Кэтти Уильямс – Latin Lovers: Passionate Spaniards: The Spaniard's Marriage Demand / Kept by the Spanish Billionaire / The Spanish Doctor's Convenient Bride (страница 13)

Madre mia! Leandro’s second sighting of Isabella’s smiling but apprehensive beautiful face in the space of two short hours set his heart to racing. A surge of pleasure so profound captivating him, he found himself momentarily at a loss for words.

‘Hello,’ she greeted him softly, holding the collar of her coat tightly together with one pale slim hand—her protective action and pinked cheeks reminding Leandro just how severely the temperatures had dropped since the morning.

‘Isabella …Come in.’

Moving aside, he suddenly detected something different about her that he hadn’t noticed before. What it was he did not know, because she was, in his eyes, lovelier than ever. As she passed him Leandro was aware of so many things about her that aroused him all at once. From the scent of the sharp cold air that clung to her clothing, to the deep sexy sheen of her blue-black hair beneath the hall light and her delicate, yet almost defiant jaw. A jaw that declared the señorita had claws beneath that deceptively sweet demeanour and should not be underestimated. Had he not had a glimpse of her temper in the library earlier?

Idly wondering how soon it would take him to turn that ignited passion to his own advantage should it arise again, Leandro could not help smiling in secret delectation at the libidinous nature of his thoughts. In the past eighteen months he had been around several lovely feminine creatures—mostly in the arena of his work—and none of them had had such a startling effect on his libido as this woman. In fact as Isabella brushed by him in the small compact hallway the heady pleasure that had mesmerised Leandro on immediate sight returned twice as vehemently. He cleared his throat as he shut the door behind them both, silently advising himself to rein in the trail of lust she unwittingly left in her wake.

‘Turn to your left,’ he instructed a little hoarsely. ‘There is a fire in there to warm you.’

Surveying her with almost jealous possession as she went and stood near the fireplace and stretched out her hands towards the bright dancing flames, Leandro realised it was a supreme test of strength to tear his hungry gaze away for even a moment. It would have been entirely natural to perhaps assume that the time they had been apart had diluted the fierce attraction that Leandro had experienced towards Isabella practically on sight—but he was discovering to his immense satisfaction, that the reverse was true.

‘You have no need of your coat now that you are inside. Here, let me take it.’

Before Isabella could properly compose her nerves, he was at her side, distracting her intensely with his disturbing presence. Her senses were immediately enraptured by the alluring warmth from his body and the disarming masculinity that electrified the air and seemed to be able to make her thoughts focus on not much else but sex. Her knees trembled as he dutifully waited for her to unbutton her coat and pass it to him. When she did, his returning, distinctly flirtatious glance kept her feet rooted to the floor. It was a wonder that smoke hadn’t appeared! Now as she stood before him in the outfit she had so carefully selected to wear this evening to tell him her momentous news she worried that the plain black long-sleeved dress that skimmed her narrow waist and fell in fluid, easy lines to her knees was a little too severe. A little too staid and ‘old maid-ish.’ Well, it was too late now to do anything about it. All Isabella had been mindful of was dressing appropriately in deference to the gravity of what she had to reveal to Leandro.

When he returned from the hallway where he had briefly disappeared to take care of her coat, Isabella glanced quickly away from those ‘heat-inducing’ eyes of his with a jolt. The truth was, it was hard to rest her gaze for long on Leandro Reyes without feeling herself coming apart. He was so ruggedly handsome with his disreputably mussed dark hair and disturbing quicksilver gaze that a girl would have to have zero sex-drive and be deprived of all her senses not to be turned on by just the sight of him. The things an ordinary pair of softly faded denim jeans and a loose white shirt could do to that mouth-wateringly fit body of his, Isabella could wax lyrical about from here until the next millennium, given the opportunity! It was easy to see why she had succumbed so easily to his seduction last spring. Being in Northern Spain and experiencing the magic and allure of all that ancient land had to offer on the Santiago de Compostela trail had definitely helped. But, if she was entirely honest with herself, Isabella knew that Leandro Reyes would have been pretty much impossible to resist wherever she had met him. It was why she had fallen for him so hard and so fast …

‘Why don’t you sit and make yourself at home? What can I get you to drink?’ There was an element of disconcerting amusement in his steady, intense regard and Isabella felt her cheeks shade helplessly scarlet in embarrassment. With his hands on his hips, he drew her very interested attention to that enviably easy way he carried himself and in the next moment she bypassed her self-consciousness to just simply gaze back at all that reined-in muscle and honest-to-God masculine beauty, with unconstrained appreciation. Then, guiltily tearing her gaze away, she glanced quickly round at the high-backed armchair beside the fire with its matching footstool. Her brows knit slightly as Leandro reached ahead of her and swiftly retrieved the sheaf of paper that was lying on the seat so that she could sit down.

‘I have been working,’ he explained, his expression serious as he laid the papers down on a cherrywood sideboard instead.

‘I haven’t disturbed you?’ Isabella responded with concern.

‘Of course not.’ He shrugged those wide shoulders of his with dismissive ease. ‘I have been waiting impatiently for you to arrive.’

‘And you are in London because of your work?’

‘Not just because of my work,’ he replied, ‘although I have taken advantage of being here to meet with some people in my industry.’ There was another conversation going on besides the one that traded actual words back and forth, Leandro considered as heat tightened his groin. They could hardly take their eyes away from each other. His skin felt hot …as though it were burning, and all he could really think about, focus on, was the arrestingly beautiful body beneath that funereal black dress she wore and how soon he might divest her of it to make love to her.

‘But I do not want to discuss my work with you tonight, Isabella,’ he told her out loud, his tone almost grave. ‘As I already told you, that was not the main reason I came to the UK.’

‘It wasn’t?’ In the armchair, Isabella carefully folded her pale hands together in her lap, like a young girl about to solemnly take her first Holy Communion.

‘I wanted to see you again. I should have contacted you before but there has been so much going on in my life in the past few months …’ He shrugged, lifting his hands in a gesture to denote both inevitability and futility. ‘I live a crazy life sometimes.’

‘I realise that you must be a very busy man. But if you want to know the truth, it’s a bit of a shock to have you make contact after this long.’ Why had he come to find her at the library? Isabella fretted not for the first time. Was he hoping for a repeat performance perhaps of what they had shared in Spain? Her heart sank. As much as she cared for Leandro, she did not want to be used like that.

‘But not an unpleasant shock, I hope?’

Was that doubt she saw briefly reflected in his hypnotic grey eyes? How could seeing him again be remotely unpleasant when she had dreamed of such a wonderful occurrence too many times to recall? Especially when their night together had produced her son? Which brought Isabella quite terrifyingly to the thing she most needed to discuss …the thing that was making her feel as if she were about to face a firing squad.

‘No. Leandro …there’s something that I must—’

‘It was remiss of me not to give you my phone number,’ he asserted firmly, ‘but in my position it is not always easy to trust that people will have integrity and not abuse my trust. Do you understand?’

Isabella did. One could say that they had very similar ‘issues’ regarding trust and protecting their own privacy. ‘Yes …’ her gaze locked with his for terrifyingly long seconds ‘ …I understand.’

‘Now …before we go any further, naturally I want to know if you have been seeing anybody else since we last met? If not, then you must also tell me how it is that a beautiful, desirable woman like you has managed to stay unattached for so long?’

Her heart ached with gratitude that Leandro still thought her beautiful and desirable, but almost instantly Isabella returned to the most important part of his question, knowing she couldn’t put off the answer for ever and wondering if his complimentary opinion of her might change when he heard the truth.

‘No, I haven’t been seeing anybody else. And there is a very good reason.’

Silence deepened the tension that was already holding Isabella’s heart in a vice.