Читать книгу Ruthless Revenge: Passionate Possession - Кэтти Уильямс, Cathy Williams - Страница 14

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?

Heart racing, she looked down and gave proper house room in her head to all those barely discernible signals she had felt emanating from him over the past few weeks.

For starters, there had been that kiss.

She’d felt the way his mouth had explored hers, hungry and greedy and wanting more.

And then, working in the same space, she’d lodged somewhere in the back of her head those accidental brushes when he had leant over her, caging her in in front of her computer so that he could explain some detail on the screen.

She’d committed to memory the way she had occasionally surprised his lazy dark eyes resting on her just a fraction longer than necessary.

And sometimes...didn’t he stand just a little too close? Close enough for her to feel the heat from his body? To smell his clean, masculine scent?

Didn’t all of that add up to something?

She didn’t know whether he was even aware of the dangerous current running between them just beneath the surface. If he was, then it was obvious that he had no intention of doing anything about it.

And then, one day, he would no longer be around.

Right now, he was making sure that his investment paid off. He had sunk money into a bailout, and he wasn’t going to see that money flushed down the drain, so he was taking an active part in progressing the company.

But soon enough the company would be on firmer ground and he would be able to retreat and hand over the running of it to other people, herself included.

He would resume his hectic life running his own empire.

And she, likewise, would return to Yorkshire to take up full-time residence in the family home, which she would be able to renovate at least enough to make it a viable selling proposition.

They would part company.

And she would be left with this strange, empty feeling for the rest of her life.

She felt guilty enough about the way they had broken up. On top of that, he would remain the benchmark against which no other man would ever stand a chance of competing for ever.

She should have slept with him.

She knew that now. She should have slept with him instead of holding on to all those girlish fantasies about saving herself for when that time came and she knew that they would be a permanent item, for when she was convinced that their relationship was made to stand the test of time.

If she’d slept with him, he would never have achieved the impossible status of being the only guy capable of turning her on. If she’d slept with him, she might not feel so guilty about the way everything had crashed and burned.

Was it selfish now to think that, if she righted that oversight, she might be free to get on with her life? Things were being sorted financially but what was the good of that if, emotionally, she remained in some kind of dreadful, self-inflicted limbo?

She wasn’t the selfish sort. She had never thought of herself as the kind of pushy, independent type who took what she wanted from a man to satisfy her own needs.

The opposite!

But she knew, with a certain amount of desperation, that if she didn’t take what she wanted now she would create all sorts of problems for herself down the line.

She wondered whether she could talk to her mother about it and immediately dismissed that thought because, as far as Evelyn Griffin-Watt was concerned, Javier was a youthful blip who had been cut out of her life a long time ago, leaving no nasty scars behind.

Besides, her mother was leading an uncomplicated and contented life in Cornwall; was it really fair to bring back unpleasant memories by resurrecting a long, involved conversation about the past?

‘Okay.’

‘Come again?’

‘I’ll do it.’

Javier smiled slowly. In truth, the whole modelling idea had sprung to mind only the day before, and he had anticipated defeat, but here she was...agreeing after a pretty half-hearted battle. At least, half-hearted for her.

‘Brilliant decision!’

‘I was railroaded into it.’

‘Strong word. I prefer persuaded. Now, I have a few ideas...’

* * *

Sophie peeped through a crack in the curtains and looked down into the courtyard which had been tarted up for the day into a vision of genteel respectability.

The shoot had been arranged in the space of a week, during which time Sophie had spoken to various media types and also to various stylists. She imagined that they were being paid a phenomenal amount for the day because they had all bent over backwards to pay attention to what she had said.

Which hadn’t been very much because she had no idea what questions to ask other than the obvious one: How long is it all going to take?

Javier hadn’t been at any of those meetings, choosing instead to delegate to one of the people in his PR department, but that hadn’t bothered Sophie.

In a way, she’d been glad, because she had a plan and the element of surprise was a big part of the plan.

Except, the day had now arrived and the courtyard was buzzing with cameramen, the make-up crew, the director, producer and all the other people whose roles were, quite frankly, bewildering. And where was Javier? Nowhere to be seen.

It was today or it was not at all.

She dropped the curtain and turned to the full-length mirror which the stylist had installed in the bedroom because the small one on the dressing table ‘just won’t do, darling!’

The brief which she had agreed on with Javier would have her standing next to a gleaming articulated lorry bearing the company logo, in dungarees, a checked shirt and a jaunty cowboy hat on her head.

Sophie had decided to take it up a notch and the reflection staring back at her had dumped the dungarees in favour of a pair of shorts with a frayed hem. The checked shirt remained the same, but it was tied under her breasts so that her flat stomach was exposed, and there was no jaunty cowboy hat on her head. Instead, she had slung it on her back so that her hair was wild and loose.

Javier had vaguely aimed for something wholesome and appealing, a throwback to the good old days of home-baked bread and jam, which was some of the cargo transported in the lorries. He’d suggested that it would be a nice contrast to the new face of the business, which was streamlined and fully up to spec on the technological front, which it hadn’t been before. Something along the lines of the home-baked bread getting from A to B before it had time to cool from the oven and Sophie’s image was going to sell the absolute truth of that.

She had taken it up a notch from wholesome to wholesome and sexy.

It had been her brainwave when she had sat there, numbly recognising that she would never, ever get over him if she didn’t sleep with him, if she didn’t seduce him into bed. He’d been in her head for years and she couldn’t think of another way to make sure that he was knocked off the position he occupied there.

She’d never seduced anyone in her life before. Just thinking about doing something like that was terrifying, but when it came to her emotions, she had to be proactive. As proactive as she had been dealing with the mess she’d been left to clear up in the company.

She wasn’t a simpering teenager any more, seeing the future through rose-tinted specs and believing in happy-ever-after endings.

She was an adult, jaded by experience, who would be left nursing regret for the rest of her life if she didn’t give this a shot. And so what if she failed? What if he looked at her get-up and burst out laughing? So, she might have a moment’s humiliation, but that would be worth the lifetime she would have had thinking about an opportunity that had passed her by, an opportunity to claim what she knew could have been hers all those years ago.

The time had come to take a chance.

Except, it didn’t look as though the wretched man was going to show up!

Her nerves were shot, her pulses were racing and she hadn’t eaten since lunchtime the previous day because of the shot nerves and the racing pulses...

She was a mess and it was all going to be for nothing because Javier had obviously had his brainwave and then allowed his minions to realise it while he stepped back from the scene of the action.

She slunk down to the courtyard with a white bathrobe over her screamingly uncomfortable outfit and was immediately appropriated by a host of people whose only function seemed to be to get her ready for the shoot.

She allowed herself to be manoeuvred while disappointment cascaded through her in waves.

No Javier. No big seduction. It had taken absolutely everything out of her. And there was no way she was going to do this again. She wasn’t going to set herself the task of staging seductive scenes in the hope of igniting something that probably wasn’t there for him anyway, whatever stupid signals she thought she’d read!

A mirror was brought for her to inspect herself. Sophie barely glanced at the fully made-up face staring back at her. After the tension of the past couple of days, and the nervous excitement of earlier this morning as she had got dressed, she now felt like a balloon that had been deflated before it had made it to the party.

She was aware of orders being shouted and poses she was being instructed to adopt.

No one had questioned the slight change in outfit. She was Javier’s personal pet project and no one dared question her for fear that she would report unfavourably back to their boss.

She was supposed to turn up in denim and a checked top with a cowboy hat and they knew what the direction of the shoot should be. The outfit was daring, though, and the poses were therefore slightly more daring than perhaps originally choreographed.

She had her back to the camera team, one hand resting lightly on the shining lorry, looking over her shoulder with a smile, when she heard his roar from behind her.

She’d given up on Javier coming.

But before she’d clocked his absence, she had somehow imagined him standing amongst the crew, goggle-eyed as he looked at her, wanting her as much as she wanted him and knowing that he had to have her. She’d pictured him waiting impatiently until the crew had packed up and gone and then...

Her wanton thoughts had not formulated much beyond that point. There would be a lot of ground to cover before the scene shifted from impatient seduction to the satisfied aftermath.

‘What the hell is going on here?’

Sophie stumbled back against the lorry and the entire assembled crew stared at Javier in growing confusion, aware that they had done something wrong but not quite sure what.

Javier strode forward through them like a charging bull, face as black as thunder.

‘You!’ He pointed to the director of the shoot, who jumped to attention and began stammering out his consternation, puzzled as to what the problem was. The shoot was going very well. Indeed, if Javier wanted, he could see what was already in the bag. It was going to do the job and sell the business like hot cakes straight from the oven. Sophie was a brilliant model. No temper tantrums and no diva pouting. She was perfect for the job and the fact that she was part-owner of the company was going to be a nice touch. They’d make sure they got that in in the backdrop...

Javier held up one cold, imperious hand. ‘This was not what I wanted!’ he snapped. He looked across to Sophie with a scowl and she folded her arms defensively.

‘They have no idea what you’re going on about, Javier,’ she said sweetly, strolling towards him although she was quaking inside, unable to tear her eyes away from his strident masculinity. He dominated the space around him, a towering, forbidding figure who clearly inspired awe, fear and respect in equal measure.

It was an incredible turn-on to think that this was the guy who had once teased her, told her that she made him weak, the guy whose eyes had flared with desire whenever they had rested on her.

The guy she wanted so much that it hurt.

The guy she was prepared to risk humiliation for.

‘Consider this shoot over for the day.’ He directed the command at the director but his eyes were focused on Sophie as she moved to stand right in front of him.

He cursed the overseas phone call that had held him up and then the traffic on the motorways and B-roads that wound their way to her family home. If he’d arrived when he had originally planned, he would have...

Made sure that she didn’t step one delicate foot out of the house dressed in next to nothing.

He was shocked by his sudden regression to a Neanderthal, which was the very opposite of the cool composure he prided himself on having.

Hands thrust deep into his pockets, he continued to stare at her with ferocious intent while the entire assembled crew hurriedly began packing their equipment and disappearing fast.

Sophie heard the gravelly chaos of reversing cars and SUVs but she was locked into a little bubble in which the only two people who existed were herself and Javier.

‘That wasn’t the outfit we agreed on.’ His voice was a low, driven snarl and she tilted her chin at a mutinous angle.

‘Checked shirt...tick. Denim...tick. Stupid cowboy hat...tick. Trainers...tick...’

‘You know what I mean,’ Javier gritted, unable to take his eyes off her.

‘Do I?’ She hadn’t realised how chilly it was and she hugged herself.

‘You’re cold,’ he said gruffly, removing his jacket and settling it around her shoulders. For a second, she just wanted to close her eyes and breathe in the scent from it.

And this was what it was all about. This hunger that had never gone away, but which had to go away, because if it didn’t it would eat away at her for ever. And there was only one way of it just going away and leaving her alone.

‘Tell me,’ she pressed huskily. ‘Why are you so furious? It wasn’t fair of you to send all those poor people packing. They were only doing their job.’

‘That’s not the way I see it,’ Javier growled. The jacket, way too big, drowned her and it was really weird the way that just made her look even sexier. He shifted in an attempt to ease the discomfort of his erection. Was she wearing a bra? He didn’t think so and that made him angry all over again.

‘How do you see it?’

‘The brief was for you to look wholesome!’ He raked his fingers through his hair and shook his head. This was the first time he had ventured to her family home but he hadn’t noticed a single brick. His entire focus was on her. She consumed him. ‘The attractive girl next door! Not a sex siren out to snag a man! How the hell is that supposed to sell the company?’

‘I thought that sex sold everything?’

‘Is that why you did it? Was that your concept of positive input? Dressing up in next to nothing and draping yourself over that lorry like a hooker posing in a motorbike shot?’

‘How dare you?’ But she flushed and cringed and knew that there was some justification for that horrible slur. She barely stopped to think that in summer there were many, many girls her age who went out dressed like this and thought nothing of it. She just knew that it wasn’t her.

‘The entire crew,’ he delineated coldly, ‘must have had a field day ogling you. Or maybe that was what you had in mind. Is that it? Has living in London kick-started an urge to push the limits? Have you realised how much tamer your life up here was?’

‘I didn’t do this so that any of the crew could ogle me.’ She fought to maintain his cool, disapproving stare and took a deep breath. ‘I did this so that...’ Her voice faltered. Her hands were clammy and she licked her lips as the tension stretched and stretched between them.

‘So that...?’ Javier prompted softly.

‘So that you could ogle me...’