Читать книгу The Revenge Collection 2018 - Кейт Хьюит, Эль Кеннеди - Страница 60

CHAPTER TEN

‘WHAT ABOUT?’ HE TOOK his time getting dressed while she watched him from the door, arms folded, her expression revealing nothing. ‘There’s nothing more guaranteed to kill a good mood than a talk.’

‘Are you speaking from personal experience?’ Sophie asked coolly. She held up one interrupting hand even though he hadn’t said anything. ‘Of course you are. I suppose some of those women you went out with might have wanted a bit more from you than sex on tap.’

‘Is that what this talk of yours is going to be about?’ Javier’s voice was as cool as hers, his expression suddenly wary and guarded.

Sophie spun round and began walking towards the kitchen. She could feel stinging colour washing over her because, in a way, this was about that. This was about more than just sex on tap.

‘Well?’ He caught up with her and held her arm, staying her, forcing her to turn to look at him. ‘Is that what this talk of yours is going to be about? Wanting more?’ He hadn’t worked out the exact time scale, but it hit him that he had been seeing her now for several months, virtually on a daily basis, and he wasn’t tiring of her. Immediately he felt his defences snap into position.

‘I’m not an idiot,’ Sophie lied valiantly. ‘You’d have to be completely stupid to want more from a man like you!’

She yanked her arm free and glared at him. Her heart was thumping so hard and so fast in her chest that it felt as though it might explode.

She wanted to snatch the conversation back, stuff it away, take back wanting to talk. She wanted to pretend that she hadn’t seen a picture of him at a gallery opening with some beautiful model clinging like a limpet to his arm, their body language saying all sorts of things she didn’t want to hear.

‘You’re not capable of giving anyone anything more than sex,’ she fumed, storming off towards the kitchen and the offending picture that she intended to fling in his face as proof of what she was saying.

‘You weren’t complaining five minutes ago,’ he pointed out smoothly.

Below the belt, Sophie thought, but her face burnt when she thought about how her talk had taken a back seat the second he had touched her. He was right. She hadn’t been complaining. In fact, at one point she remembered asking for more.

‘I don’t want more from you, Javier,’ she gritted, reaching for the paper with shaking hands and flicking it open to the piece in the centre section. She tossed it to him and then stood at the opposite end of the table with her arms folded, nails biting into the soft flesh of her forearms. ‘But what I do want is to know that you’re not running around behind my back while we’re an item!’

Javier stared down at the picture in front of him. He remembered the occasion distinctly. Another boring opening, this one at an art gallery. It had been full of just the sort of types he loathed—pretentious, champagne-drinking, caviar-scoffing crowds who had never given a penny to charity in their lives and had all attended top private schools courtesy of their wealthy parents. He could have given them a short lecture on the reality of being poor, but instead he had kept glancing at his watch and wondering what Sophie was doing.

As always, mixing in the jabbering, wealthy intellectual crowd was the usual assortment of beautiful hangers-on dressed in not very much and on the lookout for men with money. He had been a target from the very second he had walked through the door. He had shaken them off like flies, but by the end of the evening he had more or less given up and that was when the photographer had obviously seen fit to take a compromising snap.

In under a second, Javier could understand why Sophie had questions. He couldn’t even remember the woman’s name but he knew that she was a famous model and the way she was looking at him...the way she was holding on to his arm...

She didn’t look like a woman on the verge of being cast aside by an indifferent stranger. Which she had been.

And snapped when, for five seconds, his attention had been caught by something the guy standing next to her had said to him and he was leaning into her, the very image of keen, while the guy to whom he had been speaking had been artfully cropped from the photo.

Not for a second was Javier tempted to launch into any kind of self-justifying speech. Why should he? He looked at her angry, hurt face and he ignored the thing inside him that twisted.

‘Are you asking me to account for my actions when I’m not with you?’

‘I don’t think that’s out of order on my part!’

‘I have never felt the need to justify my behaviour to anyone. Ever.’

‘Maybe you should have! Because when you’re sleeping with someone, you are, actually, travelling down a two-way street whether you like it or not!’

‘Meaning what?’

‘Meaning it’s not all about your world and what you want.’

‘And maybe that will be the case one day, when I decide that I want more than a passing...situation with a woman.’

Sophie recoiled as though she had been physically struck. Suddenly all her anger seeped out of her and she was left feeling empty, hollow and utterly miserable.

Of course he would account for his behaviour one day. When he had met the right woman. In the meantime, he was having fun, and that was all that mattered. He wasn’t tied to her any more than he had been tied to any of the women he had dated in the past, so if someone else came along and he was feeling energetic, then he probably thought, why not?

Facing up to that was like being kicked in the stomach. She literally reeled from the truth but she faced it anyway, just as she had faced the fact that she was still in love with him.

What was the point hiding from the truth? It didn’t change anything. Having to deal with the mess her father had made of the company and the horror of her doomed marriage had taught her that, if nothing else.

‘Did you sleep with that woman?’

‘I’m not going to answer that question, Sophie.’ Javier was incensed that, picture or no picture, she dared question his integrity. Did she think that he was the sort of man who couldn’t control his libido and took sex wherever he found it?

He was also annoyed with himself for the way he had drifted along with this to the point where she felt okay about calling him to account. He’d been lazy. This had never been supposed to end up as anything more than an inconvenient itch that needed scratching. This had only ever been about finishing unfinished business.

‘And maybe,’ he said carefully, ‘it’s time for us to reassess what’s going on here.’

Sophie nodded curtly. The ground had just fallen away from under her feet, but she wasn’t going to plead or beg or hurl herself at him, because they really did need to ‘reassess’, as he put it.

‘Your company is pretty much back on its feet.’ He gave an expansive gesture while she waited in hopeless resignation for the Dear John speech he would soon be delivering.

She was too miserable to think about getting in there first, being the first to initiate the break-up. It didn’t matter anyway. The result was going to be the same.

‘Your brother’s disappeared back across the Atlantic and there’s no need for you to continue taking an active part in the running of the company. The right people are all now in the right places to guide the ship. You can do whatever you want to do now, Sophie. Go back to university...get another job...disappear across the Atlantic to join your brother...’

Sophie’s heart constricted because that was as good as telling her what he thought of her and she could have kicked herself for having been lulled into imagining that there was ever anything more to what they had.

‘Or France.’

‘Come again?’

‘I’ve been thinking about it for a couple of weeks.’

Javier was at a loss as to what she was talking about. ‘Thinking about...what, exactly?’

‘Ollie’s job is still up for grabs,’ she said, thinking on her feet. ‘And it’s dealing with marketing, which is something I’ve found I rather like and I’m pretty good at.’

‘You’ve been thinking about going to France?’

Sophie straightened. Did he think that she wasn’t good enough for the job? Or did he think that she was always going to hang around until he got fed up with her, without giving any thought at all to life beyond Javier?

‘Pretty much decided in favour of it,’ she declared firmly. ‘The house has found a buyer, as you know, who’s happy to take it on and complete the renovations I’ve started, so there’s literally nothing keeping me here. Aside, that is, from Mum. And I think she’d be overjoyed to come and visit Paris once a month. And, of course, I can easily get to Cornwall to see her.’

‘So you’re telling me that you’ve been concocting this scheme behind my back for weeks?’

‘It’s not a scheme, Javier.’ The more she thought about it, the better it sounded. How else would she get over him if she didn’t put as much distance as she possibly could between them? Affairs were in order here. Why not? Too much of her life had been taken up having other people make decisions on her behalf. ‘I wasn’t sure exactly when, but seeing that picture of you in the newspaper...’

‘For God’s sake!’ He tried hard to temper his voice. ‘What the hell does some half-baked picture in a sleazy tabloid have to do with anything?’

‘It’s made me realise that it’s time for me to take the next step.’

‘Next step? What next step?’ Javier raked his fingers through his hair and wished she would settle on one topic and stick there. He felt as though the carpet had been yanked from under his feet and he didn’t like the feeling. ‘Of course you can’t go to bloody France! It’s a ludicrous idea!’

‘You can do what you like with whoever you want to...er...do it with, Javier, but it’s time for me to get back into the dating scene, meet someone I can share my life with.’ She tried to visualise this mystery man and drew a blank. ‘I feel like my youth has been on hold and now I have a great opportunity to reclaim it.’

‘In France?’ He laughed scornfully.

‘That’s right.’

‘And what if you’d never seen that picture?’ He stopped just short of doing the unthinkable and telling her that he’d never met that woman in his life before and had no intention of ever meeting her again. Because his head was too wrapped up with her.

Unthinkable!

‘It was just a question of time,’ Sophie said truthfully. ‘And that time’s come.’

‘You’re telling me, after the sex we’ve just had, that you want out...’ He laughed in disbelief and Sophie wanted to smack him because it was just the sort of arrogant reaction she might have expected.

‘I’m telling you that the time has come when it has to be more than just the sex. So I’m going to find my soulmate,’ she added quickly.

‘You’re going to find your soulmate?’ Javier hated himself for prolonging this conversation. As soon as she had started kicking up a fuss about that picture, he should have told her that it was over. He didn’t need anyone thinking that they had claim to him. Never had, never would, whatever he had told her about a woman coming along who could tame him. Wasn’t going to happen.

Except... She hadn’t been trying to claim him, had she?

She’d just reasonably asked him if there was anything going on with the airhead who had been dripping off his arm at a forgettable gallery opening and, instead of laughing and dismissing the idea, he had returned to his comfort zone, dug his heels in and stubbornly refused to answer.

And it was too late now to do anything about that.

Not that it would have made any difference, considering she had been making all sorts of plans behind his back.

For the best, he decided. So he’d become lazy but in truth the itch had been scratched a long time ago.

‘Fine.’ He held up both hands and laughed indulgently. ‘Good luck with that one, Sophie. Experience has taught me that there’s no such thing. I’m surprised given your past that you haven’t had the same learning curve.’

‘Just the opposite.’ She felt nauseous as she watched him start heading for the door. ‘Life’s taught me that there are rainbows around every corner.’

‘How...kitsch.’ He saluted her and she remained where she was as he strode out of the kitchen.

And out of her life for good.

* * *

From Spain to France.

When you thought about it, it was a hop and a skip and it made perfect sense. He had had no input in Sophie’s company for over three months. He had delegated responsibility to his trusted CEO and withdrawn from the scene.

He’d done his bit. He’d taken over, done what taking apart had needed doing and had put back together what had needed putting back together. The company was actually beginning to pull itself out of the quagmire of debt it had been languishing in for the past decade, and it was doing so in record time.

It was a success story.

He’d moved on and was focused on another takeover, this time a chain of failing hotels in Asia.

He was adding to his portfolio and, furthermore, branching out into new terrain, which was invigorating. By definition, branching out into anything new on the business front was going to be invigorating!

He had also just had a good holiday with his parents and had persuaded them to let him buy them a little place on the beach in the south of France, where they could go whenever they wanted to relax. He had pulled the trump card of promising that he would join them at least three times a year there and he had meant it.

Somehow, he had learnt the value of relaxation.

So what if he hadn’t been able to relax in the company of any woman since he had walked out of Sophie’s life?

He’d been bloody busy, what with his latest takeover and various company expansions across Europe.

But he was in Spain.

France seemed ridiculously close...

And he really ought to check, first hand, on the progress being made in the Parisian arm of a company which, all told, he part-owned...

And, if he was going to go to Paris, it made sense to drop in and see what Sophie was up to.

He knew that she had been working there for the past six weeks. It was his duty, after all, to keep tabs on the company. Everything was easily accessible on the computer, from the salary she was pulling in to where she lived and the apartment she was renting near Montmartre.

He was surprised that she hadn’t headed off to more fulfilling horizons, leaving the running of the company to the experts, as her brother had.

His decision was made in moments. Already heading away from the first-class desk, he walked briskly back, ignoring the simpering blushes of the young girl who had just seen him.

A ticket to Paris. Next flight. First class.

* * *

Sophie let herself into her apartment, slamming the door against the fierce cold outside.

She was dressed in several layers but, even so, the biting wind still managed to find all sorts of gaps in those layers, working their way past them and finding the soft warmth of her skin.

Her face tingled as she yanked off the woolly hat, the scarf and the gloves, walking through her studio apartment and luxuriating in the warmth.

She had been incredibly lucky to have found the apartment that she had. It was small but cosy, comfortable and conveniently located.

And Paris was, as she had expected, as beautiful as she remembered it from the last time she had been there nearly ten years ago.

She had wanted to leave her comfort zone behind and she had! She had climbed out of her box and was now living in one of the most strikingly beautiful cities on the planet. Her mother had already been to visit her once and was determined to come again just as soon as the weather improved.

All in all, there were loads of girls her age who would have given their right arm to be where she was now!

And if she happened to be spending a Friday night in, with plans to curl up with her tablet in her flannel pyjamas and bedroom socks, then it was simply because it was just so cold!

When spring came, she would be out there, jumping right into that dating scene, as she had promised herself she would do before she had left England.

For the moment, she was perfectly happy just chilling.

And expecting no one to come calling because, although she had been out a few times with some of the other employees in the small arm of the company in Paris, she had not thus far met anyone who might just drop by on a Friday evening to see what she was up to.

That would come in time.

Probably in spring.

So when the doorbell went, she didn’t budge. She just assumed it was someone selling something and she wasn’t interested.

She gritted her teeth as the buzzer kept sounding and eventually abandoned all pretence of Zen calm as she stormed to the door and pulled it open, ready to give her uninvited caller a piece of her mind.

Javier had kept his finger on the buzzer. She was in. She had a basement apartment and he could see lights on behind the drawn curtains. He wondered whether she knew that basement apartments were at the highest risk of being burgled.

Since leaving Spain, he hadn’t once questioned his decision to spring this visit on her, but now that he was here, now that he could hear the soft pad of footsteps, he felt his stomach clench with an uncustomary attack of nerves.

He straightened as she opened the door and for a few seconds something bewildering seemed to happen to him: he lost the ability to think.

‘You’re here...’ he said inanely. Her long hair was swept over one narrow shoulder and she was wearing thick flannel bottoms and a long-sleeved thermal vest. And no bra. ‘Do you always just open your door to strangers?’ he continued gruffly, barely knowing where this unimaginative line of conversation was coming from.

‘Javier!’ Temporarily deprived of speech, Sophie could just blink at him, owl-like.

She’d pretended that she’d moved on. She was in Paris, she was enjoying her job, meeting new people...

How could she not have moved on? Hadn’t that been the whole point of Paris?

But seeing him here, lounging against the door frame in a pair of faded black jeans and a black jumper, with his coat slung over his shoulder...

She was still in the same place she’d been when she’d watched him stroll out of her flat without a backwards glance.

How dared he just show up like this and scupper all her chances of moving on?

‘What are you doing here? And how the heck did you find out where I live!’

‘Computers are wonderful things. You’d be shocked at the amount of information they can divulge. Especially considering you work for a company I part-own...’ Javier planted himself solidly in front of her. He hadn’t given much thought to what sort of welcome he was likely to receive but a hostile one hadn’t really crossed his mind.

Since when were women hostile towards him?

But since when was she just any woman?

She never had been and she never would be and, just like that, he suddenly felt sick. Sick and vulnerable in a way he had never felt before. Every signpost that had ever guided him, every tenet he had ever held dear, disappeared and he was left groping in the dark, feeling his way towards a realisation that had always been there at the back of his mind.

‘Go away. I don’t want to see you.’

Javier placed his hand on the door, preventing her from shutting it in his face. ‘I’ve come...’

‘For what?’ Sophie mocked.

‘I...’

Sophie opened her mouth and shut it because she didn’t know what was going on. He looked unsettled. Confused. Unsure. Since when had Javier ever looked unsure?

‘Are you all right?’ she asked waspishly, relenting just enough to let him slip inside the apartment, but then shutting the door and leaning against it with her hands behind her back.

‘No,’ Javier said abruptly, looking away and then staring at her.

‘What are you saying?’ Sophie blanched. ‘Are you...? Are you ill...?’ Fear and panic gripped her in equal measure.

‘Can we go sit somewhere?’

‘Tell me what’s wrong!’ She was at his side in seconds, her small hand on his forearm, her eyes pleading for reassurance that he was okay because, whatever he was, he wasn’t himself and that was scaring her half to death.

And if he saw that, she didn’t care.

‘I’ve missed you.’ The words slipped out before Javier could stop them in their tracks. He had put everything on the line and he felt sick. He wondered why he hadn’t thought to down a bottle of whisky before embarking on this trip.

‘You’ve missed me?’ Sophie squeaked.

‘You asked what was wrong with me,’ Javier threw at her accusingly.

‘Is missing me wrong?’ Something inside her burst and she wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. She had to tell herself that no mention had been made of love, and if he was missing her, then chances were that he was missing her body. Which was something else entirely.

She walked on wooden legs into the sitting room, where she had been watching telly on her tablet, and watched as he sat down, briefly glancing around him before settling those dark, dark eyes on her.

‘Missing...’ he sat down, arms loosely resting on his thighs, his body leaning towards hers ‘...isn’t something I’ve ever done.’

‘Then it’s a good thing,’

‘I couldn’t focus,’ he admitted heavily. Now that he had started down this road, he had no alternative but to continue, although she hadn’t chucked him out and that was a good thing. ‘I couldn’t sleep. You got into my head and I couldn’t get you out of it.’

Sophie’s heart was singing. She didn’t want to speak. What if she broke the spell?

‘I wanted you, you know...’ He looked at her gravely. ‘I don’t think I ever really stopped wanting you, and when your brother showed up at my office, I figured I’d been handed the perfect way of putting that want to bed for good. Literally. I was going to just...go down the simple “exchange for favours” road. Cash for a little fun between the sheets, but then I decided that I wanted more than that... I didn’t want a reluctant lover motivated for the wrong reasons.’

‘You’re assuming I would have given you your fun between the sheets because I needed money!’ But she couldn’t fire herself up to anger because her heart was still singing. She itched to touch him but first she wanted to talk.

‘I’m arrogant.’ He shot her a crooked smile. ‘As you’ve told me a million times. I thought that it would be a one-night stand, simple as that, and then when you told me that you were a virgin...that the ex was gay...’

‘Um, about that...’

‘Sleeping with you that first time was...mind-blowing.’

‘Er...’

‘And it wasn’t just because I’d never slept with a virgin before. It was because that person was you...’

‘I should tell you something.’ Sophie took a deep breath and looked him squarely in the eyes. So what if he hadn’t said anything about love? He had opened up and she could tell from the way he was groping with his words that this was a first for him. A big deal. Her turn. It would be a bigger deal, but so be it.

‘He wasn’t gay. Roger wasn’t gay. The opposite. He was one hundred percent straight as an arrow.’

Javier stared at her, for once in his life lost for words. ‘You said...’

‘No, Javier, you said.’ She sighed wearily and sifted her fingers through her hair. ‘It’s such a long story and I’m sorry if I just let you think that Roger...’

Javier just continued staring, his agile brain trying and failing to make connections. ‘Tell me from the beginning,’ he said slowly.

‘And you won’t interrupt?’

‘I promise nothing.’

Sophie half-smiled because why would this proud, stubborn, utterly adorable man ever take orders from anyone, even if it happened to be a very simple order?

‘Okay...’ Javier half-smiled back and a warm feeling spread through her ‘I as good as half promise.’

‘I’d been sort of going out with Roger by the time I went to university,’ Sophie began, staring back into the past and not flinching away from it as she always did. ‘I honestly don’t know why except he’d been around for ever and it was something I just drifted into. It was cosy. We mixed in the same circles, had the same friends. His mother died when he was little and he and his father spent a good deal of time at our place. When his father died, he became more or less a fixture. He was crazy about me...’ she said that without a trace of vanity ‘...and I think both my parents just assumed that we would end up getting married. Then I left home to go to university and everything just imploded.’

‘Tell me,’ Javier urged, leaning forward.

‘Roger didn’t want me to go to university. He was three years older and hadn’t gone. He’d done an apprenticeship and gone straight into work at a local company. His parents had been very well off and he’d inherited everything as an only child, so there was no need for him to do anything high-powered and, in truth, he wasn’t all that bright.’

She sighed. ‘He wanted to have fun and have a wife to cater to him. But as soon as I went to university it hit me that I didn’t love him. I liked him well enough but not enough to ever, ever consider marrying. I told him that but he wasn’t happy and then I met you and... I stopped caring whether he was happy or not. I stopped caring about anyone or anything but you.’

‘And yet you ended up marrying him. Doesn’t make sense.’

‘You promised you wouldn’t interrupt.’

Javier raised both his hands in agreement. In truth, he was too intrigued by this tale to ask too many questions.

‘My father summoned me back home,’ she said. ‘I went immediately. I knew it had to be important and I was worried that it was Mum. Her health hadn’t been good and we were all worried for her. I never expected to be told that the family was facing bankruptcy.’ She took a deep breath, eyes clouded. ‘Suddenly it was like every bad thing that could happen at once had happened. Not only was the company on the verge of collapse but my father admitted that he had been ill—cancer—and it was terminal. Roger was presented to me as the only solution, given the circumstances.’

‘Why didn’t you come to me?’

‘I wanted to but it was hard enough just fighting your corner without presenting you to my parents. They wanted nothing to do with you. They said that Roger would bring much-needed money to the table, money that would revitalise the company and drag it out of the red. Dad was worried sick that he wouldn’t be around long enough to do anything about saving the company. He was broken with guilt that he had allowed things to go down the pan but I think his own personal worries, which he had kept to himself, must have been enormous.

‘They told me that what I felt for you was...infatuation. That I was young and bowled over by someone who would be no good for me in the long run. You weren’t in my social class and you were a foreigner. Those two things would have been enough to condemn you but, had it not been for what was happening in the company, I don’t think they would have dreamt of forcing my hand.’

‘But they persuaded you that marrying Roger was vital to keep the family business afloat,’ Javier recapped slowly. ‘And, with your father facing death, there wasn’t time for long debates...’

‘I still wouldn’t have,’ Sophie whispered. ‘I was so head over heels in love with you, and I told Roger that. Pleaded with him to see it from my point of view. I knew that if he backed me up, Mum and Dad might lay off the whole convenient marriage thing, but of course he didn’t back me up. He was red with anger and jealousy. He stormed off. At the time, he had a little red sports car...’

‘He crashed, didn’t he?’

Sophie nodded and Javier picked up the story.

‘And you felt...guilty.’

‘Yes. I did. Especially because it was a very bad accident. Roger was in hospital for nearly two months and, by the time he was ready to come out, I had resigned myself to doing what had to be done. I’d even come to half believe that perhaps Mum and Dad were right—perhaps what I felt for you was a flash in the pan, whereas my relationship with Roger had the weight of shared history, which would prove a lot more powerful in the long run.’

Javier was seeing what life must have been like for her. In a matter of a few disastrous weeks, her entire future and a lot of her past had been changed for ever. She hadn’t used him. He had simply been a casualty of events that had been far too powerful for her to do anything about but bow her head and follow the path she had been instructed to follow.

Not old enough to know her own mind, and too attached to her parents to rebel, she had simply obeyed them.

‘But it didn’t go according to plan...’ he encouraged.

‘How did you guess? It was a disaster from the very start. We married but the accident had changed Roger. Maybe, like me, he went into it thinking that we could give it a shot, but there was too much water under the bridge. And there had been after-effects from the accident. He very quickly became addicted to painkillers. He used to play a lot of football but he no longer could. Our marriage became a battleground. He blamed me, and the more he blamed me, the guiltier I felt. He had affairs, which he proudly told me about. He wreaked havoc with the company. He gambled. There was nothing I could do because he could quickly turn violent. By the time he died, I’d...I’d grown up for ever.’

Javier looked at her long and hard. ‘Why did you let me believe that he was gay?’

‘Because...’ She took a deep breath. ‘I thought that if you knew the whole story, you would know how much you meant to me then and you would quickly work out how much you mean to me now.’ She laughed sadly. ‘And, besides that, I’ve always felt ashamed—ashamed that I let myself be persuaded into doing something I really didn’t want to do.’

‘When you say that I mean something to you now...’

‘I know what this is for you, Javier. You believed that I ran out on you, and when you had the chance, you figured you would take what should have been yours all those years ago.’

Javier had the grace to flush. What else could he do?

‘And, for a while, I kidded myself that that was what it was for me too. I’d dreamt about you for seven years and I’d been given the chance to turn those dreams into reality, except for me it was much more than that. You won’t want to hear this but I’ll tell you anyway. I never stopped loving you. You were the real thing, Javier. You’ll always be the main event in my life.’

‘Sophie...’ He closed the distance between them but only so that he could sit closer to her, close enough to thread his fingers through hers. His throat ached. ‘I’ve missed you so much. I thought I could walk away, just like I thought that sleeping with you would be a simple solution to sorting out the problem of you being on my mind all the time through the years. There, at the back of my mind like a ghost that refused to go away. You’d dumped me and married someone else. It didn’t matter how many times I told myself that I was well rid of someone who used me for a bit of fun until she got her head together and realised that the person she really wanted to be with wasn’t me... I still couldn’t forget you.’

Sophie thought that this was one of those conversations she never wanted to end. She just wanted to keep repeating it on a loop, over and over and over.

‘We slept together, Sophie, and just like that my life changed. Not having you in it was unthinkable. I didn’t even register that consciously until you presented me with that picture and I suddenly realised that I had succumbed to all the things I’d thought I’d ruled out of my life. You’d domesticated me to the point where I didn’t want to be anywhere unless you were there, and I hadn’t even realised it. I took fright, Soph. I suddenly felt the walls closing in and I reacted on instinct and scarpered.’

‘And now that you’re back...’ She had to say this. ‘I can’t have a relationship with you, Javier. I can’t go back to living from one day to the next, not knowing whether you’ll decide that you’re bored and that you have to take off.’

‘How could I ever get bored with you, Sophie?’ He lightly touched her cheek with his fingers and realised that he was trembling. ‘And how can you not see what I need to tell you? I don’t just want you, but I need you. I can’t live without you, Sophie. I fell in love with you all those years ago and, yes, you’re the main event in my life as well and always will be. Why do you think I came here? I came because I had to. I just couldn’t stand not being with you any longer.’

Sophie flung herself at him and he caught her in his arms, laughing because the chair very nearly toppled over.

‘So, will you marry me?’ he whispered into her hair and she pulled back, smiling, wanting to laugh and shout all at the same time.

‘You mean it?’

‘With every drop of blood that flows through my veins. Let me show you how great marriage can be.’ He laughed. ‘I never thought I’d hear myself say that.’

‘Nor did I.’ She kissed him softly and drew back. ‘And now that you have, I won’t allow you to take it back, so, yes, my darling. I’ll marry you...’

* * * * *