by Abby Green
He stepped back and gestured to a nearby couch. ‘Please, sit down. Your things should be here soon.’
* * *
For a long moment Leonora couldn’t move. She was still in shock at how succinctly Gabriel had summed up her existence.
‘The lives we’ve led... The expectations on our shoulders... The life built on legacy and duty. Responsibility.’
She’d never felt that anyone could possibly understand what her life was like. She had very little to complain about and yet sometimes she felt as trapped as if she was in jail.
He was looking at her. He’d just asked if she wanted to sit down.
She shook her head jerkily. ‘No, I’m fine. Thank you.’
She felt restless, and she walked over to where floor-to-ceiling windows looked out over a terrace and further, to the skyline of Madrid under a clear starlit sky. She had a very fleeting moment of wondering what Lazaro was doing right now. Dealing with the mother of his child?
A tiny sense of hysteria at what had happened rose up and she took another hasty sip of whiskey to try and force it back down.
Gabriel came to stand near her. She could see him in the reflection of the window. He’d taken off his jacket and his chest and shoulders looked impossibly broad under the snowy shirt.
She saw her own reflection. The strapless red dress. She’d hoped its elegant simplicity would prove to be timeless, because it was many seasons out of date. She saw the glittering drop earrings hanging from her earlobes that looked like diamonds. But they weren’t diamonds at all. They were cubic zirconia. It was a long time since she’d worn any real family jewels. They’d all been sold by her father to get money for gambling.
She felt like a fraud, and the humiliation from earlier rose up again. She quickly downed the last of her drink, guiltily relishing the last dregs of comfort from the alcohol.
She turned to face Gabriel, avoiding his eye. ‘I should leave—go home. My mother and father will be worried.’
And Matías.
Just thinking of him made her heart hurt. What would happen to them now? If they lost the castle then that was it. They would have hit rock bottom with no way back. An entire dynasty and legacy wiped out through the actions of her father...
‘Don’t go yet.’
She looked at Gabriel. Her heart thumped hard. His face was all lean angles and harsh lines. And then softened by that ridiculously sensual mouth.
‘We’re still waiting for your things.’
Leonora was torn. She wanted to appear totally at ease and sophisticated, draping herself artfully on one of the sofas while wittily regaling Gabriel with inconsequential chatter. But that wasn’t her. Had never been her.
‘I can get them tomorrow. They’re not that important.’
She felt that the longer she stood there the quicker he’d see that he was having an effect on her.
He came closer and moved to take the empty glass from her hand. He put his fingers over hers. A deliberate move? The breath stuck in her throat. He was so...vital. Lazaro had never had this effect on her and she’d believed that it would make for a better marriage. No extreme feelings or wants.
Gabriel said, ‘The paparazzi will know for sure by now that your engagement wasn’t announced. They’ll be actively hunting you down. Waiting for you. You should call your parents—warn them to stay inside.’
Leonora swallowed. Gabriel’s fingers were still on hers. ‘But I can’t just...stay here.’
‘Of course you can.’ He took the glass out of her nerveless fingers and in the same motion, with his other hand, he handed her his phone. ‘Use this.’
It seemed to be a foregone conclusion. And she knew he was right. She couldn’t go back home now and face a barrage of lights and questions. Out of concern for Matías as much as anything else.
Leonora moved away from Gabriel and dialled her home number. Her mother answered, immediately concerned, and Leonora rushed to assure her that everything was okay. She filled her in on the broad strokes of what had happened and told her not to worry. She told her that she’d spend the night elsewhere, to draw the press away from the de la Vega home. Her mother sounded disappointed—and then just weary. They’d been here before, with the press camped outside.
When she’d ended the conversation, after checking that Matías was okay, Leonora handed the phone back.
Gabriel said, ‘Your brother is not well?’
Leonora gave a small tight smile. ‘He has...learning difficulties. Since birth. He’s home at the moment—from the school he attends just outside Madrid.’
The school that was paid for out of the receipts from tours around the Flores de la Vega castle. And with the money from the designer clothes and jewellery Leonora sold over the years online. The school that he loved and thrived in. The school that was offering him a real chance at a life in the outside world as he moved into adulthood.
The school that they would no longer be able to afford if they had to sell the castle—the only thing keeping them afloat in a sea of debts.
‘He picks up on moods and tension very acutely, so he’d be upset if he knew the press were outside, or if there was anything wrong with me.’
‘You’re close?’
Leonora looked at Gabriel, expecting to see the same look most people had when they heard about Matías, varying between mild disdain and salacious curiosity. Or pity. But Gabriel’s face and eyes held none of those things. Just a genuine question.
She nodded, feeling emotional. ‘The closest. He’s eighteen now, and when he was born I was six. He was like my baby more than my little brother.’
‘That would have been before your fortunes...changed.’
Leonora appreciated his attempt at tact. He was obviously referring to the fact that her parents had once been such fixtures on the Spanish social scene that they probably hadn’t been around much to parent. Making their fall from grace even more explosive. They’d gone down in a ball of flames and infamy when her father had been thrown out of the casino in Monte Carlo with his wife clinging to his coat, weeping uncontrollably.
That was one of the reasons for their reclusiveness these days. Her parents’ shame. Hence their desire and need for redemption. Through Leonora.
She diverted her mind from that and said, ‘Something like that. Yes.’ She looked away, embarrassed.
‘That was them—not you. You’re not like them.’
Leonora looked at him. Had he moved closer? The way he made her feel—the way he seemed to be looking deeper into her than anyone else ever had—made her prickly.
‘You don’t know that I don’t have a gambling habit.’
He seemed to consider this for a moment, and then he said, ‘True, I don’t. But I don’t believe you do.’
He was definitely closer now. Close enough for Leonora to see the stubble lining his jaw. And that his eyes had golden flecks—they weren’t just brown.
She shook her head. ‘Why are you doing this? Why do you care what happens to me? We’ve never met before this evening. I mean...not properly.’
Even with Leonora’s family connections they’d moved in a lesser sphere than the Torres family.
‘No. But our paths have crossed—even if just peripherally. I realised something this evening—I have always noticed you...on the edges. As if you’d prefer to disappear.’
Leonora blushed to think she’d been so transparent.
‘And I realised something else.’
She looked at him.
‘You have become a very beautiful woman.’
A tingling rush of heat coursed through her blood. The way he was looking at her was so...intense. She could almost feel it...as if he was touching her.
He took another step closer. Almost close enough now that she could imagine him bending down and pressing his mouth to hers.
Leonora was b
arely breathing. She was hot—so hot. All over. Deep down where no man had ever had any effect on her before.
‘I want you, Leonora.’
For a long, suspended moment neither one of them moved. Gabriel was watching her as she struggled to absorb this information. So, all these sensations making her melt from the inside out...it wasn’t just her.
For a second it was too heady to consider. The fact that he thought she was beautiful. And that he wanted her. Her. A woman who lived a more sheltered existence than most nuns.
At that moment there was a chiming sound. Gabriel emitted a curse under his breath and said, ‘Don’t move. That’s the concierge with your things.’
He turned and she watched him walk across the vast room with athletic grace. He disappeared and she heard a door open, low voices. She saw the French doors and suddenly needed—craved—oxygen. She walked outside, drawing in deep lungsful of the night air. The sounds of traffic floating up from nearby streets helped to ground her in reality a little.
What was she doing? Practically falling into Gabriel Torres’s arms after mere words? He was probably just being polite, helping to soothe what he assumed was her damaged ego. But in all honesty relief was her overriding feeling when she thought about Lazaro and the wreckage of their engagement.
It had been an audacious plan in any case—agreeing to marry a man purely for strategic reasons. Because it would benefit them both. It shamed her now. Yet she knew it was silly to feel shame, because her parents’ marriage had been a strategic one. In their world every marriage was a strategic one. Too much was at stake when legacies and dynasties had to be passed down to the next generation for emotion to be involved in making a marriage.
The fact that her parents got on and had some affection for each other was just a bonus. It had helped them weather the storm of infamy and their son’s vulnerabilities.
But Leonora—much to her eternal embarrassment—had always secretly harboured a desire for more. For a real relationship. For love. Happiness. She saw visiting tourist couples walking through the castle and its grounds, sharing kisses, holding hands. Whispering things to each other.
She’d met an old English couple, married for fifty years. They’d exuded such an aura of contentment and happiness. She knew what they had was rare, but not unobtainable. For normal people. Not for her.
When Lazaro Sanchez had shown an interest and taken her on a few dates, and when he’d put forward his proposal and the fact that he was offering to pull them out of their quagmire of debts, Leonora had known that she had no choice. She had responsibilities, just as Gabriel had said. The Flores de la Vega legacy was bigger than her secret hopes and dreams for a different life. A more fulfilled life.
‘I want you, Leonora.’
She shivered, even though it wasn’t cold. She shivered with awareness. With desire.
‘I have always noticed you...on the edges. As if you’d prefer to disappear.’
How could a man who was little more than a stranger—no matter how much their worlds might have collided over the years—get her? More than anyone had ever got her before?
She’d never felt seen in her life. She’d hovered on the edges, exactly as he’d described. Out of the innate shyness that she had to work hard to overcome. Out of her concern for Matías, who found social situations very challenging.
And also because she’d never really enjoyed the social scene of their world. It had always reminded her of a medieval royal court, with its intrigue and politics. Petty cruelties. The way so-called friends had treated her and her parents and her brother like pariahs ever since they’d become persona non grata had been a formative lesson in human nature.
Had Gabriel Torres really told her that he wanted her? So bold? So direct?
Yes. He was that kind of man. He would just say what he wanted and expect results.
Leonora looked out over the city stretching before her. Millions of people living their lives. Millions of possibilities.
It was as if she’d stepped out of her life and into an alternative realm. Where anything could happen. She was in a moment out of time. In a place she’d never expected to be. With a man she would never in a million years have expected to know her name. Let alone...desire her.
Unless it wasn’t desire.
It must be pity.
A wave of humiliation rose up through her. Oh, God, was she so desperate that she really believed—?
She heard a noise and tensed to face Gabriel again. She needed to leave. Now.
* * *
Gabriel saw the moment Leonora heard him return. Her slim shoulders were suddenly a tense line. He stood behind her, drinking in her graceful figure. The smooth pale olive skin of her back. The sleek dark ponytail that he wanted to wrap around his fist so he could tilt her head back, giving him access to her lush mouth.
He might have started this evening fixated on Lazaro Sanchez, and wondering what the man was up to, but now all he could see was this woman.
‘I have your things.’
She turned around but he noticed that she avoided his eye.
She held out a hand. ‘Thank you. I really should go now. There’s a back entrance into the estate. I can use that. I’m sure they won’t see me.’
Gabriel handed her the wrap and bag, noting how she avoided touching his hand. A novelty when he was used to women throwing themselves at him. Especially if he told them that he wanted them.
‘Are you really willing to take that risk?’
She put her wrap around her shoulders, covering up her skin, crossing it over her chest like a shawl.
Eventually she looked at him. ‘Look, thank you for helping me, but you really don’t need to go out of your way to do any more.’
Gabriel moved closer to her, watching how her eyes flared and colour tinged her cheeks. She wanted him. He knew it.
‘Did you not hear what I said?’
She swallowed. Her fingers clutched her wrap.
For a second the possibility trickled into Gabriel’s mind that she was different from other women he knew in terms of experience, but he batted it away. She was twenty-four. To be inexperienced at her age, with her stunning beauty, in this modern cynical world, was practically an impossibility. Far more likely she was playing him. She knew he wanted her and she was getting off on watching him work to seduce her.
There was little novelty in Gabriel’s world and he suspected it was the same for her. She was hardly a wide-eyed innocent when she’d been about to announce a business arrangement masquerading as a marriage.
‘I want you, Leonora. You felt it too this evening. I saw it.’
She flushed and her eyes were huge. ‘But...we don’t even know each other. How can—?’
‘How can it be possible?’ Gabriel decided he’d indulge her faux innocence. ‘Because chemistry transcends such mundanities.’
Every line in her body was tense.
‘You don’t have to do this, you know.’
There was a fierce pride in the aristocratic lines of her beautiful face. Her eyes had turned stormy.
‘I don’t need your pity, Gabriel.’
* * *
Leonora was resisting the pull she felt to this man with every atom of her being. He was toying with her. He had no clue how inexperienced she was and she wasn’t about to let him expose her any more than she’d already been exposed tonight.
She went to move past him, intent on getting out of there before she could unravel completely, but he caught her hand, stopping her. Heat travelled up her arm. She clenched her jaw.
‘You seriously think I pity you?’
The incredulity in his tone compelled her to face him, her hand still in his. He was frowning. Suddenly she was very aware of their proximity, and of the darkness of his chest under the white shirt.
She swallowed. ‘Maybe you just feel sorry for
me...for what happened. You feel some kind of responsibility to make me feel...better.’
Even as she said this out loud she wanted to cringe. It sounded ridiculous.
He shook his head. ‘You give me far too much credit. I’m not that nice. I told you I want you because I meant it. And I believe you want me too. You wanted me even as you stood beside your fiancé.’
Leonora flushed with guilty heat. She tried to pull her hand back but Gabriel didn’t let go. He tugged her closer. She couldn’t breathe.
‘You don’t believe I want you? I can prove to you that I do. And that you want me.’
Leonora knew that if she tugged hard she’d be free. She knew that if she did that, and if she turned and walked away, he wouldn’t stop her. He was too proud for that. Too sophisticated to chase a woman or force her. And yet...she couldn’t move. Didn’t want to. That sense of being in a moment outside time, outside of her life, was acute.
As if sensing her vacillation, Gabriel said, ‘Here you are beholden to no one. There’s no duty or responsibility. We’re just two people. A man and a woman who want each other. Who are free to indulge our mutual desire.’
Leonora searched the hard planes of his face, those dark eyes. Was it really that simple? Could it be that simple? Was she free?
She thought of where she would be now if that woman hadn’t interrupted the announcement of her engagement.
She would be in a very similar situation with a man she’d liked, but hadn’t wanted. Maybe he would be kissing her now and she would be feeling nothing, resigning herself to the fact that this was as good as it would get. Because so much more was at stake. The future of her family. Her brother’s security.
She considered the vagaries of fate and timing and how she might not be here at all, how she wouldn’t be feeling this terrifying but exhilarating wildness coursing through her blood right now.
But she was. And it sank in that Gabriel Torres was deadly serious. He wasn’t being nice. Or pitying her. He wanted her. And she wanted him. For one night. One night out of time.
