Wakening, Molly lifted her lashes and registered that she was lying in a strange bed in an equally strange room. It was still dark but the dawn was lighting up the distant horizon. The décor had a cool art deco style and the room was really large. Only someone very rich could afford that amount of space and that kind of furniture in a city as expensive as London. The events of the previous night flooded back to her and she went rigid. She had slept with Leandro and she couldn’t even pronounce, never mind spell, his surname. As she sneaked a leg towards the edge of the bed to get up a long masculine arm closed round her and drew her back.

‘Don’t even think about leaving, querida,’ Leandro husked, his breath stirring her hair. ‘It’s only seven.’

‘This is really embarrassing,’ Molly mumbled. ‘I don’t even have a toothbrush with me.’

Leandro worked hard at not laughing at that inept admission. ‘I have a spare. I’ll order breakfast. I have something I would very much like to discuss with you.’

All Molly wanted just then was a magic wand to wave that would whisk her from being naked in his bed back to the sanctuary of her own bedroom. Her clothes were scattered on the polished wood floor. I’m a slut, she thought wretchedly, a total slut.

Leandro was talking on the bedside phone in Spanish at a great rate. He sounded like someone accustomed to rapping out instructions. But what did she know about him? He was amazingly good-looking? Chivalrous towards humble waitresses? Fantastic in bed? Averse to the cold? A widower? Well, these days that last fact did tell her something about his character, she reasoned. He had been prepared to commit to a future with someone and had got married at a reasonably early age, which was unusual.

‘I’ll use the bathroom next door,’ he told her lazily.

To his list of attributes, Molly added a plus for tact. Without turning her head, however, she waited until she heard the door snap shut on his departure before she scrambled out of bed, gathered up the clothes she had been wearing the night before and raced into the en-suite bathroom clutching them.

Her curls looked as though she had stuck a finger in an electric socket. She groaned out loud and rifled the drawers of the vanity unit for the toothbrush she had been promised. The corner shower was digitally operated so she couldn’t work out how to use it and made do with washing at the sink as best she could. As she dressed she was conscious that her body ached even worse than it had after the charity mini-marathon she had done with Jez the previous year.

She had a dim erotic memory of wakening during the night and making love with Leandro again. She had made the approach, which had resulted in his long, achingly slow and spellbinding seduction that had made her cry out his name at the top of her voice. She cringed at the recollection of her audacity while she fiddled with her hair, struggling to tame her wild curls into some semblance of order without the aid of her usual weapons. Only when she no longer had any excuse to linger did she emerge from the bedroom. She only knew one thing: had she had the chance to go back to the previous night she would still have chosen to stay with him and experience what had followed.

The dining room enjoyed a stunning view of the Thames. A waiter was there presiding over a trolley stacked with a wide selection of food and Molly was astonished by the concept of anyone buying in breakfast for two complete with service. But her wide eyes still swivelled straight across to Leandro, who was poised by the window. He commanded the scene, sheathed in a superbly tailored black pinstripe suit that was the very epitome of banking chic. He looked sinfully beautiful but cool and remote. Her tummy gave an uneasy lurch as if she were under threat. She didn’t know how to behave or what to say to him.

With an authoritative nod, Leandro told the waiter he could leave because they would serve themselves. Her face flushed as she carefully avoided a direct meeting with his thickly lashed dark eyes, Molly wiped damp palms down the sides of her fitted black skirt. It was obvious to her that ordering people around came very naturally indeed to Leandro. She had never been more conscious of her lowly status than when she was standing there still garbed in her work clothes while he summarily dismissed the waiter from his duties.

Conscious her tummy was rumbling, she lifted a small box of cereal and put it in a bowl before taking a seat. The apartment was even more opulent than she had initially appreciated and she felt more like a fish out of water than ever.

‘Last night…’ Leandro hesitated, searching for the right words with which to outline his offer as he helped himself to fresh fruit. ‘It was fantastic.’

‘Hmm.’ Molly nodded, her mouth too full to speak and even if it hadn’t been she had no idea what she might have replied to that surprisingly intimate comment. Clothed and in daylight, Leandro was horrendously intimidating. She could barely credit that she had spent the night in his arms.

Leandro breathed in deep. ‘In fact it was so incredible that I want to hang onto you, querida.’

Molly almost choked on her cereal. ‘Hang onto me?’ she parroted without comprehension.

‘I lead a very busy existence in which I rarely have time to lighten up, which is one very good reason why I would like you to become a part of my life. I like your cheerful attitude and I need to relax more,’ Leandro imparted levelly. ‘We both have something that the other needs. It would be an exchange of mutual benefit. You would enjoy the financial security to indulge your ambition to be an artisan potter and I would be happy to make that possible.’

Her smooth brow had indented and her almond-shaped eyes were bright with bewilderment. ‘What on earth are you trying to say?’

‘That I would be prepared to buy you somewhere suitable to live and money need no longer be a source of concern for you,’ Leandro spelt out softly. ‘No more waitressing-I would cover all your expenses. It would be my pleasure to do so.’

Molly studied him fixedly, her heartbeat thumping so fast and loud that it felt as if it were trapped in her tight throat. ‘Why would you offer to buy me somewhere to live? Why would you want to pay my bills? Exactly what kind of a relationship are you offering me?’

‘I want you to be my mistress and stay in my life, querida. In the background of my life rather than the forefront of it, it is true,’ Leandro conceded, belatedly wondering whether she was capable of being discreet. ‘But you would still be important to me.’

As he quantified his objective, Molly had turned pale and then suddenly colour ran up like a banner beneath her creamy skin and burnished it to hot pink. Anger strongly laced with outrage left her light-headed and threatened to erupt from her like a volcano. Her jewelled eyes fiery with disbelief, she rammed her hands down flat on the table top and pushed herself upright. ‘You arrogant, condescending rat!’ she launched at him furiously. ‘Your mistress? What was last night supposed to be? A trial run for the position? You have no business even suggesting such a thing to me!’

‘You don’t need to use abuse to make your point,’ Leandro censured with freezing cool. ‘In my world such arrangements between men and women are common and accepted.’

‘Not in mine!’ Molly gasped, stricken by the awareness that if he had just asked to see her again she would have snatched at the opportunity. Instead he had put an offensive commercial price on any future relationship and made it very clear that she wasn’t good enough to occupy any more equal or public role in his life. That clear fact hurt like a knife twisting inside her, echoing as it did the painful rejections she had had to deal with throughout her life. Not good enough. Sometimes it seemed to Molly that she was never good enough for anything she really wanted.

Leandro, his lean, strong face impassive, continued to study her with a detachment that chilled Molly to the marrow. ‘You can’t be that naive.’

Leandro had never been with a woman who didn’t want to profit from being with him in some way. Even as a teenager he had been the target of elaborate female stratagems designed to attract his interest and entrap him. Fabulous wealth was a very powerful draw. He had learned young that sex was invariably offered in the expectation that the act of sharing his bed would be rewarded with frequent bouts of financial generosity. And then there were the women who didn’t primarily want his money, but who had their social ambitions squarely set on marrying him and using his ancient name and aristocratic lineage to gain an entry to the most exclusive and privileged stratum of Spanish society.

‘Listen to me-I don’t need anyone but myself to make my dreams come true,’ Molly told him half an octave higher. ‘I certainly don’t need any man to keep me and I never will! I manage fine on my own-’

‘You’re capable of being more than a waitress,’ Leandro contended grimly.

‘And a great deal more than being your mistress too!’ Molly launched back at him in heated challenge. ‘However low I may sink in life, you can be sure that I’ll never be desperate enough to surrender my self-respect and sell myself to you for sex!’

‘Shorn of melodrama, was that a no?’ Leandro surveyed her with level dark as midnight eyes, his lean, powerful face tight with reserve and cool. Displeasure radiated from him like a force field but his self-control, unlike hers, was absolute.

‘Yes, that was a no, and now I think it’s time I cleared off and went home.’ Her voice sounded choky and tears were stinging the backs of her eyes. ‘How could you belittle me with a sleazy offer like that? I’m not interested in being some dirty little secret in your life!’