Читать книгу Modern Romance October Books 1-4 - Мишель Смарт, Miranda Lee - Страница 14
ОглавлениеJAVIER SENSED SOPHIE’S presence the moment he stepped through the front door.
There was nothing of her in his eyeline, everything in the same spotless order it was always in, but he could feel her there nonetheless, as if she had arrived and imprinted herself on the walls. If he closed his eyes he could smell her perfume.
All day there had been a tight feeling of impending doom playing in his guts that had distracted his thoughts from the important meeting he’d been holding with his lawyer.
Separating his business interests from Luis’s was proving to be much harder than he’d anticipated, almost as hard as wrapping his head around the fact he would be sharing his home with the Englishwoman who carried his child.
In the two weeks since he’d seen her he’d carried on as normal. Apart from booking their wedding, that was.
He’d lodged all the necessary paperwork and arranged for the officiant to marry them here in his home. The ceremony itself would be short and without any fanfare.
In six days’ time he would be a married man.
Losing his single status meant nothing to him. He’d always known he would marry when he found the right woman to breed with and continue the Casillas line. Freya had been that right woman, not Sophie. Freya, who would have recoiled at a ‘proper’ marriage as much as he did.
Not the seemingly sweet, compassionate blonde woman who appeared to have a spine made of much sturdier stuff than he had initially credited her with.
He had never thought about Freya in his private time. Yet Sophie...
She was all he could think about, and as hard as he tried to push her from his thoughts, the harder she pushed back, those wide pale blue eyes staring straight into his whenever he closed his eyes.
She had refused to sign a contract that would have given her an abundance of money each month.
How could anyone be that selfless? It was not possible. Surely it had to be an act?
If it wasn’t, if Sophie really was as sweet and giving as she portrayed herself to be, then she would be fragile with it. Sweet things broke easily.
He did not want to break her but she had to understand that he could. The contract he’d wanted her to sign would have protected her as much as him. A person knew where they were with a contract. You signed it and abided by it, something Benjamin had failed to understand when he’d accused Javier and Luis of defrauding him. Benjamin had signed that contract. Javier could not be held responsible for his failure to read it.
Without a detailed contract to knit their marriage together, they would have to forge their own path. Sophie spoke of compromise but that was a meaningless word in itself if both parties looked at compromise with different markers.
He would not allow her to get close to him. Whether she liked it or not, their marriage would never be real in the sense she wanted it to mean.
He looked at his watch and decided to take a shower before dinner and give himself a few minutes of solitude before he had to face her. He would be undisturbed, his staff knowing not to seek him out. Julio ran his household with military precision. Everyone knew their job and did it well.
Treading heavily up the stairs, he loosened his tie from round his neck. He opened his bedroom door, went to step inside and came to an abrupt halt.
Sophie was sitting on the ottoman at the end of his bed, her hand frozen on a stocking she was halfway through rolling up her bare leg.
After a moment’s pause she turned to him and smiled. Only the stain of colour on her cheeks betrayed any nerves or fear she might have. ‘Good evening, Javier. Have you had a nice day?’
A swell of rage punched through him, which he did not bother to disguise. Propping himself against the doorway, he growled, ‘What are you doing in here?’
A small crease formed in her brow. ‘It’s moving-in day. You sent your private jet to collect me, remember?’
‘What are you doing in my bedroom?’ he clarified through gritted teeth.
The crease deepened. ‘Getting ready for dinner. As it’s our first night I thought I would make an effort.’ Then she smiled brightly. ‘I’m afraid there was a mistake and my stuff had been put in a room on the east wing. I could see how busy your staff were, so I moved it over myself. It didn’t take long. I found some empty space in your dressing room to put my clothes in; don’t worry, I didn’t touch any of your stuff. I’ll find space for my books and other bits and pieces tomorrow.’
He had to inhale three times before he could be certain of speaking without hurling obscenities. ‘There was no mistake.’
‘Yes, there was.’
‘No mistake. My staff put you in the room I designated for your use.’
‘Oh, I do apologise for the confusion. I didn’t mean your staff had made a mistake in where they put me. I meant you had made a mistake.’ Then, dropping her eyes from his gaze, she rolled the stocking up over her knee and to her thigh, then patted the lacy top of it to keep it in place. ‘I’ve never worn hold-ups before,’ she added conversationally. ‘I normally wear tights but they’ve started getting a little tight around my belly and I’m not ready for maternity wear yet. I hope they don’t fall down.’
Her nonchalance, her nerve, were astounding.
Javier gritted his teeth even tighter and cursed himself for allowing his eyes to take in the milky-white thigh now encased in black lace.
Sexy lingerie had never done anything for him and he could not believe his blood was pumping harder to see it on her.
But, Dios, she was sitting on his antique ottoman, her cherubic looks and hair reminiscent of an angel, her blood-red dress, modestly cut though it was, reminiscent of a vampire. His grinding teeth were taken with the compulsion to sink into the milky flesh still exposed over the top of the lacy hold-ups...
He clenched his hands into fists.
This stopped right now. Whatever game Sophie was playing ended here. She had tempted him once, dressed only as a waif, had driven him to a place he had never gone before and which he had regretted the moment it was over.
Healthy desire was good. Sex was good. Choosing the right person to have sex with was what made it good, a person you desired on a physical level, who made your loins tighten but with whom your heart kept its normal beat. A woman you could walk away from and never have to think about or consider again. A woman with whom wearing a condom was at the forefront of your mind, not a cursed afterthought when it was all over.
‘This is my bedroom,’ he said tightly. ‘My private space. You have been given your own bedroom for your own private space.’
‘Your house is big enough for us to both host individual parties without disturbing the other, so I would say there’s plenty of space to escape to if we get on each other’s nerves.’
‘Do not be flippant,’ he snarled.
Sophie got to her feet and smoothed the red dress she had donned because it was her only decent dress that still fitted properly with her growing breasts, praying he didn’t notice the tremors in her hands and that he couldn’t see the beats of her frantically beating heart.
Why did he have to walk in when she’d been putting the hold-ups on? Julio had told her Javier was expected home at seven p.m. but he had arrived back half an hour early. She’d wanted to be ready for him, be sitting on the light grey sofa that backed along the far wall, fully dressed.
She still didn’t know how she’d found the nerve to move her stuff over to his bedroom. She had sat alone for almost an hour mulling over her options on how best to proceed. Should she stay in her designated room at the furthest point from his and hope that at some point in the future she would be allowed to join him in it? Or should she fight from the start for the marriage she wanted and which he had promised to try for?
The latter had won and now she had to brazen it out.
Standing as tall as her five-foot-nothing frame would allow, she stared up at his towering six-foot-plus form. ‘I know you and Freya were only going to share a bed one night a week but that is not something I can contemplate. That is not a marriage.’
She remembered feeling sick to read that contract when it had been designed with Freya in mind, the flash of jealousy that had wracked Sophie to imagine her best friend in the arms of the man she had developed such strong feelings for. To see it replicated in her own contract had filled her with despair.
‘I am aware you work long hours and travel a lot for your business, so the evenings are often going to be the only times we share together,’ she continued. ‘How can we form any kind of bond if we’re in separate wings of your house?’
‘If it’s sex you require then I can accommodate that without you moving into my personal space.’ His eyes flashed dangerously as he finally crossed the threshold of the huge, luxurious bedroom and kicked the door shut behind him. Walking towards her in slow, long strides, like a big cat stalking towards its prey, he put his hands to the buckle of his belt. ‘If it is relief you are after then take your dress off and I will satisfy it for you.’
‘Sex is a part of it,’ she answered, refusing to be intimidated by this power play instinct told her was designed to frighten her, ‘but I’m talking about intimacy.’
He stopped a foot away from her, his face contorted. ‘I do not do intimacy.’
‘But that’s what a real marriage entails. If you won’t share a bedroom with me then it proves you’re not willing to try like you promised you would and, if that is the case, I might as well have our baby in England, where I will get the support I need—’
‘You dare threaten me?’ he cut through her, his incredulity obvious.
‘I would never threaten you,’ she said, horrified he would think her capable of such a thing.
‘You just threatened to return to England with our baby.’
‘Only until it’s born.’ She sat back on the ottoman and threaded her fingers through her hair as she tried to explain her thoughts without getting so emotional that the tears started falling.
Javier was so ice-like that it felt as if she were trying to get through to a sculpture.
‘I haven’t made this move for my sake but for our child’s. If I was thinking only of my own interests I would have stayed in England and had my parents’ support throughout the pregnancy. I don’t expect miracles, but if you won’t share a bed with me when that’s the most basic part of a marriage then what’s the point? I made it very clear that I want a real marriage and this for me is it. Sharing a bed. Getting to know each other, and getting to a point that when our child is born we’re comfortable together and united. That’s my red line. I need you to prove your commitment. Either we share a bed or we forget about marriage because it will be far more damaging for our child to be born in an unhappy home than be born to two separate but content homes. Our child can still have your name because I know that’s important for you. I’ll be happy to live in Madrid after the birth so we can share custody. You can still be a father even if you won’t be a husband.’
Javier listened to Sophie speak knowing she’d outmanoeuvred him again with her damned reasonableness.
She was giving him a way out of their marriage and if he had any sense he would take it.
‘Do you know what my experience of a real marriage is?’ he asked harshly, sitting on the edge of the bed so she was only a blur in the corner of his eye. ‘My parents.’
He heard her suck an intake of breath. ‘I know that to call your childhood hard would be an understatement but I don’t want our baby to suffer for it. I’m not asking you to commit emotionally to me, Javier. I am asking you to commit emotionally to our child.’
He thought of the scan she’d emailed to him the week before. He’d stared at it for so long his eyes had blurred.
Their baby. Their innocent baby, who had no idea what kind of a father it had been burdened with.
He’d been prepared to leave the raising of any child he had with Freya in her hands. Sophie, he suspected, would want him to be involved.
Sophie, who wanted him to share a bed with her every night. To share a space.
Dios, he hadn’t shared personal space since he and Luis had left their grandparents’ home when they’d turned eighteen to set out on their own, determined even at that young age to earn themselves a fortune. They had rented a small two-bedroom apartment and for the first time in his life Javier had found himself with a room to call his own. The freedom had been like learning to breathe for the first time.
He thought hard before rolling his neck and taking a sharp breath. ‘Bueno. You win. We will try it your way and share a bedroom but only here in this house. I have made it very clear what my own red lines are. I need my solitude. I am a loner and I will never change. I dislike company. When I travel on business, you will not be invited to accompany me, so don’t waste your time thinking of arguments for why you should. I have no need for a confidante, so do not expect me to pour my heart out to you. If I wish to go out for an evening on my own do not expect me to take you with me. If I tell you I need space then I expect you to respect that.’
‘I will respect all of that,’ she promised.
‘Good.’ He nodded tightly and got to his feet. ‘Excuse me but I need to shower before dinner.’
He strode to the bathroom before she could object, needing to get away from Sophie and that floral fragrance she wore that had already permeated the walls of his bedroom.
She might have inveigled herself into it but he was damned if he would let her get a foot in any other aspect of his life.
He could manage nights with her, he reasoned. After all, night-time was for sleeping.
He would dine out more frequently, he decided. Work even longer hours than he already did, hit his personal gym with more vigour, exhaust himself so greatly that when he did rest his head beside hers he would not care that Sophie and her sinfully tempting body lay there. He would simply fall asleep.
* * *
‘Is Luis going to be your best man?’ Sophie asked when she could bear the silence no more.
They’d finished their first course of cured meats and accompaniments and were now eating their main course. They’d been sitting in the dining room for half an hour and Javier had hardly exchanged a word with her. Her every attempt at conversation had been met with monosyllabic answers and grunts.
To make the tension in her stomach even worse, this was the very table he had made love to her on.
It felt so long ago now it could have been a different life but being in here with him brought back memories and feelings that had been smothered under the weight of the fear she had carried with her since, from the horrifying realisation they had failed to use protection to the terrifying realisation she was pregnant with his child.
His lips tightened but he didn’t look up from his phone, which he was typing on with his left hand while working his fork absently between his food and his mouth with the other. ‘No.’
His own twin wasn’t going to be his best man? ‘Who is, then?’
‘I’m not having one.’
‘Why not?’
‘I have no need for one. We do not need guests. Our wedding ceremony will be quick and serve a function.’
Not need guests? What kind of a wedding would it be without them?
‘I’ve already invited my parents.’
‘Un-invite them.’
Sophie put her fork down, folded her arms across her chest and stared at him for so long that eventually he noticed and flickered his eyes at her.
‘I am not getting married without my parents,’ she told him flatly. ‘It wouldn’t be fair. They’ve already booked their flights.’
His jaw clenched. ‘Have you told them they can stay here?’
Do I look stupid? she wanted to retort, settling instead on ‘They’re booked in a hotel.’
He stared at her for so long tumbleweed could have crossed the huge dining room twice. ‘Have you invited anyone else without consulting me?’
‘I didn’t realise I needed permission to invite my parents to our wedding.’
‘Consultation is not the same as permission.’
‘I quite agree, which is why I think it’s outrageous you’ve decided we should have no guests at all without any consultation with me.’
She did not drop her stare. Respect worked both ways and he needed to learn that.
A pulse throbbed in his temple.
Javier, she realised, was so tightly wound that to pull him any tighter would make him snap.
It didn’t scare her. Javier needed to snap. It could not be healthy keeping everything bottled inside him all the time.
‘I am very close to my parents,’ she told him in a gentler tone when he made no effort to respond. ‘It would break their hearts if I married without them.’
His lips pulled together before he finally inclined his head.
‘Bueno, your parents can come.’
She bit back the words of thanks she wanted to say. Gratitude on this would make her look weaker than he already thought her to be.
The sooner Javier came to regard her as his equal, the better.
She had a feeling that with the exception of his brother, he rarely saw anyone as equal to him. Freya had gained his respect, she thought with a pang that felt suspiciously like jealousy, but then Freya was the female version of Javier; single-minded and driven.
If Sophie could cut through Freya’s walls then she could at least chip away at Javier’s.
By the time their child was born she would have chipped away at enough of it that he could be the loving father their child needed and deserved.
Taking her cutlery back in her hand, she cut a bite of the delicious pork fillet and added some of the red pepper and chorizo sauce.
Eighteen months in Madrid had given Sophie a great appreciation of its culture but its food had been something she’d limited herself with, her ballet diet too strict for her to dare eat out much. It had been safer to prepare all her own tried and tested meals and ignore the tantalising aromas that had greeted her whenever she’d stepped onto Madrid’s bustling streets. She had missed out on so much but what surprised her was how little she had missed dancing since she’d quit.
She’d been so ashamed of what she’d done with Javier that she had left the company the next day. By the time she’d taken the pregnancy test she’d known she would never dance professionally again. Without the drive of constant performances and tours to keep her in top condition and with the tiredness that had drained her in the early weeks of pregnancy, her exercise regime had gone from seven intense hours a day minimum to hardly anything. And she didn’t miss it at all. She found it liberating in a way she’d never anticipated. She could eat the wonderful salt-baked new potatoes that made her taste buds tingle in delight without an ounce of guilt.
The magical food Javier’s chef had created deserved to be appreciated much more than Javier currently was appreciating it, his attention again back on his phone.
‘Is Luis coming to the wedding?’ she asked before popping the fork into her mouth.
Start as she meant to go on, she reminded herself. This was their wedding. She’d been happy to leave the arrangements in Javier’s hands but she would not exchange her vows blind to everything.
He didn’t look up. ‘No.’
‘Is he too busy?’
His shoulders rose and his nostrils flared before he answered. ‘Luis and I are finished, as brothers and business partners, and if you would stop asking me inane questions I could respond to this email my lawyer has sent me about it.’
The Casillas brothers were finished? Had she really heard that correctly?
The tightness of his features proved she had not misheard.
‘What’s happened?’ she asked quietly. She would not allow his bad temper to push her into silence. Sophie had dealt with temperamental dancers and choreographers her entire life and had long ago stopped being silenced by anger.
Anger always went hand in hand with pain, something she had learned at the age of nine when her paternal grandmother had died. It was the only time her father had ever lashed out. A normal Sunday dinner in the weeks after the funeral became a memory of a plate full of food smashing into the wall, her father offended by the lack of seasoning, ranting, face red and furious, shouting obscenities Sophie had never heard before. Her mother had watched in silence, then had gone to him and taken him in her arms.
The howl of pain her father had given as he’d collapsed into her mother’s arms was a sound Sophie would remember for the rest of her life.
Javier’s sharp eyes suddenly found hers again ‘Luis’s engagement to Chloe Guillem was announced a week ago. Is that explanation enough?’
‘Benjamin’s sister?’ Not just Benjamin’s sister but a costume maker employed by Compania de Ballet de Casillas.
He nodded and took a drink of his water.
‘Didn’t you say she’d been involved in Benjamin stealing Freya away from you?’ She was sure he had, right before they had made love on this table. He had made her coffee and asked her the questions she’d guessed had been playing on his mind for a week. She’d been sad for him that she couldn’t answer them but, in truth, she’d been as surprised as he’d been by what Freya had done.
Freya didn’t love Javier but she’d been desperate for the money marrying him would have given her, which she had planned to spend on an expensive experimental treatment for her mother, who had a rare neurological disease. The treatment wouldn’t have saved her life but there was a chance it would extend and improve the quality of it.
‘Chloe conspired with her brother to make Luis and myself late for the gala, which enabled Benjamin to pounce and steal Freya away to his chateau in France.’
‘And Luis is now engaged to her? How does that work?’
His eyes glittered with menace. ‘My brother’s loyalty has transferred to the Guillems. I’m surprised you haven’t read about it. The press have loved reporting that latest twist in the saga.’
‘I’ve been avoiding the news since I went home to England,’ she admitted. ‘That doorstepping left a very unpleasant taste in my mouth.’
Javier stared at her, suddenly remembering the strange protective feeling that had raced through him when she’d spoken of the press harassment. And with it came the memory of how his eyes had been unable to do anything but drink her in.
He could keep his eyes fixed to his phone as much as he liked but every nerve ending in his body was aware of the woman seated opposite him and every muscle remembered with painful intensity the sensation of being burrowed deep inside her.
‘Luis is a traitor,’ he answered flatly, speaking aloud the fury coiling like a viper inside him for the first time.
It was not the press Sophie needed protecting from, it was him.
Sophie needed to know who she was marrying.
‘I have protected him since childhood and carried him through the business and he repays me by defending and choosing to marry the woman who conspired with her brother to destroy us. He is dead to me and I would thank you not to mention his name in my presence again.’
Her eyes widened, whether at his tone or his words he did not know or care.
When it came to his brother, there would be no compromise.
Luis could rot in hell.
