Читать книгу The Revenge Collection 2018 - Кейт Хьюит, Эль Кеннеди - Страница 54

CHAPTER FOUR

‘I DON’T KNOW what you’re so worried about. His terms and conditions seem pretty fair to me. In fact, better than fair. He’s going to have a percentage interest in the company but at least it’ll be a company that’s making money.’

That had been Oliver’s reaction when she had presented him, a fortnight ago, with the offer Javier had laid out on the table for her to take or reject.

He had been downright incredulous that she might even be hesitating to eat from the hand that had been extended to feed her. In a manner that was uncharacteristically proactive for him, he had called an extraordinary meeting of the directors and presented them with Javier’s plan, and Sophie had had to swallow the unpalatable reality that her past had caught up with her and was now about to join hands with her present.

Since then, with papers signed and agreements reached at the speed of light, the little office they had kept open in Notting Hill had been awash with frantic activity.

Sophie had refused to go. She had delegated that task to her brother, who had been delighted to get out of Yorkshire for a couple of weeks. He had reported back with gusto at the renovations being made and, inside, Sophie had quailed at the way she felt, as though suddenly her life was being taken over.

She knew she was being ridiculous.

Javier had agreed to see them because of their old connection but there had been nothing there beyond that historic connection. He had made no attempts to pursue any conversations about what had happened between them. He had been as cool as might have been expected given the circumstances of their break-up and she was in no doubt that the only reason he had agreed to help them was because he could see a profit in what was being offered.

Money was what he cared about and she suspected that he would be getting a good deal out of them. They were, after all, in the position of the beggars who couldn’t be choosers.

Hadn’t he greeted her with all the information he had accumulated about the company?

He had done his homework and he wouldn’t be offering them a rescue package if he wasn’t going to get a great deal out of it.

She brushed her skirt, neatened her blouse and inspected herself in the mirror in the hallway, but she wasn’t really seeing her reflection. She was thinking, persuading herself that his attitude towards her made everything much easier. For him, the past was history. What he had with her now was a business deal and one that had fallen into his lap like a piece of ripe fruit that hadn’t even needed plucking from the tree.

Maybe in some distant corner of his mind there was an element of satisfaction that he was now in a position to be the one calling the shots, but if that was the case, he would have to have cared one way or another about her and he didn’t.

The effect he still had on her was not mutual. And even her responses to him were an illusion, no more than a reminder of the power of nostalgia, because truthfully her heart was safely locked away, never again to be taken out to see the light of day.

She blinked and focused on the tidy image staring back at her. Everything in place. In a few minutes the taxi would come to take her to the station. A month ago, she would have hit the bus stop, which was almost a mile away, but he had deposited a large advance of cash in the company account to cover expenses and to ensure that everyone on the payroll was compensated for the overtime which they had contributed over the months and which had not been paid.

She would take the taxi to the station and then the train down to London so that she could see the final, finished product, the newly refurbished offices in which she would be stationed for as long as it took to get things up and running.

‘How long do you think that’s going to take?’ she had asked Javier on day one, heart thumping at the prospect of being in an office where, on a whim, he could descend without warning.

He had shrugged, his dark-as-night eyes never leaving her face. ‘How long is a piece of string? There’s a lot of work to do with the company before it begins to pull its weight. There’s been mass wastage of money and resources, expenditures that border on criminal and incompetent staff by the bucketload.’

‘And you’re going to...er...be around, supervising...?’

His eyes had narrowed on her flushed face. ‘Does the prospect of that frighten you, Sophie?’

‘Not in the slightest,’ she had returned quickly. ‘I would just be surprised if you managed to take time off from being the ruler of all you surveyed to help out an ailing firm. I mean, don’t you have minions who move in when you take over sick companies?’

‘I think I might give the minions a rest on this particular occasion,’ he had murmured softly.

‘Why?’ Sophie had heard the thread of desperation in her voice. She couldn’t be within five feet of him without her body reliving the way he had once made it feel, playing stupid games with her mind.

‘This is a slightly more personal venture for me, Sophie,’ he had told her, leaning across the boardroom table where both of them had remained after the legal team had exited. ‘Maybe I want to see that the job is done to the highest possible standard given our...past acquaintanceship.’

Sophie hadn’t known whether to thank him or quiz him, so she had remained silent, her eyes helplessly drifting down to his sensual mouth before sliding away as heat had consumed her.

With a little sigh, she grabbed her handbag as she heard the taxi circle the gravelled forecourt, and then she was on her way, half hoping that Javier wouldn’t be there waiting at the office when she finally arrived, half hoping that he might be, and hating herself for that weakness.

She had no idea what to expect to find. The last time she had visited this particular office had been two years previously, when she and Oliver had been trying to decide which of the offices to shut. She remembered it as spacious enough but, without any money having been spent on it at all, it had already been showing telltale signs of wear and tear. That said, it had been the biggest and the least run-down, so they’d been able to amalgamate the diminishing files and folders there from the other offices.

Not for the first time, as she was ferried from north to south, she thought about how clueless she had been about the groundbreaking changes that had been happening right under her nose.

Ollie, at least, had had the excuse of being abroad, because he had left on his sports scholarship two years before she had gone to Cambridge. He’d been a fresh-faced teenager wrapped up in his own life, with no vision of anything happening outside it.

But she had still been living at home, in her final years at school. Why hadn’t she asked more probing questions when her mother’s health had begun to fail? The doctor had talked about stress, and now Sophie marvelled that she hadn’t dug deeper to find out what the stress had been all about, because on the surface her mother could not have been living a less stressed-out life.

And neither had she questioned the frequency with which Roger’s name had cropped up in conversations or the number of times he’d been invited along to the house for various parties. She had been amused at his enthusiasm and had eventually drifted into going out with him; she had never suspected the amount of encouragement he had got from her parents.

All told, she had allowed herself to be wrapped up in cotton wool. So when that cotton wool had been cruelly yanked off, she had been far more shell-shocked than she might otherwise have been.

Everything had hit her at once. She had been bombarded from all sides and, in the middle of this, had had to wise up quickly to the trauma of discovering just how ill her father was and the lengths he had gone to to protect them all from knowing.

She should have been there helping out long before the bomb had detonated, splintering shrapnel through their lives.

If she had been, then perhaps the company could have taken a different direction. And, if it had taken a different direction, then she wouldn’t be here now, at the mercy of a guy who could still send her senses reeling, whatever her head was telling her.

Once in London, Sophie took a black cab to the premises of the office in Notting Hill.

Oliver had told her that things were coming along brilliantly but he had undersold just how much had been done in the space of a few days. It wasn’t just about the paint job on the outside or the impressive potted plants or the newly painted black door with its gold lettering announcing the name of the company.

Standing back, Sophie’s mouth fell open as she took in the smart exterior. Then the door opened and she was staring at a casually dressed Javier, who, in return, stared back at her as he continued to lounge indolently against the door frame. Arms folded, he was already projecting the signs of ownership so that, as she took a few tentative steps towards him, she felt herself to be the visitor.

‘Wow.’ She hovered, waiting for him to step back, which he did after a couple of seconds, taking his time to unfold his gloriously elegant body and then stand aside so that she had to brush past him, immediately turning around and establishing a safe physical distance between them. ‘It’s completely changed on the outside.’

‘There’s no point having an office that repels potential clients,’ Javier said drily.

Yet again, she was in work attire. The sort of clothes that drained her natural beauty.

‘Why have you shown up wearing a suit?’ he asked, strolling past her and expecting her to follow, which she duly did. ‘And where is your bag? You do realise that you will be relocating to London for the foreseeable future?’

‘I’ve been giving that some thought...’

Javier stopped and turned to look at her. ‘Forget it.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Remember the terms and conditions? One of them is that you relocate down here so that you can oversee the running of the London arm of the business.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘No buts, Sophie.’ His voice was cool and unyielding. He hooked his fingers on the waistband of his black jeans, which sat low on his lean hips, and held her stare. ‘You don’t get to dip in and out of this. You’re on the letterhead, along with your brother, and of course myself. Don’t think that you’re going to reap the rewards without doing any of the hard graft. I intend to oversee proceedings initially but I need to be assured that you and your brother won’t run the company back into the ground the second my back’s turned. Don’t forget, this isn’t a charity gesture of goodwill on my part. I’m not parting with cash if I don’t think that there will be a decent return on my investment.’

Sophie thought that she’d been right. It was all about the money for him. Yes, there was a personal connection, but the animosity of their break-up wasn’t paramount in his decision to help them. What mattered was that he was being handed a potentially very profitable business with an age-old reputation at a very cheap price because she and Oliver were desperate.

She imagined that, once the company was sorted, its reputation would not only be repaired but would ensure gold-plated business and a return of all the customers they had sadly lost over the years.

Right now, Oliver had an interest in a third of the company, but he would quickly lose interest and, she foresaw, would cash in his shares, take the money and head back to California, where he could continue his sporting career in a teaching capacity.

In due course, Javier would have invested in a very worthwhile project at a very good price.

And their past history did not figure in the calculations. In fact, she wondered whether he felt anything at all about what had happened between them.

‘I thought I might commute down.’

Javier burst out laughing before sobering up to look at her with a gimlet-eyed warning. ‘I wouldn’t even entertain that notion if I were you,’ he informed her in the sort of voice that did not expect contradiction. ‘In the first few weeks there will probably be a great deal of overtime, and hopping on and off a train to try to get the work done just isn’t going to cut it.’

‘I have nowhere to stay here.’ Once upon a time, there had been a snazzy apartment in Kensington but, she had discovered, that had been mortgaged up to the hilt when the company had started shedding customers and losing profit. It had been sold ages ago.

‘Your brother has stayed in a hotel when he’s been down.’ Javier’s eyes roved over her flushed face. ‘But,’ he mused with soft speculation, ‘as you’re going to be here for considerably longer, I have already made arrangements for you to have use of one of my apartments in Notting Hill. You’ll be within convenient walking distance of the company. No excuse for slacking off.’

‘No!’ She broke out in clammy perspiration.

‘Reason being...?’

‘I...I can’t just decamp down here to London, Javier!’

‘This isn’t something that’s open to debate.’

‘You don’t understand.’

‘Then enlighten me.’ They hadn’t even stepped foot into the renovated office and already they were arguing.

He couldn’t credit that he had originally played with the thought of helping her in return for having her. He couldn’t think of anything less satisfying than having her blackmailed into coming to him as a reluctant and resentful partner when he wanted her hot, wet and willing...

He also couldn’t credit that he had simplistically imagined that one scratch would ease this itch that had surfaced with such surprising speed the second her brother had opened that door back into the past. The more he saw of her, the more he thought of her, the more dangerously deep his unfinished business with her felt. One or two nights wasn’t going to be enough.

‘I have to keep an eye on the house,’ she said with obvious reluctance.

‘What house?’

‘The family home.’

‘Why? Is it in imminent danger of falling down if you’re not at hand with some sticking plaster and masking tape?’

Bitter tears sprang to her eyes and she fought them down as a red mist of anger swirled through her in a tidal rush.

‘Since when did you get so arrogant?’ she flung at him. They stared at one another in electric silence before she broke eye contact to storm off, out of the beautiful reception area, which she had barely noticed at all, and into the first set of offices.

It took a couple of seconds before Javier was galvanised into following her.

Being accused of arrogance was not something he was accustomed to. Indeed, being spoken to in that accusatory, critical tone of voice was unheard of. He caught her arm, tugging her to face him and then immediately releasing her because just the feel of her softness under his fingers was like putting his hand against an open flame. It enraged him that she could still have this effect on him. It enraged him that, for the first time in living memory, and certainly for the first time in many, many years, his body was refusing to obey his mind.

‘Are you sure it’s the house you need to be close to?’ he growled.

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Maybe there’s a man lurking in the background...’ Javier was disgusted to realise that he was fishing. Did he care whether there was some lame boyfriend in the background? She wasn’t married and that was the main thing. He would never have gone near any woman with a wedding ring on her finger, but if she had a boyfriend somewhere, another one of those limp ex–public school idiots who thought that a polished accent was all that it took to get you through life, well...

All was fair in love and war...

Sophie reddened. The dull prickle of unpleasant memories tried to surface and she resolutely shoved them back where they belonged, in the deepest corners of her mind.

‘Because, if you have, then he’ll just have to take a back seat for...however long it takes. And word of warning—my apartment is for sole occupation only...’

‘You mean if there was a guy in my life, and I happened to be living in one of your apartments, I wouldn’t be allowed to entertain him?’

Javier looked at her appalled expression and swatted away the uncomfortable feeling that he was being pigeon-holed as some kind of dinosaur when that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Having reached the soaring heights the hard way, he made a conscious effort to ensure that the employees of his company were hand-picked for all the right reasons: talent, merit and ability. He made sure that there were no glass ceilings for women, or for those who had had to struggle to find their way, as he had.

He was not the sort of guy who would ever have dreamt of laying down pathetic rules about men being kept apart from women, like teenagers in boarding schools overseen by strict house masters.

So what was he doing right now? And how was it that he had no intention of doing otherwise?

‘I mean you’re probably going to be working long hours. The distraction of some man who wants you back home to cook his meal by five-thirty isn’t going to work’ was the most he would offer.

Sophie laughed shortly. If only he knew...

‘There’s no man around to distract me,’ she said in a low voice. ‘And, yes, as a matter of fact the house is falling down, and Oliver won’t be there because he’s been dispatched to France to see what’s happening to the company over there...’

‘Your house is falling down?’

‘Not literally,’ Sophie admitted. ‘But there’s a lot wrong with it and I’m always conscious of the fact that if it springs a leak and I’m not there to sort it out, well...’

‘Since when has your house been falling down?’

‘It doesn’t matter.’ She sighed and began to run her fingers through her hair, only to realise that she had pinned it up, and let her hand drop to her side. She looked around her but was very much aware of his eyes still on her, and even more aware that somehow they were now standing way too close for comfort.

‘You’ve done marvellous things with the space.’ She just wanted to get away from the threat of personal quizzing. She took a few steps away from him and now took time really to notice just how much had been done. It was not just a paint job; everything seemed very different from what she remembered.

It seemed much, much larger and that, she realised, was because the space within the first-floor office block had been maximised. Partitions had been cleverly put in where before there had been none. The dank carpeting had been replaced with wooden floors. The desks and furniture were all spanking new. She listened and nodded as he explained the dynamics of the place being manned and who should be working the London office. The client list would have to be updated. The sales team would need to be far more assertive. He had identified useful gaps in the market that could be exploited.

Everything was perfect. There were two private offices and she would be occupying one. Again she nodded because, like it or not, she was going to be here, in London.

‘But,’ she said when the tour had been concluded and they were in the pristine, updated kitchen, sitting at the high-tech beaten metallic table with cups of steaming coffee in front of them, ‘I still don’t feel comfortable leaving the house and I don’t want to live in one of your apartments.’ He would have a key... He would be able to walk in unannounced at any given time... She could be in the shower and he could just stroll in...

Her nipples tightened, pushing against her lacy bra and sending tingles up and down, in and out and through her from her toes to her scalp. She licked her lips and reminded herself that if he felt anything towards her at all it would be loathing because of what had happened between them in the past. Although, in reality, he couldn’t even be bothered to feel such a strong emotion. What he felt was...indifference.

So if he were to let himself in, which he most certainly wouldn’t, the shower would be the last place he would seek her out. Her responses were all over the place and it wouldn’t be long before he started to realise that she wasn’t as immune to him as she was desperately trying to be.

‘I’ll bring your brother back over.’

‘No! Don’t...’

‘Why not?’ Javier raised his eyebrows expressively, although he knew the reason well enough. Oliver didn’t want to be stuck in Yorkshire and he didn’t see his future with the family business. He resented the penury into which they had been thrust and, although he recognised the importance of rebuilding what had fallen into disrepair, he really thought no further than what that personally meant for him. Given half a chance, he would have cashed in his shares and headed for the hills. In due course he would, which would be interesting should Javier decide he wanted more than he had. That was unlikely, because once he was done with getting what he wanted, he would be more than happy to disappear and leave the running of the business to an underling of his choice.

‘He’s enjoying being in Paris.’

‘And that’s how it’s always been, isn’t it?’ Javier asked softly and Sophie raised translucent violet eyes to look at him with a frown.

‘What do you mean?’

‘I remember how you used to talk about your twin.’ He had resolved not to go down any maudlin, reminiscing roads but now found that he couldn’t help himself. ‘The party animal. Off to California while you stayed behind to do your A levels. Praised for being sporty and indulged at a time when most kids that age would have had their head in textbooks to make sure they passed exams. When he came down to see you, he barely stayed put. He managed to make friends in five seconds and then off he went to see what nightclubs there were. He had his fun, enjoyed Mummy and Daddy’s money and never had to face up to any grim realities because by then he was in California on his sports scholarship...

‘I bet no one ever filled him in about the reality of the company losses, not even you...not even when they were glaringly obvious. I’ll bet he only found out the extent of the trouble when you couldn’t hide it from him any longer. Did your beloved ex-husband likewise conspire to keep your immature brother in the dark?’

‘I told you.’ Sophie stiffened at the mention of her ex-husband. ‘I don’t want to talk about Roger.’

Javier’s lips tightened. The more she shied away from all mention of her ex, the more his curiosity was piqued. He was bitterly reminded of his pointless wondering when she had dumped him, when she had told him that she was destined to marry someone else... When she had married a guy whom he had found himself researching on the Internet even though it had been an exercise in masochism.

He had learned strength from a very young age. It had taken a great deal of willpower to avoid the pitfalls of so many of his friends when he had been growing up in poverty in Spain. The easy way out had always been littered with drugs and violence, and that easy way had been the popular route for many of the kids he had known. He had had to become an island to turn his back on all of that, just as he had had to develop a great deal of inner strength when he had finally made it to England to begin his university career. He had had to set his sights on distant goals and allow himself to be guided only by them.

Sophie had taken his eye off the ball, and here she was, doing it again.

The sooner he got her out of his system, the better.

‘So your brother stays in Paris,’ he said, with the sort of insistence that made her think of steamrollers slowly and inexorably flattening vast swathes of land. ‘I could get someone to house-sit and daily look for walls falling down...’

‘You might think it’s funny, Javier, but it’s not. You might live in your mansion now, and you might be able to get whatever you want at the snap of a finger, but it’s just not funny when you have to watch every step you take because there might just be a minefield waiting to explode if you put your foot somewhere wrong. And I’m surprised you have no sympathy at all, considering you...you were...’

‘I was broke? Penniless? A poor immigrant still trying to get a grip on the first rung of that all-important ladder? I feel it’s fair to say that our circumstances were slightly different.’

‘And, in a way, you probably have no idea how much worse it makes it for me.’ She swung her head away. Her prissy, formal clothes felt like a straitjacket and her tidy bun nestled at the nape of her neck was sticky and restricting.

Without thinking, she released it and sifted restless fingers through the length of her tumbling hair.

And Javier watched. His mouth went dry. Her hair cascaded over her shoulders and down her back, a vibrant wash of colour that took his breath away. He had to look away but he knew that he was breathing fast, imagining her naked, projecting how her body would feel were he to run his hands along its shapely contours.

‘You’re right. Oliver has always been protected,’ she told him bluntly. He might very well be the first person she was telling this to. It was a truth she had always kept to herself because to have voiced it would have felt like a little betrayal. ‘He only found out about...everything when Dad’s illness was finally revealed, and even then we didn’t tell him that the company was on its last legs. In fact, he returned to California and only came back after the...the accident when... Well, he came back for Dad’s funeral, and of course Roger’s, and by then he had to be told.

‘But his heart isn’t in getting the company up and running. His heart isn’t in the house either. Mum’s now living in Cornwall and, as far as Ollie is concerned, he would sell the family home to the highest bidder if there was anyone around who was in the slightest bit interested. He doesn’t give a hoot if it all falls down in a pile of rubble just so long as we got some money for the rubble. So, no, he wouldn’t be at all happy to leave Paris to house-sit.’

She took a deep, shaky breath. ‘The house hasn’t been maintained for years. It always looked good on the outside, not that I ever really looked, but it turned out that there were problems with the roof and subsidence that had never been sorted. There’s no money left in the pot to sort that stuff out, so I keep my eyes peeled for anything that might need urgent attention. The worse the house is, the less money we’ll get, if we ever manage to sell at all. I can’t afford for a leak to spring in the cellar and start mounting the stairs to the hallway.’ She sighed and rubbed her eyes.

‘Why did you let him get away with it?’ It was more of a flat, semi-incredulous statement than a question and Sophie knew exactly who he was talking about even though no name had been mentioned.

‘I don’t want to talk about that. It’s in the past and there’s no point stressing about the stuff you can’t change. I just have to deal with the here and now...’

‘Oliver,’ Javier ploughed on, ‘might be indifferent and clueless when it comes to business, but you clearly have the capacity to get involved, so why didn’t you? You knew what was happening.’

‘Mum wasn’t in good health. Hadn’t been for ages. And then Dad’s behaviour started getting weird...erratic... Suddenly everything seemed to be happening at the same time. We found out just how ill he was and then, hard on the heels of that, the full repercussions of...of Roger’s gambling and all the bad investments began coming to light. There was no one at the helm. All the good people were leaving. Lots had already left, although I didn’t know that at the time, because I’d never been involved in the family business. It was...chaos.’

Even in the midst of this tale of abject woe, Javier couldn’t help but notice that there was no condemnation of her scoundrel husband. Loyalties, he thought with a sour taste, were not divided.

‘So I’ll get a house-sitter,’ he repeated and she shook her head. He had already infiltrated her life enough. She wasn’t sure she could cope with more.

‘I’ll come here,’ she conceded, ‘and go home at the weekends.’ She breathed in deeply. ‘And thank you for the use of an apartment. You have to let me know... I don’t have a great deal of disposable income, as you can imagine, but please let me know how much rent I will owe you.’

Javier sat back and looked at her from under sinfully long lashes, a lazy, speculative look that felt like a caress.

‘Don’t even think of paying me rent,’ he told her silkily. ‘It’s on the house...for old times’ sake. Trust me, Sophie, I want you...’ he paused fractionally ‘...there at the helm while changes are taking place, and what I want, I usually get...whatever the cost.’