Rosalind had set a date for the delivery and had refused to budge.
And there were other reasons why Abigail intended to tell Hal, the driver, to keep the engine running while she flew in, did what was necessary and flew back out.
For the fourth time in under an hour, she checked her phone for any communication from her friend Claire, but a reliable network service had died pretty much as soon as they had hit the first winding country lane and it hadn’t got any better the deeper into the heart of the Cotswolds they had travelled.
With a sigh of frustration, Abigail leant back and watched the dark scenery drift past her. There was something eerie about the veil of snow falling steadily into the inky-black landscape, settling over the open fields. She was accustomed to light pollution and the constant sounds of a city. Out here, she felt as though she could have been on another planet, and she didn’t like that because it made her think of Sam, her ten-month-old son back in London, and the fact that he would be fast asleep by the time she made it back to her house, even if the turnaround here was faster than the speed of light.
And then, hard on the heels of that, she started to think about the weather, started to wonder whether she was imagining it or whether the snow was getting thicker. It was so hard to tell in the darkness. What if these little lanes became impassable? Right now, they seemed fine, but what if she couldn’t make it back to London? She would have to find a bed and breakfast somewhere, and that would entail an overnight stay, and she had never spent a night away from Sam. She couldn’t imagine not waking up in the morning to the sound of his gurgling and little complaining cries that went on until she scooped him up for his morning bottle.
Lost in thought, she surfaced when the vehicle slowed, turned through impressive wrought-iron gates and headed up a long, tree-lined drive that was lit by a series of lanterns. It was beautifully romantic and it was only as they approached the Georgian mansion that she felt the first stirrings of unease.
The place looked deserted, aside from a couple of cars in the circular courtyard. Most of the house was in darkness and she made Hal double check to make sure he had got the address right.
‘You’d better come in with me,’ she said dubiously and Hal, killing the engine, turned round and looked at her, his cheerful face serious.
‘If this is an engagement party,’ he said in his usual direct fashion, ‘then I’ll eat my hat.’ He waved the woollen hat lying on the seat next to him and grinned. ‘I’ve seen more life in a graveyard.’
‘Don’t say that. I have a ring to deliver. Vanessa will be distraught if for some reason the sale falls through.’
‘It won’t, love.’ He smiled kindly at her. ‘You’ll probably find that the action will kick off tomorrow. That’s when the party’s due to take place, isn’t it? The happy couple are probably just relaxing and enjoying some peace before the big day ahead.’
Ten minutes later, Abigail discovered that that couldn’t have been further from the truth.
* * *
Leandro had thoroughly cleared his head of the catastrophic mess that had awaited him when he had arrived back from New York. That was the joy of work. It put everything into perspective. It was a world in which everything was clear cut and everything had a solution. Now, as Julie popped her head round the door to inform him that the last link in the ‘belly up’ chain had arrived, bearing the ill-fated ring, Leandro was obliged to face the final annoying hurdle in putting this matter to rest.
He was, fortunately, in a better frame of mind. Rosalind had shouted and screamed, furious that for the first time in her life someone had scuppered her plans. She had threatened social exclusion, at which point Leandro had made the mistake of laughing, and she had been apoplectic when he had suggested that she was far better off without him, because he simply didn’t have the reserves of energy or patience to give her the sort of attention she required. Nor, he had added, had he the slightest interest in having children. In fact, he could think of nothing worse. So the pitter-patter of tiny feet would have remained an unfulfilled ambition.
Rosalind had got the worst out of her system and he felt that, when she eventually descended from her rage, she would find blessed relief in gossiping about him behind his back and painting whatever picture it took for her to emerge smelling of roses.
For his part, burying himself in work had put everything in perspective.
He had no idea what had driven him to imagine that anything could be more important. His abiding memory of his parents was of two spoiled and wealthy people caught up in a hedonistic whirl, incapable of growing up and certainly incapable of looking after the child they had accidentally conceived. Even less had they been able to deal with the arrival of Cecilia years later, another accident. The task of taking care of his much younger sister had fallen to him and, from a young age, Leandro had worked out that the tumult of emotion and the chaos it was capable of engendering was not for him. A healthy aversion to chaos, disorder and unpredictability had been ingrained in him from a tender age.
As a teenager, he had lost himself in his studies, only surfacing to make sure his sister was okay. As an adult, work had replaced the studies, and when his parents had died, victims of their wild, irresponsible lifestyle—speedboat racing at night in the Caribbean—work had become even more imperative because he had had to rescue what was left of the family finances. There had been no time to kick back and relax. Work was and always would be the most important driving force of Leandro’s life. Rosalind’s hysterics had clarified that for him.
He had told Julie to show the courier into the smallest of the sitting rooms, the one which bore the least evidence of the party that wasn’t going to be taking place. He now made his way there, mind half on the business proposal he had been reading before he had been interrupted.
* * *
On tenterhooks, because whatever was wrong was very, very wrong and the fast exit she had been hoping for now seemed out of the question, Abigail was sitting upright in a chair in the room into which she had been delivered like an unwanted parcel.
Rosalind was, she was given to understand, not there. Hal was to wait in the kitchen where he would be given something to eat and she was to wait for the master of the house in the sitting room where, she hoped, he would take delivery of the ring.
She heard the approach of footsteps on the marble floor and was already rising to her feet, having rehearsed what she needed to say about getting back to London urgently before the weather took a turn for the worse.
Whatever the heck was going on, it wasn’t her problem. She had already reached that conclusion. She’d done her job and, if the loved-up couple had had a tiff, then that was nothing to do with her.
She didn’t know who or what to expect. Stiff with tension, with the metal box containing the ring clutched to her chest, for a few seconds Abigail almost thought that her nerves had brought on a hallucinatory attack.
Because there was no way that those footsteps she had heard could possibly have heralded the arrival of a six-foot-two specimen of pure, hard-edged masculinity. There was no way that those achingly familiar tawny eyes, fringed by eyelashes she had once teased could have been the envy of any woman, could now be staring at her. It just wasn’t possible. Leandro Sanchez could not be lounging in the doorway of this sitting room, larger than life.
She couldn’t tear her eyes away from him. He was her very worst nightmare and her very deepest, darkest, most forbidden fantasy come to life and she blinked, desperately hoping that the vision would disappear. It didn’t. He remained just where he was, an alpha male of such sinful beauty that he took her breath away. He had taken her breath away the first time she had seen him a year and a half ago. Over the weeks of their torrid and doomed love affair, that impact had never lessened.
He was the sort of guy women dreamed about. Olive-skinned, tawny-eyed and with an electrifying, ruthless sex appeal. He was long, lean and muscular, and Abigail thought that she could remember each and every muscle and sinew of that fabulous body.
She had never thought that she’d see him again, not after everything,