He had worked most evenings at the local gym in the town centre for extra cash, training people on the punching bags. If you hadn’t known him to be a first-class student with a brain most people would have given their right arm for, you might have mistaken him for a fighter.
He hadn’t talked much about his background but she had known that his parents were not well off, and when she had watched him in the gym, muscled, sweaty and focused, she had wondered whether he hadn’t done his fair share of fighting on the streets of Madrid.
From that place, he had gone to...this: the most expensive office block in the country, probably in Europe... A man shielded from the public by a bank of employees paid to protect the rich from nuisance visits...
Who would have thought?
Maybe if she had followed his progress over the years, she might have been braced for all of this, but, for her, the years had disappeared in a whirlpool of stress and unhappiness.
She tilted her jaw at a combative angle and squashed the wave of maudlin self-pity threatening to wash away her resolve.
Yes, she was told, after one of the women behind the marble counter had scrolled down a list on the computer in front of her, Mr Vasquez was expecting her.
He would buzz when he was ready for her to go up.
In the meantime...she was pointed to a clutch of dove-grey sofas at the side.
Sophie wondered how long she would have to wait. Oliver had admitted that he had had to wait for absolutely ages before Javier had deigned to see him and she settled in for the long haul. So she was surprised when, five minutes later, she was beckoned over and told that she could take the private lift to the eighteenth floor.
‘Usually someone would escort you up,’ the blonde woman told her with a trace of curiosity and malicious envy in her voice. ‘I suppose you must know Mr Vasquez...?’
‘Sort of,’ Sophie mumbled as the elevator doors pinged open and she stepped into a wonder of glass that reflected her neat, pristine, sensible image back at her in a mosaic of tiny, refracted detail.
And then, thankfully, the doors smoothly and quietly shut and she was whizzing upwards, heart in her mouth, feeling as though she was about to step into the lion’s den...
* * *
She was on her way up.
Javier had never been prone to nerves, but he would now confess to a certain tightening in his chest at the prospect of seeing her in a matter of minutes.
Of course he had known, from the second her brother had entered his offices with a begging bowl in his hand, that he would see Sophie once again.
As surely as night followed day, when it came to money, pride was the first thing to be sacrificed.
And they needed money. Badly. In fact, far more badly than Oliver had intimated. As soon as he had left, Javier had called up the company records for the family firm and discovered that it was in the process of free fall. Give it six months and it would crash-land and splinter into a thousand fragments.
He smiled slowly and pushed his chair back. He linked his fingers loosely together and toyed with the pleasurable thought of how he would play this meeting.
He knew what he wanted, naturally.
That had come as a bit of a surprise because he had truly thought that he had put that unfortunate slice of his past behind him, but apparently he hadn’t.
Because the very second Oliver had opened his mouth to launch into his plaintive, begging speech, Javier had known what he wanted and how he would get it.
He wanted her.
She was the only unfinished business in his life and he hadn’t realised how much that had preyed on his mind until now, until the opportunity to finish that business had been presented to him on a silver platter.
He’d never slept with her.
She’d strung him along for a bit of fun, maybe because she’d liked having those tittering, upper-class friends of hers oohing and aahing with envy because she’d managed to attract the attention of the good-looking bad boy.
Didn’t they say that about rich, spoilt girls—that they were always drawn to a bit of rough because it gave them an illicit thrill?
Naturally, they would never marry the bit of rough. That would be unthinkable!
Javier’s lips thinned as he recalled the narrative of their brief relationship.
He remembered the way she had played with him, teasing him with a beguiling mixture of innocence and guileless, sensual temptation. She had let him touch but he hadn’t been able to relish the full meal. He’d been confined to starters when he had wanted to devour all courses, including dessert.
He’d reached the point of wanting to ask her to marry him. He’d been offered the New York posting and he’d wanted her by his side. He’d hinted, saying a bit, dancing around the subject, but strangely for him had been too awkward to put all his cards on the table. Yet she must have suspected that a marriage proposal was on the cards.
Just thinking about it now, his insane stupidity, made him clench his teeth together with barely suppressed anger.
She was the only woman who had got to him and the only one who had escaped him.
He forced himself to relax, to breathe slowly, to release the cold bitterness that had very quickly risen to the surface now that he knew that he would be seeing her in a matter of minutes.
The woman who had...yes...hurt him.
The woman who had used him as a bit of fun, making sure that she didn’t get involved, saving herself for one of those posh, upper-class idiots who formed part of her tight little circle.
He was immune to being hurt now because he was older and more experienced. His life was rigidly controlled. He knew what he wanted and he got what he wanted, and what he wanted was the sort of financial security that would be immune to the winds of change. It was all that mattered and the only thing that mattered.
Women were a necessary outlet and he enjoyed them but they didn’t interrupt the focus of his unwavering ambition. They were like satellites bobbing around the main planet.
Had he only had this level of control within his grasp when he’d met Sophie all those years ago, he might not have fallen for her, but there was no point in crying over spilt milk. The past could not be altered.
Which wasn’t to say that there couldn’t be retribution...
He sensed her even before he was aware of the hesitant knock on the door.
He had given his secretary the afternoon off. He’d been in meetings all afternoon, had returned to his offices only an hour previously, and something in him wanted to see Sophie without the presence of his secretary around.
He had brought Eva back with him from New York. A widow in her sixties, originally from the UK anyway with all her family living here, she had been only too glad to accompany him back to London. She could be trusted not to gossip, but even so...
Seeing Sophie after all this time felt curiously intimate.
Which was something of a joke because intimacy implied some level of romance, of two people actually wanting to be in one another’s company...
Hardly the case here.
Although, if truth be told, he was almost looking forward to seeing the woman again, whilst she...
He settled back in his leather chair and mused that he was probably the last person in the world she wanted to see.
But needs must...
‘Enter.’
The deep, controlled tenor of that