Her Christmas Fantasy & The Winter Bride (36 page)

‘You heard that?' Leo exclaimed. ‘
Cristos
…no wonder you were suspicious! Marisa was teasing the life out of me—what sort of a bed? What sort of sheets did you like? I just gave her a free hand.'

‘So what were you doing with Marisa that night until two in the morning?' Angie queried.

‘I left her about eleven…then I drove around, thinking about you.'

Angie pushed a proprietorial hand through his thick black hair. ‘So who was it you
were
dating? You did say you had a date that first night…'

‘Protective fib,' Leo confessed cheerfully as he lowered her to the bed. ‘I had a business dinner…I should've known I was a lost cause where you were concerned the minute I lied.'

Angie reached up and kissed him. Leo came down to her with smouldering dark eyes and a tender smile that turned her bones to water. ‘I adore you, Mrs Demetrios,' he told her softly. ‘And being romantic is no longer a major effort.'

Angie lay back with an ecstatic and quite shameless sigh of invitation. ‘More children?' she offered as if she were holding out a lure.

Leo's smile was blinding. ‘You're just so perfect for me.'

‘I'm making you perfect for me,' Angie whispered blithely.

Clothes melted away like snow off a hot chimney. Sentences became increasingly disjointed and finally ebbed altogether as passion swept the two of them away in a joyous celebration of their love.

 

At six in the morning, they climbed out of bed and helped themselves to the supper they had ignored the night before. Leo's pre-planning had been so exact that even a change of clothes awaited them both. Arms possessively wrapped round each other, aglow with mutual contentment, they walked up to the Court in the dark and discovered that even Jake was still fast asleep.

Angie's father had ensured that their son's presents were all sitting in readiness below the tree. So Angie and Leo exchanged presents. Angie received a whole host of items, and handed over her single gift in some mortification. When Leo went into whoops on opening that book of love poems, she mock-punched him in the ribs, and he pulled her down beneath him and stole her embarrassment with one passionate kiss that went on and on, and very nearly turned into something quite unsuitable for the Great Hall.

‘“How do I love thee? Let me count the ways”,' Leo then quoted from the much maligned book, beautiful dark eyes resting with slumbrous hunger and appreciation on Angie as she ripped off wrapping paper to get at her presents. ‘Yes…I could get into that one.'

He brought Jake down in his pyjamas. Jake took one wide-eyed look at the toy car and had not the slightest interest in opening anything as pedestrian as a wrapped present. He careened about the ground floor in noisy ecstasy, and toot-tooted his determined way into Wallace's rooms. ‘Ganpa… Ganpa!' he called.

Leo loosed a wicked laugh. ‘The wonder of a small child at Christmas,' he roared. ‘I bet Wallace is putting a pillow over his ears!'

‘Leo…'
Angie's cheeks burned as she tugged out a black lace bustier.

‘The spirit of self-indulgence crept in occasionally…and you could model it after lunch.'

‘I could put it on for lunch…'

‘Put it on
for
lunch?' Leo was aghast. ‘This
isn't
lingerie, Leo. This is an outer garment.'

‘No way are you showing yourself in public in that!'

Angie laughed and stopped winding him up. ‘Relax, Leo. My father would throw a table napkin round me if I exposed that much flesh.'

Ten minutes later she was still piling up gift after gift. Jewellery, the most vast box of cosmetics, another coat, a pile of books, a whole host of cute little things that she just knew Leo secretly considered naff. But he had bought them to please her all the same. ‘Oh, Leo…I only got you that one little book,' she moaned.

‘Actually I did fantastically well this Christmas,
pethi mou
,' Leo confided with supreme satisfaction as he eased her back possessively into the strong circle of his arms. ‘I got you…and I got Jake.'

Angie turned her mouth up blissfully under his. They didn't quite manage to merge.

‘If there's likely to be any of that canoodling at this hour of the day, I shall go back to bed!' Wallace threatened.

Garbed in a rather magnificent crimson wool dressing gown, he seated himself in the chair nearest the fire. Angie's father, fully dressed and immaculate, placed himself behind the chair. Wallace twisted his head round and frowned. ‘Oh,
sit down, Sam, for heaven's sake! They've bubbled us, and you don't want to be standing around with that arthritic knee of yours. Right, where are my pressies?'