The Secret Sanchez Heir

‘You’d better come in with me,’ she said dubiously and Hal, killing the engine, turned round and looked at her, his cheerful face serious.

‘If this is an engagement party,’ he said in his usual direct fashion, ‘then I’ll eat my hat.’ He waved the woollen hat lying on the seat next to him and grinned. ‘I’ve seen more life in a graveyard.’

‘Don’t say that. I have a ring to deliver. Vanessa will be distraught if for some reason the sale falls through.’

‘It won’t, love.’ He smiled kindly at her. ‘You’ll probably find that the action will kick off tomorrow. That’s when the party’s due to take place, isn’t it? The happy couple are probably just relaxing and enjoying some peace before the big day ahead.’

Ten minutes later, Abigail discovered that that couldn’t have been further from the truth.

* * *

Leandro had thoroughly cleared his head of the catastrophic mess that had awaited him when he had arrived back from New York. That was the joy of work. It put everything into perspective. It was a world in which everything was clear cut and everything had a solution. Now, as Julie popped her head round the door to inform him that the last link in the ‘belly up’ chain had arrived, bearing the ill-fated ring, Leandro was obliged to face the final annoying hurdle in putting this matter to rest.

He was, fortunately, in a better frame of mind. Rosalind had shouted and screamed, furious that for the first time in her life someone had scuppered her plans. She had threatened social exclusion, at which point Leandro had made the mistake of laughing, and she had been apoplectic when he had suggested that she was far better off without him, because he simply didn’t have the reserves of energy or patience to give her the sort of attention she required. Nor, he had added, had he the slightest interest in having children. In fact, he could think of nothing worse. So the pitter-patter of tiny feet would have remained an unfulfilled ambition.

Rosalind had got the worst out of her system and he felt that, when she eventually descended from her rage, she would find blessed relief in gossiping about him behind his back and painting whatever picture it took for her to emerge smelling of roses.

For his part, burying himself in work had put everything in perspective.

He had no idea what had driven him to imagine that anything could be more important. His abiding memory of his parents was of two spoiled and wealthy people caught up in a hedonistic whirl, incapable of growing up and certainly incapable of looking after the child they had accidentally conceived. Even less had they been able to deal with the arrival of Cecilia years later, another accident. The task of taking care of his much younger sister had fallen to him and, from a young age, Leandro had worked out that the tumult of emotion and the chaos it was capable of engendering was not for him. A healthy aversion to chaos, disorder and unpredictability had been ingrained in him from a tender age.

As a teenager, he had lost himself in his studies, only surfacing to make sure his sister was okay. As an adult, work had replaced the studies, and when his parents had died, victims of their wild, irresponsible lifestyle—speedboat racing at night in the Caribbean—work had become even more imperative because he had had to rescue what was left of the family finances. There had been no time to kick back and relax. Work was and always would be the most important driving force of Leandro’s life. Rosalind’s hysterics had clarified that for him.

He had told Julie to show the courier into the smallest of the sitting rooms, the one which bore the least evidence of the party that wasn’t going to be taking place. He now made his way there, mind half on the business proposal he had been reading before he had been interrupted.

* * *

On tenterhooks, because whatever was wrong was very, very wrong and the fast exit she had been hoping for now seemed out of the question, Abigail was sitting upright in a chair in the room into which she had been delivered like an unwanted parcel.

Rosalind was, she was given to understand, not there. Hal was to wait in the kitchen where he would be given something to eat and she was to wait for the master of the house in the sitting room where, she hoped, he would take delivery of the ring.

She heard the approach of footsteps on the marble floor and was already rising to her feet, having rehearsed what she needed to say about getting back to London urgently before the weather took a turn for the worse.

Whatever the heck was going on, it wasn’t her problem. She had already reached that conclusion. She’d done her job and, if the loved-up couple had had a tiff, then that was nothing to do with her.

She didn’t know who or what to expect. Stiff with tension, with the metal box containing the ring clutched to her chest, for a few seconds Abigail almost thought that her nerves had brought on a hallucinatory attack.

Because there was no way that those footsteps she had heard could possibly have heralded the arrival of a six-foot-two specimen of pure, hard-edged masculinity. There was no way that those achingly familiar tawny eyes, fringed by eyelashes she had once teased could have been the envy of any woman, could now be staring at her. It just wasn’t possible. Leandro Sanchez could not be lounging in the doorway of this sitting room, larger than life.

She couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. He was her very worst nightmare and her very deepest, darkest, most forbidden fantasy come to life and she blinked, desperately hoping that the vision would disappear. It didn’t. He remained just where he was, an alpha male of such sinful beauty that he took her breath away. He had taken her breath away the first time she had seen him a year and a half ago. Over the weeks of their torrid and doomed love affair, that impact had never lessened.

He was the sort of guy women dreamed about. Olive-skinned, tawny-eyed and with an electrifying, ruthless sex appeal. He was long, lean and muscular, and Abigail thought that she could remember each and every muscle and sinew of that fabulous body.

She had never thought that she’d see him again, not after everything, and as the full horror of this accidental encounter hit home the room began to swim. She felt nausea rise in a tide up her throat, and she swallowed back the bile, but she couldn’t seem to stop herself from swaying. She felt her legs give way and knew that she was going to pass out before she hit the ground.

* * *

She came to on one of the low, cream sofas facing the arched window through which she had been absently gazing only seconds before and struggled up to find that Leandro had dragged a chair over by the sofa and was sitting, watching her.

‘Drink this.’ He pressed a glass with some brandy into her hand and forced her to take a sip. His eyes were cool and guarded, his hand was steady, his voice controlled.

Not a single thing conveyed his utter shock at walking into the room and coming face to face with the only woman who had got under his skin and refused to budge—and, as if that wasn’t sufficiently appalling, it galled him to realise that his ability to recall had been spot-on because she was just as exquisite as he remembered.

Her hair was just as colourful and, from what he could tell, just as long, although right now it was pinned back severely in a bun. Her eyes were as green as he remembered, green with gold flecks that were only apparent when you really took time to look, which he had. Her figure was as luscious and as sexy, a figure that could haunt a man’s dreams.

Of their own accord, his eyes drifted down, lingering on the full swell of her breasts pushing against the drab white blouse, and the length of her legs primly hidden under a pair of grey trousers. She was dressed in high street fashion. Wherever life had taken her since they had parted company, it certainly hadn’t been into the open arms of another billionaire.

‘Leandro...this can’t be happening...’ She would have stood up except her legs had turned to jelly.

‘You’re in my house, you’re sitting on my sofa.’ He stood up and strolled towards the fireplace, putting some distance between them, every nerve in his body electrified by the shock of finding her in his house. ‘It’s happening all right. I take it that you’re the courier with the ring?’

‘I... Yes... I am.’ Abigail’s eyes skittered towards him and just as quickly skittered away. She reached for the metal safety-deposit box and held it out to him. Leandro ignored the gesture.

Propelled into nervous speech, Abigail gave him a stilted, jerky explanation for being in his house, all the while feeling like an unwary rabbit that had suddenly strayed into the path of a voracious predator.

‘It seems...’ Leandro sauntered back towards her, eyes narrowed as he watched her cringe back against the sofa. As she should, he thought, considering the last time they had been in one another’s company she had been revealed for the liar and thief that she was. ‘...that your boss got the wrong end of the stick.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘That ring was purchased without my consent. Unfortunately, Rosalind misinterpreted the depth of our relationship.’

‘But we were told that there was to be an engagement party...’

Leandro shrugged and continued looking at her as he sat back down on the chair that he had pulled over, which was far too close for comfort, as far as Abigail was concerned. ‘Crossed wires all round,’ he informed her coolly.

‘So is Rosalind...? Has Rosalind...?’ Abigail struggled to make sense of the situation while her thoughts kept whirling round in utter confusion and her body burned and tingled as though she’d been plugged in to a live socket.

‘I never had plans to marry her.’ Leandro brushed aside the question with just a hint of impatience. Now that she was sitting here in his living room, larger than life and just as sexy, all those memories he had carefully locked away were coming out to play. He remembered the way she had felt, the noises she’d made when he’d touched her, the way their bodies had fit together like one. He’d bumped into ex-girlfriends before and had felt nothing for them but a sense of relief that they were no longer around. He certainly had never looked at them and wanted them.

But then no other relationship had ended the way theirs had...

Jittery and feeling caged in, Abigail sprang to her feet and began pacing the room nervously, hands clasped behind her back, barely able to think straight. ‘So this trip has been a complete waste of time. What am I supposed to do now? With the ring?’ Focus on why you’re here, she told herself feverishly, and forget about everything else.

‘Now that you’ve made the effort to bring it here, you’d better let me have a look—see where my hard-earned money has gone.’ He nodded to the box and Abigail dutifully extracted the ring with shaking fingers and watched as he carefully held it up to the light and inspected it.

‘It’s not my problem if you’ve broken off your engagement with Lady Rosalind,’ she said jerkily.

‘I haven’t broken anything off. There was never an engagement to break off. She bought this off her own bat because she wanted to pin me down. The strategy didn’t work. I’d already decided to finish with her before I knew anything about this ridiculous scheme and that’s exactly what I did when I returned here after my trip abroad.’

Abigail shivered because this was just the sort of ruthless side to him she had finally glimpsed when their relationship had crashed and burned.

She thought of Sam and was overcome with sudden sickening fear and apprehension. ‘The ring was sold in good faith,’ she told him flatly, taking a deep breath and exhaling slowly because it steadied her shattered nerves. ‘I just need you to sign for the delivery and then I can be out of here.’

‘Really?’ Leandro relaxed, crossing his legs and leaning back in his chair. ‘Why the rush?’

‘Why do you think, Leandro?’ Abigail asked in a high-pitched voice. ‘The last time we met you were walking out of your apartment, leaving me with your sister, believing every word she had said about me being a liar, a thief and a gold-digger. So, believe it or not, the less time I spend in your company, the better. If I’d known that you were the man Lady Rosalind was about to marry, there’s no way I would have come all the way here to deliver a ring. But I didn’t, and now the ring is in your possession, and all I need is your signature before I leave.’

‘I’m not going to go down the road of reminiscing over your lies and half-truths,’ Leandro told her calmly. ‘As for the ring... I may or may not decide to keep it.’