The Spanish Billionaire’s Pregnant Wife

CHAPTER FOUR

IN THE act of trying to listen to a long involved speech from one of the bank’s most senior directors, Leandro drifted into an erotic daydream.

As the self-justifying speech went on and endlessly on Leandro added elaborate layer on layer to the fantasy. He pictured Molly spreadeagled naked in the golden glow of the hot Spanish sunshine, her lush white breasts crowned by straining pink peaks that glistened damply with the champagne he was licking from her voluptuous curves. He was remembering the tantalising glide of her hair across his stomach and the velvet soft glory of her mouth…

‘Mr Carrera Marquez?’

Leandro pulled instantaneously free of the seductive images that had captured an imagination he had not known he possessed. Even though his body was hot and heavy with discomfort and sexual need was a tormenting pulse-beat through his big powerful frame, he snapped straight back into cut-throat business mode.

‘My opinion? In a nutshell? Get tough. Don’t accept excuses for poor performance. Sack the management team. They’ve had their chance and blown it. Give that opportunity to hungrier employees,’ Leandro advised without hesitation, and he brought the meeting to a close with the cool, economic efficiency that had made him a living legend in financial circles.

Closely followed by his phalanx of aides, his handsome dark head held high, Leandro strode down the corridor. He was incensed by the erotic recollections that had recently dared to cloud his concentration at inappropriate moments during his working day. But had sex ever been that good for him before? That wild? That hot? If it had been, he couldn’t recall it. Possibly he had waited too long to ease the natural needs of his body and now all the pent-up hunger of a year’s celibacy was tormenting him for release.

To that end, he finally made use of one of the many phone numbers he had had pressed on him since Aloise’s death. He dined out with a beautiful blonde divorcee who had thrown herself at him previously with an enthusiasm that any sex-starved male should have revelled in. Unhappily, Leandro discovered that his seething libido was stubbornly impervious to the blonde’s attractions. He still wanted Molly and it seemed that no other woman would do.

But why make a production out of that fact? Leandro asked himself with the equivalent of a mental shrug. He had had a lot of women in his life before he married and now that settled phase was well and truly over. Life was short. Sex was just sex and he was young and healthy. He worked hard, why shouldn’t he play hard as well? There was nothing wrong with the pursuit of pleasure. Furthermore he had the perfect excuse for seeking out Molly again: he had to check that their night together had had no lasting repercussions.

Molly vented her exasperation with a groan of frustration when she removed her pots from the electric kiln in the shed. Several pieces had stuck to the trivet because she had been too liberal with the glaze. Under pressure from her, those items cracked. More unnecessary breakages! In recent days she had made more than her fair share of costly mistakes while she’d worked.

But then her emotions were eating her up because she was still so angry with herself for sleeping with Leandro, Molly acknowledged ruefully. Meeting Leandro and falling victim to his charms had forced her to accept that she had more in common with her birth mother, Cathy, than she had ever wanted to know. Cathy had been very prone to following casual impulses with men she’d never taken the time to get to know and she had called those urges, ‘love’, and their fulfilment, ‘spontaneity’.

In comparison, Molly was less kind with her labels and over the past week and a half she had at various times called herself terminally stupid, reckless and naive. Leandro’s attitude to her the morning after had been the ultimate put-down and had set the seal on her humiliation. She had given her body to a guy who wanted a tame woman to lock in a custom-built cage for his sexual gratification. He had neither respected nor appreciated her. How much lower could she have sunk?

She was in the kitchen making coffee when the front doorbell went in two shrill bursts. With a perfunctory brush down of the clay-stained overall she wore, she went to answer it.

A shock of recognition jolted her when she saw the tall, dark, well-dressed Spaniard on the doorstep. She was stunned into silence, her tongue clinging to the roof of her dry mouth. Bathed in spring sunshine, luxuriant ebony hair ruffled by the breeze, lean, bronzed classic features set in serious lines, he was devastatingly handsome.

‘May I come in?’ Leandro studied her intently. She had turned pale, her shock at his appearance palpable. Emerald eyes bright as jewels glanced evasively off his, her wealth of black curls tumbling down past slight shoulders now rigid with tension. She was wearing a shapeless garment liberally daubed with clay.

‘Why? What do you want?’

Leandro quirked a brow at her intonation. She was a rough diamond in the manners department. ‘To see you-what else?’

Molly let him in only because she didn’t want to start an argument with him on the doorstep. He had no right to come to her home, a voice screamed inside her head. She felt cornered and her brain cells felt as though they had been frozen into inactivity. When she caught a glimpse of the vast car sitting out on the street, her jaw simply dropped. ‘Does that limousine belong to you?’

‘Sì…yes.’ Leandro settled the ice bucket he was carrying into her hands, startling her. ‘I thought we could share a drink.’

Dumbfounded by the gesture and clutching the bucket awkwardly, Molly stared fixedly down at the bottle protruding from the ice. It was very expensive bubbly, the very best: Bollinger Blanc de Noir. ‘It’s the middle of the day,’ she muttered helplessly.

‘So?’ Brilliant dark eyes with a mesmeric glimmer of gold nailed hers head-on when she was least prepared for the collision. Her tummy flipped, butterflies fluttered and dangerous warmth surged between her thighs. For a terrifying moment she was out of control of her body and the surge of memories that she had worked so hard to suppress engulfed her in a relentless tide. But now here he was in the flesh and suddenly she was remembering his weight on her, the raw burn of his sexual possession and the wild, hot excitement of it. ‘Join me for lunch, querida.’

‘No, I’m firing stuff…in the kiln,’ Molly extended unevenly. Prompted by a defiant streak of vanity, she set down the ice bucket and began to remove her overall.

Leandro thrust the front door uneasily shut behind him. His lacklustre surroundings had already shot him out of his comfort zone. ‘So this is where you live,’ he remarked, a lean shapely hand encompassing the dreary hallway, which was no more than a narrow passage to provide access to the rooms. Like the ugly urban street outside and the tired furnishings, it spoke of a poverty he seldom saw and had certainly never experienced.

‘How on earth did you find out where I lived?’ Molly questioned tautly, pushing open the door of her bedroom and going in, only because she felt trapped standing so close to a male as tall and well built as Leandro in a confined area. The lounge was Jez’s private space and always messily awash with dismantled car parts, motocross magazines and beer cans.

Leandro immediately saw her personality in the vibrant splashes of colour in the room. A multicoloured earthenware parrot plaque adorned the wall next to an oriental screen. The bed was draped with a vivid blue embroidered silk shawl. The floorboards had been painted white. An onion-shaped vase with a distinctive iridescent glaze drew his attention and he lifted it. ‘Yours?’ he asked.

Her smile, for she was pleased that he had guessed that the piece was hers, lit her heart-shaped face with a glow of warmth that ensured she retained his attention.

Leandro relived the sensation of that lush ripe mouth pleasuring him and almost grabbed her into his arms there and then. Breathing in deep, hanging onto control of his rebellious body by a hair’s breadth, he watched her step out of her flat shoes and into a pair of peep-toe polka-dot high heels that only accentuated the eccentricity of her attire. His devouring gaze zeroed in on the star tattoo etched above one fragile ankle. She wore a short black floral print dress belted to her tiny waist and black leggings that stretched only to mid-calf. Yet even though his tastes had never run to the Bohemian and he was a very conventional guy, he thought she looked incredibly sexy.

‘You didn’t tell me how you found out where I lived,’ Molly reminded him.

‘No, I didn’t, did I?’ Leandro fielded, his attention torn between the charms of her voluptuous mouth and the shadowy cleft visible between her high breasts when he gazed down at her. ‘I had you followed home that morning-’

‘You did…what?’ Molly gasped in shock.

His level dark gaze had an unrepentant gleam. ‘I told you that I wasn’t prepared to lose you again, gatita.’

‘But followed? By whom?’

‘My security team.’

‘Just how rich are you?’ Molly whispered, her incredulity unhidden.

‘I’ll never go hungry,’ Leandro quipped. ‘And when I find you living like this, it only makes me more determined than ever to look after you.’

Molly lifted her chin, feline green eyes flashing an acid shade of warning in his direction as she squared up to him. ‘Only children need looking after-’

‘Or very beautiful women,’ Leandro, who had never suffered from a lack of assurance, ignored her aggressive stance and closed his hands to her shoulders to draw her closer.

‘I didn’t want to see you again. I made that quite clear,’ Molly told him bluntly.

Leandro backed her up against the wall and pinned her there, his hands closing over hers to imprison her. Ensnared by scorching dark golden eyes, Molly could barely get breath into her straining lungs. Her awareness of the raw masculinity of his lean powerful body soared sky-high. Her nipples pinched tight beneath her clothes, erotic heat tingling low in her pelvis. ‘Dios mio!’ he growled in urgent contradiction. ‘You little liar. You did want to see me again and right now, you’re burning up for me.’

Molly’s knees were wobbling, but she continued to fight. ‘You have quite an opinion of yourself-’

‘Why not?’ His brilliant eyes burned with unholy amusement as he bent down to her level to murmur huskily, his breath stirring the curls at her temples, ‘Didn’t you give me good cause that night?’

A hot, mortifying wave of guilty pink washed Molly’s delicate features. ‘I don’t want to talk about that-’

‘Talking in the bedroom is a heavily overrated pursuit, querida.’ With a hungry groan of impatience, Leandro hauled her up to him and crushed her soft, pouting lips with ravenous urgency beneath his. As he banded both arms about her slight body to hold her to him she wrapped her arms round his neck, her breath rasping in her throat and her heart pounding inside her chest. She had forgotten how incredible he tasted and the sheer extent of the primal rush of excitement he could induce just by plunging his tongue into her mouth. He did it again and again too, racking her with desire and enforcing his sensual dominance.

There was no thought of denial in Molly’s head. His deep drugging kisses and the lancing invasion of his tongue destroyed her defences and brought her treacherous body stingingly back to life. She wanted more. She told herself that in a couple of minutes she would push him away, tell him to leave, spell out the news that he had picked on the wrong woman. Just another minute, she bargained helplessly with herself while his skilful hands shaped the tender thrust of her breasts and sent a piercing arrow of longing zinging from her sensitised nipples to the damp core at the heart of her.

She writhed under him, frustrated by the barrier of their clothes. Her hunger for him was like a leaping flame tormenting her from inside her own skin. And evidently fully aware of the unbearable ache that was building up inside her, he cupped her mound beneath the leggings, making her gasp and moan and part her slender thighs in encouragement. The power of her own wanton response shattered her.

‘You want me very much, gatita,’ Leandro husked thickly, his hot appreciative gaze pinned to her. ‘And you make me want as I didn’t know I could want all the time.’

All the time, three crucial little words that jolted Molly, for she was facing the same challenge. She couldn’t get him out of her head, day or night. It was as if she had caught a virus for which there was no cure. He pressed his mouth to the unbelievably tender skin below her ear and used the graze of his teeth to make her gasp and quiver, while he fought through layers of clinging fabric to touch her where she most craved his touch. Her spine arched, her body jackknifing, a cry of helpless pleasure escaping her when he found the hot, moist cleft that revealed her response. She was desperate for his caresses, her breath sobbing in her throat while she twisted and turned beneath the sensuous stroke of his fingers. The excitement built so fast she couldn’t catch up with it. Instead she was wholly at the mercy of exquisite sensation while the knot of need tightening low in her stomach coiled ever tighter.

‘Stop fighting it,’ Leandro urged rawly, devouring the expressions on her passion-glazed features and the thrashing abandonment of her excitement.

She couldn’t find a voice to answer him with. Control was long gone. He pushed a single finger into her tight entrance and suddenly she lost it completely, flying into the sun with an ecstatic cry while ripples of ever-spreading wondrous pleasure spread out from her pelvis to engulf her entire trembling body. A split second later she went into shock at what she had allowed to happen.

‘Before I bury myself in your beautiful body, there’s a conversation we really must have, querida,’ Leandro purred. ‘I’ll get the champagne.’

With frantic hands, Molly put her clothing back in order while her treacherous body continued to sing and tingle with sensual euphoria. She was convinced she would never look Leandro in the face again. She had intended to throw him out and instead she had allowed him to give her a mind-blowing orgasm. There was no explaining that, no going back from that point to a claim of coolness. He had made a bonfire of her nonsensical rejection and trampled her pride in the ashes.

‘Glasses?’ Leandro prompted silkily when he reappeared to set the ice bucket down on the dresser.

Shame engulfing her in a tidal wave, Molly slid off the bed in an eel-like motion. ‘I realise that I’m giving you very mixed messages, but I really don’t want to go to bed with you again,’ she proclaimed in a tight defensive tone.

Leandro dealt her an amused appraisal, knowing that he would cherish the past few minutes for a very long time. She was blushing like a schoolgirl, her lack of sophistication never more obvious to him or more appealing. ‘I’m not fixated on beds, querida. The way I’m feeling right now, anywhere will do, any way,’ he savoured softly, heightening her colour with his intimate tone. ‘Glasses?’

‘I don’t have any.’ Molly backed away from the bed much as if it was the scene of the crime. ‘What was the conversation you said we had to have?’

Leandro tensed at that timely reminder and then breathed in deep. ‘On the night that we met I didn’t use condoms when we made love. Are you using any contraception?’

Molly stared at him, alarm bells jangling noisily inside her head in tune with startled shock waves of dismay and anger. ‘No,’ she admitted tightly. ‘But I assumed that you did.’

‘I’m afraid not, but I think it’s unlikely that you will conceive,’ Leandro admitted in a calm, dismissive tone of finality that only inflamed her temper more. ‘I assume you have no idea one way or the other as yet?’

‘You assume right and I’m glad to know that you’re not losing any sleep over the risks you took with my body and my future!’ Molly slung at him in furious attack. ‘But the risk of falling pregnant is not just something that I can shrug off and hope for the best about. How could you be so careless?’

His lean, strong face was unreadable, his brilliant dark eyes semi-screened by his luxuriant black fringe of lashes. ‘It took two of us to be careless,’ he reminded her drily.

Molly threw her head back abruptly as though he had slapped her. ‘You’re a lot more experienced than I am. I was in an unfamiliar situation and I just didn’t think of that angle-what’s your excuse?’

Leandro shot her a sardonic appraisal. ‘I don’t make excuses. I made an oversight for which I apologise. If there’s a problem, we’ll face it together and I will give you my full support, but I seriously doubt that that necessity will arise.’

Molly wondered angrily why he was so infuriatingly confident that there would not be consequences. Did he lead a charmed life in which nothing ever went badly wrong for him? He had made love to her three times. Didn’t he appreciate that she was young and fertile?

‘I do not want to be pregnant!’ she told him vehemently. ‘In fact the very idea of it terrifies me-’

‘This is my problem as well,’ Leandro cut in forcefully.

‘But I can’t dismiss it as easily as you appear to. Maybe because I know that the world is not a forgiving place for a child who is born against other people’s wishes, a child whose very existence may cause offence-’

His ebony brows had pleated in a bemused frown as she became increasingly emotional. ‘Qué demonios? What are you trying to say to me?’

‘I’m illegitimate and the result of my mother’s affair with someone else’s husband,’ Molly spelt out grittily, her slim hands tightening into taut fists of constraint by her sides. ‘My mother died when I was nine and my grandmother took charge of my older half-sister and me. My sister was born within a marriage. My grandmother handed me over to social services for adoption because, as far as she was concerned, I was an embarrassment who should never have been born.’

Leandro was more unsettled than he was prepared to admit by that sad little tale. He knew that births had been concealed and most probably worse had happened in his own family’s history over the centuries. He also knew that even in today’s more liberal society, respectability and other people’s opinions still remained his mother’s most pressing concern. She kept his younger sister, Julieta, on a tight social leash, fearful that too much freedom would lead to embarrassing media headlines.

‘I’m sorry that you had that experience-’

‘Talk’s cheap!’ Molly sizzled back at him. ‘But I don’t want any child of mine to suffer that kind of rejection.’

‘There won’t be a child. Let’s tackle trouble if it comes, not look for it in advance,’ Leandro advised drily.

‘But what are you going to do if I am pregnant?’ Molly spun away, her voice shrill with her angry distress, for she knew that the fragile foundations of her security would be utterly destroyed by the advent of single parenthood. She worked unsocial hours in a casual job without prospects. There was no room for childcare in her tight budget, no supportive family circle to help out and she knew all too well how hard it was to raise children alone, for hadn’t her birth mother failed dismally at the same task?

‘We’ll tackle that when and if it happens. Are you always such a pessimist?’ Leandro enquired with silken derision, exasperated by her angry attack over the risk of something that he was convinced was unlikely to happen. ‘Such a tragedy-queen?’

A furious flush lit Molly’s cheeks at that crack and she stepped forward. ‘How dare you?’ she snapped. ‘This is my life we’re talking about in the balance, not yours. So I want to know where I stand. Why shouldn’t I? I’m pretty sure that the best you’ll offer me in a tight corner will be the cash for a termination!’

His lean, darkly handsome face clenched with distaste. A storm of outrage roared through Leandro. ‘How dare you make such an assumption?’ he demanded in a seething undertone. ‘That is not how I would behave.’

‘Well, whatever!’ Molly shot back at him, her furious distress undiminished by that assurance. ‘Let’s hope we never have to explore that predicament.’

Leandro had had more than enough drama for one morning and he refused to be the ongoing target of her resentment and disdain. His lean, strong face was etched into forbidding lines and his stunning eyes were hot with indignation. ‘When are you planning to take responsibility for your own behaviour? And stop trying to blame me for it?’

Mortified colour washed Molly’s face, for he hit right home with that rejoinder. ‘Right now, all I want is for you to leave-’

‘Don’t worry,’ Leandro derided. ‘I have no desire to stay.’

Just at that moment the bedroom door opened and framed Jez’s broad, solid frame. He stared at her and Leandro with frowning blue eyes. ‘Why are you shouting, Molly? What’s going on in here?’

‘Leandro was just about to leave,’ Molly snapped.

‘I’m Jez Andrews, Molly’s friend,’ Jez addressed Leandro while at the same time taking up a protective stance beside Molly. ‘I think you should do as she asks and go now.’

Leandro was taken aback by the sudden appearance of another male and aggressive instincts threatened his rigid self-discipline. He was quick to recognise the possessive light in the younger man’s expression. Annoyance and suspicion slivered through Leandro, for it was not only obvious that Molly and Jez lived below the same roof but also that they were on familiar terms with each other.

‘You know how to get in touch with me if you need to,’ Leandro drawled in a tone of pure ice.

Molly was frozen where she stood until she heard the slam of the front door. Then she crumpled and tears rained down her face. Even while she fought to get a grip on herself, all the pent-up emotions of recent days were taking their toll and overflowing. Unused to her crying, Jez wrapped his arms round her in an awkward hug.

‘Who on earth was that bloke?’ Jez demanded when she had calmed down a little. ‘And what’s he got to do with you?’

After that, the whole story came tumbling out because Molly was so unnerved by the fear that she might fall pregnant she just had to get her feelings off her chest there and then. Before her reddened eyes, Jez’s expression grew more and more censorious. Although he said nothing and uttered no criticism, his surprise at her behaviour spoke volumes and pierced her pride. He was, however, a good deal more vocal when it came to Leandro.

‘A girl like you doesn’t belong in a limo.’ Jez saw her wince and hastened to add, ‘A bloke with that kind of money could only be messing around with you because he’s bored with his own kind.’

Jez had a shrewd streak about people that Molly respected. ‘Imagine asking me to be his mistress, though!’ she framed with a humourless laugh. ‘Do I look the ornamental type?’

‘I wish I’d thumped him,’ Jez growled, unamused. ‘You can do a hell of a lot better than him-’

‘Not if I fall pregnant,’ Molly interposed with a shiver of fear. ‘If I end up with a baby my whole life and my prospects go right down the tubes. I’ll never stop struggling to survive.’

‘Let’s hope for the best,’ Jez advised stonily, his face tightening while he considered that possibility. ‘You know, I always used to think that eventually you and I might get together.’

Molly settled dismayed eyes on him, for it had never occurred to her that he might look on her as anything other than an honorary sister. ‘But we’re friends-’

‘Yes, well.’ Jez shrugged defensively. ‘Why shouldn’t friendship be the first step in something more? We get on well. We know each other right through. There’d be no nasty surprises. It would have made a lot of sense.’

‘Don’t say any more,’ Molly urged unhappily, for she had never once considered Jez in that light. ‘All you’re doing is reminding me that getting involved with Leandro was like giving way to a sudden attack of madness.’

‘No point beating yourself up about it,’ the heavily built blond man pointed out in a tone of practicality. ‘That won’t change anything.’

Molly attended two craft fairs that weekend and the sale of several pieces of pottery lifted her spirits. As the following week wore on her mood steadily declined when her menstrual cycle failed to deliver the reassurance she sought. She was working long hours and her usual energy seemed strangely absent. She began feeling incredibly tired at about the same time as she started feeling nauseous and off her food. Anxiety took her over then, because she feared the worst and the shadows below her eyes deepened while she lay awake at night fretting. She was planning to go out and buy a pregnancy test when Jez persuaded her to go to the doctor instead to get a more reliable diagnosis.

The doctor was very thorough and he assured her that there was no doubt that she was carrying her first child. Although Molly had believed she was prepared for that possibility, she was devastated when her biggest fear was confirmed. Jez phoned her from his workshop to ask the result and she gave it in a deadened voice, staring at her reflection in the hall mirror while she tried and failed to imagine her slender body swollen with pregnancy.

A baby, a real living, breathing, crying baby, would be looking to her for total support in less than nine months’ time. A termination wasn’t an option for her. Her own mother had given her the chance of life in equally unpromising circumstances and Cathy had done her best, even if her best hadn’t been that great. Could she herself do any less for her own child? She dug out Leandro’s business card and decided to send him a text message, because she really couldn’t face speaking to him just at that moment and when they had parted on such bad terms.

‘I need to see you URGENTLY.’

In the conference room of the Carrera bank where he was involved in a meeting, Leandro read the message and appreciated the appeal of the block capitals. He was convinced that she had discovered that she was not pregnant and now wanted to tell him that she was sorry for making such a fuss. He walked into his office to phone her.

‘Join me for dinner tonight,’ he suggested. ‘I’ll send a car to pick you up at eight.’

Molly winced at the prospect of breaking her news over a dining table and then scolded herself for caring about such a triviality. He was as much to blame as she was for the development, so why was she getting all worked up at the prospect of telling him?

When Jez came home from work, he joined her in the kitchen. ‘How do you feel?’ he enquired awkwardly.

‘Like I want to kick myself for being so stupid,’ she told him truthfully.

‘Have you told him yet?’

‘I’m telling Leandro tonight-not that I expect that will make much difference to my plans-’

‘You already have plans?’ Jez queried.

‘Just getting on with life as best I can,’ Molly muttered dully.

Jez reached for her hand where it was clenched on the edge of the sink. ‘But you don’t have to do it alone…’

Molly looked up him uncertainly. ‘What do you mean?’

Jez breathed in slow and deep. ‘I’ve thought hard about this since we had our conversation, so take a minute and think about it before you say no. I’m willing to marry you and bring up the kid as my own-’

Molly was astonished by that suggestion. ‘Jez, for goodness sake, I wouldn’t let you sacrifice yourself like that-’

‘I want to help, Molly. Together we could make a good team,’ the blond man reasoned earnestly. ‘I’m not expecting you to love me but, in time, I’m sure we’d become closer.’

Tears were clogging Molly’s throat and she was too choked up to speak. His generosity was almost too much for her to bear. She grasped both his hands in hers and squeezed them to express her feelings. But for the first time she didn’t feel she could say anything she liked to Jez because she now knew that he thought of her as more than a friend and cherished hopes that she could not fulfil. She loved and trusted him, but she wasn’t attracted to him and felt that anything other than platonic friendship would be doomed by that fact.

‘You’re too kind for your own good,’ she told him chokily and she went off to get dressed, feeling more than ever as though her security was breaking up beneath her feet. How could she possibly remain living in Jez’s home now? It wouldn’t be fair to him if she stayed on. He was too involved in her life and it wasn’t healthy. He was less likely to make the effort to meet someone else while she was still around, she acknowledged unhappily.

Dead on the hour of eight, a uniformed chauffeur rang the bell to tell her that the limousine was waiting for her…