It didn’t take a genius to figure out that, where there were secrets that required concealment, those secrets were dirty little ones. He had received half a picture from Brianna, he was certain of it—the rosy half, the half that didn’t conform to his expectations.
‘And you did all this without having a clue as to this woman’s past?’
‘I don’t need to know every single detail about someone’s past to recognise a good person when I see one!’ She folded her arms tightly around her and glared down at him. She should have let him carry on with his writing. Instead, she had somehow found herself embroiled in an argument she hadn’t courted and was dismayed at how sick it made her feel. ‘I don’t want to argue with you about this, Leo.’
‘You’re young. You’re generous and trusting. You’re about to give house room to someone whose past is a mystery.’ He drew an uneasy parallel with his own circumstance, here at the pub under a very dubious cloud of deceit indeed, and dismissed any similarities. He was, after all, as upstanding and law-abiding as they came. No shady past here.
On the very point of tipping over into anger that he was in the process of dismissing her as the sort of gullible fool who might be taken in by someone who was up to no good, another thought lodged in the back of her mind. It took up residence next to the pernicious feel-good seed that had been planted when she had considered the possibility that he might not be welcoming Bridget because he cherished their one-to-one solitude.
Was he seriously worried about her? And if he was... That thought joined the other links in the chain that seemed to represent the nebulous beginnings of a commitment...
She knew that she was treading on very dangerous ground even having these crazy day dreams but she couldn’t push them away. With her heart beating like a jack hammer, she attempted to squash the thrilling notion that he was concerned about her welfare.
‘Do you think that my friend might be a homicidal maniac in the guise of a friendly and rather lonely woman?’
Leo frowned darkly. Brianna’s thoughts about Bridget were frankly none of his concern, and irrelevant to the matter in hand, but he couldn’t contain a surge of sudden, disorienting protectiveness.
Brianna had had to put her dreams and ambitions on hold to take charge of her father’s failing business, whilst at the same time trying to deal with the double heartbreak of her father’s death and her lover’s abandonment. It should have been enough to turn her into an embittered shrew. Yet there was a transparent openness and natural honesty about her that had surfaced through the challenging debris of her past. She laughed a lot, she seldom complained and she was the sort of girl who would never spare an act of kindness.
‘When people remove themselves for no apparent reason to start a new beginning, it’s usually because they’re running away from something.’
‘You mean the police?’
Leo shrugged and tugged her towards him so that she collapsed on his lap with a stifled laugh. ‘What if she turns into an unwanted pub guest who overstays her welcome?’ He angled her so that she was straddling him on his lap and delicately pushed up the jumper.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Brianna contradicted him breathlessly. ‘You should get down to your writing. I should continue with my stock taking...’
In response to that, Leo eased the jumper off and gazed at her small, pert breasts with rampant satisfaction. He began licking one of her nipples, a lazy, light, teasing with the tip of his tongue, a connoisseur sampling an exquisite and irresistible offering.
‘She has a perfectly nice little house of her own.’ There was something wonderfully decadent about doing this, sitting on his lap in the middle of the empty pub, watching him as he nuzzled her breast as if he had all the time in the world and was in no hurry to take things to the next level.
‘But—’ Leo broke off. ‘Here...’ he flicked his tongue against her other nipple ‘...she would have...’ he suckled for a few seconds, drawing her breast into his mouth ‘...you...’ a few kisses on the soft roundness until he could feel her shiver and shudder ‘...to take care of her; cook her food...’
He held one of her breasts in his hand so that it was pushed up to him, the nipple engorged and throbbing, and he delicately sucked it. ‘Brianna, she might seem perfectly harmless to you.’ With a sigh, he leaned back in the chair and gave her tingling breasts a momentary reprieve. ‘But what do you do if she decides that a cosy room in a pub, surrounded by people and hands-on waitress service, is more appealing than an empty house and the exertion of having to cook her own food?’