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‘You’d better come in with me,’ she said dubiously and Hal, killing the engine, turned round and looked at her, his cheerful face serious.
‘If this is an engagement party,’ he said in his usual direct fashion, ‘then I’ll eat my hat.’ He waved the woollen hat lying on the seat next to him and grinned. ‘I’ve seen more life in a graveyard.’
‘Don’t say that. I have a ring to deliver. Vanessa will be distraught if for some reason the sale falls through.’
‘It won’t, love.’ He smiled kindly at her. ‘You’ll probably find that the action will kick off tomorrow. That’s when the party’s due to take place, isn’t it? The happy couple are probably just relaxing and enjoying some peace before the big day ahead.’
Ten minutes later, Abigail discovered that that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
* * *
Leandro had thoroughly cleared his head of the catastrophic mess that had awaited him when he had arrived back from New York. That was the joy of work. It put everything into perspective. It was a world in which everything was clear cut and everything had a solution. Now, as Julie popped her head round the door to inform him that the last link in the ‘belly up’ chain had arrived, bearing the ill-fated ring, Leandro was obliged to face the final annoying hurdle in putting this matter to rest.
He was, fortunately, in a better frame of mind. Rosalind had shouted and screamed, furious that for the first time in her life someone had scuppered her plans. She had threatened social exclusion, at which point Leandro had made the mistake of laughing, and she had been apoplectic when he had suggested that she was far better off without him, because he simply didn’t have the reserves of energy or patience to give her the sort of attention she required. Nor, he had added, had he the slightest interest in having children. In fact, he could think of nothing worse. So the pitter-patter of tiny feet would have remained an unfulfilled ambition.
Rosalind had got the worst out of her system and he felt that, when she eventually descended from her rage, she would find blessed relief in gossiping about him behind his back and painting whatever picture it took for her to emerge smelling of roses.
For his part, burying himself in work had put everything in perspective.
He had no idea what had driven him to imagine that anything could be more important. His abiding memory of his parents was of two spoiled and wealthy people caught up in a hedonistic whirl, incapable of growing up and certainly incapable of looking after the child they had accidentally conceived. Even less had they been able to deal with the arrival of Cecilia years later, another accident. The task of taking care of his much younger sister had fallen to him and, from a young age, Leandro had worked out that the tumult of emotion and the chaos it was capable of engendering was not for him. A healthy aversion to chaos, disorder and unpredictability had been ingrained in him from a tender age.
As a teenager, he had lost himself in his studies, only surfacing to make sure his sister was okay. As an adult, work had replaced the studies, and when his parents had died, victims of their wild, irresponsible lifestyle—speedboat racing at night in the Caribbean—work had become even more imperative because he had had to rescue what was left of the family finances. There had been no time to kick back and relax. Work was and always would be the most important driving force of Leandro’s life. Rosalind’s hysterics had clarified that for him.
He had told Julie to show the courier into the smallest of the sitting rooms, the one which bore the least evidence of the party that wasn’t going to be taking place. He now made his way there, mind half on the business proposal he had been reading before he had been interrupted.
* * *
On tenterhooks, because whatever was wrong was very, very wrong and the fast exit she had been hoping for now seemed out of the question, Abigail was sitting upright in a chair in the room into which she had been delivered like an unwanted parcel.
Rosalind was, she was given to understand, not there. Hal was to wait in the kitchen where he would be given something to eat and she was to wait for the master of the house in the sitting room where, she hoped, he would take delivery of the ring.
She heard the approach of footsteps on the marble floor and was already rising to her feet, having rehearsed what she needed to say about getting back to London urgently before the weather took a turn for the worse.
Whatever the heck was going on, it wasn’t her problem. She had already reached that conclusion. She’d done her job and, if the loved-up couple had had a tiff, then that was nothing to do with her.
She didn’t know who or what to expect. Stiff with tension, with the metal box containing the ring clutched to her chest, for a few seconds Abigail almost thought that her nerves had brought on a hallucinatory attack.
Because there was no way that those footsteps she had heard could possibly have heralded the arrival of a six-foot-two specimen of pure, hard-edged masculinity. There was no way that those achingly familiar tawny eyes, fringed by eyelashes she had once teased could have been the envy of any woman, could now be staring at her. It just wasn’t possible. Leandro Sanchez could not be lounging in the doorway of this sitting room, larger than life.
She couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. He was her very worst nightmare and her very deepest, darkest, most forbidden fantasy come to life and she blinked, desperately hoping that the vision would disappear. It didn’t. He remained just where he was, an alpha male of such sinful beauty that he took her breath away. He had taken her breath away the first time she had seen him a year and a half ago. Over the weeks of their torrid and doomed love affair, that impact had never lessened.
He was the sort of guy women dreamed about. Olive-skinned, tawny-eyed and with an electrifying, ruthless sex appeal. He was long, lean and muscular, and Abigail thought that she could remember each and every muscle and sinew of that fabulous body.
She had never thought that she’d see him again, not after everything, and as the full horror of this accidental encounter hit home the room began to swim. She felt nausea rise in a tide up her throat, and she swallowed back the bile, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from swaying. She felt her legs give way and knew that she was going to pass out before she hit the ground.
* * *
She came to on one of the low, cream sofas facing the arched window through which she had been absently gazing only seconds before and struggled up to find that Leandro had dragged a chair over by the sofa and was sitting, watching her.
‘Drink this.’ He pressed a glass with some brandy into her hand and forced her to take a sip. His eyes were cool and guarded, his hand was steady, his voice controlled.
Not a single thing conveyed his utter shock at walking into the room and coming face to face with the only woman who had got under his skin and refused to budge—and, as if that wasn’t sufficiently appalling, it galled him to realise that his ability to recall had been spot-on because she was just as exquisite as he remembered.
Her hair was just as colourful and, from what he could tell, just as long, although right now it was pinned back severely in a bun. Her eyes were as green as he remembered, green with gold flecks that were only apparent when you really took time to look, which he had. Her figure was as luscious and as sexy, a figure that could haunt a man’s dreams.
Of their own accord, his eyes drifted down, lingering on the full swell of her breasts pushing against the drab white blouse, and the length of her legs primly hidden under a pair of grey trousers. She was dressed in high street fashion. Wherever life had taken her since they had parted company, it certainly hadn’t been into the open arms of another billionaire.
‘Leandro...this can’t be happening...’ She would have stood up except her legs had turned to jelly.
‘You’re in my house, you’re sitting on my sofa.’ He stood up and strolled towards the fireplace, putting some distance between them, every nerve in his body electrified by the shock of finding her in his house. ‘It’s happening all right. I take it that you’re the courier with the ring?’
‘I... Yes... I am.’ Abigail’s eyes skittered towards him and just as quickly skittered away. She reached for the metal safety-deposit box and held it out to him. Leandro ignored the gesture.
Propelled into nervous speech, Abigail gave him a stilted, jerky explanation for being in his house, all the while feeling like an unwary rabbit that had suddenly strayed into the path of a voracious predator.
‘It seems...’ Leandro sauntered back towards her, eyes narrowed as he watched her cringe back against the sofa. As she should, he thought, considering the last time they had been in one another’s company she had been revealed for the liar and thief that she was. ‘...that your boss got the wrong end of the stick.’
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘That ring was purchased without my consent. Unfortunately, Rosalind misinterpreted the depth of our relationship.’
‘But we were told that there was to be an engagement party...’
Leandro shrugged and continued looking at her as he sat back down on the chair that he had pulled over, which was far too close for comfort, as far as Abigail was concerned. ‘Crossed wires all round,’ he informed her coolly.
‘So is Rosalind...? Has Rosalind...?’ Abigail struggled to make sense of the situation while her thoughts kept whirling round in utter confusion and her body burned and tingled as though she’d been plugged in to a live socket.
‘I never had plans to marry her.’ Leandro brushed aside the question with just a hint of impatience. Now that she was sitting here in his living room, larger than life and just as sexy, all those memories he had carefully locked away were coming out to play. He remembered the way she had felt, the noises she’d made when he’d touched her, the way their bodies had fit together like one. He’d bumped into ex-girlfriends before and had felt nothing for them but a sense of relief that they were no longer around. He certainly had never looked at them and wanted them.
But then no other relationship had ended the way theirs had...
Jittery and feeling caged in, Abigail sprang to her feet and began pacing the room nervously, hands clasped behind her back, barely able to think straight. ‘So this trip has been a complete waste of time. What am I supposed to do now? With the ring?’ Focus on why you’re here, she told herself feverishly, and forget about everything else.
‘Now that you’ve made the effort to bring it here, you’d better let me have a look—see where my hard-earned money has gone.’ He nodded to the box and Abigail dutifully extracted the ring with shaking fingers and watched as he carefully held it up to the light and inspected it.
‘It’s not my problem if you’ve broken off your engagement with Lady Rosalind,’ she said jerkily.
‘I haven’t broken anything off. There was never an engagement to break off. She bought this off her own bat because she wanted to pin me down. The strategy didn’t work. I’d already decided to finish with her before I knew anything about this ridiculous scheme and that’s exactly what I did when I returned here after my trip abroad.’
Abigail shivered because this was just the sort of ruthless side to him she had finally glimpsed when their relationship had crashed and burned.
She thought of Sam and was overcome with sudden sickening fear and apprehension. ‘The ring was sold in good faith,’ she told him flatly, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly because it steadied her shattered nerves. ‘I just need you to sign for the delivery and then I can be out of here.’
‘Really?’ Leandro relaxed, crossing his legs and leaning back in his chair. ‘Why the rush?’
‘Why do you think, Leandro?’ Abigail asked in a high-pitched voice. ‘The last time we met you were walking out of your apartment, leaving me with your sister, believing every word she had said about me being a liar, a thief and a gold-digger. So, believe it or not, the less time I spend in your company, the better. If I’d known that you were the man Lady Rosalind was about to marry, there’s no way I would have come all the way here to deliver a ring. But I didn’t, and now the ring is in your possession, and all I need is your signature before I leave.’
‘I’m not going to go down the road of reminiscing over your lies and half-truths,’ Leandro told her calmly. ‘As for the ring... I may or may not decide to keep it.’
‘You have to!’ Abigail gasped. ‘Vanessa has just taken over her father’s business and this sale is a real coup for her. There was stiff competition from other buyers to get hold of this particular diamond!’
‘Not my problem, although it beggars belief that you managed to con your way into a job handling priceless jewellery, now that we’re on the subject. Does your employer know that you’re prone to being light-fingered?’
‘I don’t have to stay and listen to this!’
‘Oh, but you do. Or have you forgotten that you need my signature?’ He snapped shut the box with a definitive click. ‘I think I’ll keep it,’ he decided briskly, ‘as an investment. It’ll make me money. Now, sit.’
‘I have to go.’
Leandro looked at her narrowly as she glanced down at her watch with just the slightest hint of panic, as she licked her lips and fidgeted.
‘It took much longer to get here than I anticipated,’ Abigail said into the growing silence. ‘We should have arrived ages ago, at least two hours ago, but the weather... I’d planned on being back in London by eight-thirty. I really have to get back...’
‘Why?’ he asked smoothly. ‘Glass slipper going to get lost? Carriage about to turn into a pumpkin? There’s no wedding ring on your finger, so I take it that there’s no Mr Right keeping the fires burning on the home front. Or is there?’ He found that he didn’t care for the thought of a man in Abigail’s life and that streak of inappropriate possessiveness shocked him.
But then, why beat about the bush? She’d lodged in his head like a burr and the plain truth was that he still wanted her. It made no sense, because she represented everything he found distasteful, but for reasons he couldn’t begin to understand she still turned him on. Something about the way she was put together. He’d been out with some of the most beautiful women in the world and none of them could get to him the way this one could.
It was as infuriating as it was undeniable.
She was still in his system, a slither of unfinished business, and there was only one way he could think of to get her out of his system once and for all.
He lowered his eyes and felt the kick of satisfaction at a decision taken. It would be an insult to fate, which had decided to throw them together, were he not to take advantage of the situation.
‘It’s none of your business whether there’s someone in my life or not, Leandro!’ Agitated, she sprang to her feet, challenging him to stop her. ‘Now, if you’ll excuse me, Hal is waiting in the kitchen. I’ll go fetch him and we can head off. It took us hours to get here, and it’ll probably take us hours to get back, and I...’
‘And you...what?’
‘Nothing,’ she muttered. ‘I just need to go now.’
‘By all means, although...’ he nodded towards the window ‘...you might want to reconsider that decision. If you look outside, you’ll find that the weather conditions that delayed your trip here are now considerably worse. Leave here and you’re liable to end up in a ditch by the side of the road somewhere. That’s the thing with these country lanes—they’re very picturesque in summer but positively lethal in winter when the weather decides to take a turn for the worse.’
Abigail paled and followed the direction of his gaze, then she anxiously went to the window and peered outside. The flakes were raining down fast and thick. Already, the extensive grounds of the country estate were carpeted in white. It was beautiful. It was also, she noted with sickening dismay, virtually impassable.
‘I can’t stay here. I have to get back!’
‘Feel free. But perhaps that should be a joint decision taken with your driver.’
‘You don’t understand! I have to get back to London tonight.’
‘You’re not going anywhere,’ Leandro told her. ‘This snow is going to get worse before it gets better. You might be willing to put your life at risk in your desperate need to return to the city, but you have your driver to consider. Frankly, what you choose to do with your life is entirely your concern, but I won’t be responsible for any accident that might befall your driver. I will ensure that he is fed and settled into one of the guest suites for the night. By tomorrow, you will doubtless find that the driving conditions are improved.’
Abigail was close to tears but there was nothing she could do. ‘I can’t get a signal on my phone,’ she told him, defeated. ‘I need to make a call.’
Leandro didn’t say anything but he was thinking fast. A man? Not a husband, but a lover? Who else? And would that stop him? He wanted her, but was that want reciprocated?
He had one night, he thought with satisfaction, and one night should be more than enough to put this urge to bed once and for all. He would find out soon enough.
CHAPTER TWO (#u0814ab23-6c1b-576a-b1c3-4279a413d526)
ABIGAIL HAD EXPECTED similar alarm from Hal about being trapped at Greyling Manor for the night—he was a family man with three young children—but he seemed pleased as punch not to be returning to London.
‘Treacherous roads,’ he said comfortably as he settled in front of the array of wildly extravagant food which had been laid on for them by Leandro’s housekeeper. ‘Wouldn’t want to risk driving on them, and besides, I haven’t been out of London in months.’
While he had tucked into the surplus party grub, with Julie nodding approvingly at his hearty appetite, Abigail toyed worriedly with her food. She had, at least, managed to get through to her friend Claire who was looking after Sam for the evening, and she had cheerfully agreed to stay until she returned.
‘I’ll be back no later than tomorrow lunchtime,’ Abigail had said sotto voce, for she had been directed to the landline and was petrified that Leandro might be lurking behind a door and overhearing her conversation. ‘I don’t care what the weather decides to do. There’s no way I can stay here.’
‘I know you miss Sam,’ her friend had said soothingly, ‘but it’s better for you to wait and travel back when it’s safe rather than risk life and limb. I promise to take very good care of the little guy!’
Abigail knew that her friend would. She had met Claire at the handful of antenatal classes they had attended together, and they had hit it off immediately. Both young, both single and both pregnant. Although, in Claire’s case, she had had a job at the local nursery. Thanks to Claire, Abigail had managed to get Sam registered and, much as she had hated leaving him there when he had only been four months old, she’d had to in order to work to keep the roof over both their heads. Knowing that Claire was there, looking after him every bit as thoroughly as she looked after her own son, had helped a lot. Just as Vanessa had given her a job when she had needed it most, so too had Claire chipped in and helped her with Sam when she’d needed it.
Claire had no idea where Abigail was and neither did she know why she so desperately needed to leave.
So far, she had inspected the weather a dozen times in the space of the past two hours.
There was some let up but not much. She had barely been able to touch a morsel of food and was only thankful that Leandro had disappeared into the bowels of the house. There was a slim chance that she wouldn’t see him again but she knew that that would make little difference to the onslaught of memories, heartache and misgivings that had risen to the surface, like debris washed ashore.
Of course you could never forget the past, but now the scab that had been formed had been picked apart to expose the barely healed wound underneath.
As Hal was shepherded up to his quarters, as happy as a privileged guest in a five-star hotel, Abigail remained in the kitchen with her cup of coffee, remembering the past she had tried to put behind her.
She could recall the very second she had looked up and seen Leandro standing in front of her, so unbelievably gorgeous that her mouth had run dry and every single thought had fled her head. In that split second, she had forgotten all about the job she had just failed to secure, the uncertain future staring her in the face, the last laugh her philandering, lecherous ex-boss had had at her expense by insinuating in his reference that she had been sacked for theft. She had turned down the pass he had made, had allowed her disgust to show and had paid the price.
She had been at rock bottom. Every single effort she had ever made to elevate herself and get away from a background that had been a slideshow of foster homes and indifferent adults had been for nothing.
Then she had felt a shadow, looked up and there he’d been, all big, brooding and heart-stoppingly gorgeous, and for the first time in her life Abigail had discovered the meaning of sexual chemistry.
She’d spent so many years playing down her looks, telling herself that she would never, ever allow anyone into her life because they wanted to have sex with her, and fending off unwanted advances from the age of thirteen, that she’d been quite unprepared to discover that sexual attraction had no time at all for pep talks and earnest lectures.
Indeed, sexual attraction hadn’t given a damn about her resolve never to leap into bed with a man who wanted her for her body and not much else. Her mother had been that woman before an overdose had ended her life. Abigail had known that she would never end up selling herself short like her mother had. Unfortunately, the power of that same sexual attraction she had had under tight control had refused to obey her ground rules. It had raced out of the box in which it had been contained with the gusto of a racehorse sprinting from the starting box.
Leandro hadn’t even beaten around the bush. He’d just said, conversationally, that it was nearly lunchtime and he knew a nice little Italian just round the corner. He had not bothered to wrap up what he’d wanted in fancy packaging. She’d bowled him over, he had said over lunch, looking at her with those fabulous, long-lashed eyes, the very casualness of his voice at odds with what he was saying. He didn’t do commitment, he’d made it clear, but he wanted her and he was going to New York. He’d glanced at his watch with a nonchalance she’d found unutterably cool and had told her he wanted to take her with him, but that she’d have to decide on the spot, because his private jet was due to leave in three hours.
His eyes had roved over her with open desire but everything about him had told her that, if she chose to walk away, he wouldn’t try to stop her.
He’d been everything she hadn’t been looking for and she’d dumped every single principle she’d ever had and gone with him. She’d let him sweep her into his world of chauffeur-driven cars, five-star hotels and every whim granted at the snap of a finger. He’d worked during the day and had insisted that she buy herself a new wardrobe, and whatever else she fancied in whatever store she chose, because money was no object.
But she had objected, only to learn that, what Leandro didn’t want to hear, he simply chose to ignore, and he hadn’t wanted to hear her objections.
‘I have never,’ he had told her, undressing her very, very slowly, ‘allowed any woman of mine to pay for anything. Not going to change the habit now.’
No-strings-attached sex was what he’d offered and it was what she’d taken, greedy for him in a way that had shocked her beyond words. They’d lived for the moment and, whilst she had not lied to him about her past, neither had she told him about it. Somewhere along the line, she’d felt that it would turn him off and quite quickly she’d known that she hadn’t wanted to turn him off.
When one week had turned into two and then three, and when, on the spur of the moment, he had decided to take a break with her in the wilds of Canada, she’d begun to hope that what had started out as just sex might end up as more.
But then everything had gone wrong, and it had all happened so fast. One minute she had been dreaming impossible dreams, and the next minute his sister had entered the frame and within three days all her fledgling dreams had lain in ruins around her and she’d been turfed out of his Manhattan apartment without a backward glance.
He’d made no bones about spelling out the sort of unscrupulous guy he was when it came to women and, instead of listening, she had chosen to ignore the writing on the wall because she had been first bowled over by him and then head over heels in love with him.
