Page 9 of Bound By Her Baby Revelation (Hot Winter Escapes)

She’d learnt from experience, from watching the heart-breaking fallout of her mother’s attempts to find love, that throwing oneself into relationships without the benefit of due diligence beforehand never worked.

Unfortunately, it was uneasy to acknowledge that the result of all that caution over the years had resulted in no relationship to speak of. No one had ever quite managed to get through Kaya’s checklist.

She wasn’t being fussy, she always told herself, she was simplybeing careful. But having had no men left gaping holes in her experience and right now, confronted with this guy, she was at a loss as to how to manoeuvre.

He was a powerful, mesmerising force of nature for which she felt lamentably ill-prepared. There was knowing experience in his dark eyes that made her horribly self-conscious and the way he smiled, the brooding intensity of his gaze, brought her out in goose bumps.

And worst of all was the simmering excitement that accompanied those goose bumps, a titillating sensation of stepping a little too close to an open flame that might be beautiful but was also lethally dangerous.

‘Why?’ She couldn’t meet his stare full-on and she briefly lowered her eyes and licked her lips. She breathed in deeply and looked at him once again but her heart was thumping like a sledgehammer inside her. ‘I just want to find out why you bothered to come if you’re so uninterested in finding out a bit more about your mother’s legacy.’

‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this!’ Leo said with outraged incredulity. ‘Are you actually questioning my motives? What business is it of yours, exactly, what I intend to do about my so-called mother’s legacy?’

‘Because it matters.’

Leo vaulted upright. He was hanging onto his control with difficulty. His normal cool, calm composure had deserted him; but were her questions really so astonishing given the fact that, yes, he had made the choice to come here personally when there had been no real need? He was rich and he didn’t need to accumulate any property from anyone to add to his portfolio so, that being the case, why bother with the formalities?

He knew that he hadn’t lost his composure because she’d asked one or two reasonable questions. He’d lost his composure because she’d ignored hisDo Not Trespasssign. The truth was that he had his rules and they were intractable. He had worked hard to be in control of his destiny and there was a core of ruthless steel inside him that had propelled him over obstacles and barriers that would have brought most other men to their knees.

In return, he had come to accept a level of untouchability that was never questioned, and the mere fact that it was being questioned now left him speechless.

Why did Julie Anne’s legacy matter? What difference would it make to this life? Would it answer any questions, send his thoughts about his past in another direction? No.

‘She had plans for this house.’

‘What are you talking about?’

If it had been seven in the evening, he would have helped himself to something stiff and potent but, as alcohol wasn’t on the cards, he instead made himself another cup of coffee, black and strong.

When he eventually looked at Kaya, when their eyes met, he knew that his expression was as unrevealing as it always was and that his thoughts were hidden from view.

‘You know about the halfway house...?’

‘It’s included in the paperwork. But forget about that. You need to give this one up.’

‘I can’t.’

‘What do you mean youcan’t?’

‘Julie Anne...’

‘Just for the record, dumped me in a foster home so I’m just going to put it out there that that’s not exactly the behaviour of someone deserving of admiration. So why are you fighting her corner now?’

‘Because I knew her.’

Leo was silenced by those four words. This was a woman who had known his mother, the very mother who had wanted nothing to do with him. A tangle of emotion surged through him and he scowled.

‘Really...? You sure about that...?’

Kaya flushed but stood her ground. ‘She...kept things from me, yes. Things from all of us, from everyone who knew her.’

‘Everyone who thought they knew her,’ Leo clarified politely.

‘But that doesn’t mean that the person we knew wasn’t kind and generous and incrediblygood. Because she was.’

‘That’s touchingly loyal, but where are you going with it?’

‘If you’ve read through the stuff they sent you, then you’ll have read something about the place she set up a long time ago. The halfway house.’

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