Читать книгу Modern Romance October Books 1-4 - Мишель Смарт, Miranda Lee - Страница 19
ОглавлениеJAVIER CLIMBED THE stairs and followed the scent of fresh paint to the room next to his.
He stepped inside it and stared around in wonder, his heart fit to burst.
‘What do you think?’
He turned to find Sophie behind him, dressed in a black jersey dress that fell to her knees and covered the belly and breasts that both seemed to have grown in his absence. It would not be long, he guessed, before she would be obviously pregnant.
She looked more beautiful than ever. His bursting heart managed to expand some more.
For the longest time neither of them spoke.
Five days away from her...
He had never thought time could drag so much.
He’d expected to be relieved to have a bed to himself again.
He had not expected to find the nights so empty without her.
‘You did this?’ he asked.
The walls had been painted the palest yellow and covered with a hand-painted mural of white clouds and colourful smiling teddy bears.
She smiled, a wide, sweet grin that pierced straight into his chest. ‘I hired a local artist to do it. I discovered her at a plaza near Calle de Serrano and offered her an obscene amount of your cash for her to drop all her other commissions and do it immediately.’ Then the smile dimmed a little. ‘I was hoping to warn you before you saw the room.’
‘Warn me that you’ve turned the room next to ours into a nursery rather than the room on the east wing that I said should be used?’
She nodded and rubbed her belly. ‘Even if we do agree on getting a nanny, I know there is no way I’d be able to sleep if I thought my baby was crying in a room too far away for me to hear.’
He’d thought of that too, in his time away.
He wanted Sophie to accept him for how he was. It worked both ways. He had to accept her for how she was too. He’d known from the start that she was different from everyone else who traversed his life.
She might not be the perfect wife he had wanted for himself but she would be the perfect mother for their child.
Sophie would protect and love their child in a way that would make it hardly aware of its father’s remoteness.
‘I need you to understand that if you won’t have a nanny then you have to be prepared to do it all yourself,’ he warned her. ‘I’m not going to be one of those modern hands-on fathers. I am not designed that way and I work too-long hours.’
The light in her eyes dimmed a little more. ‘Being hands-on would be good for you.’
‘I doubt that and I doubt it would be good for the baby. I’ll pay for any help you need but I won’t be doing any of the work myself.’
Seeing she was prepared to argue, he cut her off. ‘Carina, we have months until the baby comes. I’ve had five very long days in the company of sharks and now I want nothing but to go for a swim and have some dinner.’
Her brows drew together. ‘Did the trip not go well?’
Her obvious concern sliced through him. ‘It was successful. The deal was signed.’
But the negotiations had been a lot tougher than he’d anticipated.
The Casillas brothers had always negotiated together. It had not felt right without Luis there, as if he were negotiating with an arm tied behind his back and a leg missing.
Luis had always been the counterpoint to him, charming the people who mattered, willing to play the game when Javier would rather cut his toes off than schmooze.
This time he’d had to play the role of good cop and bad cop in one.
He had managed it though.
His successful negotiations had been the proof he needed that he didn’t need his brother in his life in any capacity.
‘Will you have to spend a lot of time in South Africa when the development starts?’
‘Yes. There will be occasions when I’m away for weeks at a time.’
He only just managed to cut himself off from suggesting that she accompany him on some of the trips.
The light in her eyes dimmed into nothing. Her lips drew tighter but then she hugged her arms around her chest and took a step back. ‘I have something to show you.’
‘What?’
‘I have to show you, not tell you.’
He stared at her quizzically, then shrugged. ‘Go on, then.’
He followed her down the stairs. As they walked, she kept up a light chatter about the nursery. ‘I’ve also hired a local carpenter to make some bespoke furniture for it but he can’t start working on it for a few weeks yet.’
‘He had some scruples, did he?’ he asked drily, wondering why she suddenly seemed so nervous.
She laughed but it sounded forced. ‘I discovered that not everyone can be bought.’
You can’t, he thought. In a world where money ruled he had married perhaps the only person on it who could not be paid for.
His thoughts turned to a blank when he stepped through the door Sophie opened that led into the smallest of his huge living rooms.
Lying on his solid oak floor, which he had treated twice a year to keep it in immaculate condition, fast asleep on a plastic oval bed heaped with blankets that dwarfed its tiny size, was a dog.
‘What the hell is that?’
As he spoke, the dog opened its eyes and clambered to its feet.
‘A puppy.’
He glared at her. ‘I can see that. I meant what the hell is it doing in my house?’
‘Our house.’ The dog had padded to her feet and was scratching at her knee. She scooped it up and held it protectively in her arms. ‘You said I should treat it as my home.’
‘That does not give you licence to buy a dog.’
‘I didn’t buy it. I found it by—’
‘You’ve brought a stray dog into my house?’ he interrupted. ‘What’s wrong with you? Who knows what diseases it has?’
‘He has no disease. I found him bleeding outside the gates of the house and took him to the vet. He was covered in puncture wounds, so we think he was mauled by another dog. The vet treated his wounds. Other than being terrified and in pain from the mauling, there’s nothing wrong with him.’
‘Why hasn’t he been returned to his owner?’
‘He isn’t microchipped and no one’s claimed him. It’s likely he’s been abandoned.’
He knew her intentions immediately. ‘No.’
‘Yes.’
‘No. We are not having a dog.’
‘We’re not, I am. If the owner doesn’t declare him or herself by the end of next week Frodo will be registered as mine.’
‘Frodo?’
‘He looks like a Frodo. He already answers to it.’ Putting her nose down to the black rug in her arms’ nose, she said, in word-perfect Spanish, ‘You already know your name, don’t you, Frodo?’
‘Since when do you speak Spanish?’ he asked in amazement.
‘I’ve lived here for almost two years.’
‘You’ve never spoken it before.’
‘I made my wedding vows in Spanish. Besides, I haven’t needed to with you,’ she said, reverting back to her native language. ‘Your English is much better than my Spanish. I speak Spanish with the staff.’
Realising he’d been distracted from the conversation at hand, he steered it back. ‘He’s not staying. We are not having a dog. You have enough to cope with.’
She could not argue with that logic.
Turned out she could.
‘The baby’s not due for five months. That’s plenty of time to train it before the kumquat’s born. He’s only a puppy. The vet thinks he’s about three months old.’
‘What do you know about training a dog?’
‘I grew up with dogs. And cats and guinea pigs and stick insects. I told you before you left for Cape Town that I always wanted to be a vet.’
Dios, the infuriating woman had an answer for everything.
But he would not be swayed.
‘No. This is not a house for a dog. Think of the mess it will create. I have antiques and artefacts worth millions.’ In the corner of this room alone stood a statue of ancient Greek heritage. ‘It can stay until next Friday to recover from its injuries. If the owner does not come forward it will go to a dog rescue and be adopted.’
His word final, he strolled out of the living room, intent on finding Julio and demanding to know why none of his staff had seen fit to warn him of his wife’s doings.
‘How can you be so cruel?’
He took a deep breath and turned back around.
His heart wrenched.
Sophie’s eyes were bright with unshed tears, her chin wobbling. The puppy nuzzled into her hand. ‘This is a poor, defenceless puppy who’s been abandoned by its owner and now you want me to abandon it too. Well, I’m sorry but I can’t. Look at the poor little thing. You think a stupid artefact is worth more than a life? If he doesn’t stay then I don’t stay.’
He stared at her with disbelief. ‘I thought you didn’t make threats.’
‘I’m not making a threat. I’m telling you how it is. I will not abandon him. He needs me.’
‘He does not need you. He needs a family, agreed, but it does not need to be this one.’
‘It does!’ She took a long inhalation, seeming to suck the tears back before they could fall. ‘He’s just settling in and now you want him to be uprooted all over again? What do you think that would do to him after everything he’s been through? This house is enormous. We can compromise, we can put one of the living rooms aside for his use—this one would be perfect—and clear it of your precious artefacts so he can’t damage anything, but if you won’t compromise then I shall pack my things now because I am not giving him up.’
His incredulity grew. ‘I don’t understand you. I keep thinking it isn’t possible for you to have such a soft heart but then you threaten our marriage over a dog.’
She adjusted her hold on the ball of fluff. ‘You don’t understand me because you think my life has been nothing but unicorns and rainbows. You have no idea...’
‘Are you telling me it hasn’t been?’ he demanded. ‘You, with your talk of a house filled with animals, parents who love and support you... You have been raised with everything a child could desire.’
Everything he’d been denied as he’d been dragged around the world with a mother who’d barely tolerated him, never home long enough between tours for them to entertain a pet, a volatile father who’d idolised him but been so cruel to his twin.
Sophie could have no comprehension of his life and what he and his brother had lived through.
‘Not everything, no,’ she said tremulously, her face contorting. ‘If you had read the documents I couriered to you for our wedding you would know I’m adopted. I was abandoned as a baby.’
His disbelief turned into shock.
He hadn’t read the documents. He’d trusted they were in order and got his PA to send them to the officiant.
His brain began to burn as he suddenly wished he had read through them rather than tossing them to one side as if they meant nothing when what they had represented was the woman standing in front of him only just holding herself together over a dog.
He swallowed his lump-ridden throat. ‘You were abandoned?’
She nodded, her throat moving as she stepped back to sit on the hand-stitched Italian leather sofa, cuddling the puppy on her lap.
If she hadn’t just dropped her bombshell he would have demanded she move the dog far away from his extremely expensive sofa.
‘Don’t think I’m playing for sympathy here,’ she said. ‘I would never play the victim card because I’m not a victim. I’ve been incredibly lucky and you’re right, compared to yours, my childhood was unicorns and rainbows and I’m lucky that my parents—the people who adopted me—are all I can remember, but you said you don’t understand me and maybe it’s time you did.’
‘How old were you?’
She drew her lips in and swallowed before answering. ‘I was hours old when I was found. I’d been left outside a church in a village on the south coast of Devon. The vicar’s wife found me—she’d come to lock the church for the night. I was lucky that she heard my cries because it was too dark for her to see me. I was put in the care of social services and fostered until my parents adopted me when I was eighteen months old.’
He swore, the burn in his brain at boiling point. ‘How old were you when you learned this?’
Her hands stroked the dog’s ears. ‘I’ve always known. My parents never kept it a secret from me. My mum had cervical cancer in her early twenties and had to have a hysterectomy, so they couldn’t have children of their own. They always said I was their miracle from God, delivered to them at His house.’ She met his eyes and smiled. ‘They’re wrong—they’re my miracle. When I think of all the couples out there that could have adopted me, I was given to a couple who loved me more than any child could possibly be loved.’
His legs becoming too shaky to support his weight, Javier staggered onto the armchair across from her. ‘I’m sorry. I wish you had told me all this.’
‘There’s nothing to be sorry for. It’s not something I talk about much because it’s not something I remember. My life as I know it began on the day of my adoption and it’s been a wonderful life.’
Abandoned at her first breath and that was a wonderful life?
‘Did they ever find your birth mother?’
‘No. It was assumed she was a young teenager but she could have been anyone. No one came forward, no one was admitted to hospital with evident signs of recently giving birth, those who had given birth that day were all accounted for... She vanished. She could be anyone. My natural father could be anyone.’
‘Do you wonder about them?’
‘All the time.’ Her smile saddened. ‘I can’t look at a new face without scanning it for a resemblance but I know I’ll never find them. I pray my birth mother’s alive and well.’
‘You forgive her?’
‘Whatever her reasons for giving me up, she must have been terrified and in so much pain.’
She meant it. He could see that clearly.
Sophie had forgiven the woman who abandoned her.
‘How do you do it?’ he asked starkly. ‘How do you forgive? How can you open your heart so much when the people who should have loved and cared for you abandoned you as they did?’
‘Because I was found.’ She stared straight at him. ‘I will never know the reasons and I accept that. But I was found and I was saved—my cries were heard. I’ve known that all my life and all my life I’ve sworn that I will never ignore any living soul’s cries for help.’ She pressed a kiss to the puppy’s head, her eyes not leaving Javier’s face. ‘This little thing is as innocent and as helpless as I was and I will not abandon it.’
‘No.’ He sighed heavily.
Everything about Sophie made sense now.
He’d known she was different from the very start. He’d seen that goodness and compassion shining out of her, the reverse lens of himself.
Where his heart had contracted into a shell, hers had expanded to embrace anyone who needed it.
But she was tough too. Her heart was as soft as a sweetened sponge but her spine was made of steel.
He did not doubt that she would take that abandoned dog and walk away from him if he refused to let it stay.
‘No,’ he repeated. ‘I understand. The dog can stay. You can give it the love it needs.’
I can give you the love you need too, if only you would let me.
The thought popped into her head before Sophie could take it back but this time she did not push it away.
She rubbed the soft ears of the sweet, loving thing in her arms and wished she could hold Javier in the same way.
There was no point denying her feelings towards him any more. She loved him. She’d always loved him.
The heart was incapable of listening to reason and her heart had attached itself to Javier the first time she’d set eyes on him.
Whether he was capable of returning her love, she didn’t know and told herself it didn’t matter. His eyes had shone to see their child’s nursery. He was developing feelings for their unborn child, she was sure of it. He’d agreed that Frodo could stay, so there was something akin to compassion inside him.
But Javier was far more damaged than the affectionate puppy in her arms.
* * *
Javier was reading the story he’d had emailed from a reporter who worked for an English newspaper when the landline on his office desk rang.
He pressed the button. He’d told his PA not to put any calls through unless it was his wife.
‘I have Dante Moncada on line one,’ she told him. ‘He says it’s important.’
He sighed. Dante Moncada was a Sicilian technology magnate who’d inherited a one-hundred-acre plot of land in a prime location off Florence that he had no use for and wanted to sell. Javier and Luis had been in talks about buying it from him. Nothing had been signed. It had been very early days in the talks when Javier and Luis had gone their separate ways.
Javier had held off doing anything about the deal while the lawyers set about severing the Casillas brothers’ business, an issue that almost two months on was dragging interminably. Luis had communicated via their lawyers that he wanted to meet. Javier had refused. He never wanted to set eyes on his brother again.
His anger at Luis’s treachery had not lessened in the slightest but he wanted a clean break for them.
He might despise the man he had loved and protected his entire life but he would not do anything to gain an advantage in the severance. The lawyers would ensure everything was split equally. That had been his firm belief until Dante had called him the week before to inform him that Luis had made a private offer for the land and asking if Javier would like to counter it.
His brother’s latest display of treachery had speared him but he had hardened himself.
If his brother could be so disloyal as to hitch himself to the bitch who had worked to destroy him then Javier should not be surprised that Luis was going behind his back to steal business by targeting the clients they had cultivated together.
Two could play that game. And Javier would win.
‘Yes,’ he had informed the Sicilian. ‘I would like to counter it. How much has he offered?’
Dante had given him the figure. Javier had increased it. He’d been waiting for a response ever since.
‘Put him through,’ he said now.
‘Javier!’ came the thickly accented voice.
‘Dante. What can I do for you? Have you called to say you will accept my offer?’
‘I’m coming to Madrid tomorrow for a few days of business. I’ve bought an apartment in your city, so I’m going to throw a party to celebrate. Come. We can discuss business then.’
His heart sank. Dante’s parties were as legendary as his party-loving brother’s.
He estimated this was Dante’s tenth property purchase. The man would not be happy until he had property in every city in Europe.
‘Will Luis be there?’ he asked, stalling while he tried to think of an excuse.
Javier loathed parties. He despised watching people lose their inhibitions through alcohol, becoming worse versions of themselves. It was why he never drank. His father had been volatile enough without the alcohol he had come to depend on. He would never risk doing the same. He’d attended his brother’s parties only so he could keep an eye on him and stop him doing stupid things, like swimming drunk.
He would not go to any function his brother attended.
‘He’s not answering my calls, so...’
The unspoken implication did not go over his head. If Luis was incommunicado then the land was Javier’s for the taking.
‘What’s the address?’
Dante gave it to him, then finished by saying, ‘Bring your wife. Everyone’s dying to meet her.’
He would rather swim with sharks with a gashed knee pouring blood than take Sophie to that Lothario’s party.
Giving a non-committal grunt, he ended the call and rubbed his temples.
He had a headache forming.
He put a call through to his PA for a coffee and painkillers, then turned his attention back to the computer screen.
Right then he had more important things to think about.
It had taken him weeks to find the information he’d sought. He could have passed the job on to one of his employees to oversee on his behalf but this was something he’d needed to find himself.
The reporter he’d paid to trawl through the archives of an English paper from Devon had finally come up trumps.
Before him was a copy of a report dated over twenty-four years ago, published before the Internet had been the go-to place for news reports.
Sophie’s story had been front-page news. The news report gave all the details she’d skimmed over and omitted.
She’d omitted to mention, for example, that she’d been so severely dehydrated the doctors hadn’t thought she would survive the night.
When she’d been found, she’d been swaddled in a pink blanket and left in an old box that had once contained crisps.
She hadn’t been left on the church’s steps where she would be easily found, she’d been left in the shrubbery.
It had been a miracle that she’d been found.
And she prayed for the woman who’d abandoned her and hoped she was alive and well?
Javier had no such compassion. He hoped, with every fibre of his being, that the woman who’d abandoned his wife to die had lived a short and painful life.
But there was no way of knowing. Sophie had been right that her birth mother would never be found.
That was something else he’d dug into these past few weeks. The police investigation had been extremely thorough, he’d had to admit. They had left no stone unturned.
Everyone had been of the opinion that it had been a young teenage girl who’d been terrified to discover she was pregnant.
Why Javier had been so determined to delve into that period of Sophie’s life when, by her own admittance, she had always accepted it as a fact of her life, he did not know, but it had been like a compulsion in him, a need to learn everything about her, to dig deep into her psyche and discover how someone who’d been left to die on her first day of life could contain such a beautiful, pure heart.
How could she live with him and his cold, vengeful heart without being repulsed?
How could she bear for him to even touch her?
