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.
* * *
Skye sat in a square box of a room. More like a storage cupboard, really. The burly man who had put her in here had just brought her small knapsack and her coat from where she’d left them in the cloakroom. She’d come straight here from the airport.
The adrenalin was still pumping through her system. Okay, so she’d got her message across. She hadn’t intended on the dramatics, but it had been impossible to try and contact Lazaro Sanchez from Dublin. He had more rings of security and assistants than a head of state. And at every step she’d been stonewalled.
It hadn’t helped that she’d thrown away the card he’d handed her when he’d asked her to join him for a drink. She’d not seen the point in keeping it, and hadn’t wanted to torture herself by knowing she had his phone number.
She’d been searching on the internet for another way to try and contact him when she’d seen the news that he was due to announce his engagement at an exclusive gathering at the Esmeralda Hotel—one of Madrid’s finest.
Before she’d lost her nerve she’d booked a cheap return flight. She’d travelled in her work uniform, hoping that it might help her blend in with staff. Which had worked only too well.
He was to be engaged. Yet he’d slept with her.
She’d always thought she was a good judge of character, but evidently lust had rewired her normal instincts that night three months ago.
He’d asked her to stay for breakfast the following morning and she’d been so tempted. He’d been standing there in nothing but a short towel. Massive chest bare and still damp from the shower. Dark hair dusting his pectorals and then narrowing into a line that dissected his six-pack before disappearing under the towel.
Skye stood up, suddenly restless. And hot. Thankfully the nausea had subsided slightly. Her morning sickness was acute at the moment, and mainly in the early part of the day, but the doctor had told her it should subside soon. If she was lucky.
Pregnant. She stopped pacing and put her hand on her belly.