The Spanish Billionaire’s Pregnant Wife

CHAPTER SIX

MOLLY examined her reflection in the wardrobe mirror from every angle.

Certainly Leandro would not be able to accuse her of looking insufficiently bridal. She had purchased every frivolous piece of finery possible for the occasion, right down to the filmy underwear and the lace garter adorned with a blue ribbon. Her dress was a fairy-tale dream of fluid organza styled over matt satin. The glass beading and metallic embroidery on the basque bodice and full skirt caught and reflected the light. Diamanté butterfly combs confined her mane of curls to the back of her head and, keen not to overdo the frills, she had added nothing else.

‘Are you ready?’ Jez asked. ‘The limo driver is panicking. But, you know, it’s not too late to change your mind.’

‘I know what I’m doing,’ Molly told her oldest friend. ‘I want my baby to have what I never had-a proper home and a family.’

‘Let’s hope Leandro is up to the challenge,’ the blond man responded drily.

‘I don’t think he’d be so keen to marry me if he wasn’t,’ Molly answered, striving to look more positive than she actually felt. The offer of a bribe not to marry Leandro had seriously dented her confidence. Was it possible that she was unsuitable as a wife for him?

Jez had agreed to act as a witness at the ceremony. Molly was glad to have her friend’s support as the limo ferried them through the traffic to the church. The photographer Molly had engaged for the occasion snapped her on the church steps with her bouquet of pink rose buds and her lucky horseshoe favour and told her that she had a lovely smile. Her heartbeat was pounding frantically fast at the base of throat when she walked down the aisle with a hand braced on Jez’s arm. Leandro, accompanied only by one other man, awaited her at the altar. Sheathed in a charcoal-grey pinstripe suit, which he’d teamed with an immaculate white shirt, he looked breathtakingly handsome.

Leandro, still recovering from the unexpected ordeal of having to pose or the photographer who had intercepted him outside, surveyed Molly, who looked every inch the blushing bride. Her green eyes were luminous pools in her delicate face, her pink mouth as lush as the roses she carried and as full of sensual appeal as the creamy swell of her rounded breasts above the neckline of her romantic dress. As she knelt down by his side it was a challenge for him to take his eyes from her and the tightness at his groin merely intensified.

Molly spoke her vows in a clear voice that betrayed nothing of the nervous butterflies in her tummy. She was fiercely aware of Leandro’s proximity. She allowed her gaze to linger on his hard, bronzed profile and felt her pulses leap when he turned lustrous dark eyes on her as they exchanged rings. He was her husband now, she thought with a rush of disbelief at the concept when the ceremony ended. He introduced her to his lawyer, who had acted as his witness, and it took her aback that he had not asked a friend to perform the office as she had.

Both witnesses declined the invitation to join them for lunch. Jez gave her an emotional hug as he knew they were flying straight out to Spain after their meal.

‘I can’t believe we’re married,’ Molly told Leandro chattily over the lunch, which was served in a hotel suite. Having been too nauseous to eat earlier in the day, she now made up for it with a healthy appetite.

In comparison, Leandro had felt married from the instant he’d walked into the church. He was already fighting off an oppressive sense of confinement, which had not been helped by his mother’s hysterical last-minute phone call pleading with him to change his mind while assuring him that he would live to regret making the biggest mistake of his life. Perhaps he had been too optimistic in expecting his family to see the sound good sense of his decision. After all, a pregnant bride met two of their expectations at once. He remained uneasily conscious, however, that when he looked at Molly her radiance and glorious curves grabbed him first and made her fertility status the very last thing on his mind.

‘I suppose I’d better get changed,’ she said, rising from the table.

‘No…keep the dress on, querida.’

Molly’s brows pleated. ‘For the flight?’

‘Why not?’ Dark golden eyes hot with hunger, Leandro closed a hand over hers to pull her close and savour the fresh lemony scent that he had come to associate with her presence. ‘I want to take it off you. You can change before we land.’

Colour turned her cheeks poppy-red. His sensual appraisal sent raw sexual awareness shooting through her in a responsive wave. Her nipples swelled and damp heat stirred between her thighs. He had taught her to want him and, although it annoyed her a great deal, she couldn’t yet keep a lid on her desire for his touch.

‘What was your last wedding like?’ Molly asked on the way to the airport, while gritting her teeth and refusing to look at him. The question had been hovering at the back of her mind all day and she had kicked it off her tongue a dozen times before finally sacrificing her pride and voicing it.

Leandro froze as if she had turned a gun on him. ‘I don’t think we should discuss that.’

Offended by his reticence, Molly sent him a glimmering look of suspicion. ‘Why not?’

Leandro breathed in deep. ‘It was different-a big society wedding.’

And that was it, one sentence and he fell silent. Nevertheless, he had said enough to satisfy her curiosity. Molly wished she hadn’t asked, for she was making all the tasteless comparisons he would have condemned. He had pushed out the boat without complaint for his first marriage, which really told her all she needed to know about how he viewed his second excursion into matrimony. But, then, hadn’t he already displayed his indifference to her feelings most effectively? He hadn’t once smiled or paid her a single compliment on the day when all women expected to feel special.

A lot of people turned to stare at her in her wedding dress at the airport. Molly ignored them, but she could feel how much Leandro disliked the scrutiny. His lean, dark features settled into grim lines and his silences got more extended. It didn’t help when his security team weren’t quick enough to prevent a photographer from stepping into their path and taking a flash photo of them.

‘You should have let me get changed,’ Molly told Leandro while he bit back a curse after having been snapped by a paparazzo.

‘I thought you were enjoying the attention, querida,’ Leandro drawled with silken derision. ‘You did dress to attract it and hire a photographer to record the occasion.’

Molly breathed in so deep and long to control her temper that she was vaguely surprised that she didn’t burst with the effort of holding her ire in. She did not require his dislike of public attention to warn her that the VIP lounge was not the place to start an argument with a guy who wouldn’t go down without a very aggressive fight. Biding her time, she clenched her small white teeth together until they had boarded his private jet. Even while she was appreciating the sheer luxurious comfort of the cabin, she was already wondering how soundproofed it would be as she didn’t fancy their row providing entertainment for the air crew.

Layers of white organza foaming all around her, she settled into a leather seat and did up the belt.

‘Possibly asking you to keep the dress on wasn’t a good idea,’ Leandro conceded soon after take-off.

‘Oh, well, at least you didn’t ask me to put a paper bag over my head and pretend I didn’t know you back at the airport!’ Molly snapped back.

An imperious ebony brow climbed. ‘What is the meaning of that strange comment?’

‘That when you criticise me for hiring a photographer, you expose just how unreal your expectations are!’ Molly extended, jerking open her seat belt to plunge upright again. ‘This is supposed to be my wedding day. Unlike you, I haven’t been there and done it before and I would have enjoyed a more memorable occasion. Of course, what I might want doesn’t matter in the least to you…you’re not just naturally authoritative, Leandro-you’re well on the way to being a domineering tyrant!’

‘You’re hysterical,’ Leandro informed her coldly.

‘No, I’m not. If I was hysterical I would be throwing things and screaming. As it is, I’m just furious with you. Of course I wanted photos of my wedding! Some pretence that this was a normal marriage may come in useful in the future. Or would you be happy to tell our child that we have no photos because it was a shotgun wedding and you didn’t see the need to dignify or celebrate the occasion in the usual way?’

Simmering dark golden eyes lit on her with punitive force. ‘If you had wanted a photographer you should have mentioned it to me-’

‘When? You were abroad and I wasn’t allowed to have anything to do with the arrangements,’ she reminded him.

‘I assumed you’d be relieved to have everything taken care of for you,’ Leandro retorted with cool assurance.

‘What was wrong with asking me how I felt about it? But then you don’t ask me anything, do you?’ Molly sniped. ‘You don’t care how I feel, so why would you bother?’

‘If I didn’t care about you, you wouldn’t have that ring on your finger,’ Leandro shot back at her with deflating conviction.

‘No, if you cared you wouldn’t have threatened me to ensure you got that ring on my finger!’ Molly traded without skipping a beat. ‘That was the act of a very ruthless guy, who doesn’t care what he has to do to get what he wants.’

Smouldering dark golden eyes collided with hers in direct challenge. ‘I regard it as a necessary act, driven by my understandable concern for your welfare-an action which ensured that I am now in the perfect position to look after you and my unborn child. Right now, I see that role as my primary purpose in life.’

Her cheeks hectically flushed and her eyes bright with indignation, Molly wanted to jump up and down with thwarted rage. He wasn’t yielding a shamefaced inch to her perfectly reasonable complaints. Even worse, he was justifying his behaviour without a blush. How was she supposed to argue with a guy who wouldn’t roll over and play dead for even twenty seconds? Worse still, a guy who clearly genuinely thought she couldn’t cope without him.

‘You don’t know how to have a relationship, do you?’ Molly accused next, one hand fiercely gripping the back of a seat to stay steady as air turbulence buffeted the plane. ‘Instead of trying to win my trust and appreciation, you used threats. Maybe aggression works well in business, but you can’t forge healthy relationships with human beings that way.’

Watching her sway, Leandro strode forward and swept her right off her feet and up into his arms. He supposed she would see that as aggressive as well, but if she didn’t have enough sense to sit down or at least remove her ridiculously high and unstable shoes, he had no plans to wait until she fell and hurt herself.

‘Put me down, Leandro!’ Molly shouted at him, all fear of being overheard by the air crew overpowered by that very unwelcome demonstration of superior strength.

Leandro elbowed open the door of the sleeping compartment and lowered her with exaggerated gentleness down onto the bed. He sank down on its edge and flipped off her high heels with confident hands. ‘You’re my wife now. Of course I care about you. We will be celebrating our marriage with a very large and stylish party at my home tomorrow evening, gatita.’

Tumbled back against the pillows, her black curls rumpled, Molly opened her green eyes very wide at that announcement. Her wounded feelings were instantly soothed by the idea that he was willing to show her off as a wife at a big party. Such an act would, in some measure, make up for the disappointing wedding he had subjected her to. ‘You should have told me that sooner.’

‘I don’t like parties much more than I like weddings,’ Leandro confided.

Locked in connection with his heavily lashed dark eyes, Molly was finding it a challenge to breathe. He had a lot of faults, but he was gorgeous to look at, she conceded abstractedly, the hum of his magnetic attraction pulsing through her like a wake-up call and stealing what remained of her annoyance. Her fingers closed over the tip of his silk tie to tug him down to her. ‘You’re a lost cause. You don’t tell your wife something like that on your wedding day,’ she sighed.

‘Was it that bad?’ he queried in sincere surprise.

‘Yes, but you’re going to make it better,’ Molly muttered, one slender hand curving over a hard, muscular thigh.

Leandro was enthralled by the covetous look in her expressive eyes, the hunger she just couldn’t hide. It set alight a desire that only ever ignited in her radius. He pressed her back against the pillows and captured her pouting pink lips with the intoxicating urgency of his, parting them with a stroke of his wicked tongue and delving deep with a provocation that made her gasp beneath the onslaught and shiver.

Molly surfaced to the discovery that her corset top and bra were being deftly unhooked. She felt limp on the outside and hot as hell on the inside. The little responsive quivers still lingering in intimate places swiftly expanded into wholehearted pleasure when he cupped the warm weight of her bare breasts and his thumbs rubbed the protruding pink points of her nipples. The stiff, swollen peaks were tormentingly sensitive and the feel of his mouth on the throbbing crests soon wrenched a moan from her throat while her hips writhed in helpless reaction.

‘I love your breasts, querida,’ Leandro husked, lingering over the creamy swells to ensure that he wrung the utmost enjoyment from her responsive body.

She was twisting under him when he dragged his appreciative mouth from a lush wet bud and dispensed with her flowing skirt. He sprang off the bed to remove his jacket and tie. As he peeled off his shirt Leandro feasted his masculine gaze appreciatively on his bride’s bewitching appearance in delicate white panties and lace stockings. All of a sudden he was willing to concede that marriage could have definite compensations.

‘You look fantastically sexy,’ he told her in a roughened undertone. ‘I can’t take my eyes off you.’

Molly was suffering from a similar problem. The golden-skinned physique he was revealing as he stripped was drop-dead gorgeous, from his well-defined pec and ab muscles to his narrow hips and long, strong thighs. Her admiring appraisal sank to the potent erection visible below his clinging boxers. A tight feeling knotted deep in her pelvis and a surge of answering heat washed up through her. Embarrassed by her susceptibility to his spectacular dark good looks, she focused on her bare toes instead. The strength of her passion for him shocked her.

When he came down on the bed beside her she closed her arms round him, loving the scent of his skin and the warm, hair-roughened feel of him against her own softer skin. She wasn’t going to fall in love with him, though, she warned herself. She was darned if she would give him more than he was prepared to offer her. He extracted her from her remaining garments and slowly worked his erotic way down over her squirming body, giving her pleasure with his every caress. The tense sensation at the swollen heart of her was like a sweet pain that kept on twisting tighter and tighter while her squirming hips dug into the mattress beneath her, blindly seeking the satisfaction he withheld.

His hair brushed her stomach, his tongue dipping to swirl round the shallow indentation of her navel before progressing to a more intimate destination between her slender thighs. She went rigid with surprise, but he was persuasive and her body was too hot for her to resist. The wild, fierce longing inside her had neither conscience nor shame. Wherever he touched she burned, her heart thumping frantically fast in receipt of the exquisite delight of his exploration. She didn’t recognise herself in that storm of excitement that drove her out of control and left her helpless in the spellbinding hold of his caresses. A single forefinger probed her tight delicate entrance and she cried out and bucked, feverishly ready for him.

‘Dios mio, querida…I can’t wait,’ Leandro confessed in a throaty growl of impatience.

Her excitement was at an unbearable height when he pulled her to him and began to push into her wet, silky depths. The pleasure was so intense for her that she cried out. He stole the sound with his mouth. And then he was moving, driving his thick, virile shaft into her, satisfying the hollow ache that had tormented her with the energising force and rhythm of his masculine need. She rocked up to receive him and he pushed a hand below her bottom to hold her there while he ground into her with ravenous hunger.

‘Nothing has ever felt this good,’ Leandro groaned with earthy satisfaction, scorching golden eyes welded to her as he took and gave pleasure, a faint sheen of sweat dampening his lean, bronzed face.

The waves of excitement came closer and closer together until her awareness exploded into a world of searing light and ecstatic sensation. Her whole body clenched in the melting throes of her climax and he shuddered over her and thrust deeper still so that the rapturous tremors quivering through her went on and on and left her drowning in hot, sweet pleasure.

‘Hmm.’ Leandro growled, rolling back on the pillows and lifting her over him. ‘In bed you’re absolute perfection,’ he confided in a tone thick with male satisfaction.

Her arms easing round him while she revelled in the kisses he was stringing across her brow, Molly wondered how she really felt about that particular compliment. She supposed sex was the true single source of her attraction and, whether she liked it or not, a very important component in the future success of their marriage. She supposed it was unrealistic and greedy for her to want more than that from a guy who she felt was rather out of her league when it came to looks and success.

‘I’d like to stay here for hours, but it won’t be long until we land. A helicopter will fly us to the castle, where I know my family will be waiting to meet you,’ Leandro advanced without any audible enthusiasm.

Molly’s head shot up, tousled black curls almost standing on end. ‘What castle?’ she gasped.

‘My home.’

‘You live in a…castle?’ Molly prompted in a panic. ‘And I’m going to meet your family immediately?’

Leandro watched in astonishment as his bride leapt free of him and off the bed. ‘What’s wrong?’

‘Look at me!’ she launched at him in dismay as she caught her reflection in a mirrored wardrobe. ‘I’m a mess and what am I going to wear?’

‘Your cases are here-’

‘But I don’t know what to wear in a castle.’ Molly studied him with fierce resentment, because she hated the feeling that she was out of her depth and the casually proffered news that he lived in a castle had driven that fact home hard enough to hurt.

Still stark naked, she threw herself at one of the cases and tried to haul it off the floor.

‘What are you doing?’ Leandro sprang up to snatch the suitcase off her and lift it on to the bed. ‘Don’t try to lift anything that heavy.’

On her knees on the carpet, she was fumbling for her keys in the little Dorothy bag she had carried to the church. Leandro draped his shirt over her shoulders, where it hung like a tent round her tiny frame.

‘What am I going to wear?’ she gasped strickenly, rooting with desperate hands through a pile of casual garments in bright colours. ‘I don’t have anything fancy.’

‘I sent you shopping,’ Leandro reminded her, as if he could not credit the idea that a woman might not take the fullest possible advantage of such an opportunity.

‘But I didn’t buy much because I’m pregnant,’ she told him in frustration. ‘In a few weeks nothing normalsized will fit me and I’ll have to buy maternity stuff, so I decided not to waste money.’

‘It doesn’t matter what you wear,’ Leandro said in an attempt to calm her down.

Molly selected a cerise and black polka dot summer dress. ‘Would this do?’

‘Whatever you wear will be fine. You’re my wife and you don’t have anyone to impress within our home.’

Molly was touched by that assurance, but he had been born to life in a castle and she was apprehensive about meeting his family and did not want to make a bad first impression. ‘It’s not that simple.’

Leandro closed firm hands over her restless ones to force her to look up at him. ‘It is.’

When she redid her make-up, she thought that her flattened, somewhat messy curls and swollen mouth were dead giveaways to the fact that she might just have got out of bed with her husband. Her dress was very casual and in no way impressive. Before they boarded the helicopter she studied Leandro in the act of turning his handsome face up in welcome to the heat of the Spanish sunshine. Well-cut black silk hair in faultless order, he looked infuriatingly immaculate in appearance.

And even though she had told herself that she was prepared for a castle, she was certainly not in any way prepared for the vast building that filled her view as the helicopter swooped in low to land. Leandro’s castle was the genuine article, complete with turrets, towers and medieval walls. It sat on a hill surrounded by extensive landscaped gardens and overlooked a fertile valley covered with woods and olive groves.

‘No wonder you think the sun rises and sets on you,’ Molly breathed, no longer marvelling at the level of his self-assurance. ‘Who on earth are all those people waiting at the entrance?’

‘Our staff. Our marriage is a major event for the household and everyone will want to welcome you to your new home and wish you well.’

Molly was convinced that she could only be a disappointment. Conscious of the barrage of curious eyes nailed to her, she curled herself in by Leandro’s side. ‘They’re all staring,’ she hissed behind teeth arranged into a fixed smile.

‘Probably because they think I robbed the cradle for you,’ Leandro breathed wryly.

But that was the least of the hurdles Molly was about to face. A few steps in through the very grand entrance hall hung with giant paintings and life-size pieces of marble sculpture, she was greeted by Leandro’s mother, a tall, older woman with silvering dark hair and cold eyes. Wearing a formal suit, she was accompanied by two younger women, dressed rather like her clones. Introductions were performed and the atmosphere grew no warmer. Doña Maria and her daughters, Estefania and Julieta, simply stared woodenly at Molly while she struggled to voice friendly words of greeting and behave as though she hadn’t noticed that anything was lacking in her welcome. Goodness, she certainly hoped they were not all going to be sharing the same roof.

Leandro was astonished when he strode into the crowded salon where a formal reception appeared to be in full swing. He saw faces he hadn’t seen in ten or twenty years. His mother had assembled every relation they possessed right down to distant cousins to provide an intimidating line up for his bride.

‘Is this the party you mentioned?’ Molly whispered, feeling horrendously underdressed when she compared the other women’s elegant formal wear and glittering jewellery to her own casual appearance.

‘No, this is only the extended family circle. I’m sorry. I had no idea this was planned.’

Viewing the packed room, Molly swallowed hard, but tilted her chin. She had to ask, she simply had to. ‘Does your mother live with you?’

‘No, she bases herself in Seville these days and makes occasional visits.’ Leandro rested an arm at her spine and guided her round to perform introductions. Many of the guests spoke English, but few had a strong enough grasp of the language for a relaxing conversation. Molly realised that if she intended to fit in, she needed to acquire a working knowledge of Spanish as quickly as possible.

‘I have to learn Spanish fast,’ she informed Leandro in a lull between the excruciatingly polite conversations. ‘Obviously you’re not always going to be around to act as my interpreter. Do you know anyone who would be willing to teach me?’

‘I’ll organise it. Learning even a little Spanish would make it easier for you to settle in.’ Leandro looked down at her and smiled in appreciation. As his lean, darkly handsome face shed all cool and reserve she was spellbound by the change in him and her luminous green eyes locked to him.

His sister Julieta came up and said something to him. ‘A phone call,’ he told Molly. ‘I’ll try not to be long, querida.’

‘Dios mio!’ the pretty brunette murmured, treating Molly’s absorbed face to an assessing appraisal and then laughing. ‘The way you look at Leandro! You’re actually in love with my brother.’

Hot colour drenched Molly’s cheeks and she was about to argue with that statement when it occurred to her that, as Leandro’s bride, it might be wiser for her to keep quiet on that score. Was there some particular way she looked at him? Embarrassment claimed her.

Away from her intimidating mother, Julieta was a different girl. She lifted two glasses from a passing tray and offered one to Molly with a friendly smile.

‘I can’t drink,’ Molly responded with an apologetic grimace.

‘Sorry…I forgot you were preggers,’ the attractive brunette confided in perfect colloquial English. ‘We’re all still in shock about that. It took you five minutes to achieve what Aloise couldn’t manage in five years!’

That one illuminating sentence satisfied Molly’s curiosity on several scores. Her husband’s first marriage had lasted five years and his wife, Aloise, had failed to conceive. Did that history explain why Leandro had been so convinced that Molly wouldn’t fall pregnant? She rather thought it did.

‘Come and meet Fernando,’ Julieta urged, tugging at her elbow. ‘He’s younger and more fun.’

Fernando Santos was the estate manager and a handsome athletic young man in his late twenties. Julieta got very giggly and juvenile with him and the couple exchanged jokes, until Doña Maria sternly beckoned her daughter back to her side from the other side of the room.

‘Are you the person I should ask if there is a vacant shed I could use to house a pottery kiln?’ Molly enquired hopefully, glancing in Leandro’s direction and wondering why her husband was staring fixedly at her just at that moment.

‘Yes, Your Excellency. There may well be a suitable building in the old farmyard,’ Fernando replied. ‘We had to build new sheds for the agricultural machinery and several are now vacant.’

‘Call me Molly,’ Molly suggested. A sunny smile of satisfaction wreathed her animated features at the knowledge that there was no longer a day job preventing her from fulfilling her artistic ambitions and doing what she really wanted to do with her time.

Brown eyes resting admiringly on her vivacious face, Fernando gave her an apologetic look. ‘That would cause offence to your new family. You’re the duke’s wife and the traditional formalities are carefully upheld on the estate.’

‘It’s going to take some getting used to,’ Molly sighed.

‘But I can speak for the whole staff when I tell you that we are all pleased that His Excellency has remarried,’ the young Spaniard told her warmly.

Leandro joined them at that point and Fernando became conspicuously less chatty. Leandro seemed very cool and distant. Following a conversation about the olive groves, carried out in English apparently for her benefit, Leandro walked her out onto the spacious landing. Molly glanced up at him and then stiffened, forewarned by the black ice chill of his dark gaze and the forbidding tension of his lean, powerful face that something was wrong.

‘Keep your distance from Fernando Santos,’ Leandro breathed with cutting cool. ‘Although he is an exemplary employee, he has a sleazy reputation with women and it will do you no good to be seen to enjoy his company to such an extent.’

Thoroughly taken aback by that unexpected rebuke, Molly said, ‘What on earth are you trying to suggest?’

‘That you don’t flirt with him and do maintain a formal distance with him when you meet.’

Furious resentment snaked through Molly’s tense figure. ‘I wasn’t flirting. For goodness’ sake, we were only talking for a few minutes,’ she protested in a vehement undertone. ‘I didn’t have you picked as the jealous type, but thanks for the warning!’

Equally taken aback by that wrathful retaliation, Leandro froze. Aggrieved gold flashed into his intent gaze. ‘I have never been jealous in my life,’ he asserted with freezing dignity. ‘But your behaviour was attracting attention-’

‘On my wedding day? When I’m carrying your child? Is it everyone round here who’s crazy or just you?’ Molly raised a disbelieving brow and stalked away from him in high dudgeon.

A shudder of steely self-restraint raked through Leandro’s big, powerful frame. She was a tiny figure in a bright dress that clung to her firm, rounded curves at breast and hip and skimmed slender thighs that led down into flawless legs. His teeth gritted. He resisted the urge to drag her back and make her listen to him. She liked male company and men liked her. He knew how close she was to Jez Andrews. Her best friend was a man, not a woman, and he was not comfortable with that fact. Another man might easily misinterpret her easy smiles and friendliness as an invitation. She also seemed blissfully unaware of how very sexy she was even in that polka-dot dress, which looked as though it would be more at home on a beach…