Free A Calculating Heart by Caro Fraser Page B

go.’
    Leo said nothing.
    She went out into the hallway and picked up her bag.Leo merely stood leaning in the doorway, watching her. She could read no emotion in his eyes. It would always be like this. She would never really know anything. Stopping now would be for the best.
    She closed the door of the flat and went downstairs. At the bottom she paused, waiting, listening. How badly she had wanted him to stop her, to say, ‘No. You’re not to go. This is my fault. Come back.’ But he had simply let her go. She opened the street door and went down the steps. She was better off away from him. He knew it, and so did she. The knowledge made her cry, and she didn’t stop crying all the way home to Clapham.

    Leo picked the larger pieces of glass from the sink, flushing the rest away into the grinding maw of the waste disposal. He dropped the shards carefully into the bin, then rinsed and wiped his hands. His instinct, as soon as he heard the sound of the front door closing, had been to go after her, bring her back. But Leo was too old a hand, too practiced for such a simple display of contrition. Besides, there was nothing to be gained from it right now. She was too young, too bewildered and outraged by what she had learnt. She needed some time to work it through, a few days in which to let her feelings get the better of her good sense. She would persuade herself that the Gideon thing didn’t matter, that he hadn’t sought to deceive her so much as protect her. She was also, he knew, too physically dependent upon him, upon his lovemaking – something she was not presently aware of, but wouldbe acutely so by the time the weekend was up. Give it another couple of days thereafter, and the girl would be such a mixed bag of self-doubt and fraught desire that he would have no difficulty in making everything all right. It was merely a question of leaving her alone for just long enough. Leo knew all too well how to manipulate a young and inexperienced heart. Had he not loved her as much as he did, he might almost have felt ashamed.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Rachel Dean came out of the lift on the seventh floor of the offices of Nichols and Co. and headed for her office, picking up a coffee on the way. In her office she slipped off her jacket, and sat sipping her coffee as she checked through her diary. A ten o’clock meeting with Adriana Papaposilakis. That should be interesting. For some time now she had been working on a case concerning an insurance claim on Miss Papaposilakis’s private yacht, which had caught fire and sunk two years previously in circumstances which left the insurers disinclined to pay out. Following months of fruitless wrangling between solicitors, the case was due to reach a hearing in a few weeks. Throughout the case Rachel had dealt only with Miss Papaposilakis’s PA, Mr Defereras, a small, elderly Greek lawyer who attended to business with scrupulous care and few words. Adriana Papaposilakis herself was something of a mythical creature. All Rachel knew wasthat she was a Greek beauty with a formidable business reputation, rumoured to be given to occasional underhand dealing and fiscal evasiveness, traits not uncommon in the average Greek shipping tycoon.
    Rachel glanced up and caught Fred Fenton’s eye as he passed by in the corridor. She called out to him and he sauntered in with his coffee.
    ‘You’ve met Adriana Papaposilakis, haven’t you?’
    Fred, a rangy thirty-two-year-old, settled himself in a chair at the other side of her desk. ‘The woman with the impossible name. Yes, I worked on a speed and consumption claim involving one of her vessels last year. We won, as I recall. Why?’
    ‘I have a meeting with her in an hour. I’m curious to know what she’s like.’
    ‘She’s – let’s see … How can I put this? She’s very—’ Fred hesitated ‘—very personable.’ Fred smiled and took a sip of his coffee. ‘Built along Dolly Parton lines, though not quite so pneumatic. Blonde, petite, with