‘You’re sure of that?’ he asked, holding her gaze.
‘Yes,’ she said, laying a hand on his arm. She wasn’t going to hold him to anything. Rebecca’s arrival was a timely reminder. She didn’t want to end up like her aunt, constantly having to turn a blind eye to flirtations and liaisons that supposedly never meant anything. ‘I love you. The way you are. I don’t want you to be anything but who you are.’
Leo’s mouth twisted and he glared at her before throwing back the bed covers and launching himself to his feet in one quick surge. With his back to her, he snagged his boxers from the nearby chair and pulled them on before turning to face her.
What did he have to be angry about? She was the one trying to be the grown-up, accepting the situation rather than attempting to change him into something he wasn’t. She respected him the way he was.
‘Is that what you think this is? A good shag?’
She swallowed, hating him diminishing everything between them to one word. There’d been more, certainly on her part.
‘What are you so pissed off about? I haven’t noticed you complaining about it.’
‘Bloody hell, Anna.’ He shook his head but she had no idea what she’d done wrong. She was just being honest. ‘You don’t get it, you really don’t get it, do you?’ He hauled on his jeans and then a shirt, shoving his bare feet into his boots.
‘Get what?’ she asked, kneeling up on the bed now.
He glared at her.
‘What, Leo?’
He gave a bitter laugh. ‘I love you and you can’t bloody see it. I’m still the bloke who’s having fun. Still the bloke who can charm his way into everyone’s knickers. Still the bloke who’s incapable of being faithful, even though –’ he glared at her as he spat the words ‘– have I given you a single reason to think that I would cheat?’
She sank back on her heels staring at him.
‘And you haven’t been with Zdenka today?’
‘Yes, I’ve been with Zdenka today. It was purely business, which you’d have known if you’d come with me.’
Anna’s lips tightened. She hadn’t meant to mention Zdenka but it had slipped out.
* * *
‘And there it is. You still don’t trust me.’ Despair churned in Leo’s stomach. ‘I can’t do this again, Anna.’
‘Do what?’
Leo stared at her. Did she really not know? He went silent, a wave of fury pounding over him, so fierce and consuming he had to clamp his hands into fists to stop them reaching out to shake her.
‘You almost ended me when you left last time.’
‘Me?’ The surprised outrage in her voice pushed his control over the edge.
‘Yes, you.’ The long-held bitterness spilled out and he didn’t care. He didn’t care that it made him sound like some sad sack, like a loser who felt hard done by – the words took flight on their own.
‘Remember you asked me when I had my conversion to tidiness.’ His voice clogged, turning a little croaky.
‘Yes.’
‘I went to live in a camper van for a couple of months – being untidy in that got old pretty quickly.’
‘A camper van?’
‘Yeah, a friend had it. When you left the flat … I moved into for a while.’
Yeah, there was a ton of subtext here and she had to ask. ‘A while?’
Raw pain and bitterness rocketed through him. ‘Thirteen months, Anna. Thirteen months, driving aimlessly around the UK before I got my shit together again. Not my proudest time but, hey, it made me tidy. So there’s a bonus.’
