Ruthless Revenge: Passionate Possession: A Virgin for Vasquez / A Marriage Fit for a Sinner / Mistress of His Revenge

‘And then?’ Javier queried silkily and Sophie shrugged.

‘Getting rid of them never happened. Thankfully the majority have now left, but with generous pension payments or golden handshakes...’ Yet more ways money had drained away from the company until the river had run dry.

‘The company is in far worse shape than even I imagined...’

Sophie blanched. She watched as he began helping to clear the table, bringing plates to the sink.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your father didn’t just take his eye off the ball when he became ill. I doubt his eye had ever really been fully on it in the first place.’

‘You can’t say that!’

‘I’ve gone through all the books with a fine-tooth comb, Sophie.’ He relieved her of the plate she was holding and dried it before placing it on the kitchen counter, then he slung the tea towel he had fetched over his shoulder and propped himself against the counter, arms folded.

Javier had always suspected that her father had been instrumental in her decision to quit university and return to the guy she had always been destined to marry. Even though she had never come right out and said so; even though she had barely had the courage to look him in the face when she had announced that she’d be leaving university because of a family situation that had arisen.

He had never told her that he had subsequently gone to see her parents, that he had confronted her father, who had left him in no doubt that there was no way his precious daughter would contemplate a permanent relationship with someone like him.

He wondered whether the old man’s extreme reaction had been somehow linked to his decline into terminal ill health, and scowled as he remembered the heated argument that had resulted in him walking away, never looking back.

This was the perfect moment to disabuse her of whatever illusions she had harboured about a father who had clearly had little clue about running a business, but the dismay on her face made him hesitate.

He raked his fingers uncomfortably through his hair and continued to stare down at her upturned face.

‘He was a terrific dad,’ she said defensively, thinking back to the many times he had taken the family out on excursions, often leaving the running of the company to the guys working for him. ‘Life was to be enjoyed’ had always been his motto. He had played golf and taken them on fantastic holidays; she recognised now that ineffective, relatively unsupervised management had not helped the company coffers. He had inherited a thriving business but, especially when everything had gone electronic, he had failed to move with the times and so had his pals who had joined the company when he had taken it over.

In retrospect, she saw that so much had been piling up like dark clouds on the horizon, waiting for their moment to converge and create the thunderstorm of events that would land her where she was right now.

Javier opened his mouth to disabuse her of her girlish illusions and then thought of his own father. There was no way he would ever have had a word said against him, and yet, hadn’t Pedro Vasquez once confessed that he had blown an opportunity to advance himself by storming out of his first company, too young and hot-headed to take orders he didn’t agree with? The golden opportunity he had walked away from had never again returned and he had had to devote years of saving and scrimping to get by on the low wages he had earned until his retirement.

But Javier had never held that weak moment against him.

‘Your father wouldn’t be the first man who failed to spot areas for expansion,’ he said gruffly. ‘It happens.’

Sophie knew that he had softened and something deep inside her shifted and changed as she continued to stare up at him, their eyes locked.

She could scarcely breathe.

‘Thank you,’ she whispered and he shook his head, wanting to break a connection that was sucking him in, but finding it impossible to do so.

‘What are you thanking me for?’

‘He was old-fashioned, and unfortunately the people he delegated to were as old-fashioned as he was. Dad should have called a troubleshooter in the minute the profits started taking a nosedive, but he turned a blind eye to what was going on in the company.’

And he turned a blind eye to your ex as well...

That thought made Javier stiffen. Her father had been old-fashioned enough to hold pompous, arrogant views about foreign upstarts, to have assumed that some loser with the right accent was the sort of man his daughter should marry.

But that wasn’t a road he was willing to go down because it would have absolved Sophie of guilt and the bottom line was that no one had pointed a gun to her head and forced her up the aisle.

She had wanted to take that step.

She had chosen to stick with the guy even though she knew that he was blowing up the company with his crazy investments.

She had watched and remained silent as vast sums of vitally needed money had been gambled away.

She had enabled. And the only reason she had done that was because she had loved the man.

He turned away abruptly, breaking eye contact, feeling the sour taste of bile rise to his mouth.

‘The company will have to be streamlined further,’ he told her curtly. ‘Dead wood can no longer be tolerated.’ He remained where he was, hip against the counter, and watched as she tidied, washed dishes, dried them and stayed silent.

‘All the old retainers will end up being sacked. Is that it?’

‘Needs must.’

‘Some of the old guys have families... They’re nearing retirement—and, okay, they may not have been the most efficient on the planet, but they’ve been loyal...’

‘And you place a lot of value on loyalty, do you?’ he murmured.

‘Don’t you?’

‘There are times when common sense has to win the battle.’

‘You’re in charge now. I don’t suppose I have any choice, have I?’

Instead of soothing him, her passive, resentful compliance stoked a surge of anger inside him.

‘If you’d taken a step back,’ he said with ruthless precision, ‘and swapped blind loyalty for some common sense, you might have been able to curb some of your dear husband’s outrageous excesses...’

‘You truly believe that?’ She stepped back, swamped by his powerful, aggressive presence, and glared at him.

The last thing Javier felt he needed was to have her try to make feeble excuses for the man who had contributed to almost destroying her family business. What he really felt he needed right now was something stiff to drink. He couldn’t look at her without his body going into instant and immediate overdrive and he couldn’t talk to her without relinquishing some of his formidable and prized self-control. She affected him in a way no other woman ever had and it annoyed the hell out of him.

‘What else is anyone supposed to believe?’ he asked with rampant sarcasm. ‘Join the dots and you usually get an accurate picture at the end of the exercise.’

‘There was no way I could ever have stopped Roger!’ Sophie heard herself all but shout at him, appalled by her outburst even as she realised that it was too late to take it back. ‘There were always consequences for trying to talk common sense into him!’

The silence that greeted this outburst was electric, sizzling around them, so that the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end.

‘Consequences? What consequences?’ Javier pressed in a dangerously soft voice.

‘Nothing,’ Sophie muttered, turning away, but he reached out, circling her forearm to tug her back towards him.

‘You don’t get to walk away from this conversation after you’ve opened up a can of worms, Sophie.’

There were so many reasons this was a can of worms that she didn’t want to explore. On a deeply emotional level, she didn’t want to confront, yet again, the mistakes she had made in the past. She’d done enough of that to last a lifetime and she especially didn’t want to confront those mistakes aloud, with Javier as her witness. She didn’t want his pity. She didn’t want him to sense her vulnerability. He might no longer care about her, but she didn’t want to think that he would be quietly satisfied that, having walked out on him, she had got her comeuppance, so to speak.

‘It’s not relevant!’ she snapped, trying and failing to tug her arm out of his grasp.

‘Was he...? I don’t know what to think here, Soph...’

That abbreviation of her name brought back a flood of memories and they went straight to the core of her, burning a hole through her defence mechanisms. Her soft mouth trembled and she knew that her eyes were glazing over, which, in turn, made her blink rapidly, fighting back the urge to burst into tears.

‘He could be unpredictable.’ Her jaw tightened and she looked away but he wouldn’t allow her to avoid his searching gaze, tilting her to face him by placing a finger gently under her chin.

‘That’s a big word. Try breaking it down into smaller components...’

‘He could be verbally abusive,’ she told him jerkily. ‘On one occasion he was physically abusive. So there you have it, Javier. If I’d tried to interfere in his gambling, there’s no accounting for what the outcome might have been for me.’

Javier was horrified. He dropped his hand and his fingers clenched and unclenched. She might have fancied herself in love with the guy but that would have been disillusionment on a grand scale.

‘Why didn’t you divorce him?’

‘It was a brief marriage, Javier. And there is more to this than you know...’

‘Did you know that the man had anger issues?’ Javier sifted his fingers through his hair. Suddenly the kitchen felt the size of a matchbox. He wanted to walk, unfettered; he wanted to punch something.

‘Of course I didn’t, and that certainly wasn’t the case when... You don’t get it,’ she said uneasily. ‘And I’d really rather not talk about this any more.’

Javier had been mildly incredulous at her declaration that her descent into penury had been tougher to handle than his own lifetime of struggle and straitened circumstances. She, at least, had had the head start of the silver spoon in the mouth and a failing company was, after all, still a company with hope of salvation. The crumbling family pile was still a very big roof over her head.

Now there were muddy, swirling currents underlying those glib assumptions, and yet again, he lost sight of the clarity of his intentions.

He reminded himself that fundamentally nothing had changed. She had begun something seven years ago and had failed to finish it because she had chosen to run off with her long-time, socially acceptable boyfriend.

That the boyfriend had failed to live up to expectation, that events in her life had taken a fairly disastrous turn, did not change the basic fact that she had strung him along.

But he couldn’t recapture the simple black-and-white equation that had originally propelled him. He wondered, in passing, whether he should just have stuck to his quid pro quo solution: ‘you give me what I want and I’ll give you what you want’.

But no.

He wanted so much more and he could feel it running hot through his veins as she continued to stare at him, unable to break eye contact.

Subtly, the atmosphere shifted. He sensed the change in her breathing, saw the way her pupils dilated, the way her lips parted as if she might be on the brink of saying something.

He cupped her face with his hand and felt rather than heard the long sigh that made her shudder.

Sophie’s eyelids felt heavy. She wanted to close her eyes because if she closed her eyes she would be able to breathe him in more deeply, and she wanted to do that, wanted to breathe him in, wanted to touch him and scratch the itch that had been bothering her ever since he had been catapulted back into her life.

She wanted to kiss him and taste his mouth.

She only realised that she was reaching up to him when she felt the hardness of muscled chest under the palms of her flattened hands.

She heard a whimper of sheer longing which seemed to come from her and then she was kissing him...tongues entwining...exploring...easing some of the aching pain of her body...

She inched closer, pressed herself against him and wanted to rub against his length, wanted to feel his nakedness against hers.

She couldn’t get enough of him.

It was as if no time had gone by between them, as if they were back where they had been, a time when he had been able to set fire to her body with the merest of touches. Nothing had changed and everything had changed.

‘No!’ She came to her senses with horrified, jerky panic. ‘This is... I am not that girl I once was. I... No!’

She’d flung herself at him! She’d practically assaulted the man like a sex-starved woman desperate to be touched! He didn’t even care about her! She’d opened up and on the back of that had leapt on him and had managed to surface only after damage had been done!

Humiliation tore through her. She went beetroot-red and stumbled backwards.

‘I apologise for that.’ She immediately went on the attack. ‘It should never have happened and I don’t know what came over me!’ She ran her fingers through her hair and tried to remain calm but she was shaking like a leaf. ‘This isn’t what we’re about! Not at all.’

Javier raised his eyebrows and her colour deepened.

‘There’s only business between us,’ she insisted through clenched teeth. ‘I must have had... I don’t normally drink...’

‘Now, isn’t that the lamest excuse in the world?’ Javier murmured. ‘Let’s blame it on the wine...’

‘I don’t care what you think!’ How could he be so cool and composed when she was all over the place? Except, of course, she knew how. Because she was just so much more affected by him than he was by her and she could see all her pride and self-respect disappearing down the plug hole if she didn’t get a grip on the situation right now.

She cleared her throat and stared, at him and through him. ‘I... We have to work alongside one another for a while and...this was just an unfortunate blip. I would appreciate it if you never mention it again. We can both pretend that it never happened, because it will never happen again.’

Javier lowered his eyes and tilted his head to one side as if seriously considering what she had just said.

So many challenges in that single sentence. Did she really and truly believe that she could close the book now that page one had been turned?

He’d tasted her and one small taste wasn’t going to do. Not for him and not for her. Whatever her backstory, they both needed to sate themselves with one another and that was what they would do before that place was inevitably reached where walking away was an option.

‘If that’s how you want to play it.’ He shrugged and looked at her. ‘And from Monday,’ he said with lazy assurance, ‘bank on me being around most of the time. We both want the same thing, don’t we...?’

‘What?’ Confused, the only thought that came to her was each other—that, at any rate, was the thing that she wanted, and she could smell that it was what he wanted as well.

‘For us to sort out the problems in this company as quickly as possible,’ he said in a voice implying surprise that she hadn’t spotted the right answer immediately. ‘Of course...’

CHAPTER SIX

‘NO.’

‘Give me three good reasons and maybe I’ll let you get away with that response.’

Sophie stared at Javier, body language saying it all as she supported herself on her desk, palms flattened on the highly polished surface, torso tilted towards him in angry refusal.

True to his word, he had more or less taken up residence in the premises in Notting Hill.

He wasn’t there all the time. That would actually have been far easier for her to deal with. No, he breezed in and out. Sometimes she would arrive at eight-thirty to find him installed at the desk which he had claimed as his own, hard at it, there since the break of dawn and with a list of demands that had her on her feet running at full tilt for the remainder of the day.

Other times he might show up mid-afternoon and content himself with checking a couple of things with members of staff before vanishing, barely giving her a second glance.

And there had been days when he hadn’t shown up at all and there had been no communication from him.

After six weeks, Sophie felt as though she had been tossed in a tumble dryer with the speed turned to high. She had been miserable, uncertain and fearful when she had had to deal with the horrendous financial mess into which she had been plunged. After her marriage, that had just felt like a continuation of a state of mind that had become more or less natural to her.

Now, though...

She was none of those things. She was a high-wire walker, with excitement and trepidation fighting for dominance. She leapt out of bed every morning with a treacherous sense of anticipation. Her pulses raced every time she took a deep breath and entered the office. Her blood pressure soared when she glanced to the door and saw him stride in. Her heart sang when she saw him stationed at his desk first thing, with his cup of already tepid black coffee on the desk in front of him.

Life was suddenly in technicolor and it scared the living daylights out of her. It had become obvious that she’d never got him out of her system and she seemed to have no immunity against the staggering force of his impact on all her senses. Her heart might be locked away behind walls of ice but her body clearly wasn’t.

‘I don’t have to give you any reasons, Javier.’ She was the last man standing and had been about to leave the office at a little after six when Javier had swanned in and stopped her in the act of putting on her jacket.

‘Quick word,’ he had said, in that way he had of presuming that there would be no argument. He’d then proceeded to lounge back in his chair, gesturing for her to drop what she was doing and take the seat facing him across his desk.

That had been half an hour ago.

‘You do, really.’ He looked at her lazily. Despite the fact that the largely young staff all dressed informally, Sophie had stuck it out with her prissy work outfits, which ranged from drab grey skirts and neat white blouses to drab black skirts and neat white blouses, all worn with the same flat black pumps. The ravishing hair which he had glimpsed on the one occasion when he had surprised her weeks ago at the apartment had gone back into hiding. Woe betide she actually released it from captivity between the hours of eight-thirty and five-thirty!

‘Why?’

‘Because I think it would work.’

‘And of course, because you think it would work, means I have to agree and go along with it!’

‘How many of the programmes that I’ve set in motion over the past couple of months have failed?’

‘That’s not the point.’

‘Any? No. Is the company seeing the start of a turnaround? Yes. Have the sales team been reporting gains? Yes.’ He folded his hands behind his head and looked at her evenly. ‘Ergo, this idea makes sense and will generate valuable sales.’

‘But I’m not a model, Javier!’

‘That’s the point, Sophie. You’re the face of your company. Putting your image on billboards and in advertising campaigns will personalise the company—half the battle in wooing potential customers is making them feel as though they’re relating to something more than just a name and a brand.’

She stared at him mutinously and he gazed calmly back at her.

The waiting game was taking longer than he had anticipated and he was finding that he was in no rush to speed things up. He was enjoying her. He was enjoying the way she made him feel and it wasn’t just the reaction of his body to her. No, he realised that the years of having whatever he wanted and whoever he chose had jaded him. This blast from the past was...rejuvenating. And who didn’t like a spot of rejuvenation in their lives? Of course, he would have to hurry things along eventually, because bed was the conclusion to the exercise before normal service was resumed and he returned to the life from which he had been taking a little holiday.

But for the moment...

He really liked the way she blushed. He could almost forget that she was the scheming young girl who had played him for an idiot.

‘So we just need to talk about the details. And stop glaring. I thought all women liked to show off their bodies.’

Sophie glared. ‘Really, Javier? You really think that?’

‘Who wouldn’t like to be asked to model?’

‘Is that the message you’ve got from...from the women you’ve been out with?’

Javier looked at her narrowly because this was the first time she had ventured near the question of his love life. ‘Most of the women I’ve been out with,’ he murmured, ‘were already catwalk models, accustomed to dealing with the full glare of the public spotlight.’

She’d wondered. Of course she had. Now she knew. Models. Naturally. He certainly wouldn’t have dated normal, average women holding down normal, average jobs. He was the man who could have it all and men who could have it all always, but always, seemed to want to have models glued to their arm. It was just so...predictable.

‘You’ve stopped glaring,’ Javier said. ‘Which is a good thing. But now there’s disapproval stamped all over your face. What are you disapproving of? My choice of woman?’

‘I don’t care what your choice of girlfriends has been!’

‘Don’t you?’ He raised his eyebrows. ‘Because you look a little agitated. What’s wrong with models? Some of them can be relatively clever, as it happens.’

‘Relatively clever...’ Sophie snorted. Her colour was high and the look in his sinfully dark eyes was doing weird things to her, making her feel jumpy and thrillingly excited.

Making her nipples tighten...stoking a dampness between her thighs that had nothing to do with her scorn for his choice of dates, whoever those nameless dates had been.

Instant recall of that kiss they had shared made her breath hitch temporarily in her throat.

Just as she had stridently demanded, no mention had been made of it again. It was as though it had never happened. Yes, that was exactly what she had wanted, but it hadn’t stopped her constantly harking back to it in her head, reliving the moment and burning up just at the thought of it. How could a bruised and battered heart take second billing to a body that seemed to do whatever it felt like doing?

‘You used to tell me that you liked the fact that I had opinions!’

‘Many models have opinions—admittedly not of the intellectual variety. They have very strong opinions on, oh, shoes...bags...other models...’

Sophie felt her mouth twitch. She’d missed his sense of humour. In fact, thinking about it, he’d been the benchmark against which Roger had never stood a chance. Not that he had ever been in the running...

In fact, thinking about it, wasn’t he the benchmark against which every other man had always been set and always would be? When would that end? How could she resign herself to a half-life because she was still wrapped up in the man in front of her? Because that intense physical reaction just hadn’t died and could still make itself felt through all the layers of sadness and despair that had shaped the woman she was now.

She hadn’t looked twice at any guy since she’d been on her own. Hadn’t even been tempted!

Yet here she was, not only wanting to look but wanting to touch...

Why kid herself? Telling herself to pretend that that kiss had never happened didn’t actually mean that it had disappeared from her head.

And telling herself that she should feel nothing for a guy who belonged to her past, a guy who wasn’t even interested in her, didn’t actually mean that she felt nothing for him.

Lust—that was what it was—and the harder she tried to deny its existence, the more powerful a grip it seemed to have over her.

And part of the reason was because...he wasn’t indifferent, was he?