Her heart was thundering in her eardrums as she padded into the opulent drawing room and she was as out of breath as though she had been running. Leandro was a very tall, still figure by the front windows. He swung round, brilliant dark eyes zeroing in on her small figure. Her casual appearance startled him. With her black curls anchored on top of her head with a clip and a bright tangerine bikini top showing above the edges of the black and yellow towel she wore, Molly took him very much by surprise.

Superbly well dressed in a black pinstripe designer suit that was tailored to enhance every muscular angle of his lean, powerful body, Leandro had a pure physical impact that engulfed Molly like a wave breaking over her head that left her struggling for breath. A masculine dream of black hair, golden skin and lustrous dark heavily lashed eyes, he looked stunning to a woman whose senses had been starved of his presence. This, after all, was the guy she woke up searching for in her bed at night. Her breasts swelled and her body tingled back to life at the mere sight of him.

‘Your brother refused to tell me where you were,’ Leandro growled soft and low, but with all the warning threat of a tiger flexing his claws.

Molly tensed. ‘Honestly? I had no idea-’

‘I first made contact with him by phone when he was flying you back to London on the day you left a week ago.’ Leandro volunteered that information grimly. ‘He said you didn’t want to speak to me.’

Molly went pink, furious that Nikolai had chosen to make such decisions on her behalf and resenting his interference in her marriage. ‘He shouldn’t have done that, but he was probably trying to protect me.’

‘I owe you a sincere apology for my misconceptions about your relationship with Fernando Santos,’ Leandro delivered gravely, his striking dark golden eyes welded to hers. ‘Julieta told me the truth.’

‘Oh…’ Off-balanced by his immediate apology, Molly couldn’t concentrate. ‘I haven’t spoken to her since I left. Is she all right?’

‘She was very upset about what happened between us and she’s broken up with Santos, after finding out that she wasn’t the only woman in his life. I think that in the circumstances you should have told me the truth.’

Molly drew herself up to her full insignificant height and breathed in deep. ‘You wouldn’t have believed me! From the first moment you saw Fernando talking to me, you were suspicious of us-’

‘Dios mio, I was jealous,’ Leandro admitted between gritted teeth. ‘I immediately saw his eagerness to impress you, his admiration for you.’

‘For me, and I don’t know how many other women. Fernando is a self-satisfied flirt,’ Molly cut in, ever so slightly mollified by that unexpected confession of jealousy. ‘I thought you didn’t get jealous.’

His incredible cheekbones tensed. ‘I believed that was the truth when I said it to you. I didn’t recognise what a hold jealousy had got on my mind, so that I misinterpreted everything that happened to fit my deepest…er…fears.’ His accented drawl dropped in level as he fitted in that last revealing word, low and quick. ‘Of course you were correct when you said that I should have trusted you. But you’re a very beautiful, sensual young woman and why should other men not be knocked out by you as I was?’

Her towel was slipping, revealing an eye-catching depth of cleavage. Conscious of his gaze dropping to the cups struggling to restrain her bountiful breasts, Molly reddened and hoisted her towel. Even so, her treacherous body was already reacting to that interest with a hot pulse low in her pelvis.

‘How could you just walk out on our marriage?’ Leandro demanded.

‘Easily. I was the only person making an effort in our relationship. You were never there and you made me live with your mother, who absolutely hated me!’

‘I wasn’t aware how deep her dislike of you was until she voiced certain opinions to me after you had gone. She’s returned to her home in Seville and is now aware that she is not welcome at the castillo unless she can treat you with the respect that is your right as my wife. Why did I have to wait for my mother to lose her temper to find out how she was treating you? Why didn’t you just tell me?’

It was a fair question, Molly acknowledged. ‘I didn’t know whose side you would take and I didn’t want to put you in that position. I honestly did believe that sooner or later Doña Maria would get tired of needling me and just accept me.’

‘But you deserved better than that in your own home. Naturally I would have taken your side. I have no illusions about what my mother can be like-’

‘I think she was behind the financial offer that was made to me before I married you,’ Molly said abruptly.

‘What financial offer?’

Molly gave him the details. He was staggered, genuinely staggered, when she shared the content of that meeting. He asked her to name the legal firm concerned and a flash of recognition lit his hard gaze. ‘That firm did work for the estate at one time. It is very likely that my mother was behind that offer. I had no idea that she would go to such extremes or even that she would dare to interfere in my life to that extent-’

‘She doesn’t think I’m good enough for you.’

His anger was palpable and his strong jaw line clenched. ‘Dios mio, you turned down two million pounds to marry me?’

‘Yeah…I’d have been wiser grabbing the cash and running for the hills, wouldn’t I?’ she quipped in a wry allusion to the current state of their relationship.

Leandro took a sudden step forward, his spectacular dark golden gaze narrowed and intent. ‘I am very grateful that you didn’t and that you went through with our marriage. I only wish I had done more with the opportunity.’

‘No, I don’t think you do,’ Molly contradicted with a rueful grimace. ‘You didn’t want any more than a shallow show of a marriage for the baby’s sake, but, unfortunately, I’m not as detached as you are. I couldn’t live like that for the rest of my days.’

‘Why didn’t you speak to me sooner about how you felt?’ Leandro prompted grimly. ‘Didn’t it occur to you that the day I believed you had spent the night with a lover was not the right moment to tackle me about my deficiencies as a husband?’

‘No. As I hadn’t been with a lover, that angle didn’t occur to me,’ Molly conceded.

‘I had spent the whole night worrying about you. Again, it’s all my own fault,’ he framed in a harsh undertone. ‘Your brother, Nikolai, left me in no doubt of that. Had you had bodyguards the paparazzi would never have got near you and I would have known where you were that night.’

‘I don’t need bodyguards. Nikolai is extremely security conscious.’

Leandro reached for her hands, which she was unconsciously wringing, and closed them firmly into his. Determined dark golden eyes locked with her anxious gaze. ‘I am not detached from you, nor do I wish to be. I want you back, mi corazón. I would have told you that a week ago, had your brother been willing to tell me where you were.’

Molly tensed, hope and doubt warring inside her in a death-defying tussle of seething conflict. ‘I’m sure you mean well, but marriage for me has to be about more than you doing the right thing for the woman carrying your child. I would never try to shut you out of our baby’s life.’

His grip on her hands was almost painfully tight. ‘How do I convince you that it will be different? This is not about doing the right thing. I’m asking you to give me the chance to prove how much I value your presence in my life.’

Tears were burning her eyes. This was the guy she loved, the guy she missed every hour of the day, and once again he was offering her what she craved, only this time around she was less naive. ‘But the point is that you didn’t value me when I was there. You didn’t even come home for dinner at night. You didn’t phone me. You didn’t look for me or show the smallest sign that you missed me when you were away from me.’

Leandro was pale as death beneath his bronzed complexion and his handsome bone structure was rigid with ferocious tension. ‘I have never found it easy to show my feelings. I would not allow myself to need you too much. I saw that as a weakness and I do not like to be in anything other than full control.’

‘Whereas I let everything show, and say and do what I feel like. We’re a very bad match, Leandro. I was lonely and unhappy with you and I don’t want to go back to that,’ she confided jerkily, fighting off temptation with all her strength because she refused to end up back where she had started. ‘Now that the break has been made, it should get easier for us both.’

‘I don’t like my life without you in it!’ Leandro launched at her rawly in the roughest tone she had ever heard from him.

‘I think you should go,’ Molly pronounced tightly.

‘I can’t walk away from you and my child!’ he bit out in a driven undertone.

‘You have to, if that’s what she wants,’ another male voice interposed from the doorway.

Molly turned her head to see her adoptive half-brothers poised just inside the room, neither of them looking particularly welcoming. ‘Nikolai-stay out of this, please!’

Fierce aggression powered through Leandro’s powerful frame when he recognised the level of family opposition in the two men’s faces. ‘Are you with Nikolai on this, Lysander?’ he asked grimly.

‘No, I don’t believe in interfering in other people’s marriages,’ the tall handsome Greek breathed with measured calm. ‘But if you cause my sister any more grief, I’ll rip you apart!’

The Russian tycoon studied Leandro with cold hostility. ‘Molly has us now. She doesn’t need anyone else.’

‘Let’s allow Molly to make that decision,’ Leandro countered, striding to the door and looking back at Molly to say, ‘You know where I’m staying.’