The Rumours Collection

Sophie was lost for words. She had been shaken by the accident, upset after the visit to her father, and Art Delgado, so different from this flint-eyed guy assessing her, had encouraged her into a confidence she rarely shared with anyone.

‘Of course...’ Matias shrugged, curiosity spiking at her continued silence ‘...I am not primarily concerned with the man’s private life but my understanding was that he was a widower.’

‘He is,’ Sophie whispered, ashamed all over again at a birthright she hadn’t asked for, the consequences of which she had been forced, however, to live with.

‘So tell me where you fit in,’ Matias encouraged. ‘Unless, of course, that was a little white lie you told my employee on the spur of the moment.’ He appeared to give this a little thought. ‘Maybe you were embarrassed to tell the truth...?’

‘Sorry?’ That garnered her attention and she looked at him with a puzzled frown.

‘Young girl having an affair with an old man? I can see that you might have been embarrassed enough to have said the first thing that came to your head, anything that sounded a little less unsavoury than what you really are to Carney.’

‘How dare you?’ Sophie gasped, half standing. ‘That’s disgusting!’

‘I’m just trying to do the maths.’ Matias frowned and tilted his head to one side. ‘If you’re not his lover, the man must have had a mistress while he was married. Am I right? Are you Carney’s love child?’

Sophie laughed bitterly because nothing could have been further from the truth. Love had never come into the equation. Before her untimely death, her mother, Angela Watts, had been an aspiring actress whose great misfortune had been her Marilyn Monroe blonde-bombshell looks. Prey to men’s flattery and pursued for her body, she had made the fatal error of throwing her net too wide. James Carney, young, rich and arrogant, had met her at a club and, like all the others, had pursued her, but he had had no intention of ever settling down with someone he considered a two-bit tart with a pretty face. Those details had been drummed into Sophie from as soon as she was old enough to understand. He had had fun with Angela and she had foolishly thought that the fun would actually go somewhere, but even when she had contrived to trap him with a pregnancy he had stood firm, only later marrying a woman he considered of the right class and social position.

‘He met my mother before he was married,’ Sophie confessed, belatedly adding, ‘not that it has anything to do with...well, anything. Mr Rivero, I would be more than happy for you to draw up a schedule for repayment. I will sign it right here and right now and you have my word that you will have every penny I owe you back. With interest if that’s what you want.’

Matias burst out laughing. ‘That’s very obliging of you,’ he drawled lazily. ‘Believe it or not, I haven’t become a successful businessman by putting my faith in the impossible. I have no idea what you owe the bank but I suspect you’re probably barely making ends meet. Am I right?’

He tilted his head to one side and Sophie looked at him with loathing. He might be sinfully handsome but she had never met anyone she hated more on the spot. She wasn’t stupid. He had all the money in the world, from the looks of it, but he wasn’t going to be lenient when it came to getting back every penny she owed him and she knew that he wouldn’t give a hoot if he drove her little company into the ground to do it.

Right now, he was toying with her like a cat playing with a mouse.

‘We could work out a schedule,’ he mused, ‘but I would be on my walking frame before you made the final payment.’ She really had the most wonderfully transparent face, he thought. Impossible though it was, she looked as pure as the driven snow.

But perhaps she wasn’t fashioned in the same mould as the father. Certainly, she wouldn’t have had the example set by him on a daily basis if she was the product of a youthful affair. He was surprised, in fact, that she had any contact with the man at all and he wondered how that had worked when Carney’s socially acceptable wife had been alive.

Matias wasn’t going to waste time pondering stuff like that, however. Right now, he was working out how best to use her to his advantage. When he pulled the plug on Carney, he intended to hit him on all fronts and he wondered whether she could be of use to him in that.

What other secrets was the man hiding? Matias knew that the company was beset with financial problems but, in the ether, there had been rumours of foul play... Sometimes skeletons were hard to find, however hard you dug, and Carney was a man who was sly and smart enough to cover his tracks. Wouldn’t it be satisfying if all his dark secrets were to be exposed to the cruel glare of light...?

Could this fresh-faced girl be the key to unlock more doors? And what if there were personal skeletons? An attack on all fronts was certainly worth considering. He was honest enough to acknowledge that this level of revenge was probably beneath him, but those letters he’d found...they had made this personal...

‘You could always ask Daddy for the money,’ he ventured smoothly, knowing what the answer would be.

‘No!’ This time she did stand up. Her full mouth was drawn into a thin, obstinate line. ‘I won’t have...my father involved in this. Bankrupt me if you want.’ She reached into her bag, pulled out one of the business cards, remembering how filled with optimism she and Julie had been when they had had them printed. ‘Here’s my business card. You can come and see the premises. It’s just in my kitchen but the equipment must be worth something. I have a number of big jobs lined up, so if you’re patient I can do those and you can have the money. As for the rest... I will sell my house and I should be able to sort out the rest of the debt with money left over after the mortgage has been covered.’

Matias looked at her, every line of his powerful body indicating a man totally relaxed, totally unfazed by her emotional outburst.

Dark eyes roamed over her. She had tried to do something businesslike with her hair but somewhere along the line it had rebelled and tangled, white-blonde strands already curling around her cheeks. Her eyes were wide and a curious shade of turquoise and fringed, he noted, with thick dark lashes, which was at odds with the colour of her hair. And her body...

He shifted in his chair, astonished that he was even bothering to notice that she had curves in all the right places and luscious breasts that were prominent against the truly appalling flowered dress she was wearing.

She lacked sophistication and clearly had no style gene whatsoever, so what, he wondered, with a certain amount of irritation, was it about her that captured his attention so completely?

‘You’re overreacting,’ he told her as she remained standing, her blue eyes dark with worry, anger and distress.

‘You’ve just told me that you’re not willing to come to any kind of arrangement with me about the money I owe you for your stupid car!’ Easy-tempered by nature, Sophie was shocked at the stridency of her voice and the fact that she was yelling at him! ‘I can’t go to my bank and draw out the kind of money I would need to make good the damage. So, of course I’m going to be upset.’

‘Sit down.’

‘No. I’m going. You can get in touch with me on the number on the card! I’m going to have to talk this through with Julie. I don’t know what she’s going to say. She’s put in most of her savings to try and get this business of ours going, as have I, so I’m going to have to find the money to pay her back too and make sure she doesn’t have to pay for my mistake.’ Her voice was wobbling and she stared off into the distance in an attempt to stop herself from crying.

Matias squashed all feelings of guilt. Why should he feel guilty? He was staring at a woman whose father had destroyed his family. In that scenario, guilt didn’t exist. After all, all was fair in love and war, wasn’t it?

‘You could do that,’ he murmured, ‘or you could sit back down and listen to the proposition I have for you.’

CHAPTER TWO

‘GO EASY ON THE GIRL,’ Art had urged his friend the previous day. ‘Because Carney’s her father, doesn’t mean that she has been cut from the same cloth.’

Matias hadn’t argued the point with his friend, but he had privately held the view that the apple never fell far from the tree and an innocent smile and fluttering eyelashes, which he was guessing had been the stunt the woman had pulled on Art, didn’t mean she had a pure soul.

Now, however, he was questioning the judgement call he had made before he had even met her. He was seldom, if ever, wrong when it came to summing people up, but in this instance his friend might have had a point. Matias wasn’t going to concede that the woman spent all her spare time helping the poor and unfortunate or that she was the sort who wouldn’t have recognised an uncharitable thought if it did a salsa in front of her. What he did recognise was that he would be better served in his quest for revenge by getting to know her.

She was an unexpected piece of a puzzle he had thought was already complete and he would have to check her out.

He had waited years for retribution. Waiting a couple of weeks longer wasn’t going to kill him and it might put him in an even stronger position than he already was.

He looked at her anxious face and smiled slowly. ‘There’s no need to look so worried,’ he soothed. ‘I’m not a man who beats about the bush, Miss...it is Miss, isn’t it?’

Sophie nodded and automatically touched her ring-free finger. Once upon a time, she had had a boyfriend. Once upon a time, she had had dreams of marriage and kids and a happy-ever-after life, but reality had had something different to say about that.

‘Boyfriend?’ Matias hadn’t missed that unconscious gesture. No ring on her finger. Had there been one? Once? Was she divorced? She looked far too young, but who knew? It wasn’t his business but it paid to know your quarry.

Sophie sat on her hands. ‘I don’t see what that has to do with...your car, Mr... Rivers...’

‘Rivero.’ Matias frowned because it wasn’t often that anyone forgot his name. In fact, never. ‘And in point of fact, it has. You owe me money but if you’re telling the truth, then it would seem that you have little to no hope of repaying me.’

‘Why wouldn’t I be telling the truth?’

Matias debated whether he should point out that her father would surely not be keen to see his child slaving in front of a hot oven cooking food for other people, so how likely was it that catering was her full-time occupation? Or maybe she was the sort who rebelled against their parents by pretending to reject money and everything it stood for? When you came from money and had comfort and security as a blanket to fall back on, it was easy to play at enjoying poverty. From what he knew of the man, keeping up appearances ran to a full-time occupation and surely his offspring would have been dragged into that little game too?

However, he had no intention of laying any of his cards on any tables any time soon. At any rate, it would be a matter of seconds to check her story and he was pretty sure she was telling the truth. Her car, for one thing, did not suggest someone with an enviable bank balance and the oversight with the insurance added to the impression.

He shrugged. ‘Maybe you imagine that pleading poverty will touch some kind of chord in me.’

‘That never crossed my mind,’ Sophie said honestly. ‘I can’t think that anyone would be mad enough to try and appeal to your better nature.’

‘Come again?’ Momentarily distracted, Matias stared at her with outright incredulity.

The woman was here on the back foot, staring bankruptcy in the face if he decided to go after her, and yet she had the cheek to criticise him? He almost couldn’t believe his ears.

Sophie didn’t back down. She loathed arguments and avoided confrontation like the plague, but she was honest and forthright and could be as stubborn as a mule. She had had to be because she had had to take up where her mother had left off when it came to breathing in deep and pursuing what she felt James Carney owed her.

Right now, she had no idea where Matias was going with some of his remarks. He had mentioned a solution to the problem staring her in the face, but she couldn’t help noticing that he hadn’t actually said what that solution might be.

If he was stringing her along only to pull the rug from under her feet, then she wasn’t going to sit back and allow him to bully her in the process.

‘If you had a better nature,’ she pointed out, ‘then you would try and understand what it’s like for me. You probably don’t have a clue about what it’s like to struggle, because if you did then you would be able to put yourself in my shoes, and if you did that you might try and find a solution to the problem instead. If you give me a chance, then I will pay you back, but first you have to give me a chance.’

‘Is this your idea of buttering me up?’ Matias said coldly. ‘Because if it is, then you’re heading in the wrong direction. Let’s not forget that you’re here with a begging bowl.’ He would come back to her father and exactly how hard he’d made Matias’s family struggle in due course.

Sophie’s soft mouth tightened. She had a lot of experience when it came to begging bowls and she had learned the hard way that buckling under threat never got anyone anywhere.

‘You said that you had a proposition for me,’ she reminded him, clinging to that lifebelt and already willing to snatch at it whatever the cost. Perhaps if she had had only herself to think about, she might have backed off, but there were more people at stake here than just her.

Matias was already pleased that he had decided to go with the flow and exploit the opportunity presented to him. Soft and yielding she might look, but it had quickly become apparent that she was anything but.

He felt the kick of an unexpected challenge. So much of his life was predictable. He had reached the pinnacle of his success and he was still in his early thirties. People kowtowed to him, sought his advice, hung onto his every word, did their utmost to please him. Bearing in mind that financial security and the power that came with it had been his ambition for as long as he could remember, he was now disappointed to acknowledge that there was something missing from his life, something that not even the glowing fires of revenge had been able to fulfil.

He had become jaded over time. When he thought back to the hungry young man he had once been, his whole body alive for the task he had set himself, he felt as if he were staring backwards at a stranger. Certainly, on a personal level, the fact that he could have any woman he wanted was something that had long lost its novelty value. Now, for the first time in ages, he was facing a challenge he could sink his teeth into and he liked the feeling.

‘In two weeks’ time...’ Matias had returned to his desk and now he pushed back his leather chair and relaxed with his hands folded behind his head ‘...I am due to host a long weekend party at one of my houses. Around eighty people will be descending and they will be expecting the highest standard of catering. I will provide the food. You will handle everything else. Naturally, you won’t be paid. Succeed and we can carry on from there. I have no intention of exercising my right to frankly bankrupt you because, for a start, driving without being insured is illegal. If I went the whole way, you’d be in prison by dusk. Instead, I will play it by ear.’

‘In other words,’ Sophie said stiffly, ‘you’ll own me until you consider the debt to be paid off.’

Matias tilted his head to one side and smiled coolly. ‘That’s one way of putting it...’ Okay, so it was the only way of putting it. He would be able to take his time finding out about her and thereby finding other ways back to her father. Were those rumours of foul play in the company vaults true? Was that something the man had confessed to his offspring? If so, if that level of information could somehow be accessed, then he would have the most powerful weapon for revenge within his grasp. He couldn’t care less about the damage to his car. He could take it to the nearest scrapyard and buy a replacement without even noticing any dent in his limitless income.

‘And when you think about the alternatives,’ he mused, ‘you’ll conclude, pretty fast, that it’s a sweet deal for you.’ He gave a gesture that was as exotically foreign as he was. ‘You might even be able to...’ he flicked out the business card she had earlier given him ‘...distribute these discreetly during the weekend.’

‘And will I be able to bring my business partner?’

‘I don’t think so. Too many cooks and all that. I will ensure that you have sufficient staff to help but essentially this will be your baby.’ He glanced at his watch but didn’t stand, leaving it to Sophie to deduce that he was done with her. She stood up awkwardly and looked at him.

How could someone so effortlessly beautiful be so utterly cold-hearted?

Although, she had to acknowledge, at least he hadn’t done what he had every right to do and contacted the police. She could have kicked herself for that little window during which she had forgotten to renew her insurance with a different company. So unlike her but then she had had so much on her mind.

‘Will there be something...er...in writing?’

‘Something in writing?’

‘Just so that I know how much of the debt will be covered when I handle the catering for you that weekend...’

‘You don’t trust me?’

Sophie gazed off and thought of her father. She’d had to learn fast how to manage him. Trust had never been in plentiful supply in their relationship and she thought that it would be prudent not to rely on it in this situation either.

‘I don’t trust many people,’ she said quietly and Matias’s ears pricked up.

He looked at her carefully. ‘No?’ he murmured. ‘I don’t trust many people either but then, as you’ve pointed out, I don’t have a better nature whereas I expect you probably do. Am I right?’

‘I’ve found that people inevitably let you down,’ Sophie told him painfully, then she blinked and wondered what on earth had induced her to say that. ‘So it would work if I could have something in writing as I go along...’

‘I’ll get my secretary to draw something up.’ All business now, Matias stood up, signalling that her time was up. ‘Rest assured, you won’t be required to become my personal slave in return for a debt.’

His dark eyes flicked to her as she shuffled to her feet. She gave the impression of someone whose eyes were always downcast and he could see how Art had been knocked sideways by her meek persona, but he wasn’t so easily fooled. He had seen the fire burning just below the surface. She blushed like a virgin but those aquamarine eyes flashed like a siren call and he couldn’t wait to get to the bottom of her...and discover in the process what she could contribute to the picture he had already compiled of her father.

‘But I just think that there must have been some other way of sorting this situation out! I’m going to be left here for several days on my own and I just don’t know whether I can manage the Rosses’ cocktail party on my own!’

Sophie’s heart went out to Julie and she looked at her friend sympathetically. Sympathy was about all she could offer. She had signed up to a deal with the devil and it was a better deal than she might have hoped for. Even though she hated it.

She had been over all the pros and cons of the situation, and had apologised profusely to her friend, who was not as confident in the kitchen as she was.

‘But on the bright side,’ she said in an upbeat voice, ‘think of all the possible connections we could make! And,’ she felt compelled to repeat because fair was fair, ‘he could have just taken everything from us to sort out the damage to his car. I honestly had no idea that a car could cost that much to repair! It’s mad.’

He was sending a car for her and Sophie looked at her watch with a sense of impending doom. A fortnight ago, his secretary had emailed her with an extensive list of things she ‘should bring, should know and should be prepared to undertake’.

There was to be no veering off from the menu and she would have to ensure that every single dish for every single day was prepared to the highest possible specification.

She was told how many helpers she would have and how they should behave. Reading between the lines, that meant no fraternising with the guests.

She was informed of the dress code for all members of staff, including herself. The dress code did not include jeans or anything that might be interpreted as casual.

She gathered that she was being thrown in at the deep end and this detailed information was his way of being kind to her. She assumed that he had diverted his original catering firm to some other do specifically so that he could put her through her paces and she had spent the past two nights worrying about what would happen if she failed. Matias Rivero wasn’t, she thought, callous enough to take the shirt off her back, but he intended to get his money’s worth by hook or by crook. He might be unwilling to throw her to the sharks, but he wasn’t going to let her get off lightly by agreeing to monthly payments that would take her decades to deliver what was owed.

This was the biggest and most high-profile job she had ever got close to doing and the fact that he would be looking at her efforts with a view to criticism filled her with terror. She wondered whether he hadn’t set her an impossible task just so he could do his worst with a clear conscience when she failed. He struck her as the sort of man who saw ruthlessness as a virtue.

His car arrived just as she was giving some final tips to Julie about the catering job she would be handling on her own, and Sophie took a deep breath and reached for her pull-along case.

There would be a uniform waiting for her at his country house, which was in the Lake District. However, his instructions had been so detailed that she had decided against wearing her usual garb of jeans and a tee shirt to travel there and, instead, was in an uncomfortable grey skirt and a white blouse with a short linen jacket. At a little after ten in the morning, with the sun climbing in the sky, the outfit was already making her perspire.

She hung onto the hopeful thought that she would probably find herself stuck in the kitchen for the entire time. With any luck, she wouldn’t glimpse Matias or any of his guests and she knew that, if that were the case, then she would be all right because she was an excellent chef and more than capable of producing the menu that had been emailed to her.

She wouldn’t even have to bother about sourcing the ingredients, because all of that would already have been taken care of.

Her high hopes lasted for as long as the very smooth car journey took. Then nerves kicked in with a vengeance as the car turned between imposing wrought-iron gates to glide soundlessly up a tree-lined avenue on either side of which perfectly manicured lawns stretched towards distant horizons of open fields, shaded with copses. It was a lush landscape and very secluded.

The house that eventually climbed into view was perched atop a hill. She had expected something traditional, perhaps a Victorian manor house with faded red brick and chimneys.

She gasped at the modern marvel that greeted her. The architect had designed the house to be an organic extension of the hill and it appeared to be embedded into the side so that glass and lead projected as naturally from rock and foliage as a tree might grow upwards from the ground.

The drive curved around the back, skirting a small lake, and then they were approaching the house from the side where a sprawling courtyard was large enough to house all those important guests she had been expecting to find. Except the courtyard was empty aside from three high-performance cars parked haphazardly.