Confessions of a Pregnant Cinderella (Rival Spanish Brothers 1)

She heard a sound and turned around, steeling herself. Lazaro walked in, tie undone and hair messy. She pushed down her concern.

That green gaze zeroed in on her. His face was stark. Lines seemed to be etched there that she hadn’t seen before.

He came further into the room. ‘You had no right to say anything to my mother.’

Skye said in a low voice, ‘I am your wife and the mother of your child. I think that gives me some right.’

His gaze dropped to the wheelie suitcase beside her. ‘Where are you going?’

‘I’m going back to Dublin. I’ve booked an early-evening flight. This isn’t working, Lazaro. I’m not prepared to live in isolation in the suburbs while you maintain a separate life in the city. You’ve made it very clear where I come in your priorities and it’s not high enough.’

He didn’t say anything. He just looked at her.

‘I know you were the one who vetoed using my logo for the project. Your assistant told me that everyone else wanted to use it except you. And the only reason I can think of is because you didn’t like how I was infringing on your business.’

Your life.

Skye saw a tinge of colour score across his cheeks at that, but she didn’t feel better to know she was right.

‘I looked up the requirements for divorce in Spain.

As long as we’ve been married for three months we can divorce within two months. I want to have this baby in Dublin. By the time he or she is born, we’ll have been married long enough to initiate our divorce.’

She took a breath.

‘I’ve been talking to my mother and she’s going to come back to help me when the baby is born. We can discuss going forward from there. I’m giving you your life back, Lazaro. You need a wife who is your equal in this world. I’m not that person. I never will be.’

She clamped her mouth shut, afraid of what else might come out. Things she was too vulnerable to say.

Lazaro had said nothing this whole time. He was expressionless. He walked over to one of the windows and looked out. After a long moment he turned around, arms folded.

‘Maybe it is a good idea for you to leave for a while. What you want...what you’re asking for...it’s not a life I ever envisaged. I don’t need a defender, Skye. I never asked for that.’

Skye stifled the hurt and pain blooming in her chest and her heart. ‘It’s not something you should need to ask for. I’ve got a taxi coming. I should go.’

‘No, my driver will take you. And you need to let me know where you are so I can set you up. You’re not going back to that dump of an apartment. Where will you stay tonight?’

The fact that he was letting her go so easily crushed her.

‘With a girl I worked with at the restaurant. She’s got a spare room. I’ll stay with her until I find somewhere.’

‘You’ll have access to money. You won’t need to work.’

Skye said nothing. She had no intention of using Lazaro’s money.

She walked to the door, pulling her small case behind her. She turned. She had a sense of déjà vu—back to when she’d been delivered to Lazaro in this very room like a toxic package.

He was as remote now as he had been then. As if nothing had changed in the meantime. As if there wasn’t this insatiable tug of desire drawing them together in spite of everything. But clearly not even that was enough. She’d overstepped the line the other night, and today, and he wouldn’t forgive her.

* * *

Lazaro existed in a fog for a few days. Barely aware of going through the motions. He found himself standing in the vast open space of a glass box on the outskirts of the city one day, with genuinely not much recollection about why he was there, beyond a vague memory of making an appointment to meet the estate agent to look at the houses Skye had viewed.

Her words came back into his head—how she’d accused him of wanting to have a house here just because it was where his parents lived. ‘Everyone is locked behind their huge gates and walls with more security than a head of state. It’s not natural.’

She’d told him it wouldn’t bring him peace to live here. And he knew with a dull feeling of pain inside him that it wouldn’t. Yet he’d been prepared to put Skye and the baby here, as if he could use them to quiet his demons.

A sense of shame burnt through the fog numbing Lazaro’s brain. And with the shame came clarity, for the first time since he’d watched Skye walk over to his mother to confront her.