Latin Lovers: Passionate Spaniards: The Spaniard's Marriage Demand / Kept by the Spanish Billionaire / The Spanish Doctor's Convenient Bride. Maggie Cox
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hurt too …hurt that he seemed to be blaming her for getting pregnant when he was equally responsible. Carefully writing down her address and telephone numbers with a hand that could not cease its shaking, she handed the paper back to him in silence. He folded it in two and sighed deeply.
‘Gracias. Now you should go.’
Stunned but not entirely surprised, Isabella smoothed her hands anxiously down the soft folds of her dress. Raising her eyes to his, she ventured softly, ‘This isn’t the end of your world, you know. You can carry on as normal if you like …you don’t even have to stay in touch. I for one am so glad that I have Raphael and nothing will change my feelings on that score.’
He cursed. Out loud and in voluble Spanish. Isabella took a step back from the fury in his handsome face.
‘You seriously believe that I am capable of calmly walking away from my own son when I have only just learned of his existence? Well, listen to this, Isabella, and listen well. It is impossible that I would even consider such a thing! Have you not heard of the word “honour” in your country? What kind of men are you used to seeing? Clearly the kind who know nothing of that word!’ He took a deep despising breath and drove his hand with force through his already tousled hair. ‘I will come and visit Raphael tomorrow at five o’clock when my business in town is concluded. Unfortunately I cannot put it off at this short notice even if I would like to, which I assure you I would.’
‘You’ll have to make it around six-thirty, not five,’ Isabella said breathlessly, apprehensive of a further display of hot Latin temper. ‘Raphael is at nursery until a quarter to six when I pick him up after work.’
‘You have our nine-month-old son in a nursery?’
‘I have to work, Leandro. How else do you think I support us?’
‘He is clearly too young to be farmed out to strangers! What about your parents? Can they not take care of him while you are out at work?’
‘No.’ Swallowing hard, Isabella wondered how to explain to Leandro that, although her parents clearly did love their grandchild, they very much valued their own independence and would certainly not even remotely consider helping out with child-minding on a regular basis! ‘I’m afraid they are not the kind of supportive parents that would do that.’
Leandro’s expression was almost frighteningly forbidding. ‘That is too bad,’ he commented. ‘We will clearly have to come to some far better arrangements for the future.’
She felt a bolt of alarm shoot through her at his ominous-sounding words, and Isabella’s dark eyes cleaved anxiously to his resolute and steely glance.
‘What do you mean by that exactly?’ she demanded.
‘We will discuss everything tomorrow,’ he said firmly, absolutely refusing to be drawn.
Around six-fifteen the following evening, Isabella let herself hurriedly into her neat terraced house, flicked on the lights, raced straight through to the living room with her son fast asleep in her arms and laid him carefully down on the plump old-fashioned sofa with its loose floral cover. Stripping off her coat, she left it on a mismatched armchair bedecked with a maroon fringed shawl, then rushed back out into the hallway to turn on the central heating. The house was far too cold for comfort this evening. Or was that only because the blood in her veins kept turning to ice at the thought of what Leandro might be going to propose for their future? Hers and Raphael’s?
The heating on, Isabella made her way into the kitchen, filled the kettle, found some cups and saucers, got the milk from the fridge, then returned to the living room to check on her infant. Raphael lay peacefully asleep, his plump, round cheeks rosy with health and his curly black hair made even more fetchingly tousled by his nap. Glancing across at the fringed shawl beneath her discarded coat, she stripped it off the chair and arranged it tenderly around her son. Softly, ever so gently so as not to wake him, Isabella touched her lips to his small downy cheek. Her heart squeezed with love. She would fight off rampaging lions with her bare hands to protect this child if it came to it.
Isabella didn’t know what conclusions Leandro had reached about the situation now that he’d had time to consider it further, but whatever he’d decided, she consoled herself, he would have to consider her needs and wishes first. She might have identified him as the child’s father when she’d registered Raphael’s birth details with the authorities, but that still did not give him inalienable rights to dictate his son’s future. They would have to discuss things in a calm, civilised manner and come to the best solution for all of them.
Determinedly dragging her thoughts away from possible disasters, she sighed, allowing her imagination to contemplate once again the full extraordinary reality of seeing Leandro yesterday. Coming face to face with him once more had been wonderful as well as nerve-racking because of what she had to tell him. Last night, sleep had mostly evaded her because her thoughts had been full of the memory of how good he had looked …how tanned and fit and gorgeous—that unusually light-coloured gaze of his sending hot sparks of delight and awareness to every corner of Isabella’s being. And at least he had wanted to see Raphael …He hadn’t rejected his existence outright as she’d secretly feared he might.
The ringing doorbell had her dashing out into the hallway and quickly checking her appearance in the mirror there as she passed. Grimacing that she hadn’t even had a moment to pull a brush through her hair, she adjusted her sweater more smoothly over her breasts, absently ran her hands across her hips in smart black jeans, and just before she opened the door sent up a swift passionate prayer for courage and guidance. She had to tread carefully but firmly and make Leandro see that her main concern was her son’s well being and not just her own. She would do nothing that would threaten his security in any way. It was vital that he recognised that. Now as Isabella saw him make a swift yet intense examination of her appearance as she opened the door—before greeting her with a very serious ‘hola’—answering heat assailed her body in a tumultuous rush. As well as stirring desire she didn’t want to feel, it frustrated her like mad that she felt pretty damn defence-less when he looked at her like that—as though he was mentally stripping her naked. And not just her body—because it was as though all the contents of her heart and mind were helplessly exposed to him too.
She wondered how on earth the actresses in the films he directed managed to remember their lines when Leandro gazed at them like that. Then she tried to quell the hot flare of jealousy that exploded in her stomach at the mere thought …Today he was wearing a clearly expensive yet well-worn brown leather jacket opened over a black cotton shirt with dark blue denim jeans. With his dark hair edging onto his shoulders and his jaw unshaven, his raffish appearance was more suggestive of adventure and danger than ‘ordinary’ life as lived by most people.
Isabella found herself wondering what her grandfather would have made of him. Would he have thought Leandro a ‘suitable’ man to have a relationship with his granddaughter and be the father of her baby? A stab of sadness throbbed through her at the memory of the man she had loved even more than the stepfather who had helped raise her. The man who had even bequeathed her his house so that she would never be without a home of her own …Raphael Morentes was the kindest-hearted, most loving man she had ever known. But Isabella also reminded herself that a proper relationship with Leandro was not really on the cards. They had slept together, yes, and made a baby—but that did not mean that a fully committed relationship naturally followed. Now she was going to acquaint him with his son and that fraught, no doubt emotive introduction was going to take every ounce of her composure to help her get through it.
‘You found us all right, then?’
She was papering over the cracks of her trepidation with inconsequential small talk and was not surprised when Leandro did not immediately answer. Stopping at the door of the living room, she gestured towards the kitchen. ‘Shall we have a drink first? The weather is still so cold. You could probably do with a drink to—’
‘I would like to see my son, Isabella,’ he interceded clearly, his glance into her startled eyes unremittingly and disturbingly focused …
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