He cast her a look over his shoulder. ‘Exactly.’
He came back then, with a glass of what looked like champagne in one hand and water in the other.
He handed her the tall elegant flute and said, ‘Dinner will be ready in a short while, but first I have a proposal to put to you.’
Leonora took a sip of champagne and it fizzed down her throat. She swallowed, genuinely intrigued. ‘A proposal?’
He looked at her carefully. ‘Yes, Leonora. A proposal. Of marriage.’
CHAPTER FIVE
A PROPOSAL OF MARRIAGE. If Leonora had still had some of the champagne in her mouth or her throat she would have choked or spat it out. The shock of his words thumped her in the gut. She felt winded.
He was just looking at her. Assessing. As if he hadn’t just said the most audacious thing she’d ever heard. A sliver of ice went down her back when she thought of the possibility that she might have hallucinated briefly.
‘Did you just say—?’
He cut in smoothly. ‘That I’m proposing marriage? Yes, I did.’
Leonora clutched the glass as if it was a lifeline. Her brain wouldn’t seem to work. It felt sluggish.
‘Do you...? Why?’
‘For many reasons—chief of which is because I think we’d be a good match. I’ve known for some time now that I need to settle down, but it’s always been an unpalatable prospect...until we met and connected.’
Connected.
Leonora’s head was suddenly filled with X-rated images of them in bed, limbs entangled, his powerful body thrusting in and out of hers, transporting her to heights of ecstasy she’d dreamed about every night since.
Something else struck her and she felt slightly sick. ‘Is this just because I was a...a virgin? Maybe you’re old-fashioned and that kind of thing—’
He held a hand up, eyes sparking. ‘Stop right there. This has nothing to do with your sexual innocence.’ He lowered his hand. ‘Although I have to admit that knowing I was your first lover is incredibly satisfying in a way that I never would have thought possible.’
Leonora’s insides clenched. She had to admit that losing her innocence under the expert tutelage of Gabriel hadn’t exactly been unsatisfying. Far from it. But...marriage? And yet why should it be such an alien concept when she’d agreed to marry someone else only recently?
She struggled to understand Gabriel’s motivation. ‘But I’m not remotely suitable.’
He frowned. ‘You couldn’t be more suitable for my requirements.’
Requirements.
A cold weight lodged in her chest. And it mocked her. Because she realised that for a moment she’d fantasised that this might be a proposal stemming from emotion. Feelings. When she’d never even considered that with Lazaro Sanchez.
But you didn’t sleep with him, reminded a small voice.
Leonora lifted her chin. ‘Do I need to remind you that my family are considered pariahs in society? We haven’t been invited to an event in years. I don’t see you sullying the Cruz y Torres name by association with us.’
In answer he pulled out his phone from his trouser pocket and after a few seconds handed it to her, ‘Have you seen this?’
‘This’ was a grainy paparazzi picture of her getting into his car that night outside the hotel. She looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights and he was staring directly down the lens of the camera, defiantly.
She handed it back, feeling sick. ‘I tend to avoid looking at those websites or their headlines, considering my family were their sole
fodder at one time.’
‘I’m showing it to you to illustrate my point that I really don’t care what anyone thinks of us getting together.’
Leonora looked at him. ‘What would your parents think?’