‘I was just very tired…I swear I wasn’t drinking alcohol!’ Molly protested shakily. ‘The photos are very misleading-’
‘You mean you weren’t in a nightclub until four this morning with our estate manager? And you didn’t require him to practically carry you out of it again?’
Molly swallowed hard, belatedly taking in the reality that Fernando Santos was the individual urging her shambling and sleepy self towards the car. ‘I was one of a large party of people which included him.’
Her husband’s strong bone structure was bone-white with tension below his bronzed skin. ‘He spent the night at my sister’s apartment with you. He was seen leaving early this morning!’
Molly didn’t quite know what to say to that without dropping Julieta straight into a mire from which there would be no clean return. How could Leandro think that she would sleep with another man? Why did he believe she could be so untrustworthy and disloyal? She was carrying his baby. Didn’t he have any respect for her at all?
‘I’m not having an affair with Fernando. He’s really not my type-although I have to confess that, right now, when you’re standing over me like a hanging judge, you’re not my type either,’ Molly confided tartly. ‘I’m very sorry if the photos cause you embarrassment, but I wasn’t in any way under the influence of either drugs or alcohol. I was simply very, very sleepy and I have nothing else to apologise for.’
Brilliant dark eyes cut into hers like abrasive diamond cutters. ‘I don’t believe you. I want the truth…’
‘I’ve told you the truth.’ Molly was torn between feeling hugely intimidated and hugely resentful that he could have so little faith in her that he instantly dismissed her explanation. ‘I went out with Julieta to celebrate her birthday.’
‘Then why wouldn’t you tell me where you were so that I could join you?’
Molly shuffled her feet, knowing that there was no acceptable answer to that and wishing she didn’t feel obligated to cover up for Julieta’s private life. It was not a friendship she wanted to put at risk. ‘I just wanted a night off from being your wife. Is that a crime?’
His classic features hardened at that facetious response. ‘How long have you been seeing Santos?’
‘Maybe you’d like me to be an unfaithful wife and then you would have grounds for divorcing me. Is that what this is about? You’ve realised that you made a mistake marrying me and you want an escape route?’ Molly slung at him accusingly.
‘You’re talking nonsense,’ Leandro drawled icily.
‘No, I’m not. I want an escape route!’ Molly threw at him in a rage. ‘I want my life back, so why shouldn’t you? You’re an absentee husband and I’m lonely. I want a man who’s interested me and who I can share stuff with. But you’re so busy making money and putting everything else ahead of me, you don’t have time for me or the baby that’s coming. Why shouldn’t I want more than your precious money, your title and social position? None of those things are important to me!’
‘You’ve said enough,’ Leandro intoned with ferocious bite, mentally stacking up those far-reaching accusations as a clumsy attempt to deflect him from her inexcusable behaviour. ‘I still have a flight to Geneva to catch. I’ll see you tomorrow.’
‘You said you couldn’t give me love-but what
Leandro ground his even white teeth together. He refused to listen to her. He didn’t want her to start crying. He was so angry with her that he didn’t trust himself to speak. As long as she continued to deny everything, there was nothing to discuss and no way forward. He would get the truth out of Julieta, and if Molly had betrayed his trust he would have no choice but to divorce her. But having reached that pinnacle of masculine decisiveness, Leandro discovered that that obvious solution had zero appeal for him. He pictured Molly in Santos’s arms and he felt as if someone were trying to rip his guts out with a machete. The black rage tamped down inside him surged higher and the fierce struggle it took to stay in control angered him even more.
Molly couldn’t believe that Leandro was still planning to fly off to Geneva just as if nothing had happened. His rock-hard self-discipline and devotion to banking business when their marriage was in crisis struck her as yet more proof of his lack of caring. Her mobile phone rang just as she reached the sanctuary of her bedroom. The instant she heard her sister’s voice, her control over her tumultuous emotions dissolved. Suddenly she was in floods of tears and struggling to find the right words to answer Ophelia’s concerned questions. Unfortunately there was no pleasant way to explain that Leandro was convinced that she had been carrying on an affair with one of his employees. Her sister was very shocked by that admission and then she explained that she was with their brother, Nikolai, who also wanted to speak to her. Somewhere just out of Molly’s hearing at the other end of the line she could hear an urgent discussion taking place between her newly discovered siblings.
‘Do you really want to stay with this bozo in Spain?’ a very forceful masculine voice enquired a little while later. ‘I can pick you up in a few hours and fly you back to England.’
Molly was shaken by the idea of leaving Spain within hours, but it was a remarkably tempting offer when she was in dire need of comfort and support. ‘Could you…I mean, would you?’
‘I’m very impatient to meet my baby sister,’ Nikolai confessed bluntly.
‘I’m not a baby-’
‘You are on my terms,’ he countered with uncompromising bluntness.
Feverish indecision assailed Molly. She desperately wanted to be with her sister and meet her brother. Leandro had devastated her to the extent that she could barely think straight. He had accused her of infidelity and paid no heed to her denials. He had shown no sign of even being prepared to listen to her perfectly reasonable complaints. Was she really planning to sit and wait for him to return from Geneva for more of the same? He didn’t love her. Nothing was likely to change that. She was never going to compare to Aloise and the fact that she was expecting his baby in another few months currently seemed to be a matter of near indifference to him. Perhaps he had decided that marrying her had been a mistake. That could explain why he had made little effort to make their marriage a success.
Molly squared her slight shoulders and breathed in deep. ‘I’ll come back home with you.’
Nikolai promised to call her when his jet landed in Spain. Ophelia was so excited when she came back on the phone that Molly could only follow about one word in three, but her sister’s enthusiasm melted the cold knot of fear and uncertainty forming inside her.
She sat down at the elegant ladies desk by the window and pulled out the fancy stationery she had never used to write Leandro a note. Tears were streaming down her tight face while she studied the blank sheet of paper in anguish. What she was feeling was forcing her to acknowledge that she cared a great deal more about Leandro than he cared about her. But she didn’t want to be the sort of sad woman who settled for the crumbs from the table because she lacked the pride to believe that she deserved the whole loaf. If she was unhappy, her child would be unhappy as well. Her dream of creating a happy home and family for the three of them was exactly that: just a dream and not an achievable goal with Leandro in a leading role.
She was packing when she made a curious discovery while she was searching for a missing shoe at the back of a closet. Her fingers encountered a surprising lump below the carpet on the floor of the cupboard and she pushed it back and drew out what had lain concealed underneath. To her astonishment she realised that she was holding several packets of birth control pills. Now, who on earth would have hidden a secret stash of contraceptives there? And her imagination could only come up with one likely contender-Aloise, whose evident inability to fall pregnant might seemingly have been a deliberate choice. So the perfect wife had not been quite so perfect, after all. Molly shrugged and put the pills back where she had found them.
She left all her jewellery behind and even removed her rings to leave them lying on the dressing table. After a light lunch served in her room, she went for a nap from which she was wakened by Nikolai’s call. Having dressed again, she rang for a member of staff to carry down her cases. Basilio was at the foot of the staircase, wringing his hands. She thought painfully of how much Leandro would loathe the attention that the breakdown of their marriage would create. Her baby kicked and she tensed, wondering guiltily if her child could somehow feel her emotional turmoil.
Dona Maria appeared in the doorway of the salon. The older woman looked incredibly smug, but Molly couldn’t have cared less, for she could already hear the noisy approach of a helicopter flying in low. That was the exact moment that what she was doing really sank in on her, not the best time for her to realise that she had fallen in love with Leandro when she was in the midst of wondering how he had survived his cold and severe mother’s upbringing. But she didn’t need to wonder, did she? Leandro had developed self-reliance and rigid self-discipline at a very early age while learning to hide and suppress his emotions.
