about her. Open. Unaffected. Natural.
She’d been dressed much as she was now. Her clothes utterly banal. Not designed in any way to entice a man. And yet she had. With her petite figure and soft curves.
She’d served him. Pulling a pen out of the bun on the top of her head, flipping over her orders pad to a new page before looking at him. And that had been the moment. Zing. Lazaro had felt it like a thunderbolt. Instant heat and sexual awareness.
And so had she, judging by the flush on her cheeks and the way her eyes had widened.
Lazaro’s razor-sharp brain kicked into gear. There were members of the press in this room. His doing. To ensure maximum coverage of his moment of triumph. If he instructed his men to kick this woman out on the street the press would hunt her down, and he could already see the headlines and the lurid sob-story.
He had no doubt she was just capitalising on the fact that she’d realised who he was. She was on the make. He needed to contain this situation, defuse it and salvage what he could of this evening.
He put down his glass and stepped down from the dais and went over to her, taking her arm in his hand. It felt very slender. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing here?’
She went white. He ignored the prick of his conscience. He’d forgotten how petite she was.
She stuttered. ‘I came…to…to tell you… I couldn’t reach you any other way…we didn’t…you didn’t…we didn’t exchange numbers…’
He’d given her his card when he’d asked her to join him for a drink. But she’d left it in the wastebasket in the hotel room the following morning.
Her show of independence the morning after—her determination to go even after he’d offered to order up breakfast—had obviously been an act.
He could still see her, backing away in her skinny jeans and a loose jumper falling off one shoulder. Her hair down and wild. She’d looked like an art student. She’d looked thoroughly bedded. And he’d wanted her again.
He’d just come out of the shower with a towel around his waist to find her leaving. ‘Where are you going?’ he’d asked.
She’d looked up as she’d slipped on her shoes. He could still recall how her eyes had devoured him, lingering on his chest. Making him hard again.
‘I should leave… It’s okay. I know how these things go. I know this was just a one-off. You’re not from here.’ She’d waved a hand at the very rumpled bed and a flush had tinged her cheeks. ‘And I really wasn’t expecting this…’
She’d been a virgin.
Lazaro had felt a moment of panic at the thought of her slipping out through the door and never seeing her again. Impulsively he’d said, ‘Stay. I’ll order breakfast. There’s no need to rush.’
She’d looked torn for a moment. And then she’d shaken her head. ‘No, I have things to do. I have to leave.’
She’d turned around and walked to the door and then stopped and looked back over her shoulder. Her hair had been like a bright flame down her back.
‘Just…thank you. I wasn’t expecting what happened to happen. I wasn’t expecting to meet someone like you. But it was lovely.’
And then she’d slipped out through the door and Lazaro had stood there, stunned and very aroused, for long minutes. ‘It was lovely.’ Not something any woman had ever said to him before after a night of passion so intense he was surprised they hadn’t burnt the suite to ashes.
That memory mocked him now. It had all been an act. Clearly. And this had been her endgame. He’d been an idiot.
He took his hand off her arm and spoke to his men. ‘Take her to the office and keep her there until I give further instructions.’
He didn’t look at her again, just turned away towards the crowd. And, to Leonora, who was looking at him with wide eyes, cheeks leached of colour. He stepped back up onto the dais, not sure which fire to put out first.
He faced the crowd and held up his hands, forcing a smile. ‘I’m sorry for that interruption. It’s being dealt with.’
He was about to say that there were no grounds for what she’d said—‘I’m pregnant…and it’s yours’—but then he recalled that exquisite moment when he’d been poised to thrust inside her tempting body and he’d realised he wasn’t protected.
‘Are you protected?’ he’d asked her.
She’d said breathily, ‘It’s fine…please, just don’t stop.’
Self-recrimination blasted him. She could be telling the truth.
He looked at Leonora, who was backing away now, staring at him as if he was a monster. He stretched out a hand. ‘Leonora, please…let me explain.’
She stopped moving. Her face was pale. ‘Is it true?’
Lazaro couldn’t deny that it might be true, so he said nothing.
Leonora interpreted his silence. She shook her head. ‘I can’t agree to marry you—not now.’ She cast a wild-eyed look around them and then said with quiet desperation, ‘How could you do this to me? In front of all of these people?’
She turned and stepped down from the dais and all but ran to the nearest exit.
There was no sound at all for a long moment. And then came a slow hand-clap from the crowd.
Lazaro turned around to see his half-brother Gabriel moving forward through the crowd. Clapping. A smirk on his face. Lazaro’s hands bunched into fists at his sides.
‘I really didn’t expect this evening to be so entertaining, Sanchez. I have to hand it to you. If anyone knows how to make a reputation sink even lower into the gutter it’s you. But, frankly, I’ve better things to be doing than witnessing your lurid domestic dramas.’
Before Lazaro could articulate a response Gabriel strode out of the room, in the same direction as Leonora. And, as much as he wanted to go after him and punch that smirk off his face, Lazaro knew he couldn’t. Not here, not now.
He turned back to face his audience. The crowd he had assembled to share this moment of ultimate acceptance. No one would meet his eye except one man. His father, at the back of the room. He had a mocking look on his face as if to say, You tried and you failed to be one of us.
This moment, which should have been the pinnacle of his success, had turned into a farce. All because of a woman. And himself. Because for one night he’d let himself be ruled by lust and had thrown caution to the wind.
He should have known, after the life he’d lived, that he would suffer the consequences for any moment of weakness.
These people could afford to be weak. But not him. Not ever him. And he’d just proved that his desires were as base as theirs…that he didn’t, in fact, have more control.
