Confessions of a Pregnant Cinderella Read online

  And now... Now he was about to announce his engagement to the most beautiful woman in the world. Skye could see her standing beside Lazaro, with his arm around her waist.

  They looked good together—both tall, lean. Her dark hair was sleek and pulled back, and she wore a red strapless dress. A slim classic column that clung to every perfectly proportioned curve and oozed sophistication and elegance.

  For a second Skye faltered. She put the tray down on a nearby table for fear of dropping it. Should she have come here to do this?

  She lamented again the fact that she hadn’t been able to get to Lazaro before this event, but it would have been easier to get a message to the Pope. She’d been blocked and shut out at every turn.

  What right did she have to interrupt this momentous moment? The announcement of his engagement to this Glamazon?

  Because you’re pregnant with his baby and he needs to know, reminded a cool voice in her head.

  Just then there was the sound of someone tapping on glass, which cut through the buzz of chat in the room. Everyone fell silent and turned to where Lazaro and his fiancée were standing on a raised dais.

  Skye felt even more sick now. Had he been involved with her when they’d slept together three months ago? Had he known he would be getting engaged?

  She saw the cordon of security men near the couple. Fearsome-looking individuals. Skye could see what would happen—they’d announce their news, and suddenly they’d be thronged, and then they’d be whisked off to some secret location.

  This was her only chance to get his attention. She had to take it. She couldn’t have it on her conscience that he didn’t know she was pregnant. That their one amazing night together had had repercussions.

  And his fiancée deserved to know the kind of man she was marrying, if they had already been involved while he’d been seducing Skye in another city.

  * * *

  Lazaro cleared his throat. He savoured the few seconds before he spoke, aware of every eye turned their way. His father, pretending he didn’t know this was his illegitimate son, about to make an announcement. His half-brother Gabriel was scowling and looking even more brooding and forbidding than he usually did.

  ‘Thank you all for coming here this evening...’

  Lazaro looked at Leonora and smiled. She wasn’t looking at him, though, she was looking into the crowd, slightly transfixed. There was a flush in her cheeks. He exerted a tiny bit of pressure on her waist and she glanced at him and smiled. But it was strained.

  Lazaro ignored the prickling sensation over his skin. Last-minute jitters.

  ‘I know it’s hardly a surprise to many of you, as it’s already appeared in some papers...’ here there was a ripple of laughter ‘...but it gives me great pleasure to formally announce that Leonora Flores de la Vega has consented to be my wife. Invitations to the wedding will be sent out shortly.’

  Lazaro lifted his glass of champagne, about to make a toast to his future wife, when a voice shattered the expectant hush.

  ‘Wait! Stop!’

  It took Lazaro a second to realise that people weren’t looking at them any more. They were all looking to his left-hand side at something. Or someone.

  He glanced around to see that two of his security team were holding back a woman. A petite, red-haired woman. Who looked familiar. Too familiar. He noticed the details dispassionately, as shock flooded his system to see her here, not just in his memory.

  Her blue eyes were huge and slightly wild-looking. Her hair was up in a bun, with tendrils of red and gold falling down around her heart-shaped face. Determined chin. Small straight nose. Full mouth currently in a thin line. White shirt...black skirt.

  He could see the white of her bra under the material. The press of her breasts against the fabric. He’d cupped those breasts in his hands, rubbed his thumbs across her deeply sensitive nipples. She’d shuddered against him when he’d touched her there.

  Heat flooded his body.

  Suddenly the shock galvanised him into action. He let go of Leonora and made a move towards the woman, as if he knew what was about to happen and thought he could stop it. But, no. Before he could reach her, her voice rang out again—loud and clear. The fact that she spoke in Spanish was a detail he didn’t even absorb fully.

  ‘You need to know something. I’m pregnant. With your child.’

  For a long moment nothing seemed to happen. There was a shocked stillness in the air and everyone was frozen. Even the security men holding her arms seemed to go slack.

  She was looking directly at Lazaro, and suddenly it was as if everyone else had disappeared and it was just them in the room.

  She said in a quieter voice, in English, ‘It’s true. I’m pregnant...and it’s yours.’

  Skye O’Hara. That was her name. She’d been a waitress in the restaurant where he’d had dinner after a business meeting in Dublin. He’d noticed her as soon as he’d gone in—something about her, the way she moved and interacted with people, had caught his attention. Which was unusual, because nothing much distracted Lazaro these days. But there had been something very refreshing about her. Open. Unaffected. Natural.

  She’d been dressed much as she was now. Her clothes utterly banal. Not designed in any way to entice a man. And yet she had. With her petite figure and soft curves.

  She’d served him. Pulling a pen out of the bun on the top of her head, flipping over her orders pad to a new page before looking at him. And that had been the moment. Zing. Lazaro had felt it like a thunderbolt. Instant heat and sexual awareness.

  And so had she, judging by the flush on her cheeks and the way her eyes had widened.

  Lazaro’s razor-sharp brain kicked into gear. There were members of the press in this room. His doing. To ensure maximum coverage of his moment of triumph. If he instructed his men to kick this woman out on the street the press would hunt her down, and he could already see the headlines and the lurid sob-story.

  He had no doubt she was just capitalising on the fact that she’d realised who he was. She was on the make. He needed to contain this situation, defuse it and salvage what he could of this evening.

  He put down his glass and stepped down from the dais and went over to her, taking her arm in his hand. It felt very slender. ‘What the hell do you think you’re doing here?’

  She went white. He ignored the prick of his conscience. He’d forgotten how petite she was.

  She stuttered. ‘I came...to...to tell you... I couldn’t reach you any other way...we didn’t...you didn’t...we didn’t exchange numbers...’

  He’d given her his card when he’d asked her to join him for a drink. But she’d left it in the wastebasket in the hotel room the following morning.

  Her show of independence the morning after—her determination to go even after he’d offered to order up breakfast—had obviously been an act.

  He could still see her, backing away in her skinny jeans and a loose jumper falling off one shoulder. Her hair down and wild. She’d looked like an art student. She’d looked thoroughly bedded. And he’d wanted her again.

  He’d just come out of the shower with a towel around his waist to find her leaving. ‘Where are you going?’ he’d asked.

  She’d looked up as she’d slipped on her shoes. He could still recall how her eyes had devoured him, lingering on his chest. Making him hard again.

  ‘I should leave... It’s okay. I know how these things go. I know this was just a one-off. You’re not from here.’ She’d waved a hand at the very rumpled bed and a flush had tinged her cheeks. ‘And I really wasn’t expecting this...’

  She’d been a virgin.

  Lazaro had felt a moment of panic at the thought of her slipping out through the door and never seeing her again. Impulsively he’d said, ‘Stay. I’ll order breakfast. There’s no need to rush.’

  She’d looked torn for a moment. And then
she’d shaken her head. ‘No, I have things to do. I have to leave.’

  She’d turned around and walked to the door and then stopped and looked back over her shoulder. Her hair had been like a bright flame down her back.

  ‘Just...thank you. I wasn’t expecting what happened to happen. I wasn’t expecting to meet someone like you. But it was lovely.’

  And then she’d slipped out through the door and Lazaro had stood there, stunned and very aroused, for long minutes. ‘It was lovely.’ Not something any woman had ever said to him before after a night of passion so intense he was surprised they hadn’t burnt the suite to ashes.

  That memory mocked him now. It had all been an act. Clearly. And this had been her endgame. He’d been an idiot.

  He took his hand off her arm and spoke to his men. ‘Take her to the office and keep her there until I give further instructions.’

  He didn’t look at her again, just turned away towards the crowd. And, to Leonora, who was looking at him with wide eyes, cheeks leached of colour. He stepped back up onto the dais, not sure which fire to put out first.

  He faced the crowd and held up his hands, forcing a smile. ‘I’m sorry for that interruption. It’s being dealt with.’

  He was about to say that there were no grounds for what she’d said—‘I’m pregnant...and it’s yours’—but then he recalled that exquisite moment when he’d been poised to thrust inside her tempting body and he’d realised he wasn’t protected.

  ‘Are you protected?’ he’d asked her.

  She’d said breathily, ‘It’s fine...please, just don’t stop.’

  Self-recrimination blasted him. She could be telling the truth.

  He looked at Leonora, who was backing away now, staring at him as if he was a monster. He stretched out a hand. ‘Leonora, please...let me explain.’

  She stopped moving. Her face was pale. ‘Is it true?’

  Lazaro couldn’t deny that it might be true, so he said nothing.

  Leonora interpreted his silence. She shook her head. ‘I can’t agree to marry you—not now.’ She cast a wild-eyed look around them and then said with quiet desperation, ‘How could you do this to me? In front of all of these people?’

  She turned and stepped down from the dais and all but ran to the nearest exit.

  There was no sound at all for a long moment. And then came a slow hand-clap from the crowd.

  Lazaro turned around to see his half-brother Gabriel moving forward through the crowd. Clapping. A smirk on his face. Lazaro’s hands bunched into fists at his sides.

  ‘I really didn’t expect this evening to be so entertaining, Sanchez. I have to hand it to you. If anyone knows how to make a reputation sink even lower into the gutter it’s you. But, frankly, I’ve better things to be doing than witnessing your lurid domestic dramas.’

  Before Lazaro could articulate a response Gabriel strode out of the room, in the same direction as Leonora. And, as much as he wanted to go after him and punch that smirk off his face, Lazaro knew he couldn’t. Not here, not now.

  He turned back to face his audience. The crowd he had assembled to share this moment of ultimate acceptance. No one would meet his eye except one man. His father, at the back of the room. He had a mocking look on his face as if to say, You tried and you failed to be one of us.

  This moment, which should have been the pinnacle of his success, had turned into a farce. All because of a woman. And himself. Because for one night he’d let himself be ruled by lust and had thrown caution to the wind.

  He should have known, after the life he’d lived, that he would suffer the consequences for any moment of weakness.

  These people could afford to be weak. But not him. Not ever him. And he’d just proved that his desires were as base as theirs...that he didn’t, in fact, have more control.

  * * *

  Skye sat in a square box of a room. More like a storage cupboard, really. The burly man who had put her in here had just brought her small knapsack and her coat from where she’d left them in the cloakroom. She’d come straight here from the airport.

  The adrenalin was still pumping through her system. Okay, so she’d got her message across. She hadn’t intended on the dramatics, but it had been impossible to try and contact Lazaro Sanchez from Dublin. He had more rings of security and assistants than a head of state. And at every step she’d been stonewalled.

  It hadn’t helped that she’d thrown away the card he’d handed her when he’d asked her to join him for a drink. She’d not seen the point in keeping it, and hadn’t wanted to torture herself by knowing she had his phone number.

  She’d been searching on the internet for another way to try and contact him when she’d seen the news that he was due to announce his engagement at an exclusive gathering at the Esmeralda Hotel—one of Madrid’s finest.

  Before she’d lost her nerve she’d booked a cheap return flight. She’d travelled in her work uniform, hoping that it might help her blend in with staff. Which had worked only too well.

  He was to be engaged. Yet he’d slept with her.

  She’d always thought she was a good judge of character, but evidently lust had rewired her normal instincts that night three months ago.

  He’d asked her to stay for breakfast the following morning and she’d been so tempted. He’d been standing there in nothing but a short towel. Massive chest bare and still damp from the shower. Dark hair dusting his pectorals and then narrowing into a line that dissected his six-pack before disappearing under the towel.

  Skye stood up, suddenly restless. And hot. Thankfully the nausea had subsided slightly. Her morning sickness was acute at the moment, and mainly in the early part of the day, but the doctor had told her it should subside soon. If she was lucky.

  Pregnant. She stopped pacing and put her hand on her belly.

  She’d tried to contact her mother to no avail. She was somewhere in India at an ashram, with little or no communications. Not an unusual scenario. But even without her mother’s advice Skye hadn’t felt a moment’s hesitation about keeping the baby.

  Even though, she’d always wanted a different life for herself than she’d had as a child. Being dragged all around Europe as her mother had followed one whim after another. Or one lover after another. She’d had Skye when she was eighteen, and most of the time Skye had felt more like the adult than her bohemian but very lovable mother. Yet here she was, only a few years older than her mother had been, and quite possibly about to become a single mother too.

  She’d always vowed that if and when she had children she would be in a committed relationship and their existence wouldn’t be rootless. It would be secure and stable.

  Suddenly the door opened again and Skye whirled around, her heart jumping into her throat. But it wasn’t him—it was the burly security guard.

  ‘You can come with me now.’

  As much as Skye might have preferred not to go, she knew she had to see this through.

  The man led her to a staff elevator and they ascended to the top floor. The doors opened onto an unremarkable corridor and the guard opened an unremarkable door. He led her into a small utilitarian kitchen and then into a very plush suite, with jaw-dropping floor-to-ceiling windows and views over Madrid.

  This must be the penthouse suite, and she’d just been brought through the service kitchen.

  Her face grew hot with humiliation.

  The man led her to a vast open-plan space, with couches dotted around glass coffee tables. Vast canvases of modern art hung on walls. Low lighting imbued the space with golden light but made it no less intimidating.

  And there he was. With his back to her. No jacket. Just his shirt and trousers.

  He turned around, but Skye couldn’t see his expression from where she was. Probably a good thing. She could see that his top shirt button was open and his bow-tie hung askew, as if pulled apart roughly.<
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  He dismissed the guard with a few curt words and Skye heard the door snick shut behind her.

  And then, in a lethally soft voice which was worse than if he’d shouted at her, he said, ‘What the hell do you think you’re playing at?’

  CHAPTER TWO

  SKYE DID HER best not to show how intimidated she was. She walked further into the room, even though her legs felt suspiciously rubbery.

  Lazaro Sanchez looked unbelievably tall and imposing. He fitted the vast space around him and the spectacular views of night-time Madrid through the windows.

  Had his shoulders always been so broad? His legs so long?

  She could see that he was furious. Livid. A million miles from the charming urbane man who had seduced her that night.

  You were a very active participant, pointed out a snarky voice in her head.

  She could see a muscle pop in his jaw, as if he was gritting it. But in spite of his palpable anger she could still feel his affect on her. As if a million nerve-endings were firing to life. Her whole body humming with awareness. Liquid electricity running through her veins.

  When she’d met him in the bar of that Dublin hotel after he’d issued her an invitation to join him, she’d said, ‘I don’t do this sort of thing...meet random men in bars. And I haven’t come here for something...anything...’ She’d blushed profusely, feeling as gauche as a sixteen-year-old.

  He’d just smiled sexily and pulled out a chair for her. ‘Let’s just have a drink, hmm?’

  That felt like a very long time ago now.

  She swallowed. ‘I’m sorry...about downstairs. I wouldn’t have done it like that if I’d been able to contact you through normal channels. I did try calling your offices—several of them, in fact—but no one would pass on a message. Not when I said it was personal.’