Page 29 of The Secret Sanchez Heir
‘So you wouldn’t mind if that woman on the phone was someone I intended to sleep with?’
Pain slithered through her as sharp as broken glass. ‘Of course, I would expect you to break off our relationship before you start hopping into bed with someone else.’
‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this,’ Leandro muttered darkly.
Abigail ignored him. In fact, she barely heard what he’d said. She was far too taken up with the images racing through her head, like a cinematic reel on fast-forward.
‘How long will it take before I can move into the cottage with Sam?’ she asked, already settling on that as the only way to break the catastrophic effect he had on her. If he wanted to carry on with some other woman, then she wasn’t going to be around to witness it in the shape of late arrivals back and unavoidable meetings.
It was astounding that he could seem so preoccupied with her, so crazily in lust with her, and still make time to start playing the field. Just thinking about it ripped her to shreds and she could feel tears beginning to glaze the back of her eyes.
‘Well?’ she demanded forcefully and his lips thinned.
‘I will sort out the finances tomorrow and I can have the whole place brought up to scratch in record time. You can be in within the fortnight.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
LEANDRO STARED OUT of his office window, brow pleated in a frown of dissatisfaction.
He couldn’t concentrate and he loathed that. He had cancelled three meetings in the past ten days and had rescheduled his trip to New York for the following month. Right at this moment, his secretary was under strict instructions to hold all outside calls, even though the documents he should be getting through while all those calls were being conveniently held were still sitting in front of him on his computer, waiting to be checked.
Scowling, he vaulted upright and strolled towards the window to gaze down at an unseasonably fine spring afternoon.
Everything was coming along a pace. The cottage had been bought and without a chain, or the thorny problem most people faced of having to get a mortgage, he had been able to rush things along and work had already started on some essential renovations.
He had discussed those renovations with Abigail in the atmosphere of cool politeness that had characterised the time they now spent together.
She’d made a fuss over that phone call and had assumed the worst of him and when he had, quite rightly, put his foot down at launching into a grovelling explanation of a simple phone call, she had resorted to the oldest female trick in the book. The cold shoulder.
And no sex.
God only knew exactly what was going through her head but it didn’t take the IQ of a genius to figure out that whatever outlandish scenario she was conjuring up probably involved him in a compromising position with a woman.
Frustrated beyond measure, he cursed softly under his breath.
This entire episode could have been avoided, he knew, if he had simply told her that he had been speaking to his sister, but the conversation with Cecilia had been an unusually abrupt and inconclusive one and he had been in no mood to deal with Abigail’s crazy suspicions.
Why should he?
He’d never had much time for people who made demands of him. What man did? A demanding woman always turned possessive at some point and there was no way he would ever contemplate having any such relationship.
It infuriated him that, after all those very reasonable pep talks he had given himself in the past week and a half, he was still out of sorts. He hated the saccharine smile she produced every time he walked through the front door and, for the past few days, she had somehow managed either to ensure that the nanny had dinner with them or had invited Vanessa or one of the other employees of the shop over so that any time spent alone together had been frankly reduced to zilch.
And then there was the lack of sex.
Leandro couldn’t work out how it was that he missed her warm, willing and incredibly sexy body so much.
Sex was a bodily function, wasn’t it? A very pleasant bodily function but nothing upon which the entire world could stop turning on its axis if it wasn’t around.
And yet...
He glanced at his watch, noting the slow passage of time and cursing the tendency to introspection that seemed suddenly and inexplicably to have taken up residence in him.
It took a lot of focus and concentration actually to get down to reviewing the complicated legalese that had to be picked over for the deal he was in the process of closing and, the next time he looked at his watch, it was after seven.
For the first time since she had re-entered his life as the mother of his child, Abigail was going out for the evening. She had handed in her notice and Vanessa was throwing her a little party at a club not a million miles away. Not only were the employees of the company invited, along with a few of Abigail’s friends she had made during the time she had been working in London, but some of their more regular clients who had dealt with her over the years were also going to be there.
This information had not been volunteered by Abigail, but by Vanessa, when she had come over two evenings previously for dinner. Leandro had surreptitiously scrutinised Abigail’s face for a show of excitement but he hadn’t been able to glean a thing from her lack of expression.
