He sighed and linked his fingers together. ‘I never really noticed how possessive she was of my relationships, because I took everything at face value, and they were never meaningful. When you came along...’
‘When I came along,’ Abigail filled in for his benefit, ‘she couldn’t wait to blow it out of the water because she wasn’t in control of it.’
Leandro’s mouth quirked. ‘She couldn’t wait to blow it out of the water because she sensed that it could become serious,’ he corrected quietly. ‘She sensed something I myself wasn’t even really aware of. I wanted you the minute I laid eyes on you, Abigail.’
‘So you told me,’ she responded with an edge of bitterness in her voice. ‘I’ve always known that. You want me and you find me attractive. You’d be surprised how insulting that can feel after a while. It was heady when we first met. I’d never met anyone like you in my entire life. How would I? You moved in the sort of circles I would never have been allowed to enter. I’ve said this before but I’ll say it again—that was why I kept quiet about my background. I wanted to enjoy you without all those judgements being formed about me because of where I’d come from. Cecilia must have thought that she’d struck gold when she dug and found out all that stuff about me.’
‘I should have listened to my conscience,’ Leandro admitted, ‘instead of accepting the evidence against you and jumping to the wrong conclusions.’
‘What are you saying?’ Abigail looked at him defiantly because she refused to get her hopes up. She’d had them dashed too many times.
‘I was wrapped up with you, Abigail. I don’t know how it happened, because I always thought I was well protected against emotional involvement, but you managed to work a way through to me... Maybe that was why I was so quick to pigeonhole you as a gold-digger. You’d lied, and it was easy and lazy to believe the worst of you, because if I didn’t I would have had to admit to having feelings for you that went way beyond wanting to have sex with you.’
Abigail’s heart leapt. ‘I didn’t tell you I was pregnant because I knew what you thought of me...’
‘I understand. When I saw you again, I realised that I still wanted you,’ he confessed. ‘I’d just broken up with someone who, on paper, should have been the perfect match. Cecilia introduced us.’ He grimaced. ‘I suppose at that point I should have read the writing on the wall and realised how important it was to my sister that she should never feel threatened by any woman I chose to date.’
Abigail allowed herself a glimmer of a smile, because if there was one type of reading Leandro didn’t do it was reading writing on the wall. She could understand that because, if you never dug deep, you never found yourself out of your depth.
He stood up and paced the kitchen, vaguely taking in the small steps she had already made towards turning it into a home. There were two framed pictures of Sam on the wall by the table and some herbs in pots on the window ledge. She’d done the same when she’d been living with him. She had somehow transformed his apartment in incremental ways, from a cold space to something homely, and she’d done it without him even really noticing.
‘I heard what she said to you,’ he stated flatly. ‘It was impossible not to overhear because she wasn’t making the slightest effort to keep the noise levels down.’
Abigail tensed and stared at her linked fingers on the kitchen table.
‘I had no conversation with her along the lines she intimated. I should be furious that she should take it upon herself to come here and purport to be my mouthpiece, but I’m not.’
‘Because she paved the way for you to...tell me what’s been obvious all along?’
‘Something like that.’ He reached out and held her fluttering fingers still until she was forced to look at him. ‘This is hard for me to say,’ he told her in a low, driven voice. ‘I’ve never believed in love. I have always associated it with something destructive. I thought I was immune to its effects but I was wrong.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I was half way to falling in love with you the first time round, and this time round I’ve managed to complete the job. I’m head over heels in love with you, Abigail, and I think I’ve known that deep down for some time now.’
‘You’re in love with me?’ she whispered, eyes as round as saucers.
‘I buried it under the excuse of rising to the occasion and doing the right thing, but when I proposed I should have asked myself how it was that I wasn’t appalled at the change it would bring to my cherished lifestyle. I was blind and I drove you away.’
‘You drove me away because I wanted so much more than you were offering. I wanted the whole package. I wanted you to love me the way I loved you.’
She smiled at him and he returned her smile, relief mingled with satisfaction.
‘I never allowed myself to feel confident around you,’ she confessed. ‘I was too aware that we came from opposite sides of the tracks. I was scared when you got that call from Cecilia,’ she carried on, ‘because I could project and see the damage she had done being done again. When you left with her again earlier on today, I was convinced that the next time I saw you it would be to learn that you’d decided to take the road away from me, the road I’d paved for you to take. I had a lot of principles about marrying for the right reasons. I mean, I wanted my future to be completely different to my past. I wanted the whole package deal—romance and love with all the trimmings. Except I fell in love with you and there weren’t any trimmings. I felt I couldn’t walk into a union with someone for the wrong reasons and, somewhere along the line, I decided that perhaps you would start to feel the same things I felt.’
‘Will you marry me, my darling?’
Abigail nodded, stood up and moved to sit on Leandro’s lap. She curved her hands around his neck and drew him to her. ‘Of course I will. Believe it or not,’ she conceded sheepishly, ‘I was desperate for you to pop the question again because marrying you—even if you couldn’t love me—felt a whole lot better than the alternative, which was not having you in my life.’ After a pause, she said, ‘What about your sister?’
‘She won’t be back to air her views,’ Leandro said shortly. ‘I will, naturally, continue to see her when she happens to be in the country—but she overstepped the boundaries and that’s unacceptable.’ He sighed deeply. ‘Protecting my sister has become a habit over the years and it’s blinded me to some of her failings. She will continue to run my hotel in Fiji but she won’t be bothering you in the future. Now, let’s stop talking about Cecilia and let’s start talking about...us.’
EPILOGUE
ABIGAIL GAZED AT her reflection in the mirror with a smile of satisfaction because this was exactly how she had wanted to look. Not flashy, no overkill, but not so understated that she could have been going to a cocktail party.
This was the perfect wedding dress. It was straight and simple, with exquisite silvery beading against the cream background. The neckline was modestly scooped while the back dipped a little lower. It was the last time she would be able to fit into something as tight as this—she was ten weeks pregnant and she could already spot the incipient signs of an expanding tummy.
Tonight, she would tell Leandro, and she couldn’t wait to see his face when she broke the news. He had missed out on her being pregnant with Sam and she knew that he would be the most attentive husband, lover and father-to-be with the baby she had found out she was carrying only a few days ago.
That would be surprise number one.
Surprise number two would be his sister. Cecilia had been firmly put in her place and given her marching orders, to hold the fort on the other side of the world and never again to interfere in his life. Abigail knew Leandro and, whilst he was the fairest man she could ever have hoped to meet, he was not a guy who believed in beating about the bush.
When he had informed her that he had told his sist
er to cease and desist, Abigail had very quickly imagined a terse and unapologetic two-sentence conversation. Whatever Cecilia had done, it was fair to say that she had done so against a backdrop of issues that had made her overly dependent and fragile and therefore vulnerable to the thought of her brother no longer having time for her.
A week ago, Abigail had spoken to her on the phone. The conversation had been awkward, halting and, at least to start with, defensive on the part of Cecilia, but Abigail had persevered and two days previously, unbeknown to Leandro, Cecilia had arrived in London. They had met and Abigail had taken Sam along with her.
‘You’re his aunt,’ she had said gently, ‘and it’s important that you get to know him. Every child needs a fun aunt. I’ve seen the movies.’
Cecilia had offered a grudging smile, but after five minutes she was no longer holding Sam with outstretched arms as though he were a parcel that might contain hazardous bio-waste material.
Abigail wouldn’t go so far as to say that they had bonded at first sight, but Rome wasn’t built in a day.
And, just at the moment, everything was looking pretty wonderful. Leandro had no idea that his sister would be attending the wedding. Abigail drily thought that, for a man who notoriously hated surprises, he was in for a fun-filled day and evening.
From behind, she saw Vanessa enter the room with a smile and low wolf whistle.
She grinned. ‘I think that the groom is going to be a very happy man when he sees his radiant bride.’
Abigail turned around, mirroring her friend’s smile with one of her own,
‘Let’s go,’ she said, smoothing down the fabulous dress and allowing Vanessa to put some finishing touches to the beads in her hair. The stylists and the beauticians had gone and this was going to be her last few moments as a single girl. She knew that there was no one she would rather walk down the aisle to than Leandro. ‘The rest of my life is waiting.’
* * * * *
If you enjoyed THE SECRET SANCHEZ HEIR, why not explore these other Cathy Williams titles?
WEARING THE DE ANGELIS RING
THE SURPRISE DE ANGELIS BABY
SEDUCED INTO HER BOSS’S SERVICE
SNOWBOUND WITH HIS INNOCENT TEMPTATION
BOUGHT TO WEAR THE BILLIONAIRE’S RING
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Keep reading for an excerpt from XENAKIS’S CONVENIENT BRIDE by Dani Collins.
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Xenakis’s Convenient Bride
by Dani Collins
PROLOGUE
STAVROS XENAKIS THREW his twenty-thousand-euro chips into the pot, less satisfied than he usually was postchallenge, but it had nothing to do with his fellow players or his lackluster hand.
His longtime friend Sebastien Atkinson had arranged his usual après-adrenaline festivities. It had wound down to the four of them, as it often did. Many turned out for these extreme sports events, but only Antonio Di Marcello and Alejandro Salazar had the same deep pockets Stavros and Sebastien did. Or the stones to bet at this level simply to stretch out a mellow evening.
Stavros wasn’t the snob his grandfather was, but he didn’t consider many his equal. These men were it and he enjoyed their company for that reason. Tonight was no exception. They were still high on today’s exercise of cheating death, sipping 1946 Macallan while trading good-natured insults.
So why was he twitching with edginess?
He mentally reviewed today’s paraski that had had him carving a steep line down a ski slope to a cliff’s edge before rocketing into thin air, lifted by his chute for a thousand feet, guiding his path above a ridge, then hitting the lower slope for another run of hard turns before taking to the air again.
It had been as physically demanding as any challenge that had come before and was probably their most daredevil yet. Throughout most of it, he’d been completely in the moment—his version of meditating.
He had expected today to erase the frustration that had been dogging him, but it hadn’t. He might have set it aside for a few hours, but this niggling irritation was back to grate at him.
Sebastien eyed him across the table, no doubt trying to determine if he was bluffing.
“How’s your wife?” Stavros asked, more as a deflection, but also trying to divine how Sebastien could be happily married.
“Better company than you. Why are you so surly tonight?”
Was it obvious? He grimaced. “I haven’t won yet.” He was among friends so he admitted the rest. “And my grandfather is threatening to disinherit me if I don’t marry soon. I’d tell him to go to hell, but...”
“Your mother,” Alejandro said.
“Exactly.” They all knew his situation. He played ball with his grandfather for the sake of his mother and sisters. He couldn’t walk away from his own inheritance when it would cost them theirs.
But “settle down?” His grandfather had been trying to fit Stavros into a box from the time he was twelve. Lately it had become a push toward picket fences. Demands he produce an heir and a spare.
Stavros couldn’t buy into any of that so, yet again, he was in a power struggle with the old man. He usually got around being whipped down a particular path, but he hadn’t yet found his alternate route. It chewed and chewed at him, especially when his grandfather was holding control of the family’s pharmaceutical conglomerate hostage.
Stavros might be a hell-raiser, but his rogue personality had produced some of the biggest gains for Dýnami. He was more than ready to steer the ship. A wife and children were cargo he didn’t need, but his grandfather seemed to think it would prove he was “mature” and “responsible.”
Where his grandfather got the idea he wasn’t either of those things, Stavros couldn’t say. He upped his ante to a full hundred thousand, despite the fact his hand had not improved. He promptly lost it.
They played a little longer, then Sebastien asked, “Do you ever get the feeling we spend too much of our lives counting our money and chasing superficial thrills at the expense of something more meaningful?”
“You called it,” Antonio said to Alejandro, tossing over a handful of chips. “Four drinks and he’s philosophizing.”
Sebastien gave Stavros a look of disgust as he also pushed some chips toward Alejandro’s pile.
“I said three.” Stavros shrugged without apology. “My losing streak continues.”
<
br /> “I’m serious.” Sebastien was the only self-made billionaire among them, raised by a single mother on the dole in a country where bloodlines and titles were still more valuable than a bank balance. His few extra years of age and experience gave him the right to act as mentor. He wasn’t afraid to offer his opinion and he was seldom wrong. They all listened when he spoke, but he did get flowery when he was in his cups. “At our level, it’s numbers on a page. Points on a scoreboard. What does it contribute to our lives? Money doesn’t buy happiness.”
“It buys some nice substitutes.” Antonio smirked.
Sebastien’s mouth twisted. “Like your cars?” he mused, then flicked his glance to Alejandro. “Your private island? You don’t even use that boat you’re so proud of,” he said, moving on to Stavros. “We buy expensive toys and play dangerous games, but does it enrich our lives? Feed our souls?”
“What are you suggesting?” Alejandro drawled, discarding a card and motioning for it to be replaced. “We go live with the Buddhists in the mountains? Learn the meaning of life? Renounce our worldly possessions to find inner clarity?”
Sebastien made a scoffing noise. “You three couldn’t go two weeks without your wealth and family names to support you. Your gilded existence makes you blind to reality.”
“Could you?” Stavros challenged, throwing away three cards. “Try telling us you would go back to when you were broke, before you made your fortune. Hungry isn’t happy. That’s why you’re such a rich bastard now.”
“As it happens, I’ve been thinking of donating half my fortune to charity, to start a global search-and-rescue fund. Not everyone has friends who will dig him out of an avalanche with their bare hands.” Sebastien smiled, but the rest of them didn’t.
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