The Spanish Billionaire’s Pregnant Wife

able to help yourself, mi gatita,’ he forecast huskily. ‘I won’t let you go. That’s a promise.’

He didn’t have her phone number, he didn’t even know where she lived, so Molly wasn’t too concerned by that macho assurance, which set her teeth on edge. She walked into the lift with an oddly bereft feeling dogging her mood. She refused to acknowledge it and her thoughts were soon turned to much more practical matters when she discovered that her car had acquired a parking ticket since she had left it the evening before. Such penalties were incredibly expensive and she was, as always, broke. With a grimace of annoyance, she drove off.

Leandro called his security team to ensure that she was followed. There was no way he was letting her go again. The more she fought, the more he wanted her for he now recognised her absolute uniqueness. She wasn’t after his money or his social pedigree, but she did want him very much. Purely as a man. He had no doubt whatsoever on that score. Indeed a hard slanting smile of amused satisfaction banished the grim cast of his handsome mouth. He remembered her in his bed last night. She had carefully nudged him awake, her Cupid’s bow mouth soft and coaxing and pure dynamite on his shoulder and his chest before travelling to more sensitive places as she became ever more enterprising. He recalled her helpless giggles when she got it wrong and the white hot glory of pleasure engulfing him when he showed her how to get it right. No way was he letting her walk away from him now. In the most basic terms and on a level that appealed to his every atavistic masculine fibre, she was his discovery and his creation.

It was only when she was gone and he was striding out to his limousine to head for the bank that Leandro stilled and realised in shock that the night before he had been guilty of a glaring oversight. He had not used condoms with her and, bearing in mind her lack of experience, it was unlikely that she was taking any contraceptive precautions on her own behalf. He swore soft and low in Spanish, stunned by his omission. Although, given the five childless years of his marriage, it was a challenge for him to believe that there could be a genuine risk of her falling pregnant by him…

CHAPTER FOUR

IN THE act of trying to listen to a long involved speech from one of the bank’s most senior directors, Leandro drifted into an erotic daydream.

As the self-justifying speech went on and endlessly on Leandro added elaborate layer on layer to the fantasy. He pictured Molly spreadeagled naked in the golden glow of the hot Spanish sunshine, her lush white breasts crowned by straining pink peaks that glistened damply with the champagne he was licking from her voluptuous curves. He was remembering the tantalising glide of her hair across his stomach and the velvet soft glory of her mouth…

‘Mr Carrera Marquez?’

Leandro pulled instantaneously free of the seductive images that had captured an imagination he had not known he possessed. Even though his body was hot and heavy with discomfort and sexual need was a tormenting pulse-beat through his big powerful frame, he snapped straight back into cut-throat business mode.

‘My opinion? In a nutshell? Get tough. Don’t accept excuses for poor performance. Sack the management team. They’ve had their chance and blown it. Give that opportunity to hungrier employees,’ Leandro advised without hesitation, and he brought the meeting to a close with the cool, economic efficiency that had made him a living legend in financial circles.

Closely followed by his phalanx of aides, his handsome dark head held high, Leandro strode down the corridor. He was incensed by the erotic recollections that had recently dared to cloud his concentration at inappropriate moments during his working day. But had sex ever been that good for him before? That wild? That hot? If it had been, he couldn’t recall it. Possibly he had waited too long to ease the natural needs of his body and now all the pent-up hunger of a year’s celibacy was tormenting him for release.

To that end, he finally made use of one of the many phone numbers he had had pressed on him since Aloise’s death. He dined out with a beautiful blonde divorcee who had thrown herself at him previously with an enthusiasm that any sex-starved male should have revelled in. Unhappily, Leandro discovered that his seething libido was stubbornly impervious to the blonde’s attractions. He still wanted Molly and it seemed that no other woman would do.

But why make a production out of that fact? Leandro asked himself with the equivalent of a mental shrug. He had had a lot of women in his life before he married and now that settled phase was well and truly over. Life was short. Sex was just sex and he was young and healthy. He worked hard, why shouldn’t he play hard as well? There was nothing wrong with the pursuit of pleasure. Furthermore he had the perfect excuse for seeking out Molly again: he had to check that their night together had had no lasting repercussions.

Molly vented her exasperation with a groan of frustration when she removed her pots from the electric kiln in the shed. Several pieces had stuck to the trivet because she had been too liberal with the glaze. Under pressure from her, those items cracked. More unnecessary breakages! In recent days she had made more than her fair share of costly mistakes while she’d worked.

But then her emotions were eating her up because she was still so angry with herself for sleeping with Leandro, Molly acknowledged ruefully. Meeting Leandro and falling victim to his charms had forced her to accept that she had more in common with her birth mother, Cathy, than she had ever wanted to know. Cathy had been very prone to following casual impulses with men she’d never taken the time to get to know and she had called those urges, ‘love’, and their fulfilment, ‘spontaneity’.

In comparison, Molly was less kind with her labels and over the past week and a half she had at various times called herself terminally stupid, reckless and naive. Leandro’s attitude to her the morning after had been the ultimate put-down and had set the seal on her humiliation. She had given her body to a guy who wanted a tame woman to lock in a custom-built cage for his sexual gratification. He had neither respected nor appreciated her. How much lower could she have sunk?

She was in the kitchen making coffee when the front doorbell went in two shrill bursts. With a perfunctory brush down of the clay-stained overall she wore, she went to answer it.

A shock of recognition jolted her when she saw the tall, dark, well-dressed Spaniard on the doorstep. She was stunned into silence, her tongue clinging to the roof of her dry mouth. Bathed in spring sunshine, luxuriant ebony hair ruffled by the breeze, lean, bronzed classic features set in serious lines, he was devastatingly handsome.

‘May I come in?’ Leandro studied her intently. She had turned pale, her shock at his appearance palpable. Emerald eyes bright as jewels glanced evasively off his, her wealth of black curls tumbling down past slight shoulders now rigid with tension. She was wearing a shapeless garment liberally daubed with clay.

‘Why? What do you want?’

Leandro quirked a brow at her intonation. She was a rough diamond in the manners department. ‘To see you- what else?’

Molly let him in only because she didn’t want to start an argument with him on the doorstep. He had no right to come to her home, a voice screamed inside her head. She felt cornered and her brain cells felt as though they had been frozen into inactivity. When she caught a glimpse of the vast car sitting out on the street, her jaw simply dropped. ‘Does that limousine belong to you?’

‘Si…yes.’ Leandro settled the ice bucket he was carrying into her hands, startling her. ‘I thought we could share a drink.’

Dumbfounded by the gesture and clutching the bucket awkwardly, Molly stared fixedly down at the bottle protruding from the ice. It was very expensive bubbly, the very best: Bollinger Blanc de Noir. ‘It’s the middle of the day,’ she muttered helplessly.

‘So?’ Brilliant dark eyes with a mesmeric glimmer of gold nailed hers head-on when she was least prepared for the collision. Her tummy flipped, butterflies fluttered and dangerous warmth surged between her thighs. For a terrifying moment she was out of control of her body and the surge of memories that she had worked so hard to suppress engulfed her in a relentless tide. But now here he was in the flesh and suddenly she was remembering his weight on her, the raw burn of his sexual possession and the wild, hot excitement of it. ‘Join me for lunch, querida.’

‘No, I’m firing stuff…in the kiln,’ Molly extended unevenly. Prompted by a defiant streak of vanity, she set down