There was a jeweller’s store in the lobby. A very expensive, very exclusive jewellery store. Her heart skipped a beat. It was real. Alejandro loved her and wanted to marry her. It wasn’t just a dream. It was happening.
She wasted no time getting to the lift, punching the button, bubbling over with joy, hardly able to wait to see Alejandro again. But the lift halted on the very next floor, its doors sliding open.
Catalina stood there on the brink, dressed for cocktails in a low-cut dress that made the most of her considerable assets. Leah shrank back to the wall as she entered, noting that the woman didn’t bother with a smile this time.
‘Well, well,’ she said, punching the button for the mezzanine restaurant level. ‘If it isn’t our seamstress. I thought you would have run off home by now, with your tail between your legs.’
‘And why would I do that?’
‘Once Alejandro spat you out, what else could you do?’
Leah turned away, preferring to stare at the floor numbers displayed, wishing them to fall faster. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Then obviously he hasn’t done it yet. But don’t take it too hard. You did walk out on him. It’s only natural a man like Alejandro would feel the need to get even.’
She flashed her eyes back at the older woman, who was busy pretending to check the paint job on her nails. ‘That’s ridiculous.’
‘Is it? Then why do you think he bothered to look you up while he was here, if it wasn’t for the chance to take his revenge? Do you think he actually enjoys slumming it with you?’
A sliver of fear worked its way down Leah’s spine. She didn’t believe the woman for a moment, but he had been so angry when he’d turned up that day at her Sydney shop. Angry, and determined not to take no for an answer. Prepared to blackmail her back into his bed if that was what it took. Prepared to humiliate her into the deal.
But that had been before. He would not have come back to her at all unless he loved her; Leah believed that with all her heart. She had to believe it. That was her trump card, and it was going to blow Catalina’s bitchy efforts to pull her down sky-high.
‘I don’t know why you’d say such things, Catalina, other than because you’ve always made it plain you don’t consider me good enough for your brother. So be it. But you’re way off base. Alejandro loves me. And he’s asked me to marry him. I’m on my way right now to meet him, to choose an engagement ring.’
The Spanish woman’s eyes grew wider, as if she were strangely delighted with the news. ‘He loves you?’ She moved closer conspiratorially, until perfumed air surrounded Leah like a poisoned cloud. ‘Then you really are a fool. Alejandro is going to marry Francesca de la Renta. Their betrothal is to be announced the minute he sets foot back in Spain.’
Francesca de la Renta.
She remembered seeing the fine-boned hotel heiress at various functions she’d attended with Alejandro. She was petite and pretty, with big doe eyes, and her father had accompanied her everywhere, almost as if he were guarding her.
And she remembered hearing her name that first night, when Catalina had been hissing some Spanish poison at Alejandro. Had she been reminding him of his obligations then? Maybe that explained Catalina’s aggression towards her, if she thought her brother was risking a connection between two powerful families. Hotels and casinos. What would be a better match? But for Alejandro to toy with her when he was already thinking about marriage with another—it was unthinkable.
‘Then why would he ask me to marry him?’ Try as she might, it proved impossible to ask the question and still keep the defensive quality out of her voice.
‘Who knows? He was planning to ditch you today.’ Catalina gave a shrug. ‘Maybe he didn’t think you were ready.’
Ice-cold fingers crawled down her back, needle-sharp and determined to do damage. ‘What do you mean, ready?’
Catalina stepped back against the wall of the lift and watched the display, as if bored with the conversation. ‘Maybe he wanted to suck you further in, to make you really believe in fairytales, before he dumped you and smashed those silly dreams of yours to pieces. Oh, at last—my floor. Choose something expensive, won’t you? It may be your last chance.’
The woman was evil, a total bitch, but, whatever the truth, Leah couldn’t let her go thinking she’d had the final word. ‘Alejandro isn’t like that,’ she countered, her words as shaky as her legs. ‘He would never do that to me.’
Catalina turned her head and gave a knowing smile. ‘And yet it seems he already has.’
The lift doors closed, blotting out the vision of the woman’s snide smile, but nothing could blot out the damage her toxic words had wreaked.
What she’d said of Alejandro, it was too ugly to contemplate. But could Catalina be right? Could Alejandro’s talk of love and marriage be just more lies to suck her in? Could he be so hell-bent on revenge that he would do that to her simply because she’d walked out on him?
With a shiver his words came back to her—the words he’d uttered with such frustration on the beach, when she’d asked him why it mattered why she’d left him, because he would have grown tired of her some day.
‘That was my decision to make!’
Had it really mattered so much to him? Had her leaving him enraged him to such a degree that he would pursue her, trap her into coming back to him, simply so he could in turn dump her?
It didn’t seem possible.
But what else had Catalina said—that he had planned to finish with her today? And her comments on the launch about Leah enjoying her last day—what had they been but a hint of her doom? And Alejandro had done nothing to deny it. Nothing!