Читать книгу The Revenge Collection 2018 - Кейт Хьюит, Эль Кеннеди - Страница 53

CHAPTER THREE

‘PERHAPS WE SHOULD take this conversation somewhere else.’

‘Why?’ The suggestion of leaving with him for somewhere else sent little shivers of alarm skittering through her.

She could scarcely credit that she was sitting here, in this office, facing this man who had haunted her for years. All the things that had happened ever since that first tentative step as a young girl falling hopelessly in love with an unsuitable boy lay between them like a great, big, murky chasm.

There was just so much he didn’t know.

But none of that was relevant. What was relevant was that he was going to help them and that was enough.

‘Because,’ Javier drawled, rising to his feet and strolling to fetch his jacket from where it lay slung over the back of one of the expensive, compact sofas in the little sitting area of the office, ‘I feel that two old friends should not be discussing something as crass as a business bailout within the confines of an office.’

Two old friends?

Sophie scrutinised the harsh angles of his face for any inherent sarcasm and he returned her stare with bland politeness.

But his bland politeness made her feel unaccountably uneasy.

He’d never been polite.

At least, not in the way that English people were polite. Not in the middle-class way of clinking teacups and saying the right things, which was the way she had been brought up.

He had always spoken his mind and damned the consequences. She had occasionally seen him in action at university, once in the company of two of his lecturers, when they had been discussing economics.

He had listened to them, which had been the accepted polite way, but had then taken their arguments and ripped them to shreds. The breadth and depth of his knowledge had been so staggering that there had been no comeback.

He had never been scared of rocking the boat. Sometimes, she wondered whether he had privately relished it, although when she’d once asked him that directly, he had burst out laughing before kissing her senseless—at which point she had forgotten what she had been saying to him. Kissing him had always had that effect on her.

A surge of memories brought a hectic flush to her cheeks.

‘Is this your new way of dressing?’ he asked and Sophie blinked, dispelling disturbing images of when they had been an item.

‘What do you mean?’

‘You look like an office worker.’

‘That’s exactly what I am,’ she returned lightly, following him to the door, because what else could she do? At this point, he held all the trump cards, and if he wanted to go and have their business chat sitting on bar stools in the middle of Threadneedle Street, then so be it. There was too much at stake for her to start digging her heels in and telling him that she felt more comfortable discussing business in an office.

She had come this far and there was no turning back now.

This floor was a sanctum of quiet. It was occupied by CEOs and directors, most of whom were concealed behind opaque glass and thick doors. In the middle there was a huge, open-plan space in which desks were cleverly positioned to allow for maximum space utilisation and minimum scope for chatting aimlessly.

The open space was largely empty, except for a couple of diligent employees who were too absorbed in whatever they were doing to look up at them as they headed for the directors’ lift.

‘But it’s not exactly where you wanted to end up, is it?’ he asked as the lift doors quietly closed, sealing them in together.

It didn’t matter where she looked, reflections of him bounced back at her.

She shrugged and reluctantly met his dark eyes.

‘You don’t always end up where you think you’re going to,’ she said tersely.

‘You had big plans to be a university lecturer.’

‘Life got in the way of that.’

‘I’m sure your dearly departed husband wouldn’t like to be seen as someone who got in the way of your big plans.’

‘I don’t want to talk about Roger.’

Because the thought of him no longer being around was still too painful for her to bear. That thought struck Javier with dagger-like precision. The man might have been a waste of space when it came to business, and an inveterate gambler who had blown vast sums of money that should have been pumped into saving the company, yet she had loved him and now would have nothing said against him.

Javier’s lips thinned.

He noted the way she scurried out of the lift, desperate to put some physical distance between them.

‘When did you find out that the company was on the brink of going bust?’

Sophie cringed. She wanted to ask whether it was really necessary to go down that road and she knew that she had to divorce the past from the present. He wasn’t the guy she had loved to death, the guy she had been forced to give up when life as she knew it had suddenly stopped. That was in the past and right now she was in the company of someone thinking about extending credit to the company. He would want details even if she didn’t want to give them.

But there was a lot she didn’t want to tell him. She didn’t want his contempt or his pity and she knew she would have both if she presented him with the unadorned truth. That was if he believed her at all, which was doubtful.

‘I knew things weren’t too good a while back,’ she said evasively. ‘But I had no idea really of just how bad they were until...well, until I got married. ’

Javier felt the dull, steady beat of jealousy working its poisonous way through his body.

He was painfully reminded of the folly of his youth, the naivety of imagining that they would have a future together. The poor foreigner working his way up and the beautiful, well-spoken, impeccably bred English girl who just so happened to be the apple of her father’s adoring and protective eye.

At the time, he had thought himself to be as hard as nails and immune to distraction.

He’d set his course and he had been cocky enough to imagine that no ill winds would come along to blow him off target.

Of all the girls on the planet, he had found himself blown off target by one who had set her course on someone else and had been playing with him for a bit of fun, stringing him along while her heart belonged to someone else.

‘And then...what?’

‘What do you mean?’ She nervously played with her finger, where once upon an unhappy time there had been a wedding ring.

She hadn’t paid much attention to where they were going, but when he stood back to push open a door for her, she saw that they were at an old pub, the sort of pub that populated the heart of the City.

She shimmied past him, ducking under his outstretched arm as he held the door open for her. She was tall at five foot ten, but he was several inches taller and she had a memory of how protected he had always made her feel. The clean, masculine scent of him lingered in her nostrils, making her feel shaky as she sat down at a table in the corner, waiting tensely while he went to get them something to drink. She knew she should keep a clear head and drink water but her nerves were all over the place. They needed something a little stronger than water.

Outside it was hot and she could glimpse a packed garden but in here it was cool, dark and relatively empty.

The sun worshippers were all drinking in the evening sun.

Trying to elicit details about her past was not relevant. Javier knew that and he was furious with himself for succumbing to the desire to know more.

Just like that, in a matter of minutes, she had managed to stoke his curiosity. Just like that, she was back under his skin and he couldn’t wait to have her, to bed her, so that he could rid himself of the uncomfortable suspicion that she had been there all along, a spectre biding its time until it could resurface to catch him on the back foot.

For a man to whom absolute control was vital, this slither of susceptibility was unwelcome.

He realised that when he tried to think of the last woman he had slept with, a top-notch career woman in New York with legs to her armpits, he came up blank. He couldn’t focus on anyone but the woman sitting in front of him, looking at him as though she expected him to pounce unexpectedly at any minute.

She had the clearest violet eyes he had ever seen, fringed with long, dark lashes, and the tilt of them gave her a slightly dreamy look, as though a part of her was on another plane. He itched to unpin her neat little bun so that he could see whether that glorious hair of hers was still as long, still as unruly.

‘Well?’ Javier demanded impatiently, hooking a chair with his foot and angling it so that he could sit with his long legs extended. He had brought a wine cooler with a bottle of wine and one of the bartenders placed two glasses in front of them, then simpered for a few seconds, doe-eyed, before reluctantly walking back to the bar.

‘Well...what?’

‘What was the order of events? Heady marriage, fairy-tale honeymoon and then, lo and behold, no more money? Life can be cruel. And where was your brother when all this was happening?’

‘In America.’ She sighed.

‘By choice, even though he knew?’ With the family company haemorrhaging money, surely it would have been an indulgence for Oliver to have stayed in California, enjoying himself...

‘He didn’t know,’ Sophie said abruptly. ‘And I don’t know why...how all this is relevant.’

‘I’m fleshing out the picture,’ Javier said softly. ‘You’ve come to me with a begging bowl. What did you think I was going to do? Give you a big, comforting hug and write out a cheque?’

‘No, but...’

‘Let’s get one thing straight here, Sophie.’ He leant forward and held her gaze. She couldn’t have said a word even if she had wanted to. She could hardly breathe. ‘You’re here to ask a favour of me and, that being the case, whether you like it or not, you don’t get to choose what questions to answer and what questions to ignore. Your private life is your business. Frankly, I don’t give a damn. But I need to know your levels of capability when it comes to doing business. I need to know whether your brother is committed to working for the company, because if he was left to enjoy four years of playing sport in California, then I’m guessing he wouldn’t have returned to the sick fold with a cheerful whistle. Most of the directors of the company aren’t worth the money they’re being paid.’

‘You know how much they’re being paid!’

‘I know everything worth knowing about your crippled family company.’

‘When did you get so...so...hard?’

Roughly around the same time I discovered what sort of woman I’d been going out with, Javier thought with the sour taste of cynicism in his mouth.

He leant back and crossed his legs, lightly cradling the stem of the wine glass between his long fingers.

‘You don’t make money by being a sap for sob stories,’ he informed her coolly, keen eyes taking in the delicate bloom of colour in her cheeks. ‘You’ve come to me with a sob story.’ He shrugged. ‘And the bottom line is this—if you don’t like the direction this conversation is going, then, like I said before, you’re free to go. But of course, we both know you won’t, because you need me.’

He was enjoying this little game of going round the houses before he laid all his cards on the table, before she knew exactly what the terms and conditions of her repayment would be.

It wouldn’t hurt her to realise just how dangerously close the company was to imploding.

It wouldn’t hurt her to realise just how much she needed him...

‘If you knew about your husband’s hare-brained schemes and addiction to gambling, and you allowed it to go under the radar, then are you a trustworthy person to stand at the helm of your company?’

‘I told you that there was nothing I could do,’ she said with a dull flush.

‘And if your brother was so clueless as to what was happening on the home front, then is he competent enough to do what would need to be done should I decide to help you out?’

‘Ollie...doesn’t have a huge amount of input in the actual running of things...’

‘Why?’

‘Because he’s never been interested in the company and, yes, you’re right—he’s always resented the fact that he had to finally return to help out. He’s found it difficult to deal with not having money.’

‘And you’ve found it easy?’

‘I’ve dealt with it.’

Javier looked at her narrowly and with a certain amount of reluctant admiration for the streak of strength he glimpsed.

Not only had she had to face a tremendous fall from the top of the mountain, but the loss of her husband and the father she had adored.

Yet there was no self-pity in the stubborn tilt of her chin.

‘You’ve had a lot to deal with, haven’t you?’ he murmured softly and she looked away.

‘I’m no different from loads of people the world over who have found their lives changed in one way or another. And, now that you’ve got the measure of the company, will you lend us some money or not? I don’t know if my brother told you, but the family house has been on the market for over two years and we just can’t seem to sell it. There’s no appetite for big houses. If we could sell it, then we might be able to cover some of the expenses...’

‘Although a second mortgage was taken out on it...’

‘Yes, but the proceeds would go a little way to at least fixing certain things that need urgent attention.’

‘The dated computer systems, for example?’

‘You really did your homework, didn’t you? How did you manage that in such a small amount of time? Or have you been following my father’s company over the years? Watching while it went downhill?’

‘Why would I have done that?’

Sophie shrugged uncomfortably. ‘I know you probably feel... Well, you don’t understand what happened all those years ago.’

‘Don’t presume to think that you know what goes on in my head, Sophie. You don’t. And, in answer to your preposterous question, I haven’t had the slightest clue what was going on in your father’s company over the years, nor have I cared one way or the other.’ He saw that the bottle was empty and debated whether or not to get another, deciding against it, because he wanted them both to have clear heads for this conversation.

When he knew that he would be seeing her, he had predicted how he would react and it hadn’t been like this.

He’d thought that he would see her and would feel nothing but the acid, bilious taste of bitterness for having been played in the past and taken for a chump.

He’d accepted that she’d been in his head more than he’d ever imagined possible. A Pandora’s box had been opened with her brother’s unexpected appearance at his office. Javier had recognised the opportunity he had been given to put an end to her nagging presence, which, he now realised, had been embedded in him like a virus he’d never managed to shake off.

He would have her and he had the means to do so at his disposal.

She needed money. He had vast sums of it. She would take what was offered because she would have no choice. His terms and conditions would be met with acquiescence because, as he had learned over the years, money talked.

He had slept with some of the world’s most desirable women. It had followed that whatever she had that had held him captive all those years ago, she would lose it when he saw her in the flesh once again. How could she compete with some of the women who had clamoured to sleep with him?

He’d been wrong.

And that was unbelievably frustrating because he was beginning to realise that he wanted a lot more from her than her body for a night or two.

No, he needed a lot more from her than her body for a night or two.

He wanted and needed answers and his curiosity to pry beneath the surface enraged him because he had thought himself above that particular sentiment when it came to her.

Nor, he was discovering, did he want to take what he knew she would have no choice but to give him in the manner of a marauding plunderer.

He didn’t want her reluctance.

He wanted her to come to him and in the end, he reasoned now, if revenge was what he was after, then wouldn’t that be the ultimate revenge? To have her want him, to take her and then to walk away?

The logical part of his brain knew that to want revenge was to succumb to a certain type of weakness, and yet the pull was so immensely strong that he could no more fight it than he could have climbed Mount Everest in bare feet.

And he was enjoying this.

His palate had become jaded and that was something he had recognised a while back, when he had made his first few million and the world had begun to spread itself out at his feet.

He had reached a place in life where he could have whatever he wanted and sometimes having everything at your fingertips removed the glory of the chase. Not just women, but deals, mergers, money...the lot.

She wasn’t at his fingertips.

In fact, she was simmering with resentment that she had been put in the unfortunate position of having to come to him, cap in hand, to ask for his help.

He was a part of her past that she would rather have swept under the carpet and left there. He was even forced to swallow the unsavoury truth that he was probably a part of her past she bitterly regretted ever having gone anywhere near in the first place.

But she’d wanted him.

That much he felt he knew. She might have played with him as a distraction from the main event happening in her life somewhere else, or maybe just to show off in front of her friends that she had netted the biggest fish in the sea—which Javier had known, without a trace of vanity, he was.

But perhaps she hadn’t actually banked on the flare of physical attraction that had erupted between them. She had held out against him and he had seen that as shyness, youthful nerves at taking the plunge... He’d been charmed by it. He’d also been wrong about it, as it turned out. She’d held out against him because there had been someone else in her life.

But she’d still fancied him like hell.

She’d trembled when he’d traced his finger across her collarbone and her eyes had darkened when their lips had touched. He hadn’t imagined those reactions. She might have successfully fought that attraction in the end and scurried back to her comfort zone, but, for a brief window, he’d taken her out of that comfort zone...

Did she imagine that she was now immune to that physical attraction because time had passed?

He played with the thought of her opening up to him like a flower and this time giving him what he had wanted all those years ago. What he wanted now.

He wondered what she would feel when she found herself discarded.

He wondered whether he would really care or whether the mere fact that he had had her would be sufficient.

He hadn’t felt this alive in a long time and it was bloody great.

‘I was surprised when your brother showed up on my doorstep, so to speak, in search of help.’

‘I hope you know that I never asked him to come to see you.’

‘I can well imagine, Sophie. It must cut to the quick having to beg favours from a man who wasn’t good enough for you seven years ago.’

‘That’s not how it was.’

Javier held up one hand. ‘But, as it happens, to see you evicted and in the poorhouse would not play well on my conscience.’

‘That’s a bit of an exaggeration, don’t you think?’

‘You’d be surprised how thin the dividing line is between the poor and the rich and how fast places can be swapped. One minute you’re on top of the world, the ruler of everything around you, and the next minute you’re lying on the scrap heap, wondering what went wrong. Or I could put it another way—one minute you’re flying upwards, knocking back all those less fortunate cluttering your path, and the next minute you’re spiralling downwards and the people you’ve knocked back are on their way up, having the last laugh.’

‘I bet your parents are really sad at the person you’ve become, Javier.’

Javier flushed darkly, outraged at her remark, and even more outraged by the disappointed expression on her lovely face.

Of course, in those heady days of thinking she was his, he had let her into his world, haltingly confided in her in a way he had never done with any woman either before or since. He had told her about his background, about his parents’ determination to make sure he left that life behind. He had painted an unadorned picture of life as he had known it, had been amused at the vast differences between them, had seen those differences as a good thing, rather than an unsurmountable barrier, as she had. If she’d even thought about it at all.

‘I know you’ve become richer than your wildest dreams.’ She smiled ruefully at him. ‘And you always had very, very wild dreams...’

The conversation seemed to have broken its leash and was racing away in a direction Javier didn’t like. He frowned heavily at her.

‘And now here we are.’

‘You once told me that all your parents wanted was for you to be happy, to make something of your life, to settle down and have a big family.’

Javier decided that he needed another drink after all. He stood up abruptly, which seemed to do the trick, because she started, blinked and looked up at him as if suddenly remembering that she wasn’t here for a trip down memory lane. Indeed, that a trip down memory lane was the very last thing she had wanted.

He’d forgotten that habit of hers.

He was barely aware of placing his order for another bottle of wine at the bar and ordering some bar snacks because they were now both drinking on fairly empty stomachs. He hadn’t a clue what bar snacks he ordered, leaving it to the guy serving him to provide whatever was on the menu.

She was filling up his head. He could feel her eyes on him even as he stood here at the bar with his back to her.

Whatever memories he’d had of her, whatever memories he’d kidded himself he’d got rid of and had buried, he was now finding in a very shallow grave.

She’d always had that habit of branching out on a tangent. It was as if a stray word could spark some improbable connection in her head and carry her away down unforeseen paths.

There were no unforeseen paths in this scenario, he thought grimly as he made his way back to the table, where she was sitting with the guarded expression back on her face.

The only unforeseen thing—and it was something he could deal with—was how much he still wanted her after all this time.

‘I should be getting back,’ she said as he poured her a glass of wine and nodded to her to drink.

‘I’ve ordered food.’

‘My ticket...’

‘Forget about your ticket.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because I’m not made of money. In fact, I’m broke. There. Are you satisfied that I’ve said that? I can’t afford to kiss sweet goodbye to the cost of the ticket to get me down here to London. You’ve probably forgotten how much train tickets cost, but if you’d like a reminder, I can show you mine. They cost a lot. And if you want to do a bit more gloating, then go right ahead.’ She fluttered her hand wearily. ‘I can’t stop you.’

‘You’ll need to pare down the staff.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘The company is top-heavy. Too many chiefs and very few Indians.’

Sophie nodded. It was what she had privately thought but the thought of sitting down old friends of her parents and handing them their marching orders had been just too much to contemplate. Oliver couldn’t have done that in a million years and, although she was a heck of a lot more switched on than he was, the prospect of sacking old retainers, even fairly ineffective old retainers, still stuck in her throat.

Few enough people had stuck by them through thin times.

‘And you need to drag the business into this century. The old-fashioned transport business needs to be updated. You need to take risks, to branch out, to try to capture smaller, more profitable markets instead of sticking to having lumbering dinosaurs doing cross-Channel deliveries. That’s all well and good but you need a lot more than that if your company is to be rescued from the quicksand.’

‘I...’ She quailed at the thought of herself and Oliver, along with a handful of maybe or maybe not efficient directors, undertaking a job of those proportions.

‘You and your brother are incapable of taking on this challenge,’ Javier told her bluntly and she glared at him even though he had merely spoken aloud what she had been thinking.

‘I’m sure if you agree to extend a loan,’ she muttered, ‘we can recruit good people who are capable of—’

‘Not going to happen. If I sink money into that business of yours, I want to be certain that I won’t be throwing my money into a black hole.’

‘That’s a bit unfair.’ She fiddled with the bun which, instead of making her feel blessedly cool in the scorching temperatures, was making her sweaty and uncomfortable. As were the formal, scratchy clothes, so unlike her normal dress code of jeans, tee shirts and sneakers.

She didn’t feel like the brisk, efficient potential client of someone who might want to extend a loan. She felt awkward, gauche and way too aware of the man looking at her narrowly, sizing her up in a way that made her want to squirm.

This wasn’t the guy she had known and loved. He hadn’t chucked her out of his office but, as far as feelings went, there was nothing there. There wasn’t a trace of that simmering attraction that had held them both mesmerised captives all those years ago. He wasn’t married but she wondered whether there was a woman in his life, someone rich and beautiful like him.

Even when he’d had no money, he could have had any woman he wanted.

Her mind boggled at the thought of how many women would now fall at his feet because he was the guy who had the full package.

A treacherous thought snaked into her head...

What if she’d defied her parents? What if she’d carried on seeing Javier? Had seen where that love might have taken them both?

It wouldn’t have worked.

Despite the fact that she had grown up with money, had had a rich and pampered life, money per se was not what motivated her. For Javier, it was the only thing that motivated him.

She looked at him from under her lashes, taking in the cut of his clothes, the hand-tailored shoes, the mega-expensive watch around which dark hair curled. He breathed wealth. It was what made him happy and made sense of his life.

She might be stressed out because of all the financial worries happening in her life, but if those worries were removed and she was given a clean slate, then she knew that she wouldn’t really care if that slate was a rich slate or not.

So, if she’d stayed with him, she certainly wouldn’t have been the sort of woman he’d have wanted. She might talk the talk but her jeans, tee shirts and sneakers would not have been found acceptable attire.

They’d had their moment in time when they’d both been jeans and tee shirts people but he’d moved on, and he would always have moved on.

The attraction, for him, would have dimmed and finally been snuffed out.

The road she’d taken had been tough and miserable and, as things had turned out, the wrong one. But it would be silly to think that she would have been any happier if she’d followed Javier and held the hand he’d extended.

‘We can go round the houses discussing what’s fair and what’s unfair,’ he said in a hard voice. ‘But that won’t get us anywhere. I’m prepared to sink money in, but I get a cut of the cake and you abide by my rules.’

‘Your rules?’ She looked at him in bewilderment.

‘Did you really think I’d write a cheque and then keep my fingers crossed that you might know what to do with the money?’ He’d had one plan when this situation had first arisen—it had been clean and simple—but now he didn’t want clean and simple. He needed to get more immersed in the water...and he was looking forward to that.

‘I will, to spell it out, want a percentage of your business. There’s no point my waiting for the time when you can repay me. I already have more money than I can shake a stick at, but I could put your business to some good use, branch out in ways that might dovetail with some of my other business concerns.’

Sophie shifted, not liking the sound of this. If he wanted a part of their business, wouldn’t that involve him being around? Or was he talking about being a silent partner?

‘Does your company have a London presence at all?’ Javier was thoroughly enjoying himself. Who said the only route to satisfaction was getting what you wanted on demand? He’d always been excellent when it came to thinking outside the box. He was doing just that right now. Whatever he sank into her business would be peanuts for him but he could already see ways of turning a healthy profit.

And as for having her? Of course he would, but where was the rush after all? He could take a little time out to relish this project...

‘Barely,’ she admitted. ‘We closed three of the four branches over the years to save costs.’

‘And left one open and running?’

‘We couldn’t afford to shut them all...even though the overheads are frightening.’

‘Splendid. As soon as the details are formalised and all the signatures are in place, I will ensure that the office is modernised and ready for occupation.’

‘It’s already occupied,’ Sophie said, dazed. ‘Mandy works on reception and twice a week one of the accountants goes down to see to the various bits of post. Fortunately nearly everything is done by email these days...’

‘Pack your bags, Sophie. I’m taking up residence in your London office, just as soon as it’s fit for habitation, and you’re going to be sitting right there alongside me.’

Not quite the original terms and conditions he had intended to apply, but in so many ways so much better...