For long seconds time was suspended, and then everything seemed to go into slow motion as Leonora felt Lazaro’s arm leave her waist. She watched as the woman said something else, not hearing what it was through the buzzing in her head.
Lazaro stepped down off the dais to talk to the woman, holding her arm. She looked very petite next to him. Vaguely, ridiculously, Leonora appreciated that they looked good together.
She couldn’t hear what they were saying, and then the woman was being led away.
Lazaro turned back to look at her, his expression veering between shock, anger and contrition.
He came back up on to the dais and said something to the crowd—she wasn’t sure what. Too many feelings were rolling over her—chief of which, she was ashamed to admit, was a sense of relief. But that was quickly eclipsed when she looked around and saw the crowd whispering. Some people were looking at her with pity and others with something far less benign. A malicious glee at the fall of one of their own.
She’d tried to buy her way out of debt and shame and now she felt as exposed as if she were naked. And he was still there. At the back. Looking at her with a grim expression.
She turned away and saw Lazaro. She backed away and then she stopped. Maybe this was just some hideous case of mistaken identity.
‘Is it true?’
But Lazaro said nothing, and his silence said everything.
He looked guilty.
He held out a hand. ‘Leonora, please…let me explain.’
It was real.
She became aware of the burn of humiliation. She shook her head. ‘I can’t agree to marry you. Not now.’
She sent up a silent thank you that her parents weren’t there to witness this moment. Or Matías. He would see that she was upset and that would upset him.
She cast a look around, instinctively seeking an escape route. All she saw were judgemental eyes. Mocking eyes.
She looked at Lazaro for one last time, dismay and humiliation scoring her insides like a knife. ‘How could you do this to me? In front of all these people?’
Without waiting for a response, she put her glass down on the nearest surface and turned and fled, making for the nearest exit with no clue where to go.
The first thing she saw was a Ladies’ sign, and she followed it to the bathroom, which was mercifully empty. She locked herself into a stall and sat down on the closed toilet.
She was trembling, her heart pounding. She forced herself to take deep breaths, and just as she was starting to feel marginally calmer the door opened. It sounded as if at least three women were coming in, all chattering. About her and Lazaro.
‘Who’d marry her now? She’s so desperate she was willing to marry some nouveau riche billionaire…’
‘Where did Sanchez even come from?’
‘Some say he grew up on the streets.’
‘The de la Vegas can’t survive this. All they have is her and that brother of hers, who everyone knows is a—’
At the mention of Leonora’s beloved brother she opened the door and stepped out of the stall, coming face-to-face with the three gossipers. The chatter stopped instantly.
One blanched, one went red, but the other one was totally unrepentant. Leonora was too upset to speak. She just watched as they collected their things and walked out in silence, taking no sense of satisfaction in having routed them because she knew they’d only start gossiping again as soon as they were out of earshot.
She went over to the sink and put her hands on the counter, looking at herself in the mirror but only vaguely registering that her outward appearance—relatively calm—belied the storm inside. She could only give thanks that the women hadn’t witnessed her falling apart.
She took a deep breath and ran some cold water over her hands and wrists. She hoped that by the time she emerged there would be no one else waiting to witness her walk of shame.
At that instant a face popped into her head. Gabriel Torres. His hawk-like features were as vivid as if he were standing in front of her. She went hot and then cold at the thought of him having witnessed her public humiliation.
But she wouldn’t see him again. Because she wouldn’t be emerging in public for a long time.
She took a breath and steeled herself before heading back out and into the lobby, hoping for a discreet getaway.
Where was she?
Gabriel Torres looked left and right outside the function room, but there was no sign of the dark-haired woman in the long strapless red dress. The dress that clung to her elegant curves in a way that had made his blood pound for the first time in a long time. The compulsion to follow her prickled over his skin now; he wasn’t someone normally given to such impetuosity.
He had only come here this evening to see for himself what Lazaro Sanchez was up to, because he didn’t trust the man as far as he could throw him. Especially when everything he did seemed to be designed personally to get under Gabriel’s skin. And because they were both involved in a very competitive and lucrative bid for a public project.
Recently Sanchez had even gone so far as to concoct a story that he and Gabriel were half-brothers. He’d accosted Gabriel at an event they’d both attended and when Gabriel had tried to walk away, disgusted at the insinuation that they could be related, Sanchez had stopped him, telling him of a day, many years before, when he had confronted Gabriel’s father, claiming to be his son.
To Gabriel’s surprise and shock he’d remembered the incident—and the skinny kid who had been waiting for them outside a restaurant in central Madrid. It had been his birthday—one of the very rare occasions when his dysfunctional family had put on a united front.
Gabriel had never been naïve about either of his parents. It was quite possible that his serially philandering father might have sired a bastard along the way. For a family like the Cruz y Torres, whose vast dynasty stretched back to the Middle Ages, such occurrences by opportunists were frequent and, frankly, to be expected.
So, for all he knew, Sanchez could be his brother but he suspected it was more likely to be a ruse to get under Gabriel’s skin.
Ironically enough, Gabriel’s father was at this event too, this evening, but Gabriel had ignored him. They barely tolerated each other at the best of times, and he’d had no doubt that the only reason his father had been there was probably the free-flowing booze or a woman.
Since Sanchez’s claim to be related to Gabriel, he’d been kept at a certain distance. But tonight had been one of his most audacious moves yet: announcing his engagement to one of Spain’s most well-connected women, whose own family rivalled Gabriel’s in lineage and legacy.
Marriage to someone like Leonora Flores de la Vega would elevate Sanchez to a place that would make it that much harder to ignore him. Gabriel had to hand it to him for sheer chutzpah.
Clearly he hadn’t been intending on marrying Leonora Flores for her money—her family were famously broke after her father’s well-documented gambling problems. Her worth came in her name and lineage.
Gabriel had heard the whispers in the crowd. Whispers that Sanchez had offered her a deal—he’d pay off her family debts and in return buy his way into the world he was so desperate to be a part of that he claimed to be Gabriel’s blood relation.
Gabriel didn’t know Leonora personally, but