Читать книгу Modern Romance October Books 1-4 - Мишель Смарт, Miranda Lee - Страница 15
ОглавлениеSOPHIE LAY IN Javier’s huge bed fighting to keep her eyes open. She must have lain there for an hour waiting for him, thrills of different shades racing through her: terror, excitement, nausea, until eventually they all melded into one that tasted of disappointment.
When she had climbed into the bed, she had thought he would soon follow. They’d finished their first meal together with him telling her to go up and make use of the bathroom before he joined her. She’d thought he was being considerate and giving her a little privacy. She didn’t need to tell him she’d never brushed her teeth around a man before or taken a shower near one. He would know.
She sighed.
It was only her first day there. She had to remember that. Javier had huge adjustments to make, fundamental ones that, she suspected, went far deeper than her own.
Building a bond would not happen overnight. It would take time. He was not a man who trusted easily and he was having to cope with a heck of a lot; the humiliation of Freya leaving him for Benjamin, Sophie being pregnant with his child, marrying her and now the destruction of his relationship with his twin.
She wished she had known about that. It would have made her think twice about asking about Luis.
She sighed again, the sigh turning into a wide yawn. Her eyes were getting really heavy. Much longer and she’d be asleep.
Pregnancy had brought about many changes in her: weight gain, the sudden appearance of breasts, the softening of muscles that had always been hard, but the tiredness had been the biggest challenge. Usually she had bagfuls of energy. In the early weeks she’d found herself nodding off so frequently she’d done an Internet search asking if narcolepsy was a pregnancy side effect. The tiredness had got better in recent weeks but she wasn’t back to her normal energy levels yet. She’d had a full and busy day, physically and emotionally, and now her body craved nothing but sleep.
Five more minutes.
She would try to stay awake for five more minutes...
* * *
Javier stood at his bedroom doorway and breathed deeply.
The air felt different. The only illumination, which came from the dim bedside light on Sophie’s side, the side he usually slept, felt softer.
Treading onto the carpet, he felt the thick ply beneath his bare feet in a way he’d never felt it before.
How could the bedroom he’d slept in for five years feel so different?
There was no movement from the mound burrowed under his bedsheets.
She’d fallen asleep, just as he’d hoped.
To be sure, he went to her side and peered down. If she was awake he would ask her to move over to the other side.
The sheets swaddled her, her pretty face peeking out, locks of blonde hair spread in different directions over the pillow.
She breathed deeply, the serene sleep of an innocent, oblivious to him staring so intently at her, unaware of his hand hovering closer...
He shoved his hand into his pocket, turned on his heel and, his heart thundering, went into the bathroom, locking the door behind him.
He’d been seconds from stroking her face.
The hour he’d spent pounding his punching bag and running on his treadmill had done nothing to dent his awareness of her.
Her mere presence at the dining table had dragged what should have been a relatively simple email exchange with his lawyer over the entire meal, Sophie snatching his attention even when she wasn’t pulling him into conversation.
He’d felt the blood pumping through his veins in a way he had never felt it before, still there, racing through him, alive, with every beat of his heart.
His awareness of the waif-like ballerina was becoming torturous.
Dios, awareness of a beautiful woman was one thing, a healthy thing, but this was something else entirely, as if something with its own heartbeat had infected his blood.
The thought of climbing into bed with Sophie with all this awareness simmering in him had been unthinkable.
He cursed under his breath.
When they made love, he needed to approach it as he always did, from a place of detachment, make it the mechanical exercise sex had always been for him.
‘Detached’ was not a word to describe how he felt with Sophie under his roof.
Sex with her had not been a mechanical exercise.
It had been mind-blowing. He had carried the feelings it had brought about in him for weeks after, even when he’d refused to allow Sophie herself into his thoughts.
It was only because she’d caught him at such a low point, he reasoned grimly as he brushed his teeth. It had been the perfect storm. An empty house. A beautiful woman with a sympathetic ear and compassionate eyes. What man wouldn’t have reacted in such a manner in that situation and with a woman who had melted at his first touch?
Those feelings had gone eventually, and the feeling of new life in his blood would disappear eventually too.
What else could he do to speed up the detachment? He’d worked out, taken a cold shower in the basement changing room he’d had installed next to his gym, and it had done nothing.
He stripped off his clothes with the exception of his boxers. He always slept nude but tonight that would not be an option, not until he’d got a grip of all these...feelings.
He cursed again.
Feelings were dangerous. Especially for him.
* * *
Sophie opened her eyes.
Something had woken her.
Then she heard faint sound coming from the bathroom and her heart began to pound.
Javier was in there.
He had finally deigned to join her.
Yawning, she groped for her phone to check the time, blinked and looked again.
She’d been alone in this bed for two hours.
In her heart she knew he’d intentionally waited all this time. He wanted her to be asleep.
For the first time it occurred to her that the reason Javier didn’t want to share a bed with her was nothing to do with his craving for solitude but because he simply did not fancy her. She’d been nothing but a convenient, willing release for him with huge unintended consequences.
The bathroom door opened. She squeezed her eyes back shut and held her breath.
She sensed rather than heard him tread to the bed.
There was only the slightest of dips as he climbed into it, then settled himself down with his back to her, keeping a distance that could only be breached deliberately. A moment later the room plunged into darkness.
How long she waited for him to do or say something she could not guess. Time lost its meaning in the dark.
There was no movement from him as the time dragged on. No sound either. Nothing. It was like lying beside an empty vessel.
While she had tried hard to stop herself assuming anything about what the night would bring, she’d been unable to stop herself making the fatal assumption that he would hold her in his arms and, at the very least, touch her stomach holding their growing child within its secure confines.
‘Goodnight, Javier,’ she whispered in the darkness.
There was no answer.
* * *
The following five days passed in a flash. It was a passage Sophie would remember as being a time of blurring nothing.
She spent the days themselves wandering around Javier’s villa and gardens, familiarising herself with everything, trying her hardest to feel comfortable within the spacious halls and learn more about the man she was soon to marry. This was her home, she constantly reminded herself. She should not feel like an unwanted trespasser.
The only things she learned about the man himself were that he had a penchant for ancient artefacts and no need for mirrors. In this villa that contained eleven bedrooms and twelve bathrooms, the reflective surfaces were confined to internal glass walls and doors, and shaving mirrors. The only bedroom with a full-length mirror was the one she’d been initially designated.
Things would be easier to manage and cope with if Javier didn’t continue to keep her at arm’s length. He left for work early and on three of the evenings failed to make it home in time for dinner, leaving her to dine alone. He would make a point of saying hello to her when he arrived back but would then disappear, joining her in the bedroom when, she knew, he hoped she would be asleep.
He made no effort to touch her. Sophie would find herself lying wide awake in the darkness psyching herself to turn over and put a hand to the cold shoulder facing her.
She didn’t think he slept either. He was just too still.
If she had more confidence she would say something but every time she opened her mouth her throat would close. She didn’t know the words to say without making herself sound like a needy nymphomaniac.
He was doing as she’d asked and sharing a bed with her. If he didn’t desire her she couldn’t force it.
Or was it something else? It hadn’t been just the contract he’d wanted her to sign that stated they would share a bed only one night of the week, but the contract he’d drawn up for Freya too.
Could it be simply that Javier had no interest in sex?
The conception of their child proved the lie in that, not just its conception but the way it had been conceived. Sophie had been a virgin but she had also spent her life in the hotbed of the ballet world, where passions always ran high. She knew passion when she saw it and in Javier’s arms she had felt it, had tasted it in his kisses.
Whatever lay behind his reluctance to touch her and however many times she told herself that it was early days and to give it time, Sophie’s hopes of creating a bond with him were fading.
The arrival of her parents brought some happiness into her heart and she spent the day before her wedding with them, plastering a smile to her face, keeping up the pretence that everything was fine and that this was a marriage she was entering with high expectations that it would last.
Luckily, Sophie was a pro at convincing her parents that everything was rosy. Their love and pride had given her the focus to get through ballet school and work like a Trojan to succeed in the ballet world. Her first concrete memory was of her mother clapping her hands in delight to see four-year-old Sophie perform in her first ballet recital. Her pride had filled Sophie’s heart and been the kick-start to the rest of her life.
Through dance she could make the woman who had given her a home and showered her with love beam with happiness.
The nights when she would lie awake yearning for the path her heart wanted would be put aside when the morning came. She would fix the image of her parents in her head and drag herself out of bed to start another day.
On that last day as a single woman, she was enjoying a meal out with them when her phone rang.
She would have been less surprised if it had been the Spanish prime minister calling.
The restaurant being too loud to hear, Sophie excused herself and went outside to call Javier back.
‘Where are you?’ he asked, picking up on the first ring.
‘In a tapas bar with my parents,’ she answered, surprised to hear what could be interpreted as brusque concern in his voice.
‘Where?’
She named the street and district. ‘Do you want to join us?’
‘No. Why didn’t you use my driver?’
‘I didn’t know I could. I took a taxi. Why do you sound so cross?’
‘I’m not cross.’ He sounded affronted at the mere thought. ‘When will you be back?’
‘Tomorrow. I’ve checked into my parents’ hotel. They’ve brought the wedding dress over, so it makes sense for me to stay with them.’
‘I should have been consulted on this.’
‘It was only decided today. I was going to call you later to tell you.’ She looked at her watch. It was eight thirty.
‘Tell me?’ he said dangerously.
Sophie rolled her eyes at his double standards. ‘Considering you do as you please with no consultation with me, you’re hardly in a position to moan when I do the same.’
The line went silent until he said tightly, ‘So this was punishment for me working hard?’
A wave of weariness washed over her and she took a seat on a nearby bench. ‘No, Javier, it wasn’t a punishment. You haven’t been home earlier than nine o’clock these past three nights. I didn’t want to disturb you while you were working. I was trying to be considerate.’
Another lengthy pause. ‘Next time, disturb me or message me.’
‘Okay. But if you want me to account for my movements, it’s only fair if you do the same.’
A grunt played into her ear before he said, ‘Message me the details of the hotel. I’ll send my driver to collect you in the morning.’
‘Not too early,’ she interjected. ‘My mum says it’s bad luck for us to see each other before the ceremony.’
The grunt he gave this time had a tinge of impatience to it. ‘He will collect you at eleven. Enjoy your evening.’
‘What are...?’
But she never got to ask him what his own plans for the evening were because the line had gone dead.
Sophie put her phone to her chest and closed her eyes, the beginning of a smile forming on her lips.
It had never occurred to her that Javier would come home at a decent time and that he would be worried to find her missing. She’d thought the only thing he would feel was relief to have the place to himself.
Her legs felt much lighter when she walked back into the restaurant. Her chest felt lighter too.
Javier had worried about her, and even if his concern had been because she was the vessel that carried his child, it still meant that, in his own way, he was beginning to care.
* * *
Javier splashed the remnants of shaving foam off his face, then turned his back on the small mirror and patted his face dry as he walked into the empty bedroom.
He could not believe how heavy his limbs had become. His chest felt as if a lead weight were compressing it.
He dressed methodically, underwear, white shirt, charcoal trousers, navy silk tie, then sat on the unmade bed to put on the hand-stitched shoes he’d had buffed and polished.
He’d expected to sleep well without Sophie lying beside him and catch up on all the sleep her presence had denied him this past week.
He could curse. With or without her fragrant body beside him, sleep had become a foe.
The one good thing was he’d been able to reclaim his usual side of the bed but that had turned into a bad thing because the sheets hadn’t been stripped and so he’d spent the night inhaling her perfume that clung to her pillow. Chucking the pillow on the floor and using his own had done nothing to help because by then her scent had crept into his senses and stuck there. He’d still been able to smell her when he woke after a few snatched hours.
At least he hadn’t felt compelled to lie like a statue all night. He could spread his limbs out, roll over, all the usual things a person did in the comfort of their bed without having to worry about accidentally finding a part of himself brushing against Sophie’s silky skin.
Dressed, he went back in the bathroom to tame his hair. Usually he made quick work of it, never meeting his own eye.
Today, he dipped his fingers into the pot of wax and stared hard at the reflection he despised but which his father had delighted in.
His father would stand beside him at a mirror and smile with satisfaction at the similarities.
‘You are my son,’ he would purr in the Slavic accent Javier had come to detest.
If Javier had more closely resembled his mother as Luis had done, would his father still have purred? Or would he have despised him as he had despised Luis?
His father’s love of him had been superficial at best, a form of narcissism, its value worthless. It hadn’t stopped his father beating Luis, even in the younger years when Javier would cry and beg him to stop. His tears had only made his father hit harder.
He had trained himself not to cry, to hold the emotion in and concentrate his energy on keeping his troublemaking twin out of the escapades that always evoked their father’s wrath, his punishments delivered with a gleam that had made Javier sure he enjoyed dispensing them.
And his, Javier’s face was the face his father had delighted in looking at, Javier the son he’d felt the affinity with, the child he’d believed was just like him.
How could Sophie look at that face and not recoil? Was she so blind she couldn’t see the danger in it?
There was a knock on his bedroom door.
‘Come in,’ he called out brusquely.
Julio appeared. ‘The officiant has entered the grounds.’
Javier nodded and worked the wax into his hair. ‘And Michael?’ he asked, referring to his driver.
‘At Sophie... Miss Johnson’s hotel.’
He gave his reflection one last look.
It was time to get married.
* * *
Sophie thanked whoever or whatever had looked out for her since her birth for her parents. Their excitement on this, her wedding day, was infectious and did much to curb the nerves chewing in her belly.
As Javier’s driver pulled up outside the villa, her mother practically squealed with excitement. ‘This is your home?’
Unable to speak, Sophie nodded.
The excited chatter between her parents fell to awed silence when they entered the house. Julio and one of the maids greeted them with smiles that didn’t quite meet their eyes. If anything, their smiles could be interpreted as sympathetic, which sent alarm bells ringing in her.
Her father holding her arm tightly, they followed Julio through the house, aglow with autumn sunshine pouring through the beautiful intricate skylights, until they reached the orangery.
The orangery was one of Sophie’s favourite rooms and she’d been delighted when Javier had suggested they marry in it. More a giant conservatory than anything else, when its doors and windows were open the most wonderful scents from the garden filled it.
She’d not allowed her expectations of what the orangery would be transformed into for this day run away with her but neither had she allowed herself to think about stepping into it and wanting to burst into tears.
The only difference in the orangery was that an oak desk had been placed in the centre with a handful of chairs facing it, presumably for her parents and their witnesses, Julio and his partner, to sit on.
There were no flowers, no balloons, nothing to indicate what an important event this was.
She took it all in slowly with a heart that wanted to smash out of her chest.
If she’d realised that there was to be no effort whatsoever she would never have worn this dress. She would have worn a pair of jeans and trainers.
A quick and functional ceremony was one thing but this...
This was humiliating.
She felt like an imposter, she realised with a wrench. The wrong bride.
Freya, whom in a fit of guilt Sophie had messaged that morning confessing her pregnancy and warning of their marriage, knowing when the press discovered it they would start hounding her and Benjamin all again, was supposed to have stood there.
The man who waited for her, his back currently turned to her—no change there—as he spoke to the rotund officiant, would never have made the choice to marry Sophie if it weren’t for the baby.
She wouldn’t want to marry him if it were not for the baby either, she reminded herself. Her body still yearned for him but her pounding heart would never yearn for him again. Her heart had learned its lesson, and thank God it had because this would have broken it.
The only effort he’d made was to don a suit. An ordinary suit. The kind of suit he wore every day for work.
And then he turned around and his eyes met hers.
The pounding of her heart became a thrum that vibrated through to her bones.
* * *
Javier’s mouth had run dry.
He stared at Sophie, hardly able to believe what his eyes were showing him.
He’d never imagined she would wear a traditional wedding dress.
He’d never imagined she could look so beautiful or that his heart would thump so hard the beats could be heard by anyone who listened.
White lace skimmed across her collarbones, forming long fitted sleeves to her wrists, the long lace-wrapped silk dress itself hugging her figure like a caress.
She didn’t look pregnant. She looked like a curvaceous nymph and as ravishing a sight as he had ever seen.
He inhaled deeply as he tried to get his thoughts in order.
But she had blown him away.
Pale blue eyes shone back at him.
Suddenly he realised why they were shining. They brimmed full of unshed tears.
That knowledge brought him back to his senses.
He inhaled deeply again, this time fighting anger.
Sophie had no reason to be upset. He’d explicitly told her the ceremony would be quick and functional. She’d chosen not to listen.
But then he watched her demeanour change. Her shoulders lifted and her neck elongated as she raised her chin and said, ‘Are we going to do this?’
He stared at her for a further brief moment before nodding.
Yes. It was time to marry this blindingly beautiful woman and give the full protection of his name and wealth to the growing life inside her.
They stood side by side in front of the officiant and, as the quick and functional ceremony began, the weight that had been compressing in his chest since he’d awoken sank lower into him.
For the first time since he’d cut Luis from his life he felt his absence.
He’d never thought he would marry without his brother beside him.
And he’d never thought he would marry with a maelstrom of feelings erupting in him strong enough to knock him off his feet.
He almost choked his vows out.
By contrast, Sophie’s Spanish was flawless and her sultry voice carried clearly. He pressed his palms against his thighs to prevent them reaching for her until it was time to exchange rings.
She held her hand out to him.
He took a deep breath and took it into his own.
Her hand was delicate. The nails on the elegant fingers were smooth and polished, the skin soft and dewy.
This time he was not quick enough to shake the stab of guilt away before it could plunge into him.
Sophie had made a huge effort for this occasion. Her actions had shown him more clearly than any words could that this was a commitment she took seriously.
He slid the ring onto her finger knowing she deserved so much more than the man she was pledging herself to.
Then it was her turn to put the ring on his finger.
His father had never worn a wedding ring. For that reason alone, Javier would wear one.
She took his hand gently in hers and then, her eyes gazing right into his, pushed the cold metal over his knuckle.
Its weight hit him like a physical mark to his person.
He stared down at it.
Where for thirty-five years there had been nothing, a gold band now lay.
Her fingers tightened around his.
Suddenly he became aware of expectant eyes upon him. The officiant’s, Sophie’s parents’...
And Sophie herself. Except hers weren’t expectant, they were pleading.
He could read everything contained in those pale blue eyes that shone beautifully under the bright sun filtering through the glass roof.
For my parents’ sake, please kiss me, her eyes beseeched.
Kiss her?
She should be pleading with him to never touch her again.
The weight pressing down inside him increased, making it hard for him to draw breath.
He had to kiss her.
A kiss to seal their marriage and spare her humiliation was the least she deserved from him.
Tightening his fingers around hers as hers were clasped around his, he placed his other hand lightly against her waist and lowered his face to hers.
There was not a sound to be heard. Only the thrashing of his heart.
Holding his breath, he pressed his lips to her mouth.
The thrashing turned into a heavy thud.
The floor he stood upon began to sink beneath him and he had to dig deeply all the way from his toes to keep himself grounded and not sink with it, not give in to the nerve endings all straining to her.
He counted to five, then pulled away.
Then he made the mistake of looking at her.
That beautiful face, cheeks slashed with colour, eyes wide...
He forced air into his lungs.
Her perfume fell in with it.
He shuddered and, gritting his teeth, turned back to the officiant.
He had done his duty. Now it was time to sign the document that would confirm them legally as husband and wife.
