Page 10 of The Secret Sanchez Heir
By the time he turned round, Abigail had managed to shove her hot, disobedient body back into its suit of armour, even though she knew that she looked a mess—hair all over the place, lips swollen from where she’d been thoroughly kissed and her whole body still flushed in the aftermath of her orgasm.
Just thinking about what she’d done made her feel sick.
‘I am not,’ Leandro grated, ‘seeing this!’
Abigail flinched. ‘This should never have happened!’ She knew just how that sounded, and she hated herself for the picture she was painting of a woman who was happy to lead a man on and then slam the doors firmly shut in his face once she’d got what she wanted. But she wasn’t going to fall into his arms again. She couldn’t. Now that sanity had been restored, there was so much at risk here that her blood ran cold just thinking about it.
She literally burned with mortification.
‘Care to explain why?’
Abigail hugged herself. ‘I know what you’re probably thinking.’
‘You have no idea what I’m thinking!’
He was now standing directly in front of her, towering and darkly, scarily angry. However much she quailed inside, and however ashamed she was at her appalling lapse of judgement, Abigail knew that she just couldn’t afford to be steamrollered by Leandro. She stood her ground with shaky legs and met his glare head-on.
‘It was a mistake,’ she offered with choked sincerity.
‘Why?’
‘Because...’ She opted for part of the truth ‘I can’t help being turned on by you. Maybe it’s because you were my first...’ She went bright red but ploughed on. ‘Or maybe you’re right and it’s because things ended...well...maybe there’s some unfinished business there. I... You touched me and I... I remembered, Leandro...’
Leandro flushed darkly, swung away and hooked his thumbs into the pockets of his jeans for a few silent seconds. He didn’t care to be reminded of the power of those memories because, whilst he could acknowledge that to himself, he had no intention of sharing any such admission with Abigail. To do so would have signalled a fundamental weakness he wasn’t about to expose. He disliked the notion of anything or anyone having power over him and memories fitted neatly into that category.
‘But it would be wrong for us to go there,’ she volunteered tentatively. Part of her thought that it was rich suddenly to come out with all of this when she had only just descended from a climax that had blown her apart. She glanced down quickly to see that the bulge was still there, pushing against his jeans, and she licked her lips and hurriedly raised her eyes to catch him looking at her. ‘And I’m sorry if I gave you the wrong impression.’
Leandro didn’t miss a thing. If the damned phone hadn’t interrupted them, he would have taken her up to his room and he would have lost himself in her. As it stood now...
He was in line for a very long, very cold shower...and afterwards?
He wanted her and he knew why she had backed away with a sudden attack of conscience. She was dwelling on what had happened between them and allowing it to get between them.
He raked his fingers through his hair and sighed. ‘Why were you afraid to tell me the truth about yourself all those months ago? You can hardly blame me for reaching the conclusions I reached and acting the way I did. Concealment always carries the stench of something underhand.’
Startled, Abigail stared at him. This was the first time he had come close to giving her a chance to explain. In the aftermath of their break-up he had been happy to walk away without giving her any opportunity to defend herself.
‘I told you,’ she said, clearing her throat. ‘I was overawed by you. I’d never met anyone like you in my life before. Also,’ she added with complete honesty, ‘around you I didn’t feel like myself.’ She grimaced, relaxing a little, because he wasn’t attacking her for stringing him on when he could have been and she would have understood. She managed to get her legs to do something constructive and shuffled to one of the kitchen chairs, promptly sinking into it with relief.
‘I was somebody different—somebody normal—and I liked how that felt. I’d spent my life being cautious around men but you swept into my life and all of that changed in a heartbeat. It was like being on a rollercoaster ride.’ He strolled towards the table to join her and she raised her huge, clear, green eyes to him. ‘And once I was on that ride, there was no room to raise uncomfortable topics about my past. Besides, I didn’t think it would last as long as it did.’
Long enough for her to fall head over heels in love with him.
‘And when it carried on...the right time just never seemed to be there.’ She stood up and smoothed down her trousers, uncertain, because he had gone from rampant lover to inscrutable spectator. ‘I should head up to bed now.’ A glance through the window told her that the snow was still falling but lightly. She hoped for the best. She couldn’t possibly stay another day in his house.
Their eyes met and for a few seconds she thought about what she had done and the secret she had kept to herself for all the right reasons. She ran through some of those reasons in her head right now. They had parted on the worst possible terms. He had never cared about her. For him, she had only ever been a short-term fling and he had never encouraged her to think otherwise. When she’d found out that she was pregnant, she had been determined to hold onto her baby, because no one had ever held on to her. By then, Leandro had been out of the picture.
She had imagined contacting him to give him the glad tidings, then she had gone further and wondered whether he might feel inclined to take the baby from her because, at the end of the day, he would be its father. If he’d chosen to do that, she wouldn’t have stood a chance and, after the way they had broken up, he might very well have seen it as an opportunity to get some revenge for, as far as he was concerned, having been lied to.
Abigail had known that she would never risk losing her baby and, after several weeks with Leandro, she had seen for herself that he led the sort of high-octane, high-pressured lifestyle that was not compatible with living with a young child.
Fear created by dark thoughts about worst-case scenarios, heartbreak at being dumped by the guy she had fallen in love with because she wasn’t good enough and hormones coursing through her system had propelled her into a decision she now realised had been a life-changing one.
Yet it had been a curiously easy decision to make in the aftermath of their relationship.
She had even told herself that it was responsible not to foist an unwanted child on a guy who had not planned for a pregnancy. Why should an inveterate bachelor be made to pay such a high price for a simple mistake?
But now, things didn’t seem quite so clear cut. She expected him to try and stop her but Leandro remained where he was, watching as she headed for the door, and she turned round when her hand was on the doorknob to inform him that she would be leaving first thing, whatever the weather.
