Deal With The Devil: Secrets of a Ruthless Tycoon / The Most Expensive Lie of All / The Magnate's Manifesto

He headed downstairs and pulled up short at the sight of Bridget sitting in the small lounge set aside from the bar area, which Brianna had turned into her private place if she didn’t want to remain in her bedroom.

Because of Bridget, the pub now had slightly restricted opening and closing hours. He assumed that that was something that could only be achieved in a small town where all the regulars knew what was going on and would not be motivated to take their trade elsewhere—something that would have been quite tedious, as ‘elsewhere’ was not exactly conveniently located to get to by foot or on a bike.

‘Leo!’

Leo paused, suddenly indecisive at being confronted by his mother without Brianna around as an intermediary. She was sitting by the large bay window that overlooked the back garden and the fields behind the pub. Her fair hair was tied back and the thin, gaunt lines of her face were accentuated so that she resembled a wraith.

‘Brianna’s still out.’ She patted the chair facing hers and motioned to him to join her. ‘We haven’t chatted very much at all. Why don’t you have a cup of tea with me?’

Leo frowned, exasperated at his inability to take control of the situation. Did he want to talk to his mother on a one-to-one basis? Why did he suddenly feel so...vulnerable and at odds with himself at the prospect? Wasn’t this why he had descended on this back-of-nowhere town in the first place? So things had not turned out quite as he had anticipated, but wasn’t it still on his agenda to find out what the woman was like?

He was struck by the unexpectedly fierce urge to find out what had possessed her to throw him to the wolves.

He thought that perhaps the facade she portrayed now was a far cry from the real person lurking underneath, and he hardened himself against the weak temptation to be swept along into thinking that she was innocent, pathetic and deserving of sympathy. Could it be that, without Brianna there to impress, her true colours would be revealed?

‘I think I’ll have black coffee myself. Would you like to switch to coffee?’

‘No, my dear, my pot of tea will be fine, although perhaps you could refresh the hot water. I feel exhausted if I’m on my feet for too long and I’ve been far too active today for my own good.’

He was back with a mug of coffee and the newly refreshed pot of tea which he rested on the table by her, next to the plate of biscuits which were untouched.

‘I’m so glad I’ve caught you on your own,’ she murmured as soon as he had taken a seat next to her. ‘I feel I barely know you and yet Brianna is so taken with you after such a short space of time.’

‘When you say “taken with me”...’ He had told Brianna that he saw it as his duty to keep an eye on her houseguest, to scope her out, because a houseguest with a mysteriously absent past was not a houseguest to be trusted. Was the houseguest doing the same with him? He almost laughed out loud at the thought. As always when he was in her company, he had to try not to stare, not to try and find similarities...

‘She’s, well, I suppose you know about...’

‘About the guy who broke her heart when she was at university?’

‘She’s locked herself away for years, has expressed no interest in any kind of love life at all. I’ve always thought it sad for someone so young and caring and beautiful, that she wouldn’t be able to share those qualities with a soul mate.’

Leo said something and nothing. He looked at the cane leaning against the chair and wondered what it must feel like to be relatively young and yet require the assistance of a walking stick.

‘If you don’t mind my asking, how old are you, Bridget?’

Bridget looked at him in surprise. ‘Why do you ask?’

Leo shrugged and sipped his coffee.

‘Not yet fifty,’ Bridget said quietly. ‘Although I know I look much, much older.’ She glanced away to stare through the window and he could see the shine of unshed tears filming her eyes.

In his head, he was doing the maths.

‘But we weren’t talking about me,’ she said softly.

Leo felt a surge of healthy cynicism and thought that if she figured she could disappear behind a veil of anonymity then she was in for a surprise. There were things he wanted to find out, things he needed to find out, and he knew himself well—what he wanted, he got, be it money, women or, in this case, answers. The unsettling hesitancy that had afflicted him off and on, the hesitancy he hated because he just wasn’t a hesitant person, thankfully disappeared beneath the weight of this new resolve.

‘Indulge me,’ he said smoothly. ‘I hate one-sided conversations. I especially hate long chats about myself... I’m a man, after all. Self-expression is a luxury I don’t tend to indulge very often. So, let’s talk about you for a minute. I’m curious. You’re not yet fifty, you tell me? Seems very young to have abandoned the lure of city lights for a quiet place like this.’ He still could not quite believe that she was as young as she said. She looked like a woman in her sixties.

‘What you may call “quiet”, by which I take it you mean “dull”, is what I see as peace.’

‘Brianna said that you’ve been here a while—quite a few years; you must have been even younger when you decided that you wanted “peace”.’ He couldn’t help thinking that, although their colouring was different, he had her eyes, the shape of them. He looked away with a frown.

She blushed and for the first time he could see her relative youth peep out from behind the care-worn features.

‘My life’s been...complicated. Not quite the life I ever expected, matter of fact.’

Curiosity was gnawing at him but he kept his features perfectly schooled, the disinterested bystander in whom he hoped she would confide. He could feel in his bones that the questions he wanted answering were about to be answered.

‘Why don’t you talk about it?’ he murmured, resting the cup on the table and leaning towards her, his forearms resting on his thighs. ‘You probably feel constrained talking to Brianna. In such a small, close-knit community perhaps you didn’t want your private life to be thrown into the public arena?’ He could see her hesitate. Secrets were always burdensome. ‘Not that Brianna would ever be one to reveal a confidence, but one can never be too sure, I suppose.’

‘And who knows how long I have left?’ Bridget said quietly. She plucked distractedly at the loose gown she was wearing and stared off through the window as though it might offer up some inspiration. ‘My health isn’t good: stress, built up over the years. The doctor says I could have another heart attack at any time. They can’t promise that the next time round won’t be fatal.’ She looked at him pensively. ‘And I suppose I wouldn’t want to burden Brianna with my life story. She’s a sweet girl but I would never want to put her in a position of having to express a sympathy she couldn’t feel.’

Or pass judgement which would certainly mean the end of your happy times with her, Leo thought with another spurt of that healthy cynicism, cynicism he knew he had to work at.

‘But I don’t come from here...’ he encouraged in a low voice.

‘I grew up in a place not dissimilar to this,’ she murmured. ‘Well, bigger, but not by a lot. Everybody knew everybody else. All the girls knew the boys they would end up marrying. I was destined for Jimmy O’Connor; lived two doors away. His parents were my parents’ best friends. In fact, we were practically born on the same day, but that all went up the spout when I met Robbie Cabrera. Roberto Cabrera.’

Leo stilled. ‘He was Spanish?’

‘Yes. His father had come over for a temporary job on a building site ten miles out of town. Six months. He was put into our school and all the girls went mad for him. I used to be pretty once, when I was a young girl of fifteen...you might not guess it now.’ She sighed and looked at him with a girlish smile which, like that blush, brought her buried youth back up to the surface.

‘And what happened?’ Leo was surprised he could talk so naturally, as though he was listening to someone else’s story rather than his own.

‘We fell madly in love. In the way that you do when you’re young and innocent.’ She shot him a concerned looked and he hastened to assure her that whatever she told him would stay with him. Adrenaline was pumping through him. He hadn’t experienced this edge-of-the-precipice feeling in a very long time. If ever. This was why he was here. The only reason he was here.

From nowhere, he had a vision of Brianna laughing and telling him that there was nothing more satisfying than growing your own tomatoes in summer, and teasing him that he probably wouldn’t understand because he probably lived in one of those horrible apartment blocks where you wouldn’t be able to grow a tomato if your life depended on it.

He thought of himself, picking her up then and hauling her off to his bedroom at a ridiculous hour after the pub had finally been closed. Thought of her curving, feline smile as she lay on his bed, half-naked, her small, perfect breasts turning him on until his erection felt painful and he couldn’t get his clothes off fast enough.

‘Sorry?’ He leaned in closer. ‘You were saying...?’

‘I know. You’re shocked. And I don’t mean to shock you but it’s a relief to talk about this; I haven’t with anyone. I fell pregnant. At fifteen. My family were distraught, and of course there was no question of abortion, not that we would have got rid of it. No, Robbie and I were committed to one another.’

‘Pregnant...’

‘I was still a child myself. We both were. We wanted to keep it but my parents wouldn’t allow it. I was shipped off to a convent to give birth.’

‘You wanted to keep it?’

‘I never even held it. Never knew if it was a boy or a girl. I returned to Ireland, went back to school, but from that moment on my parents were lost to me. I had three younger siblings and they never knew what had happened. Still don’t. Family life was never the same again.’

‘And the father of the child?’

Bridget smiled. ‘We ran away. His father ended up on a two-year contract. We skipped town when we were sixteen and headed south. I kept my parents informed of my whereabouts but I couldn’t see them and they never lived down the shame of what I’d done. I don’t think they cared one way or the other. Robbie always kept in touch with his parents and in fact, when they moved to London, we stayed with them for several months before they returned to Spain.’

‘You...ran away...’ For some reason, his normally agile mind seemed to be lagging behind.