestable glasses.

  `When your excellent Miss York explained, I forgave you at once,' he told her smugly.

  Jessica glared at him. 'Forgave me for what?'

  `For not trusting me, of course,' said Leandro, and took her into his arms.

  She had been wrong. He was not laughing; he was not in the least amused. His mouth seeking hers had the hunger of desperation and his arms were shaking.

  At last he raised his head and gave an unsteady laugh.

  `And now I suppose you'll have to forgive me for rushing my fences again.'

  Jessica disengaged herself slowly. That kiss had shaken her more than she wanted to admit.

  She said uncertainly, 'Are you trying to tell me you want me? I mean really want me? Not just for the plans, or anything?' She was incredulous.

  He shut his eyes briefly. 'What do you think?'

  I think you're wasting your time,' she told him frankly. 'There's a copy in the bank now, so even if you managed to throw Andrew's in the sea, it will be preserved for posterity.'

  He took her by the shoulders and shook her. 'I don't give a damn about your plans, or Andrew's, or the bank's, or my uncle's whole damned project. I told him when he started it that it wasn't my scene and I didn't want anything to do with it, and that still stands. It is none of my business.'

  Jessica stared at him. 'Then why did you have Spinoletti to dinner?'

  `He's an old friend. He asked me how he should approach my uncle they were worried about their water supply. My uncle Giorgio is not the sort of man who would bother about someone else's water supply if it inconvenienced him. I gave Sim a bit of advice, that's all. No conspiracy. No threats.'

  `Then why did you get involved with—I mean, flirt with me?'

  `You mean get involved with,' Leandro assured her grimly. 'And because I couldn't help myself. Heaven knows, it was bad timing. I never meant to.'

  Jessica flinched.

  `Don't look like that,' he said. 'It's nothing to do with you. It's just that I'd had an accident, and I was supposed to be convalescing. It's not easy,' he added with a grin, 'to woo and win a lady of your suspicious nature and convalesce at the same time.'

  `Accident?' So that was why he had spoken of doctors on that day on the beach. Jessica went towards him anxiously. 'What sort of accident?'

  He hesitated for a moment, then he shrugged. 'I'd better tell you, I suppose. You'll only find out later and start suspecting me of things if I don't.' He looked round. 'Can't we go inside or something? I feel this might take some time.'

  She led the way into the conservatory. Once inside he did not reach for her, as she had half expected, but leaned against a workbench, watching her carefully.

  Leandro said slowly, 'You've always thought I was a terrible playboy, haven't you, Jessica?'

  'Wasn't that what you wanted me to think?' she retorted.

  'No—I—oh, yes, damn it, I suppose it was.' He gave a snort of self-disgust. 'I was so sure I had you summed up, you see. One look round that apartment of yours and I thought, aha, here's a lady who lives entirely for work. It was so tidy, almost ascetic. It hardly looked lived in at all. It was as if all your real energies were poured out in work. Your office looked more like a home than your home did.'

  'That's—very fair,' said Jessica, taken aback and faintly shamefaced.

  'Oh, yes, that may be fair; the rest of it wasn't.' 'The rest of what?'

  'Of my brilliant conclusions,' said Leandro grimly. 'I decided, you see, that you'd taken refuge in your career because you could not handle your own sexuality. I never dreamed there was someone like Chuck to say nothing of your mother's history— in your background. I just took one look at the obvious and leapt to all the wrong conclusions.'

  She said, bewildered, 'Did it matter'?'

  He looked at her impatiently. 'Of course it mattered. If I'd realised, I wouldn't have been so complacent. I thought all I needed to do was shake you

  up a little. Make you realise that you were attracted to me, if you like.'

  He saw her flinch and his mouth compressed.

  `Yes, well, it didn't work out quite like that. I was determined, you see, to make you give in, to make you acknowledge that work was not the most important thing in life. I was pretty certain that you would not find time for me if I approached you in the ordinary way, but if you thought I was a loafer and a playboy, you might just be intrigued. Irritated but intrigued. Otherwise, I didn't think I stood a hope, not from what I had heard, anyway.'

  Jessica thought of the escorts who had never managed to achieve more than a quarter of her attention. `You were probably right,' she mumbled.

  `Up to a point. The important thing, though, was that I didn't realise you'd already bumped your nose on the sort of golden youth I was pretending to be and had the scars to prove it.'

  She shook her head decisively. 'You're wrong there. Chuck worked a great deal harder than you've ever suggested you might be prepared to do.' She gave a small laugh. 'I don't think your tactics were so wrong, after all.'

  `But they hurt you,' he said shrewdly.

  Jessica could not answer that. She turned her eyes away and said with an effort, 'You were going to tell me about your accident.'

  `It was Sandra, of course. You may have guessed.' `Sandra? She made you have an accident?'

  `She tried to kill herself,' Leandro said soberly. `Throw herself off a cliff, to be precise. You may remember I nearly scared you out of your wits once when you were leaning over the edge.'

  On the hotel terrace the night of the sunset, Jessica remembered.

  He said apologetically, 'It brought back too many memories too quickly. I'm not normally an hysteric, but, with Sandra, one moment she was looking at the view from one of the vine terraces, the next she was launching herself into space.'

  `She was hurt? You both were? I remember Enrico saying something about her being ill,' murmured Jessica.

  `No, she wasn't hurt. I caught her.' Leandro grimaced. 'Not very heroically. I dived at her legs in a sort of rugby tackle and got her just in time. The trouble was, I hit my head quite hard. I was concussed. Then, when I came round, I couldn't see properly. They told me to take three months off and then they would look again to see if I needed surgery.' His mouth was wry. 'Hence the dark glasses you so object to. To say nothing of the lolling around in the sun.'

  'Oh, lord,' said Jessica, deeply ashamed and full of foreboding.

  `Sandra wasn't hurt in quite the same way. They diagnosed a nervous breakdown. We were fairly sure it had been coming on for some time.' He cleared his throat. 'She had an affair with my uncle, you know. It went on for several years, then he got tired of her.'

  Jessica said, 'Was it Sandra who destroyed the plans, then?'

  'I am afraid so. She's still a bit crazy, you know. Half the time she loves Giorgio, thinks she is the only person in the world who can protect him from his enemies. The other half,' h
e shrugged, 'she hates him. I think she threw the plans overboard thinking that the project was desperately important to him and he would be hurt. I know she knocked you out, trying to frighten you away before you finished them.'

  'Isn't it important to Giorgio, the project'?'

  `Not in the way she thought, poor woman.' Leandro passed a hand over his eyes. 'You know, when we found out, she went to pieces. She was shouting and screaming, throwing herself around. I think it shook Giorgio. He wasn't there before, when she tried to jump. Anyway, he had her air-lifted off to hospital by helicopter at once. And I think he's pretty ashamed of himself.'

  `That's what he meant when he said he wouldn't involve me in his private affairs,' Jessica said slowly. 'I thought he meant it was you and he knew it.'

  `I know you did, my darling. As I said, Miss York explained. I must say it never occurred to me at the time. I just thought you'd decided you didn't want to have any more to do with men who scared you silly and then jumped on you.'

  Jessica found that, in spite of the light tone, the golden eyes were very intent. She swallowed deafeningly.

  `Oh.'

  He said, 'Will you tell me now, my darling? Did I take you too far too fast that afternoon?'

  She said in a strangled voice, 'I don't know what you mean.'

  `I mean that I never meant to rush you like that. I knew this mare, Chuck ' he said the name with distaste `--had hurt you badly and I was full of good intentions to prove to you how much more reliable and sensitive and generally an excellent thing I was. Only I rather got carried away.'

  Jessica lifted her chin. 'As I recall,' she said in her professional lady tone, 'we both got carried away.'

  `Yes, but you were scared half out of your mind by my stupid game with the boat. You weren't responsible. .

  `I was perfectly responsible,' said Jessica, ruffled. `I very much wanted you to make love to me. I'd been wanting you to,' she added for good measure, `for days.'

  Leandro stared at her. The mask had slipped with a vengeance now. He looked bewildered, uncertain. It suddenly occurred to her that he was no less vulnerable than she, and she had hurt him a great deal worse.

  She drew a deep breath and said, `I hope you'll do so again very soon. If you can forgive me, that is.'

  There was an unnerving silence while she blushed fierily and Leandro looked as if he had been sandbagged.

  At last he said tonelessly, `Say that again.'

  Jessica, whatever her failings, was no coward. She lifted her chin, ignored her hot cheeks, and repeated her observation.

  She was taken into a comprehensive embrace.

  `Oh, my love, my darling, you wonderful, wonderful girl,' Leandro said, kissing her fiercely. 'Whenever and wherever you say, my love. Just as long as at some point you let me marry you.'

  Jessica, who was kissing him with equal frenzy, stopped dead.

  'Marry?' she echoed dazedly.

  `I'm sorry if you don't care for the idea—' the laugh was back in his voice if it offends your independence or anything like that, but I don't want any more mistakes or misunderstandings or messing about. You and I belong together and always have done. So we might just as well get married and make sure the rest of the world takes note.'

  Jessica was dazed. 'But what about my job?' 'What about mine?' countered Leandro at once.

  She gave him a reproving look. 'I didn't know you

  had one until today,' she reminded him.

  'I told you, I'm a perfectly respectable engineer. I build oil rigs and things. I have to travel a lot. Perhaps you could come with me, sometimes.' He tucked her hair behind her ear. 'When you want me to make love to you,' he added, earning himself a look of burning indignation. He kissed the tip of her nose. 'What do you think?'

  'I don't know. I never thought about it. Your family. . . Your mother. .

  His mouth tightened and he stopped laughing. 'My mother need not concern you,' he said deliberately. Jessica was shocked and looked it.

  He gazed down into her eyes. 'Listen, I hardly knew my father because of her. She resented him for not being rich and worldly like Giorgio, so she left him when I was a child and did her best to turn me into a sort of substitute son for Giorgio. God knows what sort of complex that would have given me if Papa hadn't stuck around. He used to take me off for sneak holidays. She couldn't prevent him, but when he used to come to pick me up she would treat him like dirt.'

  Jessica said in a small voice, 'She warned me off, you know. She said you wouldn't be serious about me; it would all be aimed at something.'

  'She wants kicking,' said Leandro dispassionately. 'Now your mother seems to fulfil the job description in an altogether more satisfactory manner.'

  'My mother'?' Jessica eyed him suspiciously. 'What do you know about my mother?'

  'Just that she seems very sensible,' he said soothingly. 'At least when I spoke to her on the telephone she said that I sounded like the man her daughter was in love with and I had better come and talk to you this afternoon while she was out at the Vicarage sale of work.'

  She said that?' Jessica was shocked. 'The conniving

  `An excellent woman,' Leandro said swiftly, kissing her. 'In marrying you I shall get a mother-in-law in a thousand. It will be worth it.'

  Jessica said, 'You're marrying me for my mother?' in arctic tones.

  He was laughing uncontrollably. 'Among other things.' The anorak was old and heavy and encrusted with mud, but he seemed to have very little difficulty in removing it, or the sweater underneath it. His hands slid under her shirt until they were warm against her skin. Jessica shivered and surrendered. His voice thickened. 'One or two other things. But marriage or nothing, agreed?'

  She met his eyes and found them dancing with warmth and an affection so brilliant it was blinding. `I love you,' she said softly.

  His mouth curved, but he said, 'Don't change the subject. Marriage or nothing.'

  His hands moved on her. She moved her shoulders voluptuously and pressed closer.

  `I wasn't changing the subject,' she murmured. 'And I agree. Marriage it is.'