The Secret Sanchez Heir Read online

  She literally burned with mortification.

  ‘Care to explain why?’

  Abigail hugged herself. ‘I know what you’re probably thinking.’

  ‘You have no idea what I’m thinking!’

  He was now standing directly in front of her, towering and darkly, scarily angry. However much she quailed inside, and however ashamed she was at her appalling lapse of judgement, Abigail knew that she just couldn’t afford to be steamrollered by Leandro. She stood her ground with shaky legs and met his glare head-on.

  ‘It was a mistake,’ she offered with choked sincerity.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Because...’ She opted for part of the truth ‘I can’t help being turned on by you. Maybe it’s because you were my first...’ She went bright red but ploughed on. ‘Or maybe you’re right and it’s because things ended...well...maybe there’s some unfinished business there. I... You touched me and I... I remembered, Leandro...’

  Leandro flushed darkly, swung away and hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans for a few silent seconds. He didn’t care to be reminded of the power of those memories because, whilst he could acknowledge that to himself, he had no intention of sharing any such admission with Abigail. To do so would have signalled a fundamental weakness he wasn’t about to expose. He disliked the notion of anything or anyone having power over him and memories fitted neatly into that category.

  ‘But it would be wrong for us to go there,’ she volunteered tentatively. Part of her thought that it was rich suddenly to come out with all of this when she had only just descended from a climax that had blown her apart. She glanced down quickly to see that the bulge was still there, pushing against his jeans, and she licked her lips and hurriedly raised her eyes to catch him looking at her. ‘And I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression.’

  Leandro didn’t miss a thing. If the damned phone hadn’t interrupted them, he would have taken her up to his room and he would have lost himself in her. As it stood now...

  He was in line for a very long, very cold shower...and afterwards?

  He wanted her and he knew why she had backed away with a sudden attack of conscience. She was dwelling on what had happened between them and allowing it to get between them.

  He raked his fingers through his hair and sighed. ‘Why were you afraid to tell me the truth about yourself all those months ago? You can hardly blame me for reaching the conclusions I reached and acting the way I did. Concealment always carries the stench of something underhand.’

  Startled, Abigail stared at him. This was the first time he had come close to giving her a chance to explain. In the aftermath of their break-up he had been happy to walk away without giving her any opportunity to defend herself.

  ‘I told you,’ she said, clearing her throat. ‘I was overawed by you. I’d never met anyone like you in my life before. Also,’ she added with complete honesty, ‘around you I didn’t feel like myself.’ She grimaced, relaxing a little, because he wasn’t attacking her for stringing him on when he could have been and she would have understood. She managed to get her legs to do something constructive and shuffled to one of the kitchen chairs, promptly sinking into it with relief.

  ‘I was somebody different—somebody normal—and I liked how that felt. I’d spent my life being cautious around men but you swept into my life and all of that changed in a heartbeat. It was like being on a rollercoaster ride.’ He strolled towards the table to join her and she raised her huge, clear, green eyes to him. ‘And once I was on that ride, there was no room to raise uncomfortable topics about my past. Besides, I didn’t think it would last as long as it did.’

  Long enough for her to fall head over heels in love with him.

  ‘And when it carried on...the right time just never seemed to be there.’ She stood up and smoothed down her trousers, uncertain, because he had gone from rampant lover to inscrutable spectator. ‘I should head up to bed now.’ A glance through the window told her that the snow was still falling but lightly. She hoped for the best. She couldn’t possibly stay another day in his house.

  Their eyes met and for a few seconds she thought about what she had done and the secret she had kept to herself for all the right reasons. She ran through some of those reasons in her head right now. They had parted on the worst possible terms. He had never cared about her. For him, she had only ever been a short-term fling and he had never encouraged her to think otherwise. When she’d found out that she was pregnant, she had been determined to hold onto her baby, because no one had ever held on to her. By then, Leandro had been out of the picture.

  She had imagined contacting him to give him the glad tidings, then she had gone further and wondered whether he might feel inclined to take the baby from her because, at the end of the day, he would be its father. If he’d chosen to do that, she wouldn’t have stood a chance and, after the way they had broken up, he might very well have seen it as an opportunity to get some revenge for, as far as he was concerned, having been lied to.

  Abigail had known that she would never risk losing her baby and, after several weeks with Leandro, she had seen for herself that he led the sort of high-octane, high-pressured lifestyle that was not compatible with living with a young child.

  Fear created by dark thoughts about worst-case scenarios, heartbreak at being dumped by the guy she had fallen in love with because she wasn’t good enough and hormones coursing through her system had propelled her into a decision she now realised had been a life-changing one.

  Yet it had been a curiously easy decision to make in the aftermath of their relationship.

  She had even told herself that it was responsible not to foist an unwanted child on a guy who had not planned for a pregnancy. Why should an inveterate bachelor be made to pay such a high price for a simple mistake?

  But now, things didn’t seem quite so clear cut. She expected him to try and stop her but Leandro remained where he was, watching as she headed for the door, and she turned round when her hand was on the doorknob to inform him that she would be leaving first thing, whatever the weather.

  ‘And no need for you to see us off,’ she decided to tell him, to which he raised his eyebrows and kept looking at her until the colour crawled into her cheeks. ‘We’ll let ourselves out,’ she finished lamely. Face flaming, Abigail dashed out of the kitchen, headed straight to the bedroom she had been allocated and only allowed herself to relax when that bedroom door was well and truly locked behind her.

  * * *

  She woke to the sound of knocking on her bedroom door, and when she sat up she realised with some dismay that it was after eight-thirty. She had planned to be up and out before seven. So much for that.

  There was no service on her phone. It seemed that service was only available here and there in the house and her bedroom was not in that category. Still, she had texted the situation to Claire from downstairs the evening before, and could only hope that everything was all right. She was dying to get back to London.

  The knocking continued. Abigail didn’t have time to think about her state of undress. She’d had to sleep without anything on, because the alternative had been her work clothes, so she wrapped a bath towel round her and opened the bedroom door a crack to see Leandro outside, bright-eyed, bushy-tailed and looking unfairly drop-dead gorgeous in a pair of low-slung jeans and a thick cream jumper. She was conscious that the towel tightly wrapped round her barely skimmed her thighs.

  He pushed the door open further with one foot and then folded his arms. ‘I hate to wake Sleeping Beauty,’ he said, eyeing the bank of windows behind her, across which the curtains had been tightly pulled, ‘but I’m the bearer of bad tidings, I’m afraid...’ Leandro watched with male appreciation at the enchanting picture Abigail made as she bolted towards the windows and yanked back the curtains with one hand while the other kept a tight hold on the towel.

 
She’d blown him off but there was no way he had any intention of retreating humbly to the sidelines to lick his wounds. That wasn’t his style. He’d already determined the reason behind his malaise ever since they had broken up and he intended to do something about that. It would just take slightly longer and require slightly more thought than he had originally imagined.

  For instance, he had optimistically harboured the assumption that one wild night in the hay would do the trick. So she’d knocked him back but, even if she hadn’t, he could see that one night might not be enough to get her out of his system.

  He’d somehow managed to forget the effect she could have on his libido. He was supremely confident about winning her over to his way of thinking because he had proved that she was still as turned on by him as he was by her. He was already gearing up for the thrill of that challenge as he heard her utter a soft exclamation of anguish as she saw that the snow, which should have gone away, hadn’t. Out here, in the countryside, there were no gritted roads to give the illusion of things being done to remedy the situation either. The open fields that surrounded his palatial country manor were white and untouched. Not a gritting tractor in sight.

  Abigail spun round to find that Leandro had entered the bedroom and was standing right behind her, and she jumped back and looked up at him. Their eyes tangled and for a few seconds she recalled what it had felt like to have him down between her thighs, bringing her to an orgasm that had been as devastating to her peace of mind as a runaway train mounting a crowded pavement. Dampness pooled between her legs, shocking and embarrassing.

  ‘And it’s only going to get worse.’ He didn’t bother to try and soothe her into any positive thoughts on that score. ‘Out here, the snow can last for days. That’s why I seldom risk coming here in winter. What I’m saying here is that there’s no way the car that brought you here can take you back. In fact, if you turn around and angle your body to the left, you can just about make out the shape of it semi-buried under white. Hal’s been out to have a go at it and he managed to drive it a few metres before giving up. I doubt he could even get the thing out of my drive, and it’s miles from here before you’re lucky enough to hit any kind of road that might have been salted.’

  ‘No, don’t say that,’ was all Abigail could find to respond, aghast at this development. ‘You don’t understand, Leandro. I have to get back to London.’

  ‘I’ve talked to your driver and he’s more than happy to wait it out here, which will in all likelihood be for another night. I shall ensure that he is fed and watered. Between us, I get the impression that the man sees this as a weekend break from a household of tetchy kids.’

  ‘I don’t care about whether Hal is willing to stay another night here!’

  ‘Well, you should,’ Leandro pointed out, ‘considering he’s your means of transport out. Unless you’re insured on the car? But either way it’s moot. The country roads will be impassable, anyway.’

  Abigail wanted to sob. ‘This is all your fault,’ she accused in a wobbly voice and Leandro shot her a perplexed look that further inflamed her because it reeked of insincerity.

  ‘Explain,’ he said drily. ‘You must think I have superhuman powers if I can conjure up a fall of snow simply to scupper your plans for leaving. But, before you pull another “damsel in distress” fainting act, you’ll be reassured to know that I have a similar problem. I, too, need to get down to London. Bear in mind that this weekend here was sprung on me as an unfortunate surprise. I hadn’t planned on opening up the house until early spring.’

  Abigail glumly wondered what that had to do with anything. So both of them would be stuck here. Little did he know that, whatever important deal he had to close, it was as nothing compared to the responsibilities she urgently had to return to.

  ‘So what?’ she said shortly.

  ‘So you should go and change,’ Leandro murmured.

  Which was a sharp reminder to Abigail that she was still clutching a towel with absolutely nothing on underneath while he stood there, smirking.

  She saw red and swallowed hard because this was not how she had envisaged her ring-bearing trip to the Cotswolds ending. Everything had gone wrong. The weather had been hideous. There had been no loving fiancée for the ring she had carefully transported. She had crashed into her past when she had least expected it. She had become a stupid victim of all those physical responses she knew she should have put behind her and, to top it off, meeting Leandro again out of the blue had forced her to confront all the decisions she had made in good faith.

  And, as if all that wasn’t bad enough, she was now going to be stuck here with him because fate couldn’t do the decent thing and clear a path for her to return to London where she would have the peace and space to think things through.

  ‘I will need to make some calls,’ she muttered, and wanted to smack him very hard when he grinned at her.

  ‘You’re getting worked up over nothing,’ he said in a placating voice that made her teeth snap together. ‘Hal is going to be staying on another night because he will have to drive the car back down to London. Fortunately for you, there is alternative transport.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ Abigail frowned because, aside from skiing their way cross-country, she couldn’t think of any other means of manoeuvring in the snowy conditions. And that wouldn’t work because she had never been near a pair of skis in her entire life.

  ‘I’ve had my guy fly my helicopter up this morning. I have a landing pad and, as long as the snow isn’t too deep, it is always possible for me to get out if I need to.’

  ‘You had your guy fly your helicopter up?’

  ‘It’s a luxury, I know,’ Leandro imparted smugly.

  ‘So...we’re going to take a helicopter down to London?’

  ‘Hence it’s imperative that you slip out of your towel and get back into your working clothes.’ He strolled towards the window and peered out before turning his attention back to her. ‘The snow’s fine but it’s piling up fast. Leave it too long, and we really will be stranded here with Hal and an all-you-can-eat buffet of unused party food.’

  Leandro truly felt that sometimes things happened for a reason and this snow was a perfect opportunity to deliver her back to London, minus her driver, and directly to her house, to discover exactly where that might be.

  He felt extremely satisfied at being in control of the situation. He was particularly pleased because, the last time round, control had not been at his disposal and that had been a big mistake.

  ‘Meet me in the hall in half an hour.’ He headed for the door without looking back over his shoulder but in his mind’s eye he could see her with that scanty towel trying hard to cover her up, and then he pictured her without it at all.

  Naked and sexy and the stuff of all his fevered imaginings.

  She’d had a night to think about...things. A night to realise that it would be futile to try and ignore the fire still burning between them. Her blushing and coy backing away had told its own story. She was as jumpy as a cat on a hot tin roof around him and he was convinced that, once she was in her own comfort zone, having been solicitously dropped off by him, she would relax and be open to exploring the chemistry between them.

  Abigail watched Leandro shut the door behind him without a second glance back at her. Helicopter? That would make nothing of the trip and she would be back in her house within a couple of hours, if as long as that.

  He would go his own way and she would really have to think about what happened next now that he had resurfaced in her life.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  ABIGAIL MANAGED TO find service on her mobile in the hall and she made a harried call to Claire while Leandro was outside, doing whatever had to be done to direct his pilot. She would be back within a couple of hours—so please could Claire hang on a little bit longer?

  Hal was in the kitchen b
eing fed. He couldn’t have been happier at being left in the snowy Cotswolds, in a sprawling country mansion, with limitless supplies of wonderful food and drink. He would drive the car back down to London just as soon as the snow cleared.

  By the time Leandro re-entered the house, she was a little more reassured that all was right on the home front and that there had been no problems with Sam. It was the first time she had ever left him overnight and she had been worried sick.

  She was fidgeting to leave and Leandro looked at her curiously.

  ‘How many more times are you going to look at your watch?’ he drawled, cupping her elbow in his hand and propelling her towards the front door. He had already given his instructions to clean the house and then close it up until he could arrange to pay a return visit.

  ‘I’m anxious, that’s all. I’ve never been in a helicopter before.’ Outside the snow continued to fall, the flakes small and sharp, the wind biting and instantly putting red into her cheeks. She hadn’t banked on such severe weather and her trouser suit, even with her coat, felt like inadequate protection.

  ‘Looking at your watch a hundred times isn’t going to make you less anxious. Don’t worry, you will be delivered to London safe and sound and in once piece.’

  Ushered into the helicopter, a monstrous black beast that looked as though it could survive Arctic conditions, Abigail had some time to think as the machine roared into life, head-butting the lashing wind, and rising up and up.

  ‘I’m sure I will be,’ she said eventually, over the roar of the helicopter as it swung and made its way south. She risked a look at him and shivered because he was just so dominant, so incredibly overwhelming. He induced raw, forbidden excitement and dreadful, paralysing apprehension in equal measure. Since she had never thought to lay eyes on him again, the apprehension was winning hands down just now as the helicopter buzzed its rapid path away from the snow towards cold, leaden skies that became clearer the further south they travelled.