One Hour to Midnight by Shirley Wine Page B

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    Chapter Seven
     
    U nable to sleep, Veronica leaned her elbows on the wide sill of the sitting room window. Moonlight danced silver sovereigns on the flagstones of the terrace beneath the weeping bottlebrush and sentinel melaleucas. By day the trees swarmed with lorikeets and honeyeaters. Now, they were like the house.
    Brooding. Waiting.
    A night breeze tugged at her hair. Freed from its daytime confinement, the thick honey blonde curtain brushed shoulders that gleamed white in the pale light.
    A small sound on the terrace alerted her. The atmosphere underwent a subtle change. Blood pounded in her veins and nerve ends tingled.
    Leon crossed the flagstones, the moonlight's shadow moving ahead of him. Outside the French doors to her suite, he paused.  
    Veronica never hesitated. She opened the door and he stepped inside.
    "Is Jordan sleeping?" She was first to break the pulsing silence. Why had he come to her?
    "Yes." He moved closer, leaned against the opposite sill of the bay window and tilted his head back on the frame. His shoulders drooped and his hand hung limp.
    "You need rest," she said, her concern genuine. Leon looked very much like a man teetering on the edge.  
    "What's rest?" His hollow laugh echoed as he straightened and stepped closer. "Would you give a man comfort and ease, Ricki?"
    Her heart raced, she'd always loved the inflection he put on her name. Tonight she revelled in being Ricki. Sensible Veronica had vanished with the moonlight.  
    His brooding words made her react. Alone in the night, with no fear of being interrupted, and Julia but a distant memory, she opened her arms and offered Leon comfort.  
    It was risky. But tonight, back within Claremont's confines, she succumbed to impulse.  
    Leon stepped into her arms, shudders shaking his body as he crushed her close, his bowed head resting in the hollow of her neck.
    "Why?" His voice was muffled in her hair.
    She slipped her hands beneath his jacket, ran her palms up his back and found muscles as rigid as iron. She frowned and tightened her hold.  
    Even a man as strong as Leon had his breaking point. "Life offers no guarantees."  
    "But he's so young, he was so vital." Leon pushed her away, gripped her shoulders, his expression tormented. "It's not fair."
    The age-old reaction alarmed her.
    She'd never seen Leon so down. Did he think he had the monopoly on suffering? He would probably hate her but she knew sympathy would be no help.
    "Who said life was meant to be fair. Stop indulging in self-pity and consider the advantages you do have."
    Leon jerked back as if she'd slapped him, dropped his hands and his retaliation was swift. "It's different for you. You've never loved Jordan. Never watched him grow, or walked the floor with him when he had colic. Hell, you never even had the guts to visit and get to know your child."
    Shock left Veronica bereft of speech, and then rage bled through her grief and into the huge, internal void she'd lived with for a decade.
    "How dare you?" Each clipped word was edged with fury. "You have a nerve. It was because I loved Jordan that I left him to you and Julia. What could I offer him by comparison?"
    "That's so easy to say now."
    She whirled around, desperate to escape his harsh words.  
    "Easy. How dare you? You and Julia brought me here so you could take my baby." The accusation rose from the deep well of festering bitterness. "Your whole family used me."
    Leon moved swiftly, spinning her around to face him.
    "You've intimated as much before. Explain yourself." His flat, lethal voice was wiped of emotion.
    Should she? Why not? Kept inside it was poisoning her in slow steady increments. "Why did you bring me here unless it was because I was so conveniently pregnant?"
    For long moments nothing moved or stirred. The tension in the night silence was tangible. "Would you have preferred I dump you alone and pregnant on a street corner?"
    "I may have fared better." She threw