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Leonora had the sense that this didn’t happen very often with a man like Gabriel. She nodded her head slightly and sat down.
He sat down again too, but sat forward, with his hands clasped between his legs. He looked at her.
‘It was not my intention to make you feel as though I thought of you as a wife for hire, based on your recent history. As I told you, there’s been pressure on me for some time to marry and start a family, but no woman has ever made me feel remotely inclined to do so—until the other night and you. Every moment in your company only makes me feel more sure that this is the right decision for both of us.’
Leonora cursed him silently. His deep mesmeric voice was drawing her in, making it all sound so reasonable. Logical.
‘You know this world, Leo, and you know how to navigate it. I think you share my disdain for it, and yet understand that we need it too. We are bound to it whether we like it or not.’
Leo. She should feel irritated by the way he’d shortened her name—only ever done by her family—but, dammit, she liked it. It felt intimate in a way that it didn’t feel with her family. Private.
‘You and your family need urgent financial help. Matías can’t afford to stay at that school for ever. And what will you do if the bank takes your castillo as payment for the debts still outstanding?’
Leonora went cold inside. ‘How do you know about Matías’s school?’
‘I know someone with a child in that school, so I know how expensive it is.’
Leonora refused to let herself feel vulnerable. ‘I’m sure if we lost everything and Matías had to come out of
the school we’d manage.’
‘I don’t doubt you would. But would they? Your parents? Who have only known a life of privilege and luxury, even in spite of what’s happened? And would Matías survive without the care of special teachers and assistants? You’d have to work—you wouldn’t be there all the time.’
Leonora knew he was right. Her parents would never survive in the real world, in a small apartment—if they were lucky enough even to get one. Neither would Matías. She had less sympathy for her parents, but Matías... She’d do anything for him. To keep him safe and secure.
Gabriel said, ‘And there’s something else you’re not acknowledging.’
His voice was lower. Seductive. Leonora really wanted to avoid his dark, knowing gaze, but she couldn’t.
She feigned nonchalance even as her skin tingled with anticipation. ‘What’s that?’
She knew, though.
She knew with every gathering rush of heat that pulsed through her body.
‘We want each other.’
Just that. Stark. To the point.
‘I don’t like to play games, Leonora, life is too short.’
‘And believe me,’ he said, ‘that’s as solid a reason as any to embark on marriage. We have social compatibility and mutual chemistry. A powerful combination.’
Not really understanding why she felt such a need to resist his pull, Leonora said, ‘But it won’t last—it never does, does it? And what then?’
Gabriel raised a brow. ‘This wasn’t a concern of yours when you agreed to marry Sanchez? A man you hadn’t even slept with?’
Leonora stood up abruptly, feeling cornered. She paced away to a window that took in the expanse of the castillo’s impressive back lawn. She was being a total hypocrite—she knew she was. And she was deluding herself. She did know why she was resisting his pull. But how could she explain that she had found it easier to agree to marry a man she hadn’t been intimate with, who she hadn’t even wanted, than this man, with whom she had been intimate and who she did want, with a hunger that made her feel so many things it was overwhelming?
She realised that Gabriel was infinitely more disturbing to her on so many levels because he affected not only her equilibrium, physically, but also her emotions. She’d grown up in a world where you kept your emotions hidden behind a polite front.
Her parents had never really approved of Leonora and Matías’s affectionate relationship. But Matías didn’t understand about keeping his emotions hidden and Leonora loved him for that. When her parents had sent Matías to the special school they’d told her that it was because he was becoming too attached to her. Too dependent. She’d always felt guilty that her need for his uncomplicated love and affection was the reason he’d been sent away, and while she knew now that he’d been sent away for lots of other reasons, to do with his own self-development in the right environment, she still felt guilty about that need in her for emotional sustenance. As if it was a weakness.
And that was why Gabriel scared her. Because he touched on those needs and wants inside her. That was why it had been easy to say yes to Lazaro. Because he hadn’t disturbed her emotions on any level...
* * *
Gabriel looked at Leonora’s graceful, willowy form. She oozed elegance in spite of the tense lines of her body. She was perfect. For him. For his life. And yet she resisted.
