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.’
