Page 84 of Modern Romance July 2025 #4-8
‘I know you’re not accustomed to doing anything domestic, but you’re going to have to lend a hand here, because if you look outside the snow’s not getting any lighter, and you might need to get to the airport directly from here.
We can talk as we go, but we just need to clear this kitchen quickly.
I don’t want Mum over-exerting herself in the morning when she comes down. ’
Leo sauntered over to the window and stared out at a panorama of white snow falling gently but steadily and settling on everything.
‘Leaving for the airport from here is out of the question.’ He turned to her. ‘I can’t leave without my laptop and, by the time we get back to your house, this snow is going to be even deeper and more impassable. We both know what it gets like here in the depths of winter.’
‘You mean you’re going to be around for another night?’ Cassie cried.
‘Why is that such a big deal?’
‘Because…’
‘It’s also a little worse than you think, Cass. Come and stand here and have a look at what’s happening outside.’
He waited until she was standing next to him. From here, there was an unimpeded view of white pouring down on open space, collecting on the trees and the tangled lawns at the back, with the looming dark mountains behind making it feel as though they were caught in a snow globe.
He could see her reflection in the window. She was tall and toned, her long, dark hair caught in a pony tail so that it was impossible to miss her fine bone-structure, the same as her mother’s.
‘We’re going to have to spend the night here,’ he said flatly, spinning round on his heels although, instead of tidying, he reached for the wine to pour himself another glass.
‘What?’
‘You don’t live far away, but this snow’s collecting, and I have no intention of getting stuck out in it because you’re scared to share space with me.’
‘I’m not scared to share space with you.’
‘Sure about that? What do you think is going to happen if we’re here together for a night?
And, by the way, we’re going to be sharing a room, because I don’t suppose your mother is going to buy us sleeping separately because we’ve suddenly become shy.
Not when she knows that we’ve been seeing one another for…
what did you say?…a few months. And definitely not when we’ve just returned from a raunchy week away. ’
‘I never said to her that the week was raunchy!’
‘I looked at your mother looking at us,’ Leo said with silky-smooth conviction. ‘And I can tell you that, whilst she might not be in robust health, she’s not away with the fairies. She knows that we had fun together.’
‘That’s because you kept looking at me. ’
‘So you noticed, did you? I did wonder…’
Cassie glared at him, at the small, satisfied smile tugging the corners of his mouth.
A tense silence stretched between them for a few seconds.
Cassie could feel the colour rush into her cheeks.
Yes, she’d noticed those sidelong glances in her direction—lazy, assessing and sexy.
Just as she’d noticed the way he’d brushed against her every so often, without actually blatantly resting his hand on hers, which would have been a lot better for her blood pressure.
‘Did you enjoy that—me looking at you?’
‘What are you playing at, Leo?’
‘Am I playing? I thought I was just trying to establish why you’re so skittish at the prospect of spending another night with me.’
He sipped his wine and stared at her over the rim of the glass, looking cool, collected and curious.
‘I’m going to finish tidying the kitchen.’ Cassie huffed before spinning round and whipping stuff off the table, conscious that she was as tense as a bow string. When she eventually looked at him, after several minutes of nerve-racking silence, his eyes were still on her and he was grinning.
‘I can show you to your room, if you have no intention of helping out here,’ she said with lofty indignation. ‘I know you’re allergic to all things domestic.’
His grin widened. ‘ Our room,’ he corrected. ‘And don’t worry; I’m not so allergic to all things domestic that I can’t pull my weight when need be…’
They tidied the kitchen in record time. When Cassie next peered into the darkness outside, it was impossible not to agree with Leo that trekking back to her apartment was out of the question, never mind him getting a taxi to the airport.
They would have to share a room. He had been teasing her earlier, but underneath that ran a very real thread of curiosity about her behaviour around him.
How on earth was she going to cope having him at such close quarters, when she was in love with him; when all she wanted to do was touch him?
‘Okay.’ She made a show of stifling a yawn. ‘I’m going to head up; I need an early night. You might as well see where we’ll be sleeping and then, if you’re not tired, feel free to go back down and work.’
‘Thanks for your permission to make myself scarce, but I’m afraid working is going to be impossible without my laptop.’
‘Then watch telly,’ Cassie said irritably, stalking off towards the door and out into the cavernous hallway that felt cold after the warmth in the kitchen. ‘You might catch a good cooking programme so you can improve your skills.’
‘I’ve never been much of a fan of television,’ Leo informed her thoughtfully, exiting the kitchen behind her and catching up with her fast stride so that they were walking alongside one another. ‘Usually feels like a waste of time when I could be doing something better.’
Cassie stopped dead in her tracks and looked up at him, arms folded. ‘In that case, you could always while away your time painting your nails or doing your hair,’ she snapped.
They stared at one another in the semi-darkness of the hall, the chill gathering around them, and just like that, without any warning—or she surely would have taken a few evasive tactics—he reached out and very softly trailed his finger along her cheek.
All at once, Cassie heard the soft, trembling intake of her own breath and felt the heavy thud of the blood in her veins and the weight of her legs pinning her to the spot like lead columns.
She wanted to ask him what the hell he thought he was doing. Instead, her mouth parted, her eyelids fluttered and all she could think was how much she had missed this—the physical connection that had been left behind in his villa on Mustique.
Her breasts felt heavy and there was a tingling in her nipples that longed for the heat of his mouth clamped on them. Between her legs, the tell-tale warm pooling of liquid reminded her of a body that still craved his. Her nails dug into the soft flesh of her arms. She felt drugged with longing.
‘I still want you, Cassie,’ Leo murmured softly. He leant into her so that she could feel his breath tickle her ear when he spoke, and smell his aftershave.
‘Please, don’t,’ she whispered back.
‘Don’t what—don’t want you? Or don’t tell you that I want you?’ He cupped her cheek with his hand, gently urging her to look at him, which she did.
‘I can’t do either of those things, Cass, but don’t worry; I won’t come near you.
I know you want me—I can feel it. A week wasn’t long enough for either of us but, if you want to turn your back on what’s going on between us, then I’ll let you.
You’ve laid down your ground rules and you have my word I won’t break them. Unless you want me to…’
He pulled back, dropped his hand and Cassie blinked her way back to reality, which felt very cold, now that he was no longer touching her.
‘It’s cold out here.’ He stepped back but his eyes were still pinned to her face.
‘It costs a fortune to heat the house. We’ve become good at being careful. We—we should head up.’ Her voice was jerky.
‘Where’s the bedroom?’
‘On the floor above, left at the staircase. Leo…’
‘Keep a light on and the door ajar. You go up and I’ll follow in a couple of hours or so.’
Cassie remained frozen to the spot as he turned away to head back to the kitchen, then she sprinted up to the bedroom they would be sharing, her mind buzzing with a confusing tangle of thoughts and emotions.
She wondered how she had ever thought that someone who knew her so well, someone as intuitive as Leo, could ever miss the signals she’d been giving off.
Not signals that she had feelings for him—deep, true feelings that went against everything her head was telling her—but signals that she was still attracted to him, still wanted him.
How could she have imagined that he would obediently fall in line with her request that sex remain off the table?
But he wouldn’t lay a finger on her. Cassie knew that because she knew him as well as he knew her.
He would wait to see if she would come to him, and that was an even more devastating thought, because it gave her the absolute choice to go one way or the other without him trying to persuade her.
She’d made so many promises to herself. How could she jeopardise her heart with her eyes wide open?
She had clothes in the bedroom. She always kept clothes there because she spent so much time between the family house and her apartment, especially after her father had died and there had been so much stuff to do, so much to sort out.
She had a lengthy shower, changed into warm pyjamas, because the bedroom was only slightly less cold than the hall and then, as she’d said, she kept the door very slightly ajar with the bedside light on to guide him to the room.
There was no chance of her falling asleep this early so she was still wide awake when Leo pushed open the door and stepped inside.
His silhouette, looming in the doorframe, sent a shiver of sexual awareness rippling through her.
She watched in absolute stillness as he quietly shut the door behind him and walked in, stripping off the jumper as he did so, and throwing it over the back of the chair by the old-fashioned dressing table.