Page 33 of Bound By Her Baby Revelation (Hot Winter Escapes)

And that’s why I love you. Because you’re a decent guy. You’re not a rich bastard, you’re a decent guy who can never love... And I can’t be the one who loves for both of us.

‘Thank you.’

CHAPTER SEVEN

LEOHADBEENstaring out of the window of his magnificent villa in the sunshine for forty minutes...he checked his Rolex: no forty-eight minutes...when his mobile phone pinged.

What the hell was he doing?

He had hit Manhattan two weeks ago, energised with positive thoughts. No Kaya but, then again, for the best—no tears and no pleading were an added bonus. The best break-up a guy could ask for!

And work? So much of it was waiting for him that it made his eyes water when he thought about it. He would lose himself in his work. There were deals to be done, money to be made. It never failed when it came to nailing one hundred percent of his attention.

The business with the journal, the back story to his adoption...how could he not take some comfort from knowing the details? A frightened teenager pregnant and facing the wrath of her wealthy, conservative, well-connected parents... The decision to run away with his father, the Mexican immigrant who had been working on her father’s sprawling estate in the Hamptons...

He had opened that journal and been consumed by the journey his mother had made. He had read and re-read about the headlong rush to freedom and the accident that had taken his father, leaving Julie Anne alone with a baby on the way and no choice but to return to the very place she had been trying to escape.

Depressed for years, isolated and at the mercy of decisions made on her behalf, she had handed Leo over, her parents had assured her, to a loving couple who would look after him the way he deserved to be looked after. She had believed them.

He hadn’t been abandoned, as he had thought. Questions had been answered.

Fired up to put the business of his fling with Kaya behind him, because life was full of blips—even invigorating ones—he had quickly realised that the blip had taken more of a toll than he’d expected.

He had no idea why returning to his comfort zone had failed to settle his feverish thoughts. So they’d parted company—it wasn’t the end of the world! Had she taken up lodgings in his head because he still wanted her, because for the first time in his life he was having to deal with a woman breaking it off when he’d been happy to carry on?

Surely he couldn’t be that egotistic?

But he hadn’t been able to focus. He’d scrolled through his phone, idly looking at numbers of women who would bite his hand off for a call from him, and had found himself deleting their contact details.

He missed her.

Sitting in his towering offices in the city, staring down at life happening eighteen storeys below, he was sucker-punched by the realisation thathe missed her. Not just the sex buther—all the things that made her, the sum total of all the parts. He missed her smile, her laughter and her annoying habit of arguing with him and just never giving up.

He missed her optimism and the way she had of being supportive without saying anything at all. And he missed the person he’d been with her, as though a weight had been lifted from his shoulders. Laughter had come more easily and so had relaxation.

If she’d felt the same, she would have called.

She hadn’t, although he had checked his phone on the hour to see if he’d missed anything. He hadn’t. She would have called and the fact that she hadn’t made it all the more imperative that he not be the one to crack.

Pride was an ingrained hurdle too vast to overcome and Leo saw no reason why he should try. He never had before. Nothing had changed, not really. Things started and then they ended. That was the way of the world. If there were feelings there, swirling under the surface, then he would get past them.

However, despite every assertive lecture he gave himself, he couldn’t really seem to get past the reality of her abrupt absence, and after two weeks here he was, in a villa he rarely visited. From the air-conditioned splendour of the space he had tailor-made for work purposes when he’d first bought the place, he could stare out at glorious blue skies, even more glorious turquoise ocean and the expanse of icing-sugar sand that separated sea from the sloping incline to his property. Directly in front of him was his infinity pool, basking just beyond swaying palm trees.

It was a magnificent view, which Leo barely took in as he stared out, for a few seconds barely registering the beep of his mobile and only picking it up after a couple of minutes. He was pretty certain it was going to be work-related, even though only a select handful of people had this particular number.

Her name... It didn’t instantly register. He wondered whether he had seen it at all but, yes, he blinked and there it was:Kaya.

And, just like that, the tenor of the morning suddenly changed. He opened the message and read it. She wondered where he was...was he in Manhattan...? She would like to meet, if possible.

Leo smiled a slow, curving smile of utter satisfaction. So, it hadn’t just been him. He hadn’t been alone in concluding that what they’d had was too good to throw away just yet. He hadn’t stopped wanting her and she hadn’t stopped wanting him. Why else would she have texted? Why else would she now be desperate to meet up?

He waited a while to reply, giving it an hour, when he strolled outside and admired the scenery he hadn’t previously really noticed.

His reply was as brief a communication as hers had been: he was in the Bahamas, as it happened. Sure, if she wanted to meet up, why not? He would ensure arrangements were made and his PA would be in touch with the details...

Two days, was his instruction to his PA in Manhattan—that was how long he was prepared to wait to see Kaya. Long enough to show her that time hadn’t stopped still for him...that he was a busy guy as he always had been; that, sure, he could fit her in but clearly not at the drop of a hat...yet not so long that he ran the risk of her changing her mind. That was the last thing he wanted.

Still smiling, Leo realised that it was possible to focus under tropical skies after all...

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