‘NEVER BEEN ON a private jet before?’
Skye refrained from rolling her eyes at the question. ‘Funnily enough, no. It’s not something most mortals experience, believe it or not.’
They’d taken off from a small airfield outside Madrid about thirty minutes before and were now high in the sky over Spain. Skye glanced at Lazaro and instant heat sizzled under her skin. He was dressed more casually today, in dark trousers and a dark grey polo shirt. The muscles in his arms bunched and moved under his golden skin as he read the newspapers.
In an effort to try and hide how annoyingly compelling she found him, Skye picked up one of the papers. The woman on the front page looked familiar... She was wearing a red dress and she was being helped into a car by a very handsome if slightly grim-looking man. And then she realised who and what it was and her insides contracted.
‘What is it?’ Lazaro asked with a sharp tone. ‘You’ve gone white again. Are you going to be sick?’
Skye shook her head. Actually, today was the first day she hadn’t had morning sickness. She wished she hadn’t picked up the paper now. But it was too late.
She held it across the aisle to Lazaro, saying nothing. The headline said it all: Humiliated fiancée Leonora Flores de la Vega finds comfort in the arms of Gabriel Ortega Cruz y Torres.
He took it, and Skye watched as his face became hard. He said something in Spanish. A curse. And then he looked out of the window.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Skye in a small voice.
Even if he hadn’t loved Leonora, it had to hurt that she was already seeing someone else. Lazaro turned back and Skye was shocked at the anger on his face.
‘You need to stop apologising. What’s happened has happened. It’s not your fault Gabriel Torres is taking advantage of the situation to stick the knife in. I can’t say I’m surprised.’
‘Who is he?’
Lazaro made a sound halfway between a laugh and a growl. ‘See that land down there?’
Skye looked out of her window and saw nothing but lots and lots of brown landscape. Mountains. Gorges. Small villages. ‘Er...yes...but I’m not sure what I’m meant to be looking at.’
‘It doesn’t matter. What you’re looking at is most likely owned by Gabriel Torres and his family. They own half of Spain—and that’s only a slight exaggeration.’
Feeling her way in this sudden air of frostiness, she said, ‘So he’s some kind of...rival of yours?’
Lazaro emitted a curt laugh. ‘Something like that. Yes.’
‘And you think he’s seduced Leonora just to get back at you?’
Lazaro looked at her. ‘It’s just the kind of thing he would do.’
Skye’s insides twisted. ‘That’s awful. Poor Leonora.’
Lazaro shook his head. ‘She knows who he is. She’s not stupid—she comes from that world too... He might have done this to get back at me, but if she went with him it’s because she wanted to.’
‘And that doesn’t bother you?’
Skye couldn’t imagine that it wouldn’t. Her insides twisted even harder when she thought of how she had felt to see Lazaro standing beside Leonora in that beautiful ballroom.
He said, ‘After what I did to Leonora, she can do as she pleases. She doesn’t owe me anything.’
‘I owe her an apology.’
Lazaro looked at Skye. He lifted a brow. ‘I don’t think you’re someone she wants to hear from right now. Or me.’
‘I guess not...’
* * *
Skye had turned her face away from Lazaro. He marvelled that she’d looked genuinely contrite. Anxious. As if she really cared about Leonora, who was a complete stranger to her.
He relaxed his grip on the paper in his hand and forced himself to look at the picture again. It had been taken that night, outside the hotel. Gabriel had his arm protectively around Leonora as he helped her into his low-slung sports car. He was looking directly down the lens of the paparazzi’s camera, as if to send a message to Lazaro: You had no right to try to marry your way into our world, Sanchez.