Redeemed by His Stolen Bride

by Abby Green

  The tortured look on her face and the sincerity of her words made Leonora do a double-take. She was used to a different breed of female. Like the ones who had been gossiping in the bathroom the night she’d met Gabriel. Clearly Skye was not in their league, and something in Leonora relaxed.

  ‘I know. I get that now. You met before he proposed to me.’

  ‘Yes!’ The relief was evident on her face and she smiled ruefully. ‘I would have hated it if you’d been with him then.’

  Leonora moved closer to Skye. ‘No, that would not have been nice. But he would not have done that. These men...they have integrity, at least.’

  ‘You mean Lazaro and...?’

  ‘Gabriel—my husband.’ Leonora couldn’t stop her gaze from dropping again to Skye’s pregnant belly. She looked up. ‘Congratulations. I wish you all the best in your future with Lazaro.’

  Skye put a small pale hand on her belly. She smiled shyly. ‘Thank you...’ Then she blurted out, ‘I felt it move just now...a proper movement.’

  The evidence of Skye’s pregnancy only drove home the fact that no matter how in tune Leonora might feel with Gabriel, she really only had one function to fulfil as his wife. Bear him an heir. And she was in danger of forgetting it.

  Skye must have seen something on her face. She looked anxious. ‘I’m sorry—did I say something...?’

  Leonora forced a smile. ‘No, not at all. I really do wish you all the best in your future with Lazaro and the baby.’

  She turned away to leave but Skye reached out and took her hand. ‘I’m sorry again...and I wish you all the best too.’

  Leonora was surprised at the surge of emotion she felt at the other woman’s touch and sincerity. She squeezed Skye’s hand and said, ‘Thank you,’ and turned away before she could notice the moisture springing into her eyes. Crazy. What was wrong with her? She’d never really had a close female friend, but she realised now that if she had, she would have wanted her to be someone like Skye.

  She walked back into the room, her eyes searching out her husband. She didn’t have to search for long because he was the tallest man in the room. Well, him and the man he was talking to. Lazaro Sanchez. What on earth would he be talking to him for?

  Suddenly concerned, Leonora made her way over, seeing the tension in Gabriel’s body. And in Lazaro’s. The grim looks on their faces. This was not a friendly chat. Far from it. They seemed to be locked in some private battle of wills.

  She drew closer and they were still oblivious to her. She picked up their conversation.

  Lazaro Sanchez was saying, ‘Maybe this time you’ll be surprised, Gabriel, and maybe the best bid will win—the one that has the good of the city at its heart, not just the insatiable Torres need for domination in all things.’

  Gabriel took a step closer to Lazaro, his face etched in stark lines. ‘I do remember you, you know. I remember that day when you confronted my father in the street and claimed to be his son. You have a chip on your shoulder, Sanchez, and it’s time to get over it and stop telling yourself you’ve been hard done by.’

  Leonora couldn’t believe what she’d just heard. The two men obviously knew each other. Had history. The tension between them was palpable.

  She took a step into their space, but even then they didn’t notice her. She said, ‘Hello, Lazaro, it’s nice to see you.’

  Lazaro Sanchez blinked and seemed to come out of his angry trance. So did Gabriel, and he immediately reached for Leonora, pulling her close with an arm around her waist.

  Lazaro echoed what Skye had said. ‘Leonora. I’m sorry for what happened. It was never my intention to do anything to hurt or embarrass you.’

  She smiled tightly. ‘I know. I just met your wife. Congratulations on the baby.’

  ‘Thank you.’

  Lazaro looked at Gabriel and Leonora could feel the tension in her husband’s body. He was rigid with it. She’d never seen him react like this to anyone else.

  ‘Till next time, Torres.’

  Lazaro walked away.

  Leonora looked up at Gabriel, who was staring after Lazaro with a hard expression. Almost bitter. She said, ‘I didn’t realise you knew each other.’

  He looked at her, jaw tight. ‘I’d prefer it if we didn’t but, yes, we do.’

  ‘You’ve known him since before the night of the engagement party?’

  ‘Yes, for a few years now.’

  Leonora felt sick as things slid into place in her mind. ‘A few years?’

  Instinctively she moved out of his embrace and stood apart. ‘You know him and you didn’t think it worth mentioning?’

  ‘I didn’t think it was relevant.’

  Confusion and hurt and other emotions were swirling in Leonora’s gut now. ‘Not relevant? I slept with you on the night I was due to announce my engagement to him—the night you seduced me—and you didn’t think it was relevant?’

  Gabriel looked around and took Leonora’s elbow, guiding her over to a corner of the room where a large plant shielded them a little. That only made her feel more incensed.

  She pulled away again. ‘Why didn’t you tell me you knew him?’

  ‘Because he’s not someone I think about unless I have to.’

  ‘You don’t like him—that much is obvious.’

  ‘No, I don’t.’

  The implications of this were huge. ‘Why were you even at the engagement announcement if you don’t like him?’

  Gabriel’s jaw clenched. ‘Because I needed to know what he was up to.’

  Leonora shook her head to try and understand. ‘You came after me...after the interruption. I thought it was coincidental...but it wasn’t, was it?’

  ‘I came after you because I wanted you. You felt it too that night. And, I was concerned about you.’

  But Leonora wasn’t hearing him. She was reliving what had happened in slow motion. She looked at him, feeling the blood drain south through her body, leaving her cold all over. ‘You seduced me just to get back at him. You seized an opportunity.’

  Gabriel shook his head. ‘No, I seduced you because I wanted you—for no other reason.’

  Leonora was aware of a sharp pain near her heart. ‘Are you telling me you weren’t in any way aware of the fact that it might get to Lazaro if you were seen with me?’

  Gabriel flushed. ‘I admit I wasn’t unaware that it might irritate him if he saw pictures of us together, leaving the hotel. But once we got back to my apartment Lazaro Sanchez was the last person on my mind.’

  Leonora shook her head. ‘You’ve used me from the very start—like a pawn. Is that why you proposed? Because it was another way to strike at your adversary?’

  Leonora backed away from Gabriel. She had to leave before he saw how devastating this knowledge was to her. She turned and fled, apologising as she bumped into people in her bid to get out of the function room.

  She emerged into a corridor and saw an elevator. The doors were closing and she ran, catching it just before they closed all the way. She stepped in, aware of people looking at her. Her heart was pounding. She felt wild. Undone.

  She’d just been a pawn all along.

  She saw Gabriel emerge from the room just as the doors closed. In that moment, when their eyes met for a split second, she hated him.

  She didn’t think when she got out on the ground floor. She went straight to the entrance and jumped into the first taxi she saw...

  * * *

  Gabriel cursed loudly and colourfully enough to make people stop and look at him at the entrance of the grand hotel. He’d just seen a flash of blue dress and bare back disappear into a taxi and the car was already merging into the heavy Paris traffic.

  He tried calling Leo’s phone but it went straight to voicemail. Gabriel was not unaware of the irony of his wife being pretty much the only woman who had ever consistently demonstrated
that he wasn’t as irresistible as people liked to make out.

  He summoned his own car and got into the back, instructing the driver to go to his hotel. All he could do was hope that she had returned there.

  But she hadn’t.

  He paced up and down, trying her phone again and again. Eventually he gave up. She’d run because she needed space. He couldn’t blame her. His conscience stung hard. He had gone after her that first night because he’d wanted her, but he’d also seen an opportunity to stick the knife into Sanchez by letting them be photographed leaving the hotel together.

  He just hadn’t realised how much he would want her. Sanchez had become very much peripheral to everything once he’d slept with Leo and decided to ask her to marry him.

  But could he convince her of that?

  * * *

  ‘Oú allez-vous, madame?’

  Leonora looked at the driver and blinked. Where was she going? Her instinct had been to get as far away as possible from Gabriel. But she had a limited amount of cash in her clutch bag and she was dressed in an evening gown. Hardly appropriate to roam the streets, even though she felt it would take miles to work off the anger she felt towards Gabriel.

  Anger. And hurt.

  She knew she had no choice but to go back to their hotel, so she gave the address reluctantly. The taxi did a U-turn in the road and went back the way it had come.

  She felt sick. Bruised. And, worse, like a monumental fool. From the moment Gabriel had spoken to her he’d relished her strategic importance in scoring points against a rival.

  Would he really be so petty?

  Leonora ignored the question. Her anger was too fiery for her to try and be rational, to think this through. Lazaro had seen her as a pawn to use to get him accepted in a world closed to him. And Gabriel had seen her as a pawn to use to get back at Lazaro.

  She knew she wasn’t a helpless victim in all of this, but the revelation tainted every single interaction she’d had with Gabriel since they’d met. How he must have laughed at her the morning after that first night together when he’d realised that she hadn’t even given her virginity to Lazaro. Another point scored.

  For a moment she thought she might actually be sick, but she managed to control it. The hotel came into view, glittering in the distance. The taxi pulled up outside and Leonora paid the driver and got out.

  As she ascended to their room in the elevator she nurtured her anger, feeling as if she needed some kind of armour against Gabriel’s inevitable effect on her. When she reached the door she realised she didn’t have a key, so she knocked on the heavy wood.

  It opened almost immediately. Gabriel filled the doorway, jacket off, tie loose, top button undone. His hair was messy, as if he’d been running a hand through it. He held his mobile phone to his ear and he had the grimmest expression she’d ever seen on his face.

  He said curtly, ‘She’s here. It’s fine. Thank you, Marc.’

  He stood aside and took his phone down from his ear. Ridiculously, Leonora felt like a rebellious teenager who’d been caught sneaking home from an illicit party. She refused to let Gabriel make her feel as if she was in the wrong, so she tipped her chin up and stalked past him into the suite.

  She turned around to face him. He’d followed her and she could see the anger on his face.

  ‘Don’t ever do that again.’

  Leonora was genuinely confused. ‘What?’

  ‘Run away and turn your phone off. We had no way of tracking you or following you.’

  ‘We?’

  ‘My security team. The same security team that protects you without you even knowing it. You’re a target, Leo, because I’m a target.’

  To her surprise, although she could still see the anger, she could also see something else. Fear? And Gabriel looked slightly pale. Or was it just a trick of the light?

  But his revelation just stoked her anger. She welcomed it. ‘Well, if I had known that you had a security team I would have been more considerate. And I didn’t turn off my phone when I left. It’s been off since we arrived at the event.’

  Gabriel ran a hand through his hair, mussing it up more. Leonora hated how fascinated she was by this far less urbane incarnation of Gabriel Torres.

  Had he really been concerned?

  She pushed that notion down, remembering seeing him go toe to toe with Lazaro Sanchez. The bristling tension between the men.

  ‘Look,’ he said, before she could say a word, throwing his phone down on a nearby chair, ‘I’m sorry I didn’t tell you that I knew Sanchez. I didn’t realise how it would look. Or how it would make you feel when you discovered we did know each other.’

  She asked tautly, ‘What is it between you?’

  Gabriel stuck his hands in his pockets. ‘Ever since he arrived on the scene a few years ago he’s made a beeline for me. Shadowing my every move, trying to disrupt deals I’m involved in. We’re both currently involved in a bid to redevelop the old Madrid marketplace.’

  Leonora had heard about that bid. It was huge. ‘I had no idea you were involved in that.’

  The hurt she was feeling intensified. While she’d been thinking that she was growing closer to Gabriel, developing an intimacy that might one day extend beyond the bedroom, he had basically told her nothing about his day-to-day life. It was like a slap in the face.

  He looked at her. ‘I didn’t think you’d be interested.’

  ‘I’m your wife. I think I should know what you’re involved in.’

  Gabriel walked over to the window. He said, ‘I’ve never had to answer to anyone. I’ve never had to explain myself.’ He turned to face her. ‘It didn’t occur to me to let you know about these things.’

  The anger in Leonora diminished slightly. She could appreciate how a lone wolf like Gabriel might find it hard to adjust to being in a relationship.

  Still... ‘That doesn’t excuse you not telling me about Lazaro. It’s too much of a coincidence that we ended up in bed together the same night my engagement was meant to be announced.’

  Gabriel shook his head. He came closer, but Leonora backed away. He stopped.

  ‘I went there that night because of Sanchez, yes. But as soon as I saw you I got distracted. It became about you, not him.’

  Leonora cursed the fluttering in her belly. ‘It was about him when you walked me out through the front door of the hotel.’

  His mouth tightened. ‘I was aware of how it would look, yes. But I was also conscious of wanting to get you out of there, and getting to know you.’

  His straightforward honesty deflated her a little. Her heart beat fast as she recalled how she’d felt the pull between them that night. She’d felt guilty, standing next to her fiancé and being mesmerised by another man. And as soon as he’d asked if she wanted his help in leaving she hadn’t hesitated.

  As if sensing her weakening, Gabriel said, ‘I swear to you, from the moment we got to my apartment Sanchez was not in my head or my thoughts or my motivations. I wanted you. Do you really think I would have seduced you into my bed just to get back at him?’

  Pride oozed from every inch of the man in front of her. But she resisted the urge to let herself weaken too much.

  She remembered something. ‘You were saying something to Lazaro earlier...about meeting him in a street with your father. What was that?’

  Gabriel’s jaw clenched. ‘He claims to be my half-brother on my father’s side.’

  Leonora sat down on the seat behind her. ‘What?’

  ‘He confronted us in the street years ago. It was my birthday. He accused my father of being his father...but then two of my father’s men took him away and I never saw him again until a few years ago.’

  ‘So...he could be your half-brother?’

  ‘It’s quite possible. My father could have sired any number of illegitimate children.’ The bitterness was in Ga
briel’s voice was palpable.

  ‘Who is his mother?’

  Gabriel shook his head. ‘I don’t know...and I don’t care.’

  But Leonora saw something. A flicker of emotion. And the fact that Lazaro Sanchez could inspire emotion in Gabriel made her feel almost...jealous. Which was crazy. Jealous of a business rival!

  ‘Did you marry me to get back at Lazaro?’

  He took a step forward, a fierce look on his face. ‘No. I married you because you were the first woman who made me even want to think about it.’

  Suddenly she felt weary. She stood up abruptly. ‘I’m quite tired now. I think I’ll go to bed.’

  She turned before he could see the emotion she was feeling. She suspected deep down that Gabriel wouldn’t really have gone so far as to seduce her and marry her just to score points, but it still stung.

  He called her name just as she reached the door. She stopped reluctantly but didn’t turn around.

  He said from behind her, ‘You were never a pawn. I went to the engagement announcement that night because of Sanchez, yes. But then I saw you, and I wanted you from that moment. I went after you because I wanted you. I seduced you because I wanted you. And I married you because I knew we’d be good together. Because I want you more than I’ve ever wanted another woman.’

  Leonora’s heart beat a little faster. Her hand tightened on the door handle. Gabriel had really hurt her this evening. And his power to hurt her only reminded her of how far she’d fallen. She had to protect herself.

  She said, ‘I’ll take the spare room tonight.’

  She walked out with her head held high and didn’t look back. But it felt like a pyrrhic victory, because every instinct was urging her to go back and seek solace and oblivion in the arms of the man who had hurt her. Ironically, he was the only one who could help her to forget.

  * * *

  Leonora lay awake in the spare bed for a long time. It was the first night since she’d married Gabriel that she’d spent alone. And her body ached for him.