This entire episode could have been avoided, he knew, if he had simply told her that he had been speaking to his sister, but the conversation with Cecilia had been an unusually abrupt and inconclusive one and he had been in no mood to deal with Abigail’s crazy suspicions.
Why should he?
He’d never had much time for people who made demands of him. What man did? A demanding woman always turned possessive at some point and there was no way he would ever contemplate having any such relationship.
It infuriated him that, after all those very reasonable pep talks he had given himself in the past week and a half, he was still out of sorts. He hated the saccharine smile she produced every time he walked through the front door and, for the past few days, she had somehow managed either to ensure that the nanny had dinner with them or had invited Vanessa or one of the other employees of the shop over so that any time spent alone together had been frankly reduced to zilch.
And then there was the lack of sex.
Leandro couldn’t work out how it was that he missed her warm, willing and incredibly sexy body so much.
Sex was a bodily function, wasn’t it? A very pleasant bodily function but nothing upon which the entire world could stop turning on its axis if it wasn’t around.
And yet...
He glanced at his watch, noting the slow passage of time and cursing the tendency to introspection that seemed suddenly and inexplicably to have taken up residence in him.
It took a lot of focus and concentration actually to get down to reviewing the complicated legalese that had to be picked over for the deal he was in the process of closing and, the next time he looked at his watch, it was after seven.
For the first time since she had re-entered his life as the mother of his child, Abigail was going out for the evening. She had handed in her notice and Vanessa was throwing her a little party at a club not a million miles away. Not only were the employees of the company invited, along with a few of Abigail’s friends she had made during the time she had been working in London, but some of their more regular clients who had dealt with her over the years were also going to be there.
This information had not been volunteered by Abigail, but by Vanessa, when she had come over two evenings previously for dinner. Leandro had surreptitiously scrutinised Abigail’s face for a show of excitement but he hadn’t been able to glean a thing from her lack of expression.
But he had had to face the stark truth, which was that they were no longer sleeping together and, effectively, she was a single woman who could do as she liked.
Which, of course, would be nothing, because if there was one thing he had worked out it was that she wasn’t the sort to jump into bed with a man just because the opportunity happened to present itself.
He almost laughed at the thought of her going to some office party and throwing herself around.
Yes, they would be going to a club, and indeed he knew the club they would be going to and had once been a regular there back in the day. And yes, sure, there would be music and dancing, although he personally had never been one of those gyrating on a dance floor, but doubtless she would miss Sam and would make her excuses to leave as early as possible.
He’d bet on it.
* * *
Abigail looked at her reflection in the mirror of the spare room she now occupied. The wardrobe spanned one entire wall and was completely mirrored. There was no escaping the reflection staring back at her. It felt odd to be dressed up when she had spent so many months in an array of unexciting work garb or old stay-at-home clothes that were suitable for holding a baby.
Since Leandro had re-entered her life, her wardrobe had undergone a radical transformation because he had insisted that she buy herself stuff she could go out in. He had even bought a couple of dresses for her himself, which had seemed extraordinary at the time, but she had quietly put those to the back of the wardrobe because she was assailed by a weird feeling of guilt whenever she thought about wearing them.
She’d extracted one of those dresses now and she had to admit that it fit like a dream.
It was figure-hugging, short and, despite the very modest neckline and three-quarter-length sleeves, still managed to look incredibly sexy.
Maybe because it was fire-engine red. For better or for worse, one look at her and people would stop dead in their tracks, and that was exactly what she wanted them to do because her confidence levels were at an all-time low.
Things between Leandro and herself had changed so quickly from wonderful to nightmarish.
One phone call.
Why couldn’t he have told her what it had been about? How hard would it have been for him just to have said that he had been on the phone to a work colleague? Very hard, she reckoned, if that phone call had been from a prospective lover, and surely it had been or he would have explained the situation?
He was seeing someone else. Or, at the very least, he was contemplating it.
Abigail couldn’t bear the thought of it. When she had heard a woman’s voice down the end of the line, the jealousy that had gripped her had been as powerful as a vice squeezing her heart. Since then she had feverishly found herself imagining what woman. Blonde? Brunette? Tall? Short? Past flame? Potential flame? She’d been driven crazy with her imagining.
And, when she hadn’t been busy imagining, she had been sensible enough to work out that their trial period—which she could now see she had optimistically undertaken in the wild hope that he would find himself loving her, and proposing to her all over again for the right reasons—was at an end.
She had taken herself off to the spare room on the night of the phone call. Leandro hadn’t objected. He had watched her move her stuff out and close the door on sex and he hadn’t tried to win her back. Considering the sex had been so powerful, that pretty much said it all as far as she was concerned.
Her heart was breaking, but she was keeping it together, trying to make sure that she behaved like an adult for Sam’s sake. She wasn’t going to run away or take out her sadness and hurt by being mean to Leandro. Once upon a time, she’d let her emotions determine her behaviour and had deprived him of the first ten months of his son’s life and, looking back, she could see that although she had done that without malevolence she’d been misguided.
So she was polite to him. They made conversation. She kept her distance and communicated the way she would have communicated with a perfect stranger, even though every time she looked at his lean, achingly beautiful face her heart squeezed tighter and the hollow in the pit of her stomach hurt more.
She would have to move on with her life, whilst recognising that he would still be a part of it whether she liked it or not. She would still have to see him. When she moved out to the cottage, he would probably show up one day with the very woman he had been talking to on the phone in that guilty, hushed voice. And she would have to face her replacement with equanimity and get on with it.
‘Getting on with it’ meant having a life of her own. She’d decided that step one to achieving that would be to go out to the party Vanessa had arranged and have fun.
Hence the dress. And the make-up, which was deceptively light but definitely effective. And the hair, which she’d had styled at the hairdressers. Trimmed and straightened, it hung down to her waist in a colourful golden curtain.
She had already settled Sam and, sticking her feet into some very high sandals, she had a few quick words with the nanny and then hurried out to get into the taxi which she had ordered earlier. She could easily have taken Leandro’s driver, but not relying on such luxuries seemed a vital step in reasserting the independence which she had gradually forfeited during the time she had spent succumbing to Leandro’s charms and nurturing hopeless fantasies about happy-ever-afters.
The club was in the centre of London and by the time Abigail got there, having texted Vanessa to
warn her that she would be arriving—so that she didn’t turn up at the place and find herself on her own, having to order a drink at a bar and hope she didn’t look as if she had been stood up by a hot date—it was already heaving.
Taking a deep breath, she headed in, very much aware of heads swinging in her direction, and decided that she was going to have fun if it killed her.
* * *
Leandro wasn’t quite sure how, at a little after nine-thirty, he found himself outside the club where Abigail’s leaving party was taking place. It seemed that one minute he’d been engrossed in the finer points of due diligence, and the next he’d been in the back of his car on his way to Valentino’s.
Outside, there was a polite gathering of well-heeled, well-dressed thirty-somethings, mostly smoking and holding flutes of champagne. The men had dispensed with their obligatory jackets but the women were still decked out in their finery, even if they were beginning to look a little less groomed than they had probably looked two hours previously.
The doormen looked bored. Valentino’s was an exclusive members-only club and the opportunities for getting rid of riff raff would be remote.
Leandro wasn’t sure where his membership card was, but in any event it didn’t matter because he was known here. He also carried that air of unassailable power and opulence that encouraged people to bow, scrape and open doors before they even realised what doors they were opening.
It had been well over a year since he had been there, but he was familiar with the layout. Like other private clubs, this was a dark, intimate place, with a very cleverly thought out décor that encouraged intimacy, relaxation and therefore a great deal of expensive drinking and eating. The bar snacks were unusually good and the food, which was served in separate rooms, had won Michelin stars. To one side, the actual bar was a curving oak semi-circle that brought to mind old-fashioned movies involving the mafia. The dance floor was a raised podium with low lighting and sufficient space to house a live band, which was often the case, although not tonight. Sofas and comfortable chairs were interspersed between low wooden tables.
As always, the place was heaving. Jean Claude, a Frenchman of impeccable good manners and frightening efficiency, ran the show with a hand of steel. Drinks were never spilled, bar snacks were always delivered with aplomb, food was never served cold.
Leandro had been prepared to cut short the preliminaries and flatly ask him where Abigail’s party could be found, but he didn’t have to because, eyes narrowed, he saw for himself where his quarry was.
He clenched his jaw and remained standing where he was, towards the back of the dark room, a towering, vaguely menacing presence that was attracting all sorts of sidelong looks from the people edging past him.
No wonder Abigail hadn’t waxed lyrical about the leaving party, he thought through gritted teeth. She had managed very successfully to keep her excitement under wraps.
She’d barely had time for him for the past couple of weeks. Indeed, they had moved seamlessly from passionate lovers to nodding acquaintances—but what a fool he would have been to have thought that she might have been missing...well, missing him.
It appeared not.
It seemed that she had been ticking off the days until she could let her hair down and revert to the single life she had clearly never intended to leave behind.
So much for that sweet, sexy smile and those big doe eyes when she had told him that she wouldn’t marry him, but would live with him and see how things went. She’d failed to mention that the slightest hiccup and she’d be off in a puff of smoke.
Every muscle tensed, he watched through narrowed eyes as she danced with some guy who looked as though he would have jumped all over her given half a chance. Her eyes were half-closed and her movements were as rhythmic as a professional dancer’s. Around her, everyone else faded in comparison. It was as if she exuded an unbearably bright glow which was, quite literally, unmatchable.
The over-eager man curved his hand around her waist to gather her closer and Leandro didn’t wait to see how she would react.
Galvanised into furious action, he strode through the crowds, the tables and the waitresses holding huge, circular trays above their heads. By the time he hit the dance floor, fury was coursing through every vein in his body. He made no effort to think straight or to analyse why he was behaving the way he was.
‘Mind if I cut in?’ He barely glanced at the younger man who stepped back with an expression of alarm. Every scrap of his attention was reserved for the woman who had now snapped to attention and was frowning at him in a way that suggested perhaps one glass of champagne too many.
‘How much have you had to drink?’ he demanded.
Abigail blinked and laboriously tried to work out an answer to that, while trying to process the unexpected appearance of Leandro in the middle of the dance floor. He’d appeared out of nowhere—and he wasn’t dancing.
The music had changed from upbeat to a ballad and she tugged the lapels of his white shirt and shimmied closer to him. ‘Can I interest you in a dance?’
Aware that the eyes of the world were beadily swivelling in their direction, Leandro curved his big body against hers, shifting and settling her against him so that he could murmur into her ear, ‘I’m dancing. Now, how much have you had to drink? No, scratch that. Who the hell was that guy you were dancing with? If I hadn’t arrived in time, you would have had to peel him off you...or was that what you wanted? Have I interrupted a romance in the making?’
He tightened his grip on her and pulled her a little closer. Her breasts were pushing against him. When he thought of that guy and pictured him getting into a clinch like this with her, Leandro saw red, and he had to bite down the urge to find the man and thrash the living daylights out of him.
It would never happen, of course. Leandro abhorred that sort of extreme reaction. And yet...his fingers itched...
‘I haven’t had much to drink.’ Abigail knew that her inhibitions were lowered. She had come to have a good time and had knocked back three glasses of champagne in quick succession in her quest not to be a party pooper.
The champagne had gone to her head, and had done wonderful things to loosen her up and relieve her of some of the terrible stress and sadness that had been plaguing her every day since she and Leandro had begun pulling away from one another.
Right now, it was also allowing her really to enjoy the firmness of his body against hers and the husky, urgent whisper in her ear and that tone of...possessiveness was frankly thrilling.
She cosied up to him and he didn’t pull away.
‘Shane,’ she murmured, curving her hands behind his neck and linking her fingers together.
‘Shane?’ The woman was sex on legs and Leandro’s blood ran more hot the closer she pressed herself against him. He fought to remember that this was the same demanding woman who had laid into him simply because he had failed to answer a question which should never have been asked in the first place. He didn’t do nagging, even though she was in a different category from anyone else who’d ever tried. However, his body was not making the necessary connections, and he knew if he wasn’t careful soon he’d be as hard as steel and painfully in need of relief.
‘Don Andrew’s son.’ Abigail was proud of her ability to think clearly even though she knew that the drink had gone to her head. ‘Don Andrew,’ she enunciated with precision and clarity, ‘is a regular customer of ours. Shane is his son by his first marriage. He came in with his girlfriend a couple of months ago to buy a diamond bracelet for her.’
‘And where’s the lucky girl now?’ Leandro bit out. ‘Hiding behind a pillar? Waiting for him to get back to her just as soon as he’s done making a pass at you?’
Abigail pulled back and stared at him in apparent fascination. ‘Are you jealous?’
Leandro flushed darkly. ‘I don’t do jealousy,’ he de
nied, voice cool and clipped. ‘Never have, never will. You’ve had too much to drink. I’m taking you home.’
‘But I’ve only just got here,’ Abigail trilled. ‘And we’ve barely danced together at all.’ She pouted up at him, all lush pink lips and bedroom eyes, and Leandro swore softly and fluently under his breath.
‘Don’t do that,’ he said roughly. They’d managed to find their way to the side of the dance floor where the light was even dimmer and the music was low enough that they could hear themselves talk.
‘Do what?’ She fluttered her lashes with a shameful lack of reserve and giggled.
‘Ask for something you might not be intending to ask for,’ Leandro growled. Never had self-restraint felt so hard, and his desire was so painful he could barely move properly.
‘Maybe I am intending to ask for what you don’t think I should be intending to ask for...or something like that...’ She pulled him down towards her because she just had to, and her body went up in flames as his cool lips met hers, then lingered and then devoured, tongues meshing, her little moans shattering proof of how much she’d missed touching him.
Leandro was the first to pull back and he was shaking as he raked his fingers through his hair. ‘I don’t believe in these public displays of affection.’ He looked at her long and hard, and wanted her with every bone and muscle and tendon in his big body. ‘Besides, you’re not in control. Where’s your boss? I’m taking you to her, and you’re going to make your excuses and then we’re going home. And don’t even think of telling me that you’re not ready to go yet.’
Leandro didn’t give Abigail time to mull anything over. They were out of the club in under ten minutes and in his car, heading back to the apartment. She was pressed against him, her body soft and pliable like a rag doll, and it took the will power of a saint to keep his hands to himself.
He would settle her into the spare room and in the morning she would wake up with a thumping headache and there would be no question of him having taken advantage of her.
That plan worked pretty much until he’d shut his bedroom door. He’d settled her into her room, having made sure to check on Sam. He’d even made sure she’d wriggled out of the cling-film dress which, if he had his way, no other man would get to see her in again. He’d politely turned his back, in true ex-lover style, while she’d got into whatever sleeping clothes she’d found in one of the drawers after she’d banged about searching. Then he’d reminded her that there were paracetamol in the cabinet in her en suite bathroom, and told her to take two, because she wouldn’t like how she’d feel when she woke up in the middle of the night.
The Secret Sanchez Heir Page 12