Leah rolled her head, trying to relax her neck and shoulders, trying to dispel the crazy feeling that someone was watching her. It was nerves, she told herself, crazy nerves following the panicked phone call from Jordan, informing him that the bank had given him a week to pay them back or they would foreclose. She’d hardly eaten in the two days since, desperately trying to work out how she could help him while surviving on nothing more than coffee and dry crackers. No wonder she was jumpy.
She’d barely turned her attention back to the garment she was altering when a movement outside caught her eye. Nothing more than a flash of black, but enough to set every hair on the back of her neck to prickling awareness. There was something about the way that dark shadow had moved—something that had rippled through her on a wave of dread and taken her right back to another time, another place.
But it couldn’t be him.
Not here.
Not now.
And then the door opened, the ancient bell above tinkling. An incongruous sound, given the man who had just entered. A man, it occurred to her, who should more likely be accompanied by a thunder clap or heralded by a blast of trumpets, not the mere tinkle of a tiny bell.
Nor even the desperate thumping of her heart.
He stood there across the small room like some kind of gunslinger ready to draw, looking simultaneously more dangerous and yet more handsome than any man had a right to.
‘Leah,’ he uttered, and heat infused her veins, his deep Mediterranean voice filling all the places in the room that his sheer presence didn’t already occupy. She rose behind her machine, refusing to dwell on the ripple of pleasure that had accompanied hearing her name spoken in that rich accent once again, desperately wishing she was wearing heels instead of her workaday flats, so she felt at less of a disadvantage.
Yet there had never been a time when she hadn’t felt at a distinct disadvantage where Alejandro Rodriguez was concerned, even wearing the highest heels or when done up to the nines. It wasn’t just his height, or the span of his shoulders. Only in bed had she ever felt anywhere near his equal, and even there just the force of his dark personality had always been enough to make her feel inconsequential.
And then there were his eyes.
Dark and fathomless under a dark slash of brow, and framed in lashes women would kill for, those eyes stared at her now, pinning her to where she stood. There was still traffic outside. She was vaguely aware of the bustle and movement of a city in motion. But all that shrank in her ears under the thump of her beating heart and the questions that framed themselves so jaggedly in her mind.
‘What do you want?’ Her voice sounded unnaturally tight in the tiny shop—but how could it sound anything else now that he was absorbing all the space, effectively shrink-wrapping the room? She’d heard not a word from Alejandro since she’d left his home in Spain two months ago, and the look in his eyes before she’d done so had been no less unforgiving than it was now. Clearly nothing had changed.
He paused. Or was it just that time slowed in the air that hung heavy and thick between them, in the dark laser glare he directed her way?
‘My dear Leah,’ he said at last, holding out his arms as he made a move closer. ‘Is this any way to greet an old friend?’
Her eyes narrowed, along with her thoughts. Alejandro wanted something. Friendship had been the last thing on his mind that fiery day two months ago, when she’d walked out of his villa and out of his life, his savage parting words still stinging in her ears. ‘Get the hell out,’ he’d yelled after her. ‘There are plenty more where you came from.’
And she’d known what he said was true. Hadn’t she lived with that fact hanging over her head every day of their six-month liaison? She’d known from the very beginning that she was only one more in a long line of mistresses. She’d been reminded of that fact every time she was out in public with him and women jostled to get close, flashing him white-toothed smiles and perfectly angled décolletages. Becaus
e they’d known it just as much as she had. Her position as mistress to Spain’s hottest property was tenuous. Short-term. Temporary.
And after half a year her time must have been nearly up.
And that was why she’d fled. While she still had her pride, if not her heart. Before she’d crashed and burned like so many others before her.
‘Why are you here?’
He frowned and drew closer, until there was barely a metre and her ancient sewing machine between them, the look in his eyes almost wounded. ‘You sound so suspicious.’
She wasn’t taken in for a moment. She crossed her arms over her chest, needing to feel together—whole—when her world seemed to be unravelling by the minute. But he was too close for her to think. So close she could breathe in his exquisite cologne. So close she could have reached a finger out and touched the dark curls kissing his collar. So close she could all but taste the salt on his skin.
Distressed by her body’s betrayal, she edged away, moving deeper into the narrow shop, not stopping until she had the solid counter between them. She clutched onto the counter-top like a lifeline. ‘You haven’t answered my question.’
He smiled then, and his dark beauty just got better. The sensual slash of mouth suddenly more passionate, a dimple transforming his jawline from ruthless businessman to lover in an instant. My God, she thought. She’d turned her back and walked away from this man. How the hell had she managed that?
‘I came to give you something.’
She blinked and tried to focus on his words. She’d left something behind? She turned her thoughts back to those frantic few hours after she’d made her decision, haphazardly throwing her few scant belongings into her suitcase, trying to shut out Alejandro’s orders that she stop—orders that had soon turned to demands that she get out when it had become clear there was no way she would change her mind. She’d left nothing, she knew. Only the trappings of her mistress life, the gowns and shoes and jewels, and those had never really been hers.
Only those, and the heart she’d had no choice but to leave battered and bleeding behind. ‘I left nothing,’ she lied. ‘So what is it?’
The corners of his mouth turned up in a smile that missed his eyes completely. ‘I came to offer you a second chance.’
For just a moment it felt as if her heart had stopped beating, until the thumping kicked in again, louder and more insistent than ever, and her lungs demanded to be filled with air, demanded it now! How many nights had she lain awake, wishing he would call, wishing he would tell her he missed her, wishing more than anything that he might discover he loved her after all? But not once had he bothered to contact her. Not once had he even bothered to get in touch. She’d long ago given up hope that he would. And yet he was here now…